rockin' the papa shoes!

mmk, no frontin'. i'm swollen. i thought i would avoid this lovely part of pregnancy where my feet and calves swell up and lose their ability to circulate my blood as they should but nope... no such luck.

and so, friends, with this swelling comes set-backs. my shoes no longer fit as they should so i had no choice but to pursue other avenues. this, friends, is what i came up with (and yes, i took it off, set it on my desk and took the picture for no other reason than for you to see it):


yep. your eyes are not deceiving you. these are the same shoes that my papa rocked the last 20 years of his life. the cloth slip-on. except my version has very colorful skulls on them because i'm bad to the bone. oh yeah baby. i wore these to work today. and i plan on wearing them again tomorrow and most likely the next day too. they are cloth and comfortable. now i know why my papa rocked them. and i love him even more for it. i just wish he was still around to sport the skull version... (haha - funny visual huh meme?).

my boss was like, "ummm... those are colorful shoes mckenzie." i said, "why yes dean. they are. they most certainly are." bwaaahahahaha! :)

and God said, "give out floor! pregnant lady comin' through"

mmkay, let me begin by saying so sorry for the three week hiatus. i know three weeks in blog time translates to about five years... but i've been really busy. and there was a brief stint within this major lapse in blogland that i had the flu. and then there was koinonia... i've been busy, pregnant, sick and tired. please give me a pass. :) thank you.

so there really is no time to catch you up, so we'll just start fresh, from today. i had a doctor appointment today. since my last appointment (2 1/2 weeks ago) i've gained a pound. yep, that's right. one pound. eat your heart out. :) i was pretty happy. well, until i laid my big ole' pregnant arse onto the table in the room. my doctor says, "ohhh, you've certainly got a big belly! let's measure that baby, mmk?" ummm, ok. whatev. so she measures me and says, "well, everything looks good but you're measuring at 34 weeks. you're 31 weeks, right?" i said, "yep. 31 weeks last saturday." so she then proceeded to tell me that if i were still measuring 3 weeks ahead we'd take a look at nora at the next appointment and do a "dating" scan. soooo... i suppose i could potentially be going into labor a little sooner than planned. i'll keep you posted on that situation as it progresses.

that said, when i returned from work i was greeted by my co-worker, heather. she very excitedly said, "soooo? how'd it go? do you have a picture?" (**sidenote: heather has no babies and is a little obsessed with ultrasound pictures. i can't count on both hands how many times i've told her i don't get a "picture" everytime i go and also that i probably won't be getting anymore "pictures" until i take them of my born baby in a couple months). mmk, so i say, "well, i'm a biggin' and no i don't have a picture." she laughs. i said, "no, i'm serious. i'm measuring about three weeks ahead." and at about this moment i feel the floor beneath my feet give way. yes, i'm serious. i look down and realized i had been standing on the heater vent in my office and i had just fell through. yes people... i fell through the mother-loving heating vent at the exact moment i told heather i was measuring three weeks ahead of schedule. classy, no?

so i sat there... mortified. and since heather was looking at me and heard the very obvious ::thud:: when the heater vent gave way i had no choice but to address the issue. so i said, "well. i just fell through the floor." she laughed. and so did i... because seriously, that's pretty funny. and the timing. great job God - couldn't have produced a more perfect moment for an almost 8 month pregnant lady to fall through the floor myself.

and then she did the most generous thing anyone has ever done for me. and i mean that. she, in her 125 lb glory, got up from her chair, walked over to the heater vent, stood on it and pressed her heel into the vent and broke it... same as i had just done. and she says, "well, see... i broke it too. you're not fat. it was just the heel on your shoe." i hugged her... through tears. and then we laughed as we had never done before.


and above you will see that glorious heater vent we smashed up. about half way through you'll see two little rungs that are just demolished. one for me and one for skinny, not pregnant heather. :) that is why i will miss my job. thank you heather. thank you very much.

oh... and dean (my boss) if you read this... the heater vent on the side of the filing cabinet was damaged by a big heavy box of dead files that accidentally fell onto the vent a long time ago. we did not swap it out for the one pictured above. no sir, we did not do that.

i'm such a stinkin' wimp!

