It's been a minute since I've written. Between the nesting and resting there hasn't been much time for writing. My mom has been here 2-4 days every week for the last month helping (and by helping I mean cleaning like a boss) around the house. You don't realize how much junk you have until you start tearing through everything room by room. I recently gave in and started watching Marie Kondo's show "Tidying Up" on Netflix. I haven't gone full minimalist but I am for sure viewing some things in my house differently now. Stuff we haven't used since we moved here five years ago is getting pitched or going to Goodwill and I feel pretty good about that.
A few highlights over the last month:
1. We finally ditched the couch from the 80s in our family room and got a sectional from Costco. It was on a really good sale and felt like a no brainer purchase. I LOVE IT. There is room for me to lay on the chase with pillows to prop my ever-swollen feet up in addition to Alex and both dogs. We'll have no issue adding a couple babies into the cozy mix now!
2. My best friend and college roommate my junior and senior year, Olivia, threw me the most beautiful 'twinkle twinkle little star' themed baby shower. She planned everything from Illinois, where she lives with her husband, and did not leave one single detail out. It was the most perfect day.
My counterpart from work and a few high school friends who live in the Dayton area were able to make it and the wives of Alex's friends who have become my friends over the years were there too, but when I looked around the room I noticed the majority of the women there supporting me were from my church family. I got emotional for a second thinking about how faithful God is. When I moved to Cincinnati I had zero [local] friends. My co-worker, Kim, became my closest friend in Cincinnati. Then I set her up with one of Alex's friends and they moved to Chicago and got married and lived happily ever after (you're welcome). When she left I thought well now what? And through Bible Study, Community Group, and singing on the Worship Team at RC3 God gave me the most incredible group of women to lift me up and walk with me in my faith journey.
I didn't take many pictures from the shower (Shame on me!), but here are a few I did manage to capture:
3. My District Manager team threw me a work shower at the end of February. They went with an elephant theme. One of my DMs' friends (or sister?) has a cricket machine and went to town on decorations. The food was brilliant, the center pieces, elegant, and of course the company was wonderful. My mom was in town helping at the house so she was able to come to the shower and meet my co-workers. I talk about everyone so much that she was excited to be able to put names with faces. I don't know who all did what but I know there were a lot of people involved to pull this off. The ladies in HR went in on the pack n' play and all the ladies of the Accounting Department got me my glider for the front room. I was overwhelmed by the amount of people that came and all the gifts. It was a beautiful afternoon, one I won't soon forget.
A few highlights over the last month:
1. We finally ditched the couch from the 80s in our family room and got a sectional from Costco. It was on a really good sale and felt like a no brainer purchase. I LOVE IT. There is room for me to lay on the chase with pillows to prop my ever-swollen feet up in addition to Alex and both dogs. We'll have no issue adding a couple babies into the cozy mix now!
2. My best friend and college roommate my junior and senior year, Olivia, threw me the most beautiful 'twinkle twinkle little star' themed baby shower. She planned everything from Illinois, where she lives with her husband, and did not leave one single detail out. It was the most perfect day.
My counterpart from work and a few high school friends who live in the Dayton area were able to make it and the wives of Alex's friends who have become my friends over the years were there too, but when I looked around the room I noticed the majority of the women there supporting me were from my church family. I got emotional for a second thinking about how faithful God is. When I moved to Cincinnati I had zero [local] friends. My co-worker, Kim, became my closest friend in Cincinnati. Then I set her up with one of Alex's friends and they moved to Chicago and got married and lived happily ever after (you're welcome). When she left I thought well now what? And through Bible Study, Community Group, and singing on the Worship Team at RC3 God gave me the most incredible group of women to lift me up and walk with me in my faith journey.
I didn't take many pictures from the shower (Shame on me!), but here are a few I did manage to capture:
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| GiGi's Cupcakes (& Cake!) for the win! |
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| Centerpieces. These took forever to take apart. haha |
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| Me & Kim :) |
For some reason I have a hard time accepting compliments or believing that I deserve things. When my DMs would ask what kind of food I wanted or if I had preferences on this or that I would always say "whatever is cheapest" or "whatever is easiest, don't make it a big thing". They obviously didn't listen to me and I felt like a princess being showered with all their love and attention to every little detail. My DM, Sarah, said "we did all of this because we love you!" Right to the heart. I love you guys too.
