A pregnancy update

I am now 22 and a half weeks pregnant.

I am still feeling pretty sick a lot of the time, although not nearly so bad as earlier on. I am still taking meds to stave off nausea, but I am taking a lot less than before. I have only vomited once recently.

I can't really fit in my pre-pregnancy clothes any more, but I still feel like a lot of maternity clothes are too big. I mostly hang out in yoga pants. Kinda frumpy, but hey.

Since I am feeling a little better and more energetic, nesting has begun. We have spent a lot of time researching baby gear and have already purchased some of our important items. We got this lovely pack n play after way too much research and changing our minds a bunch of times about what we really wanted.

Originally we thought about just having the baby sleep in there for a few months while we worked on figuring out our next step in terms of where we will live but I ended up changing my mind about that and we got a crib. We also got a dresser and a little bouncer chair. Maybe it's a little early for all that but we are excited and overanxious for this little girl's arrival. Plus I love to plan ahead. We have also picked out a stroller and car seat but haven't purchased those things yet.

People have started asking me if I am pregnant. Since that can be a risky question to ask someone, I guess that means I am really starting to look it.

I first felt baby move at 17 weeks and 5 days. I was sitting on the couch before church when I felt it unmistakably. Since then, this little girl has been a real wiggle worm.

Everything looked okay on the big ol' ultrasound we just had.

Christmas vacation

I wrote before about the amount of wrangling it took to get the vacation time I wanted off work. After I wrote that, things got more complicated again. Work would not allow the pool nurse that I had gotten to cover one of the days to work for me, and I couldn't figure out any other switches. It was the day before I supposed to leave and things still hadn't worked out for that last day I needed covered. I thought I was going to have to call out. But at the last minute, someone agreed to work for me and it worked out that I could go the Utah without having to worry about work at all. 8 whole days work free with a travel day on each end.

We got delayed in Detroit on the way there but made it to Utah safely and mostly uneventfully.

We took hardly any pictures while we were there, but we really had a good time. We spent time with family, ate out, shopped, and relaxed.

Some highlights:

-Since little Marseille was such a gem and decided to make her debut the day after we arrived, I got to spend a nice little chunk of time holding her.

She loves her aunt

-We decided to go on our own little getaway one night. We stayed at the Hotel Monaco in downtown Salt Lake City (this is not a picture I took. Just found it online. That's basically what our room looked like though).

We had a whole evening planned, with a nice dinner at Market Street Grill and we were going to see the Christmas lights on Temple Square. But we had spent the whole day out with Zack's siblings. We were shopping and walking around a whole lot and I was worn out. So we ended up skipping the lights, grabbing some fast food that we ate right in our room, and dozing off early while watching Home Alone. Much less fancy, but still perfect. Loved it. Thanks babe!

-Christmas was just perfect. We saw "We Bought a Zoo" with my family on Christmas Eve, then went over the my grandma's to open presents and see some extended family. We spent the evening with the Noyces having a nice dinner and just enjoying each other's company. On Christmas morning, we opened gifts at the Noyces and got to talk to Sam on his mission in France. After lunch, we headed over to my parents for another round of presents, and we got to talk to Matthew on his mission in California. Then we enjoyed Christmas dinner and the family played some games while I held the baby. Our families were so generous and we felt very blessed by their generosity and by getting to spend time with them on the holiday.

-We got together with some high school friends for breakfast one morning. That night, some of the gals from high school threw me my first baby shower. I didn't know I was having a girl yet at that point, but we still had a nice time catching up and eating delicious goodies.

The whole trip was just lovely. I enjoyed it so much. We hadn't been back for Christmas in a few years, and it really is nice to be with family at that time of year. We had to come back before New Year's because I had to work and we passed that unremarkably. I turned into bed around 9:30 and slept my way right into 2012. We have an exciting year coming up and are anxious to see what it brings to us.

Growing belly

And, just as soon as I wrote that my cord was missing, my wonderful husband found it for me. So here comes some photos.

Per my mom's request, here's some belly pictures. They're kind of taken at random times.

The week I found out I was pregnant (5 weeks)

14 weeks and 2 days

15 weeks and 5 days

20 weeks and 4 days

In case you haven't already heard...

Yes, we have a little girl on the way. We are both thrilled. She tried to be a little shy during out big ultrasound, but she eventually decided to show us that she's a girl. I think we would have been fine either way but I am very excited about all the fun girly things out there. Plus my sister just had a girl, so it'll be fun to have 2 girl cousins so close together.

