Fun with Fruitcake

Our family has a thing for fruitcake. No, no fruitcake has actually been consumed in the telling of this story, but we have a fondness for fruitcake that borders on a fetish. Some people would be embarrassed to admit this. I, however, figure that anyone reading this post already knows that my family is filled with fruitcakes anyway.

For those of you who don't know the story, I'll give you the abbreviated version. One year for Christmas my sister sent my younger brother a fruitcake. Not actually wanting to digest said item, he proceeded to send it back the next year. Long story short, this fruitcake has been making the rounds for several years with added embellishments along the way such as a card and a t-shirt. As happens with most jokes, this one is probably taking on a life of its own. No, not probably. It is taking on a life of its own.

This year, I have been double timed on the fruit cake front. Today, in the mail, my husband and I received a completely inedible fruitcake from my sister and her family. We think there may have been some violation of the fruitcake laws as rules clearly state that the receiver must be in possession of the fruitcake by Christmas day in order to be responsible for it for the upcoming year. However, we'll be good sports and consider this bending of the rules as a little leeway to bend them next year.

The second fruitcake came from my brother and is one of the original fruitcakes. Along with it were the card and the tshirt. The down and dirty part was that this fruitcake and paraphernalia were disguised as a gift for my baby boy. As such, we sent the following picture to let him know that Gabriel was putting his gift to good use:
I was laughing so hard as my son lay on the changing table that I almost didn't get the picture. I started to promise him that I would never include him in our lunacy again, but then I realized that that was a blatant lie. After all, he was born into the insanity that is our family, he might as well get used to it now.

And that my friends, is the story of a fruitcake. Quite frankly, I am not sure you're supposed to have this much fun with a doorstop of a confection.

A Slackard for a Mom

Someone mentioned to me recently that I've been negligent in posting Baby Button pictures to my blog. I also promised my sister that I would share pictures of him in his lovely outfits she sent him as soon as I had the chance. I'm going to take the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and post pictures of him in his outfits. Maybe not every day, but attempt to do so a little more often.

This one just seemed appropriate for today. The outfit didn't come from my sister, it came from my friend Rachelle, but I thought he looked adorable sitting under the Christmas tree looking at his presents.

Merry Christmas!

An Organ and a Kia

This isn't really my story to tell, but some things in life are so funny that you have to share. Hopefully I'll get the basic narrative correct, but you'll have to pardon me for any oversights.

My mother had a Hammond Organ. Those of you who are familiar with the instrument know that it's not very large, as in the way of church organs, but it's still an organ and a fairly heavy instrument. It's been sitting in her living room for quite a few years now and she's been asking around to see if anyone is interested. No takers. Finally she decided to list it on Freecycle. (I think that's the correct site. Can't keep all of them straight these days.) About three weeks went by and she heard nothing. As it turned out this wasn't technically correct as apparently people had been emailing but the emails were going into the junk box somewhere. In the interim, one persistent gentleman called stating that he wanted the organ and wasn't sure if it was still available. After some basic discussion, they set up a date and time to come get the instrument.


Fortunately it was one of those days when my brother didn't have much else to do. The gentleman got lost about two or three times on the way to the house. When he finally did show up it was about four o'clock in the afternoon and he pulls up in a Kia. My brother looks around thinking he has a truck or something stashed up the street. Nope, he plans to load the instrument into the Kia. He tells my brother that they'll be able to fit it into his car. Dan looks and says, um, no you won't. The guy insists that they've fit larger items into the vehicle. Deciding to humor the guy they begin trying to shove the organ in the trunk. When that didn't work, they put down the back seat and give it another go. Eventually they opt for shoving it into the backseat ... also unsuccessfully. By this time, I can just imagine what the neighbors were thinking as they tried to shove this thing into the car several different ways.

Finally, the guy looks at Dan and says, "guess we're going to have to roof it." Dan turns around to look at him incredulously and sees that his wife is already crawling on the roof to try it out. She comments on the fact that the roof is buckling a bit under her weight and she's not sure if it will take the organ. The guy replies that the organ weighs less than her and it will be fine. I don't know about anyone else, but I can't imagine how frosty things would be in the car on the way home if my husband dared to state that I weighed more than an organ. Pretty gutsy. Being resigned to the fact that this guy was going to drive away with this organ, and being prepared to leave it at the curb if he didn't, Dan and this rather scrawny fellow begin hoisting it onto the roof while his wife shouts instructions about not scratching up the paint. Dan, at this point, is trying to avoid throwing something out and she's worried about scratching the paint. Sure enough, though, they get the organ up there, strapped on and the guy prepares to drive away. With amazing presence of mind, Dan dashed into the house and grabbed this picture before he drove away. Some things just have to be seen to be believed.

Getting Lost in Sicily

Being able to explore Sicily is one of the great advantages of living here. I must admit, though, I find the driving over here just a bit scary. Most of the rules here seem to be more suggestions rather than hard and fast rules. I have seen my husband try some crazy stunts on the road since we've been here. The scary part is that no one bats an eyelash. The other day we were driving down the road and I saw him pass two cars at one time. Once we got back into our appropriate lane, I realized that another car was heading straight at us in our lane. The funny part is that I didn't even blink. It's then I realized I've been here for too long. Point being is that to get along around here you have to just get used to the way traffic goes. And to get around you have to be willing to get lost a little.

Ben and I finally developed a theory on getting lost here. It was sometime after our trip to Erice which is on the west coast of Sicily. We drove there with some friends and it took about three hours by car. After that we figured the most we could get lost in any direction was three hours. At that point we'd hit the coast and we could just turn around and come back. Took a lot of the fear out of getting lost. What I didn't count on was the date factor ...

Now, one of the interesting things about getting lost around here is that there are no clear indicators of north, east, south or west. You're also not sure where you are in relative distance to any one given landmark. In other words, if you see a sign post pointing towards a specific town, you don't know if you're 64 km or 3 km away from said town. If you're 64 km then you probably want to head towards that town if you're 3 you may not want to be heading there any more. Since you also have no idea which direction you're heading, it could be relatively confusing unless you're intimately familiar with every bit of flora and fauna on the Sicilian country side.

