A random thing on my mind

In retrospect, my last blog was a bit whiny. So let me say this: yes, it's a bit of a pain, but I LOVE being pregnant. And I actually like having symptoms because that means I'm baking a baby, and that's a good thing. And I know things could be so much worse. And my husband has been amazing to me this whole time. And I'm finally eating a bit again. So yeah, things are good.
Oh, and we got happy news that we are unofficially prequalified for a decent sum of money for a house, and with a good interest rate. And my company stock is doing pretty well (all of our house plans are counting on that stock staying above the thirty. Obviously, the higher the better). Yay! I'll fly down next month and pick out a home.
This is going to be a really random blog. I've been thinking a lot the last couple days about a certain painting. See, some punks broke into the Musee D'Orsay museum in Paris and punched a hole through a Monet. I'm not blogging about that, sad though it is, but it reminded me of something. I used to visit that museum a lot- it was my second favorite museum in Paris and was free on Sundays (the Rodin museum was my first favorite museum. That puts the Louvre in third).
There was one painting at the Musee D'Orsay, kind of in a corner, that is one of my all time-favorites now. It's called "Les disciples Pierre et Jean courant au sépulcre le matin de la Résurrection" or, in English, "The disciples Peter and John running to the tomb the morning of the Resurrection", and it's by some fellow I hadn't heard of named Eugene Burnand.
Here's the low-quality pic I took of it:

It is my favorite religious work of art (I'm generally not a fan of the genre as a whole, with some of my least favorites, Gary Olsen and Minerva Teichert, a bit overrepresented in Utah).
They look so hopeful, and worried, and excited, to get to the tomb. And they look like real people, vulnerable and worried about a friend. I don't know why it moves me so much, but I wanted to point it out to the world.
I hadn't ever heard of it, nor has anyone I've talked to except when we visited Kenny's sister Jeanette in Dallas, she had a beautiful print of it up on her wall. I was thrilled to see a copy of it again, and thrilled that someone else as cool as Jeanette liked it to.
Anyways, for some reason the painting has been on my mind and now I want a print to go up on my wall someday. Keep an eye out for it.

The things they don't tell you

So, as far as I know the pregnancy is still going well. Here's what I've learned about pregnancy that I didn't know before:
-It's completely normal to LOSE weight at the beginning of a pregnancy. I've actually lost 10 pounds since I found out. This is to make up for the eventual weight I am sure I will gain. Remember 2003 when that medicine made me pack all that weight into my cheeks and bum? (It was the same summer that I overplucked my eyebrows.... not a good summer for me.) Yeah, I'm terrified of that happening again... all the weight going into my cheeks or something. My limbs have never picked weight up much and I fear being disproportionate.
-Morning sickness isn't just in the morning. Well, I had heard that before, but I figured they meant "you can feel sick at night instead". What they actually mean is "you will feel sick all day every day for the next 3 months". To be fair, I'm lucky- I haven't vomited. I just hate food. I actually gag when I try to swallow stuff. No wonder I've lost weight.
-I will cry if I'm out of bed past 10 pm. I don't need a reason. Kenny will look over, bless his heart, and go "is everything ok, sweetiie?" and I'll just be a puddle on the floor. I've never known exhaustion like this.
-You get dumber. I can't remember stuff, I can't spell anymore and I can't focus enough for even some video games.
-Apparently blood pressure goes down for the first trimester. Go figure. Whereas I used to get dizzy one out of ten times of standing up, now EVERY time I stand up, I immediately fall right back down, usually with some sort of dazed dopey look on my face.
-Every one you know will tell you horror stories about pregnancy. "I was in labor 28 hours!" or "I miscarried at 5 months". All stuff that I don't particularly want to hear. Like I've said before, I'm terrified of miscarrying. The less I think about it the better.
-The world doesn't slow down for your pregnancy. Not every one will guess you are pregnant, and not every one will treat you like you're amazing for putting yourself through this. As a matter of fact, women go through this every day and it's apparently not earth-shattering (these women, all mothers, are now my heroes).
-I've learned some other things and read a frightfully honest pregnancy book that let me know what I was really in for, but I want to shield the rest of the world, particularly my wonderful husband, from some of the more gory or depressing aspects of it, so I'll wrap this up.

