You can't make this stuff up

Here is an email that Nate received yesterday from a mutual friend of ours~

Nate,

I am not sure how this happened, but your wedding invitation to Stephanie and me turned up in a little late. I guess now is better than never...

As I opened it, I thought to myself "I wonder who is getting married?"I have to admit, you two are the first couple at HFBC to send me a wedding invitation AFTER the announcement of a pregnancy. LOL!

For the record, I would have loved to have been there. I'm pretty sure that I was free on...

"Saturday, the thirteenth of December
two thousand and six
at one o'clock"

Blessings,
Byron

P.S. I am going to see if your wedding site is still up!

WOW. Way to go USPS, way to go :P This tops the 5 months it took for you to deliver something to me that my Grandma in New Orleans sent. So the official longest USPS delivery time in my experience is 15 1/2 months (And that's in the same city too :P) Hmmm, I wonder who else from our list ended up not invited....

As a very important side note, today is my brother's birthday! I won't go into all of the reasons or details of the whole thing, just know that I have the best, most loyal, funniest, coolest big brother on the planet. And yes, he IS better than your's :P Happy 27th Ben!!

Nowhere to go?

There is a Suave commercial on right now that tracks a woman through engagement, marriage, and then three kids by showing subsequent 1 second shots. I tried to find it online but no such luck, so if you haven't seen it then try to imagine with me :) Their punchline at the end of this is.... "85% of mothers admit they have let themselves go......100% can get themselves back." (the 85% shot is the mom in sweatpants and in really bad shape, the 100% she has gorgeous hair and a cute black dress on)

Anyhoo, point being.... I've been trying to figure out what letting myself go would entail. I mean, I already wear pretty much no makeup, I only do my hair once a week and the rest of the week it's up, I'm not necessarily sloppy, but I am fairly casually dressed by nature. I don't own mommy sweatpants and I figure if I don't buy them then I can't go down that road. So the question is.... how do I get worse? Of course, this must be what most mothers think 6 years before they end up on What not to Wear with Stacey and Clinton saying, "You still wear maternity pants??" or "Do you ever take any time for yourself?".

Side note- I used to think it was ridiculous when people wore their maternity pants after pregnancy.... now I totally get it. They are so comfy!!

Side side note- Blogger spell checker is working again!!! Ahhhhh, security blanket :)

Shifting Responsibilities

Let me set up the situation a bit. I have a coworker who is about 2 years ahead of me in terms of time out of school and I get alot of assignments from her. She set up an appointment to get a set of plans signed at SBC today a couple of weeks ago and then was bummed when a lunch thing came up at work that she wanted to go to. According to her, she would "never make it back in time". Well, she signed up for the lunch anyway as did I, which she knows. A speaker is coming in and they are charging us $15 for the thing. You had to prepay.

Ok now fastforward to yesterday~

Kristin ~ "Abby, I think I am going to have you go get the signatures tomorrow. Plus we need to run the plan sets downtown immediately afterwards to get to Brett."

Abby ~ "Ummmm, ok.... so I am going to miss the AWC lunch?"

Kristin ~ "No, you shouldn't." And then she lays out a timeline in which if I catch every single green light, hit no traffic, if SBC is ready to sign on time and if they only take 15 minutes to do so then I might be back right when the lunch starts..... easy peasy, right? If the thunderstorms that are predicted end up hitting during that time then it will likely extend said timeline by maybe an hour based on what I need to do and how I need to go to get there.

Ok, I am trying desperately not to be a brat about this, but Kristin has no reason not to go herself except for a lack of desire to do so... she told me. This also wouldn't phase me, but if she had told me even 2 days sooner then I wouldn't have spent $15 on a lunch I may never get to eat. ARG! And to this situation I apply a quote from the Princess Bride~

"Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."

Growth Chart

Pretty much at this point everything has formed, it's just getting bigger :) To make growth chart a little more interesting, I will now be including belly pics from each week..... so get excited :)

What is happening with your baby?

A protective covering called myelin is beginning to form around his/her nerves. This covering will continue to form up until your baby's first birthday. If you are having a little girl, her fallopian tubes and uterus have positioned themselves into the correct place. If you are having a little boy, then his genitals may be noticed on your next ultrasound. However, many babies do not like to cooperate during the ultrasound, and the genitals cannot be seen.