That being said, you can imagine my consternation when I was coming home with my sister one afternoon and missed the exit we wanted to take. I was so busy paying attention to the traffic (see earlier paragraph about Sicilian driving) that I had not realized it until I was a town or two beyond. The problem with this is that once I hit this town, unbeknownst to me beforehand, the tangenziale came to a sudden and abrupt end. This caused a bit of an issue as there was no discernible spot to turn around. I was quite proud of myself and my copilot as neither of us panicked.

Unfortunately, I was supposed to be home for a date with my husband (my very generous sister was offering to babysit) and we were already running late. Fortunately we saw some of those signs saying this town this way. I know we always head towards that town coming home from the airport, so it seemed like a safe bet. Until we were driving out in the middle of the country with nothing looking like civilization in sight. Still, we were heading that way, might as well keep going. After following the markers for this town for a good 15 to 20 minutes we finally hit another pair of sign posts at a traffic circle. It seemed like we had headed in this direction long enough and it was time to change our heading, so we did. Imagine our surprise when we headed in that direction and it turned out we were 2 kilometers from home.

My lessons for the day were this ...
1) The don't panic theory is always correct
2) We were right, you can't get too lost in Sicily
3) Keep number two in mind as long as you have no where specific to be. If you do have to be somewhere, make sure you don't miss your exit.

Now the sad part to the ending of this story is that we raced around like mad, zipped over to the movie theatre, made it there just in the nick of time ... only to find out that they had never received the movie we wanted to see. Isn't that just my luck? Our hot date became dinner and grocery shopping. Ahh, yes ... what I have learned from my sister.

Circle of Friends

Andrea over at Arise 2 Write sent me this award. This is probably way bigger than need be, but hopefully I at least got it up there this time. That's a work in progress for me. I'm supposed to share 5 things I truly love to do, which is very hard to limit to five! I'll do my best to whittle it down to my top five:

1) Spend time with family and friends. There's nothing like people and those wonderful memories from life.
2) Read a good book. Or several good books.
3) Spend time playing on the beach or just watching the waves. (Rather a strange one for someone who can't swim.)
4) Paint, scrapbook, make cards, color in a coloring book ... Basically any vent for my creative side.
5) Travel. I love seeing new places just not getting from Point A to Point B.

Now to pass this along ... Well, there's only a select group of you who read my blog, so I pass this award along to all 10 of you.

Feeling Creative

A friend of mine here is having a baby soon. Just so you know, this happens fairly often around here. They say there aren't a lot of babies born in this hospital. However, I think if you looked at the number of babies born compared to the size of the population it would come out to a rather large percentage of people having babies. But I digress.

The friend of mine who is having a baby is being thrown a baby shower today. There are also an awful lot of these. (See above for digression.) I wanted to do something a little different for her baby shower present, and she had been asking for a painting for a while, so I killed two birds with one stone. Her theme for her nursery is a jungle theme so I painted her a jungle picture.

It's nice to be able to sit and paint for a short while (even if it's not my concepts). It's one of the few things that I do that doesn't have to be perfect. Probably also why I rarely give a painting to anyone else. If we were looking at Maslow's hierarchy, this is probably the closest I ever come to self-actualization. I can sit down to paint for just a few minutes and discover that an hour or two has passed before I realized it. This is one of those marvelous times in life when I get to do something for someone else and myself at the same time.

For Brianna

My lovely niece at By The Way blog has awarded me a Gorgeous Blogger Award. (Yes, I'm behind in responding to this.) I would post the little award thing here, but I'm not quite certain how to do that still. Sad part is, that I think this bright young lady told me how at one point in time and my brain lapsed. *sigh* If the Gorgeous part applies to me (hence me being the blogger) then I'm very flattered. If the Gorgeous part applies more to the blog itself, then I owe all the credit to Brianna. Which makes it rather funny. In either case, I am supposed to post "six things about myself that no one knows." Does this go along with posting your biggest secret on the WWW? In any case, I'll give a good shot at listing six things about myself that are worth sharing at all ...

1) Most of the women out there would probably think me strange, but I'm really not a huge fan of sweets or chocolate. In fact, it was one of the strange things during my pregnancy because I wanted ice cream almost every night.

2) I could spend an entire day curled up reading one good book after another and be perfectly content in my little world.

3) My husband and I have driven across country three times together; we talk about driving across again and incorporating some stops along the way.

4) So far in my life I have managed to see quite a few countries in the world. Somehow I have managed to miss the areas closer to home such as Alaska, Hawaii and Canada.

5) It took me until just a few years ago to finish my Master's degree. Now that I have it finished I dream about going back to school to do something more artistically inclined such as cooking or interior decorating.

6) I have 16 nieces and nephews at this point in life. It always seems to take people a moment to digest that half of those are from one sister.

Now to pass it along ... Well, I give this award to my Canuck Friend Heidi. Hopefully she's reading this and gets the award ... or at least reading a little more than I am these days.

Just 30 Days

I had the best turkey sandwich ever this year. I was motivated out of my usual prosaic turkey sandwich building doldrums by the ingenuity of the Naftali. It also seemed like a good way to use those Thanksgiving leftovers for more than drying out in the microwave. With this in mind, I went to work. I took two slices of seven grain bread and slathered them both liberally with mayonnaise. These were then lightly seasoned with salt and pepper while one side received a mandatory layer of turkey breast meat. Next came a small spoonful of cranberry sauce, a heaping layer of stuffing and a final layer of turkey before putting on the lid. I thought I had died and gone to Thanksgiving sandwich Heaven. This was an amazing sandwich. So amazing I decided to recreate the experience the next day for lunch. It was just as good the second day around.

