money back guarantees...

i should mention that we got the credit for the baby furniture back...it posted to my account on friday, so as long as there are no weird issues with the "investigation", we are whole again.  such a relief, and honestly, everything really worked out for the best.  yay!

the lafayette shower.

all i can really say at this point, one day later, is wow.  what a whirlwind, fun weekend!  i certainly didn't take enough pictures (i never do, that's jb's department), but i will try to do a little bit of justice in describing all the activities that went on.

friday, jb and i hit the road in a very empty car around noon.  the pets were sad to be staying behind on this particular adventure, but there was no way we were going to be able to manage all the festivities and them too, so we hired a housesitter.  more about that later.  the drive to lafayette was uneventful.  we stopped for some food and saw this awesome spider (we are currently a little obsessed with spiders around here, so you'll have to forgive), so i hopped out of the car to take some close-ups.

when we got into town, we unwound for a few minutes and then headed to my aunt and uncle's house for a little family gathering.  it was great - delicious food, good company, and a relaxing evening.

the next morning was shower time.  the boys headed out to play golf, and mom and i left for terri's house around 9:15.  i think my face is starting to look pregnant, but i figure there are only 9 or 10 weeks left and it had to happen sometime, right?

anyway, terri's house is just gorgeous and it was decked out with cute decorations and delicious food.  10 of my mom's (and my) friends hosted the shower, and they really went all out.  i felt like it was a scene out of southern living magazine (my pictures again do not do justice to everything).  since nibs' identity is a mystery, they went with a gender-neutral ABC theme that i loved.  everything was pink, blue, and yellow, and it was just perfect.  oh, and grits and grillades were served.  i probably could have eaten all of them by myself, but i saved a little for the other guests.....

(ABC blocks in ice sculptures on the main table)

(candy bottles and decorations around the house)

(more ice sculptures - so cool...haha puns!)

(m&ms that say 1st born on them)

(the super-hostess action team, from left: danette, miriam, karen, kakie, clo, elita, lolo, terri, elizabeth, and paula)

(my new homegirl yola kat, n's 9 week old daughter.  i wanted to steal her)

(flower arrangements with the ABC block theme)

anyway.  the whole morning was a blast.  i loved seeing so many people i don't get to see enough of, and everyone was unbelievably generous.  nibs will be very very well taken care of.  

saturday after the shower, mom and i ran around town getting a few things done.  one of the highlights was stopping at lolo's to see she and a.  amelia, a's daughter, was napping, so i didn't get to kidnap her this time, but i'm plotting to steal her away when we see them again in a couple of weeks.  such a sweet, beautiful baby (and no surprise with a mama like amy....).  

saturday night was my uncle pit's 60th birthday bash.  the party was at mazen, the same restaurant where jb and i had our rehearsal dinner before our wedding, and it was a party indeed.  my uncle is quite the icon - i felt like i was related to a kennedy while we were there.  of course, it was a blast to see several of my cousins, and even more people i haven't seen in years.  and the food was tremendous, as it always is everywhere you go in lafayette....

sunday morning we started loading everything up in the car, and man was it loaded.  mom made a phenomenal breakfast of corn grits, fresh fruit, eggs, bacon and sausage, and biscuits.  gram came over and it was a perfect way to wind the weekend down.  

we hit the road about noon, thinking we'd be home by 6 and have plenty of time to hang out with the pets, unload everything, and get to start putting stuff away and playing with all the new baby things.  not so much.  right after beaumont, we hit a traffic jam like you've never seen.  it took us almost two and a half hours to make it about ten miles.  we found out (when i rolled down the window and asked some random man) that there had been a chemical spill around 4 a.m. on I-10.  such a bummer!  we finally made it to a detour and drove around the spill to get back onto I-10, but we didn't make it home until after 8.  jb was a total champ - he drove the whole time - but it's not so fun when you realize you've averaged less than 30 mph for the first half of your trip.....

when we got home, the dogs were overwhelmed with joy.  it's so cute how much they miss us.  

