The 16th has come and gone...

To those who know me well, they knew that I was really hoping for baby girl to come on the 16th. There were several reasons for this:

1. 16 is my lucky number (I was born on the 16th). It just sounded like a good day.
2. This would be four days early. A safe amount of earliness. I don't think that any nine-month-pregnant lady would disagree that safe early is preferable over on time or late. It's like winning the baby lottery.
3. This would have made her come while Sean is on Spring Break, which would have just been so convenient. And children are supposed to be convenient, right?

Well, I promised her a car on her 16th birthday and everything but.. she's a no show. I mean, sure, who knows if I could follow through on that, but she couldn't have known that right? So in the words of Sean, she's already a disappointment to us.

... Okay, I feel heartless even just typing that as a joke. We don't mean it baby girl! If anything, we are blaming ourselves-- I mean, she is our child, so of course she's going to be late. (If she's more like her mother, she'll be 1-2 days late... if she's more like her father, she's going a good week over...  haha, he never reads these but when he does he's going to be so mad! So for when you do read this, Sean, I'm talking about dating Sean; you've improved greatly over these last few years... love you!)

So now that the 16th has gone, we are mentally preparing ourselves for the 27th. One week past my due date, when they would induce me, if it comes to that. I don't think it will, because it looks like everything's working fine and progressing, but... who knows. I was having all of these early labor signs a couple days ago that convinced me I was going to go early (the book said that "when ___ happens, usually labor follows within 24 hours"!) but, I've found that I apparently fall into the latter part of the sentence that I sort of conveniently skimmed over ("... though it could be another one to two weeks.")

Anyway, this whole ticking time bomb thing is quite the experience, such a mind game. It's like an unpredictable Christmas, only like Sean said-- "I've never had to wait this long for a present!"  I just have to keep telling myself that our little present has got to come out eventually, right???

Okay, well here's some pictures now.

 

This is a fun game I play in the mirror. It's called Front View...

Side view! This is at 36 1/2 weeks. Also, note the cute coat Sean picked out for me at Christmas all on his own. It's great because it's not maternity but totally works.

 

 Without the coat, for the full effect. I probably should have cropped these pictures.. meh.

 

Me and my basketball.

Some leftovers from the Baby Shower brunch the sweet ladies in my ward threw for me. And holy cow, those ladies can cook! This picture does not do this food justice. It was amazing.

The cake from my team on my last day of work before maternity leave. Also, very sweet. (I need to get the photos off of my work laptop still from the baby shower they threw me, but spoiler alert-- there was a dinosaur pinata. It was awesome. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've documented baby girl's nickname of "baby dinosaur"-- I will have to get to that later.)

This is at just about 39 weeks. Not the most flattering picture of me, but the face truly captures the disappointment and frustration and level of discomfort I am now feeling.

 

 Today, March 16th, 39 weeks and 3 days. The D-day that wasn't meant to be. The juxtaposition is a subtle hint that perhaps she would be more comfortable in her car seat?

Well, that's all for now. Here's hoping the next time I write it will be a post filled with photos of a cute healthy baby girl! In the mean time, I'm off to go do some more lunges and eat some more spicy food, pineapple and balsamic vinegar... (I know they're old wives tales, but it can't hurt right?)

T-Minus 6 Weeks...

... what on earth?!

I was just reading my last blog post from, oh, four months ago, and found myself just a smidge jealous of then-me. I was just starting my second trimester, feeling good and loving my tiny baby bump, and know what else I could do?? Walk! Like a normal person NOT doing an impersonation of a penguin. (I really tried to fight the waddle for as long as possible, but shoot... it's just easier to waddle.)

Oh, 16-weeks-pregnant Tiffany. How little you knew of what was to come...

Alright, honestly, I really shouldn't complain too much. My pregnancy has gone rather well, considering the horror stories I've heard from other people. But still, that doesn't mean that there hasn't been some side effects from growing a human. So while I shouldn't complain... I'm gonna. Just for a sec. Purely for documentation purposes.

