17 Weeks: Things I Want to Remember.

Seventeen weeks already! It's hard for me to wrap my head around this because I really feel like I just spent $98 on pregnancy tests yesterday. But time is funny like that, and it never does ask you how fast or slow you would like it to move. 

• Chris came home yesterday and sang "Jesus Loves Me" to the baby. He then proceeded to ask the baby if it was Catholic (We're not Catholic), but that's neither here nor there. It was a sweet moment while it lasted. 

• Getting to hear the heartbeat again! This is the third time I've heard it and it still give me butterflies. And by butterflies, I mean an incredibly weird feeling of realizing that something is literally living inside of you, followed by extreme relief that everything sounds good. 

• This is the week we find out the gender! In fact, as I am typing this, I have the baby's gender in an envelope and am just waiting on Chris to get home so we can open it together. I repeat, I HAVE THE BABY'S GENDER IN AN ENVELOPE AND AM EXPECTED TO NOT OPEN IT FOR NINE HOURS. SEND HELP. Also...final guesses, people! What do we think this little babe is?!

17 weeks down, 23(ish) to go. This. Is. Happening.

Little baby Jacobs, 

I can't wait to find out if you're a boy or a girl. I can't wait to start being able to picture you as the person you're going to be. Today will be the last day I have to refer to you as "it" or "they" or "the baby" or any of those other awkward terms. 

Girl or boy, you're going to be an incredible human being. I truly cannot wait to get to know you. But for now, I can't wait to find out if we're going shopping for tutus or camo. Xoxo

Any Day is a Good Day to Celebrate a Fresh Start.

Sometimes, I miss January.

Not really January, exactly, since it's kind of the buzzkill of all months. But I miss the motivation and enthusiasm for change that comes in January.

In January, I wake up excited to tackle my to-do list. I'm motivated to examine every area of my life and see how I can make it better and what needs an overhaul. In January, the idea of cleaning the house excites me, because it's a resolution and I'm going to tackle it head-on. In January, waking up and spending the day making binders and lists and meal plans and writing out goals seems like the perfect thing.

But it's August. And my dishes and laundry are slowly overtaking my house. I have no idea what's for dinner, and I'm days behind on my to-do list. Work is piling up, and oh yeah, I'm having a baby.

And it's August.

So the idea of spending my time writing out goals and resolutions and decluttering the house and making meal plans just doesn't seem as enticing, you know?

Sometimes, you have to have New Years in August.  

You have to reclaim your days, even though it's not January and there isn't a Christmas tree in your living room. You have to decide what you want to change and then change it, even though it's 95 degrees outside and not the crisp winter weather that usually accompanies change.

Here's to the inspiration, motivation, and enthusiasm that January 1st so often brings. And here's to having that, and maybe more, on August 5th.

Here's to reclaiming your days and overhauling your life whenever it's needed, no matter what the calendar says. Because any day is a good day to celebrate a fresh start.

Spending Your August: A To-Do List for Adventuring Through the Month.

Happy August! Let me just be redundant for a second and ask HOW is it already August?! We're quickly approaching my favorite part of the year!

There are 31 days in August, and you get to decide how to spend them. Of course, I have some suggestions.

1. Go see Paper Towns!

2. Pick one area of your house and make it perfect. We get so caught up with all we want in our perfect dream house that we can get overwhelmed with how expensive everything is. But that doesn't mean you can't change anything! Pick one area--the bathroom or your desk or the kitchen--and make it perfect. Organize and buy pretty things and hang pictures and just make it perfect.

3. Make a coke float. Or an ice cream sundae, or something you haven't had in awhile.

4. Click here and remember how much you miss Friday Night Lights. And then give them all your money because you definitely need all of these things.

5. Remove one stressful thing from your life. Whether it be a messy drawer or a toxic friendship, get rid of it.

6. Write your significant other a love note, just because.

7. Go to Party City and buy whatever decorations/props are in the clearance section, and throw a dinner party based on those. Cinco de Mayo in August? Why not!

