Baby Kicks

With every flutter, kick, punch, wiggle, somersault, push, and reposition my love for my unborn baby grows.

Ok, that being said, yes I have referred to her as a parasite eating me from the inside out and as an alien. The parasite comment was in the first tri, when she was sucking down all my energy like a car from the 70’s guzzling gas. This feeling still applies now in the third tri, but now more that she is sucking on my brain and memory. If it is not baby related, I don’t want to focus. I am sure I am not the only pregnant girl who ever thought of her in-utero baby as an alien. When you are still and all of a sudden your belly starts moving of it’s own accord and you feel something trying to escape out of you straight through your stomach, it is hard not to equate it to an alien.

 

Home is....where?

We are thinking of buying a house.

When Hubby first mentioned this idea, I cried. It was back in January and I was still in my crying stage of pregnancy, everything made me cry at that point. It has taken me until now to consider accepting this idea. As soon as I brought the subject back up, he jumped on the idea and it feels like we are delving right in.

Mostly as an investment, partly because mortgages are cheaper than paying rent. We also hate this rental house that we are in and the agency we have to deal with. The people who own this house took no pride in their home, there are so many problems and issues that could have easily been prevented. We had to find somewhere to live quickly when we moved to AR. With a baby on the way and two pets, I really wanted a house and not an apartment. There were not many homes for rent. I looked at about 6 or 7 in our general price range. Most of them were built in about the 70’s (and still had the paneling to prove it), had tiny kitchens, and not much living space or natural light. The one we ended up in is bigger than we need but most of the others would have been smaller than we needed. Even knowing that I will have much more time to search the market for a better rental property, I am still not optimistic about what will be available for a family with two pets. We had to
pay a deposit for each of them with this place, and I was informed by two different rental agencies that most home owners would not accept cats. It also seems that the ones that do accept cats are prejudice against dogs, so we are screwed either way. I am dreading the idea of having to pack everything up and move as well. At least if we bought a house I could rest assured that we would not have to move ourselves again. When we end up moving out of AR it will be because Hubby’s company has transferred him and they will have to pay for movers so I won’t have to worry about the stress of packing.  We have never bought a house before or even really considered it. I’m not exactly thrilled about buying a house in AR but as we are here now I am just trying to deal with it.

I scream, You scream, We all scream for ice cream

I was at the store today for just a few staples, including ice cream of course. Hubby’s Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream was on sale, excellent. But wait, where is the Edy’s Chocolate? They can’t be out of just regular chocolate ice cream, I must be missing something. Good God! It’s not me, they really are out of Edy’s Chocolate ice cream!!!! What the F kind of place do I live in that there is not a constant supply of chocolate ice cream?? Do they not realize there are pregnant women in this town?? Are they trying to incite a riot??

I was forced to buy a different brand of chocolate ice cream. I am not happy about this. I also bought 2 of the those mini sample size ice creams of Edy’s in different flavors. Having 4 kinds of ice cream prompted the cashier and bag boy to engage me in a discussion about the varied deliciousness of the flavors I chose and the other options that I did not choose. Everyone loves ice cream.

Grad School

I have been planning on continuing on to grad school since working on my bachelor’s. I had looked into schools in Florida but began a full time job in my field instead. I had gotten most of my requirements for application done then. I had 2 letters of recommendation and had my GRE’s done,
which are the most time consuming part of applying. Once I decided to apply to a school in AR all I needed was 1 more letter of recommendation, my transcripts, an essay, and to fill out their application, all easy enough.

I’ve kind of lucked out that there are schools right here in town. Of all the places we could have ended up, there are 3 schools here- 2 universities and 1 college. Again, I lucked out that the big university here offers a master’s and phd program in school psychology.

I have been accepted into the Graduate School at UCA, which means I have met all the general requirements. I have also been accepted through the first round for my specific program, which means I met the general requirements but still have to pass the interview process. The interview is at the end of next week, here’s to hoping I don’t go into labor too early. Of course if I was in labor and still went to the interview, that would just show how devoted I was and they would have to accept me right?

Of course now that I am on the road to being accepted, I am having second thoughts. I have planned from the beginning to only go part time. Baby will only be 4 months old so I know I am not going to be excited about leaving her. I do not want to put her in daycare so we are going to look into
finding a private sitter/nanny. Either choice of childcare will be expensive. Either choice is going to be hard on me leaving my baby in someone else’s care. Even going to school part time is going to be a lot to take on with a new baby in a new area. I know I will not feel like reading textbooks when I’m sleep deprived and my baby is crying. Nor will I feel like writing papers when I could be taking her out for a walk. And not to mention that I would much rather spend money on anything she may need than tuition. I will just need to keep focusing on the long term. By the time I graduate with my degree and get licensed, baby will be old enough to be in school. I will be ready to go to work and hopefully find a good job that will have a similar schedule to my school aged baby. Being a dual income household again will ease financial pressures and we will hopefully be able to provide anything our child will need or want. This all seems so far away though, I am worried about the here and now.

Perks of being Pregnant

There are a lot of symptoms that come along with being pregnant. Most of what is talked about is the morning sickness, swelling, weight gain etc. Well there are plenty of perks too.

To begin, lint brushing off a shirt over a hard pregnant belly is much easier than lint brushing over rolls and the lint hiding in the creases.

Everyone loves a pregnant woman. I get smiled at all the time, no matter what I’m doing or what I look like. I do believe that a pregnant woman could get away with whatever she wanted. I have a feeling I could go rob a bank, and everyone would be like “oh it’s ok, she’s pregnant”.

You get complimented no matter what you look like or what you’ve been up to. I now get told I look pretty just for wearing normal clothes. When people ask what you’ve been doing, you could answer “I’ve been napping all day and stuffing my face with pizza” or “Ran a 5k marathon, worked 80 hours a week, and have cured cancer” and either answer would elicit the same exact response “Oh! Good for you!” and it would be completely sincere.

