You know you're a dweeb when...

...you get excited to post your first baby purchases. But I'm seriously excited! I'm sure it won't be nearly as thrilling when I buy things for future kids, but this is a big deal for me. Let me explain why.

When you're adopting, you have NO IDEA what you'll need, if it'll be a girl or boy, or even (in our case anyway) what age they'll be. True, all first parents don't know what they'll need, and some don't find out if it's a girl or boy, but I'm willing to bet that most first-time parents aren't looking at the prospect of adopting a child anywhere between a newborn and a 4-year old. To complicate matters further, we wouldn't have much warning before adopting, so all the stuff you'd have to buy would be bought in a 1- to 3- week time frame. We couldn't buy a crib (because maybe they'd be in a toddler bed) or a stroller, or a car seat, or diapers, or clothes, or ANYthing which was super-frustrating. I've pretty much been stocking up on kids books!

So, to all those who think I'm nuts and a little too gushy, YES I am excited (and I think justifiably so!) when I am able to go to the store and buy things for a teeny tiny little bundle of joy who will get to use the little things I buy for them before they're too big! That's another thing that ridiculously excited for - having my children from the beginning. It was always a little daunting knowing that we were adopting a crown ward, and knowing that they'd have gone through some sort of emotional or even physical trauma before they made it to us, and it was sad that I wouldn't know what their first word was or see the first step, or do things like start reading books with them right away (because we all know the foundations for literacy can begin as early as 6 months, right???? ;)

So anyway, enough rambling. Here's what I bought:

 

Fisher Price Newborn-to-Toddler Rocker

Graco Imonitor Vibe Baby Monitor

Mixed reviews on this one, it's rating isn't the greatest, but Graco puts out really good monitors, and the reviews are split so 50/50 (meaning some LOVED it while other HATED it), I'm willing to go along with what one reviewer said: that the people who had troubles with the battery-life probably didn't precharge it for 16 hours prior to use. This can be killer, because a lot of batteries have a charge memory, and if you take it out before it's fully charged, it'll never charge beyond that point again. I'm willing to give it a try!

And lastly...

So I just realized I got 2 seat-like things. I wonder if I'll end up using one and not the other...oh well. I guess I'll find out!

Anyway, that's enough gushing for today.

These last few days have been quiet ones, mostly because I've been down for the count with a nasty cold. Matt said that at times it sounded like work for me just to stay alive...hahaha! Probably because I couldn't help but sigh after every breath. It's clearing up now but I'm starting to lose my voice (colds always do that to me. Just watch, I'll have a lingering scratchy throat for weeks.) I'm hoping it's gone by tomorrow though so that I can teach sharing time. Matt's my backup, just in case!

Not much else is new with us, just more everyday life things. Our car is getting repaired, we found this guy who does repairs for fun, charges less than 1/3 of what the dealership would, AND (the best part yet) he isn't retired, and is therefore not likely to die in less than 10 years! Huzzah! He's our new mechanic. It's GREAT. Oh, AND the car didn't break down on our way to see him, which always means good luck for us. OH! AND we just paid our last payment on our car!!! That makes repairs less stressful because we don't owe money on a beast that keeps trying to kick the can before its time.

Wow, my ability to ramble astounds even me. Perhaps the days when I would post once every six weeks were better!

Maybe it's just me, but...

...then maybe it isn't!

I was starting to think maybe about a week ago that I'm really, truly beginning to show. To me. I didn't really figure anyone else would think so, and if they did it's just because I have a gut that's a little tiring to suck in right now, but then on Saturday someone made a comment about starting to show a teeny bit, and on Sunday I had the same thing, so maybe it's ISN'T just me!

It's PRETTY exciting to me, and I can't help but check in the mirror and lay flat on the bed, checking for signs that I'm not just faking this whole thing. This week I've been checking every day, despite the wise voice inside of my head saying, "a watched pot never boils!" but I've finally come to the conclusion that I'm 'showing'!

