Halloween, part 1

So, I just dropped Ethan off at daycare, and here are the pictures of him this morning before we left. He was in a really good mood. We'll see how long that lasts, given that he hates having hoods on his head. But he is so cute!

I'm off to the party at daycare at 10:30, then home to work again for a few more hours, then back to pick him up early at daycare, then off to get Daniel so that we can go to the trick-or-treating at the mall close to Daniel's work. I'm tired already! But it should be a fun day. 

Oh, and I'm nervously waiting to hear if I won any of the hundreds of bloggy giveaways that I entered this week. I don't even want to know how many hours I spent on that. Sad, really. I did only enter for prizes I really liked, so would be happy with any of them!  I'll do my drawing in the morning tomorrow.

Happy post!!!

Okay, so you get a happy post from me for my third post of the day (sorry about that!). My primary care doctor wrote me back with a recommendation for an OB, and I decided to give it a shot. I didn't want to switch, since the people at my current clinic are experts on my medication and all, but I also did not want to go through 7 more months of stress over scheduling and getting to the hospital and everything.

So it looks like I'm joining the herd here in Seattle and switching over to the OB clinic at the hospital where everyone else in the city gives birth. And they said when I called that, if I'm having a scheduled c-section, I should be assigned to one person that I'll see throughout the pregnancy. Which would make me very happy.  And they were so nice on the phone and friendly and actually cared when I had schedule availability and all.  

And, best of all, it'll be about a 5 minute bus ride from my office to the clinic.  Which would be great and would save me a lot of time for these next few months.

Sigh of happiness. Thanks for bearing with me on this!

** edited to add. I forgot to tell you this, at the end of the scheduling call, the nice nice lady said "Now, if you have any problems or concerns, just call the office and the nurses will  be happy to help you out."  I have NEVER heard that from my current clinic. In fact I didn't even know who to call if I had problems or what to do.  Seriously, this is such a blessing!

Amusing flashback

So, I was just looking back at my blog entries from when I was pregnant with Ethan, and this was my post from 8 weeks pregnant last time.  Apparently being 8 weeks pregnant does something to my mind!!!

Thursday morning

Okay, so if you read my last post and are wondering how I've managed to make it through almost 32 years of life while being so busy overreacting about minor things... I actually do have pretty fabulous coping skills. But they do not come out for small problems.  No, the small problems get ignored and pushed to the side until I FREAK OUT!! like I did yesterday and lose my mind and make everyone around me think I'm nuts.

Big problems- I'm great with those. Those remind me to recenter and focus on what's important and pray and read my Bible and talk to people about what's going on and just generally deal with it.  

Yesterday things just got to me, since I'd just left work and am stressed about our trip next week, and am still generally feeling nauseous all the time, which does not put me in a very good mood.  

Anyway, I did stop crying eventually and Ethan and Daniel still love me and I went to bed early and am doing better today. 

Except one of my project managers told me I need to call EPA tomorrow to ask them a question about a report that we don't understand.  Calling people= Carrie's #2 phobia. Just behind snakes.  So that should be interesting. 

I need to go work on performance reviews for coworkers now, before Ethan wakes up and wants breakfast.  Not sure what we're up to today. I'm carless today (weeping bitterly).  I should use my time to organize closets, they're getting out of control again. 

I'm losing my mind

I can't stop crying.  The trigger? My integrated screening ultrasound/OB visit appointment for a month from now got canceled. And my doctor has no availability for 6 weeks. So I have to see a different doctor. And my appointments are now on different days, so I have to miss hours of work twice.  And use PTO to cover it. And I don't really have much PTO left after our trip back east next week. And I have no car, which means either I have to bus to these appointments or Daniel has to bus to work and then he gets home at 7:30 PM or 8 instead of 7.

Seriously. Sobbing.  And the scheduling lady at the clinic thinks I'm insane because I started crying and told her I had to go.  

