Truths to Read Before Having a Baby

Since becoming pregnant I have had quite a few friends, and even a few strangers, ask me about childbirth and being a mom - I am certainly no expert in either and am definitely winging it when it comes to pretty much everything I do except eating. That, I am an expert in. I know what I want and I know when I want it. I want some soup right now and I'm about to go make it to eat whilest I write this.

I think they come to me because they want the truth. The nitty gritty, real truth that they know they will get from me. One thing I am NOT is perfectly classy. One thing that I AM is frighteningly unfiltered. I have seen lists like this before but thought it would be fun to make my own. So here are the things to know before having a baby...or before having a momentary lapse of memory and having another :) (I'm talking to you Mrs. Duggar mom of 2,132 kids).

You are always going to be answering the same question. All day long. 
Brooks is about 19 months old, so he can say about 20 words and a few phrases. I was extremely lucky to have passed high school math and have a professor who allowed me to pass the college math class "math for non math majors," so I don't by any means expect Brooks to be a genius. But I also want to encourage him to learn new things. So when learning to talk we would constantly point to things and say "What's this?" Boy has that backfired on me. I counted about a week ago and by 7:44 a.m., Brooks had legitimately pointed to different things and asked the question "What's this?" 77 times. This is not an exaggeration. This is God having a jolly old time up in Heaven laughing at me as I slowly melt into a pile of mommy mush.

You will be cleaning up and changing some questionable things
I don't know if people would agree to creating a family if they knew the things that were coming out of the back end of their little miracles. I have changed some diapers and legitamately wondered if something had died. I watch everything that Brooks eats, and we eat pretty healthy, so I have no idea how some strawberries, cheerios and yogurt somehow forms to be a death bomb by 10 a.m., but they make it happen. When you breastfeed, their poops are somehow pretty much without smell. I guess this is God's way of saying congrats on giving them the mommy juice. What comes after, however, is 2 years of changing someone's poo and not getting anything in return.

You may not shower for days at a time. Washing your hair is now a luxury. You're going to look like a hot mess most of the time
You can just forget looking nice a good majority of the time. That ship has sailed. I am really, really lucky if I have on clean work out clothes, remembered to put on deodorant with my pregnancy mush of a brain, and by some Grace of God Brooks hasn't touched me so I remain unsticky. I love fashion. I really love clothes, accessories, and feeling like I look nice. I love to dress up and go out and socialize. If I'm going somewhere where I want to look like a decent human being and not a mom alien, I get Brooks fully dressed and almost out the door and remain completely naked until I know all I have to do is get him to the car. I've been fully dressed, hair done and been puked on. This is no longer my first rodeo. I've considered putting him in the garage to get ready until we leave but this seems a little harsh and there are some sharp things in there. If I decide to blow out my hair I am saying that there is going to be 20 minutes where I cannot directly watch his actions so I am just asking for a box of cheerios to be turned upside down or for him to strip off his diaper and poop in my closet. Yes this has really happened, and yes, it will probably happen again. I really like to wear my hair straight and this is apparently a consequence. I have actually at times gone a few days without a shower because I'm so sick of the consequences of leaving an 18 month old unattended in my locked room for 7 minutes and 29 seconds, but that's no good either. The hubby starts to sleep inches and inches further from me in bed every night and my skin starts to itch. That can't be good.

You are always going to be sticky.
I'm literally always sticky. Not like oh that scotch tape left some residue on my pointer finger, poo. Like, I just rolled around in Cinnabons covered with syrup and icing and walnuts for an hour and now I have to walk into Target and expect people to take me seriously. I knew babies were messy. I am the oldest of five kids. I was not oblivious to this notion. I just had no idea how bad it was going to be. Brooks also had terrible reflux, where they have a hard time keeping down their (liquid gold) breast milk, so he pretty much puked 30-40 times a day for his first entire year. Nobody can prepare you for this: yes, I love my child, but I just had no idea that almost every free and spare moment of my day would be spent peeling gummies off of the back seat of my car or cleaning up puke because he ate the 5 dove chocolates (and the foil) next to my bed while I was changing clothes (yes you could say this one is on me since I eat chocolate in bed. Woops). I don't know how Brooks gets as sticky as he does sometimes. I admit, I am not one of those moms walking around with a fanny pack of hand sanitizer or baby wipes, but I bath my child. At times I have picked him up and wondered if he found a vat of lollipops to bath in. Kids just have an ability to get really, ridiculously sticky.

