Friday, October 01, 2010

Five on Fridays: Fried Brains, Lost Photos, and a Peanut in my Tummy

Hello Blog. My name is Anne. I used to like writing on you... remember that? Why is it that I could never keep up with telling you about all the wonderful crazy things that go on in my life? I tend to forget things a lot. So I really should be taking advantage of you to remind me later about all the things I had done. Last week, I forgot my purse in the restaurant after lunch and didn't even realize it was gone until half an hour later. In 20 minutes, I will have already forgotten what I wanted to write about.

My brains are fried.

With that said, it's Friday. It's been a really long work week, with half of it spent nauseated. There's a lot going on, and everyday that passes, I can only hope I had done something worthwhile.


1) Meet our little peanut. I'm only 8 weeks along so we wont' find out for another few months if Mike will get to painstakingly help me pick the right shade of pink for the nursery. Ethan is set on having a little brother. He keeps threatening to "give it away" if it doesn't come equipped with a penis. We're still working on convincing him they don't come undecided... that God has already made that decision for us... and that he will love him (or her) unconditionally, no matter what. I suppose we have a few months to work on it. The little peanut's not due until the spring - May 17th to be exact. Although I love the idea of being pregnant, there are some moments that make me wish I could bake a little faster.





There's a lot of pressure to have a girl (as if I had a hand in the drawing board), and I have to admit, I'm a little tired of being outnumbered. In a way, I'm as freaked out as Mike is about the whole idea (although he would never publicly admit it) of being responsible to raise a girl. Is it really that much harder to raise a girl? They poop and puke the same I suppose, but then they grow up and menstruate and go boy crazy and you have to worry about giving her enough foundation to make sound decisions about not letting boys pressure them into having sex at 14, going to college on their own terms and not because they are forced to, because unfortunately, women are still paid half of what their male counterparts make. And then I think about doing her hair everyday before school, encouraging her it's ok to ride bikes, and short skirts are inappropriate, that she's beautiful and she can do whatever she sets her mind to do.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Boy or girl, we are one happy bunch. Ethan would be a GREAT big brother either way!


2) I had a talk with the Principal of Ethan's school the other day, but it was a great talk, the kind I wouldn't mind getting called into the principal's office for. He said Ethan's done a tremendous job in school. He's very smart and that we have given him a great foundation. He's actually started to read. Every day, he gets one-on-one time with his teacher, reads a few pages, brings home the book and we work with him to read at least 5 pages and sign off each time. He even passed his first reading test this week!!

It's amazing how much he loves books. My mom bought him a story book with a CD and that's all he listens to when we're in Mike's car. On Sundays, I have to referee between one who wants to listen to Sleeping Beauty and one the other who wants to listen to the Browns game. Guess who always wins?


3) Our big anniversary eurotrip is over, and 1 month later, I still haven't gotten to the photos we took throughout our trip which is probably in the upwards of 1500. I blame it partly on laziness, but mostly sad because it's over. We planned it for so long and looked forward to it for months and despite our differing levels of tolerance with hotel standards and walking til our legs fell off, we had a blast.

We found out I was pregnant just 2 days before the trip, so that put on a damper on our great plans to get plastered on the streets of London. There was not a single day where we just relaxed, even when we said we probably needed to physically reserve some energy to survive the rest of the week. See... Mike and I are not the type to go on vacation and lounge around. Ironically, we nearly killed ourselves trying to fit in as much culture and history and sightseeing in 8 days, that we needed another 8 days to recover from it.

But that's ok.

So here's a sneak peak. I hope sometime this year, I'll get to share the rest of the photos we took on our trip........ before they get lost in the sea of other untouched photos in my external hard drive. *sigh*





Stonehenge, London



Piazza della Signoria, Florence



Colloseum, Rome



Canals, Venice




4) Halloween is just around the corner. Gone are the days where I get to pick what Ethan will be for Halloween (which is usually whatever I can get on clearance the year before). After letting Ethan peruse through the Party City catalog, he's decided that he's going to be Robin, that I will be Batgirl and Mike will be Batman. So as Mike graciously agrees to wear tights for one night, I'm on the hunt for costumes that won't cost us a gazillion dollars. I've already bought Ethan's (somehow got lucky and saw it on sale for $5 on Amazon), and I've tracked down someone selling a Batman costume on craigslist, but no such luck on mine.



Now as far as decorating, I've learned from last year that my neighborhood's actually pretty gung-ho about decorating their houses. I felt pretty blah with my fake cobwebs with a few hanging spiders. I promised myself I would do better this year, but ever since my lovely sister took Ethan on a scary ride at Universal Studios, he's now pretty freaked out about everything -- I'm talking aliens, ghosts, "scary noises", even the strawberry smellin' bear from Toy Story 3 -- so I don't know how much I can get away with this year without putting my son in a Halloween coma.


5) Last month, I turned another year older, maybe a little smarter, but definitely more vindictive. And because of the recent no alcohol and no sushi restriction (boooooooooooooo for mercury!), I opted for a more low key dinner at my mom's house with family. Cake and good company, what more does an old lady need? The gifts were of course a hoot. They were actually terrific gifts, things which, now that I have them, I realize I quite like but would probably never have gotten for myself. Which is maybe the essence of a good gift. Although I have to say to this day, no one has ever gotten me the one thing that I have constantly asked for every birthday, Christmas, Anniversary or Mother's Day.... and that's either a house cleaning service or a detail for my car. My sister screamed at me once and told me she refuses to give me a carwash for Christmas.

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