I just want to have a doctor who understands all these stupid complications I have going on.  Who knows how much medication I'm taking and the problems that I went through last time and everything.  If I wait for my doctor, I'll be going 6+ weeks between appointments and I'm pretty sure I need to start seeing the hypertension clinic fairly soon. 

Ethan keeps crying too, because he doesn't understand what's going on and why mommy is crying. 

I am sure I'm just being an overly hormonal, overly tired pregnant woman and that things will be fine and the new doctor will be fine and everything will be great. But I still cant stop crying.  I need a break.

Almost half-way through the week

I can't blame my tiredness this morning completely on either the embryo or the toddler, as Daniel and I stayed up late last night watching Biggest Loser (what were you thinking, black team!). He's still baffled by that show, being one of those annoying people who cannot gain weight. I like watching much more when I'm pregnant. I dont have the guilt of "oh, I really should be more devoted to my diet." Although I still dont like the last half of the season, when the contestants start slowly approaching my weight and then are suddenly thinner than I am.

T-6 days until the big trip. The piles of stuff to be packed are starting to appear around the condo. Fortunately, my parents have a pack n play and a car seat for us there, and they're going to buy diapers, so we get to pack fairly light, but there's still a lot of stuff to take. Including two dress-up outfits for each of us, one for the family photo and one for church on Sunday. Daniel, Ethan and I have never attended a service at my dad's new church. It's always intimidating meeting a congregation, especially after they've been hearing about me for a year or more, and I know nothing about them. I'm not sure how they're going to react to the news of our new addition, as I'm pretty sure they're already entirely sick of hearing about Ethan and seeing photos of Ethan. A second grandkid to be talked about every week might push some of them over the edge.

I'm just really hoping we can get into a better routine after we get back from the trip. Things have been very "survival mode" lately, with Daniel's work being very busy and very stressful, and the pregnancy, and the toddler. We barely even have the energy to talk in the evenings. I miss that. He's my best friend and there's no one I'd rather talk to and spend time with. When my nausea goes away and my energy returns, our marriage is going to have to move a bunch of steps up my priority list, that's for sure.

So that's it from here. Trying to stay awake for another 5.7 hours until I get to head home to get Ethan. I need to finish getting ready for Friday- there's a party at his daycare in the morning (I'm working from home so that I can run over for a bit) and we are heading down to IKEA to go trick-or-treating in the evening. Should be fun!

I think my son has meatloaf in his hair and I'm too tired to care

Ethan and I went shopping downtown this morning.  It was a lot of fun, but I am EXHAUSTED now.  It's really kind of scary how little energy I have these days.  I'm a very high-energy person, so this is tough for me to get used to. I just don't sit and rest much, and napping is almost completely out of the question.  Then I get pregnant and try to do all my usual activities and run out of energy half-way through!

Just finished up my self-evaluation for my work's 360 performance review project. This is, without a doubt, the low point of my year, every year.  We have to come up with high points and low points and our top 5 accomplishments. And this year it's especially tough, because I am working hard and doing a good job, mostly, but it's nothing I didn't do last year. I have not really made career progress (fairly intentionally) which is fine, except when I have to point it out to people in the evaluation process. And discussing my low point of the year- what if they haven't noticed! Who wants to bring their failing to everyone's attention if they missed them in the first place!!

In completely unrelated blogging, there's a fun blog party going on that is discussed here and  here Go check it out. Prizes! We all need those this year, that's for sure!

T-8 days until the big cross-country trip

We're heading back east to visit my parents next Tuesday. We flew back there with Ethan last year, but he was then an easily portable 3-month old, so it was a fairly easy trip. Except for his refusal to nurse the whole time, which meant I was in some serious pain at the end of our 12 hours of traveling home.

I asked the doctor if I could give him benadryl. She suggested that I not try it, since he's young and likely to just get hyper. Darn it. We did buy a small DVD player and have a Baby Einstein DVD. He normally isn't allowed to watch TV, so hopefully this will distract him for a while. We're planning to bring lots of other small toys and snacks, but if anyone has any helpful hints, they would be GREATLY appreciated.

