Early Morning Thoughts

This morning, we made some last minute plans for my parents to come down to our neck of the woods and go to church with us, since we haven't seen them in a while.  When we made the plans though, we were up and dressed to go to first service, so after we got off the phone with them, we realized we had about 2 1/2 hours to kill before they could make it down for second service. 

And so, here I am.  The house is quiet.  The dogs are still asleep.  Landon is (hopefully!) catching up on some much needed sleep.  The laundry is going and the dishes are done.  Chocolate chip cookies are baking for Landon to have after he finishes his crazy long bike ride this afternoon. 

I still have grading and planning to do (it's all sitting in a bag beside me right now, just waiting to be pulled out :)), but I figured it was time for an update.

I want to start off by bragging on Landon for a minute, because I don't do that nearly enough on here, or in general.  He started his Ironman training again about 2 weeks ago and has been pulling crazy hours.  He wakes up in the 5o'clock hour every morning, either to bike or swim, and then either runs on his lunch break or swims right after work, so that he can have his evenings at least semi-free and we can spend them together.  It would be so much easier for him to just sleep in to his normal time and work out after work, but he's decided to do it this way so that we can actually see each other, since I'm not training with him this time (which is WEIRD for both of us!) and I'm SO thankful for that.

His new job is going well too.  It's longer hours and he sometimes says it's boring, but it's stable and he seems to work with good people, so we're thankful for that.  And, underneath where he works are what's called the tunnels--a HUGE underground area filled with restaurants and shopping and all kins of stuff--and I never knew it even existed until he started working there.  A friend and I met Landon and her husband, who he works right by, which is also cool, for lunch on MLK day since we had it off an they didn't.  They decided to show us around the tunnels so we ate lunch down there--it was pretty impressive. :)

And, on a money/work note--he's been working so diligently to plan for the future and to make it work to where I can stay at home with our baby, and I am more grateful for that than he will ever know.  Since we've been married, the plan has pretty much always been for me to stay at home when we have kids so we've basically lived off of one salary this whole time.  But, when the time comes, I know that puts a lot of pressure on one spouse who's becoming the sole income provider, so I'm just so thankful for a husband who's willing to do that, because I know a number of women who would love to stay at home but their husbands won't consider it.  I'm not judging at all, I'm just thankful for Landon and his willingness/desire to make this happen for us as a family.

My job is going well.  Classes were better this week--I changed some stuff up and it seems to be working a lot better, thank goodness.  Other than that though, it's pretty much life as usual.  Some days when I'm teaching I'm so thankful that I won't be coming back next year, and some days I really think I'll miss it.  Overall though, it's exciting but a little weird at the same time to think about not teaching.  More exciting than weird though. :)

This Friday, we have our 20 week ultrasound and we can't wait.  We can't wait to see his/her precious little face (or whatever we can see!) on the ultrasound screen and are just praying that everything looks good and on track with our little one.  We're not going to find out what gender it is at the ultrasound though--we're having a reveal party with our immediate family and some close friends on Saturday night, so we're going to find out with them!  I think that those 24 hours when we have an envelope that says if it's a boy or a girl but can't open it yet, will be about the longest 24 hours ever!

I feel the last few weeks I've been saying this over and over, but it's hard to believe we're almost halfway there.  I'm showing some, but can still fit in to some of my clothes, which is nice.  This past week though I've started having people I work with that I don't know as well, and kids at work that I don't teach, ask me if I'm pregnant, so I guess I'm starting to look like it, which is fun.  And, I've started to feel the baby move more, at least I'm relatively sure that's what it is.  A couple of times I could put my hand on my belly and feel a little bump, which was so cool.  When I was telling my mom and brother about feeling it, I told them that I was pretty sure it was the baby, and my brother said "well, what else would be inside your stomach like that?"  Ha.  That made me laugh.  Anyway, I tried to let Landon feel once, but the baby quit moving.  We tried to get it to move around again, but no luck. :)  Hopefully soon he'll get to feel it too!

Pregnancy is weird though.  In general, physically, I feel good.  Aside from the couple of mornings I've thrown up this week (what is that about??), I feel pretty normal.  I've been walking almost every day, and yesterday I did 7 miles in preparation for my half marathon and felt good.  But even with working out, it's like nothing is simple anymore--I'm worried about my heart rate being up too high, or for too long, or if I'm eating enough or the right things.  And if the number on the scale goes down, it makes me nervous, and if it goes up too much, it weirds me out.  I'm trying to just go with it, but it just feels like there's so much we don't know.  And, I've definitely got the pregnancy brain, or whatever you want to call it.  I'll be saying something and forget what I'm talking about.  I have the hardest time thinking up things to cook for dinner.  I have to write down EVERYTHING I have to do, or else I forget.  I keep walking away from the kitchen and leaving the refrigerator door open, for goodness sakes.  Like Landon told one of his friends the other day as we were talking about babies etc, pregnancy is just weird.  Good and exciting, but strange sometimes.  There's so much about it that we had no idea, haha!  But, we're figuring it all out--and excited about the end result. :)

And that about sums up our life right now--work, working out and baby.  Hopefully I'll get up a 19 week picture sometime today and then next week...pictures of our son or daughter!! :)

And now, I hear those ungraded papers calling my name...