For the first year ever, we were cleared out of Thanksgiving leftovers by the day after Thanksgiving. (With the exception of the cranberry sauce that is. My husband won't touch the cranberries, which leaves me on my own to finish up the fruit.) It helps, of course, that we only baked a small breast, but I still think this divine sandwich building contributed to the success with leftovers.

In the midst of our sandwich consumption, I realized how much food has been going to the wayside recently in our house. Wasted food normally isn't a problem, let me assure you. I have gotten pretty good over the years at not cooking too much. Which means that food is either consumed at that meal or soon thereafter. For some reason, though, I have ended up throwing quite a bit of food away over the past week or two. Plus, I end up spending considerably more on food around the holidays anyway. Not only do we tend to purchase more at the grocery store, we tend to eat out more often. This led me to thinking about a challenge one of our Chaplains issued earlier this year.

For 30 days, those who chose to participate, were to live off what was currently in their pantry, refrigerator and freezer. Obviously, you can buy the necessities such as milk, eggs, bread, etc. as you run out, but you were to use up what's hiding in your larder. I know I have food that I purchased for a meal that has gotten pushed further and further back into my storage space. In addition, we could not go out to eat during those 30 days. The idea is not to starve yourself or to start your new diet, but just realize how much we spend on wasted food. At the end of the 30 days the money you would have spent on food shopping or eating out is to go to a good cause of your choice.

After some discussion, Ben and I decided that this is a great time of year to attempt this challenge. My husband is being a bit more extreme than I as he talks about eating dry cereal towards the end of our 30 days and marking down the cost of a box of crackers on a tally sheet. I was thinking along more simple guidelines. Either way, at the end of 30 days, I hope to have a better appreciation for how much wealth we really have in our lives and perhaps to give just a little bit to someone more in need.

For This I am Truly Thankful

It's been a while since I've posted. Not sure what it is I do with my time these days. Yes, that was said entirely tongue in cheek. However, it is Thanksgiving and my son is one month old today. Mind blowing. It's been an amazing month and I'm on a steep learning curve. I thought I'd blog a little about that then there's a whole host of experiences from this past month that I'll try to integrate here. No one minds slightly stale news, right?

If I were to write a list of things I am thankful for I would never finish this blog. Today I'm just going to focus on the newest blessing in our lives. And blessing he is. Despite some trials and errors on the parenting front, I wake up every day with a smile on my face. There's nothing quite like stumbling out of bed at six in the morning for a feeding ... only to get to hold his warm cuddly body next to mine. Like all things in life, this will pass all too soon and I treasure these moments: stroking his soft hair, smelling his sweet little neck as I burp him and watching the cute little smiles as he decides whether he's finished eating or not. Motherhood has been a challenge for me on some levels, but only because it has thrown my predictable little world into a spin. For those of you who know me, you are aware this has been my biggest struggle. So, while I'm learning to be a good mother to my son, I'm also attempting to learn to take life more as it comes. Grateful me that I have a wonderful husband and supportive family to help me along the way. And for this ... I am truly thankful.

My Cat is a Comfort Eater

This will be one of my shorter posts (don't I always say that?) as I am not quite the skillful hand at mothering as many of you. Seems like my days go by ever so fast and I look around and can't think what I've done. Reminds me of that Baby Blues cartoon ... I made a tray of ice cubes and combed half my hair. Kat knows what I mean. Of course, it doesn't help that every time we turn around we have to run out to yet another doctor's appointment or to take care of more paperwork. Right now, my son is officially known as Babyboy Rickert. We hope to clear this up soon. But I digress ...

What does this title have to do with anything I'm writing about? Well, we ended up having our baby October 26 at 9:20 in the morning. We didn't arrive home until Friday of that week. My husband came home a couple of times during that stay to check on the cat and clean out her litter box. Apparently, though, she was quite bored. When we got home she had spent a good amount of time eating and it is quite apparent from her spreading proportions. We're trying not to make her feel bad about this, however. Since we've gotten home, she hasn't taken too kindly to babyhood and spends a lot of time eating and sleeping. Very sad state of things. If she would just get over her dislike of Babyboy, she would see a lot more of us, but there you have it.

On to Babyboy Rickert ... As I mentioned, our son was born October 26 at 9:20 in the morning. We had a little boy who, as you can see from the sidebar, was named Gabriel Benjamin. Although most of you probably know this since I believe all of you read my sister's blog. This means that the winner of the Baby Pool is Kat who came closest on 3 out of 5 categories. And I should probably give her credit for guessing our son's name as Baby since this does seem to be his official moniker at present. She'll be here in just a few short days so I'll be sure to hand over her prize then.

For now, I'll post a picture or two and then I'm going to go spend some time with my husband while our son sleeps ... Thank you to everyone for all the support and prayers. We're all recovering nicely and appreciate your kind thoughts.

ABC's of Me

Thanks to everyone who entered our baby pool. I'm keeping track of everyone's answers and there's still time to put in your guess if you haven't. I hope our baby isn't as big as some of you are guessing, but with this stomach, you're probably right!

Manuela (look what I taught myself this morning! I did a hyperlink :) tagged me on the ABC's of me. Here's my answers for what they are worth:

A - Age: Old enough that it's not polite to share (or ask)
B - Bed size: King size bed (Freebie from a yard sale), twin size sleeping space
C - Chore you hate: To name two ... Laundry and dishes! They never go away.
D - Dog's name: Nope
E - Essential start your day item: Nada. Unless you consider laying in bed and counting the things I'm grateful for.
F - Favorite color: Yellow ... it's so sunshiny!
G - Gold or Silver: Silver
H - Height: 5 foot nothing
I - I am: Yes, that just about sums it up.
J - Job: Love that book of the Bible.
K - Kids: No goats either
L - Living arrangements: A little more cramped than I like. Anyone good at rearranging furniture?
M - Mom's name: Kathleen
N - Nicknames: I tend to overuse them
O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: None that I know of
P - Pet Peeve: How did you know that's what we named our cat?
Q - Quote from a movie: Oh heavens, where to start? Our family can have an entire conversation in movie quotes. No, I'm not making this up. Ask my sister.
R - Right or left handed: No prejudices here
S - Siblings: Yes, indeedy. And I'm rather fond of all of them
T - Time you wake up: Do you mean time I wake up or the time I get up? I wake up once to to go to the bathroom, again to go to the bathroom, again when the cat is playing in the closet, again when she bats my face, again when I have to go to the bathroom, again when Ben gets up for work, again for the bathroom, again when Ben takes a shower ...
U - Underwear: Most of the time
V - Vegetable you dislike: How can you dislike a cute harmless vegetable?
W - Ways you run late: Pshaw
X - X-rays you've had: Arm, foot, teeth ... ummm, perhaps something else I'm not thinking of at present
Y - Yummy food you make: You'd have to ask my husband that one
Z - Zoo favorite: Seriously? I don't think I have met a zoo I didn't like

I think this is where I'm supposed to tag someone. Let's see ... I tag Heidi and KK and Nana. If you've already done this you can just direct me to the right spot.

NOT Me Monday!

Here's something else I've been dying to try ...

I did NOT stay in my pajamas until 10:15 a.m. this morning. This was NOT due to the fact that I woke up several times last night because my husband was up at 2:00 a.m. watching the Phillies play baseball. I was NOT perfectly okay with this instead of urging him to get a couple hours of much needed sleep before having to go run at 5:30 this morning. And I certainly did NOT decide that this was a perfect opportunity to spread out across the bed since he was not sleeping there anyway.

Having had a rather disjointed night's sleep, I did NOT wake up this morning and decide that I was going to spend the day scrapbooking instead of cleaning the house (which it certainly does NOT need.)

Rather a short post, but I certainly did NOT have fun while writing about all the things I did NOT do this morning.

And the Winner Is ...

My sister is always doing these fun give aways on her blog spot. Which got me thinking this morning. How about I do a fun give away? And the only thing I could think of is a baby pool. Considering that we're down to 12 days on the baby counter (how did that happen?!) I figured I should post this soon. Here's the deal:

• Anyone who would like to participate, leave me a comment on this post.
• Please include date, time and gender of the expected Baby Button.
• Whomever comes closest will be awarded a bottle of our fine Italian olive oil and some amazing balsamic vinegar.
• I'll award a second prize to anyone who comes close on Baby Button's name. And just for the record, my husband and I have not shared them with anyone, so no one has an unfair advantage.

I can not promise that they will get out in the mail immediately afterwards, but I'll do my best. Good luck and have fun!

Hibilden

About six weeks ago my husband and I joined a bowling league. Seems like a strange time to take up bowling, right? Or maybe not. But I'll come back to that part. Anyway, it's a mixed league with people of various skill levels. Ben and I (far right this picture) definitely are not what you'd call competitive bowlers. In fact, if I bowl a 35 it's a good game. This may sound like I'm exaggerating, but I'll assure you my highest game before this league was an 81. Ben isn't bad, but he's also not going to be giving anyone stiff competition.

When we started putting together a team, we wanted people who, while not necessarily being bad, also weren't ultra competitive. We just wanted to go out there for the fun of it and not have people who were going to be incredibly upset it we didn't do well. Our friends Andy and Carla (far left and aqua shirt) were on board for that theory. The night of the bowling league meeting we picked up Michelle and her husband Rick. Turns out they had enough people to do six man teams and Rick and Michelle wanted a team to join. They were a perfect fit for our little group.

Here we are six weeks into the league and it's been a blast so far. Here's some fun facts to show you where we are: I, personally, have the highest handicap for the league; Michelle has the second highest; one-third of our team is currently pregnant; somehow we managed to land ourselves in second place; and four members of our team landed on the high bowler list. Quite honestly, this cracks me up. And in the end, we still don't care whether we're doing well or not. Every night we're out there bowling we cheer for everyone whether it's our team or the team we are bowling against. And if we only get one pin, then we "got the hard one" and we're happy about that too. Granted, we do give a little extra cheer if someone happens to get a strike, but I'm glad they aren't a necessary part of us having fun.

To wrap this post up, I have to talk about my sister's theory of bowling. She swears that you actually bowl better when you're pregnant. I'm beginning to think she's right. My average for the league hovers at 63. While not stellar, still better than the norm for me. I have actually bowled two games that broke the 100 mark. Carla, the other pregnant member of our team, has been steadily improving all league hitting the 150 mark. She says she normally doesn't do that well either, but she's been high scorer for our team a couple of games now. I'm not sure if anyone else has tried it, but we would love some feedback on this theory. Pregnancy ... does it make better bowlers?

Seventeen Days on the Baby Counter

I am having trouble digesting this one. It's starting to become more real that we're actually going to take a baby home at the end of this process. However, it still hasn't quite sunk in completely. I mean, seriously, what does it take? My belly is huge, my feet are swollen, I'm, well, we'll skip this one for the sake of delicacy, but you get the general idea. You think somewhere in there it would have hit me. Perhaps this is why it takes 10 months to incubate a baby. Your brain needs that long to catch up with the concept.

We had our 37 week appointment today. It occurred to me this morning that our baby is really going to be here soon. Ben asked if I was nervous about the delivery or the baby. Both. I'm not sure why. I just am. The good news is that everyone is happy and healthy. Baby is doing very well and still pretty active. I don't know where he finds space to move in there, but he's making his presence known. Maybe Button wants to make sure I don't forget about him. Our doctor is encouraged by everything and my weight is holding steady. This is very good news. We have worked hard to keep it under 10 pounds for this pregnancy and, even with the extra water weight the past couple weeks, we have managed to do that. Doctor Tatro still hopes to make us his last delivery before leaving the hospital and we hope this works out too. If not, we have met Doctor Sexton who is also very nice. Medically speaking, I have a lot of confidence in both of them. However, it would be nice to see the pregnancy through with the person who has been there for all the ups and downs.

