pageants and preggo bellies

Vergil and I attended the first annual TYN Christmas pageant tonight. It was good times. Michele's son Joey was particularly hilarious as a Eeyore/slow yokel-speaking shepherd. Actually, I'm not quite sure what to call how he was speaking, but it was pretty dang funny. As was their 'Captain Obvious' sketch called Night Falls, which was a re-telling of the Christmas story using props. For example, when the narrator said that "night falls", someone came out holding a sign that said "Night" taped to a basketball and let it fall. And so forth and so on. Very hilarious.

Also, I had Verge take some new pictures of my belly today. Becky keeps telling me I don't look pregnant from the back, so here's a picture of me from behind first. I'm not so sure - I've got some bra-induced back rolls going on that make me think I look wider than normal, but I suppose since I never actually look at my back, I really wouldn't know.


And now, boom! Just like that, I'm 32 weeks pregnant:


Good times. My belly button will probably pop in another few weeks. The 'baby's ready timer' as I like to call it. I'll for sure post a picture of that when it happens...

13 things I'm thankful for

Look at me trying another Thursday 13! I'm impressing myself.

Things/People I'm thankful for this Christmas season (in no particular order):

1. My brother-in-law who bought us the sweetest stroller/car seat ever.

2. My grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who patiently schedule around Vergil's crazy Christmas work hours.

3. My uncle who is going to cook nasi goreng for us for Christmas.

4. My church community.

5. Getting to see my parents and sisters for four days after Christmas.

6. Having a totally normal pregnancy.

7. That all four of my grandparents are still alive.

8. My in-laws. ("Be careful! Call us if you need anything! What do you need from Costco? Can we take your car in to get serviced?" ...and so on and so on...)

9. Knowing a God who loves me enough to humiliate himself not just by dying on a cross, but entering the world as a helpless, messy, dependent baby.

10. Friends who endure our constant business and still want to hang out with us.

11. A car that doesn't freeze up in the winter.

12. An apartment with perks like a fireplace, dishwasher and garberator.

13. My husband, who can make me laugh even in my foulest moods.

I think that's a pretty good list.

d'oh!

Sorry, Eric! I was so excited about you getting and taking the job I didn't think about the fact that most of your family reads my blog... Oops. Sorry for ruining your surprise! :)

i love it when i'm right

So, four months ago when we first made our baby announcement to the world, I started thinking about my maternity leave from work. I bent my brain to the problem of who might be a good replacement for me and the first person that came to mind was Eric, a friend from church and someone who's already been working for our department for the last year as our intrepid News Release writer (among other things).

Anyway, I gave his name to my bosses and encouraged him to apply (which he did) and then I sat and I waited. I started hearing about other applicants for my job with different skill sets that seemed to intrigue my higher-ups and I started to worry a little. I knew in my gut Eric was the right person for the job, but it seemed like maybe I was the only one who was convinced.

Yesterday they interviewed the two top candidates for my position (Eric included) and today, Eric was offered and accepted the job. I'm a happy girl. And I love being right. I'd just like to toot my own horn a little and say that I've now been involved in hiring two people for jobs at my work and my intuition was dead on both times.

Yup. I'm just that good. I'm confidently waddling around the room right now, just so you know. I'd swagger, but that's a little hard to do in my condition.

I'm really not that arrogant, I promise. Not all the time, anyway.

On another note, I'm happy to report that my 'to-do' list is getting smaller by the day. Many thanks to Linda for the encouragement to say no to things. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I'm not sure which), my 'to-do' list has very little to do with other people - it's all stuff for myself that I've decided I need to get done and I have to say that as a boss, I'm a bit of a jerk and a task-master, especially when I'm the only employee. I am slowly learning it's okay to do things in pieces instead of all at once like I used to be inclined to do, so that's been good.