so... as posted below i had my gestational diabetes test on friday (to which i passed, thank you very much). well... in my excitement over my cake, i left out some of the gory details. like the mother-loving lab phlebotomist who needs more practice on an orange. she was a jammer-inner and a ripper-outter. but don't worry. my arm vein took it's own revenge when it just about squirted her coat. this is about the time i dang near passed out. (yes, i'm serious).

i'm not sure that getting blood drawn has hurt like this... ever. i do recall one event long ago in which i had to be poked about 20 times to get an IV in that hurt much worse... but this was up there on the hurt-o-meter. and... i still have a bruise. and i'm a whiner. a wimp. and... reality check: i'm getting an epidural.

yes. this is a three day old bruise. but i'm still going to whine about it. and... holy crap... i just realized how full my inbox is. ack. i better get on that... booo.

gestational diabetes and cake...

this summer i ate the most magnificent cupcake i've ever had in my life. while at the bite of bozeman i came across the super-cupcake confection from sweet pea bakery. it was a raspberry lemonade cupcake made from scratch. i seriously can not put into words how good this sucker was. thick, creamy raspberry frosting (and lots of it) over a moist lemonade cake bottom... mmmm.

mmk, fast forward to wednesday. since i've been pregnant i've been dreaming about this cupcake. i'm talking literally. i go to bed and i dream about eating this cupcake and can sometimes taste the pastry perfection.

in a moment of weakness, i decided that i'd stop in at the sweet pea bakery this week and just see what they had... all the while secretly praying to God that someone at the bakery had the urge to bake my sweetly perfect raspberry lemonade cupcakes. no suck luck. shocker. so as i was walking away from the counter... obviously looking defeated, the nice young man behind the counter said, "you know... we can make them for you on a special order." whooo hooo! so i said, "great! how many do i have to order?" and he replied, "at least a dozen." awww crap. seven months in and i've already gained 34 pounds (ack!) so i said, "well, i really don't need that many." and he said, "well, did you know that we make raspberry lemonade cakes?" whoo hooo again! i said, "i most certainly did not! let's do it!" somehow ordering one cake made me feel a little better about myself than ordering 12 cupcakes... no comments about this please. :) so i ordered and agreed to pick up the cake this afternoon. i've been waiting for today to come for 48 looooong hours. :)

mmk, you are finally up to speed. fast forward to today. i had a doctor appointment today and my gestational diabetes test was scheduled to be done this morning. ever since i ordered myself a whole entire raspberry lemonade cake i've been a little concerned about the results of the test coming back positive and then i'd have to watch my lovely hubs kev eat MY cake. sooo, when i went into the docs office this morning i said, "dr. augustyn, i have something to tell you. it's important. i take my prenatal everyday, without fail. even though i often eat too many burritos in a weeks time i do try to watch what i eat. i haven't had a drop of booze or even so much as an aspirin in the seven months i've been pregnant." she said, "ok. sounds good..." i continued, "i ordered a cake. i pick it up this afternoon and i'm eating it regardless of my diabetes test results." she said, "mckenzie, you are going to be a terrible mother. how could you even think of eating the cake without getting the results of your gestational diabetes test? don't you understand what eating a lot of sugar at this point could do to your fetus? you should just consider adoption." ok, ok... she didn't say that. that's what i was expecting her to say. gotcha. she said, "sounds great. enjoy." HAHAHAHA. :) perfect. so - that, friends, is exactly what i did:yep... that is me and my cake. thank you sweet baby Jesus for inspiring someone at the sweet pea bakery to come up with this confection. it was everything i remembered it to be.

oh, and i passed my 1 hour test with flying colors. no gestational diabetes for this cake-eatin' mama. :)

this is the day...

this is the day friends. week 28, day 4. the day the belly took charge. kev and i went to rosauers for lunch today and as i was putting my ranch into my dressing cup i turned around to head back to my table to eat my lunch. the belly, however, decided to linger and knock off about 30 plastic salad to-go containers onto the floor. lovely.

the girl in the salad bar line next to me goes, "ohhhh, rough day, eh?" i said, "umm... you have no idea." :)

holy mother of infant bows...

