Classy

Yep. 

Way classy. 

That's the way my day has been.

Making bold fashion statements right and left!

It all started when I got dressed this morning.

We recently got new school shirts that the teachers were all supposed to wear today. 

They were made to look like the "I heart NY" shirts, 

except that ours say "I heart RV" (RV is our school's initials). 

(sorry it's blurry...I have no idea how to take a picture in the mirror--it was quite disastrous) 

I thought it was a totally cute shirt, until I put it on and my husband commented that I can never wear this shirt anywhere else or people are going to think I must really love RV's. 

Dang.

Way to burst my bubble.

I can only imagine how well I would fit in wearing this baby at Walmart...

Anyway, with the shirt, we were all supposed to wear black pants today. We had a big assembly and a lot of visitors from other districts/states coming to observe us and see how we do things, so our principal wanted us to look nice and make a good impression. 

Well, crap, what about the expanding pregnant lady who has no black pants no more?

I went with a stretchy black skirt instead. 

Kind of tight shirt that I didn't get to try on before ordering + stretchy skirt = hello belly!

  

(My sister informed me last time that it's a rule to post how far along you are when you put up a prego picture, so almost 17 weeks in this one.)

Apparently this get-up greatly accentuated my pregnant-ness, because I had all kinds of students from other classes approaching me today and flat out asking me if I was having a baby.

Good thing the answer was yes. 

So then, recess time rolls around.

I was on duty.

It was freezing. 

Too freezing for a knee-length skirt, that is.

Like 28 degrees. 

I panicked.

What was I going to do?! 

I had to stand outside for 30 minutes in that temperature!!

My legs would freeze!

Just before recess, I remembered that I have a weird pair of brown leg warmers in a drawer in my classroom. 

I used to wear them under my pants on really cold days at recess, but haven't needed to use them in over a year.

In my moment of desperation, I went for it. 

Let me just add that, while my classroom door was wide open and I was standing in view of it putting on my brown leg warmers to go nicely with my skirt, 

the group of visiting adults happened to be entering the classroom across the hall for a meeting.

I got several double takes and stares.

Add that to my ginormous puffy brown recess duty coat, that is not in any way attractive or exactly fitting me anymore (but is super warm and toasty and was only $25 at Target on sale a few years back).
It lives at school and is used ONLY for recess.
Despite its faults, I love it because it is warm and long and poofy and saves my life on cold days.

(One of my friends referred to it as "the sleeping bag.")

Real winning combo right there, friends.

(It makes me shudder when I look at this picture and realize that I'm really just a frumpy old school marm.)

Please believe me when say I don't dress like this every day.

Gingerbread 2011: Igloo Style

The December that we were dating, we made a gingerbread house. 

I think it was one of those cheater gingerbread houses.

You know, the kind that come from a kit at the store.

Of course, my curious Matthew was intrigued and wanted to create his own gingerbread structure. 

So last year, we tried it.

We decided to do something a little more creative, and we made a gingerbread teepee. 

 Matthew baked the gingerbread and built the structure, and I made the people and supervised the decorating.

One of the candies we bought to decorate the gingerbread teepee was this bear, since it was a wild animal that would fit nicely into the scene. 

However, upon returning home and giving the bear further thought, we realized it was a white bear, which would make it a polar bear, which would totally not fit in with the teepee scene.

I commented that it would work great with a gingerbread igloo and that we should save it and make one next year.

Right away (as we were still creating the teepee), Matthew began concocting ideas for how he could construct a gingerbread igloo. 

So, we saved the bear in the kitchen cupboard next to the soups and the peanut butter all year, and brought him back out this December when it was gingerbread time.

(Btw, has anyone else besides me noticed that the bear has a beauty mark? I wonder if it may have developed over the humid summer while he lived in the kitchen cupboard, still in his box...)

Here are some pics of the process and final product.

I thought Matthew's idea to use the wire mesh was ingenious, but it still proved to be very difficult to bake something in a round shape.

We did manage to patch it and cover the messed up spots. Here is the final decorated product:

I think the bear is my favorite, fishing with his toothpick and floss fishing pole. :)
And I also really like the Eskimo.

We are definitely still novices...but determined ones! We hope to get better every year.

We have lots of ideas for future gingerbread houses, so stay tuned!

Happy Thoughts

Today is a SNOW DAY!
Totally still in my pj's at noon.

