The Walks Begin.

Roald Dahl, writing about his father...

"He harboured a very curious idea about how to develop a sense of beauty in the minds of his children. Every time my mother became pregnant, he would wait until the last three months of her pregnancy and then he would announce to her that 'the glorious walks' must begin."




"These glorious walks consisted of him taking her to places of great beauty in the countryside and walking with her for about an hour each day so that she could absorb the splendour of the surroundings."



"His theory was that if the eye of a pregnant woman was constantly observing the beauty of nature, this beauty would somehow become transmitted to the mind of the unborn baby within her womb and that baby would grow up to be a lover of beautiful things."



We've begun our "glorious walks" a little early...but with aspens and colors like these...who could resist? Colorado is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen - I never get tired of seeing my mountains.

A post by the numbers.

First, the number 2. Today I'm 13 weeks pregnant (according to the doctor), so we're officially going to say I'm in trimester number 2. If you ever want to make your husband panic, announce you're in your second trimester and then remind him that means you're already 1/3 of the way to birthing a baby.

As far as sickness/nausea/imminent emesis (my new favorite phrase), I'm feeling a lot better. I was definitely very blessed in the nausea department. I just feel a little sickly when I don't eat. I definitely tend to be stubborn and say to myself, "But I don't feel like eating now. Maybe I'll feel like it later." LIES. LIES, I tell you. I'm trying to be better about finding food right when I need it. Which I should probably be doing right about now.




Second of all, the number 4. I finally joined the ranks of iPhone users today. I came home, rushed joyfully up the stairs to sync all my iTunes music, and was greeted promptly by an error message informing me my Mac operating system was too old.

Gloom, despair, and agony on me.

Oh well, we've needed to add some memory and upgrade my computer for a while for school purposes. We've just been putting it off. My sweet husband ordered the necessary components for my computer and I should have it by the end of the week. In the meantime, if you have an iPhone, won't you please play "Words With Friends" with me? My username is jgreiving.

And finally, speaking of husbands: We'd sure appreciate your prayers that Ben will be able to find a good job with health benefits. He is working very very hard at two different jobs right now - something I really and truly appreciate. But I sure would like to be able to see him once in a while.

Wow. Really?

Pregnancy brings with it a multitude of interesting "symptoms" - most notably nausea and fatigue (at least so far).

Today, I experience something new.

I've always slightly mocked my own mother for her propensity to cry at movies, books, news stories, the plights of random strangers, etc. Phrases uttered included "Whoops, Mom's turning on the waterworks again," or the classic "Mom, seriously? We're going to drown."

I can only think of one time she and I really shared a crying moment. We went to our local theater to see the movie "Little Women", starring Winona Ryder and Christian Bale. Being very familiar with children's literature, Mom was savvy and brought along a box of Kleenex.

That she promptly left in the car. A fact we discovered during the movie when Beth got sick. We shared a partially illuminated look of horror and searched frantically for something, anything, to serve as a drying aide.

All we came up with was half of a paper napkin from the concession stand. It was ours, it was clean (aside from a few smears of fake butter), and it was all we had. As Hannah the maid sprinkled the rose petals on the piano, my mother and I sobbed into our half napkin, handing it back and forth.

Whatever, germophobes. We're family.

However, we knew there was more sorrow to come in that movie. My ingenious mother wrung out the napkin (wring, wring, wring, wring, wring the message out) and placed it over the back of the seats in front of us so it could dry a little. By the time we needed it again, it was actually mostly dry.

All that to say that today I cried watching a YouTube video. There is absolutely no explanation for my shedding of tears. I was sitting at my desk watching it on my computer with a big black dog curled up at my feet, breathing on my knees (and making me sick to my stomach).

Here, for your enjoyment, is the video that made me cry. Feel free to mock me.

Warning...

this post does contain discussion of a couple of less-than-ideal nausea situations. Read ahead at your own risk.


I was pretty excited that I made through 10 weeks of pregnancy without puking. I was in Atlanta and ate some yogurt and an apple for breakfast before we headed out to my parents' other crib (haha, get it?) to do some flying in Dad's airplane. However, about 10 minutes down the road, my poor father got a very calm, "Hey Dad, you'll need to pull over in the next minute."

Drivers down Highway 124 on their way to I-20 were treated to the sight of the right rear door opening and me tossing my cookies for the world to see. I have to say, I felt a lot better right afterward. Mom and Dad whisked me (albeit carefully) to the local Panera where I gnawed on a plain bagel and drank a ginger ale.


Today after work, I decided to head to Sunflower Market. After all, poor Ben hasn't had any food to take to work this week, so I thought I'd get some sandwich meat and cheese. That way I didn't have to actually cook. Okay, so that wasn't my entire motivation, but it may have factored in.