Your body is never going to be the same again
Sure go ahead. Try that cleanse from Walgreens. Oh you've decided to pick up running? That's neat. Oh these are things that you think are going to get you back to the old you? Oh I see you. You can stop. Just stop there. Sit back down on the couch and enjoy your chick fil a the way God intended. Your body is never ever ever going to be the exact same. Ever. When things stretch that way, they can't just unstretch. It's over. That body I complained about in college? I would give up ANYYYTHING to have it back, even for a week. I would probably spend the whole week going to the grocery in my bikini, but it would be a glorious week. Your boobs are going to be very sad from now on. First they'll get ginormous. You'll think "Wow this is fun!" Then when you're done nursing, away they'll go. And all you'll be left with is sad pancakes you have to scoop in to your 34A bra you bought in the Juniors section of Wal Mart. My belly button seriously needs botox. It became an "outie" with Brooks and never really went back to it's former cute self. It just half hangs out now, as deflated as my boobs about 20 inches above. In between lies a stomach that screams "I try to work out but chocolate rules my life." Sometimes, when you drink that magic amount of wine (2 glasses for me), and you have on shiny lip gloss, and you're in a dark restroom at a dirty Mexican restaurant, with a margarita under your belt, you'll think "there I am," and you'll feel you're back. But you're not. Too bad I can't have the one margarita feeling all the time.

How many kids do you want again?
Disclaimer: I do love my little nugget. He was all worth it :) And having a child makes your husband even hunkier! I just like to joke about all the stickiness and loose belly buttons.

Happy Father's Day

Though about 3% of me wants to write a really sweet and gushy post about Father's Day and my amazing husband, and dad, I really can't seem to muster the strength. I have about 10-12 blogs I try to keep up with and most seem like they are so sweet and loving and I do sometimes wish I was more there. Alas, my feelings towards men unfortunately grow deeper in bitterness each day I am pregnant. Before you go feeling really sorry for my husband, don't worry, he will have a really great Father's Day weekend :) I made homemade banana bread bars with browned butter frosting for the weekend breakfasts, I will let him sleep in all weekend only to be welcomed with hugs kisses and coffee, but inside, I'll be raging.

This all started with my first pregnancy with our son Brooks, who is 18 months old. I'm sorry I just don't enjoy pregnancy. Whew I said it. I do feel incredibly lucky to be pregnant. I am aware it's a miracle not awarded to just anybody and I feel thankful God gave me a body that can carry a baby. But for 300 days of pregnancy, I am cranky. And I grow (scarily) crankier as it goes on, especially towards the male sex. I just don't understand why we couldn't go halfsies on this pregnant stuff. Like I carry one, you carry one, and keep alternating. Seems pretty logical to me.

Sometimes I will read an article or run into someone who brings up the most insane notion I've ever heard - that pregnancy is sexy. Um, cough out my coffee that I feel guilt for having while pregnant yet still continue to have. What!? There is nothing sexy about this entire time. Insane that I probably made a liver today? Yes, that's true. Incredible that God has allowed me to have a beautiful child and is giving me another? Yes. I mean I guess it's a Miracle, I can get on board with that. But sexy? I must be missing something. I can't go 10 minutes without wanting to itch the living daylights out of my boobs. Which are already heading towards their size D milk jug whoppers they will be when baby comes.

When I sit down y boobs rest on top of my growing stomach. I look more like an orangutan and less like the gorgeous goddess that I am as the days go by. I feel lucky that I produced enough milk to feed a small country with my son Brooks. But that blessing is coming back to haunt me in spades with number 2, as I've already started to leak breast milk. I'm 19 weeks pregnant. That means if I breastfeed the baby for a year, there will be liquid coming out of my boobs for at least a year and a half. Um I'm sorry, nobody wants that. I only want more wine going in, less breastmilk going out. And it will literally be like 2014 before that switch is fully made. And by then my husband will be making weird winks at me about having #3 and I will have forgotten how terrible pregnacy is and he will catch me in a confused red wine fog and I'll probably get knocked up again. Sweet fancy Moses.