How big is your baby?

Your baby is now around 7 inches long and weighs 5 1/2 ounces.

Do you think they ever just guess to appease the parents when they can't see the genitals on the ultrasound? I think I have a new thing to pray for... if I go in next week and they tell me the baby just isn't cooperating I think I'll go crazy :P Anyhoo, this is me from this Sunday which was the 17.5 week mark. I am in no way sticking it out and I couldn't suck it in if it were my lone desire :P

1 down, 423 to go :)

Ok, so I went into a meeting yesterday and I was the first to arrive. Just as I am sitting down, an older lady who I don't work with very often came in, looked at me and said "Oh, are you pregnant?". Haha, I froze. It was so out of nowhere. Anyway, we sat there and discussed due dates and number of kids I wanted and which gender I preferred all while other people were coming into the meeting and..... nobody else noticed. I even wore an outfit yesterday that made it painfully obvious in an attempt to out myself. Well, 1 down, the rest of the company to go :P Unfortunately, the woman who asked isn't the type to spread it around so her knowing isn't exactly going to speed things up :)

On another note, I walked into work today directly behind another of those "there's absolutely no way you were raised in the South" guys. He grabbed the door and I waited as he let the guy infront of him enter the office, he then glanced back at me (waiting a foot behind him) and just as I started to move (no weird hesitation or anything on my part), he cut me off and ducked inside in front of me and let go of the door. I made it inside after utilizing my quick reflexes, but seriously? I mean, you are going to duck in the door right infront of a girl and not even hold it from the other side? The guys I went to high school with never would have let that happen. They used to run ahead of us to get to the door first so that we never had to open it ourselves if at all possible... totally not kidding. Dang Yankees.

Thoughts from this weekend

~ My parents really are the best. No really.... the best :)

~ Opening boxes with 12 pounds of packing material (non-peanuts) is about as much fun as you can have on a dreary Saturday.

~ I really love my Sunday school class...... especially when 12 of us are at Dave and Busters, busting out the moves on Spacey Racers; Rett is the current record holder and Mike came out with a finger swollen to twice it's normal size :)

~ Pregnancy has good things and bad........ Good- I get to watch as my husband and dad do the heavy lifting..... Bad- I have now added Ranch and Ceasar dressing to the list of things I'm not supposed to eat, and last night it took me 4 hours to get to sleep because the baby was being too active for me to get comfortable.

~ I am blessed with amazing new friends and faithful and wonderful old ones. I LOVE getting to spend time with some of my older friends after a long absence.... Ashley, why don't we get together more?? :P

~ Potbelly is awesome..... I hope they build one in Katy before we get out there :P

~ Pit is awesome, and Jen is the Pit queen.

~ Today I am 25......that seems old.... doesn't it? At the same time, it doesn't feel nearly old enough to be a mom. At the same time, my mom had 3 kids by the time she was 26, so what do I know? :)

Brain Fart

On the way to work today I remembered something that I really needed to go buy. I remember that I needed it for something very soon, I remember thinking that it was good I had thought of this while I still had time to go and pick it up......I remember everything but what the item was! I cannot for the life of me remember now what I was going to go get! And the worst part is that I remember thinking that I would have to get it at Target which does absolutely NOTHING to narrow down the item for me. I remember the other things I thought of after that item that I could also get since I was now going to Target, but I am drawing a complete blank. BLAH!

If God somehow reveals to you what it is that I needed to get before this weekend, please leave me a note so that I can stop going crazy :P

Nothing makes you pretty like Jesus can

I ran across this article two days ago about a brand of cosmetics that is using the image of Jesus along with catchy religious inspired sayings mixed with innuendo in order to sell their product. With lip balm flavors like virtuous vanilla and hand cream titled "Get close with Christ"....how could the "Looking Good For Jesus" product line fail? Well, it has made a lot of people angry (and rightfully so). A lot of Christians in Singapore (where it is marketed) are pretty mad and managed to get it pulled from the shelf. The article is here ~ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330439,00.html


Just for giggles, here are a few of the items they sell (mom and dad, think Jesus night light) Just click on the pics to see a bigger version->

Brrrrrr!!

