Tomorrow

Tomorrow my baby turns 1.

I'm so excited and heartbroken all at the same time. It's been an incredible year and the love I have for Sweet Pea is more than I ever imagined. It's wonderful to see the world through her eyes. She has a fabulous personality and loves everyone. Sweet Pea makes friends with everyone when we go out - just like her grandpa. She is the love of my life (and RoadTripDaddy's). Sweet Pea is learning new things every day and constantly amazes me. I can't wait to see what the next year brings but there is part of me that wants her to just stay little. And it's that part that's sad that her first year of life will be done tomorrow.

It's crazy to think what I was doing this time last year:

• I can't believe a year ago today I was running around JC Penney trying to find just the right curtains for our bedroom and front room.
• I can't believe that I spent the day worrying if RoadTripDaddy would like what I had picked out.
• I can't believe I was worried about what my commute would be like the next day. (We had a week of snow at rush hour - twice a day - and I was averaging 2 hours each way on my commute.)
• I can't believe that I had cooked any meals to freeze and eat when we got home from the hospital. But I was so convinced Sweet Pea would meet her due date or be late that I assumed I had at least one more weekend to make something - or bribe RoadTripDaddy or my dad to make something.
• I can't believe I assumed the pre-term labor I had gone through (and sent me to the hospital with) didn't trigger more initiative for me to be ready.
• I can't believe I didn't realize that the next day would be one of the best days of my life.

I can't believe my baby is going to be 1 tomorrow.

Help for Haiti

This weekend, I saw news coverage for the first time of Haiti. I have been trying to avoid the images because I can't handle the pain and suffering right now. Please take a moment to donate in any way you can help the people of Haiti. This is a country without a net. While I had a crappy start to my weekend, I feel blessed to have my family and friends safe and healthy.

You can click on any of the following links to donate:

Red Cross

Clinton Bush Haiti Fund

UNICEF (1-800-4UNICEF)

Direct Relief

Yele Haiti

Partners in Health

Red Cross

World Food Program

Mercy Corps (1-888-256-1900)

Save the Children

Lambi Fund

Doctors Without Borders

The International Rescue Committee

Care

William J. Clinton Foundation

Meds & Food For Kids

Feed the Children

Habitat for Humanity

If you can't donate financially, please consider donating a pint of blood. My friend is running her Third Annual Blood Drive. You can find out about it by clicking here.

One day this will be funny...

But at this point, I'm tired and crabby.

We are in Michigan this weekend for Sweet Pea's first birthday party (round 1). We are having a party here today for all my relatives then another party next weekend for the rest of my family and our local friends.

This weekend has started with a few hiccups that are just getting on my nerves. On Friday at work, I was assigned a task that needed to be completed by Tuesday. Not a big deal right...except I can't get into the system and the internet goes down at our office so I waste the entire morning trying to work. Keeping in mind, we have Monday off I know that I will be working this weekend. The weekend we are out of town celebrating Sweet Pea's 1st birthday. Before I leave work, I save my work on my computer and head home.

At home, RoadTripDaddy and I get ready to leave while Sweet Pea dances while her music table plays song after song. I decide to bring our home computer with us this weekend as it's much lighter than my work pc. I figure I can work in the car on the drive in and get as much work done as possible. I hope that I can finish everything before we get here. Saturday morning I wake up realizing that I didn't email the document I need to myself and it's instead sitting on my work computer at home - an hour away.

I spent an hour before we leave desperately trying to access the system to run my report. No luck...so several text messages and emails go out begging for some help. I get the report - just a crucial column from a work friend - so I still can't get my work done. Awesome.

When we got to the hotel, we are informed that while we do have a reservation it's just not for this weekend. It's for next weekend. Thankfully this isn't a problem as there are rooms available. Another small snafu but after a long car ride and my general frustration with having to work, I'm not amused.

Did I mention that we are sharing our hotel room with my parents? Oh yeah, and we are sleeping on the fold out couch. Nothing like a crappy mattress and paper thin sheets to make for a comfy night. There's a blanket too that I'm sure is a hand me down from a local hospital. So this morning when Sweet Pea woke up at 3:30am Central Time and finally fell back asleep with her feet jammed in my ribs, I decided that it's not that bad to be awake and got out of bed.

So I'm sitting in the lobby of our hotel wondering just when I can get breakfast around here. Here's hoping I can take a nap later this morning before the party...

This will be amusing some day, but right now I'm tired, crabby and hungry.