Reasons to suspect the showing-ness? When I suck in my gut as far as I can, I still have a gut. And then there's the obvious (aka-the picture above).

I haven't wanted to take a picture until now because I felt like there wasn't much there, but now I feel like Belle, and want to sing, "there must be something there that wasn't there before!"

Sorry, I know I'm gushing. It's just, a week and a half ago, I was convinced that I wasn't showing in the least, and that it'd be weeks before anything noticeable happened, and now, boom! I'm really excited to see how these next few weeks pan out. As of today I'm 14 weeks 6 days, and my sister said she didn't start showing with her first until she was 4 months along (so just over 17 weeks) and I figured I'd be like her, but apparently not. But then, we DO have different body types after all.

Anyway, I'm going to go enjoy the lovely thunderstorm now!

By popular demand...

And by popular demand, I mean that someone asked, "hey, what happened to your university rant?" and I was like, "OH YAH!" How I can forget about what ticks me off is beyond me, but I'm glad someone out there has my back! ;)

So what's my beef with my school? I think it all started in my second year of Linguistics. One of my friends told me that the Linguistics department is one of the only departments whose course timetables don't have to be approved by the registrar before they get posted. I was indignant. I was outraged! I was a little foolish. In hindsight, I'm not sure how reliable this information was but I was frustrated enough to believe it, and it really wouldn't surprise me now if it turned out to be true. Here's why.

1) Required courses being offered at the same time - Sometimes it feels like the powers-that-be at school are trying to make it so that I don't graduate. What they were thinking when they double-booked two required courses is beyond me, but MAN does it ever mess my schedule up. They do it with lectures, and they do it with seminars. Sometimes there'll be 4 seminars listed, and only ONE of the ones will actually fit your schedule because you have to take these other courses. The one seminar becomes the coveted seminar, and everyone's trying to get into it, hoping someone else will switch out of it.

I can't even tell you how many times I've gone to class on the first day and had snotty ling girls (seriously, most just need to grow up!) complaining that if they don't get into that seminar they can't take the course. A lot of the teachers who are new and trying to make a good impression try to work it out by saying, "Is anyone willing to switch out of seminar 1 to another seminar so that these students can take it?" and the girls turn around and face the class full of girls staring back mercilessly because no-one is going to switch it because THEY'RE all in it for the same reason. Only one wise professor turned to them this past semester and said, "sorry, that's just the way it is. I don't do the scheduling, but we don't have room, so maybe you won't be able to take the course." Mostly I agree wholeheartedly with this firm stand on the matter, but perhaps if the girls behaved a little nicer I could have more sympathy. Besides, I really do know how it feels.

There was this course that I refrained from taking 2 years in a row because of scheduling conflicts, and finally this last year I took it because I couldn't put it off any longer, but it was only at the expense of not taking another course that happened at the same time. IT SUCKS. I don't know if other departments have this problem so much, but I hear about it in about every class I show up to in linguistics. Now the ONE course I couldn't take because of the overlap is the only course I need to graduate, it's only offered second-term, and due to baby (I'm REALLY not complaining, I mean it) I can't take it until January 2011, which means I'll graduate in 2 years. 2 YEARS just because of one stupid course. It's just a good thing I'll have a wonderful squishy consolation gift to make up for it.

2) Professors TA'ing seminars - but not ALL the professors. Oh no. Only the foreign ones who you have a hard time understanding in lecture, and then when you're supposed to go to your TA for help, you only have this incomprehensible professor who clearly never took courses on TEACHING, only on LEARNING trying to explain to you why you got a poor mark on something.

Maybe I'm being a little over-dramatic on this one. I've never actually had a problem understanding these foreign-speaking professors and I found them to be really nice, I just happen to know that 75% of the other people in my seminar were absolutely lost and feeling mutinous most of the time. I mostly feel sorry for the poor chaps though. This one prof I knew from last year was teaching 4 courses and TA'ing one seminar for each, which I think is a little over-worked for a part-time, temporary professor.