Also, I know I have probably lost the few readers that I had due to my few and far between posts of late. Part of the problem is that my camera cord has gone missing, so I can't include photos in any of my posts right now. That makes blogging a lot more difficult for me. Let me just say that quite a few posts/updates are forthcoming. I just gotta figure out where that cord is hiding.

Marseille

My lovely sister gave birth to this little gem on December 21st.

Meet Marseille Lynette Horner, my very first niece (no nephews yet). This little gal weighed in at a fairly hefty 8 pounds 10 oz, and she is just darling. She really couldn't have timed her arrival much better, coming the day after Zack and I arrived for our trip in Utah. I got in a few hours of snuggle time while I was there. I am so excited to be an auntie. Congratulations to Michelle and Zach.

Christmas season

I love this time of year. I am especially excited because we actually get to travel to Utah this year to spend time with family over the holidays. Thank goodness. My work didn't make it easy. In years past, my work has blocked out the dates from December 15 until sometime early in January and said that no one could request time of during those dates. Thus we have spent the last 2 Christmases here in Philly. Don't get me wrong. It hasn't been horrible. The first year, we went to New York just a couple days before Christmas, made up our own walking tour of the different department stores so we could check out their holiday windows and indoor decor, and we saw Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. It was so much fun. We stayed in a really ghetto hostel for the night and came home on Christmas Eve. We were able to do some skyping with family on Christmas. Last year, Zack's family came to us, and we really had a great time hosting them and enjoying family time on our own turf. But this year, when I found out they weren't blacking out the dates around the holidays, I just knew I had to try for some time off.

I went to the staffing lady who would be handling the holiday scheduling several months ago and discussed this with her. I asked her what restrictions there would be (basically none), when I would know if I had been granted the time off, etc. Then I went for it. I put in a request. I put it in nice and early and hunkered down for the long wait until November 11, the date that she said I would know if I got the time off or not. After a while, it became abundantly clear that the prices of plane tickets were just going to go up and up so we took a gamble and went ahead and bought our tickets for the time I had requested off.

November 11th, I stopped into the staffing office to hear about my schedule and was told that they didn't know yet and that they needed more time. Imagine that.

Finally, 3 weeks later, the finalized schedule was posted. I had requested several days off in a row, and they had granted me the first part of my request, but scheduled me to work for the 3 days at the tail end of my planned trip.

As you can imagine, I was pretty livid. I had specifically discussed with staffing my need to know in advance if I wasn't going to get the vacation time since it takes more than just a couple of weeks to arrange for cross-country plane tickets, especially around the holidays. They had promised me a certain date and then just pushed it back and pushed it back until it was a mere 3 weeks until I was supposed to travel, and then they didn't grant me the time. It wasn't so much about not getting the entire time I had requested. That would've been okay if they had just informed me sooner. I marched my behind down to the staffing office and made my case, but they basically just told me that there was nothing they could do. They didn't care about the promises they had made and broken and the inconvenience they had caused me. After cooling down for a day or 2 though, I worked out a trade with one of my coworkers for one of the days, got a pool nurse to cover for me the 2nd of the 3 days, and was able to switch one of my days off for the 3rd day. It took some real work and several days to figure all that out, but I got it done and now I get to take my vacation free and clear. And I don't have to pay $500+ to change my plane ticket. Phew. So in 9 days, we're headed off the Utah to spend some of this delightful holiday season with our families.

Well hello Wednesday. Oft considered by yours truly to be the worst day of the week, this particular Wednesday has proven to be one of the best [Wednes]days in quite some time. Not only did I not vomit at all today (vomiting has been an increasing common occurrence lately), but I'm pretty sure I did not even feel like vomiting once today. I haven't had a day like that months. Not only did I manage to make it through my entire breakfast... I also made it through my work shift in relatively good form, went to the doctor, went out to dinner with my man and ate an entire meal (which included a good dose of red meat, since apparently I'm anemic), went to the drug store to buy some good ol' pregnant lady junk food (no iron there folks), and ran the dishwasher (okay so it was already 3/4 full when I got to it). How's that for a terrible, overly long sentence? Setting the crappiness of the sentence aside though, all of that made for a day in which it was pretty awesome to feel like a semi-normal person again. I'm not holding my breath for another one of those days tomorrow. But I am hoping that maybe, just maybe, I won't be sick my entire pregnancy, and some of that 2nd trimester excellence I've been hearing about will make its way to me in the near future. Please.