week 12 - plum

week 12 started for me on monday.  i was also in kansas city for a sales meeting monday - wednesday.  i was so excited because i wasn't nauseous and felt pretty good! i thought finally, the morning sickness is done!

this morning was my first day back in denver and i threw up twice.  wtf?  now i'm convinced that there's something in my house that i am super sensitive to now that i'm preggo.  but what is it?  there are so many culprits?  the pets, dirty air ducts, scented candles, hidden mold, dirt in general?

this morning i rounded up anything scented and put it in a plastic bin with a tight lid.  i want to get my air ducts cleaned.. but we tried that last summer and the cleaner wouldn't do anything because our HVAC guy installed our furnace wrong.  we're planning to get that fixed, but for now i'd like to just have all the duct work cleaned.  who knows how much filth is in our ducts from our old tenants.

the only place that i think mold might be lurking is in our garage.  i need to have j powerwash the concrete walls to see if we can get rid of it.

the pets i can't really do anything about - although i could brush them more often.  we're putting in sod in the back in the next few weeks, so that should cut down the dirt in general in the house. 

i wonder what else i'm missing?

week 7 - blueberry

i'm now at the point where i am no longer fearing that any slight move i make will make me miscarriage.  right now i just want the first trimester to pass so that i can stop feeling hungover 24/7.  yes, i'm one of the lucky ones who has had all-day nausea.  i hit a wall at about 3pm every afternoon as well, so my days seems to consist of lying on the couch, eating saltines, sipping tea, and napping.  all while wanting to hurl, but not being able to.

the baby is the size of a blueberry and that's what jared and i have been calling it.  "do you think this will hurt the blueberry, or am i ok?"  "our little blueberry says thank you for giving it some closet doors!" "please, little blueberry, you're killing mommy with these hormones!"

i'm amazed at how fast it's growing.  poppy seed --> sesame seed --> tic-tac --> blueberry.  next week the nickname will change to our little raspberry.

right now it's waving it's little arm and leg buds around - and that just blows my mind.

we haven't told our parents yet because my mom is coming to visit at the end of the month and we want to tell her in person.  it's killing us!  i nearly slipped when she called me yesterday.  i also have a little anxiety because we've told a lot of our friends and i'm a little worried they're going to say something on facebook and my mom will KILL me if she finds out that way!

speaking of anxiety.  i had it when i thought i couldn't get pregnant, and now that i am, it's just manifesting itself in other ways.  i'm slightly terrified of the labor part of things... in a "there's no going back now" sort of way.  it's how i felt when i went skydiving, and that didn't have a pretty ending (or video!).  i'm reading too much for my own good, but i also know i have to.  it's in my nature to be prepared for absolutely any little thing that could possibly happen. 

i'm even more terrified of the idea of having someone be entirely dependent on me for so long!  i know that we will be good parents and whatnot, but the whole idea of PERMANENT parenthood seems so daunting! 

then there's our house and finances.  i simply don't know how we're going to afford things like day care.  or college.  even the co-payment on the insurance.

i'm SOOO happy that this is happening, but i am in total fear of the unknown.

finally!

so remember when i posted my analogy about selling our house and trying to have a baby?

well, we finally have an offer!!

baby rockman will be joining us sometime around 11/7/11.   i'm 10 weeks right now, and right in the middle of all the lovely morning sickness symptoms..

i have a post that i wrote when i was 7 weeks, but didn't publish at the time.

spring!

i am so thrilled that winter is finally over.  even though we really had a very mild winter, it's still too much for me.  i like being outside and doing yardwork and gardening and not being cold.   so yay to spring!

we spent the weekend cleaning up our backyard, which hasn't seen any kind of gardening tool in probably 10 years.  we (jared) had to cut down a bunch of weed trees and then put them in a mulcher we rented.  it didn't work too well, so we ended up bundling sticks and having a controlled bonfire in the backyard. 

i haven't been feeling too good lately, so mostly i just supervised and watched.  next weekend jared has a huge dirt pile that he has to spread around the yard and then he's going to build some raised beds and i'll finally get to plant all my veggies!  i'm being smart this year and i planned out everything i'm going to plant on a calendar so that nothing will go to waste. 

my mom is coming to visit in a couple of weeks and that has kicked jared into high gear on the house projects.  he finally installed closet doors in the study last week and is about halfway done getting our hall closet in shape.  hopefully the house will feel a little bigger once all of my closets are done and i actually have some storage!

the honey-do list is getting shorter, but it still seems neverending!

emotional intelligence

i've always thought i was a pretty good salesperson.  it's what i do for a living, i like it, and so far i've been pretty successful.  it was review time for work last week and i went into my review thinking "i'm 112% of goal!  i did a good job!  they love me!"  the actual review was waaaay different and i was kind of caught off guard. 