3) Firing the good professors, and not being able to replace them until the last second- okay, so I know that this is not related to scheduling, but still. Do all departments neglect things like this? I've had professors coming in for the first week of class who had been hired the week before, never got access to online resources until more than half-way through the term, and were teaching word-for-word from the lecture notes of the previous prof. This is a problem when they start to disagree with something they are supposed to be teaching their class, and it's expecially irksome when what they're disagreeing with is printed right there in your lecture notes.

4) Making all the required courses fall in one semester - this is a more recent complaint, but it's the most important to me right now, so I saved it for last. For 4th year TESL I have 6 courses (half-credits) that I need to get, and all but one of those fall under D3, or to you people who aren't familiar with my school's system, that means 2nd semester. Why would they do that? Why wouldn't they divide the courses so that you can take 3 first semester and 3 second semester? I'm pretty upset about this, because I was planning on going to school in September for as much as I can before baby comes along. Then finishing school part-time wouldn't be such a big deal. I think I could even handle 3 or 4 courses when baby turns a year old, because it'd only be for one semester of my life and then I'd be DONE university with a 4-year degree! But it just wasn't meant to be I guess. 5 courses next January just is not going to be feasible, and I'm not waiting 3 years to graduate when I've already spent 5 years at this blasted school. So I'm switching to the 3-year degree, relaxing a little, doing some OTHER things with my life, and perhaps I will finish the 4-year degree over time, for credibility's sake.

PHEW! What a rant! I would say I didn't know I had it in me, but I knew I did. It's been brewing for a while, and I try pretty hard to not rant like this at school because the profs are rather nice and (in my opinion) are just victims of the man anyway, so why turn fellow-students against them. But most of my school friends are done at my school now anyway, so there. That's my justification (if there can ever be a justification for casting 'bad fruit'!!!)

So where does that leave me? I'm not going to school in September which was a bummer at first, but I think I'm over it. Here are my lofty goals:

-practice piano and make significant gains towards perfecting grade 5 piano
-maybe start vocal lessons - it'd be fun to know how to sing!
-keep helping Matt with directory submissions and data-entry
-take a couple night courses in college to continue working towards my photography certificate (by the time baby comes, I'll be almost half-way done, AND I'll be all pro at taking good photos!)

So life isn't really so bad when your university fails you, although if I was uber-ambitious and was making my career my life, I think I'd be in tears right about now, or switching to something completely non-linguistics related, like Community Health. Wait, that's too close. How about...physics? No, you deal with sound waves in audiology, so that's too similar as well. Umm... (seriously, I'm wracking my brain here)...MATH! Math is not related to linguistics in the least. Unless you have to interpret graphs and know how they got the mean average and type-token ration and all that jazz. So I guess linguistics is related to everything. Oh wait, DUH! Oh course that makes sense. We speak, don't we? There's no going back I guess.

Anyway, here I am, rambling as usual, when I'm supposed to be doing directory submissions. Gah! I'd better sign off before Matt...I mean, my boss catches me!

 

What's up with my body?!

Yes, yes, in this post I will commit the unspeakable and COMPLAIN about being pregnant. **GASP** Seriously though, it's something I try to not do, because it'd seem like I'm an ungrateful little something-or-other to complain about something I've wanted for so long. So maybe instead of wording this as a complaint, I'll word it as a "what the heck is going on?!"

How am I feeling, you ask? Like I've told everyone, I feel pretty normal. PRETTY normal. But not totally normal. I can't complain of morning sickness, indigestion, frequent urination, and even the fatigue isn't so bad. About the only thing letting me know (almost constantly) that I'm pregnant is my diet, and it's the weirdest thing in the world. Let me expand on what I mean by 'weird.'