This is rather a rambly post, but quite honestly, my brain is feeling rather rambly today. I'm not sure if this is common, but I'm just having a hard time feeling "plugged in." Taking this into consideration, and the fact that it's a rainy day here, I think I'm going to go catch up on some scrapbooking. I still have high hopes of getting Button's book ready before he arrives, so now seems like a good time to work on that goal.

Five Days Late and at least a Euro Short

I had wanted to get these up on my blog before the end of the County Fair. Needless to say, did not happen. However, I did manage to finish the paintings last evening so decided I'd share them anyway. These are the last of the items to be hung in Button's room. I wanted to do something for Baby just from Mama and this is it. Today, if all goes well, I will be taking them into get framed. I believe the Italian gentleman said he'd be at his shop from 4 to 5, but I could be mistaken about that. Guess I'll find out. In the interim, here are my paintings for Button:

Fun with Photos

I am looking at my baby counter and can not believe there are 23 days left until Button comes into our world. Actually had a very odd dream about that last night. But that's a different story ... We had several people tell us we should get tummy pictures taken before the baby came. Neither Ben nor I like having our pictures taken so it took us a while to get around to doing this. There is an Italian gentleman here who does photos and we had several recommendations to go to him. Finally, last week, we got around to doing so. I'm so glad we did! We actually had fun having our pictures taken which I think shows in a few of the shots. As such, I'm actually willing to share some of these. Here they are:

Things I've Learned

Considering the title, this should be a relatively short post. And there's absolutely no pictures involved in this one! Some of you may sit there and laugh at my naivete. Others of you who have been through this process one or more times will probably be going, "duh, well, obviously." One of the things that I love about life, though, is no matter how far I get, I'm always discovering something new. With that thought in mind, here's my list of things I've learned while being pregnant:

• My husband is the most amazing person in my world. Okay, I knew this one before, but you see a person in a whole new light when they've seen you go through all the pregnancy ups and downs and are still able to tell you every day how much they love you and how beautiful you are. And somehow, everytime he says it, he convinces me that he really means it. Everything he does is with such good grace and humor. I am convinced that this would not have been such a wonderful experience without him by my side.
• Sometimes it's better in life to make things up as you are going along. This may sound like an obvious one to some of you, but you must keep in mind how absolutely vital it is in my little world to be organized and prepared. There are days during my pregnancy, however, when I have been tired or a baby appointment has taken longer than planned or perhaps I just had more energy than expected that day. At those moments I've been making the most of whatever comes my way at that time. Whether it's enjoying five minutes with my husband on the back porch, not stressing about the meeting I was supposed to be in or going for a walk around the neighborhood after dinner. In other words, trying not to be so upset about what isn't happening and being very grateful for the little moments that are.
• I'm not in control of any of this. Again, some of you out there may be snickering as you read this. (Keep in mind ... girl here who color coordinates her underwear drawer. Honest to goodness; not making this up.) Every time during this pregnancy that I thought I knew what to expect, something different has come up. Parts of it have been perfectly normal and I just had no idea that those things actually happened. Parts of it no one has been quite sure why it has happened. It just has, and I move forward from there. Whichever the case may be, I keep focused on the fact that I am blessed with this amazing little human being. It doesn't get much better than that.
  

Baby Shower

This past Saturday some ladies here held a baby shower for me. I have to admit that I wasn't a big fan of the concept of a baby shower. First of all, I have never liked the games they make you play. I mean, seriously ... who really wants someone pulling off 92 squares of toilet paper and insinuating that you're really that big around? I was also a bit embarrassed by the concept of an event that is held for the purpose of people bringing me gifts. It's lovely and sweet, but it just makes me uncomfortable.

As it turned out, though, it was absolutely perfect. My sister started the ball rolling with a box of wonderful books for baby. There is nothing I could have wanted more. Apparently she also took the time to plant a bug in someone's ear out here. I was wondering how everyone was so smart as to buy me baby books. And then one of the ladies hosting the shower filled me in on the fact that my sister has been in touch. Isn't it amazing what good care she takes of me even from thousands of miles away?

The rest of the day was just what one could wish for. Everything was beautiful and low key. We played two games that included baby bingo and a drawing game. The bingo was awesome as we played with M&M's. Everyone got to eat their boards as we went. The drawing game was too much fun. Wait, I think I have a picture:
Not a great picture, but it gives you a general idea. The concept was that everyone had to draw a picture of Button ... with hair. Some of them had me absolutely cracking up laughing. Especially the ones with the goatee, eyebrow piercing, cigarette and Mr. T haircut. Not sure what this says about Ben and I, but entertaining none-the-less.

You know it's been a nice day when everyone doesn't run out the door immediately following. In fact, a small group of us sat around for approximately two to three hours just talking. For me, it's the perfect way to spend the afternoon. I felt so honored that so many lovely women put in so much work to make it such a special occasion. I don't think there's ever a way to say thank you for that most marvelous of gifts. Below, I am going to show some pictures of some of the highlights of the day.

Rachelle made this amazing carousel cake for the event. It tasted as yummy as it looks ...

I was so impressed by Anna's diaper cake. She says it's simple, but I thought it was incredible. There were all sorts of little goodies tucked inside.

Carla playing M&M bingo. One for me, one for the board ... I do believe she won a game, although I may be mistaken. Rebekah gave these little teeny chicken pitchers as prizes. Chicken pitchers, just so you don't think we are odd, have a special meaning here and they symbolize good luck. Apparently it's also good luck to give pregnant women grapes, so one of the Italian ladies sent me home with a whole crate of them. This should be a very lucky baby.

Last but not least ... Laura and Anna having fun and checking out their game prizes. There's a ton more pictures, but in the interests of keeping this post to a reasonable length, I'll leave it there.

