Mea Culpa

I have spoken to the commenter in the previous post who works for autozone, and have learned that autozone does in fact sell used batteries for $20, legitimately. The employee I spoke to was either joking, or it is highly likely I misunderstood entirely. My apologies to autozone and autozone employees.
The keyboard for my mac is no longer functioning, so I'm not going to be able to put more photos of Bella up until we buy a replacement.
My husband has spent the last week doing his mandatory volunteer work for pharmacy school with the red cross at various blood drives. The last two, on New Years Eve, and New Years, were at the mall of Georgia. Bella and I accompanied him for his shifts and spent the last two days shopping. Well window shopping, as we can't afford to buy much, but I did purchase two baby books by Karen Katz at the Waldenbooks that is going out of business.
I hate it when bookstores close :( It makes me feel guilty. Guilty because most of the time I go into book stores, browse for books, and sit in the coffee shop with a snack and a hot chocolate and read my iphone's kindle application.
I love books, but they take up so much space, and are several dollars more than the kindle versions. We're planning on moving summer of 2012, and then again in 2013, so I'm very aware of how much space things are taking up. Everything in the storage closet is already packed, boxed and labled, and next year as we use things (Holiday decorations and the like) we will be packing those up. As is my books take up tremendous ammounts of space, and I can't justify taking up anymore.
Bella's books I can justify. She's a baby, she can't read kindle yet, but when she can, she'll get kindle books. It's just easier. I've spent the last year donating books I'll never read again to the library, keeping books I want for Bella to read one day and packing them up, and replacing any torn or worn books on my kindle, and replacing any books I have with free kindle downloads. I've cut my bookshelves down from three shelves to one. One shelf was broken so we got rid of it, and the other we use for Bella's books and toys. I've kept anything autographed, and sentimental, other than that my bookshelf is getting slimmer and slimmer. I have to keep evaluating my book shelf, because my husband keeps getting textbooks from pharmacy school that he needs to keep. It's been going great, and there is so much less clutter in my house already that it's amazing. I like packing as we go.
But I still feel guilty when I'm at bookstores. I support their coffee shops at least, and their childrens sections, but how many other people like me are switching to electronic readers? I was sad enough watching the downfall of the independant book store, but bookstores in general? It's depressing.

Shots

My baby had her "first" shot this morning :(. I put the quotes in because I know she got shots in the hospital when she was born, but this was different. She cried. It was this terrible minute long wail that just kept going until she ran out of breath, and then the real crying started :(. I have never felt so helpless, it's so silly, but I feel terrible for her, she's fine now, she's sleeping it off, but I don't know if I can do two more shots next month and then lots of shots at her six month check up. I hate to see her in pain :(

I'm very pleased with her new fleece sleepers, she loves being all warm and snugly. She especially likes the sleepers that have little feet with animals on them like the bunnies in the photo above. I couldn't get a photo of her doing it, but she keeps sticking her little feet in the air and grabbing at the bunny ears that flop down, it's very fun.

This morning we hit a landmark development (at least in my opinion) Bella is beginning to speak baby. I woke up before she did this morning, and was getting ready when I heard her wake, instead of making her squeaky sounds and then crying for food, she spent a few moments making little babbling sounds mixed in with the squeaks, which reminds me I need to make a recording of her little squeaky sounds before she stops making them.

Yesterday I began her baby book, well one of the like ten baby books I'm working on. My mil got me a baby book, and my mother got me a baby book, and I had already decided to do my own digital baby book on shutterfly of Bella's first year. What I've decided to do is fill out all the baby books, keep the shutterfly one, and give the two others to each grandmother on Bella's first birthday. I'm pretty excited about this project.

Tommorow is my husbands birthday :) and I still don't have the slightest clue what we're doing for it. I got him a dvd he wants, and Bella got him a book called "Daddy Hugs." I would love to buy him more (we spent a small fortune on my birthday this year, I think that may have had something to do with the fact that I pushed a baby out two weeks before hand though) but he's so focused on the baby, and school right now that he honestly can't think of anything he wants or needs outside of those two worlds. Ah well, we will be celebrating on Saturday, so I'm sure he'll think of something by then.

I don't like company

Ok, maybe I'm the most possessive new mommy ever, but I really just want to be home spending time with my baby with my husband. Actually considering that I didn't even want guests at our wedding, I'd say this is most likely just a personality trait. Its not that I don't like people, I love people. I consider myself fairly social. It's just that I'd rather not worry about people when I'm cherishing a special event.

That said, my husbands cousin came to visit this weekend. She brought a diaper genie, and promised to help with house work and cooking. Thing is I don't need help. The house was clean, the cooking pre-done, so all she actually did was hold my baby, and make me feel rude when I napped or went back to the room to feed. She's super nice, and she was trying to be helpful, so it wasn't her fault, its just that I would have rather waited a few weeks before having company.

My husband felt the same way once she was here and felt bad about it, so instead of studying he spent to the entire time in the living room with her being social. Which again meant I was nursing without him talking to me and playing with the baby with me.

She's left now, but his mother is planning on visiting for a week sometime soon. A week! I love my mil, but I just want to be with the baby and be alone, but I can't deny her the opportunity to see her grandchild either. My brother is visiting next weekend, but only for a few hours, so I'm not very concerned about that. But in the meantime I feel like a selfish ogre. No company please, just me and my little family.