First of all, I can't eat scrambled eggs anymore and that's weird because I ate them for breakfast every morning for almost a year without getting sick of them. I also don't like any of the normal favourite meals like Mulligatawny, Lentil Soup, tacos, chicken wings, and even pizza. In fact, there is very little that I DO like. I can't think of anything at the moment.

Then there's how often I'm hungry, which is all the time pretty much. Unless I gorge myself on one meal, then I'm usually good for an hour to an hour and a half. So here I am, feeling like I'm going to vomit if I don't get something inside of me (about the only time I feel sick) and do you think I can find something that I would want to put in my mouth? Nope. No I don't want soup, crackers, granola bars, almonds, chocolate, chips, rice cakes, or even chocolate milk (I know, what's the world, coming to??) The only thing I really care to put in my mouth is fruit and vegetables, and milk if I'm thirsty. WEIRD!

I realized this in full when Matthew and I were walking through Zellers today. I was feeling a little down (long story that's not really worth the retelling!) so Matt was suggesting all sorts of foods that I'd normally love to eat, in a bid to cheer me up. The eye-opener was walking down the junkfood aisle and saying 'no' to absolutely everything down there, apart from Riesens, which I felt that I could go for, if it meant eating just one.

Has anyone else experienced this? I remember Farrah saying that her tastes changed and that she didn't want chocolate anymore, but has anyone ever not wanted ANYthing???

I was thinking this evening (after the Zellers episode) that it seems like my body is hardwiring me into a healthy-eating machine, whether I like it or not. I mean, picking an apple over chocolate is so not my thing, nor is downing an entire bag of chopped veggies and tossing out my buttertart after one bite (true story.)

So there. For all of you who are wondering if I'm telling the truth when I say I feel "fine" or "pretty normal", now you know. I'm not lying, I DO feel pretty close to being normal, and I guess it's easier than explaining the above to the unsuspecting! Hopefully I haven't complained about it too much. I don't feel annoyed or upset, just curious in an "I didn't know I could ever turn down chocolate" sort of way!!

Crazy little thing called life

I feel like I've been really busy this week, which is usually a good sign that I need to post again! Nothing has been too life-changing, but hey, how often is life made up of these riveting experiences? So this blog post will be more about the steady thrum of life.

Sunday I taught sharing time in Primary for my second week in a row. I'm not going to lie, teaching sharing time SCARES me and with little kids, you often wonder if you're getting ANYthing through to them. Apparently I succeeded in some small measure though. Here's how it happened. The sharing time was on how reading scriptures strengthens your family, and at the end of teaching the Juniors I encouraged each of them to go home and read their scriptures on their own or with their family that day. I didn't think I said it all TOO forcefully, but Pamela, an adorable little 3 and a half year old girl, took it to heart and here's the conversation that ensued at home.

Pamela: Mummy we need to read out scriptures.

Lindsay: We will, after dinnertime.

Pamela: But mommy, we need to read our scriptures, Holly said so.

Lindsay: We'll read them, Pamela. We always read them after dinner!

Pamela: But mommy, Holly said we NEED to read our scriptures!!

TOO CUTE. Just when you think you're not getting through to anyone! I have another couple sharing times left to teach this month, and at first I was anxious about teaching every sunday in the month every 3 months rather than teaching one Sunday a month every month, but I think it might be better this way, because then I feel like there's more time to practice and actually get good at it.

Monday I worked for Matthew doing data-entry for his magnet website, and I slept. Then in the evening we had family home evening, and rented a movie. The Nicholas Cage one, called Knowing. It had a cool concept but not very good delivery. Sort of cheesy in the end. I'd rate it 6/10, though the whole end-of-the-world thing is intriguing to me.

Tuesday I did laundry, went to the big city with a friend and their kids, went to Once Upon a Child for the first time (coolest store EVER by the way!), went to Matt's parent's for dinner, and picked up Jen to go see a movie at the cinema. We were going to see the Proposal, but when we got there it was SOLD OUT. I was dumbfounded. I mean, sure it was Tuesday and all, but it had been out for weeks and was probably never a big box office hit like Transformers and whatnot. I suspect it was because there were people already lined up and camping for the midnight showing of Harry Potter 6, and so there were people killing time by watching movies while others saved their place in line. So Jen and I left and rented the movie New in Town instead. It was cute, and pretty clean, so yay to that!