After all my whining, I'm thrilled to have symptoms because that means the baby is growing and my body is responding appropriately. I'd be more freaked out if I lost my symptoms. My baby this week is about half an inch long, has a heart, lungs and some brain, and flippery-dos for limbs.

What a great day

First, if you're looking for the big news, it's a couple posts down.
Well, about a week ago I emailed my boss with two huge bits of news: 1) I'll need maternity leave next spring, and 2)I'm moving to (I mean, may I please move to) Houston and and working remotely. It was a terrifying email to write, but I needed to know about working remotely and didn't want to have him jump through those hoops for me and THEN bring up my pregnancy. I figured this was the fairest way to do it.
Well, it took him a while to get back to me, because he had to clear it through all levels of bureaucracy, but today I got the OK to continue my position from Texas. I don't know what we would have done with another response, since Kenny already submitted his application, but I have a huge load off my shoulders and feel kind of special- it's a big deal to have your superiors decide you can handle working from your home. My boss has been way supportive and we're so lucky.
Now, if only I could figure out how to even begin thinking about moving so far away and finding a home of our own.
I scheduled my first doctors appointment for October 16th. I'll be 9 weeks along and will hopefully get to hear a heart beat.

More big news

Well, to start with, I'm still pregnant, which is a very good thing. I'm terrified of miscarrying. No real reason for me to fear it particularly, aside from this has all seemed just too easy. So far, still no real nausea, just an overall aversion to food and feeling of queasiness. I have gagged a couple times while trying to eat, but so long as I'm not vomiting I'm happy.
So here's the other big news: Kenny has applied to do student teaching in the Aldine school district in Houston Texas. This means that rather than moving next august, we will move in late December/early January. He'll still graduate in April, but will already have a good standing with a district in Houston- a district that happens to pay about 45k/year for a starting HS math teacher. That's insane for a new teacher! However, the district has a very high minority rate (something like 90%) and is kind of rough.
So we're looking at houses and will hopefully move into a house of our own within 4 months or so! Our very own house! We'll be away from the screaming girls upstairs, the falling apart apartment, the Utah winter...
We've prayed about but we're too biased to get a real answer. It's a bit late to change our minds now, but we're so excited.

The big news (that everyone already knows)

First let me preface this by saying I am the worst secret keeper of all time. OK, well, I wasn't even really trying. Now that the cats pretty much out of the bag I might as well make it official:
I'M PREGNANT! We found out last Sunday. I'm 5 weeks along next Monday, and the baby should come sometime around May 19th.
So, pretty much ever since we got married we've both planned and tried to figure out the soonest time we could start trying without having the baby while Kenny was still in school, or before we had a chance to really get good at this marriage thing. Well we just finished the first year of our marriage and things couldn't be better. Kenny graduates in just under 9 months. And we have enough money saved up to not only have a baby but to also move into a real house within the next year (thanks to my company stock). I got it all planned out in my big fancy budgety spreadsheet. In July, we prayed and fasted and both felt that the time was getting right. Of course, I knew I'm biased, so I left it up to Kenny. Once he gave me the go-ahead, it became this all-consuming thought. I charted my basal temperatures each day to figure out when I was ovulating (not like it really changed how we do things). My temps showed that I ovulated really early in my cycl, which theoretically means a positive pregnancy test could come much sooner than the end of my cycle. What's often referred to as the dreaded"two week wait" ended up being a three week wait, during which time everytime I felt slightly funny I'd think "ooooo, maybe that means I'm pregnant!". And then came the craziness- "I bet I'm not pregnant and I'm just imagining I'm feeling nauseous."
To keep myself (and Kenny) sane, I started spending a lot of time on the bulletin boards at pregnancy.com, chatting with the other girls TTC (trying to conceive). IT really helped to have someone to talk to without bugging Kenny all day with "oh, I'm craving yogurt. Maybe I'm pregnant!"
In retrospect I stressed about it way too much- eh, who am I kidding, I knew I was stressing too much at the time, but what can you do? I'm just so excited! Anyways, after 7 home pregnancy test, taken every-other day BFNs (that's Big Fat Negatives), I finally got a faint line on Sunday and a stronger line on Monday. Meaning three happy things:
1) We don't have to go through this craziness next month
2)I wasn't crazy that whole time, I actually did feel symptoms of pregnancy!
3)WE'RE HAVING A BABY!