He does not have his own seat, as the cost of tickets from here to the small town that we're flying into is incredibly high, and we are far too poor right now for buying him a seat. I was already nervous about this trip before adding in my "morning sickness"/extreme sensitivity to smells/ridiculous tiredness. It should be an interesting week!

Carless Thursday

No car today. Or next Thursday either.  And it looks like I need to adjust to that, since Daniel's friend that he carpools with a couple of times a week is moving soon and will have a different route to work. Oh well, I'll just have to work on begging people to visit me and doing more of my shopping on the weekend.

I just realized today that I haven't been to Target in at least 2 months. I don't think I've EVER gone two months without going to Target, except when I lived outside of the US. I'm feeling a very huge need to go there.  Must...spend...random...money...on...cool...Target...items...

Ethan's napping. He's been asleep for 2.5 hours now.  I just checked to make sure he was still breathing. He is.  I kept him up all morning today, because this afternoon I was participating in a sort of mini focus group (of 1!) for Cozi.  I love focus groups. Especially for things that I love already or didn't know about and now can't figure out how I lived without them.  (Full disclosure, they did pay me for my time testing the beta version of their site today, but that does not affect how I feel about the website).

Cozi is a family-organization website. It has a handy online calendar that everyone can log into and see the family schedule.  I had been trying (without success) to set up Google calendar to manage things, and this is going to be a nice alternative.  Especially since Daniel's always having to call me from work and ask if he's free on a weekend or an evening. Now he can just log in and see what's going on, and make plans accordingly.  And there's a nice shopping list feature. Again, useful for the times when I start a list at work and lose it by the time I get home and have to start all over. This way everything is in one central location. There's also a family journal site, which is probably less useful, since I already overshare details of my life here, but it could come in handy.

Seriously, is there anything more glorious than a beautiful autumn day?  We're having another completely perfect afternoon here.  Blue sky, not-freezing temperatures, pretty trees.  Sigh of happiness. 

15 pounds???

Daniel and I went to my first OB appointment this morning. I'll be seeing an OB at the hospital where I delivered Ethan, as all the doctors at my usual doctors' office no longer do OB because of the malpractice insurance. So we headed over there this morning after dropping Ethan off at daycare. We're so rarely out without Ethan that it seemed very strange to be getting in the car without him! 

My new OB seems very nice. High energy, so between her and me, we got through the questions and forms in record time. She's all for a repeat c-section (hurray!) given the fact that Ethan was tiny and still got stuck, and that I have high blood pressure. She was not worried about the subchorionic hematoma, which didn't really surprise me. It's one of those things where nothing can be done anyway, so there's not much point in worry about it (I still do, but shouldn't).  My blood pressure is going to result in the usual huge number of ultrasounds and appointments and NSTs and everything.  I'm not sure how that's going to fit with my job and with Ethan, but we'll worry about that later too.

So the appointment was almost done and we were gathering up our papers, and she asked how much I weighed today.  I told her and admitted that I was 20 pounds heavier than where I was at the beginning of my last pregnancy.  Which is when she told me that I should try to only gain 15 pounds.  I gained 40 last time.  This is going to be interesting.   

Grocery shopping with "morning sickness"

So, it was 5:30 here in Seattle. A light drizzle was falling, the sky was already well on its way to darkness, Ethan was in his pjs... and I had a momentary break in the nausea. Which meant- get out the stroller, put a coat on over Ethan's pjs, and head out into the drizzle.

At the store, I had a simple test.  Did the food make me feel nauseous when I looked at it? If yes, walk quickly away. If no, put it in my basket.

I made it home with the following items: a pumpkin pie, a thing of La Choy beef chow mein (I'll have to tell my Chinese husband that it's Chinese food, otherwise he wont be able to tell), a box of Campbell's Supper Bakes in Lemon Chicken, some of those REALLY unhealthy frozen chicken cordon bleus, and a box of lean pockets breakfast sandwiches.  Oh, and syrup for the pancakes that passed the sickness test yesterday.  Now I'm trying to eat as much as possible before the embryo changes its mind again on what foods it likes. Which is pretty much every day.  Daniel's been taking some very strange food to leave in the break room at work. But they're mostly computer programmers there, so they'll eat pretty much anything. 

