Monday, March 24, 2008

32 weeks ~ 8 months

Eight Months!



sunny side up


8 months of belly


xo

happy belated easter

me: "I have cankles"

him: "honestly, you do sort of have cankles today"

me: "WHAT??"

him: "but they are the cutest little cankles I've ever seen"

xo

Friday, March 21, 2008

chop chop

I'm thinking about cutting my hair.


I used to have short "Rosemary's Baby" style hair for years.



Not always the same cut but always a short cropped 'do.
Then I couldn't find a reliable hairdresser so I stopped cutting it and it just kept growing and growing. It had been so long since I had had long hair (like 5th grade). I thought it made me look more womanly and it did make me feel pretty sexy. But now I just have this long tangled mop on top. I semi-recently got bangs, just for a little change and I do like them but I'm really not the blow-dryer type and I think when my hair is long it may need that sort of TLC.

So, I'm thinking about chopping it all off.
It's my husband's fault.
He loves me with short hair (he loves me any way but you know what I mean)

Here are my main concerns:

1. I read, way back in the beginning of this pregnancy, that you shouldn't do anything too drastic to your appearance. That your hormones might be playing a trick on you and you'll wind up regretting it later... Now as I type this I realize that that sounds ridiculous. I probably read it in that crappy "what-your-girlfriends-won't -tell-you guide to pregnancy" book. The one that spent an entire chapter on how ugly and unfair maternity underwear are. But regardless, what if I don't like it? Then I'll feel a little pudgy and ugly.

2. Short hair will make me look chubby.
I've gained 25 pounds so far and even though I know I shouldn't be, I'm a little self conscious about it. It's just not what I'm used to. What if my new hair-do makes me look like a pinhead! Because the weight gain certainly has not been to my head.

3. I will have to get it cut and dyed waaaay more often.

4. I do not currently have a hairdresser that I trust completely. I don't even have a "regular" hairdresser. I seem to have a hard time finding a really good one.

Here's what I really wish:
I wish I could just show up at a magical salon where the stylists are all nice and everyone's hair is beautiful. Then the most super talented hair cutter of them all would ask what I want and I would say: "I feel blah, will you please cut my hair and make me feel absolutely drop-dead stunningly gorgeous?"
snip snip, chop chop a little blonde highlights and voila;
gorgeous.

Here are some really good things about short hair:

1. Sooo easy.
Say I roll out of bed one morning after the baby is born and I actually need to leave the house for something, say, more diapers, I am 99% sure my hair will look fantastic.

2. Short hair does look cute on me. I'm lucky I'm one of those girls who can get away with barely-there hair.

3. Short hair makes me feel more youthful and spunky. I think edgy might be an appropriate word too.

So there you have it. What's a girl to do?



xo

Monday, March 17, 2008

week 31



sleepy, slightly blurry belly.



According to "Your Pregnancy-Week by Week" Little Ray weighs about 3 lbs. by now! I can definitely tell that he is feeling a little cramped. He doesn't so much gently kick and flutter anymore. Now it's more like jab and roll. It's really cool though because I can feel different body parts when he pushes against the outside of my tummy. He has also figured out how to tickle my ribs from the inside. It feels exactly like being tickled on the outside but just inside instead! I think he thinks it's funny when it makes me jump, so he always does it a couple times in a row...

I'm starting to get pretty darn excited. I had the most wonderful dream about little Ray the other night. I was holding him and he was giggling and playing with all my friends. He had the biggest bright blue eyes and long dark lashes just like his daddy.
I s'pose it's time to start looking for some furniture for his room...

Other than that, I started reading about vaccinations (taboo, I know) and I'm looking into alternative ways to deal with pain. I'm hoping to have Ray au naturale, but the only decision I have made so far is that I am not going to make myself feel bad if I can't handle the pain. Deep down though, I think I can handle it...

I think I can.
I think I can.
I think I can...

xo

Friday, March 14, 2008

cuppa joe?

new mugs at whitney leigh





they said it best

a collection of my favorite quotes...
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"And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom."
~Anais Nin
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"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."
~Galileo
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"The lovely flowers embarrass me,
they make me regret I am not a bee..."
~Emily Dickinson
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"Speak French when you can't think of the english for a thing -
turn your toes out as you walk -
and remember who you are."
~Lewis Carroll
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"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook.
At seven I wanted to be Napoleon.
And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."
~Salvador Dali
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"When you come right down to it all you have is yourself.
The sun is a thousand rays in your belly.
All the rest is nothing."
~Pablo Picasso
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"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
~Lewis Carroll
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"Clouds are so beautiful I could bite my toes."
~Matthew Howe, age 4
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I hope you have a really great day today.
xo

and a well rested morning to you too.

