Impending Parenthood Playlist

I've been thinking about this for awhile, so it seemed like it might be time to get it started (since in theory, we're now 7.5 or fewer weeks away from go time). So . . . here we go. I've provided links to places where you can listen to them wherever available. I'll probably add to it as I think of more, and I'd love your suggestions!

•  "Timshel" by Mumford and Sons. I was listening to this while I was working the nursery the other day and heard the lines "And you are the mother/ the mother of your baby child/ the one to whom you gave life/ And you have your choices/ and these are what make man great/ his ladder to the stars. / But you are not alone in this." And I got chills. (It helps that the name of the song and some of those lyrics are a reference to my favorite part of East of Eden, which you can read here. "Think of the glory of choice! That makes a man a man!"  Amazing.)
• "Montezuma" by Fleet Foxes. "So now I am older/ than my mother and father/ when they had their daughter/ now what does that say about me?/ Oh how could I dream of / such a selfless and true love?/ Could I wash my hands of/ just looking out for me?" 
• "St. Judy's Comet" by Paul Simon. I love how this simple little song about a dad trying to get his little boy to sleep feels so full of the hopes parents have for their children. It's always been a favorite of mine. 
• "Lullabye" by Billy Joel. Because how wonderful is this song, really? "Goodnight my angel, now it's time to dream/ and dream how wonderful your life will be/ Someday your child may cry and if you sing this lullabye/ then in your heart there will always be a part of me." 
• "Things They've Handed Down" by Marc Cohn or possibly Art Garfunkel (the version I have and love is John Gorka's from Down at the Sea Hotel). "Will you laugh just like your mother/ will you sigh like your old man/ Will some things skip a generation/ like I've heard they often can/ Are you a poet or a dancer/ A devil or a clown/ or a strange new combination/ of the things we've handed down?"
• "Quinn" by Chris Merritt. "Yeah, your arms are like branches, your legs are like bamboo/ you grow like those dinosaur sponge things/ where will you go and where will you be?/ I guess we all wind up back home again." One of my favorite songs ever about the wonder of babies. 
• "Barefoot Floors" by Neil Young (the version I have is by The Wailin' Jennys and it's just gorgeous). This is just an incredibly sweet and beautiful lullaby. I love the image of a parent walking barefoot at night singing a baby to sleep.
• "My Little Bird" by Rogue Wave. I couldn't find a video or lyrics to this one, but it's on Spotify if you want to listen. It's just a lovely and dreamy little lullaby. I love it. 
• "Mother Pray" by Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama. This is an awesome old-timey gospel number about how much he loved to here his mother pray when he was a little boy. I love it.
• "Gracie" by Ben Folds. This may be the cutest father/daughter song I've ever heard. "You can't fool me, I saw you when you came out/ You got your mama's taste but you got my mouth/ you will always have a part of me/ no one else is ever gonna see, Gracie girl." 
• "Hush Little Baby" by Bobby McFerrin and Yo Yo Ma. I remember finding this about the time I first became an aunt, and it is not exactly a lullaby (because "Hush Little Baby" doesn't usually sound like "Don't Worry, Be Happy" quite so much, but it is kind of fantastic, especially the cello.  
• "I Was Born" by Woody Guthrie and Billy Bragg.  It's not particularly profound, but it's delightful. 

Also, not technically on the playlist but very much worthy of sharing: "Pregnant Women are Smug" by Garfunkel and Oates. (Do not watch if you are offended by the b-word that also means female dog, because they use it. But it is pretty darn funny.) 


What do you think I should add? Any good parent songs or lullabys you've been saving for just such a playlist?

30 week stats

 Pictures to come when I finish the quilt and nursery and do something with my hair.