I'm (temporarily, probably) over my earlier freakout.  I love my job and all, but doing work all day on birth defects is not helping with the craziness. Unfortunately, we're in a really slow time at work, and this is my specialty, so I just have to work on separating emotionally a bit more. I think Daniel and I are going to have to have an especially long prayer tonight!  

I really want to just go back to bed now

We had fun this weekend telling people about our upcoming addition to the family. Busy days on both Saturday and Sunday, but we got to see a lot of friends, so that was good. Pretty much the whole weekend was great until Daniel decided to bake salmon last night, and I nearly vomited from the smell. Good times. It was about 50 degrees in our condo for a lot of the evening, while we tried to de-fish-smell the condo by leaving all the windows open. Further cooking of fish has been banned until further notice.


Anyway, it was a good weekend and I was starting to relax. Even mentioned to one of my coworkers that I was pregnant on our way over to get flu shots this morning. Which didn't hurt at all. I was impressed!


Then I got back to the office and had an email from the doctor's office with a complete report on my ultrasound. And I apparently have a small subchorionic hemorrhage. Which is apparently associated with an increased risk for miscarriage, particularly with bleeding prior to 8 weeks. Sigh.


I'm only 7 weeks into this and I'm already feeling pretty worn down from all of this. The spotting, the subchorionic hemorrhage, the blood pressure. I see my OB for the first time on Wednesday, so at least we'll have someone to talk to after that. Until then, just trying to hold it all together and be somewhat productive at work. Not doing so well on that front.


I know this is all not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, and people are in much worse situations all over the world. But it's hard to remember in the middle of it.


Just praying a lot.

Apparently people do not read shirts

So, we decided to start telling people about baby #2 today.  We got this shirt (actually, we got a decal and put it on a onesie, because they dont make "big brother" shirts in 12-month size) for Ethan, and had him wear it to our home fellowship today, so we could tell our church friends first.  These are the people that we went through the last pregnancy with, we all have kids about the same age.

NO ONE read the shirt. After 30 minutes, I finally just held him up in front of them and said "read the shirt". 

Oh, and can I just say, I know I'm 31 years old and the parent of 1.2 kids and all, but today, when we had to pick up the babysitter for our home fellowship, and I was suddenly the old married mom in the car, instead of the babysitter that I'm sure I was about 3 minutes ago, it freaked me out.  Adulthood keeps sneaking up on me and scaring me.  

Not really buying into the hype about the new baby

One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen

Was the sight of the new baby's heart flickering away on the ultrasound screen today. :)  149 beats per minute, everything is measuring right at 7 weeks.  We actually were able to see the heartbeat on the external scan, but they did an internal as well to double check the measurements.

Thanks for your prayers.  Hopefully that was my one completely nutty freakout of the pregnancy.  I don't think I had too many with Ethan (I suppose I could go back and check my blog to see for sure, but I'd rather not).  

Phew. 

I think I used to be rational

Maybe I'm not remembering that right though. 

My "awfulizing" habit has kicked into high gear today.  REALLY high gear.  I forgot how much the early stages of pregnancy freak me out. The total unknown, the lack of control, the feeling of helplessness over things going on inside my own body.  

I have 8 hours and 14 minutes left until the ultrasound appointment.  Did I mention it's a full-bladder u/s?  Don't we all just love those? I had two last pregnancy, and remember them in very clear detail. The other 5 ultrasounds, not so much. But those two, definitely.  

I'm trying to focus on working today and praying when I start to freak out. Unfortunately, I have nothing to do workwise, so I keep finding myself hanging out on pregnancy boards and reading all these horror stories.  I think my biggest fear is that we wont see a heartbeat today and that we'll have to wait a week or two to check again. And I will LOSE MY MIND while waiting. 

