First off, many, many thanks to all the folks who have expressed excitement about Baby Ellery Krahl and reading about our pregnancy. Kris and I are very lucky to have such a great group of friends and family and we plan on abusing your kindness to no end once the baby arrives and we need babysitters, cleaners, cooks and general shoulders to cry/vent/freak out on.
Also, I need to share the fact that we call Baby Ellery Krahl "Tickey." This stems back to the early days of our pregnancy when I told Kris that the baby was the size of a tic tak (thank you google). Despite the fact that our baby grew out of that stage in a week and moved on to fruits and veggies (currently it's the size of an eggplant....so much better than the week it was prune), Kris continued to call the baby Tickey after the tic tak and it just grew on us. I strongly hope that we drop the habit once the baby arrives and has a real name, but this is coming from the couple who call their cat Munchie, Muchachi, Munchkin, Munch, Bubbie, Bub, Buble (his actual name is Beckham and neither of us can recall the last time we said that name out loud without referring to David or Posh..err, Victoria). We also call Kris's brother Kyle, Karl. Apparently names mean very little to us.
With that out of the way, I thought I would share with you how preparing for Tickey has cast a glaring spotlight on the total insanity of my personality. Last weekend Kris and I were lounging around and I commented how bizarre it was that I went through 6 years of school without having a concrete idea of "what I wanted to be when I grew up." I knew my strengths, but never really drew a concrete line between them and a profession. Now that I'm a social planner, I can't believe that I didn't figure it out. I've always been a planner. If I wake up in the morning and don't have plans, I literally get a headache by the early afternoon. I HAVE to have plans. My mind does not stop planning. At work, I plan the work of others - that's my actual job. At home, I make meal plans, weekend plans, budget plans, etc. I just don't stop planning.
After I got over the 18 weeks of morning sickness, I realized that we had a lot of planning to do. We had to make a birth plan, a budget plan, a plan to get a new car, a plan to decorate a nursery, a plan to buy an enourmous amoung of "stuff." It's the part where "plan" and "buy" come together in the same sentence that makes my life extra tricky. See, not only am I a compulsive planner, but I'm also a shopoholic. If I didn't come up with a PLAN for buying things, our house would quickly turn into a giant nursery filled with every baby product I found. So I made a plan.
I researched every "list of stuff you need for a newborn" I could find (and there are a lot). I started to panic about the number of different opinions we were hearing. A trip to the local baby store to learn about strollers suddenly made us feel as though we were in the market for buying a Land Rover when we'd never even ridden a bike. This is when the researcher in me came out. I researched every stroller, I watched every youtube stroller video, I read stroller blogs, stroller reviews, and compared stroller heights, weights, baskets, brakes and more. I finally settled on a stroller that cost nearly as much as our rent. The same thing happened with the crib. I suddenly realized that I would need to quit my job and set up permanent residency in front of the laptop if I was going to invest this much research in every baby product. This is when I found the Baby Bible, aka the Baby Bargains book. It told me everything. EVERYTHING. Now I have a spreadsheet with the product, price and where to get it. Yes, that's how insane I am.
People say that if you're laid back, you'll have a laid back kid. As much as I try, being laid back is just not in me. Kris IS laid back, so lets hope the baby ends up somewhere in between. I'm not sure he can handle living with two of me. Then again, the baby is due dangerously close to my birthday, making us both Taurus. Honestly, Kris knows this, and I think it terrifies him.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
"The Important Folks" delayed this blog
I can remember setting this blog up sometime during my first trimester. Kris and I were holding onto the biggest secret and I could barely wait to start blogging about our first pregnancy - but we wanted to make sure we'd told "the important folks" first. At first, the list consisted of our immediate family, but once we'd told them we realized that our family consisted of more than just mom's, dad's, brother's, aunts and uncles and grandparents. At 12 weeks we shared the news with Steve, Emily, Krysten and Jonathan and a trip to Kingston a few weeks later for a conference gave Kris the opportunity to tell John and Mike. A planned venture out to the Sugar Bush to tell Val and Dennis and Lauren kept getting postponed until we finally managed to catch up with Dennis on his birthday and by then I was 20 weeks along. I broke the news to Janelle a few weeks later and by that point, had succumbed to telling "my boys" (Kyle, Brandon and Greig) via email (I'd much rather have done it in person - but trips to the UK and Vietnam aren't in the budget and Kyle Brown can only be tracked down after dark - a time I rarely see anymore). In the meantime, we'd shared the news with co-workers and friends in Guelph - "the important folks" and more.
So now here I am - 25 weeks a four days pregnat (or 6 months) and writing my first blog entry. Perhaps its better that I'm writing now, rather than during the first 18 weeks when I maintained a daily schedule of throwing up, sleeping and struggling to make it through a day of work. Everyone told me the morning sickness would end after my first trimester, but weeks 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 proved them all wrong. Since week 18 I've been feeling better -minus a trip to the ER where I discovered that not only do I have a round ligament, but I'd pulled it. I'm sporting a nice sized belly and if you're lucky enough to see me in person and give it a rub, you'll probably be treated to a solid baby kick.
Things we know about the baby - the baby is very, very active. During an ultrasound at 22 weeks the technician told me that she'd been in the business for 20 years and our baby is one of the most active she's seen. This led to me googling "does active baby in womb mean active baby when born?" (trust me, this is not the strangest thing I have googled since becoming pregnant - in fact we joke that our baby will be raised in part by google). Our baby has all the right parts - fingers, toes, four chambers in the heart, two sides of the brain, chubby cheeks, little nose and round belly. Our baby is expected to make its grand entrance on May 9th (Mother's Day!).