(Warning: This gets long... but this is the price to pay for skipping four months.)

• I can't sleep anymore. Some nights are worse than others, but I can't remember the last time I didn't wake up at least once in the middle of the night. There's just so many reasons! I'm too uncomfortable, my hips are hurting, baby girl is kicking me awake, I'm too hot, my ribs are hurting, I have heartburn, I have to go to the bathroom, I can't breathe, or Sean had DelTaco, and even though he brushed his teeth AND used mouthwash, my super-smelling abilities can detect it from a mile away. It's really annoying, to both of us. The weirdest is that I've noticed a pattern this past week-- every night, I have been waking up at 3 a.m., 4:30 a.m., and then 6 a.m (give or take a few minutes). I thought maybe it had something to do with baby's sleeping patterns? But I don't always feel her moving when I wake up. So I'm really just not sure what that's all about... needless to say, I am getting pretty good at running on not a lot of sleep! I'm feeling like this might be good preparation for motherhood...
• I have a huge belly! The last blog post, 18 weeks ago, I was weighing 103. I am now a nice round 125 and rising. Considering I dipped down to 97, that means I have gained close to 30 pounds since then, and now roughly one-fourth of my body weight is protruding from my midsection. No wonder I feel like my back is going to snap in half, and when I'm walking I fear that the ligaments in my pelvis are going to stretch so far they finally snap. Oh, as for my waist size, I have gone from 25" to 40.5" as of this morning. And I still have almost six weeks left! Can I seriously handle getting any bigger?! Putting on shoes has become practically impossible.
• I find myself crying. Like a lot. Which is not normal for me. Both happy cries and sad cries, though the sad cries have come mostly from watching movies like Moulin Rouge (that was really rough) and TV shows like Extreme Home Makeover (a lady met the guy who donated bone marrow and saved her life... k, I'm not a robot!) Ha, oh ya.. and the end of Casper. I really lost it there too. But other than that, I really have done a pretty good job at not being overly emotional around/at Sean. No really, even ask him. Well, okay, there was this one week...yikes, not sure what my deal was then. Maybe don't bring it up after all. But c'mon, one week out of 34 is not too shabby.
• I am ON FIRE. Like, all the time. This is such a strange thing for me, I'm usually always cold. But nope, these days I'm the one asking Sean why he turned the heat up so high. Thank goodness it's winter...
• Recent development- there's been some slight swelling in my hands and feet. It's so slight that Sean's not sure he believes me, but I can tell. Well, and the fact that I can't take my rings off is kind of hard to dispute. But hey, the good news is that for the first time in ever, my wedding ring fits! (Thanks to my bony knuckles, my ring has to be a little bigger than would be ideal.)
• Other miscellany: For a few weeks I got this incredibly itchy rash thing on my shins. I did some internet research, and saw that it could be an allergic reaction to the fish oil I'd been taking. It got pretty unbearable, so I went to the dermatologist,  and he was incredibly unhelpful. ("Ya, sounds like you should try not taking fish oils... and moisturize your skin..." and then he prescribed me some fairly expensive anti-itch cream that I couldn't even end up taking because as I was reading the labels I discovered that it wasn't recommended for pregnant women because not enough research had been done on it, so "use at your own risk"... um, no thanks?) Well, luckily it did clear up, so it looks like fish oil was the culprit. Who knew? (Side note: I have some $60 anti-itch cream if anyone who is not pregnant is interested.)
• The kicking of the ribs. Oh, the kicking of the ribs... I remember someone on facebook posting something about how their baby was kicking their ribs, and I thought "oh.. but that's so cute! It can't hurt that bad..." I was so wrong. Well, I still think it's kind of cute, but I have been surprised how much of an impact her tiny little feet can make! I am convinced I am covered in bruises in there. Also, I love feeling her move, it's probably one of the most amazing/mind-blowing sensations to know that there's a life inside of you... but things are getting so cramped in there these days that sometimes it really hurts! Like when her legs have decided to give my ribs a break, and she moves on to kicking my stomach-- it makes me feel kind of nauseous. You know, like as if you were getting punched in the stomach. Actually, yes. It is exactly like that.
• OH! How could I forget?! Pregnant brain! Actually, that is the perfect example. I am so crazy forgetful these days. Also, kinda clumsy, and just in general, absent-minded. I could fill a whole blog post with funny anecdotes about this, and maybe someday I will, but I will sum it up by saying that a couple days ago I wore two completely different looking earrings. All day. And I had a vivid memory from that morning of them matching. That still blows my mind. Also, Sean holds his breath any time I go to pour any sort of drink, and usually insists on just doing it for me. I've been told this will not improve much in my future role as a mother, but... it just has to. I am willing it to get better. My poor coworkers deserve better grammar from me in my IM conversations with them. (I'm usually an extremely good and fast typist, but lately when I re-read things I know that I typed right.. there's like an entire word missing or something. You'll see. I'm sure I've done it several times already.)