Truth be told, I'm regretting not telling more people in my group of friends. If we do get bad news today, there are people that I would like to be able to talk to and have praying for me, but I am not sure I want to tell people bad news if I didn't first share the good news. If that makes any sense.

But hopefully it'll just be good news and all this freaking out will be for nothing.  

Yesterday I managed to stay more sane, thanks to hanging out with Lizzie in the afternoon. We went to a community center that has a fabulous toddler room, where Ethan was able to run around and throw things and practice saying "uh-oh!", which is his first word. Lucy, being only 10 weeks old, was less impressed, but still seemed to have fun.  It was good to get out and have a real conversation and be distracted for a while.

Anyway, sounds like Ethan's up, so I need to get him fed before I drop him off at daycare. And then come back here to check my work email obsessively in the hopes that someone will find SOMETHING FOR ME TO DO!!!

Edited to add- They found me work. I get to research birth defects all day!  Ah, the joys of being a reproductive/developmental toxicologist...

Ethan's officially Canadian!

I got a phone call from the Canadian consulate yesterday, letting me know that Ethan's citizenship card had finally arrived. We applied for it on New Year's Eve last year, so it's been quite the wait!  

So, this afternoon I dropped by the consulate on my way home from work. When the consular worker handed me the card and I laughed out loud. I'd forgotten how fat Ethan's little cheeks were at 4 months old, when we had the picture taken. That and the fact that his height is listed on the card as 66 centimeters just cracked me up. Can you imagine being a 25 year old man and having to hand over that card for identification?  Too funny!

No news

I didn't end up calling the hospital (where I will be seeing my new OB next week), because the spotting stopped all day yesterday. Until evening, of course. It's not rational, but I just don't like feeling like I'm overreacting to health issues, so I seriously underreact. I never once called the doctor when I was pregnant, and have taken Ethan in only once other than his well-baby appointments and weight checks.

Also, I never went to the doctor as a kid- the first appointment I had that I remember was when I was 12 and we moved and I needed to get shots in our new state. Because I hadn't been immunized where we were living before. So it's not a mental path of mine "Oh, I'm sick, I should call the doctor." Whereas Daniel, being Canadian (land of socialized medicine) is always suggesting that I go to the doctor for every little ache and pain.

In addition to just not having a history of going to the doctor, I'm a scientist and have worked in a nurse's office and as an EMT, so am one of those people who has just enough information to be dangerous. I told Daniel that he needs to please be forceful and make me go to the doctor or take Ethan to the doctor if he thinks that I am not taking things seriously enough. He hasn't played that card just yet, but almost has on a few occasions.

So just trying to stay distracted until Friday at 4, when we get to see what's going on in my uterus. I'll write again Friday night with an update.

Tuesday morning

The spotting seems to have gone away again, but it did that on Sunday night as well, so I'm not sure what to think. Just trying not to drive myself crazy overanalyzing whether or not I still feel pregnant. I forgot how totally insane this whole thing could make you!

I did reschedule my ultrasound from next Tuesday to this Friday. If something's going wrong, I'd like to know sooner rather than later. And we're seeing a whole bunch of friends this weekend, and if things look okay on Friday, I think we'll share our good news. 

Hopefully I wont have anything more to say about this topic! Just going to try to rest today (with a 1 year old at home, yeah, right). :)

Ever so slightly worried

I'm having some spotting. Not bright red, not a huge volume, but it's also not going away and maybe is getting a little more frequent since yesterday.  I'm not officially worried just yet. But I'm getting there.

And it's frustrating to not know who to call. My primary care doctor (who I have seen all of once, since my doctors keep leaving the practice) doesn't do OB, so she passed me off to the hospital clinic after my positive test.  But I don't have an appointment with the hospital OB until next week, so I'm kind of in between doctors.

And truthfully, I'm scared to call and have someone brush me off or be rude to me, and I can see that maybe happening at the big clinic.  Maybe not, but I'm really wishing I had an actual doctor to call. 

Okay, yeah, I'm scared. 

