A Simple Mom's Life

I made the mistake of taking my prenatal vitamins before finishing my breakfast this morning. Ugh. Cue nausea all morning. I know better than to take anything that has B vitamins in it if I don’t have a full stomach, but somehow I got distracted.

Then I went and brushed my teeth. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

You know, vitamins and attempts at oral hygiene aside, I really haven’t had issues with nausea. I know I’m one of the lucky ones in that respect. On the other hand, the way my hips feel when I’m walking up and down stairs is–let’s just say interesting, shall we?

I have stairs right by my room at school. My room is on the second floor, while important things like the copier and the door I enter and leave from are on the first. Needless to say, I spend a lot of time on stairs (or lately, avoiding stairs). Thank goodness for the rickety old elevator.

I’m starting to look pregnant a bit, I think. Being really overweight, it’s not extremely obvious yet, but there’s definitely a difference in my shape. It’s kind of cool. I should be able to feel the baby move in another few weeks, and I really can’t wait for that. I wonder if I’ll know what’s happening the first time I feel him or her?

I’m getting more emotional, too. Things are making me cry that don’t usually. Like the entire last ten minutes of <I>Akeelah and the Bee</I>, which I’ve seen enough times that I really shouldn’t be tearing up. Hormones. Gotta love ‘em.

The next big deal will be the ultrasound in a few weeks. It should be the one where we find out if we need boy stuff or girl stuff if the baby’s not playing hard to get. I’ve been telling him or her to make sure to face the camera when the picture is taken, but I’m not sure if he or she is listening. The story of a parent’s life, I guess.

Just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m probably cooking, cleaning up after the cooking, or recovering from the eating. I hope you got to spend the day with good company and good food whether you celebrate Thanksgiving today or not. I’ll be back when I recover from the turkey coma.

One of my biggest gratitudes in life is my husband. We met through friends. My best friend is married to one of his best friends, and they decided to set us up. The first time we talked on the phone, we talked for hours. His phone kept cutting out and he kept calling me back.

We didn’t actually meet face-to-face for a few months. He was driving over-the-road at the time in an 18-wheeler. He’d be out for months at a time, but eventually he swung through my city and then slept through our first meeting.

Well, okay, he woke up eventually. After I’d already left. But I came back, we talked and talked, and things just seemed to click.

For the first year and a half of our marriage, he was gone most of the time. Three to four months at a time on the road, then back home for a few days before he took off again. I won’t say it was easy, but we’re both in our 30′s. We’ve been living independent lives for a long time, him on the road and me raising a teenager. It was probably easier on us than it would be on a younger couple.

This past June he switched to driving for a company that puts him home weekends and Wednesdays. It’s been a huge improvement and a bit of an adjustment. We’ve never spent so much time together! It seems to be working out pretty well, though.

Why am I grateful for him? Well, he’s a genuinely good guy. He’ll do anything to help a friend. When he says he’ll do something, he does it. He works hard–sometimes too hard–to support our family. He shows me he loves me all the time with hugs and by doing little things for me. (I suppose the sneaking up behind me and scaring the life out of me is a form of showing he loves me, too. Can I help it if I concentrate really well?)

We don’t always agree on everything, but that’s okay. We’ve had issues to work out, and that’s okay too. I’m sure we’ll have more as time goes on. What counts is that we’re willing to try. I’m grateful he came into my life, and I’m thrilled that he’s going to be the father of my baby. I couldn’t ask for a better guy.

Today, I’m making up for yesterday when there was a massive storm that kept me off the computer. So, to start off with, I’m grateful for rain. Even when it comes in a massive storm that has the lights flickering and the dog glued to my leg.

I live in an area that has been stricken by drought. This summer broke records for numbers of days over 100 degrees, and it pretty much didn’t rain all summer long. We desperately need rain, so any time we get it, I have to be grateful.

And for today’s actual gratitude, I’m thankful for all the people at different companies who help out customers in need, and for all the ones who work to sort out fraud. Why? Well, yesterday I discovered that someone had used my Facebook account to purchase Facebook credits through my Paypal account.

On the same day, someone had used my debit card to sign me up to the kind of site the internet is known for, if you know what I mean. Not the kind of site I personally visit, let me assure you, and if I did, there are free ones out there. You really don’t have to pay for it.