• Nursery - definitely coming along. It's all painted, and on Saturday we set up the crib, hung curtains, organized the closet, and started putting things on the shelf. I still want to get some kind of changing table where I can streamline diaper stuff. Will be scouring KSL.com now that I know what kind of space we have. 
• Quilt - almost done. I'm going to put a border on it as soon as I finish this post, and then a delightful friend offered to machine quilt it with a pattern for me, which will 1) make it really easy to finish and 2) cover up the mistakes I made and hide the fact that the blocks are not completely square. 
• Physical health- feeling great (if slow and heavy) until last night, when I inexplicably threw up for the first time in a month and a half and then had pains in my stomach all night. At first I thought it was food poisoning, but I ate the same things that everyone else in my family ate, and no one else appears to be sick. Also, when I went to the doctor I told him I suspected that I had an infection, and was oddly gratified that I was right, even though it meant I had to buy antibiotics. I just get tired of freaking out about things and having everyone tell me it's normal. It was perversely satisfying to actually feel like I understood what was going on in my own body.
• Stuff acquisition - still a long way to go. Need to buy a stroller and carseat, plus all kinds of bottles and whatever babies need, but I'm having a shower in about a month, so I hate to buy too much until I see what I get. I have tons of hand me down clothes, but I have nothing in newborn sizes yet, so I'm going to have to get a move on if she's to avoid being naked for her first couple of months. Also, it's more fun looking for things like diaper bags (another excuse to buy a purse!) than breast pumps and nursing bras (ugh) so I'm focusing on the fun things. (Plus, I've been lucky enough to have some people offer me stuff they haven't used or are finished using, so I figure putting things off isn't hurting my acquisition that much - it just means that I will have to do a couple of major shopping days when I'm enormous  in order to avoid not spending money on things that I might get for free or for less.)
• Name - probably settled upon. 
• Diapers - seriously considering going the cloth route. I feel a little crazy, especially since I've already bought a couple of boxes of disposables from Costco, but I've been reading up on it and talking to some friends who have done it, and I actually think we want to do it - especially since I think I found a way to do it without spending a ton of money up front. I'm going over to a friend's house later this week so she can show me her system, and I bought a few diaper covers on sale the other day. I always swore I would never do such a thing, but I think in the long run it will save us money, and since it's not costing me excessive amounts to get into it, I feel good about the environmental aspect too without feeling like I'm just jumping on a trendy green bandwagon. Plus, I think I'll still feel okay about keeping disposables on hand for trips out of town and such when I don't want to pack around soiled cloth diapers.
• Mental health - more crying than there was earlier in the pregnancy. The reality is setting in, and the unpredictability of when she's coming coupled with the unpredictability of Eric's work schedule is driving me crazy. I'm reading lots of baby books and blogs to calm myself, which sometimes works and sometimes freaks me out more. But when I'm feeling mostly sane, I'm pretty excited for this little girl to get here.

26 Weeks

Hey look! I'm posting a picture on the day I actually took it instead of 2 weeks later! Eric was practicing with the Mustache Power lighting kit today (you'll notice my belly is actually lit in some of them), so I talked him into taking a couple of pictures to commemorate the last week of the second trimester. (To those books that say the third trimester doesn't start until 28 weeks, I say neener neener, because next week will be 3 months until my due date, and that sounds like the third trimester to me.)

Letters to My World

I'm stealing another awesome idea from my friend Debra, because I want to write about lots of random things and I'm tired of bullet points. Hers look niftier than mine because she puts them on postcards, but I was too lazy to figure out how to do that.

Dear OBGYN,

Thank you for telling me it's okay for me to take Prilosec. I haven't thrown up in a few weeks, and I'm pretty sure that's partially because I am not dying of acid reflux every night.

-Hooray for doctor-sanctioned medication!

Dear Husband,

It secretly makes me happy that by our second Easter together, we can fill each other's Easter baskets without any hints. I know that you love jelly beans and multi-colored Swedish fish, you know that I love Cadbury caramel eggs and Hostess fruit pies. Just seeing that fruit pie in my basket gave me a little glow. Plus we both looked at Clue on the $5 rack at Target and realized it was the only good movie there - but I bought it for you and you opted to buy me Angry Birds: Space.

-How did you know anti-gravity would make me so happy?

Dear BellaBand,

You are the best idea ever. The elastic band trick was starting to fail me, and the hand-me-down maternity pants in my closet are still too big, but thanks to you, I once again have more than one pair of acceptable pants.  I missed you, jeans!

-Now ALL of my pants are maternity pants!

From the very end of week 24. I'm now at the beginning of week 26. I like this shirt because it makes me look REALLY pregnant. Why do I still look super pregnant some days and just kind of fat other days? I'm pretty sure actually looking pregnant is the best reason to buy maternity clothes and not just big clothes.

Dear guy at the conference we streamed last weekend,

Thank you for talking about cryostasis, mind-uploading, and multiverses and being completely serious about it. Never before did I think the future actually could look like The X-files, Doctor Who, Dollhouse and The One.