our housesitter karma is just not great, so we were dismayed to see that the girl we'd hired (who had references and whom we'd met and everything) in all likelihood had blown our pets off on sunday.  etta had peed in the kitchen twice, they had no food or water in their bowls, and etta had also started to get into a couch cushion.  fortunately, nothing that was irreparable, just disappointing.  i checked on pippa's bowls, and she had tons of food and water, which was the first sign that something might be amiss.  that cat doesn't miss a meal for anything.  we started searching around the house for her, to no avail.  i guess she got out at some point when the housesitter was over on saturday.  long story short, the housesitter claimed she had seen pippa inside on sunday morning, so we put food on the front and back porches and called her and then just hoped she'd show up at some point in the night or morning.  she's not good with being outside - it makes her crazy - so we figured we would just have to wait it out and pray.  at around 2:30 this morning, we heard her yowling at the front door.  jb tried to let her in, but i guess another neighborhood cat was around, so she scampered off and we were unsuccessful, but glad to see she hadn't ventured too far away.  the whole night was pretty sleepless despite our big weekend and our long drive.  this morning, jb went outside and found pippa crouching in a bush, so she is now safely back inside and has been napping all day recovering from her adventure.  i think we may be done with housesitters for good.  

so that brings us up to speed, i think.  we haven't even tipped the iceberg on getting stuff unpacked and set up, but i did go through a few things and take a few pics this morning.  everything is just soooo cute - i feel like such a girl geeking out over all of it.  i'm sure i'll post more pics as i get stuff situated, but for now, here is a little preview of some of nibs' new cool goods.  

piggy bank - very important for our college-bound baby.

bouncer - called a life-saver by many, i'm hoping it's the same for us...

the cutest cloth diapers in the world, courtesy of mom's work children.  can't wait to see that cute little tush in all these colors.  also, ABC lamp that matches the room perfectly (still not sure how that worked out but it's awesome).  

a book of all the cute stuff i'm going to sew for this kiddo - thanks amy!  

i wish i'd taken a picture of this when i unwrapped it, since this does not do it justice, but this is nibs' carseat, courtesy of my parents.  inside it are items from my childhood that are just too precious - newspapers from the day i was born, blocks my mom and i both played with as children, the outfit both my brother and i came home from the hospital in, my first baby gift, etc.  not pictured are the diary my mom kept for the first year of my life (let's just say my personality emerged very early), and the photo book of four generations of women in my family.  needless to say, unbelievably special.  

thanks so much to anyone who reads this blog who was there this weekend - y'all really know how to make a gal feel truly blessed.  

spinach and quinoa lunch treat.

this is a recipe from my friend a who got it from clean eating magazine.  it's sooooo good and light and filling.

- about 1/2 cup of quinoa, cooked
- 1-2 cups of baby spinach, raw
- walnuts
- 1 apple, cut into bite size pieces
- chicken sausage
- olive oil or some other fruity vinaigrette

pile everything together in a bowl and sprinkle with the dressing.  i like to let it chill in the fridge for a couple of hours.  eat.

klutz.

this morning feels like we may eventually have days that are below 100 degrees in texas.  i don't know how long that feeling will last, but it is glorious right now.  overcast, breezy, and only about 78 degrees...but i'd say it feels like a solid 76....

anyway...i got up and made lunch this morning (i'll post the recipe because it's incredible), but we don't have tons of food in the house, so breakfast didn't happen.  because i'm a sucker for a bagel, i decided to stop at einstein's on the way to work so i could grab a bagel and decaf to go with my fruit bowl.

let me just interject that i am not a graceful person.  i never played sports, so i never learned to be coordinated in that self-assured manner that so many people are.  or maybe i was just lacking that particular natural gift and that's why i never played sports, but i digress....

back to einstein's.  i order my bagel and coffee, they hand me my cup to go concoct my own warm milky decaf treat.  i am holding my keys in my left hand, the same hand i use to pull the spigot, with my right hand holding the cup beneath it.  as the cup gets to the full point, my keys suddenly become animated and fly out of my hand, straight to the bottom of the scalding hot coffee milk i've just made.  awesome.  dump out coffee and keys.  wipe off keys and cup and counter.  re-commence coffee-creation process, making sure keys are safely in back pocket for round two.