Another weekend recap

Note to self: stop planning multiple activities to take place in the space of one weekend day. At least until the end of the first trimester. Thanks very much. Love, Me.

We're having beautiful fall weather here this weekend- blue skies, 50 degrees, leaves everywhere on the ground. So this required a trip to the pumpkin patch. We emailed a bunch of friends and several of them were up for the drive, so we met up with our kids at the pumpkin patch on Saturday afternoon. Ethan went to a pumpkin patch last autumn as well, but he was all of 2 months old, so the excitement of the event was kind of lost on him. This year he and his friends had a great time looking at the chickens and horses, riding the hay wagon, and crawling around the pumpkin patch for the obligatory photo shoot.

Then we rushed home and bathed and fed the baby before my best friend showed up to babysit for us, and we were off to dinner and a play. Which I'm fairly sure was a lot of fun, but, as I tried to explain it to Daniel, my brain reaches a point in the evenings, around 7 PM, where it feels a lot like being a little tipsy- everything is just a little fuzzy, and I remember things only vaguely the next day. But it was great to get out, just the two of us, and enjoy spending time together. And- between dinner and the play, we were killing time on Seattle's Capitol Hill (quite the interesting place on Saturday night!) and stopped by a resale store, where I scored 2 pairs of maternity pants (petite-sized, very rare at resale stores! for $7 each. And they're pants that retail for $70-80 in the stores, so I was very excited about that.

This morning Ethan woke with a cold, and I was feeling pretty dreadful myself, so we didn't make it to church, unfortunately. Hopefully we can all stay well next week. Even though we've gone and scheduled two fairly major activities again for Saturday. Whoops. :)

Enjoying his joy

I think one of the greatest blessings of being around a small child is getting to see the world through their eyes for a while.  Ethan's been in a ridiculously good mood these last few days (taking a break from teething, I think!) and he's been a lot of fun to watch.

Yesterday he and I were out running errands and stopped by QFC on our way home. On our way out of the store we were waiting for the elevator. And when it arrived, a worker from Office Max (upstairs from QFC) was already in the elevator. WITH BALLOONS!! He saw Ethan staring pointedly at the balloons and asked if he would like one. I agreed and he kindly gave us one (then went back up to Office Max and got more before coming back down to his car again- we stole his balloon!!).  Ethan stared at the balloon on our way home, and then crawled around the condo dragging it behind him for hours.  He wouldn't eat unless the balloon was tied to the side of his highchair. When he got his diaper changed, we had to take the balloon into his room with him.

Every time he looked up at the balloon floating over his head, he got this ridiculously huge smile across his face.  Something so simple made him so happy. And this morning, we got to go through it all again, because he had forgotten about the balloon. When I carried him out to the living room and he saw it again and remembered- he was SO excited!  

That childish joy is just so fun, isn't it? I'm sitting in the living room right now. It's a workday, so Ethan's off at daycare, but I find myself smiling every time I look up and see that balloon floating above me, and think about his excitement this afternoon when he comes home and sees it again.

Kids- they're a handful, but such a blessing too.

Almost through another week

Okay, so second pregnancy- so much harder than the first, so far. I'm completely wiped out, all the time. I asked Daniel today if I was this tired last time, and he said he didn't think so. And believe me, if i had been feeling tired/sick/anything, he would have known. I don't really keep things to myself much.

Random comment- we're doing lots of gift reviews and gift guides over at Type-A-Mom. So if you're looking for good presents for this holiday season, go check it out! 

And because I can't post it on my desktop at home (Windows Vista doesn't allow it) or at work (no one there knows yet, and I dont want someone to accidentally see it, I'm going to put my pregnancy ticker up here someplace. Once I find space for it!  My page is getting too crowded. 

Glimpses

A glimpse into my "intelligence" this morning at work:
My co-worker: So, I think the info is in the "blah-blah" file. Why don't you take a look at that.
Me: Sure, I'll do that.
Me (about 10 seconds later): Wait, what was I looking for?
Her: The "blah-blah" file. You can use that to start drafting the report.
Me: Oh, okay.
Me (again, about 10 seconds later): And we're writing a report on.... what?