This morning, I saw news coverage for the first time. I have been trying to avoid the images because I can't handle the pain and suffering right now. Please take a moment to donate in any way you can help the people of Haiti. This is a country without a net. While I had a crappy start to my weekend, I feel blessed to have my family and friends safe and healthy.

You can click on any of the following links to donate:

Red Cross

Clinton Bush Haiti Fund

UNICEF (1-800-4UNICEF)

Direct Relief

Yele Haiti

Partners in Health

Red Cross

World Food Program

Mercy Corps (1-888-256-1900)

Save the Children

Lambi Fund

Doctors Without Borders

The International Rescue Committee

Care

William J. Clinton Foundation

Meds & Food For Kids

Feed the Children

Habitat for Humanity

If you can't donate financially, please consider donating a pint of blood. My friend is running her Third Annual Blood Drive. You can find out about it by clicking here.

Delurking Day!

Today is Delurking Day, a day where you I encourage you to “delurk” or say “hi,” especially if you don’t normally comment. Yes, it’s a blatant ploy to get comments. I’m okay with that. I know it’s awkward to comment when you really have nothing to say, so I’m asking you to delurk (or just comment as you regularly do!) and tell me, who were your first blog reads?

Delurking Day, hosted by Greeblemonkey and Rude Cactus

Wordless Wednesday

20 weeks

This was Day 5 (I think). I'm not in my flickr account right now and I'm not in the mood to find out. This is the first present RoadTripDaddy bought for the new baby. He brought this and a card home the day after (I think) we found out I was pregnant. It's the only thing we have bought for the baby. I am nervous that if I start shopping for the new little one I will go overboard. And that's probably not a good idea. Also, I would feel like I would need to get stuff for Sweet Pea too. And she will be a year old in two weeks (as of 4:29 this afternoon). So, I think we are set on presents for the moment.

Back to the topic of this post - yesterday was the 20 week mark for this pregnancy. Half way there. I can't believe it. At this point in my pregnancy with Sweet Pea, both RoadTripDaddy and I were convinced we were having a boy. And everyone was all to willing to give their opinions on the matter as well. Because I was carrying like I was having a boy. Or so I kept being told. The week of my ultrasound last time people kept asking me whether I thought Sweet Pea was a boy or girl. And I repeated over and over what I believed, that I was pregnant with a boy. I didn't tell people that I had changed my mind. That I was sure we were having a girl. See, we had a name set for a boy. And we had stopped looking at names - but part of that was that I was just so sick of repeating names over and over again trying to figure out how my child could be teased with each name I liked. I announced to RoadTripDaddy at 18 weeks that it didn't make sense to keep looking at names. We had the appointment set and there was no point in looking for a girl name too unless we were told something different at that appointment.

Going back to whether I thought we were having a boy or girl, the week of my ultrasound I became convinced (although I didn't share this with anyone) that we were having a girl. Because I was totally unprepared for having a girl. Because I didn't have a name for a girl. Because I thought RoadTripDaddy wanted a boy. Because I thought I wanted a boy. So on that day, during the ultrasound as we talked with the ultrasound tech and looked at the different parts of Sweet Pea's little body, we saw Sweet Pea's arms and RoadTripDaddy mentioned our little one becoming a pitcher for the Cubs. The technician looked scanned down further on Sweet Pea, looked at us and said our little one will be more likely waving her arms at a Miley Cyrus concert than pitching in a major league baseball game. Tears filled my eyes. I looked back at RoadTripDaddy worried he would be upset. And there were tears in his eyes. But he wasn't upset. He was happy. He squeezed my hand and we continued the ultrasound. I wiped away the tears and knew that we would be okay. I knew that it didn't matter if we were having a girl or boy. Sweet Pea was healthy and we were halfway to meeting our little girl.

My 20 week ultrasound is this Friday at 3pm. We will once again be finding out if the little one will be a boy or girl. I'm convinced we are having a girl. And having panic attacks that it will be a boy and I won't have any clue what to do. But truthfully, as long as the baby is healthy I will be happy either way.

Happy New Year!

Well, here it is. My first picture of 2010. Sweet Pea was crawling around my in-laws dining room. She had us all laughing as she crawled around making her presence known by "yelling" with each move. We had a great New Years Eve and a wonderful weekend at my in-laws with some of my husband's siblings. We were missing his younger brother, but we did get to talk to him just after midnight. Hope you all had a great time ringing in 2010.