I love how moms and dads always know what to say to make you feel better.

"It's not so much a loss of self but a gain of dimension. The trick is the definition. You may not always have a choice in the priority of the day but the YOU that is present is what makes it all happen."

"You" will never disappear; you are reflected and multiplied in all those you love, and who so love you."

xo

p.s. breakfast did help. It was the best eggs benedict in the history of eggs benedicts.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

stinky

I don't know what happened but at the end of yesterday I found myself in the most rotten, foul mood yet.
I can't think of anything that triggered it and there was definitely nothing that seemed to help. So this morning I am waking up with a bad mood hangover. Does that ever happen to you? Where, you just feel wiped out because you wasted so much energy wishing the world would just shrivel up and die the day before...

Here's a couple of things that may help:

Breakfast. And I'm not talking a piece of toast with butter. I'm thinking eggs benedict with hashbrowns, fruit and chai tea. (none of which I actually have the means to prepare, so maybe a field trip is in order)

Making myself a dress (that fits). Sometimes it feels so good to spend an entire day doing something for yourself. And the last one I made; not so cute with a basketball in the front. Look for it on my new pine & hanker etsy site.

Other than that I've been having scary baby dreams lately. In the first one, me, my brother, and my husband were house sitting this huge expensive house and in the middle of the night a gang of thieves (hooligans!) broke in and we had to keep running from room to room to hide. I finally made it downstairs to the kitchen where I saw my brother and right as I whispered "hey, Tay" I heard a gun click, I turned to my left and there was the meanest of the mean guys pointing a gun at my head. I felt my hair move as he shot me in the head (ick, I know, but it gets worse). Taylor yells "Nooooo" and as I fall to the floor he runs over and holds me in his lap and I tell him to save the baby. So he grabs a kitchen knife and cuts open my stomach and right as Luke (my husband) walks in he is lifting the baby out of my belly.
ooh, I get chills just re-telling it. It was an awful dream.

Then the next night I dreamt that me and Luke were playing with our new beautiful baby boy when all of the sudden he started having seizures. He would get the most awful look on his face and then shake and twitch like crazy. He had three of them in a row and then he was fine.
Not fun either.

Then last night (ok this isn't a dream) as I was out driving around trying to curse my bad mood onto someone else, I started thinking about how much I am going to change as a person when this little guy arrives. So far all I have really thought about is how our immediate world will change. The new, foreign supplies. The stinky diapers. The lack of sleep. The leaky boobs. All of the sudden I was overcome with complete sadness when I thought of the fact that I will disappear.

I will cease to exist.

I will become someone's mother.
Then I'll just be someone's daughter, someone's wife, and someone's mother.

It was a sad moment, and I think I'm still trying to figure this one out.
Words of encouragement greatly appreciated...

xo

week 30

10 more weeks to go.
Part of me feels like "Ack! wait, slow down."
And the other part remembers back to week 20 and how long ago that seems and thinks, "oh ok, I got plenty of time."



I thought I'd throw in a frontal belly shot, it looks different from this perspective.


xo

Thursday, March 6, 2008

salvation

or is that salivation?











www.wondercabinet.etsy.com

I often find things I like.
But I rarely (and I mean very rarely) find things that make me swoon.
I absolutely love these prints.

xo

Sunday, March 2, 2008

week 29

mick likes my belly


gretta does too


blurry, I know


We started a new project this week!
We have a two bedroom house and currently one of the bedrooms is my studio, a small room, out of which I do everything. Or at least try to but inevitably I spill out into the kitchen and the living room and the bedroom... Well, we also have an old 2 car garage out back that we have been using for storage. We are going to turn that garage into a finished studio for me and my old studio will become little baby Ray's room!
So this weekend we moved everything out of the garage and into storage, we stripped the whole thing bare, and went window shopping (literally).
Next step will be to frame in the front and cut out some windows.
I'm so excited, I keep dreaming about what it is going to be like to have a place to 1. keep everything of mine and 2. a single place where I can accomplish everything, from making a necklace start to finish, to packing and shipping etsy orders. I will be so productive. And at the end of the day when I'm done, I can shut the door and walk away.
Ahhh..

the new studio


the old garage


xo

p.s. thanks to everyone who read my blog last week. I had 98 hits in one day!