9 months preggo photoshoot....am i crazy?

mom had generously offered to give me a pregnancy photo session when i became pregnant. she said that she regrets not having more photos of her when she was pregnant and that one day i will treasure them. i got in touch with anne yarbrough, who is amazing by the way, when i was only about 5 months. we kept deciding to push it back bc i was not showing enough, benson's schedule was difficult, etc. well we ended up scheduling it when i was over 9 months pregnant! i think most people who get preggo photos done try to schedule it when they are 7-8 months so they are still "pretty pregnant"; before the swollen hands, puffy face and extra-large belly. oh well! i was showing a bit behind schedule, so i am okay with it...but i was a bit self-conscious of my blowfish face and double chin. somehow, anne did her magic and so many of them turned out amazing, despite my massive state!

pickles with mustard

think i do this between 25-50 times a day

going to add one more to this wild crowd

my favorite photo

wonder where a baby will fit on this bed? we seriously sleep like this most nights

man hands

baby shower!

my wonderful friends threw us a baby shower that was perfect for me. you know that means they threw me a baby shower that was more cocktail party than baby shower! it was awesome...it felt like a holiday party, except that we got baby presents! thanks mebbie, lori, carrie, cassidy and sydne! sydne was surprisingly interested in my baby bump throughout the night, until she pushed it a little and the baby kicked back...she screamed and jumped and almost spilled her drink! it was a great night and a big thank you to everyone who made it so much fun and who worked so hard to help us celebrate the little peanut.

so right now i am 35.5 weeks preggers. it is super scary to think that i have about a month until the due date. holy crap. the list of things that are not done is much longer than the list of completed tasks. i know that since christmas is coming up the time is going to FLY. well, say a little prayer that we can get our butts in gear and finish reading the "how not to maim or psychologically damage your infant" books, decorate the nursery, and stock up on baby essentials before this little thing decides to make an appearance!

bff

mebbs!

benson can pull off a diaper bag! work it!

hostesses with the mostesses!

m.i.a.

so i was alerted to the fact that i have not updated this blog in a while...i wasnt really aware that anyone read it (except mom, mallory, mebbie and ellen...and i think benson checks to make sure i am not writing anything embarrassing). i have been out of town for the past 10 days and i am aware that some people stay connected through i phones and laptops etc. while they are away...but i readily admit that i am not one of those people. i dont even carry my cell phone when i am in waycross. i think that being at home makes me forget the outside world exists!

we had a wonderful thanksgiving in waycross. it was pretty low key which i really needed. it was so great to spend time with the rents and trey and mallory. although 7 dogs in the house was a little much. yes, you read that correctly. seven.

i am going to cut it short because unfortunately i have a stomach virus :(

34 weeks and counting...i need to start getting things in order!

thanksgiving day. i am thankful for my benson. i am also thankful i did not eat the entire red velvet cake by myself.

watch out. unstable hormonal rambo woman. trey thought this was hilarious. note the serious face.

betsy and betsy...the other betsy is due 3 weeks after me. i just had the best beef barbecue at fox brothers. i stuffed myself to an inappropriate amount of food. yes, i am enjoying my time as a non-vegetarian!

fall trips

30.5 weeks at Cashiers with Bens and his rents for his birthday. i had a 31 week appointment yesterday and i been gaining a little too much weight! 1.5 lbs. a week instead of just .5-1. trying to slow down but i kept telling myself that i was on that crazy sugar diet and then out of town for 2 weekends (and therefore eating like i am a human garbage disposal) but either way i need to slow down. i find myself cooking and baking a lot more with me staying home...

benson's 30th birthday!! cant believe i am married to a man in his 30's! i am such a lucky gal...he is just as wonderful as he was the day we met, august, 21 2001. it is so funny to think that our next anniversary will be 10 years. we have really grown up together...i cant even imagine what i would be like without the influence we have had on each other over the past 9 years. (i definitely would have much worse taste in music!) happy birthday to my best friend and the greatest person i know!

austin, tx with the incomparable shannon. once again, she rolled out the red carpet and treated us to such a great time. this was the last plane trip i will probably take for years! my hands and feet definitely were swollen when i got off the plane...and i am sure that once the babe is here i wont be able to travel until i am finished breastfeeding, or at least close to it!