-Should probably spend more time reading science and less time watching science-fiction

On the bright side, my husband looks like a stud while he's streaming, even when he's streaming about cryostasis.

Dear Pinterest,

Thank you for provided me with a couple of awesome meals this week, plus some deviled eggs that looked like baby chicks.

-Plus I used my sewing machine again this week!

Dear Easter Eggs,

I know other people like to make their eggs all pretty and photoworthy, but all of our favorite eggs had things like the Hulk, Voldemort, Chuck Norris, and Chuck Norris's boot kicking someone's face on them. They were just more awesome.

-Plus it was fun to drop the Humpty Dumpty egg before we ate it.

Chuck Norris and his boot - roundhouse kicking you in the face.

Front row: Humpty Dumpty, Harry Potter, Voldemort, Hulk, Angry Bird, Mustache Egg

Dear General Conference Speakers,

Thank you for addressing everything I had been thinking about in the first 3 talks Saturday morning so that I could just sit back and enjoy everything else for the rest of the two days. That was some pretty good planning.

-Stop it.

Dear Nephew,

All of the work we've put into the mural so far became totally worth it when you stood next to the raccoon so your mom could take a picture and said, "He's just my size!" In fact, I'm not sure why we didn't just go ahead and measure you from the beginning.

-I think we need a baby bobcat so my niece can get excited about a kitty on the walls too

Good things before noon

So many good things have already happened this morning! What kind of wonders await me for the rest of the day?

• Found out that Eric gets some Americorps money after all, even though he ducked out of TFA early. Obviously it's much less than it would have been, but it's still a good chunk of change, and since we didn't think we'd get ANYTHING, it's completely awesome. (Plus they pay all of the interest we've accrued this year while the loan has been on forbearance, which is also great.)
• Walmart sent back the money I paid for the crib they lost. Yay! A new one is on its way in a slightly different, but still lovely color. 
• We got our third call about the Honda Civic we're selling in less than 24 hours, and the guy happens to be in Orem. Since Eric's down in PG with the car today and is also going to show it to some guy in Lehi, hopefully they can get together and strike a deal. (We love Eric's car, but since we both have 2-door Hondas and mine is worth nothing because it's a Salvage Title, and since we don't really need two cars and would eventually like to get one that's more baby friendly, and since we're still paying student loans, it's just time for it to go while we can still get money out of it. Plus, with everyone freaking out about gas prices, it seems like a good time to sell a car that gets crazy-good gas mileage.) Cross your fingers for a quick sale at our asking price! (A girl already came and drove it last night. She's thinking about it.) 
• I just found out Jennie will be in Utah next week, and I'll get to see her!
• And though this was last night, that's still technically before noon today - we go to see a great lecture by the guys from Radiolab at the Utah Natural History Museum last night, and it was completely delightful. I seriously could not be more pleased. Especially since the show they're hosting tonight in Salt Lake was $35 per ticket, and the lecture we saw last night was FREE! (I cannot express to you just how much I love Radiolab. If you haven't started downloading their podcasts, you should, right now. I love it so much that if I were having a boy I would consider naming him Jad.) 
• Baby girl finally started kicking in a place that feels more like she's getting into that head down position she's supposed to be in for birthing purposes. I realize she's still got plenty of time to do backflips before then, but it was still kind of comforting. (Also, whoever came up with the phrase "decreased fetal movement" should be shot. Every time I feel her a little less than usual I start freaking out and wondering how decreased the movement has to be before I should actually worry. Sigh.)

So now I'm off to clean the hedgehog cage and see what new wonders await me as the day progresses! (I can tell you one thing - it will certainly involve some hedgehog poop!) 

Some things about March

It seems crazy that with so much going on in our lives right now, I actually never really feel the desire to post on this blog. However, here are some things I've been thinking about, in no apparent order.

