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!