Sooooo, I got dressed today and I put on a lightweight Spring-type dress with a 3/4 sleeve cardigan over it. I pulled my lunch out of the fridge and headed for the door. I opened it, took one step and froze....in more than one way. It was so cold!!! I shut the door quickly and racked my brain for other clothing options only to come to this conclusion.... I was wearing one of the few outfits that still fit me that I hadn't already worn this week. Not only that, I've been buying warm weather maternity clothes, so any other options I had would still leave me pretty dang cold. For those of you wondering.... no, my regular pants no longer fit me (it's official after last week) and no, i do not have any warm tops that are long enough to cover the waistband of my maternity pants.

Basically I took a deep breath and went for it knowing that my office would be a comfortable enough temp (which it is, thank goodness). Dang Gina.... that's cold! Turns out it really did feel like it was 32 degrees although it was really a toasty 35. Anyways, no worries. Being Houston, the forecast has a low of 62 tomorrow and a high in the 70's. Now if only we could stay there.....

Growth Chart

As of today, I am 17 weeks pregnant! Well, I guess it depends who you ask. My pregnancy journal says I'm 16 1/2 (based on my due date), and my facebook ticker says something else. But based on conception, I am 17 weeks! Here is where the baby is in their development~

What is happening with your baby?

His/her umbilical cord is not only lengthening but also becoming thicker and stronger for these last 23 weeks. Your baby's sense of hearing is also developing since the ears have fully formed and moved into their final position.
Your baby is also beginning to form adipose or fat tissue. This will help him/her take on a more normal appearance by filling out the fine features that he/she has. Fat is important in helping regulate the body's temperature and metabolism.

How big is your baby?

Your baby is about 6 1/2 inches long and weighs 4 ounces.


Ummmm, twice baked potato with cheese?

ARG!!!

Right after I finished writing my post, Blogger malfunctioned and deleted it. Because I am a woman of limited patience, here are the key points.....bullet listed

- I used to not care what gender our baby was.
- Then I wanted a girl a little more
- Pretty outfits
- Cute announcements
- Etc
- Then this weekend I started wanting a boy a little more
- No idea why
- I guess I really DON'T care when it comes down to it

- I can feel the baby moving now!
- Started last week
- Feels like a butterfly fluttering
- Very random and sporatic right now

And that, my friends, was how my Dad would have presented my post that so unfortunately got deleted. I am copying this one before I try to publish :P (which turned out to be a good idea....here is try number 3)

Surveys...... now THAT'S worth 5 minutes of my time :)

Soooooooo, you go into a store and you decide to purchase something. You approach the cashier with a smile while whistling a happy little tune over your recent find. ( Well, sometimes I whistle, but I don't particularly recommend it as you get weird looks from a lot of people :P) You plop it down on the conveyor belt (in my mind I am in Target... hence the belt) and the cashier reaches for it and opens the transaction. Just as your receipt comes out and you start to reach for it, they hold it up for you and point towards the bottom and say something like "You have been reandomly selected to participate in an online survey. Once you complete it, you will be entered into a drawing (with thousands of other people) for $100. Thank you for shopping with us!"

Ok, so here's the deal. I'm not usually willing to spend even 5 minutes of my time on the slightest chance that I could win $100. Because of this, I never do the surveys and those receipts end up where all the other receipts do....trash, couch cushion...whatever :) But this past week I got two surveys I thought were worthwhile. One from Target that enters you in a drawing for $5,000 (which you probably won't win, but hey... it's 5,000 bucks if you do) and one from Gap that gives you 20% off of any item you want if you complete the survey. I have to say, I think the Gap one is genius!!! I mean, customers get an automatic reward (no drawing) and it brings people back into your store.... it's a win win. Anyhoo, the last question of the survey was,

How instrumental was the 20% off one item in your decision to complete this survey?