• It's funny how you can know something is a good decision without really being sure why. When we moved back to Utah, we felt good about it, but I've had lots of misgivings about the timing and money and other issues, so occasionally I wonder if it was in fact a good idea. Then I realize how much I love being able to do all kinds of things to get ready for the baby, like painting a mural the nursery and buying fabric with my mom and ordering the crib (because yeah, we would not have moved the crib in June). And then I get some bins full of my sister-in-law's maternity clothes JUST when I was about to run screaming to the store because I'm sick of having 5 shirts that look decent on me and several of them are about to be too warm for spring, so suddenly I have a huge borrowed maternity wardrobe and I don't have to fork out a couple hundred dollars for paneled pants and baggy shirts. And then I feel ill when I look at meat at night and Mom decides it's her night to make dinner, even though it's clearly way past my turn. And then we get free tickets to see RadioLab at the museum of Natural History next week, and tickets to go to Conference this weekend, and I am content. And THEN I unload the dishwasher and remember how happy I am not to be washing smelly dishes by hand.
• Speaking of buying cribs (a few run-on sentences ago, if you remember), it is terrifying. Everything I read seems to point to certain death if you buy the wrong crib for your baby, and I have to remind myself that some of these cribs have been on the market for years and would have been pulled if there had actually been a problem. And crib mattresses! Not firm enough! The coil counts! The pressure to buy things made of organic substances at exorbitant prices! We finally found our economical solution by going to Babies 'R' Us to look at some cribs that Consumer Reports said were safe and a good deal, and then we had the same crib shipped to Wal-mart for about $60 less. I found a mattress I felt okay about and bought that too, and then tried not to be anxious about it and instead thought about the cute crib sheet I had that would match the room and the quilt that can't actually go in the crib (since you can't put ANYTHING in a crib or your baby will SUFFOCATE and it will be on your head FOREVER).
• I thoroughly enjoyed the movie Midnight in Paris, which we saw earlier this week. My enjoyment had everything to do with the pleasure I took in recognizing the 1920s icons before they announced who they were supposed to be. Ernest Hemingway sounded exactly how I would expect Hemingway to talk, and Adrian Brody was fabulous as a rhino-obsessed Salvador Dali. (I also very much enjoyed going to The Hunger Games with our friends Josh and Paige, but everyone enjoyed it, so I'm not going to spend much time talking about it, except to say that I was pleasantly surprised about how much I liked Lenny Kravitz in it.)
• We are about to be working on a second mural, a space-themed one in a neighbor's house. I'm putting aside my desire to have the baby mural done because I'm kind of excited about painting planets. 
• Sunday night we were at my brother's house, and we were testing my nephew on his colors. It went down like this: "What color is daddy's shirt?" "Blue!" "What colors is Megan's shirt?" "Red!" "What color is Grandpa's shirt?" "Hulk!" 
• Influx of awesome new music recently - new Shins album, new Andrew Bird album, new Punch Brothers album, etc. Life is good.

A couple of pictures to fill out the post:

Here's me about a week ago, 23 weeks.

Here's the baby girl about 3 weeks ago, at 21 weeks.

Some trees from the nursery mural in progress. That branch over on the left side is going to have a possum hanging from it by its tail soon.

A hedgehog from the nursery in progress.

And a raccoon, who is very chill.

The walrus sketch Eric used to try to convince me walruses belonged in the nursery mural. Cute as they are, his efforts failed.

In Which I Am a Sappy Sap

So the day after Valentine's Day, I felt the baby move for the first time. (I had felt things that I thought might be the baby, but then my stomach would growl and I would decide it was probably something else.) I was sitting on the bed in my old bedroom sorting through some things so that we can start painting in there sometime before my belly gets too big for me to reach the wall, and I felt several distinct pops that I'm calling baby kicks even though I suppose they could have been baby punches or jumping jacks.

Time out to say that it is weird to have a miniature person kicking your insides. But it is also pretty awesome.

Anyway, I was floating around on a baby high all evening, and that night when Eric went to bed, he asked where I'd felt the baby move. So I put his hand  on my stomach where I felt her kick, and I kid you not, she started to move just a couple of seconds after he put his hand there. Of course, Eric couldn't feel her yet (according to the Babycenter community, that probably will happen sometime between week 21 and week 23, but who knows?) but of course I was going, "OH! She can feel YOU! EEEEEE!!!!"

Yes. I also cried when I watched this video the day after we found out I was pregnant. I am a little ridiculous. But it still made me really happy, and I'm excited for Eric to actually get to feel her kick back.

What We're Having and Other Updates

Happy Valentine's Day all! I regret to inform you that I haven't had time to make a playlist this year, so you'll have to check the archives if you're in need. I'm sorry. However, to make up for it, I offer you a picture of the baby bump! (I'm 18 weeks now, but it took me a few days to get around to uploading it.)