But yes, other than those items, things are going really well. No complications have come up yet anyway, and our doctor keeps congratulating us on everything just going boringly according to plan. I'm really hoping that holds up as we get into these final weeks... two of my best friends just had their first babies and had some pretty serious stuff happen during their deliveries, so maybe with those odds I'll just be the one to get off relatively scot-free??

Oh, and as for cravings: nothing crazy, but I have found myself wanting milk like as much as possible. Which has led to me eating quite a lot of cold cereal. Also, chocolate. Though it's hard to know if that is the pregnancy or not... I mean, it is Cadbury egg season.

Alright, well that's a pretty good summary of my pregnancy I think. Long enough anyway. I will now move on to the photo portion of today's presentation. I call it...

SOME OF THE FEW PICTURES WE HAVE TAKEN SINCE OCTOBER

October 15th marked our two-year anniversary, and as tradition dictates, we spent the weekend in Park City. Here is Sean with the present I made him (well, I painted it at Color Me Mine).

 

We walked around Sundance a little bit, for sentimental reasons. Plus, nothing beats Sundance in the fall.

I thought I looked sooo pregnant.

 

Halloween: I dressed up like a mobster for work (wearing Sean's shirt and my black bella band as a cummerbund because my pants didn't zip up anymore...), and I brought in this burlap horse head I happened to find in my parents' basement.

Then I left it on my boss' desk with a threatening note. (It says "No more time sheets or else!", which is just this really monotonous task that we hate.) Apparently he hadn't seen The Godfather, and somehow didn't know the reference (I've never seen it either, but c'mon-- how you not know about the horse head scene??) so it made it even funnier because he had no idea who had done it, when it should have been pretty obvious. Also, I went up to visit Michelle at her desk and snuck up behind her and tossed the horse on her keyboard and scared the crap out of her. It was great.

 

Christmas: Company Work Party at the Zermatt. I am about 25 weeks here.

 

Playing Black Jack for gift cards with my bros Andrew and Adam and Creighton and Michelle. I was pretty much on a roll.

  

Christmas Day.

 

A really terrible phone picture from New Year's Eve at Brooke & Preston's wherein I look bald. It was a really fun night though; we played games, snacked, and toasted to a new year of being the coolest new parents ever. (She was a couple months more pregnant than me then---they just had their first little guy a week ago.)

 

At 30 weeks (and in front of the armoire we got for baby girl because we realized our second bedroom doesn't have a closet for some reason...)

 

I think this was just like 31 weeks-ish...

 

Last Saturday my sister Brittany/sister-in-law Tami/ Mom and other sisters hosted a wonderful baby shower for me!

 

The treats and decorations were amazing.

 

The turn out was great! The candid pictures that would prove that are not the most flattering though, so you will just have to believe me because check out our pile of pink loot!

