Kinda Sorta Gestational Diabetes

How, can I have Kinda Sorta Gestational Diabetes you ask?  Yeah, I don't know either. 

It all started two Fridays ago.....  It was my first day of being a part time stay at home mom (SAHM) and it was my first opportunity to take my one hour glucose test.  I go in, book in hand, drink the nasty lemon-lime drink, and sat around for an hour people watching before getting my blood drawn. 

Tuesday of last week I get a call.  YOU FAILED!  Blah!  Well, a lot of people fail that test so off I went to get the 3 hour tolerance test on Wednesday.

I'll miss you cake :(

Oh so much fun, let me tell you.  I get in to the doctors at 7:30 a.m. because I wanted to be there at opening since you can't eat before the test.  They take some blood.  I sit while they analyze the blood.  (If that first number is too high they just call it and say you have gestational diabetes.  If it's not too high, they make you finish the test.  Oh joy, mine wasn't too high.)  I drink some even nastier drink.  Sit for an hour, they take my blood.  Sit for another hour, they take my blood.  Sit for one more hour and, you guessed it, they take my blood.  At this point I'm done.  It's 11:30 and I'm starving.  I'm also very thankful I've managed to not vomit since that last hour was a little touch and go.

I didn't hear anything the rest of the week.  I figured no news was good news; but, just to be safe, I thought I'd call for my results yesterday.  My reward for taking the tests?  I get to see a nutritionist at the diabetes info place!  Huzzah!

So Many Posts in One Day

Look at me, posting so much in one day.  I told you all I'd post more once I was a part time stay at home mom.  Plus, today I had my three hour glucose test to check for gestational diabetes and as a prize for myself for making it through that shenanigans, I'm planning on doing nothing of use this afternoon.  Huzzah!!

Let's start with a video why don't we.  Meet Kallie, full name Khaleesi, our adorable but spastic German Shepherd, Golden Retriever, Chow puppy.

She's doing great so far blending into our family.  She's still learning and still spends some of her day in her puppy playpen; but, overall she's learning to be a nice member of the family.

Kallie joins 2 other dogs, 3 hens, 3 chicks, and 5 fish in our crazy house.  Meet them after the jump.

Even More Life Changes!

I swear, things have changed so much in the last year.  This time last year we weren't even thinking about buying a house, we weren't even thinking about kids, and we definitely weren't thinking about changing jobs.  Well, you already know how the whole baby and kids thing turned out so you're probably wondering about the jobs.

I resigned my position just over a week ago.  Crazy, I know.  This baby is just so big (90-95 percentile) and even though I have some meat on my bones I'm only 5'2, and she is doing a number on my back.  I work in a toddler classroom and am up and down off the floor all day everyday and most of my day is spent sitting in chairs meant for the two year old set.  Needless to say, I come home exhausted and sore.  So with a heavy heart I resigned my position as of March 15th.

* The gif is an accurate representation of my feelings about this whole thing ;)

I'm hoping to stay on the sub list for the center where I work, and I might start working with a friend at her in home daycare; but, spending more time at home will definitely be a change of pace.  I am very thankful that my hubby got a "salary readjustment" last month that makes up for some  of what I'm losing by quitting my job; but, it's enough.

Book 4: Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

This is a bit of a combo post; both personal and book review.  Personal because it's about my (desired) plans for my little one and book review because, well, I'll be reviewing a book.

4.
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin

Ever since I went through school (I have a B.S. in Child Development) I've wanted to have as natural a birth as possible.  Unfortunately for me, I was born with a heart condition that makes everyone worry and, although I haven't had any problems with it, everyone wants me to give birth in a hospital to make sure I'm safe if something goes wrong.  If I had my way, I'd be giving birth in a birth center.

Despite the fact that for this birth I'm stuck with a hospital I'm hoping to have as natural of a birth as I can still be allowed.  I don't want an epidural, I don't want to be induced, I don't want an episiotomy, and I definitely don't want a cesarean section if at all possible.   To further this goal, I've been lurking forums that highlight natural, unmedicated childbirth.  In doing so, I found out about Ina May's book.

Jaded or Just Broke?

That's the question I've been asking myself this week about my friends, and people my age in general.  Are we not fond of direct sales businesses because we just don't have the extra money or is it because we grew up with our mom's going to direct sales parties and dragging us along.

I was really excited to become an Independent Scentsy Consultant, and I still am; but, over the course of this past week I've realized that I'm going to have to build a customer base without the help of my friends.  Not a single one of my friends has ordered anything through my Launch Party, not even the ones who said they would.  Am I disappointed?  Absolutely.  Am I surprised?  Not really.

More Life Changes :)

I'm still a slacker blogger aren't I?  Oh well, being pregnant and working is kind of a lot; but, as always, I'm going to try to be better.