I have been make-up free since 3/03. I probably didn't need foundation before this either but for whatever reason still felt the need to wear it. My skin tone has miraculously evened out. I do look like I have just had my cheeks pinched for 5 minutes by great grandma mildred, but there is no foundation in the world that will cover up my flamming red pregnancy cheeks.

I also believe that I have picked the perfect time of year to be pregnant. I was with child through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and am due the day before Easter. I was able to indulge in all the sweets associated with those holidays nearly guilt free. The two exceptions to this are New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day. It sucks to be pregnant on those holidays, which coincidently are my two favorite.

Grocery Shopping

Usually my food shopping trips are rather uneventful. And so was this trip. But, being pregnant and forgetful I ended up wondering around the store aimlessly and back tracking 3 times. I was highly distracted by the fact that there were girl scout cookies for sale out front. As I was leaving the store, already planning my purchase of thin mints, there was a lady in a scooter chair passing by the girl scouts. They asked if she wanted to purchase some cookies, but she was able to resist the temptation stating that she was trying to lose weight. Here is a woman who is too obese to walk on her own and she is able to pass up delicious, only available once a year, girl scout cookies. I on the other hand fell right into these little girls’ devious trap and bought two boxes of thin mints, knowing that I would not share any with my hubby.  I have less will power than a large woman in a scooter chair.

Trying to have some lunch

I went to Panera’s the other day for a cinnamon crunch bagel and cream cheese. Delicious. I was pretty hungry and thirsty when I first got there. I downed some water first and felt better, then dug into my bagel. About half way through I was starting to feel a little full. A few more bites. Ok, no
more, can’t finish. Really? I can’t even finish a bagel for lunch? Not only was I unable to finish but it felt more like I had just spent 5 hours at an all you can eat buffet stuffing my face. This feeling lasted for about 2 hours. Baby needs to make up her mind on whether she is hungry or not. It is not fair to
tease mommy like that.

Also, it was very odd to be in Panera’s without a tea or coffee. Baby may get a dose of caffeine next time I go in.

Arkansas

It is very “Southern” here. The town we live in is a small town in area but has a very large population, yet somehow remains “small”. There is a bare minimum of things to do, there are plenty of fast food
restaurants but hardly any healthy or quality restaurants, the few none fast food places are still southern and cook everything in bacon fat so being a pescatarian here has seriously limited even the sides I can eat. Just being health conscious about not eating vegetables cooked to death in bacon fat would limit what I would be able to eat here. Also there don’t seem to be any groups, clubs or organizations to join. I’m slowly trying to adapt.
The fact that I was 5 months pregnant when we moved into our place here has stopped me from looking for employment. I feel it would be unfair to an employer to make a commitment to a job, then take maternity leave and not be entirely sure if I was even planning on returning to work. Plus, there are no open positions in my field here. I looked into volunteering, but apparently no where wants a preggo to volunteer for them. I can usually find plenty to do to keep myself busy and don’t mind doing things alone, but it would be nice to have connections and friends here before I have a baby.

My hubby was in the Navy for 9 years. I met him when he was in sub school so have basically been with him his entire military career. We first moved to Virginia Beach, VA and then to Cornwall, UK. Both were great stations. I was thinking of my friend who just married her military man, he is in the
Coast Guard. She was expecting Hawaii or maybe Virginia for their next station. Somehow he got the shaft and was sent to Baltimore. My poor friend’s anxiety went through the roof over this yet she had to accept it. I can completely sympathize with her. First off I was upset that they weren’t going to Hawaii, I had wanted to visit. Second off I felt we were in the same boat, giving up our own job to move somewhere crappy for our husbands. It did make me think that things could be worse though. I am at least used to moving and we could have ended up in Texas, which would have been much worse.

Moving

I have moved countless times in my life. It started young with my parents moving often for my dad’s work. I guess it is something I got used to and doesn’t really bother me too much anymore. My last two moves have been rough though. My husband and I left England at the end of 2009. This was
very difficult for me as I loved living there and was pretty happy there. I had good friends, some of whom I met there and others who I knew before we ever moved there. To be able to rekindle friendships with my English friends who I hadn’t seen for a few years was an absolutely wonderful experience for me. The only thing that softened the blow of leaving the UK, was that we were heading to Florida where my dad lived. Florida is basically exactly how you would imagine it. There are palm trees everywhere, everything is built along the coast, and the sun is almost always shining. We lived in an unremarkable area of FL, but it was still FL. I was able to find a great job that I loved doing. I was making a few good friends. I saw my dad more often than I had in the past 6 or 7 years altogether. Life wasn’t so bad.

Unfortunately, my husband did not see things this way. He had originally planned on using his GI Bill to go to school. He did go for about 1 semester but was not thrilled with it and did not want to continue. At the same time though he was not able to find employment in the area. We were
staying at my dad’s house and I think he resented it a little bit. It made sense for us to stay there, especially since my dad and his wife did not live there through the summer months (May-October), but I still think it was hard for him to deal with being in someone else’s house and dealing with other
people when they were living there. Once he decided not to continue with school, he updated his resume, put it online and expanded his job search area outside of our city. It only took about 2 months for a recruiter to find him and set him up with an interview. Long story short, he was offered a job but not in FL. We discussed it and came to the decision to move to Arkansas for this job opportunity. Basically I sacrificed my job, family, and happiness for him to take this job and be happy working again. I have to admit, a very large part of my decision was based on the fact that I was pregnant with our first child. I loved my job but it was with a non-profit organization and would
barely support the two of us, let alone a new baby too. So that is how my second, really rough move ended with me in Arkansas.