I laughed and laughed and then I clicked as far over in the "Extremely instrumental" side of the range as I could. Let this be a lesson to all you survey incentive creators out there..... give a discount. You'll eventually bring more money into the store, and people will actually do the survey. (like, nice people... not just the ones who had a horrible time and want to chew you out about it)

Opposite Day

I came across this article yesterday and was somewhat floored by what I read. It is about a woman in the Dallas area who was seriously mad that her child's elementary school was forcing her to learn Spanish. Her arguement was along the lines of "They're the illegals! Let them learn English!!"

I find this interesting because I have already been looking into KatyISD to see if they offer Spanish classes to Grade School children because I very badly want my kids to learn Spanish and be conversational if not fluent. It is so much easier for them to learn a foreign language at that age as opposed to high school. I found out they are opening a dual-immersion elementary in Katy where the students will be half native Spanish speakers and half English and thier lessons will be taught in both languages... I am pumped about it!! I also found mommy and me classes in Katy where your child and you can start learning Spanish together as soon as they are "verbal" which means about a year and a half old. Anyway, if you want to read this very short article about this woman, click here -> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,329669,00.html I want to see how much practical use her child gets out of French living in Texas :P

Freaky times

Here is something interesting...... in two days time, the widest part of my belly increased in size by 1 inch around. 2 days..... 1 inch. And I measured at the same time of night too (it makes a big difference what time of day it is because eating dinner makes it bigger). Can you imagine if I kept going at that rate? I've got 170 something days to go.... you do the math :P

So I am still holding out on telling my coworkers that I am pregnant. I don't really care if they know at this point and it would certainly make a lot of conversations easier! (Reference me trying to explain yesterday why I wasn't going to Happy Hour with them) But now I feel as though I am in a bit of an experiment. My goal? To measure how long it takes for people who don't know me that well to notice and then feel comfortable asking me if I am pregnant. It's a pity really that I don't have different groups to test this on. Perhaps a group that knows me well but doesn't know yet and then of course a control group filled with strangers :) I predict that by the end of February people here will know and have asked me. If I make it further than that, not only will I be shocked, it is also very likely that I will break down and just tell them so that I can start wearing whatever I want and not worrying about it :P

Growth Chart

Side note- Nate left me a card and Valentine's Nerds in my car today, so I am currently crunching on those and feeling the love :)

What is happening with your baby?

Your baby is preparing himself/herself for a growth spurt over the next several weeks. Your baby's head is more erect now than it has been in the previous weeks of pregnancy. His/her ears and eyes are situated in their final positions. These three things are giving your baby a more "normal" appearance than he/she has had up to this point.
Several of the more complicated body systems are also beginning to function including your child's urinary and circulatory system. Your baby's heart pumps around 25 quarts of blood per day. However, by week 40 this amount will increase to 1,900 quarts per day!

How big is your baby?

By the end of week 16, your baby is approximately 6 inches and weighs 2 1/2 ounces.


Ok, so I am going to put the new baby size at about a potato. At the same time, I think a potato would weigh more than that. Ah ha! I've got it!!! Your baby is now the size (and weight) of a twice-baked potato :)

Dear City of Houston,

As much as I appreciate the fact that people that drive on Memorial must get to work in the mornings, I would like you to consider granting a light cycle for people who would like to cross Memorial on the 610 service road. Imagine what it would be like if these people too were granted a green light to make it through this intersection. Imagine the joy and fulfillment that this would bring to so many lives. Lives that have been forced into the lawlessness of crossing the intersection despite the clearly red light. People driven to madness by the 5-10 minutes they waited for the light to turn before taking the law into their own hands.

This is your chance. Your chance to assist criminals in restoring their good names and to release them from the temptation for future transgressions. Do the right thing Houston... your citizens need you. Oh, and could you make the light cycle on Silber and I-10 allow more than 3 cars from Silber Northbound per cycle in the evenings? It is mucho annoying.

Sincerely,
Abigail Ezell, E.I.T. , Graduate Engineer, knows where you sleep...or work at least

Look What We Bought :)

We didn't know that we would get it this soon, but here it is!!

Our nursery furniture!!! The finish looks lighter in the pictures. In person it was a tad bit darker with a little bit of distressing....absolutely perfect! We didn't get all of these pieces.... only the crib and the "combo" which is the shorter dresser on the left (we got it without the hutch on top of it). The crib becomes a full size bed when we are done with it.... hopefully 3 kids from now :) Here is what it looks like as a bed.....