Going to the grocery store is a completely different ball game when you're pregnant. Sights and smells assault you from out of nowhere. Sunflower Market is a natural foods store (but the only one that carries Boar's Head brand meats/cheeses, our go-to deli option), which means that not only do sights and smells assault you out of nowhere, but the sights/smells are compounded by a weirdness factor. You don't usually catch whiffs of patchouli oil in a regular grocery store. I'm just sayin'.

I purchased my meat and cheese from the deli counter and went to peruse the bread. As I bent over to check out a multi-grain loaf, all of a sudden, an all-too-familiar feeling started to come over me. It usually begins with a slight tightening of the jaw muscles (specifically the ones right in front of my ears), and then the throat muscles constrict...and I'll spare you the rest. I stayed like that for a minute, trying to figure out if the threat of imminent emesis was real. It was. I glanced around, found the restroom sign (located, of course, at the other end of the store) and walked quickly towards it, holding a finger/hand near or on my mouth. In the last 20 feet or so, dignity was cast to the winds and we went to full-scale speed demon with the hand completely clamped over the face. I ditched my meat and cheese in the organic juice cooler and made it the restroom just in time for the eject button.

Massaman curry is one of my favorite foods in the entire world. But it may be a while before I can face it again. No one looks good after a bath in stomach acid.

If you made it this far, congratulations. Skeletor and I salute you.

Sigh.

So.

Most people have some sort of nickname for their child-to-be. Those that come to mind are endearing, adorable names such as "Sprout," or "Peanut". Our friends Matt and Sarah called their little Reese "Bun" while she was incubating. I tried several nicknames out on my small-but-expanding pooch. Peanut didn't work. I grew up with several parakeets named Peanut and I was afraid that might have some deep psychological scarring on the child. I tried "Cub" from the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox. It just didn't seem to have the right ring to it. I tried using both gender names that we've picked out, but once again we have the deep psychological scarring issue. (and no, we're not telling the names. We probably won't find out the gender, either!)

So.

Ben solved this problem at our first ultrasound. The picture came up on the screen.



Ben, holding my hand tightly, leaned over and whispered this endearment in my ear...

"Um...it kind of looks like Skeletor."



So.

I am going to have to explain one day to this child why we called him or her "Skeletor" for the first few months of its existence.

Milestone!

Tonight Ben was working, so I cooked dinner for myself. This is the first time I've ventured to cook anything for a while - Ben has been very kind to fix bowls of ice cream, fried egg sandwiches, dinners-that-after-I-ate-two-bites-of-I-had-to-leave-the-table (not because of his lack of culinary skills, mind you, but because of imminent baby-induced nausea). Granted, my meal consisted of 2 pieces of bacon, 1 fried egg, 2 pieces of cinnamon toast, and a large glass of apple juice. I had designs on some sour cream pancakes or some nice homemade waffles, but as I drifted in and out of REM sleep on the couch, I realized that eggs/bacon were the easy way to go. Of course, now it's 7ish and my body has started the nightly nausea routine. I may yet regret my culinary prowess.

It's been an interesting food day. Haven't eaten as much as I should probably eat. I ate hummus yesterday for a nice protein boost. Today when I cracked open my hummus snack pack in Spanish 2, all of a sudden my stomach decided that it wasn't meant to happen today. It's amazing to me how food can taste so good at one time and the next minute: BOOM. It's taboo.

Even though the nausea and decision about what to eat can be kind of frustrating at times, I keep reminding myself that it's nice to feel a little bit of nausea in order to feel reassured that the pregnancy is going well. According to the doc, I'm almost at 12 weeks which is when some of this nausea should start going away.

My students were very congratulatory today. Questions and comments abounded! The one overarching question was, "Mrs. G, can we make fun of you when you get fat?" I wasn't sure how to answer this one. The knee jerk response was NO. The gremlin in me responded, "Well. If you can insult me in Spanish with proper grammar, then maybe." I then amended the statement by saying, "By the way, if I cry, your grade drops and you have to stop mocking." I may seriously regret this.

I will say that with homeschool students who don't always have a great filter anyways, this pregnancy subject is interesting and can quickly get awkward. I'm sure I'll have some interesting stories to tell soon.

48 oz of water so far. 2 more 16 oz cups to go. Time to pound it.

Trial Run

Well, as many of you know, we announced on Wednesday that we're expecting our first baby on April 3rd, 2010.

In the meantime, I have plenty to keep me busy. I'm working on a top-secret present for my sister-in-law Megan, who is expecting her baby in October. All I can say is it involves cutting a LOT of fabric. Which is really what I should be doing now instead of blogging about it. Only a few more cuts to make tonight.