It might be a little late in coming, but I do have updates about a couple things.  Including: sex of the baby, a new addition to the house, and my new hobby!

I Think I'm Building a Nest

So, I've always heard about nesting.  That instinct, or perhaps compulsion, pregnant women seem to get where they feel the need to clean, rearrange, or completely redecorate their house.  I always thought it was a silly idea and figured it didn't happen to most people.

Well, I can without a doubt say it has hit me.  When the new year started I decided that I wanted to get on top of keeping our house clean again.  Part of that means having to do chores.  I don't like chores.  They make my heart sad.  I'd much rather watch TV or read.  However, I figured getting the house organized now, and getting in the habit of keeping it that way, would make it easier to keep it that way once the baby come.

To help me accomplish this goal, I downloaded the Motivated Mom's app for my phone.  I had it last year and didn't really use it; but, I'm determined to make the most of it this year.  It's actually really nice.  It tells you what chores to do each day and even puts in chores you don't really think about like cleaning the baseboards or washing the walls.  Also, it spaces out the chores fairly evenly which makes it so that you don't have one day during the week where you just have a ton to do.  I also like it because you can assign chores to specific people and color code them to match to that person.  You can also add chores of your own creation and set them at regular intervals or delete the chores they include if you don't do them.

I've had the app since Monday and I have to say, our house is looking nice.  In fact, on Wednesday my MIL (mother-in-law) who lives with us wondered if we were having guests coming since we were doing so much cleaning.  Honestly, the house is probably in the best shape it's been in since we moved in last July.  I got so wrapped up in cleaning that last night I finished all my chores and then felt like I hadn't done enough.  I just wanted to keep cleaning.  I blame the baby.  It's easy to blame things on the baby. :)  Probably one of my favorite parts of being pregnant.

Plus, now that the house is all spiffy, I'll try to remember to take those pictures of our house that I promised ages ago and you can check them out.

Updates!

I am so sorry for being a blog abandoner.  I've had at least one reader tell me they check everyday which makes me feel horribly guilty; but, can't we please cut a first time home buyer some slack?  Because I really am going absolutely bonkers over here.  We were hoping to close by last Friday but that didn't happen, now we're hoping to close by this weekend or early next week.  We already had to reschedule our move once, I'm really hoping we don't have to do it twice. 

Anywho, hubby and I have been having some fun weekends to keep us busy and I thought I'd share that with you guys!

Google+

I've been hearing about Google+ for the last week and I've been hankering for an invite.  However, I didn't know anyone who had it so I was quite the sad panda. 

Yes, I was this sad!

Buying a House (Or Why I'm Getting Awesome at Signing My New Name)

So, you know that house we put an offer in on?  You guessed it, they did in fact accept our offer.  We don't have keys yet; but, we've done all the escrow paper work and signed a boatload of documents and now we're just waiting for all of our loan stuff to go through.

It's a smaller three bedroom, one bath house, on a quarter acre one town away from where we currently live.  It's in excellent shape and looks so adorable.  There will be a few things that we need to do before we move in, but really it's not much at all.

So Tired

I am so, very tired.  I'm not physically exhausted at all, I'm just so emotionally exhausted that I've actually gone to bed before 10 this week.  Quite unnatural for me.

It's all because we put an offer in on a house.  We had been planning to buy maybe the end of this year, or early next year; but, I always keep my eye on the houses for sale in the area and there was a house that was cheap enough that I felt we at least needed to check it out.  We checked it out, and the amount of work it needed just wasn't worth the price.  A friend of mine is a Realtor though and mentioned that there were some houses near her house for sale.  The first one we walked in, we fell in love with.  At least I did; hubby took a minute.  It was smaller, 3 bed 1 bath, but it was two lots so it had a huge yard.  It was well maintained with new carpet and paint, and it isn't a foreclosure which is even better.

Light Up Shoes

Confession: I may or may not have bought light up shoes today.  Oh, let's be honest, I totally bought light up shoes today.

I have been blessed with small enough feet that I can wear kids sized shoes.  I am also of the opinion, that sometimes, kids shoes are a lot more fun than adult shoes.  They are also, frequently, much cheaper.

Today we, hubby and I, ventured out to get a juicer and dog food and along the way we stopped at Payless because I had received a 20% off coupon at the grocery store last week.  Adding sweetness to the deal was the fact that Payless was having a buy 1, get 1 half off deal.  I'm a girl, I had to look, and ever since I found out I could still wear kids shoes a few months back, I always look at their shoes first.

The Good, The Bad,...and the Burrito?

Let's have a recap of the last few days.

