the christmas mantle.

one of the most exciting things to me about christmas this year is our plethora of (albeit deemed unsafe) fireplaces, and the mantles that adorn them.  finally i can hang my stockings by the chimney with care!

but they have to be the perfect stockings. and after weeks of searching and successfully pissing off an etsy seller whose stockings we didn't end up choosing, we settled on these beauties from pottery barn:

gasp! they're perfect.

they only came in three styles, which is poopy, but i figured we've got the important people covered (billy, me, and the fetus... sorry tuck).  and i'm planning on stalking pottery barn's after christmas sales to maybe score duplicate styles on clearance to ensure any future bambinos (fine, and you too, tuck) have matching stockings as well.  yes i'm thinking that far ahead. yes matching is that important.  yay! christmas!

how cute are these?!

i found these chalkboard placemats in real simple's email on ways to "dress up" your table.  i don't know how dressed up this table looks, but umm...
chalkboard placemats=acceptable coloring pages for grown ups=i'm in! 
how much fun is that?  here's the link:

http://www.realsimple.com/holidays-entertaining/entertaining/decorations/alternative-ways-dress-table-10000001124613/page2.html

childbirth classes part one- can i change my mind?

last night was our first childbirth class. 
predictably, billy was hilarious. 
unpredictably, i was totally freaked out.

i feel like i've kind of had this laissez-faire approach to childbirth because of my little stint as a CNA in labor and delivery, and from being steph's labor coach.  i've seen the videos before, been to the classes before, taken the labor and delivery tests before, heck i've seen it up close and personal a hundred times (okay more like twenty).  i've seen it with drugs, i've seen it without drugs, and i'm fully aware of what goes on.

but last night i think it hit me for the first time that it's actually going to happen to ME. 
all i could think was "oh no! not my vagina!"

billy took the videos surprisingly better then expected. 
the first video was an upscale version of an 80's powerpoint presentation on the stages of labor.  billy's description after the fact went something like this "there were cartoons, and then people talking, and then there were cartoons, and then people talking and then WHAM! RIGHT IN YOUR FACE! I HAD NO TIME TO PREPARE! IT WAS JUST THERE!" he recovered pretty quickly after that.  i think i covered my face through some of it.
the second video was a video of an actual birth at the birth center, and our instructor (who was great) introduced it saying "this is a video of trish.  i feel like i should introduce her because the video basically just starts with her completely naked pushing out a baby."  she hits play.  trish is indeed completely naked pushing out a baby.  i hear billy whisper behind me "hi trish..."

then we practiced some relaxed breathing.  it was really comfy sitting with billy behind me and his hands on my belly.  he took the relaxed breathing really seriously. like so seriously i thought he was going to fall asleep and start drooling on me.  i was laughing so hard i could hardly breathe at all. 

i'm hoping that in our next three classes i'll be able to stop being mortified and really focus on learning the relaxation techniques.  luckily i have a lot of prenatal yoga moves under my belt to refer to.  my favorite part of the class was definitely how awesome billy was though... i know he's going to be the best labor coach ever.  he really stepped it up.  oh, and there was this quote on the chalkboard through the whole class that i thought was really empowering:

"we have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. it's that women are strong."

-laura stavoe harm

yes!

so the baby nursery is so not nursery like, and everyone always asks me what our "theme" is.

i don't know what the theme is, i mean there's a really cool vintage world map in there, and big bookshelves i scored off craigs list, and those awesome gustav klimt paintings i framed.  it looks really cool and old worldy. like a yummy vintage study. and that's what we were going for.  but i don't think yummy vintage study is widely accepted in the world of baby nursery themes.

we have plans to put heavy curtains in front of the bookcases and mom is going to make a matching crib bumper and skirt, but it's guaranteed to be a cool fabric i find at the outlet fabric store and not anything babyish.  and we're excited about that and we don't want babyish.  but i have run into a problem with one particular area.

crib mobiles.

i thought it would be cool to maybe make something, because the crib mobiles you see in the store are either super babyish (like  or part of a matchy matchy nursery set.  it's been hard to find anything that would work in our little guy's room.  and then i found this:

woodland creatures?! YES! YES!

the etsy artist custom makes them to order!  i think these little dudes would be perfect for our little dude.  and it's super gender neutral so we can use it over again for sure!

this is on baby's christmas list.  he told me.

bump watch

we had baby's 25ish week appointment today.
billy and i waited an hour in the lobby and i was getting all flustered thinking "this never happens!  my wonderful midwives who never make me wait!" and then i realized my appointment was actually for 2 o'clock and not one o'clock. wooahhh there baby brain. 