after procuring my bagel, i go to get back in my car.  as i'm putting the ill-fated coffee into my cup holder, it magically ejects several sprays across my belly.  did i mention i'm wearing a white shirt today?  of course i am.  super awesome.

the rest of the breakfast eating experience went off essentially without a hitch, but it did serve as a valuable reminder of my true nature, that of the super klutz.  i drop things, bump into things, and generally flop quite a bit.  this has gotten worse with the pregnancy, as you might expect.  my body is larger and fits into space differently than it did at other points in my life.  i don't think it's possible to count the number of times per day i drop my keys.  on friday, i dropped them in a parking lot while carrying random other stuff.  i bent down to pick them up and my whole body just sort of toppled into the side of my car.  such an audrey hepburn move, you know.  fortunately, it was not a real fall and my shoulder took the dull thud of the collision, rather than some other part of my body.

i'm wondering if they make a contraption that allows you to strap your baby to yourself, just in case my butterfingers don't disappear when nibs is born.  if not, i have a feeling i'm just going to sit in one place until someone is available to supervise me....

hob knobbery.

so the furniture situation has not been resolved as far as the money we spent at usa baby, but things have progressed in the acquisition of furniture department.  after we got the letter saying they were going out of business, and after i emailed asking for a refund check and got an automated "contact your bank" reply, and after we read the article in the paper about the sheisty dealings of this place, we foraged craigslist for some gear.  have i mentioned in the past how much i love craigslist?  i really do.  i got my first sewing machine there, our tent for camping, and other stuff; and we've gotten rid of loads of stuff we didn't want and gotten money for it.  it's genius.

anyway...we found a diaper changing table and a chest of drawers thingy on there for a great price, and the people who were selling even offered to deliver them to us.  success!  they dropped them off on saturday afternoon and the stuff is in really great condition.  they had painted the knobs on the bureau pink, and we figured we could find something with a little more personality, so we headed to anthropologie and found 4 different pairs of knobs that i think turned out really cute.

the diaper changing table isn't the most exciting piece of furniture ever, but it's cute and functional.

as for the crib, a woman my mom works with has sooooo generously offered a crib that she has to us.  it's brand new, with a brand new crib mattress, and nibs will be the first baby to sleep in it.  we are really so overwhelmed by how well this has worked out, and how supportive everyone has been.  so now, all that's left is to figure out the glider/rocker situation and keep praying that we get our money back.  but at the end of the day, this is a much smaller problem than what many people face, and it looks like we will have a place for a baby to sleep, which is great news.  it's really helped me to get some perspective and be grateful for how good we have it.  i'll post pictures of the crib after we pick it up this coming weekend.

other than that, we've been busy trying to stay cool in the demon heat of august.  our house doesn't really stay cool when it's in the 100s every day, so falling asleep is kind of annoying for me these days, but i have a feeling the pups are fighting it even more than i am.  ollie has fur like a husky, even though it's shorter than that, and he just lays around waiting for fall.  his most recent spot is in his crate (he and etta share a crate, but he absolutely loves that thing and hangs out in it any chance he gets), upside down.  it's really cute, but i have no idea how he finds it comfortable.

i've also completed another sewing project - 2 throw pillows for our couch.  i had sewn a few last summer but did a pretty shabby job with cheapy fabric, so it was time for a refresher.  these were made from some fabric jb picked out and also included my first ever attempt at putting in zippers (which i taught myself how to do and actually succeeded!).  i think they turned out well, and i'll probably do a couple more in the coming weeks - they are soooo much easier when you have a pillow insert instead of stuffing with the poly-fill stuff.

so i guess that's it for now.  we head off to lafayette for my first baby shower this coming weekend, and we are super pumped.  though louisiana will not offer any respite from the heat, it will be awesome to see family and friends...and i'm sure i'll partake in some delicious food, which never hurts....nibs is moving and shaking these days, especially when we go to the movies.  we're getting super curious about what s/he is going to be like, and especially what gender s/he is.  less than 11 weeks to go!

garbage and gratitude.