Things we don't know about the baby - the sex. Unsure of whether we really want to know (ok, Kris does not want me to know because he thinks I'll go shopping crazy and he is very right), we asked the ultrasound technician to write the sex on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope. We do have names picked out, but have only shared those with our mom's. Trust us, they are awesome. Clearly I grew up with a unique name and Kris grew up with a common name (although spelled in a unique way), so we've weighed the pro's and con's of each and come up with names that are unique, but will not require spelling 8 letters every time they introduce themselves along with an explanation of where the name came from (not that I'm bitter!).
Things that I do not enjoy about being pregnant - lack of maternity fashion. I've been forced into buying a wardrobe worth of maternity clothes since I have to dress semi-professional at work and would rather not spend my weekends in sweats. Thyme Maternity and Old Navy just don't cut it. I cannot wait to get back to shopping at R&W Co. and Jacob. Every now and then I force myself to fit into a non-maternity shirt, but it doesn't always work out. Example - today I wore a sweater and was greeted by a co-worker with "Really Randalin? Horizonal stripes?" I also do not enjoy the fact that I cannot sleep on my stomach. I am a stomach sleeper and so sleeping on my side has proved to be nearly impossible. At this point, I don't have much of a choice but to try and so this means waking up 40 times a night to try and get comfortable while dreaming of days gone by where I slept comfortably on my stomach.
Things I like about being pregnant - honestly, there is nothing all that fantastic about being pregnant. I am convinced that women who say they love being pregnant are all liars. There are, however, some cool things. Like this morning I woke up to our cat sitting on my stomach, meowing at me to get out of bed and play with him and while he was standing there, the baby started kicking at him. That was pretty awesome. I also enjoy shopping for baby and thinking of nursery ideas. Nursery blogs and baby websites have taken over my celebrity blogs - now that is saying something.
I'm going to try to update this blog as much as possible. I want to share the experience with those who are far away and who I don't talk to all the time, and I also want to have a record of this pregnancy so I have something to remember this time in my life by. Perhaps I'm a little late in getting it going, but it's better late than not at all.
So now here I am - 25 weeks a four days pregnat (or 6 months) and writing my first blog entry. Perhaps its better that I'm writing now, rather than during the first 18 weeks when I maintained a daily schedule of throwing up, sleeping and struggling to make it through a day of work. Everyone told me the morning sickness would end after my first trimester, but weeks 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 proved them all wrong. Since week 18 I've been feeling better -minus a trip to the ER where I discovered that not only do I have a round ligament, but I'd pulled it. I'm sporting a nice sized belly and if you're lucky enough to see me in person and give it a rub, you'll probably be treated to a solid baby kick.
Things we know about the baby - the baby is very, very active. During an ultrasound at 22 weeks the technician told me that she'd been in the business for 20 years and our baby is one of the most active she's seen. This led to me googling "does active baby in womb mean active baby when born?" (trust me, this is not the strangest thing I have googled since becoming pregnant - in fact we joke that our baby will be raised in part by google). Our baby has all the right parts - fingers, toes, four chambers in the heart, two sides of the brain, chubby cheeks, little nose and round belly. Our baby is expected to make its grand entrance on May 9th (Mother's Day!).
Things we don't know about the baby - the sex. Unsure of whether we really want to know (ok, Kris does not want me to know because he thinks I'll go shopping crazy and he is very right), we asked the ultrasound technician to write the sex on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope. We do have names picked out, but have only shared those with our mom's. Trust us, they are awesome. Clearly I grew up with a unique name and Kris grew up with a common name (although spelled in a unique way), so we've weighed the pro's and con's of each and come up with names that are unique, but will not require spelling 8 letters every time they introduce themselves along with an explanation of where the name came from (not that I'm bitter!).
Things that I do not enjoy about being pregnant - lack of maternity fashion. I've been forced into buying a wardrobe worth of maternity clothes since I have to dress semi-professional at work and would rather not spend my weekends in sweats. Thyme Maternity and Old Navy just don't cut it. I cannot wait to get back to shopping at R&W Co. and Jacob. Every now and then I force myself to fit into a non-maternity shirt, but it doesn't always work out. Example - today I wore a sweater and was greeted by a co-worker with "Really Randalin? Horizonal stripes?" I also do not enjoy the fact that I cannot sleep on my stomach. I am a stomach sleeper and so sleeping on my side has proved to be nearly impossible. At this point, I don't have much of a choice but to try and so this means waking up 40 times a night to try and get comfortable while dreaming of days gone by where I slept comfortably on my stomach.
Things I like about being pregnant - honestly, there is nothing all that fantastic about being pregnant. I am convinced that women who say they love being pregnant are all liars. There are, however, some cool things. Like this morning I woke up to our cat sitting on my stomach, meowing at me to get out of bed and play with him and while he was standing there, the baby started kicking at him. That was pretty awesome. I also enjoy shopping for baby and thinking of nursery ideas. Nursery blogs and baby websites have taken over my celebrity blogs - now that is saying something.
I'm going to try to update this blog as much as possible. I want to share the experience with those who are far away and who I don't talk to all the time, and I also want to have a record of this pregnancy so I have something to remember this time in my life by. Perhaps I'm a little late in getting it going, but it's better late than not at all.
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