it was halloween while we were in austin but of course we didnt come with costumes. so creative shan suggested we go old school (as in 3rd grade thanksgiving play) and make indian costumes out of paper bags. what a fun night!

so yes, we sort of match! we froze out butts off that night eating at a wonderful french restaurant, justine's. they were so crowded we had to eat outside and it was in the 30's or 40's. the food was excellent though and benson discovered his new favorite drink, le enfante terrible. it had vodka, st germain, cranberry and lime juice. if you havent tried st germain before, you definitely should!

times, they are a changin'

sorry for waiting a whole week to update, especially with so much changin' going on! i believe the last few times i blogged i mentioned getting the nursery ready, failing my gestational diabetes test and the distress of starting to eat meat again. so lots of changes!

to start with the simplest; the nursery is the same as when my parents left, just cluttered with our normal, daily refuse. please, please comment with some ideas to decorate the walls!

i woke up to good news this morning...i passed the three hour diabetes test!!! yay! i guess not having a sweet tooth made it a bit more difficult. it was soooo hard to eat all of those sweets everyday. i had constant headaches and felt so lethargic. i felt chained to the house because i had to eat these large portions so often that it was hard to leave for more than an hour. the test itself was not fun...unless sitting on an uncomfortable floor for 3 1/2 hours and getting your arms poked over and over is your idea of fun! after the first blood draw on both arms the nurses had trouble getting blood from my poor, poked veins. so they had to stick me over and over, moving the needles around underneath my skin....grrrr..... p.s. the reason i was sitting on the floor was that the waiting room where they wanted me to sit at the lab corp was uncomfortable and also very busy with all these guys coming in for their court-mandated drug tests and paternity tests. not a fun environment. so they had an empty office and let me spread out and rest in peace.

so for the eating meat thing....the first few days were a little hard. the meat tasted strongly of...well...meat! but i have to admit, after a week back on meat, that i have been missing it! i fully intend on going back to being a vegetarian (although i might have to eat meat while breastfeeding....more on that later) but i am going to take full advantage of all the things i have been missing...yesterday, i thought i might die of happiness while eating a double cheeseburger. seriously, die!!!! please give me a swift kick in the future if you ever overhear me talking about how a veggie burger is not that different. i was deluded, please forgive me. so for now, i am planning all of the dinners i have been denying myself for years. hot wings, here i come!

29 weeks. buddy is getting ready to be a good big brother! i thin k i am getting fat face. gross.

the dresser....lets not discuss how difficult it was to get in the house! buddy once again, doing his vanna white thing!

thanks mom and dad for such a beautiful baby bed. now i just have to decide how to decorate the room!

insert foot in mouth

some of my dear readers, all three of you, might remember my post (ahem, semi-recent post) in defense of remaining a vegetarian while pregnant. i remember those idealistic days of the second trimester...before synonyms like 'glucose test failure' or 'protein deficient' were in the thesaurus next to my name.
i failed my first glucose test last tuesday. i know this is a common occurrence and no reason to sound the alarm quite yet. and for the record i do not think i have gestational diabetes (but i will find out this thursday). however after a frank talk with the doc it seems most likely that i was overloading my body with carbs (aka sugar) through my recent, desperate attempts to get the recommended 100 grams of protein a day (the protein amount you need doubles between the 2nd and 3rd trimester).

i have not been especially hungry during this pregnancy so the idea of drinking a quart of milk and eating 12 eggs to fulfill my protein quotient was not an option. there are links between too much soy intake and fetal anomalies so i was not relying on soy too much for my protein. so i ended up eating about 40-50 grams a day and supplementing with protein bars and shakes. through this method i was unwittingly eating like 4 x the carbs i should have been in a day! i was also relying on some nasty man-made, unnatural protein bars to give my baby sustenance....not the brightest idea. basically it looks like i was not eating the most healthy, natural foods for the pregnancy and also i was creating a scenario where i would fail my glucose test. sorry for all of the long background story!!!!