i love that we're having a girl. :) i have so much fun shopping for swimsuits with ruffles and cute little bright pink dresses. my most recent obsession has been with cute little hats with big flowers attached to them and infant bows. yep, that's right. despite major resistance from her daddy, my sweet little nora will be one of those accessorized princesses. i can't wait.

anyway, during my search for newborn bows on my new favorite website, etsy, i ran across something that absolutely blew my mother-loving mind. now... please note i'm a newbie. my sweet husband and i are taking parenting classes two nights a week to be sure we can keep nora alive when she comes. :) i don't know what kind of mama i will be because i just don't have a lot of experience. but, i will try. very hard. anyways - i was drawn into a particular site by this adorable photo of a little baby with a bow:she's cute huh? i love the expression. so i enter the site. (**disclaimer so my bump ladies don't think i'm a dummy: noooo, i wasn't really going to PAY $6.95 for bows that i know i can make for $.99 - i just didn't understand how to stick them onto nora's head (especially if God chooses not to bless her with a full head of hair), so this esty search was for research purposes. sheesha!) so i find a picture of some bows i think are cute for sale in this shop:
i click on them and start reading about how they stick to a baby's head and am confronted with this picture:
GLUE! bwahahhaha! this lady seriously uses surgical lubricant to GLUE bows to her baby's head! LOLOL! seriously? this cannot be how this is done! i thought i must be missing something... and that's not all friends... she says in her listing that in the event you'd rather not use the GLUE you can use KY Jelly.

::jaw drops wiiiide open::

really? can you imagine? if kevin walked into nora's bedroom and found me attaching bows to her head with glue or KY jelly he would have me locked up in the nuthouse. HAHAHA! wouldn't that be funny? he would think i had lost my mother-loving mind!

and so... my search continues. i will find a better way. there must be a better way... LOL!

alas... i will just pray that my sweet babe has a full head of adorable blond hair for me to affix my little bows to... otherwise this mama has no choice but to stick to hats. :)

confession...

well... i don't know where the montana girl scouts are hiding. perhaps they are warm inside their homes since it's
-10 and blizzarding again... but dang it... if you want to sell those cookies you have to get your butt out there and push em, right?

ugh. well, ok. now to the confession part. i don't know how - but my boss has a contact where i have none. a girl scout contact. he brought in a box of thin mints today... i devoured it. absolutely devoured it. as i wiped the last of the crumbs of my chin i said, "ummm, hope you didn't expect that to last long. until tomorrow." bwaahahahaha! the evil seven month pregnant woman strikes again!

i have my gestational diabetes test on friday... so i figure just in case i better make dang sure i'm satisfied. (ack! red flag - bad mom alert!) mmkay, in all actuality though, this is the first incident where i took out a box of cookies. not good. my weakness is cupcakes, not girl scout cookies.

so, once the box was gone i realized... i don't even like thin mints! i like tagalongs!

::silently prays for God to send a girl scout bearing cookies, no tagalongs, to her office during this wonderfully snowy spring break week::

that's all for now friends. ack. :)

sneak peek and the dropsies...

here is what my sweet babe nora's room looks like today... a sneak peak of what is to come if you will:

in other news... i've all of a sudden become the most clumsy person i know. and just so you know, this is saying something. i know some clumsy people. i won't name any names (tiffany hartpence). :) hahaha. you know i love (and miss) you lady. :)

anyways - this morning while i was at work i had a couple little mishaps both within an hours time. i was standing at the water cooler filling up my water bottle and when it was about ummm 3/4 full i just let go. i can't explain it. my brain told my hand to hold it there but my hand just decided it was tired of doing that. blah. so it spilled all over the place. and everyone in my office was watching.

then... if that's not bad enough i was headed back into my office, coming in (we're talking about 20-ish minutes after the water incident) in from my hourly bathroom break and went to open the door into my agency and rammed smack dab into the glass door. i swear, once again, my brain told my hand to turn the mother-loving door handle but it just wasn't listening... the biggest problem was my body was listening to my brain and it started walking... and i smashed smack into the glass door. you see how this could very easily become a problem when my pregnant body refuses to work as a team, right? ugh. oh - and again, dean and heather were looking right at me... through the glass. laughing. ha-ha-mother-loving-ha. :)

jo' mama is sorry about that nora d. whoopsies. :)

whoa big mama...