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| Jess was in charge of games. Since she knows I don't like games she did activities instead. Here is a diaper inspiration station and a headband/bow making station. So cool! |
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| The food - seriously divine. |
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| Sarah, Carrie, Me, Reginna & Jess. Sarah, Carrie and Reginna are three of the District Managers for our properties. Jess is the Property Coordinator that works alongside me in the office and will be taking over a lot of my responsibilities when I am on leave. Sara is our fourth DM. She operates out of our Kentucky market and was unable to make it to the shower. I know it killed her that she wasn't there, but she was there in spirit! |
4. Around 32 weeks my feet started to swell. The swelling was met with some pain on the outside of my left thigh and the swelling wasn't going down completely overnight. One night my feet and hands were on fire and I wasn't sleeping and I felt like I was just keeping Alex up so I went into the nursery and laid in my overstuffed recliner and just looked around the room trying to imagine my life in the coming months. Then I started googling my foot/hand symptoms and found all of this information on a liver condition that only presents during pregnancy. Nothing I read was like hey this is totally normal, stop panicking. I called my doctor the next morning and pretty much demanded to be seen. I got a 1:00 appointment that day and my doctor assured me that the swelling and itching was 100% normal and that this liver condition is very rare, and once again reminded me to stop googling my symptoms (whoops). He told me to get my feet up more and use benadryl gel and cortisone cream on my feet when needed. Those things helped but didn't completely get rid of the itching/burning sensation.
I was still wearing compression socks during the day at work which seemed to make the itching worse but I figured I kinda needed the compression socks to control the swelling. And then the cracking and blisters started and I realized that all along I had had athlete's foot and just didn't realize it. I had a lotrimin spray from a while back that I started using but it wasn't doing much. When the swelling and itching/pain became so much that I couldn't wear any of my shoes or stand for more than 5 minutes at a time without feeling like my legs were going numb I called my primary care doctor. I got an appointment for Thursday morning. Doc said it looked fungal and said to use a lotrimin cream. I started that Thursday night and it has already made a world of difference. My feet are still swollen after a full day at work but at least I don't want to punch anyone in the face anymore. What I've learned from the hemorrhoids and now this is that I let things go too long. I just think If I ignore this it will go away. And then I end up WAY worse than if I had treated at the first sign of symptoms. Oh well. Now I know, right?
5. Two weeks ago I had my 32 week ultrasound. Both babes have flipped and are now breech. Something I've never noticed during an ultrasound is that the computer shows you how big each thing the tech is measuring is measuring gestationally. Of course it's all an estimate, but it's a highly scientific estimate. After the ultrasound Alex was like "their bellies are measuring at 35 weeks and their legs are measuring at 34 weeks..." and so on and I was like "how do you know that?" and he said, "it said right there on the screen after she measured each thing". Next time I'll pay more attention. They weighed 4 pounds 5 ounces and 4 pounds 11 ounces, which is where they should weigh around 34 weeks, so I guess they are overachievers. She showed us all the organs again and their hearts look more 'heart' like than the prior ultrasound. She said they are both practice breathing which means their little lungs are working. Since they are breech we didn't get many good pictures but here is one of a little baby yawn :) So cute!
And here is me, today, at one day shy of 34 weeks:
I was still wearing compression socks during the day at work which seemed to make the itching worse but I figured I kinda needed the compression socks to control the swelling. And then the cracking and blisters started and I realized that all along I had had athlete's foot and just didn't realize it. I had a lotrimin spray from a while back that I started using but it wasn't doing much. When the swelling and itching/pain became so much that I couldn't wear any of my shoes or stand for more than 5 minutes at a time without feeling like my legs were going numb I called my primary care doctor. I got an appointment for Thursday morning. Doc said it looked fungal and said to use a lotrimin cream. I started that Thursday night and it has already made a world of difference. My feet are still swollen after a full day at work but at least I don't want to punch anyone in the face anymore. What I've learned from the hemorrhoids and now this is that I let things go too long. I just think If I ignore this it will go away. And then I end up WAY worse than if I had treated at the first sign of symptoms. Oh well. Now I know, right?
5. Two weeks ago I had my 32 week ultrasound. Both babes have flipped and are now breech. Something I've never noticed during an ultrasound is that the computer shows you how big each thing the tech is measuring is measuring gestationally. Of course it's all an estimate, but it's a highly scientific estimate. After the ultrasound Alex was like "their bellies are measuring at 35 weeks and their legs are measuring at 34 weeks..." and so on and I was like "how do you know that?" and he said, "it said right there on the screen after she measured each thing". Next time I'll pay more attention. They weighed 4 pounds 5 ounces and 4 pounds 11 ounces, which is where they should weigh around 34 weeks, so I guess they are overachievers. She showed us all the organs again and their hearts look more 'heart' like than the prior ultrasound. She said they are both practice breathing which means their little lungs are working. Since they are breech we didn't get many good pictures but here is one of a little baby yawn :) So cute!
And here is me, today, at one day shy of 34 weeks:
Well that's probably a long enough post for the moment. Stay tuned for more in the coming days (gotta write everything out now in case these little misses decide to make an early appearance!)
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