So Wednesday comes around and I made Matt PROMISE that he'd go see Harry Potter on opening day with me. There was no way I would last through a midnight showing, but I figured there'd still be people lined up for the morning shows, so I made Matt drive there 2 hours early, totally expecting a line-up, and it was deserted. The box office didn't even open for another hour and a half! I felt pretty foolish. I guess all the true fanatics went to midnight showing, rather than the 11:30 am showing.

Matthew was very graceful about me blowing his workday, and we shopped around before going in, but even then, the theatre wasn't even half full! I guess my plan to go mid-day was a good one because most people are at work. The evening shows were probably completely swamped, but oh well, we enjoyed our little mid-day extravaganza! As for the movie? It was incredible!! I loved it. I'm addicted to it. I want more of it. I can't wait for the next movie. Even the changes they made to the storyline were acceptable, unlike Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban!! I couldn't stand that movie at first. But anyway, YES I would recommend going to see HP6!!


So that was Wednesday during the day. Then we had our photography class at night, which is getting pretty boring, but I've learned lots so I can't complain.

Thursday...yesterday...I guess I didn't really do a whole lot yesterday. I mostly read, went grocery shopping and made dinner. Then I went visiting teaching in the evening, which I feel so good about! I'm kinda terrible at remembering to do VT'ing, but I went and had a great time. Those sisters are just awesome and I'm glad to be able to help others even if it's in a little way.

So that pretty much wraps it up! I know that might have been boring for some, but this blog is really about what's going on in Matthew's and my lives right now, and sometimes, well, MOST of the time, this is all that there is! I also wanted to post something that's non-pregnancy related because that's not what the whole POINT of this blog was. Oh! I forgot that I was going to rant about my university's idiotic scheduling system for the linguistics program, but I'll save it for another day. This post is long enough, so I'll just wrap it up now!

An update

I visited the midwife today and it went well. Far better than my first appointment anyway! It's not like my first appointment was bad, I just was feeling so insecure about this pregnancy, and I thought the midwife would be more reassuring than she was. Today's appointment was lovely in comparison!

Really not a lot happened, the midwife looked for the heartbeat for what felt like forever and then was saying that if we don't find it she'll send me for an ultrasound today or tomorrow (imagine my stress! An ultrasound TODAY sounded pretty urgent to me...eep) but then, just before she pulled away, she found the little sneaker's heartbeat and we were all set at ease. Well, I for one was. She didn't seem too worried to begin with, perhaps because she had heard movements, but for me and my uneducated mind, I wanted a heartbeat! The heart rate at the ultrasound 4 weeks ago was 160, so nice and strong. Hurrah!

That's really about it. I like how the appointments are scheduled though. I have one in another 4 weeks (well, 4 weeks yesterday!) and then the big ultrasound a few weeks after that, and when I think of it in terms of weeks (rather than months) it feels like time goes faster. Oh, we also made sure to book the u/s at a place where they'll tell me the sex of the baby, so hurrah again! I can't wait to find out.

I'll finish this up now before I ramble on any further, and hopefully, maybe I'll post in a couple weeks.

Oh wait! I forgot a few fun things. That's right, I'm simply not capable of short blog posts! Last week Matthew and I celebrated our birthdays, so Matt's 28 now and I'm 25. That's starting to sound...respectable. Not like, "you're only 22 and you want to do in vitro???" or, "you're only 20 and you're getting married???" Yeah. I feel like reaching the quarter of a century mark suddenly makes me more credible, especially because I can now rent cars from anywhere I like, without a penalty!