I do find myself in a state of denial some days that there is anything different about me than there used to be. Last night was probably a good example. We needed to do laundry and I really wanted to start some of my Christmas baking. So I decided to tackle both - an easy multi-tasking venture on any other day. Unfortunately, carrying around a child all day is not as easy as it looks. I get tired a lot faster and standing too long makes my back ache to the point that I start walking like Quasimodo. So yeah, I probably pushed it a little too hard yesterday in my enthusiasm to get things done.

Anyway, I do plan to do a little more baking tonight, but I promise I'll pay more attention to my fatigue levels and maybe I'll even try to do most of the prep sitting down instead of standing. That might help a lot, actually.

Okay, one more story before I wrap this blog up - I've been baking ginger snap cookies and one of the ingredients is dark molasses, so the batter is a really rich brown colour. I sent myself into a fit of hysterics last night over how much the stupid batter looked like excrement. I could not stop laughing. Poor Vergil was actually getting a little frightened. I know a lot of women find themselves crying uncontrollably while they're pregnant. For me it's hysterical, maniacal, uncontrollable laughter. Which isn't a bad thing, just kind of weird.

Oh and fortunately, the baked cookies look a lot better than the batter does.

unproductive

Definitely how I'm feeling these days. I feel like my 'to do' list keeps getting longer and longer and my energy to accomplish anything on it diminishes by the second. *Sigh* I can't decide if being pregnant is solely to blame or if it's the fact that we're down to about 8 hours of sunlight a day. Probably a combination of both.

I really do love watching the sun rise on my way to work every morning, but watching it set on the way home is kind of deflating. At least I have a window in my office. Poor Vergil is trapped in a mall of all places for 8 hours a day. I don't think he'd actually seen the sun for about three days before yesterday. I've never worked nights before, but I imagine if I did I would feel something like this - a little disoriented, highly lethargic and a tad bit stir crazy. Feels like just yesterday I was complaining about the heat around here.

On the bright side, we're slowly, slowly picking away at getting the apartment ready for baby banana. I've done some purging of my stuff that was in our spare-room-soon-to-be-nursery, we gave our futon to my uncle, Vergil's gone through his massive clothing collection and purged some of that, so now I think we have a closet and a bookshelf left to deal with. After Christmas, we'll hopefully be able to get the crib and set that up and then I think it'll just be cosmetic things. We're in an apartment so there won't be any painting, but I would like to put up some colourful blocks of colour here and there. We don't really have a 'theme' per se, we're more about big, bright, solid colours. Fun and childish without being too 'cutesy'.

However, our apartment still lacks Christmassy-ness. Verge spent so much time on his store last week that I felt really bad making him work again on his day off last Sunday, so I decided to let him off the hook. I think we'll try to tackle the tree and trimmings this Sunday instead. I'd been half hoping to get that started some evening this week, but my energy levels have been pretty low every night after work (or after whatever it is we had planned that night) to the point that it's hard to even convince myself to get up and make food.

Changing the subject completely, as my dad is wont to say, I get to lead a session for the leaders at my church tomorrow morning. I'm pretty excited about it, actually, which is kind of a relief. I've gone through such a long period of 'ministry exhaustion' that it's really nice to feel like I'm finally starting to get over that huge hump. It's a subject I'm already really familiar with, so coming up with the material was less of a challenge than if I had to do something completely from scratch. That helped a lot. It also helped that I'm pretty passionate about what I'm presenting, so it hasn't required begging God for the energy and motivation to do what I need to do. Though, I will need some help feeling awake at 8:00 on a Saturday morning! I thought I'd got away from pastors who were morning people, but I guess not! The first pastor I worked for LOVED having leadership meetings at 7:00am on Saturdays. I don't generally start to feel like myself till about 9 or 10:00am, so that's at least two hours too early for me. It was his best time of day, though. He'd come in chattering like a squirrel on too much caffine and I'd just sit there, glaring at him over my massive mug of coffee that hadn't quite kicked in yet, wondering if I could lift my arm high enough to whack him with something. Good thing he's such a great guy or I might never have forgiven him for those meetings.

But now this post is getting awfully long and I'm sure I've started to bore you. Thanks for sticking with me this far!