Approximately 17 and a half weeks

Okay. I have been a blog slacker since the move (which went well), despite the fact that we've been eventful around these parts. The most important thing is that on Eric's birthday, Feb. 10th, we went to the doctor and had an ultrasound. And it's a GIRL BABY!!! (I would post pictures of the ultrasounds, but they didn't give me digital ones this time, they look fuzzy alien pictures unless I explain them to you anyway, and also Eric felt his first stab of fatherly protectiveness when the doctor started talking about the "hamburger shape" that represented the girl parts. He told me later that his first instinct was, "Hey! That's my DAUGHTER you're talking about!" Which made me love him deeply. Again.) We got to see her wiggling around and she actually looked like a baby with fingers and toes and a humanoid head this time (a big improvement over the kidney bean with a heart we saw at seven weeks) and I'm positive that she's already the most beautiful baby in the world. I'm also excited because we had much better girl names in mind than boy names, so naming the little darling will be exponentially less stressful. We'll have to work on boy names over the next few years in case we get one of those later. There's another ultrasound in about 3 weeks where they'll check out everything and make sure she's developing normally, and I think we'll get to see things a little more clearly then.

In any case, that set off a rampage of brainstorming about the nursery, so now I have a little more motivation to clean out my old room so we can start getting it ready. I already found a fabric that I LOVE and I'm trying to avoid buying it before I look around a little more, but I think it's a done deal. Baby girl is getting a blanket made out of that stuff, and it will probably inspire the nursery mural. I'll post a picture when I actually buy it.
It was hard to 1) find a place in the house with a blank wall and 2) explain to Eric that taking a picture from below is a bad idea for anyone, but especially for a pregnant lady who is self-conscious about her increased double-chin potential. But there you are.

In other news, both Eric and I celebrated our birthdays (inexpensively, since we're still in post-moving and early stages of the new business mode) and they were lovely. Eric is an excellent hint-taker where presents are concerned, and it was wonderful to be able to celebrate my birthday with my parents for the first time in a few years.

Last week, we went to Vegas for a Mustache Power job filming the Big O Tires franchise owner retreat. We were grateful that it went off without any hitches that were our fault (there are always a few technology emergencies, but there was nothing horrifying, and none of it was on our end). Highlights included the Elvis impersonator who came in during one of the breaks, a visit to my dear friend Melissa and her beautiful family, and free tickets to the Ka Cirque du Soleil show. It was a great trip (and I was a very wonderful camera woman, if I do say so myself).

In between all of that, we've been reconnecting with old friends (and we hope to see many more in the near future), enjoying being closer to family, and feeling a little overshadowed by the popularity of the hedgehog with my nieces and nephews. (Also, my husband is a rock star salesman. He is awesome at his job.)

May you all have a day filled with love and chocolate! 

So Long, Farewell (Probably Next Week)

So Eric went back to school today and it looks like there's a very good chance that we'll be out of here by next Wednesday at the latest. Which is crazy. We've already managed to take care of our couch problem, and we've shipped 16 boxes of books to my Utah, so now I'm just praying they all get there. This weekend will be a weekend of packing and hanging out with friends, and then I guess we're gone.

Anyway, I thought it seemed like the right time to make a list of the things I will miss and not miss about the Rio Grande Valley. (I will actually miss some things! Amazing!)

Things I Will Not Miss: 

• Being nearly an hour from the nearest bookstore. Ridiculous. 
• The Mexican food. No, I didn't develop an enduring love of it while we were here. Probably because people keep trying to get me to eat intestines and stomach linings. (Although I do love those fried stuffed avocados at La Playa. Mmm.) 
• The heat, and the complete lack of seasons, and the fact that I can never wear my winter clothes here. 
• The fact that everything is at least 4 hours away - the temple, any concerts/plays/culture I might want to partake of (minus mariache), any family we have, etc. 
• The periodic freaky border stories we hear down here, even if San Benito is quiet. 
• The fact that people look at me like I'm crazy when I say I'm in a book club. ("Wait. So you all get together each month and read a book . . . and then talk about it? Why?") 
• Yes, I love working for the library, but I will not miss the fact that they never have the books I want, and there's no way to get them to order them for me except to suggest it. 
• Waking up for seminary. Nope. Not at all. 
• The taste of our the water in our apartment, and indeed in the whole Valley. It all tastes like sulfur, and we've been buying bottled water for a year. Which makes me feel bad, because there's not really a good recycling service, so we've just thrown away a million plastic bottles. Sigh. Dehydration or ruin the environment? I don't know. 
• Needing to speak Spanish every day. Feeling dumb because I don't. 
• My tiny countertops, which are insufficient for preparing any kind of baked goods. 
• The fact that independent movies never come here. Do you know how long I waited to see Jane Eyre and The King's Speech? And how many others I probably just missed because it wasn't worth the pain? 
• Valley drivers. Yes, I know I'm trading them for Utah drivers and I-15 perma-construction, but I think I'll take them over the way I feel like I take my life into my hands around here whenever I get in the car. (Also, they're unsafe drivers, but they also drive SO SLOW! How is that possible?) 
• The way humidity messes with my hair and makes it take 5 years to dry in the morning. 
• Zero good radio stations (although I did finally find NPR - it's just only good in the mornings when it's not playing crappy jazz music). 