while it was acknowledged that i reached my goal, far more time was spent on all the things i did wrong.  i didn't have enough meetings.  i'm not hitting my potential.   i felt like jennifer anistons character in office space when she's being lectured by her boss about how many pieces of flair she needs to wear. 

after getting off of the call and bursting into tears (which i was amazingly able to hold back during the call), i thought about it a little and realized that my boss was just trying to motivate me.  but he has NO idea how i am actually motivated.  he's treating me the way he would want to be treated, instead of treating me the way i want to be treated.

i've been reading a lot about emotional intelligence lately and how it is a much larger factor in success than IQ is.  the book i'm reading right now is how to sell with emotional intelligence and it has been very helpful for me to learn about my traits and why i find some other people SO annoying or hard to get along with.  

i scored pretty evenly in all categories - the range was from 12-48. My dominant personality is that of "motivator" (35), and my secondary is "enterpriser" (34).  the two that were equally my lowest were "togetherness" and "analyzer" (32).  i think this will help me recognize other people better and conscientiously adjust my personality so that i don't irritate them. 

here are a few of the traits - which one are you? 

 

A larger version of this chart can be found here. 

food fight

i've heard somewhere that the top three things couples argue about are money, sex, and work.  what is the main thing that j and i seem to argue about?

FOOD.

some back story.  j has always been a very picky eater.  he hates vegetables.  his sister hates vegetables.  his dad hates vegetables.  and even though his mom likes vegetables, she never made the rest of them eat any.

when i met him, the only things he ate were:
pizza. spaghetti. ham & cheese sandwiches (white bread and american cheese of course). burritos. hamburgers. hotdogs.

i am not kidding - that is ALL he ate.  of course, him and his family are blessed with good genes and they are all crazy tall, a healthy weight, and appear healthy.  so because he looked fine, he didn't think there was anything wrong with his diet.


when we moved in together, a typical night would go like this:  i would make a balanced meal for dinner.  he would take one look, wrinkle his nose, and cook a burger on the grill.  or eat a frozen pizza.  because his schedule was so weird, he was only home 3 nights a week, so it wasn't a huge problem for me, although it was very annoying.

recently, he has been home every night and i have taken on the responsibility of making dinner.  i was pretty lazy for awhile and we had a lot of pizza, which resulted in me gaining 20 pounds.  i realized that i couldn't keep going like that and i needed to start eating healthy again.  then we went on the 17 day diet, and although he hated it, jared was able to eat the vegetables.  he kept commenting about how great he felt and how he wants to incorporate healthy eating into our lives.  i was thrilled!

well, the strict part of the 17 day diet is over and j has completely reverted back to his old eating habits!! sausage and pepperoni pizza with ranch dressing.  spaghetti with plain meat sauce.  he has made a *few* changes - wheat bread, eating more yogurt, cut back on coffee - but the veggies have basically vanished from his diet.

last night we got into a fight because i made lasagna for dinner.  i used ground turkey and whole wheat noodles, which he was ok with.  but then i also chopped up some zucchini,  mushrooms, and red peppers to put into the sauce.  you would have thought i was trying to poison him by the reaction i got. 

he can't understand why i would "ruin a perfectly good dish by adding vegetables", and i can't understand why he wouldn't want the veggies to be "hidden" in the meal, since they add more flavor and texture to the dish. 

i can't get through to him that we need to add as many veggies to things as possible, in order to get more fiber and nutrients.  I would rather have them in my main dishes instead of having to eat 5 bowls of salad a day. 

it seems like if i want to compromise i have to either
a) let him make his own dinner - which he doesn't have time to do because of his school/work schedule and which will result in him having pizza or fast food every night
b) make him something different - which i just refuse to do on principal
c) make what he likes and try to eat more salad

none of these seem like a viable option to me.  is it wrong to think that if you are the one making the meals for the family, then the other person should be happy you're cooking and eat what they're served?  or do i just not understand what it's like to be a picky eater?

i'm so sick of this being a battle every night.  it's making me feel like he's a child, which is NOT good for the marriage. 

how does mealtime work in your house?

homemade sugar scrub

anyone who knows me, knows that i love me some sugar scrub.  now that i've been on a budget, it's been a little out of my price range.  it's usually $20 for a smallish tub that i end up having to ration*.

so in the spirit of being more crafty, and also because i have sugar in my cabinet that i won't be *eating* due to my weight loss attempts, i looked up how to make it myself..

holy crap is it EASY!!!

here's the gist.

50% white sugar, 50% brown sugar.  mix and place in container (i used a glass storage container that normally goes in the fridge).

pour some sort of oil until the sugar is almost saturated (i used olive oil).

add a bit of vanilla extract or any type of essential oil.

mix it up a bit. 

voila.

my skin is SO soft.  for approximately $3.

now i know what to make for my clients next christmas!  if i can find cute packaging, i might try to sell on etsy. 





*and yell at j if he decides to use it!