It was all too easy (though obviously the hard part has yet to come). I feel so bad for all the girls on the TTC board who have been trying for 2 or 3 years. Especially since I've had ovarian cyst trouble and have never been particularly healthy, we just feel so lucky and blessed.
I know it's standard practice to keep a pregnancy a secret for the first 12 weeks or so, in case you miscarry, but I just couldn't. If Kenny had told me not to tell anyone, I might have been able to... then again, maybe not. Most people who know me well at all know how excited I've been for this, and how it's a HUGE deal for me. The only person who can't know yet is my boss, and it's nothing personal- I just don't want him to know until the next round of promotions and bonuses come out in October. Some of my coworkers guessed, and I was hardly being sneaky on facebook, so pretty much everyone knows now.
I still feel foolish for letting on so early- if I miscarry I'm sure I'll really regret it. But we're so excited, and even if I miscarry, I think it'd be nicer to not feel completely alone and secret about it. Fortunately, we know that getting pregnant wasn't hard, so if we do miscarry, we'll be sad, but it won't be the end of the world. I don't want to think about that right now though. I want to go back to thinking about how tired I am, how hungry I am without actually wanting any specific food... and how very, very Happy I am.

The Bad Blogger

OK, so I'm a bad blogger. If I get even a little behind, I give up. That said, I have big news, which I'll blog about next. For now I will just get you caught up:

We hiked timp together. I thought I was going to die but we made it it to the top just in time for the sunrise. It was beautiful, and I was so proud of myself:


We went camping in Zions for our first anniversary. We had so much fun. We hiked the Virgin River Narrows and had the puppy with us... it was a great experience.


Kenny has started school back up. His schedule is AWFUL. Each day we drive in between Lehi, Provo, and Orem all day. The puppy trades hands and gets too much alone time. And Kenny hzsn't gotten to really relax since the weekend. Poor boy. Fortunately it's his last semester of classes, and none of the classes are hard- just time consuming. I think it'll be a rough few months but we'll get through it. Oh, he had to shave his beard off too, for school.

I think that just about sums things up. I'll save the biggest news for the next blog.

What's new pussy cat, woo-o-o-o-oah!

Nothing too exciting to report on. Sister Becky is in town and we've had fun playing with her and her family. We've done some seriously cleaning and now have grass out front (pray to the grass gods that it will live). Lori comes into town Friday night and stays with us for a week. Also, Friday night we are hiking mount timp with Kenny's Cousin, Grant. Then the following weekend we go to Zion's to camp and celebrate our one-year anniversary. No news about the weird neighbor situation. Apparently they know they can't prove it's Kenny and are hoping the situation just magically goes away. Not exactly ideal, but so long as they aren't telling people in the ward of their suspicions (and it would appear they aren't) I'm ok.
Last night I read a 600 page book in one sitting. It's book three of a series I was just introduced to (thanks, Anna Rose) and it just came out yesterday. The series, which starts with the book "Twilight' is impossible to describe without making it sound dumb, but I've loved reading them. And I was very pleasantly surprised to find out the author is Mormon and graduated recently from BYU in English- living my dream. You wouldn't guess she's Mormon by her writing, but I'm glad to see an LDS author hold their own without writing for just a Mormon audience. I'm also reading the latest in the Thursday Next series, which I adore. Lots of reading, since Kenny has been working overtime lately.
I'm dreading the school year because I'm going to be practically husband-less for fall semester: Kenny is taking 18 credits and planning on still working at least 20 hours/week.
Oh, and a few of my best friends from former years are visiting Utah this month. Oh, and my company stock (omtr) is going crazy in a very exciting way (our house plans rest on my stock options).
That's all I got. In an effort to make my blog more interesting, I'm going to include fun things at the bottom. Here, have a photo of a happy swimming elephant:


And a quote:
95% of the world lives with their eyes closed. The other 5% lives in constant amazement.
-Anonymous