Thirty Four Weeks

We had our thirty four week visit this week. There is a part of me that can not believe that we are already at 34 weeks. Actually, it's mind boggling. I've had several people tell me that usually women are ready "to be done" by now. In fact, my doctor mentioned that most of his patients are really tired of being uncomfortable by this point. I can't say that that has been my experience at all. I am so thrilled with being pregnant and it just seems to be flying past.

Trust me when I say that it has not all been easy. My ankles have disappeared by this point in time. My husband says he can't find the bed anymore because of the number of pillows I'm sleeping with. From what I understand, I no longer walk, I just waddle. The list goes on getting into items that are probably too personal to share with the general public. Here's the bottom line, though ... all of it doesn't matter.

I sat there in my appointment the other day just thinking that as excited as I am to meet my baby, I am so going to miss this very special bond we have right now. Never again will Button and I be so close to one another. I can lay in bed in the morning and feel him move. I can rub my belly and know that my baby is safe and sound inside me. Just writing it makes me want to cry because that's how much in love I am with this little human being. And in six short weeks, Button will be out on his own. Perhaps it's the fact that I really wanted to be a Mom. Or perhaps it's the fact that I never took it for granted that I was having a baby. (Maybe, if someone needs to hear my story someday, I'll share it on here.) Whatever the cause, I just couldn't help thinking how sad it is that some women wish that period of their life to be over sooner or just can't see the blessing for the minor aches and pains. Enough of my soap box.

Here is a picture of me that evening after our appointment for those who are interested in the belly progress:
This is me sitting in Button's nursery. For those of you who read my previous blog on the nursery, I am happy to report that we finally got our bookshelves in! We did a little bit of furniture rearranging (nothing drastic, just making the plugs work with how the furniture was positioned) and I'm really happy with how things worked out. Not too crowded, but still cozy. Now all I have to do is finish the paintings I'm working on. For now, I will leave you with my wonderful husband assembling our new book shelves:

Through the Eyes of My Cat

My cat ended up in my life about three years ago now. I'm actually stopping to think as I write this, because I can't believe it has been that long. Someone I know in passing said she needed to get rid of her cat because of allergies in her household. At the time I happened to be looking for a cat and it just seemed fortuitous. After having her for a brief while, however, I started to wonder what her real reasons were for getting rid of her.

She isn't what you would call the friendliest cat in the world. Well, let me modify that. She's absolutely adorable when she's around my husband and I with only minor flair ups of, shall we call it, exerting her independence. I am not sure what her early life was like, but she can be a bit skittish. (Anyone who knows my cat is probably thinking, "that's an understatement.") She meets with strangers to her home with varying degrees of success. To most people she shows her borderline personality mode ... she comes up, rubs against you, looks like she wants to be loved, and then, as soon as you go to pet her, she begins to hiss and "claw". I put claw in quotations as she doesn't have any front claws so can not really harm you. For the majority of people who come into our house, this scares the living daylights out of them and they either refuse to be around our cat or they are skittish themselves the entire time they are there. For large parties we have taken to putting her away in our room for the night. People who come over often have gotten fairly comfortable with her and she doesn't seem to mind them. She'll come up, sniff and then go about her business.

When it's just my husband and I at home, she is a whole different cat. In fact, she's really the neediest cat I've ever seen. If I'm working on the computer, she'll take a nap on the printer so I'm not far away. If we're watching a movie, she'll curl up on our laps and go to sleep. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she'll jump on our stomachs so she can get some petting. Ben and her play all the time. It's really rather funny watching the two of them. What causes this change when strangers come about, I can only refer to as guard cat mode.

Ben and our needy cat hanging out on the bed together.

You're probably wondering what all this rambling has to do with the price of ice cream in Bulgaria. Well, I'm glad you asked. Ever since I've been pregnant, I haven't been quite sure what to make of her. First of all, I sincerely believe my cat knew I was pregnant before I did. She has been much more nippy than usual around me. Not mean, exactly, but letting me know that we aren't quite kosher. It's almost like she could sense the changing status quo and she's blaming it on me. She also wasn't thrilled about the fact that I can no longer sleep on my back at night. This has eliminated one potential person to sleep upon. Of course, this problem has cleared up a little bit since she figured out that I'm now as wide laying on my side as I am on my back. It's wonderful for your ego when your cat is using your stomach as a perching ledge. The part that makes me laugh is when she's laying up there when the baby starts kicking. The look of surprise and indignation on her face is absolutely priceless. I've tried to explain to her what's going on, but I'm not sure she's tuning it in.

She is absolutely thrilled about the nursery. To her, it's a whole new game room. I walked in one day to find her taking a nap in our newly assembled crib. I immediately lifted her out and told her that the crib was not for her. After she repeated this performance two more times, I washed the sheets and took to closing the door. As we set up the changing table and the pack-n-play, she came in sniffing to see what all the excitement was about. You could almost see the wheels turning in her little head ... yeah, cat beds. Now, when we do open the door, she is standing there ready to see what she's missing. Button will be sleeping with the door closed.

The problem in the interim is that my husband and I are a little nervous about how she's going to take to this intruder to her domain. We've thought about putting her in her carrier and bringing her and Button home at the same time so they could get to know each other a bit. We also thought about bringing a blanket home from the hospital so she could get used to the new smell. In the end, we're hoping that Button will smell enough like Ben and I that she will accept Baby without a murmur. Perhaps this is being optimistic of us, but it would certainly be nice.

In the end I write all this not because I need a reality check on Baby versus animal priorities or how unpredictable pets can be. More so to emphasize the little things in life that I was not planning on having to figure out when we found out we were expecting. And to share what a unique personality our cat is ... I just think she could use a little therapy.

The Fair is a Veritable Smorgasbord

I had hoped to have two entries ready for the County Fair. And, perhaps, before the deadline comes around, I will complete my second entry. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, take a hop on over to Art's Chili blog. There is an old fashioned County Fair going on and you too can get in on the fun. In the interim, I am going to attempt to post my entry and hope that I get it all right. Can you tell that I am still a little intimidated by Blog world?

