What I Loved in February

One of my favorite blogs features an "All Things Loved in ..." every month and being the un-creative person I am, I decided to copy her. So, if anyone cares, here is what got me through February. January and February are my most hated months because they drag on FOREVER. I hate the winter, I wish it was over on December 26th but no, we have to suffer through 2 and a half more months of its misery! Spring, come quickly. But leave the rain behind.

Onto the list:

Mini Fruit Roll-Ups. I had to stop buying boxes of these because I would eat EIGHTEEN mini fruit roll-ups in about 2 days. Somehow the fact that they were mini took away some of the shame of stuffing them in my face, two at a time. But, seriously they are hella good.

Bubble baths. Early on in the pregnancy, I had horrible leg cramps that woke me up at night. My midwife attributed them to needing more calcium, but before I knew that, I was in agony. I would get up in the middle of the night, draw a bath and instantly I felt relief. I'm also known to take baths to warm up, thanks to this sucky winter and being stuck inside all day, I spend hours in there. My skin is dry as a bone and itching me all over, but I can't stay out of the tub. I predict a water birth in my future.

The March Vanity Fair Issue. I am obsessed with Vanity Fair. I used to subscribe to Glamour, InStyle, US Weekly and People (not all at the same time) but they all got to be too fluffy for me. I still read Glamour at the bookstore from time to time, but finally I bit the bullet and subscribed to Vanity Fair. Every month when it comes, I spend HOURS reading it. There are so many interesting articles in there. In every issue there is an article on the current movies/stars, and always some article about something from Hollywood's past. It's just a perfect mix of entertainment news, book suggestions, fashion, politics, history and current events. Go out and read it. Or better yet, come over to my house and read some back issues because lord knows I'm not throwing these away.

Napping. Before I got pregnant, I liked naps as much as the next person. But I never knew what it felt like to REQUIRE a nap on a daily basis for many weeks. On Sunday afternoons, my typical one hour nap turned into a huge, five hour nap. From one to six in the evening, I was snoring away. And the most remarkable part is, I would still go to bed at NINE THIRTY. Growing a baby is hard work y'all.

Seeing the baby on screen! Life changing. Amazing. Going to the midwife again on Wednesday, hoping for another peek!

Seeing this guy turn 30. I meant to write a long, mushy post on his birthday, but that's not really my style. I will say that I am so incredibly lucky to have him as a brother, because he is so loyal to me. But I am also lucky to have him as my best friend, which is what he has become. He's the only one who laughs at all my jokes. He gives great book and movie recommendations. And I am mostly SO thankful he didn't ruin our family dynamic by marrying anyone other than Sandy. He chose wisely. I cannot WAIT to see him as an uncle, and I hope he makes me an aunt PRONTO. (Are you reading this? Get on it.)

dream a little dream of me

I might be the only one who feels this way, but I dread the mornings when Nick rolls over and says, "I had the weirdest dream last night." To his credit, Nick sometimes has very interesting dreams and usually they feature him as the hero: saving me, or saving his family. One of his dreams was him and Robert DeNiro fighting dragons so me and my friend Teeg could escape.

But no matter how interesting HE thinks they are, they are still someone else's dreams. And most of the time, other people's dreams don't make a damn bit of sense to anyone but the person who dreamed them! And it only gets worse when they try to explain them, despite the huge gaping plot holes: "We ended up at your house, but I don't remember how and it wasn't really your house because it was two stories..." Ughhhh. So boring. And I am as guilty as anyone about wanting to share them. Because sometimes dreams seem SO REAL, someone else HAS to know about it!

This morning we were enjoying our Saturday morning ritual, cuddling in bed and checking our iPhones and Nick muttered those words, "I had such a weird dream last night." Here we go. I said, "Oh yeah? A short one, I hope?" He rolled his eyes and said a bit defensively, "YES."

Here's what he said.

"I was still dating ------- (a girl from his past) but she was always so mean to me (in the dream, not in real life) and I was getting so sick of her. I went to the airport to pick her up after a long trip to Africa. When I saw her getting off the plane, I waved to her and said, "Hey!" to which she snarled at me, "I thought you'd have the car right outside!" And then I responded, "I'm so sick of your shit! I'm leaving!" And I left her standing there. When I got outside I saw a very pregnant lady struggling with her luggage and I hurried over to help her. And when I got there, I saw that it was you. And I knew instantly that I loved you and I loved this baby."

Swoon.

why i hate working in the schools sometimes

Mean Librarians.