Just some of my supporting friends!

At almost 34 weeks.

 

*****

Phew. I made it. And if you hung in there this long, way to go. Man, if only I didn't blog so infrequently, this wouldn't be so painful, right?! Why do I do this to myself... Well, while I'd like to say I'll do better, I can only say I'll try... so chances are I'll see you in another four months!

... okay, no but really, I'll try and do better. Especially once baby comes.

Which is SO SOON!! OH MY GOSH!! 37 more days!! 

...What on earth?!

I am Pregnant.

Did you know this? I am thinking that since I have announced it for all the world to see on Facebook, that you did know this. We are obviously very excited!!

Did you know, however, that it often causes me to wake up in the middle of the night? At least I'm blaming it on being pregnant. (I blame a lot of things on being pregnant, but I'm pretty sure most of them are justified.) Really, almost every night lately, sometime between three and five in the morning I am just-- awake. Usually I lay there, and think about work, and then try really hard to think about something that isn't work, and then I'm thinking about work again. This makes waking up for work a couple hours later especially unexciting.

So here I am, trying something different. Maybe blogging will make me sleepy?

Some other thoughts on my pregnancy... Did you know that I am loving what it's done for my body so far?! My first trimester, I pretty much just felt blah the whole time. Luckily I never threw up... but it was just that general nausea feeling all day long, and pure exhaustion. Most of the time food sounded absolutely disgusting, except for random cravings that would pop into my head from out of nowhere. (One day while at work I realized that I NEEDED tuna. ASAP. I even left work a little early so I could come home, and apparently on the way home I said to Sean--"If we don't have tuna, I'm going to FREAK OUT!!" And then, full confession, I ate it straight out of the can, with some pickles on the side, like a crazed homeless person seeing food for the first time in weeks. And it was amazing.)

Ya... we kind of gave up on trying to plan ahead for any sort of meals, because while something would randomly sound so good one day (examples: chocolate frosted mini wheats, pink grapefruit cups, string cheese, chocolate teddy grahams), it seemed as soon as I ate them, I wanted nothing to do with them again. We still have plenty of the above-mentioned items in fact.

Good news though is that as of this last week, I can eat again! Without getting sick! Which is probably the worst symptom I've had so far. Every time that I would eat, I would almost always get crazy stomach pains after. Like, sometimes as bad as food poisoning cramps. Apparently not a super common symptom, but common enough that the doctor wasn't too worried. They said it would probably start to go away soon at my last visit, and it has! Oh thank heavens, it has. And I am loving food again!

This is an especially good fact, seeing how I lost seven pounds during my first trimester. Seven! And that is not an "ooh, I'm excited I've lost weight!" exclamation mark. It is a shocked exclamation mark. Just to make that clear. At the risk of horrifying my readers, I will now tell you that I, Tiffany Greene, was back into double digits for a while there. Something that has not happened since probably ninth grade. Okay, don't get too worried, not a whole lot into the double digits-- okay, I'll just tell you, I went from my normal 105 down to 98. And it stayed there for quite some time. But my doctor wasn't too alarmed, so you shouldn't be either. And more good news- as of the last couple weeks, it's coming back. I just weighed myself and I was at 103! Yay!

But remember that part where I said I am loving what it's done for my body? Well, during this time of not eating, my body has still been growing. I am getting a nice little baby bump, and there are also a couple of other areas that have grown quite significantly... (dot dot dot... if you don't know what I'm referring to than I'm not going to tell you...) Anyway, it's been pretty great. This was a perk (ha, no pun intended) I was not expecting quite so early on.

Well my poor body, in an attempt to grow these other areas, has resorted to pulling from certain other areas of my body with ample fat storage, namely my thighs and buttocks. No longer will people be able to call me Tiffany "has a big butt" Thomas! (Believe me, plenty of people call me this.) Man, if I could develop some sort of pill that recreated this transformation, I would be so rich. (Well, minus the baby bump part of course.)