Things I Will Miss:

• I will miss our apartment. I honestly cannot imagine a more perfect apartment for the first year of our marriage. It was roomy (except the in counter space), it was relatively bug-free (3 live cockroaches and several dead ones are numbers I can live with) it was in a quiet area with a lovely balcony and trees (not palm trees, which I don't really like for some reason) that grew tropical flowers, and we had a fantastic landlady. I will always think fondly on this apartment. Except the counters. 
• I will miss (and have missed since I've been working) British Friday with Debra. I will just miss Debra. My life in the Valley became a million times better when we became friends and discovered we were kindred spirits. I very much hope she moves north soon. I will miss my friend Jordan, who was my counselor in YW and with whom I shared some delightful heat-exhaustion times at Girl's Camp (as well as many other good times). I will miss several other friends we've made around the Valley - Sammie and Kaylee and Will from TFA, the Sparkes, the Villarinos (Mr. Villarino was the teacher in the classroom next to Eric, and then we saw him at stake conference when he was there investigating the church. We got to attend their baptism and have had them over for dinner - and they're just delightful. They will be wonderful for the church here.) and so many other people and families who have just been amazing. 
• I'll miss all of the wonderful people in our branch here - and the opportunities to serve in the church that come from being in a small branch. Although I can't say that I love getting up for seminary at 5:30 or that I didn't get overwhelmed being in charge of the Young Women sometimes, I can say that being very involved has made me love all of the following: the people in this branch, the leadership of the branch, the organization of the church in general, working with and feeding the missionaries, and the fact that my husband is a much more Christlike and service-oriented person than I am. I do believe that I have become a better person with a stronger testimony of the gospel because of the opportunities we've had here, even the ones I didn't particularly want at the time. 
• I'll miss the independence Eric and I have had here as a couple. I hate not being close to any family, but it has been really great for us to have to completely rely on each other for the last year, and I feel like it did a lot to strengthen our marriage and help us to become closer as a couple. I can't imagine anyone I would rather turn to. 
• Being five hours from Brady and Kristi. It's been nice to be able to take a weekend vacation to Houston and spend time with them whenever we want, even if it was still five hours.  
• Our easy access to South Padre Island. Being this close to the ocean is lovely.  
• Kumori sushi in McAllen. Best. Sushi. Ever. Especially for being so cheap. 

And so, Rio Grande Valley, I leave you feeling a little more fond than I thought I would when I moved here (which was not fond at all), but mostly I will miss the friends I've made and the opportunities I've had for growth here. I'm looking forward to our new adventures, but I can think of worse ways that we could have spent our first year of marriage. 

What We're Anticipating this New Year

So . . .  I've been a very half-hearted blogger for the last couple of months, and I am about to tell you why.

Mostly, it's because there are a lot of BIG THINGS going on, but they weren't things I was ready to reveal to the interwebs at large just yet. But have you ever noticed that when there are GIANT THINGS going on, you don't feel like talking about other things? Especially when you aren't talking about the big things? Maybe that's just me, and that's the kind of non-committal blogger I've become.