Don't get me wrong, I love my husband and little boy so much, this is all worth it. It just makes me feel better to compain about it. A lot. Even if it is only to my Intel Celeron Emachine today.

If you want to see me really, really riled up, catch me in a moment with anyone asking me absurd pregnancy questions or making insane statements. A few I have heard:
--"Woah, you really got big there." If you are going to u say this, just go ahead and block any private parts you don't want me to hit.
--Stranger at Starbucks: "How many weeks are you?"
Me: "16 weeks."
Stranger: "Wow you're big!"
Me: "At least I'm pregnant and have an excuse" (No I didn't really say it I thought of it in my car and almost got back out to say it but it wouldn't have had the same effect.)
--Old woman I got stuck in line with at grocery and couldn't escape from: 20th invasive statement in 3 minutes...."Please tell me you are going to breastfeed?"
Me: "Yes you'll probably see me putting soup in my cart in aisle 8 with a baby attached to my boob in 5 months, I lost all connections with the fact that my boobs should be hidden with my first child and breastfeed in public like it's the newest Olympic sport I'm trying to get to catch on."
Cut to poor 89 woman looking shocked.

My husband has to deal with none of this and I just have a really hard time with that. He just gets to prance around knowing "his boys can swim" with a built in designated driver for 9 months, while I suffer through the gas, itchiness, and sheer horror of pregnancy only to face the nightmare that is childbirth and the aftermath. Oh the aftermath. I remember looking at my stomach in the hospital room after they had taken Brooks the day after I gave birth. It looked like a waterbed. Literally, exactly like a waterbed. With like 20 lemons in it. I'm certainly no perfect body but I love to run and enjoy eating healthy, and here I was staring at what can only be described as a disaster of a stomach. My boobs were amazing but it was hard to get excited about the insant boob job because they hurt so badly and they kind of lost some of their glimmer sitting on top of the waterbed. I had pushed so hard with Brooks (I'm sure I yelled "get that thing out of me" at least 10 times) that my eyes were completely blood shot. Literally, ALL the white around my eyes was pure red for 2 weeks. And Zac looked exactly the same. I'm not sure where the fairness factor comes in here people.

Another depressing time is when you have to admit what kind of fruit the baby is really resembling, like this week, I think I'm a kumquat or something, yet my stomach is definitely resembling more of a cantaloupe baby inside, and I have no explanation. Except maybe that I had about a third of the homemade banana bread bars with frosting right after they came out of the oven. Whoops. Happy Father's Day honey!

Church and Food Porn

This blog will only be half serious :)
Being that I grew up Catholic, a religion I personally view to be one that is somewhat private and lacking in evangelism that other religions tend to encourage (keep in mind this is only my idiotic opinion), these next few paragraphs are going to be very foreign for me, and unlike me. However, I just have this feeling that I need to say them.

I had a wonderful, amazing church in Texas. Of course I don't think I appreciated all it offered until I left Texas, but in retrospect it was awesome. It had a mom's support group with a Christian based message every other week where they watched your child (and not just watched but loved on, sang Bible songs with, etc). It had an array of weekly Bible studies to choose from during which they again, watched your child. Did I mention all this Christian based child watching was all free? This church was led by an extremely talented Preacher whose message always seemed to be geared directly at me. He was engaging, funny and made me look forward to service. If you live in College Station you should really try Central Baptist!

Since we moved here we have been sassy about church. We tried one very close to home that we weren't sure was the right fit and then basically played church hooky for more weeks than I care to admit. Then the friend who has been so amazing to me since I moved here, Jessica, told me about a church she was going to called Calvary Sawgrass. We decided to try it this past Sunday. I dropped Brooks in the arms of a woman I could instantly tell was a Christian and would love on my son while I went to pray. Is there anything better??