so today my diet changed in 2 major ways. the most important is that i ate meat for the first time in about 5 years. i survived but it was not especially tasty and i feel like i lost a little moral high ground. i think being a vegetarian was a big part of how i felt about myself. benson and i had a short conversation after that doctor appointment but really, once everything was laid out; there was no choice. it was not healthy for me, and there were better options for the baby. i made spaghetti to mask the taste of it...but it was amazing how much greasier even the noodles tasted:( i know i will get used to it...and then after the baby is born, it might be hard to go back! i tell you, the cleanup is much worse cooking with meat rather than fake meat.

the second diet change is for my second diabetes test. you have to go on a high sugar diet for 3 days prior to the three hour test. i have to eat three solid meals a day plus four "snacks". these snacks include four pints of icecream, 40 oreos, 8 cupcakes, etc. that is what you have to eat a day! it is revolting to eat that much. at first glance, most pregnant women would jump at the chance for their doctor to tell them to eat 8 snickers a day....but really, putting all of that into your body is difficult. i have had a major headache from the sugar high today. only 2 more days though! and my sweet neighbor baked me a cake, so that will make things a bit easier!

on a different note, i watched the worst movie i have seen in recent memory tonight. do not rent splice. it was painful to sit through. if bens and i werent so brain dead tonight, we would have turned it off... but that would have taken too much effort! now, i love bad movies. dead alive, the room, and trolls ii are up there among my all time faves, but this was unfunny bad. there is no way to come back from that.

not quite finished...

after a weekend of hard work (especially on the part of my poor dad), the baby's room is completely finished. psych!
i wish we had gotten closer to finishing. painting and decorating one room is a lot more work than i had originally thought. i remember telling mom that i dont know what she was worried about and that we would finish on saturday. i feel like in the past we have finished even bigger projects in shorter time periods....but alas, it was not to be. maybe it was because i was basically no help in my present state....or that i didnt have everything picked out ahead of time...either way, there is still so much to do.

so i just wrote a bunch of boring paragraphs about our misadventures and what we ended up finishing or not finishing...but it was boring. so i erased them. i am going to attempt to abbreviate it!

a comedy of errors:
everyone but me worked hard painting but because of the original dark blue underneath there are still tons of touchups needed around the molding. we did not decide, after many discussions with the lowe's staff and debate at home, what type of window treatments/blinds/shutters to put in the room. i got a call friday saying the furniture store from which we bought the crib went out of business and we have a window of time on saturday to pick up our stuff. said stuff was not all together and 4 screws were missing from the crib! while trying to carry the 500 pound (maybe?) dresser inside, the legs ended up scraped from trying to maneuver it on a dolly. almost every time we left the house, Scout would find some hidden food items, or just raid the trash and strew it about the house. he even ate my hot/cold casserole cover! mom broke a decorative cutting board! dad spent all day sunday hacking down the jungle growth in our yard. it was a busy, busy weekend and made me realize how much more we have to do. i guess i was hoping that after all of this work i would be able to take some cute pictures of the finished nursery. i know mom was really hoping to be able to as well.

so here is a partial list of what i think we need to do for nursery decor:
find something in the way of window treatments or blinds needs to be chosen
decide if some shelving might be necessary to help organize the changing area
i need a mobile!
maybe find one of those tray things to put on top of the dresser to hold the changing pad...wonder if that is necessary?
move benson's clothes from that closet and into the third bedroom closet (as soon as i get that closet rebuilt!)
decide what i want to hang on the walls
find a glider- i am partial to the ones that are all upholstered...
get the terrible stain left from benson's hardrive (do computers create exhaust? it looks like it left behind the ash of 50 packs of cigs!)
decide what to do with benson's computer and desk
find a rug to really tie the room together, man
have a baby

that seems like it should do it!



here are some photos from the weekend. guess i have been negligent about posting lately. here i am 28.5 weeks
just noticed i change a lot between past and present tense while writing. i am a terrible grammarian. sorry mebbie.

love this picture...except for my puffy face! but mom looks good! i love pics with the hand on my belly!

mom wanted to take a picture of dad's "baby" in his lap....he kept saying he cant believe his baby is having a baby.

all of the mess of changing rooms behind us...if you looks closely you can see paint in benson's hair! not that i should be talking about the state of anyone else's hair!

