17 Weeks

(Ian has an obsession with putting a different animal in this picture each week.  This week it was the parakeets, Charles and Marie, but you can't even see them!  It drives me nuts.)

Such an eventful week and such a late post, sorry!  I have been sick since Sunday (hence my "look" in the pics above) and I just haven't been able to get off the couch to blog.  But today I'm back at school and feeling just a bit better so I thought I'd try and fill you in on last week's events.

This week I got a BIG surprise, another new baby - a Toyota Prius!  We have been considering this car for over a year and if you know me, you know that I have issues with making commitments, especially on big purchases.  I can't ever decide, everything is always too much money and I go back and forth and end up ultimately never making a decision and forgetting about what I wanted in the first place.  The same thing happened this time, so Ian decided to make the decision for me.

The problem is that everything I have, I have bought myself, nothing was ever given to me.  Sure, my parents help out once in a while but most every big purchase that I've made, I've done most of it by myself.  So, when it comes time to fork over the cash for something, I can't commit and I get too nervous about it to do anything.  And, it isn't just with big purchases!  When I buy clothes, more than half of them get returned because I talk myself out of them when I get home.  And, usually when I do get something new, I hate it for awhile because it's new and I'm not used to it or I have buyer's remorse for buying it.  Ian knows this all too well and so this time he just used his spontaneous personality (totally opposite from mine) and went out and made the decision for us.  We needed a new car - something reliable for baby, something I could drive (since we only have one automatic) and something with another backseat since his truck doesn't have a backseat for a car seat.  So, we definitely needed it.

After school on Wednesday I stopped by a house my friend was looking to buy, she wanted me to see it so I headed over.  Ian told me that after he got home, he had to rush off to somewhere far away (I can't remember what city he said) to pick up a bird cage for his classroom, so that he could bring Einstein (see my previous post) to school with him during the day (remember, he is a Special Education teacher).  I was mad because he was heading out to make another crazy Craigslist purchase, in the middle of traffic, and I thought it was silly because if the people wanted to give him a cage, they could wait until he could come at a time that was convenient for him.  So, he left, and I got home and started dinner.  He called an hour later and told me to come outside because he needed help lifting the cage (and I thought to myself, "what the heck am I going to do, I'm pregnant!") but I went outside anyway and in the driveway was the prius, the one we had test driven just a couple of days before but walked away from, for the thousandth time.  I couldn't believe it, I cried and was so surprised, it was seriously the BEST surprise I've ever gotten in my life.  Usually no one can surprise me, I'm too good at guessing, but this time he did it and it was wonderful!  I got to drive him back to the dealership to get his truck, and drive my car for the first time, and it was seriously awesome!

I wanted a prius because each year I teach a 9 week environmental unit to my 11th graders and each year I feel like a hypocrite driving my Toyota 4runner to school every day and paying $55 in gas each week to do so.  We wanted a car that was environmentally conscious, something that would save us money on gas and something that had a lot of room for a car seat and storage for road trips.  The prius was just the obvious pick and after watching An Inconvenient Truth every year, and watching the documentary Fuel this past month, we just had to do it.  And, as you can see, it is saving us on gas already!

 

(Are you kidding me?!!!!)

So, now I have two new babies and I couldn't be happier.  I would have never made the decision to get the car, and Ian knows that, and I love him for making it for us.  We can afford it, I just wasn't ever going to be ready for a car payment, but I am happy now that we have a new car, no matter what.  (P.S. We bought the car from a reputable used car company, Le Sueur, in Tempe, Arizona and we loved their no hassle approach to sales.  The company is family owned, Steven sold us the car in a t-shirt and shorts and they were really relaxed and great.  However, I have some issues with their tax/length of loan options presented to Ian and the fact that the car didn't come with a spare/jack - that we had to later pick up.)

And this happiness has caused me a lot of guilt this week.  Ian has been working hard on fixing little things around the house and we just hired landscapers to finally fix up our front yard (and it's done, see below).  I have a new car, a baby on the way, our house is coming together and the best husband I could ask for - and I am feeling so unbelievably happy and lucky.  And it's a weird feeling, after feeling so unhappy and so unlucky last year, to feel like this.  I feel like at any moment it could all be taken away, or guilty that I am so happy and so many others are not.  I feel so lucky to have a little lemon growing inside me but know what it's like to have that taken away, and I know that so many women are dealing with this, even now, and it makes me feel guilty to feel so good.  Isn't that strange?