Within 5 minutes of being at service, I was tearing up at the wonderful music, and I could literally feel God hug me, and maybe even whisper "welcome back." Is this the pregnant hormones? Well, maybe a little. But God loves us so much and just wants a little of our time every week. If you don't attend a church, or don't attend a church you love, I really encourage you to find one. It is honestly amazing what he can do to lift you up when you attend and give of yourself. I admit, I find it hard to go to church sometimes. My husband works a lot of hours and I am selfish of his time when he has off. When I'm alone and he's in football season, I blame it on getting there with my son by myself. But man, it helps me in every aspect of my life when I do go.

This first half of this blog post today was very hard for me. I am not the type to talk about my relationship with God. Just not my style. But I really felt a calling from him to write about this and encourage others to find a church if they don't have one. I appreciate it if you just read every word. Below I found a verse from the Bible about finding the right church. Below that I continue on my blog with other musings :)

Romans 16:16 ESV
Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.

With that being said, though I am striving daily to become a better daughter, mother, and wife for God, I must talk about a fact. When I am pregnant, food becomes my porn. Oh. My. Gosh. Food is all I have. If you come at me during meal time, I will literally come back at you like a spider monkey.

I am an eater. Can't really remember a time when I didn't love food. But being pregnant brings my relationship with food to another level. Before we may have been best friends? We have known each other forever, we know everything about one another, our likes our dislikes, we love another. When I am pregnant, the relationship changes. One might say....we become lovers. I lust for food. I think about food pretty much all day long. I think about food in my car, at the gym while I am lifting, at the park when a mom breaks out a snack pack. I think about my dinner when I'm eating breakfast. I start sweating with excitement when I know I'm going to eat a certain food I love. It's lust. And food is my porn.

With food as my lover, I begin to eat things I normally do not eat. You see I have a few vices in life that I love for which pregnancy creates a huge hurdle. They are: running, wine and coffee. I had complications with my first pregnancy making running long distances off limits. We all know nobody likes a drunk preggo lady so wine is off the shelf for 10 months. I do have coffee in moderation, but feel immense guilt the entire time, and I do not get to have my venti starbucks jet fuel that makes me even more on crack than I already am. All I'm left with is food! So you better believe that I'm going to be eating some sassy things.

About 2 weeks ago I took my little boy to Target to get a Little Tikes basketball hoop to play with and saw ground beef mini sliders on sale. They expired the next day and I'd have to make them that night. My biggest worry was that it was 3 p.m., how would I make it until 7 p.m. when my hubby returned home to eat these things!? I LOVVVVE a good burger, and since these were little mini sliders, I figured they were basically diet burgers. If you know me, you know that I eat mostly pretty healthy, so the image later that night of a gal in a gross old t-shirt and my husbands plaid boxers frying up burgers with the grease hitting me was quite a site. This is what pregnancy does to people! I still have dreams about those sliders and know I will have them again. To be honest I really don't know if I can type about them and not have them tonight, so Zac if you're reading this, we are having mini burgers tonight!

For some reason I also use pregnancy as an excuse to resort back to a habit that I really got carried away with during my first pregnancy: eating in bed. If you want to feel totally gross, then try eating a taco salad in bed. You know you have a problem when you put on a special "eating in bed shirt," because you know it will be covered in ground beef and sour cream when you are done and you don't want to get your jammies all gross.

What naturally goes along with food being my number one priority during pregnancy is an unfortunate side effect mostly for my husband: sometimes needing a certain food RIGHT THIS SECOND. I always used to think those people who posted their food on facebook were pretty gross. Um, hi I don't need to see your half eaten tacos from Chuy's but thanks. Now, I find myself immediately thinking - oh gosh, if I don't get my hands on a taco in 20 minutes, the world may end.

I'm still in that stage where the baby bump is not really big enough to be cute but it's big enough to notice and have people just assume I've been hitting the beef sliders too hard. As much as I loathe the weight gain, I'm actually looking forward to having a baby bump that is definitely without a doubt a baby bump. I'm 5 lbs up and climbing and if I make those sliders again tonight, I just might pop.

Pregnant Pause

Now that Big Mama is finally in her 13th week I am ecstatic to be able to annunce that I am with child! We are thrilled that our little man Brooks will have a friend to play with because I'm sure this Mom gets a little boring day after day.