She doesn't know I'm pregnant, so probably just thinks I'm drinking at 7 AM at the office or something. I cannot seem to shake the cobwebs from my brain this morning and wake up. Ugh.

A glimpse into the bigger picture:
There are SO many things in life that I do not even begin to understand. And there are a lot of times when God lets us go through a trial that doesn't make sense to me at the time or even months and years down the road. But occasionally, we do get a chance to see a little bit of the reason behind things and understand that He does have reasons for things.

As I think most of you know, Daniel had worked at the same company for 8 years, and by this spring, he was hating it. He came home from work most days very sad and a little depressed, which is totally unlike him. So in April when he got a new job, he was really excited. It was in downtown Seattle, he liked the office, the job and the people. And then he got laid off in June, and we were sad. Thankfully, he got a new job before the severance ran out, and now has a job he likes even more, although the commute is significantly longer.

Yesterday he got an email from his boss at the job that laid him off. The parent company had merged with another company, and the smaller company where he worked was being shut down. All except for a few employees were laid off immediately.

Last night when Daniel came home, we couldn't help talking about what a blessing it was that he got laid off back in June. We couldn't imagine how scary it would be to be facing a layoff in today's job market and economy, with a new baby on the way and with me about to rack up another $40,000 in medical bills (which insurance will hopefully cover again!) for a high-risk pregnancy.

This is one of those things that I want to remember for when I am facing the next trial and don't get a glimpse into why God does things. Hopefully it'll help me remember that He is in control, even when I don't grasp the reasons.

This is not going to help the whole spend-more-time-with-Daniel-in-the-evenings thing

Both Daniel and I are ever-so-slightly addicted to our computers. Part of the problem is that we both have jobs that involve us sitting in front of a computer all day, and I think we've developed some sort of symbiotic relationship with the computers. So, in the evening, one or the other (and sometimes both) of us are sitting in front of the laptop or on the couch holding the laptop or even curled up in bed with the laptop. And generally whoever is not using the computer just
waits until the other one gets up to go to the bathroom or get something from the kitchen, then swoops in and steals the computer "just to check my email real quickly." As if anything important has happened since I last checked it 4.3 minutes before. You don't even want to know how many times I check my email during the day. Seriously, it's not a good thing. We try to take breaks from the computer and keep it off in the evening, but it never seems to last long.


And to make matters worse, every month or so I will branch out past my internet/email/blogging addiction and will play a game. And then I get addicted to that for a few days.


So, when GameHouse studios sent out an email a month or so ago, asking if any of the Seattle Mom Blogs people were interested in attending a tour at their studios, I was SO there. I awoke to a gorgeous day this morning, so Ethan and I caught the bus about an hour early and went and walked around Pioneer Square for a bit before heading to the GameHouse offices. When we got there, they had a room set up for the kids to play in, and someone there to watch the kids while we had our tour. They had a huge spread of sandwiches and salads for us to eat as well and we enjoyed those while a whole bunch of GameHouse people explained to us what they do and why they were interested in meeting with us. As it turns out, women make up a huge percentage of the casual game players, so we're the target audience for most of these game studios. I believe one of the people referred to the target audience as women age 35 and up at one point, then referred to the target audience as "middle-aged women" at another point, (dude, I'm 31 and there's no way I'm 4 years from middle-aged), but we decided to let that one go :)

After we ate, we began our tour. I really enjoyed seeing the whole process of designing a game- we visited different people throughout their office, beginning with the person who works on an idea at the very beginning, to the graphics person, to the person who codes the game, to the guy who does the (very nice!) music for the background, to the QA guys (who get to play games all day), and to the social networking games people. It was quite the education. Then we got to play some of their games on the different platforms that are available- on the computer, the Wii, phones, you name it.

Unfortunately, Ethan had been up since 7 AM at this point, so we had to leave a little early and catch the bus home for his nap. But I plan to go on their website and check out a bunch more games later tonight (sorry Daniel!) to look for my newest addiction.