sometimes in yoga, we do a little exercise where we stand in a circle and symbolically throw all of our garbage into the middle of the room, into an imaginary fire pit.  our garbage can be really abstract things like fear or really specific things like that thing that woman said to me at work today.  i've always thought the whole thing was a little cheesy and contrived, frankly.  i mean, lots of stuff in yoga can be, but on the whole it balances out with the really helpful techniques and exercises we do.

yesterday, i had a lot of garbage to cast into the imaginary fire pit.  i'm not sure i was done casting, as a lot of it is still on my mind, but i just got some great news and i'm thinking there may be more to the expulsion of negative thoughts and energy than i originally thought.

one of the things i threw into the pit was the 3-hour glucose tolerance test i had to take yesterday morning.  i had failed the 1-hour screening test last monday, which completely took me off guard and left me feeling anxious and inept for the week until this second test.  as my mom says, you can rationalize everything and quote a zillion statistics, but until you have the results in your hands, you're still going to worry about it.  i worried off and on all day, alternately convincing myself that i definitely had gestational diabetes (no need to be taken by surprise again), and berating myself for not being positive enough (think something good will happen and you will it to happen and all that). at yoga, i tossed the whole thing in the pit.  or, i tried to. it was still weighing on my mind a little bit, but i at least felt mentally prepared for either outcome.

so, i passed.  and therein lies yet another reminder to me that everything works out, one way or another.  i'm very relieved.  and grateful.  and on to the next item i'm throwing in the pit.

yesterday, we also got the news that the store we bought all our baby furniture from is bankrupt.  lots of other random things with that, but the short story is that they won't be fulfilling our order, and we are just hoping that they will refund the money we paid them already.  at this point it's mostly hope with a little wait and see.  we've filed a claim with my bank, and i've sent some emails over to the place, so i guess we'll know what's happening at some point in the near future.  a bummer all around, but fundamentally just some more garbage to toss out of my mind.  and with that, i am just going to think that it will all work out, and if it's a problem that can be solved with money, it's not really a problem.

there are a few other garbage-y items i need to expel more thoroughly, but it's mostly internal stuff i think everyone goes through on the precipice of a major life event.  i think this negativity expulsion might need to be more of a daily practice than a weekly one, so i can fully embrace all the really really awesome stuff that's going on.

mary had a little lamb....

so morbid, but we ate lamb last night.  and it was delicious.  as i think i've mentioned, i've been a little lazy when it comes to kitchen duties these days.  thank god my husband is an awesome cook.  anyway...i decided to whip something up, and it was tasty!  here is the recipe (kind of a modified version of something i found in real simple and other recipe sites online):

lamb:

- 1 lb. ground lamb
- 1/2 cup bread crumbs
- kosher salt and pepper
- scallions (i used about 4 or 5 but not much of the green parts)
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
*mix together in a bowl and form 12 mini-patties/balls.  place on foil-lined baking sheet and broil for 8-12 minutes, flipping once.

tzatziki:

- greek yogurt, plain
- cucumber, seeded and grated
- dill (fresh is best but i didn't have any and it was still good)
- garlic
- lemon juice and lemon zest
- kosher salt
*mix everything together - add more yogurt to affect consistency.  i threw ours in the blender but it came out too liquid-y, so i'm not sure what the solution is for that.  i've also read you can strain the yogurt through a cheesecloth so it's thicker, which might have helped.  regardless of the liquidiness, it was still super tasty.

anyway...serve the lamb with whole wheat pita, tzatziki, hummus, and feta.  it was light and perfect for a summer weeknight meal.  and we had leftovers for lunch!