My first entry for the Fair is a fairly recent endeavor. A friend of mine is a huge fan of card making. She is devoted to a particular company and has a ton of their products for both cards and scrapbooking. (I'm not sure about throwing around brand names, so I'll avoid doing so here.) Anyway, I honestly don't have money to invest in a lot of tools and toys, but card making really caught my interest. Instead of spending money I don't have, I started looking around the house for what would work. And I raided everything. I pulled out scraps of colored paper, ribbons, glitter from a Christmas project we did last year, buttons from my sewing box ... well, you get the idea. Here is a sample of what I came up with:


And I wanted to get at least one close up shot, so here's two of my favorite cards:

Now I just have to pop back to Chili's page and figure out the link thing. Wish me luck!

Our Nursery

Someone asked me recently for some pictures of our baby nursery. This post is mainly to satisfy their curiosity. I'm afraid our nursery doesn't have much of a theme. We had two rocking chairs that were going in the room -- one is yellow with lady bugs and fireflies the other is a cream color with hammocks and palm trees. No, they don't really go together unless you're thinking Summer. However, considering the difficulties finding what I like over here, I wasn't going through the trouble of reupholstering. Plus, I figure they're only in there on a temporary basis, so I was going to work around what I have.

That being said, we decided to go with bright colors and settled on yellow and blue. Plus they seemed neutral enough for which ever gender baby we had. I know blue is typically associated with boys, but I don't think this combination would damage a little girl psyche too drastically. My sister found this darling Paddington Bear set on Ebay, which we ordered, and we also ordered a cute yellow bumblebee set as our backup. Both of them are really adorable, but Ben and I were excited about Paddington. Shortly after returning from the States (about two days after, actually) Ben and I went to London. I made him walk all the way to Paddington Station just so I could buy a Paddington bear there.


This is the valance in Button's room. I mentioned earlier how difficult it is to find what you're looking for here. Let me emphasize this to you. As much as I love living here, it is nigh on impossible to find things that we are used to being able to locate with ease back in the States. A good example of this is the curtain rod. I could not find a thing in the Navy Exchange. My friend ended up finding one at the local market and we compromised by spray painting it white.

After spending a great deal of time reading through the Consumer Best Buy reports, I finally found the furniture I wanted to buy for Button's room. Originally I was going to buy it in an espresso color. The crib is one of the ones that converts to a toddler bed and later to a twin/full size bed. Seeing how well the darker wood did in my nephews' room I thought this would be a good choice. However, I couldn't find the crib in the same color as the dresser or couldn't get them both from the same place or ... well, you get the idea. All our walls in our house here are white. Not wanting to have to paint everything back when we leave, we have decided to leave them white. As such, I finally went with the white furniture. I figured it would blend with the walls and make everything look a bit bigger. That was my theory at least.

Here's where the story gets really fun. We ordered book shelves for Button's room. That was back in May. They were supposed to be coming into the Navy Exchange. It has now been four months and the book shelves are still no where to be found. I was thinking I might actually see them before baby arrived, but that was silly of me. The crib and the dresser we ordered online, but they would not ship to this address. Another day I will bore you with my sentiments on businesses who will not ship to FPO addresses. In the interim, we had the furniture shipped to my Dad's house and he agreed to forward it onto us.

My father was able to break the dresser down into small enough packages that the US postal service would mail it over here. One part came within a week or so, the second part floated around the ocean for about an extra month. No, I'm not exaggerating. (BTW, notice the painting on top of the changing table. It's my contribution to Button's room and you may see it again in my County Fair entry. Wish I knew how to do one of those cool link things so it would take you to my sister's County Fair site.)

The crib was another story. No matter how much he tried, he could not get it to the right size or weight limit to be accepted by the postal system. It was quite the quandary. Dad actually suggested sending the baby back to the States and they would raise him until he no longer needed a crib. One idea, I suppose, but not my favorite option. Out of desperation, I asked one of our base leaders one day what they would do. They asked where the crib was coming from and so I told them. Now here's a blessing from God. As it turned out, there was a squadron coming over here from our home state and the base is only about an hour from my parents' house. They drove the crib down to the base, offloaded it to the very nice gentlemen there and it was flown here to my husband and I. It actually arrived before the dresser did!

Ben was so excited when it came in that he actually took the afternoon off work just to put the crib together. I think it was the first moment that he realized we were going to have a baby. I was excited to put out the comforter and make up Button's bed. Our cat was sure we had put this bed together just for her, so we have since rewashed all the sheets, remade the bed and taken to closing the door. Above the crib we hung the blanket that Grandma Rickert made for our first baby. Again, not much of a running theme, but more than anything, I wanted it to be a room that felt cozy.

As we are adding our finishing touches, and still waiting for book shelves, Ben and I picked out a pack-n-play for Button's first few weeks.

Don't let these seemingly easy things fool you ... these things are complicated to put together!! Of course, this could just be a first time parent thing as we are still flummoxed by the car seat base. Would it be wrong to just duct tape our child into the car every time we have to go somewhere?

I'm a Turkey: AKA What People Don't Tell You

When I say I'm a turkey, I don't mean that in the traditional derogatory manner. I mean, I really feel like a Butterball. You know, that kind of turkey. I realized the other day that my belly button is starting to disappear and I have a sneaking suspicion that it's soon going to just pop out. When it comes out, I figure I'm ready ... just like an oven roaster. My big question is, will it go back to normal after the baby is born? Laugh if you must, but these are serious questions, my friends.

This may seem like a silly question. Especially to those of you who have gone through this child bearing experience multiple times. However, I have had many such questions. The other day I mentioned how wonderful my doctor here has been. The person I did not mention in my previous post is the individual who has answered most of these questions for me:


Nicole Johnson is our visiting nurse here and she is absolutely marvelous. She has an open door policy in her office, she goes walking with me to make sure I stay with my walking program, she's written me long emails when I needed encouragement and she's managed to answer all of my off-the-wall questions while maintaining a straight face. How she has managed the last is completely beyond me. There have been some doozies. Nicole calls it doing her job, but I call her a definite blessing during this time of my life.