Today, I went to a school to visit with a kid. We meet in the library. We have a deal where we visit for most of the session and then we read aloud from Diary of a Wimpy Kid (which is amazing). Before our session started, he asked me if he could check out a book to take home and read. Of course I said yes and we wandered through the aisles together and he picked out a fairly large hardback book with a picture of a dragon on it. I believe it was one of the Eragon series. He brought it to the Mean Librarian and pushed the book back at him and then sneered at him, "Go back and pick out a book you CAN read."

My client was so embarrassed and upset. He insisted he could read it and she opened it up at random and made him read one of the sentences inside and when he had trouble with one of the NAMES, not words, she made him return to the stacks and pick something else.

By this time I was giving her an incredulous look, mixed with fury and she started back peddling and then tried to insist that he should look for another book about dragons that's not so advanced if that's what he was interested in. He just grabbed a book off the shelf and set it down in front of her. I could tell he had no interest in reading it.

Another potential book lover bites the dust.

We sat down and talked for awhile and then read our book. During the time when he was reading out loud, I could hear the Mean Librarian yelling at every kid who came in.

Here's a lovely exchange with a SECOND grader who was at the card catalog computer:
"William, what are you looking for?"
Three full seconds of silence from William.
"Excuse me, are there any other Williams in this library?"
William sadly shakes his head.
"Do you have some kind of hearing problem?"
Shakes his head again.
"Then why would you pretend like you can't hear me when I asked you a question?"
He shrugs, looks terrified.
"Get over here and pick out a book and go back to class."

Another with a girl who looked like she was in fourth grade who had just returned a book.
"Jennifer did you really read this whole book?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm not counting it for your reading points because I don't believe you. I know you couldn't have finished it. Pick out something else from this shelf only and I'll let you check it out."

What a peach she is. She also did that awesomely, condescending thing where she had discussions with the teacher about how misbehaved the children were like the children weren't even there. Grrrrr.

Why do people think it's okay to speak to children that way? I understand it's not easy to deal with kids all day (God knows teachers complain about it 24/7), but that's what they signed on for! And in my opinion, librarians have NO excuse. They are in a big empty room surrounded by books most of the time!

Sadly, most kids don't even realize that they are being mistreated by this horrible woman because they are spoken to like this by most people in their lives. Have you ever walked down a hallway while classrooms are lined up, going to lunch? All they hear is what they're doing wrong; and you'd think teachers would have clued into the fact that if you ramble on enough, KIDS STOP LISTENING TO YOU. So, instead of yelling instructions at them all day like, "Face forward. Stop talking. Hands to yourself. Get in line. Don't look in their classroom. Hurry up," they'd start giving attention to the ones who ARE doing what they are supposed to because most kids would cut off their right arm for positive attention.

This whole rant has me seriously considering homeschooling my kid. Kidding.

behold good sir, your future child

(I have decided that every post related to the pregnancy, which let's face it, most of the future posts will be, I will title them with a quote from Juno - one of my favorite pregnancy movies.)

Today, Nick and I went to the midwife for our second appointment. In the last few days, I had been having a lot of anxiety about the baby. In our last appointment, I was only 8 weeks along and LeAnna (the midwife) didn't think we would be able to see the baby that early and she was right, but it still bummed me out.

So for our appointment today, I was worried there wouldn't be a heartbeat. I know, it's morbid. I don't know why I even thought of that, but I just wanted to be prepared for anything. I warned Nick going in that it was a possibility, but he was sure everything was alright.

At the beginning of the appointment, we chatted for a bit with LeAnna and she said, "Well, let's take a look." She gets out the doppler and rubs it around on my belly for awhile and all we hear is static. I start feeling really uncomfortable and nervous. Then she says, "Okay. Let's see if we can get a look at it." She gets the ultrasound machine out and has Nick come over and stand by me so we can look at the screen together. I was too freaked out to look at the screen right away so I looked at Nick until she said, "Okay, there it is!" I whipped my head around and as soon as I made out the baby on the screen, it jumped a mile! It didn't stop moving the whole time we looked at it. We saw the heartbeat fluttering a mile a minute. Nick was so sweet the whole time. I love, love, love seeing him excited about the baby. Last week he brought home a stroller!

I made a comment about being so relieved that we could see the baby and the nurse said, "Yeah, you looked really worried earlier!"

She printed out three pictures of the peanut and we set the date for the BIG ultrasound. March 23rd! How will I be able to wait?!