Now I have to go make the bed. Or lie down on the bed and contemplate making it. One or the other. Pregnancy is doing bad things to my motivation for cleaning the house.

Sunday night comes so quickly

Sunday night again- I'm supervising Daniel hang shelves on the wall and am blogging while watching The Amazing Race. Here's a confession- I would totally be one of those annoying, yelling, grouchy people if I was on this show. Totally.

It was a good weekend here-I started off the weekend early by taking the afternoon off work on Friday to go do some shopping and go to the gym, since I have NO work to do right now. Hopefully tomorrow will be better, or else I'm heading home early again. Saturday morning

started out with a visit to the twice-yearly consignment sale held by a local preschool co-op. The sale was supposed to start at 10, and we showed up at 10:04, to find the parking lot completely full and wall-to-wall people. But we did get some good stuff, so it was a worthwhile trip. After that we headed down to Olympia to Daniel's rental property to empty the quarters from his washing machine, then had lunch at our favorite Korean BBQ. Even the embryo was happy with that, and the embryo is against most foods these days. We had planned a trip to a pumpkin patch, but Olympia was having terrible weather, so that plan was scrapped.

So, we decided to drop by the new Cabela's store. Wow. It was quite the experience, especially given that I do NOT go outside. At all, ever. Unless there's pavement and no chance that I will actually have to interact with any sort of nature. So Cabela's (a two-story massive store full of hunting, camping and fishing gear) was quite shocking to my system. Ethan enjoyed looking at the fish in the aquarium though, so it was a good stop. We finished off the day by stopping at Walmart, where we randomly spent far too much money. Hard not to do at Walmart sometimes.

Today was church in the morning, then after church Daniel and I tried to bribe Ethan into napping so that we could both nap, but he wasn't going for it. Ethan and I ended up going to see my best friend and taking her cake and wine, since she broke up with her boyfriend this weekend and was having a rough day. I'm really hoping that she finds someone great soon, she's so sweet and deserves a great husband and kids!

In baby news, the baby is the size of a sesame seed and I'm just past 5 weeks now. Still feeling really tired and totally devoid of appetite, but otherwise okay.

Trying not to fall asleep at my desk

The thing that's funny about all this is that I originally had a physical scheduled for next week, at which I planned to ask the doctor for a prescription for a sleeping pill, since I haven't been sleeping well, and benadryl no longer was working. Instead I got pregnant, which cured the insomnia problem even better than drugs would have.

I forgot about the soul-sucking tiredness. Other than that, I'm still feeling pretty well. I have absolutely no appetite and keep forgetting to eat, which is so utterly unlike me that it's a weird symptom in and of itself, but no nausea to speak of yet. Since I'm starting out this pregnancy 20 pounds heavier than last time, I'm not too worried about the lack of appetite. I made up for it in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters last time, and imagine I will do so again.

But right now I cant imagine having the energy to lift food to my mouth.

Have I mentioned how much I love my job right now? Chasing Ethan around the house yesterday was tough. Especially when I stopped to remember that I had ~35 weeks left to go and it was only going to get worse. When Daniel called at 5:45 to say that they were launching a website and that he would be late getting home, I actually sat on the living room floor and cried while Ethan took advantage of my distraction and played with the computer cords.

My first ultrasound is scheduled for the 21st. I am having an early one again to check and make sure there's only one kid in there. For those of you just joining me, I was a twin (my mom lost the twin about halfway through the pregnancy) and my grandmother is a twin, so they like to check. Not sure about the first OB appointment yet. My family doctor wants me to get in fairly early, given the whole BP thing. Unfortunately, no one at my family medicine practice is doing obstetrics anymore, so I have to be assigned to an OB over at the hospital. Hopefully I'll like the person, as I really hate to leave the hospital where I've been through all of this before, and where they're world experts on people going through pregnancy while on my particular BP medication.

So that's the Wednesday scoop from here. Time to make a trip to the restroom. I forgot about that symptom too!