i've gained two pounds since last month (better than four!) for a total of 15 pounds so far.  eeef. but my midwives say i'm doing swimmingly, baby sounds great and he weighs about a pound and a half.  i'm measuring great, my blood pressure is good (although it's always super low... 80/50).  but i'm definitely starting to feel pregnant.  my back hurts a lot more and i'm tired when i'm on my feet all day.  it's hard to get comfortable at night, bla bla, all of that stuff i guess i should have expected.

here are a couple of pictures of the belly:

 it's getting bigger!
but i feel like the past month the rest of me hasn't gotten any bigger, so hopefully my butt will hold steady and the belly will be the only thing that keeps growing! :D  i know i feel really big for me, but i'm 25 1/2 weeks and my baby book says at 26 weeks weight gain is normally between 16 and 22 pounds.  so 15 pounds isn't too bad right?  and it made me feel good today when my midwife lifted up my shirt for baby's heartbeat and squealed "oooh look at that cute little belly!"  i wonder how long it will be cute.  i'm sure one day i'll lift up my shirt and it will be like "dear god look at that huge swollen belly!" haha.

this week the midwife also talked to us about choosing a pediatrician for baby.  i guess i have to do that soon.  does anyone have any tips on what questions to ask?  i'm thinking the least amount of shots and the best lollipops.  or maybe excellent sticker selection?  these were my most important pediatrician criteria when i was little.

my next appointment is in four weeks, when i have to have the glucose test to make sure my body is processing sugars okay.  i basically just have to drink a pint of orange juice and then they take my blood.  i also have to have a rhogam shot since i'm rh negative.  but, the most exciting part about my next appointment is that it's my last 4-weeks-out appointment.  after the next visit i have to go to the doctor every two weeks.  and then we all know what happens next!  the stork comes and delivers a perfect baby and leaves my body magically intact!  okay okay, i know i have some serious work to do to get the perfect baby here, but that's what our 4 weeks of childbirth classes are for!  and they start a week from tonight! 

road test: the swiffer duster.

mondays and tuesdays are my cleaning days.
yes i have two.
this house is very big.
it works out great because i can get the house cleaned when billy is at work, instead of like when i was in school and had to clean on the weekends.  this consisted of billy trying to help me, me re-doing everything he cleaned because "he didn't do it right" (yes i'm one of those), and then him looking at me like i was a crazy woman as i ran around for eight hours with a bottle of clorox clean up.  embarrassing. 
now i can fully give in to my neurotic cleaning tendencies without anyone watching me.
oh, except tuck.

my cleaning apparently exhausts him.

anywho, i love cleaning products and am always looking for a new and better product or a new and better way to clean.  so the other day when i noticed that *gasp* my new blinds had a healthy layer of dust on them, i thought i would try the new swiffer dusters.

i thought maybe they would make cleaning the blinds easier because of the nifty handle.  and because the ones i bought were pink for breast cancer.  oops.

i also have this image permanently engraved in my head of my mom washing our blinds in the bathtub.  like "oh you can't take a bath tonight i'm soaking the blinds".  there has to be a better way!

but unfortunately, the moral of the story was this:
cleaning your blinds sucks. 
it's a crappy annoying job, and the swiffer duster did not make it any more enjoyable.  it would have been just as easy to dust them with a rag and a little bit of pledge.  lesson learned.  i shudder at the idea of future me giving my blinds a bath.  i'm not above it, i'll admit.

but at least now you know about the swiffer duster! save your money and some landfill space.

this old house.

so, in case you were wondering, this is not what happens when you call a chimney sweep:

i'm just trying to save you from sharing the same disappointment i felt when a guy with a tongue ring and ill fitting jeans showed up instead of dick van dyke. 
devastation.

i thought i was being proactive by calling a chimney sweep to check our chimneys since 1) we had never used them before and 2) we had no idea what kind of shape they were in when we moved in.  but really 3) i was scared we were going to set on fire a family of birds or squirrels who had been living there undisturbed for how many years. 
well, let me tell you that i was not thrilled when after four hours and a $250 bill, the chimney sweep handed me a quote for over $10,000 to have the necessary repairs made to our three fireplaces.  when i asked him what the risks were if i didn't choose to have the repairs made, he told me chimney and house fire. 
oh, that's all?

needless to say i went through kind of a wide range of emotions today.  but i had to stop and remind myself to take a deep breath.