We didn't do anything particular for our birthdays because we were away at Girl's Camp for the week, but I DID condescendingly agree to go out in a canoe and putter around with Matthew, even though I was convinced that I'm terrible at canoeing. It's a good thing I turned out to be wrong though! We had to rescue some girls who just couldn't go straight to save there lives so we did a bit of switching around, and then BOOM, there's Holly-of-the-weak-arms, canoeing sans Matthew, and STEERING too! I've never been prouder. My girl and I were doing so amazingly well, while Matthew went back with the other 2 rescued girls. We caught up with the big group and were on our way back, only 10 minutes left to go, when our canoe tipped. It wasn't my fault! But you know what? It was probably the funnest and funniest thing I experienced all week. The water was nice and warm, and even though I had one heck of a time crawling into another person's canoe without tipping IT too, it was all a riot.

Anyway, that's all I'll write for now, even though I've thought of more I could say. I'll save it for another day, so keep checking back!

Now that you know the details...

Now that everyone knows the details about my being pregnant, I just wanted to use this post to talk about my feelings a little bit, because I think sometimes they're hard for people to understand.

But FIRST I would like to let everyone know about this great blog I discovered. I found this blog by complete chance, reading other people's blogs, and following their links, and I spent easily over an hour today reading Que and Brittany's Adoption Journal.

I'm just blown away by their faith and the hope which Brittany's entries give to me, even when Matthew and I are no longer looking to adopt. Brittany is an excellent writer, and I feel like she was able to describe every feeling I've experienced over the last 4 years and a bit of being married and wanting to have children more than anything I can imagine. To me, their blog is the greatest example on how to go on living your life when it's kindof falling down in pieces around you.

And this is where I get to talking about my feelings. It's so hard to describe how I feel. I've already written a ton of things and deleted it all because I feel like it just doesn't sum anything up (and besides that, I was rambling and it was getting incoherent!)

Okay, here's the thing. I think a lot of people underestimate what going through infertility feels like. It's taken me a long time (and I mean a LONG time) to realize that the trial I'm experiencing has a purpose. I just didn't get it. I mean, why would Heavenly Father deny me the one thing I want more than anything else in the world? I realized in time that if it was something I did not want so dearly, then I might have given up. I strongly feel like Heavenly Father was teaching me humility and to rely on Him for my blessings. How could He have taught me that through any other lesser desire? It had to be something I would give anything for, and Matthew and I really did try everything possible to have kids, and still, in the end it was Heavenly Father's will, timing and blessing that won out. I know this more than I know what my own name is!

I am happy, incredibly so, but the happiness is constantly mingled with fear. Fear that I'll miscarry, that there will be something wrong, and that we'll have trouble having kids again when the chance comes around once more. It's very hard to let down the walls you've built to protect yourself from such pain, and for that reason, I almost feel like everyone else is more excited than I am! Perhaps I'm being melodramatic, and like how we have trouble giving up our favourite sins, I have trouble giving up my favourite wounds and woes. I'm going to go all metaphorical here, and compare it to a person being kept in darkness all their lives, and then finally stepping out into broad daylight in the middle of summer, and not being able to see and experience the beauty around them because they are momentarily blinded by the abrupt change in their situation. THERE! That's the closest I can come to explaining or justifying my feelings.

I'd like to post a video on here that is simply fantastic. Really, if you never get anything else out of my blog, watch the following video. It made me cry for sadness and also for joy at different parts, and I think if you've ever had trouble understanding the touchy emotions of a person experiencing infertility, this will help you a lot.

(video, "I Would Die For That")

Anyway, I'll wrap up this slightly random blog post by emphasizing how amazingly BLESSED Matthew and I are. I'm scared stiff, but it's amazing that it's already been 2 months since we found out. I thought time would drag, and it's flying so fast. I can't wait to have more to post about, and I really hope I didn't upset or insult anyone by posting my thoughts in this post. But then again, it's MY blog, so if you don't like my feelings...well...deal! Hahaha