**quick note to those who have commented about the lafayette baby shower - i would love to see any and everyone, but totally understand the travel restrictions.  we invited the out of town cousins hoping everyone might be coming in for uncle pit's 60th birthday party.

doctors appointment and weekend update.

this was a good weekend.  according to some web sites, i am now in the third and final trimester.  woo hoo!  and also, holy crap.  i have this little countdown app on my iphone that tells me we have 87 days left, and that is about the craziest thing you could ever tell me.  i feel like we have SO much to do, and it's almost paralyzing just thinking about it.  but, all in an exciting, fun way - just totally crazy.

anyway...friday night we went to an mba friend's house for some grilling and some euchre.  we brought half of one of the watermelons we grew and tried it grilled, per a recommendation from some friends.  it was interesting - i think next time we will slice it a little thinner and see how that works, but it's definitely a different way to eat watermelon.  saturday was yoga for me and swimming for jb, followed by dog park and an afternoon birthday party.  i got to eat hot dogs twice this weekend, so i consider it a success (i know they're sorta gross, but i really have been craving hot dogs for a lot of this pregnancy, but trying to stay away from them because of the nitrates.  these were all beef and pretty decent as far as hot dogs go.  they were also delicious).  sunday was errands and some resting and then our friends m&k made dinner for us last night as sort of a belated birthday celebration.  m makes pizza from scratch and does it on the grill, and i swear that guy needs to open a restaurant.  really really delicious.  he also made homemade cookies-n-cream ice cream.

and that took us to our doctor's appointment this morning.  technically the 28 week appointment (i guess?) even though it's only 27.5 weeks.  i got to drink that delectable orange dextrose drink for the blood test for gestational diabetes after "fasting" all night.  it was pretty gross, but i think all the pizza left in my system helped a little bit.....anyway, fingers crossed that i don't have GD.  i'm optimistic, but should find out tomorrow or wednesday if i'll need to do the three hour test.

in other news, nibs is getting big.  s/he is measuring almost 2 weeks ahead, but the doctor said that was normal and my weight gain is in check, etc, so we're all good.  heartbeat was still in the mid-140s, which is pretty much where it's been.  we scheduled all of our remaining appointments this morning as well.  that's an eye-opener - flipping through my calendar pages at that speed makes it seem like we're having this bebe so so soon.  which i guess we kind of are.....

so i guess that's it for now.  we're officially in to texas summer now, with temps at or over 100 every day for a week now and no rain to speak of in the forecast.  i'm handling the heat pretty well by staying inside unless i'm near water or have a big jug to drink.  the pups are definitely ready for the fall.  the humans are ok with time moving a little bit more slowly as the next season approaches....

the new toy.

this is a grainy pic (small file size), but here's my new toy.  i seriously had dreams about sewing last night.  this may become a problem....

happy birthday to me.

well, my last child-less birthday (or at least, child that lives in my house instead of in my body) is upon me and it's been awesome so far.  jb and i did our celebration yesterday, as i think weekend birthdays trump monday birthdays any day.  i woke up to the best gift ever - a brand new bernina sewing machine from jb, mom, dad, and joe.  unbelievable.  it is currently all i can think about and i just want to be at home sewing things and learning about it.  i am so touched by how generous and awesome my family is.  everyone, really.  i am definitely feeling the love today.

anyway...the rest of the day was spent relaxing and playing with the new sewing machine, with a few errands and a dog park jaunt thrown in for good measure.  it was the first day we've hit 100 degrees this year (in contrast to last year, when we'd already had 42 days of 100 by this point), so it was wicked hot.  perfect for the entry into august, honestly.  for dinner, jb and i had a hot date to vespaio - an italian restaurant we'd never been to on south congress.  it did not disappoint.  we started with olives and a fig/cheese plate, followed by spaghetti pomodoro (homemade pasta and veggie deliciousness from their garden out back), followed by a seafood mixed grill (the grilled drum over polenta was my fave), followed by these little mini donut things with peach gelatto from fredericksburg (nearby german town famous for its peaches).  we split everything, so it was still an insane amount of food, but not too overwhelming....

today has been great.  lots of phone calls and texts and facebook messages, and i appreciate all of them.

yesterday, we harvested two of our watermelons.  they are awesome!  we haven't cut in to either yet, but they look delicious and we are quite proud of them.  here's jb displaying the pair.

also, it's hard to tell in my black shirt, but i think my belly is right about the sizeof the melon.....

finally, we had to say goodbye to our orange sherbert room.  i think i mentioned it got painted while i was in boston (you can see the new green behind the watermelon shots), but here's the last pic of the orange.  it was a good color....

i hope everyone else is having as great a day as i am.  much love.