************************************************************************

On Friday, several people randomly stopped me in the halls at work to tell me how cute my "baby bump" is. 

Baby bump? I have a baby bump?!

I thought I was still in the phase of looking like I ate a big breakfast (and lunch, and dinner).

Of course, when I got home I had to check in the mirror, and, sure enough, I do have one!

It's not too big yet, but it's there! I think it shows more depending on what I'm wearing, which may have been why I got such sudden reactions from people at work. 

I have to say that it's kind of validating! It helps make this whole thing feel a little more real.

************************************************************

Ever since we got married and I moved into Matthew's apartment, our microwave lived here:

Not a big deal for a 6 foot 3 husband, but kind of  a big deal for a 5 foot 5 wife. 

(Especially when pulling out a bowl of hot soup...)

It lived there because we have not a whole lot of counter space, and, what little we had, was taken up by my toaster oven. 

I do have a little stool that I used, but it was still scary to get hot food out of a microwave way above my head. 

Plus, all of that other stuff that is still on the fridge now was there when the microwave was. It was a crowded mess and things were always falling off!

Unfortunately, (this is not a happy thought, but it leads to one), my beloved toaster oven of 8 years died in January. I was (and still am) very distraught over this, because I have since come to discover that our regular oven does not know how to make cheese toast! Dah!
(Byers, I know you will understand the tragedy of this)

So, I will have to be cheese-toastless until we move to a new house with a working oven or buy a new toaster oven. 

Sigh.

But, with the death of the toaster oven came open counter space!

Check out this baby!

I can reach it! It is beautiful and wonderful. It makes me so happy to look at and use!

Something in life I never knew could bring me so much pleasure:
a microwave on the counter.

*************************************************************

I have had an incredibly happy, relaxing weekend! 

Pretty sure this hasn't happened in quite a while. 

I was confused though, because we didn't even do anything too out of the ordinary. 

Several church meetings, a trip to the dollar store and Office Depot, eating Taco Bell in the car between it all, cleaning the house. 

??

I sat there last night, trying to figure out what made this weekend so different, when it dawned on me: 

I got to spend the entire weekend with Matthew!

(minus about two hours, when he went in to work)

It made sense, but also seemed strange. I see my husband every day, so it seemed weird that I was so excited and refreshed over spending time with him.

I had to think about it for a minute, but then I realized that I honestly haven't seen much of him for the past month or so. Every day when I get home from school I am a pregnant zombie creature and fall asleep immediately. He's been out of town on several weekends or sick or busy with meetings. Or I've been busy with meetings on the weekends. Or I just fall asleep some more. 

So, really, we haven't seen each other.

It amazes me what simple joy I found this weekend in going about my mundane errands and meetings with him there the whole time.

It changed the whole weekend.

*******************************************************************

And, saving the best for last, this handsome little chunk!

I melt at every adorable picture I see of my new nephew.
I love those toes...and those cheeks...and all of him.
I hope my baby is this cute!

The Un-Fun Parts of Being Pregnant

There are lots of fun parts of being pregnant.

Like getting excited about having your own little bundle of snuggles.

And having other people get so excited with you.

And wondering what the baby will look like.

And picking out cute things for him/her.

And baby showers.

And finding out if it's a boy or a girl.

And feeling baby kicks (which hasn't happened yet, but I'm sure will be fun!)

And choosing a name.

And hearing baby's heart beat.

I like those parts.

But there are other parts that I don't like. 

Like feeling sicky to my stomach.

And being super tired.

And crying lots and lots.

Overall, it hasn't been as terrible as it could be--I know plenty of people who are much sicker when they are pregnant. I think I am a pretty typical, textbook pregnant lady. 

But it has still not been easy.

I have been feeling nauseous, but, luckily, have only thrown up once. Smells definitely trigger the sick feeling (the school cafeteria, bacon, and Walmart are some of the grossest smells right now). It took me about a month of feeling sick to figure out that eating protein throughout the day (and staying away from nasty smells) keeps the nausea mostly at bay. However, cooking meat grosses me out at the moment and makes the sick feeling worse. So...enter lots of cheese and peanut butter. And extra pounds. And pants not fitting.

Mostly I have just been really, really tired. Exhausted is probably a better word. My job of herding 7-year-olds just about wipes me out by the end of the day. I end up staying much later at work than usual on most days, simply because I am so slow and lethargic by the time school is out that it takes me longer to get things done.