How long will I be loving what it's doing for my body? Mmm, not sure. I'm guessing sometime between my little baby blossoming from a navel orange into a watermelon the novelty might wear off a little. And here's hoping that I don't start retaining water or something crazy like that... I guess only time will tell.

Well, I have to get up for work in less than two hours, and I am pretty depressed about that, so I am going to go try this whole sleeping thing again. Wish us luck! (Get it? Cuz I'm pregnant... so I'm talking about me & the baby...  Yep, I'm pretty tired again.)

Oh, and Happy 16 Weeks to us! We're getting so close to knowing if this is a little guy or girl!

Cadbury Chocolate Strawberries

So I've realized that to become a legit blogger, I need to A) Post Recipes, B) Post Cutesy Tutorials, and C)Post more than once every three months.

Well, I'm not making any promises about B & C, but I do have a recipe that I love that I would like to share. I call it:

CADBURY CHOCOLATE STRAWBERRIES!

Ingredients:

-Strawberries

-Cadbury Mini Eggs

Step 1) Take a bite of a strawberry.

Step 2) Eat a chocolate mini egg.

Step 3) Take a bite of a strawberry.

Step 4) Eat a chocolate mini egg.

* Repeat until strawberries &/or chocolate mini eggs are gone.

Bon Appetit!

-------

I also call this Lazy Man's Chocolate-Covered Strawberries. But seriously-- you don't have to worry about burning your chocolate, making a mess with the chocolate, waiting for the chocolate to cool, you can control your chocolate-to-strawberry ratios perfectly -- it's a win win!

What's that you say? You don't have any cadbury chocolate mini eggs? Well, maybe you should have stocked up during Easter like I did... I hope you've learned your lesson. But lucky for you, (and me), Christmas Candy is coming soon!

 (and yes, I am fully aware of my mini egg problem.)

This Summer; An Update

So, this summer has been way busy! It started out the good kind of busy, full of fun and activities and trips and things... and then turned into work busy for the past like two months. Eesh. But nevertheless, it has been a great summer! And while I'm sad to speak of it in the past tense, I am getting very excited for the months to come. I love fall!

But anyway, since I haven't blogged at all about summer, here's a "quick" photo update. (I'm using the term "quick" loosely... this could get long...)

First, to kick off summer right, we went to the Happiest Place on Earth for 10 days! And stayed with Alysse and Chasten. And it was magical. There are a ton of pictures, but they've already been transferred off of this computer and onto the external hard drive, and honestly I am just way too lazy to go get it, and besides, they're already posted on facebook so... you can go look here if you want. There are a few that are still on this computer though, so I'll just post this one...

Amour.

Besides that trip, this summer has been made up of a lot of hiking...

Hiking to Battlecreek falls with Sean's sister Rebecca and kids. Here Sean and Dash are setting the pace.

At the falls...

Rebecca and Miley.

Such cute kids!

And we also did a lot of rock climbing!

Sean is very excited about rock climbing. Actually, excited is a huge understatement.

Starting to climb. This boulder in AF canyon was pretty tough...

... and pretty tall. Did you know bouldering means you don't have a rope? You just have a crash pad and a spotter and the routes aren't as tall. Except I still feel like this is pretty tall...

Me and my new rock climbing shoes. I like them quite a bit. I am smiling on the outside but am terrified on the inside because I have never just bouldered before (well, outside) and this one does not look easy. Turns out, it was not, and I made it maybe, um, five feet?

...But I am actually glad I didn't make it to the top, because once you do, your reward is to jump from the top onto this tree/log situation and shimmy your way down. This is like a good 30-40 feet up at this point. Um, call me a sissy pants, but no thanks. Sean of course made it to the top though, and managed to make it down in true non-sissy form.