The First Trimester

The first trimester of pregnancy was largely uneventful for me, but in the spirit of all of the pregnancy books I read, and all the pregnancy blogs, I feel the need to share what they don’t tell you about pregnancy.

1) Morning Sickness- Ok, so maybe they do tell you about morning sickness, but what they don’t tell you is that you don’t feel better after you’ve thrown up. You don’t stop feeling sick, ever. I can count the times I actually threw up during my pregnancy (thus far) on one hand (three, unless you want to count that week I had the flue, which I don’t, cause I didn’t know I was pregnant yet, and I really did have the flue). I felt sick all the time though. I always felt queasy, it just wouldn’t stop. For me though, it wasn’t so bad. Eventually I got used to feeling sick, and I didn’t really notice anymore. I adjusted to new patterns to help me feel better more of the time. Certain foods had to be avoided, and I had to eat the minute I was hungry. I had to get something on my stomach before I got out of bed, which was weird, but if I didn’t let myself get hungry, I felt a lot better.

2) Teeth- This was/is/will always be the hardest thing to adjust to for me. Being pregnant means your gums are more sensitive for some reason, which I can deal with, but it also means morning sickness. Sticking a toothbrush in your mouth while trying not to vomit… it’s not easy. I’m fanatical about my teeth though. I brush (twice), floss, and use mouthwash first thing in the morning and right before bed. I also do all of that anytime I get ready to go anywhere in the middle of the day, whenever I feel like I need it, and anytime I take a shower because I don’t feel clean unless I’ve stripped whatever may be on my teeth as effectively as possible. I had never eaten prior to brushing my teeth in the morning, but sadly, unless I wanted to spend every morning gagging over the sink, my routine needed to change. I had to wake up, eat a cracker or something, go downstairs, eat breakfast, let the food settle, and then brush, floss, and mouthwash. Even then, it was still a struggle to get that toothbrush in my mouth. Your gums bleed randomly, which also doesn’t help the nausea. It’s disgusting, and I hate it. I can’t wait until my teeth turn back to normal.

3) Cravings- I knew to expect cravings, heck I looked forward to sending the husband out for ice cream at three in the morning. I’ve had four cravings thus far. Olive garden breadsticks, a cookie, and a chocolate frosted donut at Krispy Kreme. Right now I’m craving pizza from a very specific restaurant. Cravings aren’t that much fun. I have to have whatever I’m craving. I will be sad and irritable for days until the craving is met. I wasn’t prepared for that. If I get what I’m craving, great, it’s no big deal, I’m happy. Otherwise… I’m not. When I wanted Krispy Kreme, they were closed. I was sad until morning, really sad, and irritable. I decided we couldn’t afford to go to Olive Garden, and pretended this was ok for days. I acted happy, but inside I was devastated. Luckily, my husband is an amazing man, and surprised me with a nice dinner out two days after I mentioned I wanted breadsticks. (He kept offering to take me, and I kept saying no, because we needed to watch our spending.) It’s strange being able to rationally say, “No, I shouldn’t eat this.” But being unsatisfied until I get it. It’s just strange.

4) Aversions- I didn’t know about this one. My first trimester I didn’t want to eat anything. Soda was gross (which is good, because I don’t need it, but oh, the caffeine headaches) I had to have bland foods, nothing with any flavor. It wasn’t that eating something else would make me sick, it’s just that I had no will to eat anything but crackers, meat, and cheese for three months. The good thing about aversions paired with morning sickness is that you lose weight. I lost eight pounds my first trimester. The doctor assured me it was normal, so I wasn’t concerned.


5) Being tired- I was always ready for a nap. Enough said.

6) My worst symptom. Spotting- I spotted a lot my first trimester. This scared me a lot. I had to quit my job at the preschool (well I asked my boss if I could work the hours I had agreed to when I was hired, as opposed to the new crazy hours I had been given when the other teacher quit. She said no thank you, you can work it or quit. I chose to quit, and now they don’t have a three’s class because the night teacher for some reason wasn’t willing to work 24 hour shifts, and got the same ultimatum) and told to take it easy. I think that worked out the best actually. I would have rather not been spotting because it was frightening, but once I got more rest all the other symptoms got much easier to handle. I didn’t feel as sick, I wasn’t as tired and my headaches were gone.

I visited my doctor three times during my first trimester. There are no words to express how much I love my doctor’s office/insurance company. (Kaiser Permanente, an insurance company and medical group, love them.) I was given a binder full of information on pregnancy that complimented the million books on pregnancy I now own. I love to read, and when something makes me nervous I read about it to feel better. The only thing I didn’t read was the delivery chapter of any one of those books. Delivery was not something I wanted to think about yet.

My favorite pregnancy books were Baby Laughs, and The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy. No one could tell I was pregnant unless I told them, so for the most part we kept the news to ourselves. My friends and family knew, and that was enough.

We made the decision to close the business. On the last day of my first trimester (April 4th) we announced we would be closing at the end of the month, and began to make arrangements. While this was a sad and emotional decision, once the decision was made my stress level plummeted. I had time to grieve my business, but life was easier without having to wonder if we could possibly get through another month without the business supporting itself.

I felt like I was at a turning point. All the pregnancy books said the second trimester would be easier than the first. I was nervous about the third trimester, but that was months away. Oh yeah, one other thing they don’t tell you about being pregnant….

Time flies until month 9, but more on that later.