Anyway, I contacted Facebook and Paypal and my bank, and I got everything sorted out. My bank in particular was very helpful, and Paypal and Facebook have already resolved the issue and will get my money back. It’s an all’s well that end well situation, plus I’ve tightened up security on all of those sites. So it’s a win, although a stressful one.

The people who did the work to help me get everything sorted, whether they were people I talked to or people working behind the scenes, are awesome. I’m so grateful that they are on the job.

You know, before I started this blog, my life wasn’t nearly this eventful. I wonder if there’s a message in there somewhere?

Today I’m grateful for the baby. Every day I’m grateful for the baby, but today I’m focusing on it.

I’m grateful that conceiving went fairly easy–it only took us two months of trying.

I’m grateful that my age and weight don’t seem to be creating any huge problems. (Fingers crossed that I didn’t just jinx us, and no pun intended on the weight thing.)

I’m grateful to have another chance to be a mom, and to get to start from the beginning this time. I’m no less a mom to my older son for starting when he was 10. But I’ve never got to do this with a baby, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m grateful for almost no morning sickness.

I’m grateful for the excited, happy reaction I’ve got from friends and family.

I’m grateful for the help my family is already giving me, and the help I know they’ll give me as we go forward.

I mean, so far, pregancy has been fun. Sure, there have been some interesting things happening in my hip-region that sometimes make me go, hmm, I didn’t know my body could do that. And I can’t brush my teeth without gagging even though I’m not nauseated, which is kind of weird. But all in all? I’ve been enjoying the heck out of it.

(Someone remind me of this post when I’m 9 months, 7 weeks and praying for the baby to just get out already.)

So, yes. Today, every day, I’m grateful for this opportunity to bring a new life into our family. I can’t wait to meet him or her!

One of my neighborhood squirrels looking for the snack he buried.

Okay, this one is a bit weird, but it’s Saturday. I can be quirky, right? Today, I’m grateful for squirrels.

Not just any squirrels, but the ones that live in my neighborhood. We have mostly brown squirrels, but we also have one white one. I don’t think she’s albino. At least, she doesn’t have the pink eyes you usually think of with albinos. (How do I know she’s a she? My brother told me, which forced me to ask how he’d possibly gotten close enough to the squirrel to know that information.)

Anyway, the squirrels are a source of constant entertainment around here. Just about any time I look out the window, I see squirrels planting future trees for me to pull up. Squirrels, apparently, are forgetful of where they hide their winter snacks, and we have quite enough pecan trees, thank you. (It’s actually pretty cool to pull up an opportunistic little tree and find the split-open pecan still attached at the bottom. It’s like a mini-science lesson right there in your yard.)

I can go outside and watch one run like a high-wire artist across the power lines, hurtling

My dog looking for the squirrel who is already up the tree.

itself at a tree branch that doesn’t look strong enough to hold an ant. And don’t even get me started on the feud between the blue jays and the

squirrels. It’s like squirrel TV in my backyard.

But even more than I’m entertained, there’s my dog. She’s an old lab who doesn’t run around nearly as much as she used to, but when she sees a squirrel, she’s young again. I’m pretty sure the squirrels aren’t nearly as entertained by the whole thing as the dog is, but they certainly stay in shape when she’s around. Those things can go from zero to halfway up a tree in no seconds flat.

Maybe it’s weird to be thankful for squirrels, but then again, maybe it’s not. They have their place in the life of the neighborhood just like all the human families do. Plus, they’re loads of fun to watch.

For Day 2 of Thankfulness Week, I’m focusing on being thankful for my house. It’s an old house, built in the 1940′s. It still has most of the original wood trim and the orginal cabinetry, which is sometimes a feature and sometimes a bug. I’m not entirely convinced it doesn’t have some of the original wiring, too.

My house was never intended to be a fancy, expensive house. I suspect the neighborhood at the time it was built was mainly lower middle class, blue collar families, with a curious sprinkling of professors and college students thanks to the college two blocks away. It hasn’t changed that much as the years passed.

I grew up in this house since I was about eight. It was a good house to live in. I have lots of good memories and a few sad ones. My dad died here. My oldest son lived here for the first few months after he was born. When I moved back in, renting and later buying it from my mother, it didn’t feel strange at all to be back.

It has its quirks. There’s not a level floor in the house thanks to the clay soil and a whole lot of settling. (Our dream is to get the house leveled one day, although we figure there are 50-50 odds that the entire thing will split in half or collapse when we do.) Some of the cabinet and closet doors don’t open easily, and some don’t shut easily. We have no real dining room, although putting a dining table at one end of the living room has worked out pretty well.