bedding!!

i am so excited because my bedding came in yesterday. i had a really hard time picking something out...i was really stuck between wanting a modern/streamlined room or a sweet baby room. i have some folk art i really wanted to use in the baby room which has been nixed by everyone! (that includes the taxidermied vampire bat benson gave me for christmas last year. i know...we are strange. i might be one of the few females in existence whose eyes shone with excitement while opening her taxidermied, flying, sonar-using christmas present)

so after spending "X" (an amount of time that i am ashamed to admit) perusing websites showing different nursery designs, i decided it is better (and less expensive from a design aspect) to do the sweet nursery. the modern nursery accessories and furniture were more expensive...

so i drove my poor mother crazy every time we went to a baby store by disliking every bedding set she fawned over. i had a set in mind that i saw in a pottery barn kids magazine three years ago. dont ask why i was looking, or why i remembered it so exactly (i kept the magazine *just in case* we had an oops) but it was green and yellow with lambs and bunnies and i loved it. the animals were not cartoon-y which was the problem with a lot of the sets i saw in stores. it just looks old fashioned and simple. anyways! i finally realized i could probably find it on ebay somewhere...i did...and now its here!

without any further ado...

before my date with benson at horseradish grill at 26.5 weeks. thanks wards for the gift certificate!!

27 weeks. first day of 3rd trimester and one week from 7 months. i am starting to think that i am going to stop doing the belly baring pics....mom thinks it is cute and wants to see but she might be the only one! i think i am going to lose my innie belly button soon which really concerns me. i am also still immensely happy to not have stretch marks, but that might not last forever. i am starting to have some of the third trimester side effects--getting up and down is harder, and yikes, the colostrum has arrived! (yes, that is a stuffed pig on my bed. am i too old to sleep with a stuffed animal?)

this is the baby quilt. my sweet parents are coming next week to help us get the room ready! cant wait!!!!!!

first baby

sadie was our first child. born in the summer of 2004. she is a typical first born...bossy, intelligent, responsible, a know it all...the apple of her dad's eye. he really wants to name one of our future girls after her. i know sadie will be a wonderful big sister to our future children...it is her wild brothers who concern me!

not a great photo of me....but sadie is adorbs as usual!

baby's first concert

well, we have done what we can to ensure that our child starts off on the right track. at 6 1/2 months old our little gollum can hear really well in the womb. it feels a little awkward to sit and talk to my stomach, but i make sure i turn up the record player loud enough so that the babe can bounce along to beat. the little one's first introduction to live music is one i can be really proud of...last night we went with mebbie, cam, sarah and ridley to a concert i have been looking forward to for years--the national. third row seats. at the fabulous fox. (!) bens and i have loved them from their first album but unfortunately with their sporadic touring and bad luck with our schedules, the national is one of the few bands we have wanted to see and have been unable to. we had a great time but i learned a few things from prego concert going...

1) having a seat is essential. if we were farther back from the stage, then i probably wouldnt have been able to see anything while sitting, but since we were super close, i could see while i sporadically sat down to rest my feet!

2) eating a huge meal beforehand is not essential. i am at the stage where my stomach is starting to get squished by the babe and i was way too full for comfort.

3) seeing a band you LOVE is essential. i would not have been in the mood for the standing/dealing with obnoxious people yelling out the same song request after every song/stomach discomfort/loud music if it was not for a band i love. however, i could not wipe the smile off my face the whole show :)

4) doing 3-4 hours of yard work and then vacuuming before a show is NOT essential. i tend to self sabotage. when i have major plans for the night, for some weird reason i find all of these difficult chores i have to do during the day. i planted all of my fall annuals, redid my front planters and put out pine straw. then i remembered i needed to vacuum. it was a really bad idea to do all of that bending over before a late night of standing. when i got home, i could barely get out of the car--it felt like someone was twisting a knife in my lower back. i really need to stop pushing myself physically!