(While they were clearing out the "rock" that we never really had and leveling out the yard.  They made 9 trips to the dump, there was so much dirt and just weird rocks in our yard.)

(We were constantly mowing these bits of grass over the past 8 years, it was so annoying for Ian to have to do all the time and we got many warnings from the city about it.)

(You can see our non-existent rocks and junk that we had in our yard.)

(Weird tree stump that never went away and always tried to grow but was too damaged to make anything good.)

(After leveling out the yard, looks so much bigger.)

(Yay, river rocks were delivered!)

(Laying down the weed barrier and rocks.  Putting in drip system, no more watering our plants/trees ourselves!)

(Done!  Looks SO good!)

(They gave us a new curb by the alley and since it was new we HAD to carve our initials in it, and the lemmy!)

This week a new friend found out the sex of her baby and another good friend of mine lost her baby at 5 weeks, all on the same day.  All in one day someone got good news and someone got bad news, and here I was, in the middle, happy for one and so terribly sad for the other.  My friend who lost her baby, communicated with me through the whole process, wanting information and to know what to expect and as I was telling her, I was overcome.  It was like I was re-living my hospital visit, around this same time, last year as she was going through it.  It affected me so much, I carried her hurt on my heart, and I couldn't shake it for days.  I was so so sad for her, I still am, and that sadness and being able to relate never goes away.  All of the stories I hear, all of the advice I give, it is always with me, I will always be able to relate.  I will always know the feeling, and it was hard hearing about her experience and feeling as though I was living it right along with her.  Our love definitely goes out to her and her husband this week and for months to come.  You never recover from something like this, you just make peace with it and learn to keep moving forward.  Staying positive, leaning on each other and leaning on family and friends definitely helps too.

On another note, as I was listening to the baby with the doppler multiple times in one day (I told you, I was sad for my friend on that day, I just had to!) I felt the baby move, I mean really move.  I think it was because I had the doppler on the baby, and could hear the heartbeat really close, like the baby was right there and then when the heartbeat moved, I felt the baby move.  It was like my mind connected the movements I had been feeling (but didn't know they were baby) to the heartbeat movement sound and all of a sudden, they were the same.  It was the coolest thing!  It felt like a hand just grazed me from the inside, just swept across my tummy.  I am sure I've felt some movements since then but haven't paid much attention because I'm still new at this, but nothing like that one.  I think that seeing the baby move on the ultrasound next week will do the same thing for my brain, connect those movements (popcorn popping) I feel inside to what is on the screen and it will be magical, I can't wait!

On Sunday my mom and I went to visit my nani and grandpa's grave site.  We sat, wearing nani's hats, and talked to her about our lives, told her how much we missed her and just sat their arm in arm looking up at her their names there on the wall.  I truly believe that my nani sent us this little lemon, that she got to Heaven, saw our baby's spirit and said, "get back down there, what are you doing here, they are waiting for you?!"  My nani watches over all of us, she watches over the lemon and keeps her/him safe, I just know it.  I thank my nani for our happiness and pray to her every night, to keep us all happy and healthy.  It was nice going there with my mom, sitting with her and laughing; it was just like that last night in the hospital, before she died, when it was just us.  I can't wait to have a daughter/son like my mom had my nani and I have my mom - to carry on the relationship I have with her, she is truly my best friend, just like my nani was hers.

(Oh my gosh, you HAVE to forgive these pictures this week!  I was so sick in all of them, and that's why this one isn't enlarged like the others - ugh!)

So, that's about it.  An eventful week, I got sick (and couldn't take anything so it was the worst), saw my mom, went walking again at the zoo with the twins and Ian, got a new car and experienced some happy and sad events along with my friends.  I can't leave this post without also mentioning that today is February 1st and I am SO excited about it.  In a week from today, we will get an envelope with our baby's sex in it, we will get to see our baby again and know that he/she is healthy and SPRING is right around the corner and then - SUMMER!  So today, I am extremely happy and grateful that winter is over and that baby time is only a week away!  Wahoooooooo!