We found out that the store that sells this brand in Houston was having a sale this weekend and so we decided to go and ended up buying it for cheaper! We had read that this company could take up to 3 months to ship new pieces in so we didn't think it was TOOOOOOOO much overkill. Well, as it turned out, the store had it in stock so it is tagged for us just waiting to be picked up :) We're hoping to swap out the furniture in that room 2 Saturdays from now as long as my Dad ends up in town that weekend (although this may or may not be the first he's heard of it. Thanks in advance for helping Dad! :) I will send pictures as the nursery starts to come together. By two weeks from now I'll be awfully close to being able to put a name on the wall too!

Good Morning Sun :)

I got in my car today at 6:50 as I always do. As has been typical since Christmas, I shivered like mad as I accelerated down the service road picking up speed in an attempt to warm my engine faster. As I reach the turn for Woodway, my engine gets warm enough for me to turn on the heater. By the time I reach Sage, the shivering has stopped and I can feel myself wiggle my toes. This is when something strange happenned.......

I had been so focused on getting warm to minimize the shaking so that no vital body parts would fly off during the quakes, that I didn't notice. But as soon as I was warm there it was. Not the sun, nope too early for that. But the sky had light in it. I could actually see the turn in for my building instead of shooting for it blindly as I normally do. It was beautiful! There was yellow and pink in the sky and the promise that our long lost friend, the sun, would be paying a visit today. It's been dark and cold for too long....let's get this spring business going :) Anyway, I had a happy morning and I hope you did too....... and just think, it's Friday!

Deaf Noises

I work next to a guy who is deaf which normally means nothing at all except that all yesterday he must have been low on work because he was playing a computer game at least 75% of the day. Now, I don't care really but the problem was that because he can't hear anything, he had no idea that the sound on his computer was on. The lovely whooshing sounds as he placed items in their correct spots on "the cube" served as an interesting soundtrack to my day.

I was hit with a dilemma... should I tell him that his covert game playing was in reality anything but covert? Do I somehow owe it to him? Anyways, I took the wussy way out and said nothing for 6 hours....... I just wasn't sure how to tell him that his gameplay was being broadcast to surrounding cubes.

In other news...... The Ags BTHO t.u. in College Station last night. The currently 23rd ranked Aggies pummeled the No. 10 t-sips by 17 beautiful points. I didn't want to be too stressed out to sleep, so I passed on watching the game and had Nate giving me updates. Speaking of Nate.... the No. 24 Kansas State Wildcats beat No. 2 Kansas! For those of you unfamiliar with the situation, Kansas is amazing this year and they have beaten K-State at K-State 24 years in a row. It was a fine day for K-State who led the entire game and finished 9 points ahead. What a great night :)

Growth Chart

Today is Wednesday and hence forth it is time for the growth chart. If this wasn't a somewhat established thing now, then I would write about something non-baby, but here we are. I promise that tomorrow I will put forth the effort to supply witty commentary on something that has nothing to do with babies. This is an attempt to not alienize readers who may not think that pregnancy is the most interesting topic in the world :)
~~~~~~~~~
As of today, I'm 15 weeks pregnant->

What is happening with your baby?

Your baby's skin is very thin, and his/her blood vessels can actually be seen through the skin. Your baby's ears are continuing to develop externally and continue to look more like normal ears. Your baby's eyes are continuing to move towards the nose from the sides of his/her head. The baby's bones are beginning to ossify, which means that if an x-ray was taken the skeleton would be visible. Babies at this age have also been caught sucking their thumbs on ultrasound pictures.

How big is your baby?

By the end of this week, your baby is 5 inches long and weighs a whole 2 ounces.
~~~~~~~~~

It kind of makes me sad that they have stopped comparing the baby's size to random foods. It was kind of fun to hear that the baby was the size of a peanut or a lime.... plus it gave a fabulous mental picture for those of us with vivid, albeit screwed up, imaginations. So 5 inches......that's like a small potato...only lighter I imagine. And that is your baby to fruit/veggie comparison for the day :)