Here's the little guy/girl with its head down and feet up!
(I never thought I would be one of "those" women who post ultrasound pictures that no one can figure out. I imagine in the next few months I'll be doing alot of things I never thought I would. Isn't that what motherhood is all about?)

for shiz up the spout

Well, it's happened. I'm pregnant, knocked up, prego, with child, expecting. Would you like to hear how it happened? (No, not how IT happened, but how we found out?)

We started "trying" in November (by the way, people asking me how long we had been trying or if anyone knew we were trying makes for uncomfortable conversation in my opinion. No way around it, we're talking about having unprotected sex. So no, we didn't tell our parents or random people that we were trying). Due to my obsessive nature regarding success in the trying-to-conceive game, I researched and read books for months leading up to November. The most helpful was Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Up until I read that, I was sadly ignorant about my own body and what it takes to get pregnant.

I also joined a message board, full of other obsessed women trying to get pregnant. Let me tell you, a message board can be an informative, albeit scary place to visit. There are so many people out there struggling to get pregnant and it's taken them YEARS. It's easy to get discouraged and I was sure it would take us several months to get pregnant, which is why I convinced Nick to start trying earlier than we planned because no one gets pregnant in the first month. (Snicker)

So, November came to an end and then all you can do is wait. The problem with being well-informed is you know that it takes at least 14 days after you ovulate to detect pregnancy with a home pregnancy test. Fourteen days is a long time, y'all. Two full weeks. And all that's running through my head is, "What would be scarier? If the test was negative or positive?" Sure, you want it to be positive, but if it is, then that means, holy shit I'm going to be a mother! If it's not, then you have to go through all of this next month, and maybe the month after that. The waiting is enough to make you go mad.

I could only stand to wait ten out of the fourteen days before I decided to test. Which is dumb, because that early the chances of a positive test are like thirty percent. But I bought a pack of 10 cheapo pregnancy tests online (another trick I learned from the message board). Shelling out for those digital tests is totally against my tight wad nature.

Day ten out of fourteen = negative. Damn.
Day eleven out of fourteen = negative. This time I expected it, but still. Damn.
Day twelve out of fourteen = negative. Expecting my period any day now. Depressed.
Day thirteen out of fourteen = uh. Is that a faint, FAINT line? I'm talking so faint, you might be imagining it out of desperation? I abandoned all cute ways to reveal to Nick I might be pregnant and shoved the test in his face at 6am that morning. He concluded it was a "maybe". Later, he told me he couldn't see anything, but didn't want to disappoint me. That day I bought a digital pregnancy test and an early response test to use the next day.
Day fourteen of fourteen = a big, fat, positive test! It's hard to argue with the word PREGNANT showing up on the stick covered in your urine.

Nick had me wait until he got home from work that morning to test so I peed in a cup and got in the shower. We dipped the early response test first and it was a very clear plus sign. But Nick wanted confirmation from the digital. So we dipped that one too and waited forever. There's a little hourglass on the display screen that's there for about, oh, eight hours. It was infuriating. We couldn't sit there and watch it so we held hands and talked about Nick's day (night) at work. All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye, I see it change and lo and behold...PREGNANT.

Disbelief, tears, joy.

We took dozens of pictures of the thing, included the one above which we framed several copies of and gave to his family for the big reveal on Christmas Eve.

The waiting to tell people was the hardest part. I'm learning that pregnancy in general is a big waiting game and I suppose it's teaching me patience for when I have an infant, then toddler, then school aged, then adolescent - Lord help me.

For right now, I feel mostly fine, but just...different. My body sends me clues that something is changing. It's pretty amazing. I've been sick a few times. I realize I have to eat a little something every few hours or the full-on nausea hits hard. I know pack a lunch AND a dinner for my long days at work. So far, though everything has been manageable.

I think it's a boy.

Movies of 2009

Well, 2009 was a better year for movies than 2008, that's for sure. Nothing beats 2007, though. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom for the awards!

Movies of 2009

Bride Wars
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Taken
He's Just Not That Into You
Fanboys
Coraline 3D
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Sunshine Cleaning
Duplicity
I Love You, Man
Observe and Report
State of Play
The Soloist
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Land of the Lost
Away We Go
Public Enemies
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
(500) Days of Summer
Funny People
Julie and Julia
The Time Traveler's Wife
Extract
Post Grad
9
The September Issue
The Informant!
Food, Inc.
Zombieland
Whip It
The Invention of Lying
Good Hair
Where the Wild Things Are
Precious
The Men Who Stare at Goats
New Moon
The Blind Side
Everybody's Fine
Avatar in 3D
Up in the Air
Sherlock Holmes
Invictus
It's Complicated

TOTAL: 45 Movies. Not as many as in years past, but Nick and I are more selective of what we see in the "off season". We mainly see films that are out from May to August and October to December. Not much doing in the other months.