Back to the Doctor's - Lots of Pictures

I have literally never spent so much time at the hospital. I'm not trying to exaggerate, I just seriously never think I've been in and out of the doctor's office so much in my life. Lest you think this is a criticism of the fine individuals who work on staff there, I assure you it is not. There's just days when I swear I am there almost continuously. The good part about this is that I have a lot of faith and trust in my doctor and I know he's taking good care of me and baby. He's also incredibly patient with all my questions (yes, I've asked some doozies) and he instills a lot of confidence. That's a very good thing. On top of all this, he's an exceptionally good sport, as you can see from the fact that he let me take his picture during our check up this morning:

This is Doctor Tatro who has been looking out for us for quite a while. The bummer is that he is due to leave the day before our due date. In the interim, I'm trying not to think too hard on that part and have faith that it will all work out well in the end. I've heard some fabulous things about the new doctor, so I'm sure we'll be well taken care of, it's just a confidence issue.

Now, to satisfy Nanamesiter-meisterNana, here is the latest and greatest in belly pictures:


We're almost at the eight month mark in this picture. Just a few days shy, actually. BTW, to avoid any confusion, I am speaking in gestational months and not calendar months. That being said, we still have eight weeks to go. Which is really flying by way too fast. Yes, there's been some discomfort and some ups and downs, but I adore being pregnant. As much as I'm looking forward to baby arriving, I am loving every moment of having my baby this close to me. What an amazing feeling.

I realize that you can't see much of my belly in this picture, so I'm posting an additional one just for those who want to see how huge I'm really getting. (Yes, I know I'm getting big for a fact as I had approximately five women comment on it at church yesterday.) Here's the side view just so you can compare with earlier pictures:


Recognize the dress, Kat? Update is that everything is going well. Our appointments are going to start being a bit more frequent. Everything is normal, though, and I am thrilled that everyone is healthy.

I got my lazy self motivated and found the sonogram picture from my last appointment:


This is a frontal facial picture of Button. Anyone who has any practice looking at these things should be able to pick out the pertinent features including the little hand to the left. Doctor Tatro said I just need to picture the face with a little more fat on it. As you notice, we have only facial images as my husband and I do not want to know the baby's gender ahead of time. We also put it in our birth plan that I want my husband to tell me. I figure after all that waiting, we should at least have that much.

Last, but not least, I'm inserting a photo of my amazing husband:


Here he is Sunday morning. We were conducting some serious business with Crayolas and a couple of coloring books. Which is just one of the many things my husband does to keep me smiling. I don't want anyone going away with the mistaken impression that this is a solo effort. He has been absolutely amazing putting up with my mood swings, helping me tie my shoe laces, listening to me grumble as I try to roll over at night or get up to go to the bathroom (yet again), doing things around the house, letting me cry about silly things, dealing with the extra pillows I'm taking to bed ... well, the list goes on. Needless to say, I'm not sure how anyone does this alone. He has been my saving grace. And experiencing this with him reminds me often of why I married this wonderful individual.

Confusion in Blog Land

This post is going to be a bit more prosaic than the lovely, poetic and fun writing that I've perused on other people's pages. Unfortunately, confusion reigns eternal in Diann land and that's just the way it will have to be for now. I had hoped to have this up and running by today. We have our next doctor's appointment tomorrow morning and I thought it would be fun to put our update after the appointment. However, after two hours of staring at this page last night, and going cross-eyed in the process, I'm no closer to becoming technologically savvy and I certainly haven't figured this out as of yet. All that rambling to say ... bear with me! (And I don't mean bear as in the furry brown one with the attitude. My sister and nieces will get that.)

Ahem. In the interim, I offer abject apologies to all the lovely people who have stopped by and left a comment welcoming me to blog land. If I could figure out how to respond, I would tell you how grateful I am. I also have to post this with a warning. **IMPLICIT BLOG WARNING TYPED HERE** As I have learned from past experience, I am not all that great at keeping up with anything on a daily basis. In fact, I had both a myspace and a facebook page that were summarily deleted because I felt guilty for never keeping up with them. That being said, I would love for you to drop in when you have a free moment. And I'd love to return the favor and get to know some of you a bit better. Admittedly, my main goal is to keep Brianna up to date with as many pictures as I can so she doesn't come over and hunt me down.

For the time being, here is a sonogram picture that was taken at the 19 week mark. I believe she's already seen this one, but it works for the page, it gives me a chance to see if I'm doing this correctly and I have to go dig up the more recent sonogram picture.


This picture was taken June 8 of this year during my hour and 40 minute sonogram appointment. That wasn't as much fun as I thought it was going to be as I wasn't even able to look at the monitor during the appointment. Mainly I slept while my husband chit chatted with the guy checking out my tummy. However, I thought the profile (or profitle as it was thus labeled) made it all worthwhile.

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with more blog knowledge and an update on Button life.

Dear Aunt Diann

Dear Aunt Diann,
Mom and I started this blog for you and Button. Here you can let us know how much Button is growing over there in Italy. You can post pictures and let us know all about first steps, first words, and first everything else! You can also use this blog for your entry for the county fair. If it seems too over whelming I will be happy to post pictures for you. I will email you your log-in info. If you have any questions about changing backgrounds, headers, hyperlinks, adding pictures ask me. I know a little about HTML and will be happy to help you the best I can. Any other questions ask Mom about. You can add pictures and other cool stuff to your side bar by going to the corner where it says customize and then add a gadget. You should be able to get it from there!
Looking forward to hearing about all the adventures of Baby Button!
Love Always,
♥ Nana



Taken June 6th.


Taken August 2nd.