Exhausted

I feel like this April has been really busy. I feel like that because it has been. I had three work trips this month - Pittsburgh, Albuquerque and Houston. Because of that my weekly hours have been up from about 20 per week to more like 32.

Eric has a lot on his plate at work right now. Plus he's trying to get the hill that is our back yard terraced with retaining walls built of rocks. Then we'll have to put in plants. Plus Eric planted our vegetable garden while I sat in a camp chair and watched. (I did do a whole bunch of weed-pulling in the gardens and the front yard the following week.)

I'm not sure what Ike has been so busy doing, but he's all tuckered out as well.

This happened in real life. Yesterday.

Seven Years

For Christmas I gave Eric 12 envelopes, and each envelope had the idea for a date for each month of the year. Some of the envelopes even had a necessary supply or two. (For instance, the symphony tickets that had been given back in September. And the free movie pass we had which went into March's envelope so we could see The Hunger Games.) I had gotten the idea from Pinterest, but our Christmas budget didn't allow me to fund all the dates for the year, like the original person did. That is why some are funded, some aren't, and some are partly-funded. Eric's love language is quality time, so my real intent was to make a concerted effort to spend planned, quality time with Eric each month. So far, it's been a lot of fun. January we hosted a Chinese New Year Party, complete with dumpling making, which was something we'd wanted to do for a while. February was dinner and the symphony. March was supposed to be The Hunger Games, but we didn't get to it until early April. And our April date is what this post is really supposed to be about.

Our April date was a trip to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point. We have made this our anniversary date a few times, and we always enjoy it. This year we went on a Friday afternoon when Eric got off from work a little early. We let Ike tag along (because his admission is still free), and we counted it as our anniversary date. (Our anniversary is today. We celebrated the Friday before last.)

 

 

 Next year we'll do it again, but with two babies in tow. Wowza.

Birthdays

Eric's birthday is in September, mine's in November, and Ike's is in December. That means we planned things rather perfectly since the new baby is due in the middle of October.

Facts:

• I'm 14 weeks along.
• This first trimester hasn't been as bad as the first trimester with Ike, besides the frequent and very bad migraines I experienced the first several weeks. The general exhaustion has been much lower, and the nausea has also been significantly lower. Huzzah.
• I alternate between being extremely thrilled and being extremely overwhelmed about having another baby.
• Unlike my pregnancy with Ike where people still could not tell I was pregnant when I was like 20 weeks along, my muscles and ligaments began giving up at about 9 weeks. Other people couldn't tell that early, but I could. (With Ike I didn't begin noticing until about 16 weeks - maybe even later.) (Only one person has pointed out my belly and asked if I'm pregnant. She is nearly five. If she noticed then grownups are noticing too but are being more polite.)
• If you had asked us any time before I was actually pregnant if we had good name ideas I would have told you that we probably had more baby names than we would have children, and we had all our favorites at the ready. We are less certain now. Bah.
• But I do have an arsenal of blog names this time around. This child will not have a temporary blog name like Ike did.
• I think it is a boy baby.
• If you ask Ike where the baby is, he will point at my body somewhere between my collar bone and my legs. In actuality, he has no idea what's happening. He'll be about 22 months when New Baby comes.
• Yes, I took Clomid again. I had some left over from last time, so I just treated myself on the same dose that worked with Ike. It worked the first time.
• I took one negative pregnancy test, two ambiguous ones, and finally one that showed I was clearly pregnant. It was so different than last time where I was certain I wasn't pregnant (because I had taken a test that said I had not ovulated. I found out much later those tests are notoriously inaccurate).
• Having done this once before, I have more set ideas about what I plan to do during the delivery. This time around I'm going to skip the painkiller fentanyl and go straight to the epidural. Also maybe I won't be induced, but if I am, that's okay. Also, I'm going to cut the cord this time, and maybe also the baby can be given to me immediately this time. Since my dad won't be having triple bypass surgery the day this kid is born I will also have a strict phones-off policy. I just want everyone to leave me alone. I'll call, text, and update Facebook once the baby gets here.
• We got to tell some of Eric's family in a very fun way: 

Did I skip anything?

Utah Tourists

Sometimes I do not post a lot because I do not have much to say. Sometimes I have lots of things to say but don't really feel like writing. Sometimes I have pictures to show but not a means to get the pictures off the camera. Sometimes I have lots to say but am too busy doing other things and do not bother to write blog posts.

My brother and his wife and four kids came into town from Jackson Hole on Thursday and have been hanging out and doing Utah touristy things for the past week. On Thursday I stayed home with the two little kids and Ike while the big kids got a tour of BYU. Then I took the little kids to the Bean Life Science Museum, which we affectionately call the Dead Animal Zoo. Ike had fun not only staring at the taxidermied animals, but also staring at the other people who were checking out the stuffed animals. Because of Ike's keen interest in the people (rather than the animals) at the Dead Animal Zoo I was concerned that the next day's visit to the Hogle Zoo would not be all that exciting to him. I was wrong. He totally got the concept of staring at the animals. There were lots of really active animals on Friday, and it was so fun to watch him find them and point and stare at them. Oh, and he waved hello at many of the animals as well. (He liked the people too, but he seemed to understand this place was for staring at animals.) John and I didn't go into the reptiles and small animals building because we don't do snakes, but apparently it was very difficult to get Ike away from these turtles. He was mesmerized. I have seriously considered purchasing a pass so I can take him a bunch more times. It was that much fun.

On Saturday and Sunday we watched General Conference. (My brother also ran a half marathon on Saturday and his time was a personal best. My oldest nephew ran a 5k and won for his division.)

Eric originally planned on taking Friday off to come to the zoo, but then he bailed at the last minute, believing that the child would be too little to really "get" the zoo. He had remorse as Nicole and I sent him pictures of our boy staring at animals. My nephews really wanted to go to the museum at Hill Air Force Base, even though they just went last summer, so we all headed up there on Monday. They had specifically noted that they wanted Eric to go because he knows all about the airplanes. Later that day we all went to the Kennecott open-air copper mine. I had flown over it before and knew that it was massive, but it was seriously impressive to see it up close. (It's the largest open-air mine in the world.) The little visitors' center is very cool, and totally worth $5 per vehicle.

Ike has just had a blast with his cousins in town. It has been so fun watching him play with his cousins, follow them around and just be amused at their presence in the house. I think my four-year-old niece has also thoroughly enjoyed having a baby to boss around. (Not that he always listens, but he does prefer her to the others.)

Today they took off to hike the Y. (Facebook informs me that they succeeded.) Ike took a much needed 3-hour nap. His batteries are re-charged for his last night with the cousins.

Tomorrow they are all leaving. And I am going to Pittsburgh for a few days, and I think Ike is going to be so sad and befuddled about the empty house.