February so far

Last night Andrew and I used the movie tickets my mom gave to Andrew for his birthday (five months ago). We went out to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which was a terrible idea because I cried the whole time but a wonderful idea because it was such a great story. It follows the life of a little boy who lost his father in the World Trade Center on 9/11 for about a year or so and was absolutely heart wrenching.

My parents watched the girls for us and they got to watch a movie at home. Rachel's always excited when I leave because she thinks other adults will always "definitely say yes" to a movie. She picked out "the all the birds of a feather movie," which the general public refers to as Rio. After that my mom spoiled the girls by reading a full chapter and a half of Harry Potter. Usually one chapter is my limit for a night.

We have a visitor from North Carolina right now—he's visiting his daughter, who is at BYU, on his way home from a business trip. He arrived last night just as we were sitting down to play a game of Ticket to Ride. We never did get our game in but we did get to listen to Reid and Karen and our visitor reminisce about North Carolina. They speak so fondly of it that it nearly makes me nostalgic and I've never lived there—the closest I've been to North Carolina was a short stay in Atlanta, Georgia, with my dad's cousin.

I don't think I would mind if we ended up heading out to Durham for school.

Yesterday I also had another doctor appointment for the baby. I set the appointment time so that Andrew could come but then a meeting came up at BYU and he ended up rushing to try to make it. The office was so efficient yesterday, though, that I was finished by the time he got there—less than fifteen minutes after the scheduled time for my appointment. The last time I was there I waited in the lobby forever and read two chapters of my book. Yesterday I got through less than two pages before they called me.

Next time Andrew will have to make it for sure because we'll be doing our 20 week ultrasound, at which point we'll likely be revealing the gender of this little baby.

I had suggested to Andrew that we let it be a surprise but he was so totally not on board with that idea. He said, "If you want to let it be a surprise you can have it be a surprise but I will be finding out." So we'll be finding out—I suppose it's a surprise whenever you find out. And it will give us more time to come up with a name, which is something that I've been trying not to stress out about since there are so many other things to worry about before we'll need a name.

Anyway, yesterday's appointment went well. I got to listen to the baby's heartbeat, which is always fun though I always feel awkward when it seems the doctor's looking at me to gauge my reaction. I don't ever respond to things very well but yesterday I was happy and relieved to hear the baby's heartbeat. Sometimes in the early hours of the morning I think I can feel the baby moving but I can't feel it all during the hubbub of the day. The pregnancy doesn't feel entirely "real" yet but at the same time I'm rather stressed out because of it—not that I'm not happy. Because I am. I just also happen to be incredibly stressed out about it.

I have near-constant nightmares. Pregnancy dreams are the worst, but add to that the fact that I spotted on and off for the first twelve weeks of this pregnancy, in addition to the sheer number of friends in the past year who have either miscarried, had their babies far too early and/or had their babies pass away shortly after birth, or wound up in the hospital in a bad way only to end up on bedrest for the duration of their pregnancy, in addition to (SPOILER ALERT:) the lovely miscarriage scenes I recently got to witness on The Help and Downton Abbey...well, it's turned me into a bit of a worry wart.

I can tick a list of people off on my fingers that I don't envy: Sara, Emily, Crystal, Lynette, Karley...I could go on. And that's just within this year. I also have a number of friends—probably a great number more—who've had babies with few complications (minus a few emergency c-sections): Amy, Aubrey, Rebecca, Tracy, Rachel, Amber, Heather, Julia...and a bucket load of others.

But I suppose, as Gabe on The Office so eloquently said, this time in our life is "the perfect blend of love and horror," as "things can go so wrong, or so right."

Besides those nightmares, there's the question of where we'll be when the baby's born. We still haven't decided if it would be better to move before or after the baby is born. Either way we swing it, it will end up being that we'll have to move mere weeks before my due date or just weeks after the baby comes. I can't decide which sounds worse—thoughts?

Hopefully we'll find out where we'll be moving around the same time we find out the gender of this baby. Knowing those two things will help us feel more certain about the future. Maybe.

Today I have a practice for an Indonesian dance I'll be doing with a group from BYU—a bunch of people my mom knows from Gamelan. It's called Saman and according to UNESCO it's an "intangible element of world cultural heritage." The entire dance is done kneeling down and so I though it wouldn't be much of a workout but it is. 

I suppose I should stop blabbing and make my kids do things like get dressed and eat lunch so that I'll be ready to head out when I need to...