billy and i bought this house for less than we would have paid for a townhouse in our area.  and the reason we got it for that price is because it's 300 years old and had been completely neglected by the previous owners for the last FIFTY years.  you may not understand what i mean by completely neglected, but here's a little window into what that looks like : i had to scrape all of the sides of the doors in our house with a razorblade when we first moved in to peel off the fingerprints.  yes, the fingerprints.  because for fifty years, if you put your hand in the same spot to open the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, doors and you never ever clean them, the fingerprints built up into a thick layer of skin deposits.  gray and black skin deposits.  that don't come off with bleach, or sponges, or brillo pads, but have to be scraped off with razor blades.  that's how thick they were.  and that's just a little spotlight into the bazillions of gross things i could tell you about taking over a house that had been virtually forgotten.

this house has come a LONG way, with lots of help from friends and family, and lots of good old fashioned elbow grease.  but it is still easy to get discouraged when it comes to the problems that exist around here.  and we are always reminded of them whenever a contractor comes by.  because i don't think they understand that we got this house for a song, they walk in and all they see are dollar signs.  it's really easy to freak out when you get a crazy roof estimate for your leaky ceiling, or a septic estimate to replace the full cess pool (yes it's so old it's actually called a cess pool), or when the chimney sweep comes to do a jig on your roof but instead hands you a quote for $10,000.  but i have to remember that these guys have companies that are struggling too, they need the work, and it's their jobs to make us feel like we need the job done.

and really, we do need the job done.  our roof is leaky.  our chimneys are rickety.  our septic tank is called a cess pool.  but if this old house is still standing after so many years of owners doing nothing, i think it will keep standing for us.  we have so much love for this old house, and we don't care that it's not perfect.  and maybe one day down the line we'll actually be able to afford to have new windows and new septics and new roofs and new chimneys, but we don't need them all today.  today we are doing just fine, and i know that God is in control! 

so today, i am thankful for this old house.  lefty, the sad old man who lived here before us, liked to say that the house "has good bones".  and despite all of the layers of dust and filth and grime and even more seriously needed repairs, it does.  i'm so thankful that we found this house to love, to love eachother in, and to work on together as a family.  i'm thankful for the cobwebs that creep out no matter how often i clean them, i'm thankful for the drafty windows, i'm thankful for the creaky floors and the poorly patched roof.  because they're our creaky floors. and they're our drafty windows.  and hopefully if we keep on loving this house it'll love us right back.

(our first meal in the new house back in april... we had a picnic on the great room floor)

so much to be thankful for.

my sweet friend charity decided to post a facebook status every day in november about something she is thankful for.  what a great idea!  i don't know if i can commit to 30 thankful facebook statuses (stati? what's the plural form of status??) but i think i will try to bust out a few blog posts this month about things i'm thankful for.  let's shoot for oh, say five.

so for this very first blog of something i'm thankful for, what will i choose?  there are a whole host of wonderful things that i'm thankful for.  but today, i choose to be thankful for one very special thing.

cheese.

CHEEEEESEEEE!!!!!

cheese.

oh cheese, you and i have had such a roller coaster of a relationship.

i was lactose intolerant until i somehow outgrew it in college.  little known fact, because whether or not i could get my hands on my trusty lactaid ultra tablet (those things were actually delicious), i never passed up tasty cheese.  pizza, oh pizza, how i paid for you dearly.  if anyone else is familiar with the side effects of eating dairy whilst lactose intolerant, you will be grateful i am not going to take this any further...

but cheese, oh cheese, i miraculously grew out of my lactose intolerance and our love affair continued, but much deeper!  i remember the first time lindsay taylor and i had delicious boursin at circa and i think we may possibly have sang a song about it.  or maybe my heart just sings when i think of you, sweet boursin.  and so many more! 

then i betrayed you cheese, with my brief few months of veganism this year.  i felt terrible.  literally.  some people do so well on vegan diets, but not me.  i was a puffy and bloated uncomfortable vegan.  it was awful. it was cheese withdrawal.  and i will never give you up again cheese!  not for good anyway.

so cheese, i am thankful for you.  i am thankful for cows, and farmers, and bacteria, and all of the other things that go into making the delight that is cheese.  thanks for being in my fridge.  thanks for being in my life.  thanks for being you.

i leek you a lot.

some people don't know what leeks are. that's okay, i didn't either until a couple of years ago.
this is what a leek looks like:

it's like a big, tasty, delicious green onion.

a couple of years ago i found this recipe in my real simple magazine.  it's for fettucine with lima beans, peas, and leeks.  oh, and parm cheese.  i've made it a few times and it is delicious!  but i happen to love lima beans, and i know not everyone does. 

this week while i've been trying to keep up my on the cheap grocery shopping, i made bowtie pasta with roasted butternut squash and roasted leeks.  oh, and parm cheese :)  the point is, pasta+veggie+cheese+leek= dinner. delicious dinner.

and the best part is, a big ole bunch of organic leeks will set you back a whopping $3.  give them a shot, you'll leek them a lot.