But here’s what’s important. On cold nights, we’re warm. On wet nights, we’re dry. On hot summer days, we’re . . . well, we’re hot, but that’s because it’s 110 outside, not because of the house.

I’m thankful for all of the memories this house holds, and for the way it keeps us sheltered and gives us a place to relax after a hard day’s work. I’m looking forward to raising my baby here and sinking more memories of my family into the house’s framework. It’s so far from perfect it’s not even funny, but it’s a good house all the same.

What kind of imperfect things are you thankful for anyway?

I have to drive through downtown to get to my job. I noticed the other day that the city had put up their Christmas decorations. Our downtown looks pretty when all gussied up for Christmas, but really? It isn’t even Thanksgiving yet.

I like to deal with each holiday as it comes (not including Christmas shopping, which I’ll do any time of the year that I can get a good deal). So I thought I’d take the next week and focus on Thanksgiving and all the things I’m thankful for. I’m hereby declaring this Thankfulness Week here at A Simple Mom’s Life.

Today, because it was quite a day, I’m going to focus on being grateful for my job. I really, really need to focus on being grateful for my job. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure you do.

I teach at a medium-sized middle school. Most days, I love it. My colleagues are great to work with, my kids (student-kids, not personal-kids) are mostly awesome, and I truly believe in what I do. Then there are days when someone sets a trash can on fire and someone else drops a pocket knife right at my feet–which, if you didn’t know, is highly illegal in schools. Those are the days when I just shake my head and keep on truckin’ because what else can you do?

So, yes, I am grateful for my job. It keeps me on my toes and gives me good stories to tell. And if it makes me crazy sometimes? Well, you have to be a little crazy to deal with middle school, so it’s all good.

What are you thankful for this year?

You know, being a mom-to-be at 37 comes with a few worries. The doctor seemed to enjoy giving me statistics like “your baby has a 1 in 456 chance of being green and purple” and other info that was clearly not designed to make me relax. But you know what I was actually worrying about the other day?

All my friends and acquaintances are my age or older. They’ve already had their babies. In fact, their babies are old enough to babysit my baby.

Who is my baby going to hang out with?

It’s a very important question. Is my baby going to be a social outcast because every kid he knows is going through puberty already? Have I doomed him to a life of solitude? Is he going to be asking me to teach him to drive at the age of three because that’s what everyone he knows is doing?

Clearly I am going to have to get to know some people with babies of their own. These will no doubt be young, energetic people who don’t go to bed at 9:00 at night because they can’t stay awake anymore. (Although I might be able to blame that one on pregnancy. I used to make it till almost 10:00. I lived such a wild life before I got pregnant.)

I’m sure it will all sort itself out somehow. Either we’ll get to know some people with younger children, or else my baby will get so good at playing by himself that he’ll be the entire basketball team and get an athletic scholarship to college. It’ll be fine.

And if all else fails, at least his odds of not being green and purple are pretty good.

You know the story: Mom comes home from work after a long day, or maybe her long day was chasing the kids around the house. Either way, she’s tired and doesn’t really want to cook dinner. But she does, because <strike>she’s the only one who knows how to cook</strike> <strike>she’s the only one who will serve vegetables with the meal</strike> she loves her family and want them to eat a healthy meal.

After she eat, there’s clean-up (and possibly bedtime for any little ones in the house), and finally Mom gets to sit down for a few minutes at her trusty computer. So what does she do?

Start a blog, of course.

Or at least, that’s how my story goes. Mostly, anyway. Everyone in this house is grown up except for the lime-sized one hiding out in my tummy for the next six months, so they get to do the clean-up after I do the cooking. (Moms of little ones, this day will come for you, too. I promise. And what a glorious day it will be.)

With my life shifting from Mom of a college student to Mom of a baby too, I thought it might be fun to keep a record of what’s going on in my life. I’m also hoping to connect to other new moms and new moms-to-be. Especially any who are old new moms like me. Is 37 old? The doctor made me feel like Methuselah.

Anyway, along the way, I’ll be sharing some other topics near and dear to my heart: how we’re managing baby expenses on a tight budget without going (more) into debt, the changes and improvements we’re making to our old lopsided house, and probably some stories about my apologetically overprotective dog and the cat who thinks she’s queen of the world, just because I like talking about my fur-covered kids, too. It’s going to be an interesting six months and beyond. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.