"wow mckenzie... there's not very many people we can't fit but you are definitely one of them. and just wait until your milk comes in. you are in big trouble sister."

this to me from the very nice bra lady at the uber-expensive boutique that claims there is "no one they can't fit for a comfortable bra" i went to today at lunch. my thoughts were filled with big comfy bras and being able to go a whole day without a backache because i didn't hoist my ooties on my desk for a rest long enough that day... i dreamt of frolicking in the park in my big comfy bra...


ok, so i'll admit... my daydreams didn't include little boys dragging my big bra through the park... but you get the point, right?

based on their claims, i went with high hopes of buying a stupid expensive bra that actually fit me. i'm desperate... and after trying on (and off) 30+ bras... nothing. blah.

those of you that know me know that i've always been, well... for lack of a better word... "blessed" in the upper region. top heavy if you will. ugh. well - since i've been pregnant with my little babe nora i was hoping she would steal my thunder, right? you know... take a lil somethin' somethin' from her dear mama. ummm... yah. no such luck. just when i could FINALLY fit into a victoria's secret bra for the first time in 10 years i get pregnant. and now... all i got is a sports bra that gives a pregnant sister a big uni-boob. great.

why do i blog this you ask? isn't this too much information for strangers to read on the internet? yes. yes it is. but i blog in hopes of a rescue. there has got to be "blessed" women, much like myself, out there somewhere with a cure for this disease. :)

so i decided i'd contact edna and have her make me a bra... and this is what i ended up with:

i absolutely love being pregnant and feeling my sweet babe moving around all day. i do... but for the love... couldn't God have given me just a little break? ouchie is all i have to say. ouchie.

my first bit of crazy...

poor, poor kevin.

i had my first bit of pregnancy crazy. kev and i were laying in bed talking about life when this forensic files came on the tv and started talking about how statistics show that men die before women.

this is common sense, yes? well - we always do this cheesy, really kind of morbid thing (but i love it...) where we say, "i hope i die first." and then the other person says, "nooo! i hope IIIIII die first." it's weird, i know... but the basic principle is we don't want to live without each other.

mmk. stage set. so this forensic files comes on and starts talking about how the man dies first. well... i lose it. i start crying. hysterically. because the tv says that kevin will most likely die before me. at some point i realized how ridiculous i am being and i start laughing... also hysterically. then i realized kevin was looking at me... blankly. between my tears and laughs i looked at him and said, "i'm out of control!" he answered, "umm... i know."

haha... pregnancy is a beautiful thing.

i just can't kick the habit...

i woke up last night around 4:30 am after what i'd call a nightmare. you see friends, i've gained 8 lbs already. now let me just say, for those of you who know me well, i'm not upset that i'm gaining weight. not at all - i know that i have a baby in my belly - i am growing our baby. weight is not an issue. that said; all the books i've read say i should be gaining 2-5 lbs in the first trimester. not 8lbs.

well... i know why this is happening to me. after my mega weight loss (72 lbs off since june 2007! whooo hooo!) i swore off processed carbs and junk food. then i got knocked up and then morning sickness reared it's ugly head. the only thing the belly doesn't throw back up is crap food. and therefore... i've been giving it what it wants. this consists of a lot of top ramen, mac and cheese and 100,000 bean burritos. i've been feeling especially guilty about this just recently as i've watched the scale go up 8lbs in my first tri... ugh.

ok - back to my nightmare. i dreamt that i was in labor. i mean hard labor. what seemed (in this dream) for HOURS i finally gave birth to the baby. as soon as the baby was completely out and in the doctors arms - he looked at me and said, "ummm, mckenzie... you must have eaten a lot of bean burritos. i warned you about this." and the nurse handed the baby to kevin who looked at me and said, "damn! i told you not to eat so many of those damn things!" then i got a glance at my precious babe. my sweet precious babe was a two year old size hispanic baby.

the funniest part about this was no one - our doctor included - ever mentioned the fact that kevin and i conceiving a hispanic baby is IMPOSSIBLE. everyone just attributed the baby's RACE to my bean burrito intake.

ok - so i get it. for the love... i'm going to really put some effort into stopping, ok no... slowing my burrito intake down.

he is cute tho, right? :)