So I get home at about 6:30 or 7, eat, then sit on the couch in zombie mode for about an hour until I decide I can't stay up any longer and go to bed. 

Needless to say, I don't get much done these days. 

Ever. 

It's probably sad to admit how proud a day it was for me on Saturday, when we finally took down our Christmas tree/decorations and vacuumed for the first time since mid-December.
Normally that would horrify me, but I am just to tired to care lately.

(I'm sure you've already put two and two together, but this whole tired-ness thing would be why I haven't written any blog entries for the past three months. For some reason tonight I feel very awake! This hasn't happened...well, ever. So it's a good sign!) 

And then there's the crying. 

Oh, the crying.

I'm not talking about little happy tears from a tender moment in a commercial. 

It's more like, as my husband put it, me crying as if someone has died. 

Bawling hysterically could be another description.

Without any reason as to why (or maybe with some made-up irrational reason).

It happens maybe three times a week. 

Or more. 

Last week it was almost every day.
Usually at night.
So, I wake up with super puffed up eyes (which are extremely difficult to put make-up on). 

I am, however, very proud to say that I have been tear-free for three days (knock on wood).

Matthew has been the best. He does the cleaning, the cooking, the laundry, the grocery shopping--everything that I used to do. Along with all the stuff that he already does. And he puts up with my irritable moments and crying episodes. Good grief. I don't know what I would do without him--he makes all of this so much easier. I don't know how single moms get through being pregnant on their own--kudos to them!
I know I have needed help. 

Which, actually, has been one of the hardest parts about this for me. It has been really, really hard for me to accept the fact that I can't do some of the simple tasks that I normally do (either because they make me sick or because I am just too tired). I have felt like such a subpar wife and a lazy bum! 

But that all doesn't really matter, because, in the end, we will have a squeezable, adorable, little baby that is all our own, and every little un-fun part will be so, so worth it!

First comes love, then comes marriage...

If you are reading this, then you have probably already heard the news:

we are expecting a baby! 

The official due date is August 6th.

Right now I am 14 weeks along, just starting my second trimester (woo-hoo!)

No, we don't know what we are having yet (too early for that).

Yes, we are going to find out (probably sometime in late March).

And, yes, we are also moving to another state this summer (Ahh! Crazy. Let's not talk about that right now.)

My young women (at church) and my second grade students' reactions to the news were my favorite by far.

The young women (being teenage girls) screamed and screamed.

The second graders looked at me blankly for about 30 seconds to a minute, until it dawned on them what I had actually said. Then every single one of their hands shot up into the air, wanting to ask a question or tell me about how they know someone else who is having a baby.

Here is my favorite second grade comment:

Student (we'll call him Jack): Mrs. Wright, if the baby is a boy, I think you should name it Jack Jr.
Me: Thanks for the advice. I'll have to run that one by Mr. Wright.
Student: Okay. But, either way, can I be the godfather? 

3 Keys

Thanks to the almost-car-thief (see previous post), 

Matthew had to get a new driver's side lock on his car, and a new ignition. 

Both of those came with a new key.

So...

Matthew's car now has: 

one key to open the driver's side door,

one key to start the ignition,

and another key to open the remaining three doors and the trunk.

The Ghetto Neighborhood Strikes

I'll just be honest, we don't live in the nicest part of town.

Almost all of our neighbors and people from church have stories about houses and cars being broken into, stuff being stolen, creepy men following them, etc. 

So far, none of that has happened to us. 

We've just been biding our time, really.

This morning at about 6:15, just as I was finished my workout, a knock came at the door.

Weird.

I looked through the peep hole.
It was the girl who lives upstairs.

I opened the door and she told me that when she had just gone out to her car to leave for work, she had seen a running truck and a guy standing by Matthew's car. When she walked outside, the guy ran back to his truck, and drove off, leaving the emergency lights flashing on Matthew's car.

I thanked her, and went back in the house to wake up Matthew and let him investigate.

The driver's side lock was picked and ruined, and the key ignition was completely stripped.

Had our neighbor not come out at the right time, his car would have been hot wired and stolen.

The downside: 

Tow truck + new lock + new ignition = $675

Thanks a lot, car thief. 

The upside:
The car wasn't stolen!
For this I am very grateful.
Paying for a repair (even if it is pricey) is waaay better than paying for a new car.

Thank you, neighbor!