As thrilling as this is, of course I had to round out my 1st trimester the classy way: partying in South Beach! I got to attend the Bachelorette party of one of my very best friends 2 weekends ago, and spent 3 days partying my buns off with an awesome group of girls, and some of the classiest people this side of the Mississippi. And by classy I actually mean not classy at all. Which was perfect because I fit right in.
First off, it just happened to be a Lesbian and Gay Pride convention, so within 1 hour of my arrival to beautiful South Beach I felt compelled to tell my unborn baby why we were around such a colorful crowd. That really set the weekend off just right for what was to come.

When you are pregnant the first thing that comes to mind for most people is probably not a weekend of debauchery in a city that can only be described as the Vegas of Florida. I had spent my first trimester mostly really, really tired and was in bed with a handful of dove chocolates or a bowl of ice cream most nights, so I was a little bit worried that I would a) not be able to keep up with the night life, or b) find that I still loved it so much I would have to give in and fly to LA to be Snooki's new sidekick.

I will say that it was really hard to watch everyone in the entire city enjoy cocktails while I went wild with my water with extra lemons, but I had a blast the whole weekend. We saw Latin Dancers, accidentally stumbled on to a completely lesbian  bar and were welcomed with open arms, went to the hottest night club in South Beach, and finished the weekend off with a really, really graphic drag show. Overall, I think my unborn baby has an idea that mama is not Mother Theresa.

One of my very favorite things to do is to dress up and go dancing, so the night at the club was probably my favorite. I wore insanely impractical shoes, a sequin dress that fit only because I forced it onto my growing body, and more make up than I have probably worn collectively in the last 3 months. We danced the night away until 2 am and that would have to go down as my favorite night. However, the night did not end as planned....I headed home about an hour before the rest of the crowd with a good friend of mine, Sara, and despite my complete sober-ness, was so concerned helping Sara out of the cab that I left my phone in the cab! This is absolutely the worst feeling in the world, and I didn't even have that wine buzz that makes you sort of laugh about it. I called the main cab company to see if there was a way to track it down and without a specific cab number that I had gone in, the lady gently told me that "there was no way on earth we are finding this phone."

I will say that there is something about being in a nightclub, 100% sober, and pregnant, that feels just a smidge trashy. I caught eyes with quite a few girls that I could tell had been "overserved" and just wanted so badly to go hug them and say let's go home! I think the mom instincts begin to kick in on all accounts. At one point our group of girls attracted a young man who began to dance with us, and I turned to my friend Sara and asked "who is that?" She turns to me and slurs "I don't know, but he's beautiful." To which I died laughing, because let me tell you he was not beautiful! At that point I did wish I had beer goggles on because life is just a little more fun once in awhile through foggy beer goggles.

One interesting thing that comes with pregnancy that I find pretty hilarious is that it is like people are wearing beer goggles towards you. And with that comes the fake compliments. Towards the end people feel so bad for you as you waddle around they start to tell you what I call flompliments - fake compliments that they make up because they feel so awkward staring at you. It includes things like "you're glowing," (um, wow this chic is sweating up a storm), that you are "carrying it really well" (wow, had no idea what an extra 75 pounds would look like on you), or the best, "you're about to pop!" (I can't believe this child hasn't exited your body, I'm freaked out that you are going to get even an inch bigger, stop growing, yowza). I was told with my first child that I was about to pop from about 7 months and on, so this one gets really fun.

It doesn't end with strangers though, even my husband feels so bad for me he tells me fompliments too. They include things like, "your arms still look really fit" (but the rest of you scares me, scares me to the core), "you're still moving around really well" (it puzzles me how you're getting around, you gigantic cow), or the best/most awkward "you can't really tell from behind" (so turn around because I need to visualize you normal!). Even though I am really not showing much yet the fompliments started with the hubby last night. Laying in bed together and cuddling, Zac proceeds to tell me that I smell like "one of our old apartments." Ummm. Pregnant Pause. We lived in a gross apartment when we first got married and a not much better duplex after that, both of which smelled vaguely of frat parties, so I'm not sure what to take from this. The truth is my hubby is darling and so sweet and I had put on perfume that I used to wear when we first got married (Coolwater- the kind you buy at Walgreens when you're in the 8th grade, yes I wore this until about 2 years ago, when I majorly upgraded by buying Juicy Coutoure at TJ Maxx), so he meant that I smelled like when we first got married, but the whole thing had the air of the fake pregnancy compliments about it.