5) going to a concert with some of your closest friends is essential :) i was thinking this morning how much i am going to miss being able to just relax and hangout with people the way we can now. there is no rush to hurry home to a sitter, no checking the phone for messages, no guilt over leaving a baby at home, no insurmountable tiredness to contend with....i may be slightly crippled by being a small whale, but all in all, things are still normal.

i wonder if that might be one of my last concerts for a few years? (try not to think like that betsy!!)

random and blurry band shot but i liked it

if someone is good with computers and can tell me how to edit these photos before/after i upload them, would be appreciated! i am sure randar water toting dude would appreciate not being in this shot. i would appreciate it too!

love mebbs and sarah

big girl. sans makeup. cassie has it and once she gets back from her honeymoon i can reclaim it.

unsure if this video will work. yall know how i am with technology. it was pretty cool how they did the last song with no mikes though.

these are not the cupcakes you are looking for

before i was pregnant sweets held no sway with me. i have been very accustomed to depriving myself of what i really wanted to eat. i became a vegetarian about 5 years ago despite the fact that i LOVED meat, especially a bone's filet just barely cooked....yum...all bloody and still a bit chilled inside :) my choice to become a vegetarian was 100% wrapped up in the treatment of animals and giving up meat was very hard. i still drool over steaks and hamburgers....anyways, i became adept at eating food that really did not hold much interest for me but that i knew was a healthier option. yes, i am the vegetarian that does not really like salad and i am not in love with veggies. I started to think of food as simply fuel for my body. therefore, i very rarely ate sweets of any kind because they are full of sugar which i also tried to avoid (although i always made an exception for my aunt angie's red velvet cake!).

one of the side effects of pregnancy that i looked forward to was food cravings. i pictured myself sending bens out at 11 pm for ice cream and pickles just like they do in the movies. during this pregnancy i have had one real craving...for taco bell. what a waste! i just drove the 1/2 mile from my house and picked it up for myself. the rational side of my brain insists that not having food cravings or aversions has been much better for me. i look at the food pyramid and try to plan what i should eat throughout the day without a second thought to what i will be wanting at that particular moment.

although i would not define any of my feelings as cravings, i have developed a "taste" for sweets that i did not previously have. i will admit that ice cream was once an important part of benson's courtship strategy but like i said, i have never had a sweet tooth. once or twice a week, benson and i now have a late snack of atlanta's best ice cream from the frosty caboose. i find myself getting super excited about which flavor i am going to get (even though it is usually butter pecan). imagine my surprise when i was driving down peachtree industrial the other day and found myself veering across multiple lanes of traffic when i saw a sign for the newly opened sugar shack...40 flavors (guesstimation) of cupcakes should be illegal! i felt like i had an out of body experience when i became THAT pregnant girl buying 4 flavors of cupcakes and making excuses (lies) about how i was going to space them out and how i have a husband at home who can help me out! it was physically difficult to drive home without ripping into the box at a stop light. when i finally got home, this is what i saw.

cue lights and ethereal voices coming down from the heavens

carrot cake....peanut butter....red velvet...key lime pie...
i was at a loss. which one should i eat first? luckily (in this one respect) benson was out of town for 2 nights. (in a very nice and supportive way, he does what i asked of him months ago and reminds me that i did not want to turn into THAT pregnant lady and continues to remind me that sweets are not really giving anything good to the baby. damn it, why did i make him agree to keep me in check?! in the future i will have to try jedi mind tricks "these are not the cupcakes you are looking for...i can go about my business" ) since bens was out of town i was under no pressure to eat them immediately. i felt like this was the best option.

why could i not get this picture to rotate??

a bite of each! later i finished off the key lime pie and the next day i demolished the red velvet. true to my old form though, i got a little tired of the sugary sweet treats and ended up leaving them on the counter until i found an ant trail this morning...maybe some things never change... i can say that for the first time in my life i am really enjoying my desserts!