Way Exceeded Expectations:
Away We Go (see photo at the top of post) I'm not sure why this movie affected me so much. Maybe it's because when I saw it, I was in full-on baby mode and the thought of being pregnant without my parents there was something too horrifying to imagine. But I loved the dialogue, the music, the characters' chemistry with each other. I loved it all.

Star Trek. Never had an interest in the show, or any of the previous movies, but I really enjoyed it. This movie was everything a summer blockbuster should be.

Food, Inc. I thought it would be self-righteous and pro-organic, but it was actually interesting and provoking. Convinced us to (mostly) give up Wal-Mart and start shopping locally and in season.

Avatar in 3D. Visually stunning, better acting that I expected, and I am developing a major crush on the main guy: Sam Worthington. Mmmm...


Thought It Would Be Good But Sucked It Up Bigtime:
Sunshine Cleaning. Boring. Depressing. Pointless.

The Time Traveler's Wife. Didn't live up to the hype. I should have known better.

Everybody's Fine. Misleading movie trailer and poster. Again: boring, depressing, and pointless.


Guilty Pleasures:
Confessions of a Shopaholic. Hugh Dancy. Shopping montages. I'm sold.
Land of the Lost. No matter how stupid those Will Ferrell movies look, I usually end up seeing them and laughing my ass off.

I'm realizing as I get older that I don't enjoy movies from my favorite books. I usually get a thrill when I hear they're making a favorite book into a movie, but I'm inevitably disappointed. Take Harry Potter for example: I saw the sixth movie with my dad at midnight, like we usually do. And right after it was over, I thought it was so great and made plans to see it again.

But when I had time to think about it, I realized I didn't really like it at all. They are adding whole sections to the movie that aren't even close to the book and I can't understand why. The house-burning scene really set me off. What was the point of that? And the Harry-Ginny love story is forced and awkward. Why didn't they leave well enough alone? I think I love the characters so much, that I'm happy to watch them do anything on screen, but I mourn for the movie that COULD have been.

Does that make me sound like a huge weirdo? Movies are the closest thing we have to watching the characters we love in real life, and it burns when they don't get it right. Same thing with Time Traveler's Wife. I felt such a connection with Claire and Henry in the book, but in the movie, I couldn't care less about them. Now I'm thinking I want to stay away from books turned into movies. Unfortunately, that's EVERY movie these days.

Are there no new ideas left? Maybe just in Pixar movies. By the way, we finally saw UP and I can say that the 5 minute montage of the main character's life is truly a cinematic wonder. The rest of the movie is so-so, but those first few minutes remind you of how powerful movies are. In other words, we were bawling. But what else is new in the Fossey house?

2010 Goals

Or dare I say resolutions?

Let me just tell you what WON'T be on the list:

-Lose weight/Be Healthy. This one's been done to death and no one (okay, me) sticks to it anyway.

Onto the real goals:

-Work on being confident in who I am RIGHT now. Not to say I couldn't be healthier, but I need to work on trying to love myself as I am.

-Take more photos. Like way more. I need to learn how to use our fancy camera.

-Update blog more often. I know y'all miss me and I have things to say, dammit!

-Read more to improve myself as a wife, person, future mother, and therapist. There's no need to only read the Harry Potter books over and over (although they're damn good)

-Be better about telling my family and friends how I feel about them. In the past few years I have shied away from "mushy" scenes with my family. Sure I tell them I love them, but I am terrible with the specifics. I actually worry about myself on this one.

-Keep up with my scrapbooking/card making. I have invested hundreds (maybe we're into the thousands by now) of dollars on supplies and "pretty stuff". I want to make an album of 2010 just for me and Nick.

-Take a trip with my beloved husband this summer. To somewhere other than Oklahoma or Texas. We need to get outta town.

-Cook more meals at home. My goal is to make 3 dishes a week and we'll eat leftovers the rest of the time.


That's all I've got for now. I read a LOT of blogs and it seems like everyone is anti-new year's resolution. Which I can understand; why set yourself up to fail? But the beginning of a new year always brings a renewed energy. It always makes me feel like this is the year to start new things, to fix what's broken and to let go of what's gone.

I'm excited for 2010.