I prefer to go against form and start with the bad.  I ALMOST DIED WHILE RIDING MY BIKE BACK FROM WORK TODAY!  And for once, I'm not exaggerating. First off, I realized that my front breaks were cater wonky.  My back brakes were fine, but my front brakes were too tight.  Whenever I braked with my front brakes they would stay tight even when I released the grip.  Then they would stick to the tire and made a god awful noise.  At one point I couldn't get the noise to stop so I called the hubby to come and get me but no answer.  Which was a bummer because the death defying incident started just a few moments later.

I got the brakes to suck a little bit less and got the noise to stop.  I just knew that I had stay away from my front brakes for the rest of the bike ride home.  I made it over the pedestrian overpass that is my half way point at which point I safely entered a roundabout.  Ahead of me I saw two cars waiting to enter the roundabout and slowed down so that the first one would have room to enter.  The second car didn't have room to enter so usually they would wait their turn, but this one came right in.  It was way too close to me so I had to slow down and steer my bike into the no car zone.  Well, at this point I realized that this person must not have seen me because they bring their car into the no car zone (so they are a bad driver in general to boot).  Anyway, longer story short, I finally screamed when the car was within 6 inches of me.  The driver just stared at me and stopped while everyone at the cafe shop across the way stared at us.  I was so angry I just rode away without hollering at them.  I made it home safe and sound, but it wad definitely unsettling. 

Now for the good:

Sweets: 1 Gina: 1

So, I have officially decided that sugar and I are in a love hate relationship.  I currently love sweets but they apparently hate me what with the havoc they have directed at my self control.

See, we started out okay, me and sweets.  I gave them up for Lent and made it a FULL 46 days without them.  I didn't even cheat a tiny bit.  Even when presented with bite sized cupcakes.  I pretended I was Wonder Woman and used my bracelets to reject the cupcake onslaught.

Alas, Lent ended and I decided that sweets and I could be friends again.  I WAS WRONG!!!!   Sweets are apparently very bitter that I gave them up and are working hard to remind me that I can't eat just a little bit.  I need to eat more, and more, and MORE, and MORE.  I write this after eating 2 bowls of ice cream.  Yes, I will be honest.  The most frustrating part is that sweets are really the only thing I'll binge on.

And thus, I have made my choice.  Sweets and I have broken up for the time being.  There may be the occasional relations for holidays and other special events; but, otherwise me and my waist line are saying SUCK IT! and we're looking to start seeing fruits more seriously.  

The end.

Feeling a Wee Bit Lost

Disclaimer: this shall be an emo post.  If you do not wish to infect your happy spirit with my rambling melancholy, now is the time to click the back button or the Stumble! button.  You have been warned.

Grandma Janie

I aspire to be my grandma.  No, I don't aspire to be a 70 year old woman, that would be weird; but, I do aspire to be like her.  In a lot of ways I'm already like her.

My grandma was only 47 when I was born, so she's relatively young for the "typical" grandma and we have always been close.  (In fact, I really need to give her a call.)  When I was in preschool my mom went back to work and every day after preschool my grandma would pick me up and I would spend the afternoon at her house.  Whenever my parents went out of town, I would stay at Grandma's house.  Whenever my parents went out of town, Grandma would buy me presents too!

Delicious "Breadsticks" and A Sweets Fast

I made a delicious new recipe for garlic bread sticks this weekend.  I got it from Cheeky Kitchen and oh my goodness were they heavenly.  They were also super easy to make! 

You need:
2 cups of water
1/4 cup sugar
A packet of yeast
3 +/- cups of flour
1 tsp. garlic power (I double that but we <3 garlic)
1 tbsp. sea salt
1 stick of butter
&
a bit of fresh parsley if so inclined.

Changing my Name

I really like being married.  I mean it.  Being married is basically the same as when we were dating (since we already lived together and had joint accounts almost as soon as we got engaged), only now I get to say "my husband" and we have the same last night.

But let me just say, changing your name is the biggest pain in the ass!  Nobody ever tells you that.  Of course, if you're like me, you don't think it's going to be a walk in the park, but no one tells you exactly how much of a pain it's going to be. 

A Real Life Love Story

My husband and I have only been together two years and three months.  Now, that may not seem like a long time; but, when you begin to hear the rest of the story, it starts to make sense.

Household Work

When I was a super fly preschooler, I spent every afternoon with my grandma.  My grandma is an amazing person and easily one of my favorite people in my life.  Because I spent so much time with my grandma I've inherited a lot of traits from her.

1.  I don't leave the house without makeup

2. I love looking at houses.  (We always used to look at model homes together.)

3.  I aspire to have a beautifully clean house just like hers.  Seriously, my grandma's house might be 18 years old, and it might have white carpet; but, it's still completely SPOTLESS!