In any case, here are the big things going on in the Family Long at the moment (important points bolded in case you don't want to read my entire long post):

First and foremost, we found out a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving that we are expecting a baby (which puts me at 12 weeks now, just for the record.) We're very excited about this (no, it wasn't a particular surprise) and we're very much looking forward to meeting Baby Long sometime around July 17th. So far, everything seems to be going well - we saw a heartbeat at my first appointment at around week 7, and I was supposed to go again today but got bumped to next week because my doctor got stuck at the hospital. (I was going to wait and post this after my second appointment when they went ahead and told me everything was good and now I'm home free because it's week 12, but then they foiled my plans and I couldn't wait any longer.) I've been nauseated since the night before Thanksgiving and am pretty much living on breakfast foods and crackers, so that's been fun, but luckily my husband is a wonderful person who tells me to go and lie down while he does the smelly dishes and subsists on frozen corn dogs. Hopefully the nausea will go away soon and I can start liking/cooking food again. By all other accounts though, we are enjoying looking forward to this addition to our family. (And yes, basically everyone I know is pregnant right now. Am I the only one who feels that way?)

These pictures were on the card we made to tell my parents when we went home for Thanksgiving:

Our ad hoc Halloween costumes, for the record.

Yes, I washed that before we took a picture.

Second, and almost as crazy, we're moving back to Utah. Soon. As in, probably before the end of January. We'd been planning to head back that way after the school year ended so that we could house-sit for my parents while they serve a mission for our church. However, we'd also been in talks with my brother about taking over most of the day-to-day operations of his business, Mustache Power Productions when we moved up there in June. We talked to him again a couple of weeks ago, and he had started a new job and was drowning in work. It looked like he was going to either have to start turning down jobs for Mustache Power, or he'd have to turn it over to someone else in order to stay afloat, so we started asking some questions and found out that Eric's school wasn't as upset as we thought they'd be about him leaving before the end of his contract. We had to do some research to figure out what that would mean for insurance (see above concerning Baby) and figured out a reasonable solution.
So now it looks like we're going to move as soon as they can get a replacement into place for Eric, which they seemed to think wouldn't take long (we hope we hope!) I'm definitely not sad about abandoning the plan of moving during my 8th month of pregnancy or about not having to get up to teach seminary with morning sickness, or about being able to go baby shopping with my mommy, getting to work with my husband and my brother, and just generally not being out here in the middle of nowhere. I will, however, miss the dear friends I've made here (although I'm really hoping one of them is going to be joining me in Utah soon), the beach, and my short-lived but very enjoyable library job.

In side news, Eric and I made it very happily to our first wedding anniversary, which we spent at South Padre Island. We also had a lovely Christmas with his family in Houston where my sister-in-law and I generally sat around eating crackers. (She's due two weeks before I am.)

So there you have it! When there is a baby bump to show, I will post a picture of it (mostly because I genuinely stalk people's facebook profiles to see how they look pregnant, and I wouldn't deprive you all of that, just in case you feel the same way). For now, I'm just grateful that my pants continue to fit, and hope they will do so until we move, because I don't want to have to move MORE clothes than I already have. (We're already going to have to ship most of our books. We have a book-buying problem of epic proportions. But clothes I might be able to throw away to make space, as long as I don't also have to buy a bunch of new ones before we go.)

Happy New Year!

Books Read in 2011

For record-keeping purposes:

• Interview with the Vampire, Ann Rice 
• The Help, Kathryn Stockett 
• Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner 
• Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
• The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
• No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
• I Am Not a Serial Killer, Dan Wells
• Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
• Mr. Monster, Dan Wells
• The Distant Hours, Kate Morton
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Shadow of the Hedgemon, Orson Scott Card
• Confederates in the Attic, Tony Horowitz
• Shadow Puppets, Orson Scott Card
• Ender in Exile, Orson Scott Card
• The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley
• In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, Nathaniel Philbrick
• Warbreaker, Brandon Sanderson
• Shakespeare: The World as Stage, Bill Bryson
• What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell
• The Forgotten Garden, Kate Morton
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
• Matched, Ally Condie
• Spook, Mary Roach
• Crossed, Ally Condie
• Bossypants, Tina Fey
• Before I Go to Sleep, S.J. Watson
• The House at Riverton, Kate Morton

I love how I look at this list and when I read what and can tell exactly where a book bogged me down for months, which happened multiple times. However, I read some very lovely books last year, and I have a stack on my shelf ready for this year. Yay! 

Guest post

So I've been a lazy blogger because I haven't been feeling well lately, but today I've got a guest post over at Housewife Eclectic about my favorite Christmas traditions. Check it out! (Includes awesome pictures of my brothers in tin foil hats.)