This is at Maple Canyon, which we went to quite a bit this summer because we LOVE it! I just didn't bring my camera when it was just us two because, well, it's not a great idea to take pictures when you're belaying... We also went to Rock Canyon, but again, no pictures from that either.

There was the annual Thomas Family Reunion, complete with golf, shooting, duck races and rocket launching... Again, same situation as the Florida pictures, so click above to get to facebook if you so desire.

There were Fourth of July festivities! And again, a lot of fun with glow sticks (and my camera) this year.

Then there was a trip to Saint George/Vegas/Zion's with my fam:

I think this was called the Weeping Wall...

Little Mermaid at Tuacahn-- so cute!

Your family doesn't sacrifice a family member each vacation? Huh. Weird.

My family. :)

Some family rock climbing at Maple Canyon on the way home.

I'm pretty good at belaying.

Oh, there was a weekend camping/geode-hunting trip out by Dugway in the deserts west of Utah lake with David & Tami and nieces and nephews...

And also a road trip out to Colorado to see my good friend Sierra's wedding. Sadly, I don't have like any pictures of that though...


Well, those are some highlights of our summer anyway, me and blogger are fighting so I'm going to quit before I freak out. But one last thing to add...  there's a new member of our family! And his name is Ron Burgundy. Behold...

(Not our actual bike, but it pretty much looks like this. Only we have the extra seat on the back instead of the trunk right now and we ended up taking the windshield off.)

It's an oldie but a goodie that is supposed to run forever.  (It's a 1983 Honda GL650 Silverwing, so it's older than both me and Sean, kinda funny.) We were thinking about just getting a scooter but... for the same price, we're getting a lot more bang for our buck here. And it doesn't hurt that motorcycles are just a tad bit cooler than scooters...

So everyone, watch out for motorcycles out there!

Free Writing

I was just going through one of my old email accounts and stumbled upon a draft of an email from 2004. I'd forgotten that sometimes I would write emails to myself when I was needing to vent and didn't want the material to make it into my actual journal (you know, don't want my great-grandkids knowing my deepest darkest secrets), so a lot of this stuff is pretty melodramatic. Emphasis on dramatic, I mean, gee whiz 19-year-old Tiffany!

But... I did find one fun little gem.

See, also around this period in life, I was practicing "Free Writing" pretty regularly. It was something I'd heard about in a film class, I tried it, and I LOVED it. Basically, you sit down and without thinking, just start writing as fast as you possibly can, ideally faster than you can even think. It's supposed to free up your subconscious, and there were a few times that it actually helped me solve some problems by knowing how I really felt about things.

Other times though? It would result in absolute jibberish.

Back story: This came from a time when I was in a very confusing boy situation. (I do not miss those.) So here is my free writing from 3:30 a.m. on December 12th, 2004. (pardon the mis-types, I was trying to type as fast as I could.)

I am so mad at myself. I wish that I could just get away 

and visit somewhjere like Japan. I think it'd be cool 

cuz that where I am the best dancer In japans they walk 

around like this, and it l;ooks really funny. Als, who 

knows about drunk people these days. Do you think they're 

always drunk. Like maybe they're just h=aving some 

fireworks because of the shooting star. I domn't know 

if this willl even work on a computer, but maybe it will. 

I can type pretty fast, even thought I'm pretty much 

falling asleep, this girl will help us out. Wait== 

she doesn't exist. Odd... but probly she just didn't 

like Yoshi.

....????

Do I really think Japanese people walk funny?? Why would I type "they walk around like this" and not explain it better, what do I mean?!

What's stranger, is that did my subconsious already know that I would audition to dance at Tokyo Disney three years later? Cuz I'm pretty sure that thought had not crossed my mind until at least a couple years later...

And I didn't really see a girl, did I? What is that?? I'm pretty sure that I would remember something like that.


But seriously. Free Writing. You should try it.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2092165_tap-subconscious-through-free-writing.html

p.s. Here's a funny image of a free write I found... poor poetry-hating high schooler...