25 weeks

exactly 25 weeks along!

almost the same photo but with dogs!

the most beautiful thing in the world is.......
a jerry j's biscuit
what would i give to have a jerry j's in atlanta???

well i am not 25 weeks along. some websites are saying i am in the third trimester and some are saying i am still in the second trimester. i realized yesterday that we have less than 15 weeks until the baby comes....that means we have A LOT to do. everyone keeps asking me about the baby room and if we have found the bedding, etc. oh! and one of the first questions i always get is whether we have picked out names...it is so weird but bens and i talked more about baby names a year ago than we are right now. i used to think i wanted really original names but now i dont know.
my top names before we got pregnant were: bayard, sutpen and early. all of those have officially been axed now! 10 years ago, it was original to have very unusual baby names, but now it seems like it is more the norm. always interested in bucking a trend, i am starting to lean towards more classic names. who knows...bens is a lot more conservative with baby names than i am so it will be an interesting discussion when it finally happens :)

cassie's wedding weekend

cassie's cat buttermilk in his wedding attire

me and laura, all of the bridesmaids dresses but mine looked like hers....i was 24 1/2 weeks by the way!

besides whatever weird crotch hold i am doing in this photo....it is a good one of us! i tried to crop it to no avail!

the beautiful bride! her dress was incredible and perfect for the farm wedding
on another note, once again, i am striking a weird pose...

sorry i have been a bit negligent about blogging for the last week. on monday i spent all day cleaning and getting ready for the wards to come for dinner. then on tuesday i spent the day making fig jelly and running errands for the wedding. i went down to waycross on wednesday to help my mom start to get ready for the bridesmaids brunch for cassie's wedding. then i spent the next few days cleaning up for mom since she was working. everything looked great for the party so it was worth it. the best part was doing the flowers for the party. i love doing flower arrangements!
cassie's wedding was so beautiful! i had to order a different bridesmaids dress to accommodate little bean. as you can tell, even with alterations, the top was still a bit big! the day of the wedding was quite a long one. i had been up since 7 am cleaning for the shower and was on my feet all day... so i was a little nervous about standing for the outdoor wedding and pictures in heels! i didnt faint though---so no attention was taken from the bride :)

the wedding was so incredible...they used all kinds of plants from the farm like okra, sugar cane and corn stalks. on most of the tables they used pecans and they were in the boutonnieres. since it was an outside wedding, we were praying it was not going to rain like it did for mine. everything ended up going perfectly. it was one of the most beautiful weddings i've seen.

on the pregnancy front--things are going well. we finally saw our new doc, dr. tate. i am so so so happy that i decided to change! not only b/c of the insurance issues, but b/c he spent over an hour with us on our first visit getting to know us. he has one of the lowest c section rates in atlanta and is an advocate of natural birth. during the ultrasound we almost saw the sex of the baby b/c we forgot to tell him that we were keeping it a surprise! it was funny bc afterwards benson seemed to wish that we had seen it! i have been really tired for the past week because i was so busy...and i have been growing a lot. i feel like i really have a basketball up front and i have gained 14 pounds at 24 weeks. i love finally having a real bump though! the baby is moving all the time and has decided it likes to hang out really really low, right on my bladder. guess i better get used to it!

uga v arkansas

well, the dogs did not really show up to play until the very end...and then it was too late. however, we had a good time and in the end we were glad we made the trip to athens. all in all, there were some good and bad elements-

bad
-walking pregnant in the heat...at least it made me grateful i was not 9 months in the summertime
- we lost...and played badly most of the time
-north campus was a ghost town...does anyone tailgate there anymore?
-i missed the gram parsons tribute in waycross and really wanted to go!

good
-the saving grace was our seats-benson's rents are friends with coach dooley's daughter so we all sat in the box with them. now i am spoiled for life: a/c, free refreshments, comfy seats, and you don't have to stand!
-andrew (benson's brother) was in town from ny and i havent seen him in ages
-ate at 5 star day!
-the dogs rallied in the 4th and started to look good for a little while...not long enough though

it was funny....before the game we went to sigma chi for a little while, which just makes me feel old. while in the bathroom, there were all of these 18 year old girls in line and they were all silently staring at me in a bit of horror...i think pregnancy might be a little freaky to drunk college freshmen! dont worry girls, its not contagious!

here are some photos from the game-

merlin and bear did show up to play...excuse the demon eyes, i'm not sure how to eliminate that.
they could be extras for the dead marshes

he is so cute. look at that roman nose!

yeah, i'm making a weird face, but it was the only one of just us. notice the wall of glass that kept
the a/c in and the 91 degrees out. thankful for box seats :)

andrew, me and bens. they dont really look like brothers...what do you think?