My friend the mailman

Today I get to head down to Miami for one of my dearest friends' Bachelorette party! It's going to be so fun and I have been looking forward to this for weeks!

Since moving to Florida my social schedule hasn't been exactly packed. Not that I was such a party animal before in Texas but....well actually I kind of was. Brooks and I were involved in the church, he went to a preschool, I had so many sweet friends, great neighbors, and I was in Junior League, so we had something to do pretty much every day. It's such a big change when you move somewhere, and after all the hustle and bustle of unpacking boxes you are just sitting there starting at your 17 month old and I swear he's thinking, "Mom where did all your friends go? This is kind of boring."

Right when we moved into our house, I kind of started a bad habit of ordering things online just so the nice mailman would ring my bell and I would have someone to talk to. This is just a tad embarrassing when you realize what you're doing. But Mike the Mailman is so friendly! What's even more sad is I know everything about his life story thanks to some supplies for the Bachelorette party this weekend, my J. Crew swimsuit, Brooks' new Toms shoes and a few books from my grandpa. Mike is a middle aged mailman that's anything but boring. He actually competes in body building competitions on the weekends and boy would you know by looking at him in his uniform. Yowza! (Lonely, very lonely and bored housewife). Actually, I find his uniform a little bit distracting because it is literally skintight on his body, like a joke Halloween stripper mailman uniform. I racked my brain for ideas on how I could get a picture of this but I concluded that a) he would realize how creepy I am and we could no longer be best buddies and b) that really wouldn't be fair to my good friend, and at this point I only have like 3 friends here so I really can't jeopardize anything.

Another thing that has happened as a result of my becoming a reclusive cat lady is that I have started becoming increasingly and alarmingly invested in my TV shows. They are, after all, my extended family. I watch Guliana and Bill with Guliana Rancic from the E! news show, and their struggle to have a baby is played out on the show, and when they announced they were pregnant via surrogate on the episode last week I was a bawling gross mess. I actually called my husband AT WORK and interrupted him to tell him the news. He says "Ummm...that's great babe. Ok I'll be home soon." Probably said to himself "Note to self, buy my wife friends, this is a new low." You know how in the 50s and 60s your grandmother wouldn't even dream of bothering your grandpa at work, it was just unheard of? I'm calling up there to tell my husband news on my favorite TV shows! Yikes.

My final side effect of being friendless for the beginning of this move is Wendy. Oh Wendy! Wendy is my best friend at the grocery store. She's about 132 years old (seriously I think she's at least 98), and we are somehow on the exact same grocery schedule, so we chat at least a few times a week. Either that or Wendy is stalking me and waits in her car for me to go into Publix and then "just happens to be there too." Wendy has already taught me a few things about couponing, how to check if the avocados are ripe for eating, and how to make a homemade bath treatment for Brooks' diaper rash. This vixen is hilarious and I can't help but wonder if I'm turning into her. First, she travels with a fanny pack and I can't help but think that's just practical. I've been behind her in line and she whips out her coupons and checkbook like she's on Price is Right and the clock is ticking down. Her hands are free to expressively explain to me how as you get older you may lose your flexibility but not your sex drive. Like I said, Wendy is a vixen. (Any single male readers in their 80s living in Weston, FL? Contact me and I will hook you up with Wendy, you won't regret it).

I know that I will eventually make great friends here who I will be devastated to leave someday, and I really have already made a few great ones. I am one of those people who will probably wear you down so much with my cookies or cake pops, or oversharing of information or incessant calls about how Guliana is pregnant via surrogate, it's easier for you to just say we are friends than to fight it. When I went to a first lunch with one of the sweet girls who I have become friends with through our husbands working together, I was so excited I talked her ear off for 2 1/2 hours and I'm pretty sure I told her about my vaginal labor. Like, details. Sorry Jessica!!

Well I should wrap this puppy up. There's a new episode of Guliana and Bill I need to watch before leaving for Miami, and I think Mike is dropping by with the fanny pack I ordered!