8. Make a playlist of all your favorite songs from high school.

9. Get a planner! If summer is the season of laid back, fall is the season of getting organized. Even if you're not going back to school, you need a planner. I have this one and this one and they are magical.

10. Order something you've never tried at your favorite restaurant. 

11. Watch the Pretty Little Liars finale and find out who A is. Except JK, because they're never going to answer this.

12. Work on viewing Mondays differently. 

13. Forgive someone. Whether it's a grudge you've been holding for years or just someone who cut you off in traffic, forgiving someone and letting it go just feels good.

14. Give yourself a break and just eat cereal for dinner. 

15. Reread a favorite book. 

16. Start a wanderlust Pinterest board. Plan your dream vacation!

17. Go see a morning movie. Safe yourself some money!

18. Make lemonade. 

19. Spend an hour dreaming. Whether it's looking at job openings or new towns or just spending an hour working on a project, dream a little bit.

20. Invest in a good self-tanner. Fall is coming and so is your pasty white skin.

21. Make dinner with only what you already have. 

22. Get rid of five things you don't need.

23. Every time you go to Target, browse the dollar section for potential Christmas gifts. Seriously--I got so many good gifts for $3 and under last year! Start looking now!

24. Spend an afternoon by the pool. Enjoy the remaining warm weather.

25. Go on a fro-yo date. Because eating a bow full of gummy bears and captain crunch is only bad if it's on top of ice cream. Yogurt is totally healthy.

26. Buy some new lipstick. 

27. Listen to Serial. 

28. Get a crockpot. Mine has been saving my life this month.

29. Go school supply shopping. The fact that you're not going back to school is not important.

30. Buy fresh flowers at the grocery store. Just because.

31. Get a new journal. Changing seasons (we all know I start celebrating fall in September, because duh) deserve new journals.

How will you be spending your August?

Books I Read in July and Whether or Not You Should Read Them.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Plot: "Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them. In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything." -via Goodreads

Favorite Quote: 

"Mortals. I envy you. You think you can change things. Stop the universe. Undo what was done long before you came along. You are such beautiful creatures." 

My Thoughts: This is very outside of what I normally read, but a friend from work recommended it so I thought I'd give it a shot. I surprised myself and loved it. I'm so happy there are more in the series. It reminded me a lot of Twilight.

Should you read it?: If you like paranormal YA books, yes. 

The Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Plot: "Her perfect life is a perfect lie. As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve.

But Ani has a secret. There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything.

With a singular voice and twists you won’t see coming, Luckiest Girl Alive explores the unbearable pressure that so many women feel to “have it all” and introduces a heroine whose sharp edges and cutthroat ambition have been protecting a scandalous truth, and a heart that's bigger than it first appears. 

The question remains: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for—or, will it at long last, set Ani free?" -via Goodreads 

Favorite Quote: 

“I think you know when two people are meant for each other when you see that they’re better people together than they are when they’re apart.”

My thoughts: Everywhere I saw this book, it was compared to Gone Girl. Even on the cover of the book! I think that was a very, very poor choice that someone in PR made, because I went into it expecting it to be shocking and twisty and enthralling. It wasn't. 

Yes, it's mysterious, but more in a way of you know something bad happened, you find out the bad thing that happened, and there's really no closure. It was a very raw, very rough book to read, but I kept reading it waiting for some big twist, and I just didn't feel like there was one. I know a lot of people liked this one, but I did not.

Should you read it?: No.

And, not a book, but one of the reasons I didn't read so much this month: 

Serial. Serial is a podcast from the creators of This American Life, and is hosted by Sarah Koenig. Serial tells one story - a true story - over the course of an entire season. Each season, we'll follow a plot and characters wherever they take us. And we won’t know what happens at the end until we get there, not long before you get there with us. Each week we bring you the next chapter in the story, so it's important to listen to the episodes in order, starting with Episode 1. 

Plot: "On January 13, 1999, a girl named Hae Min Lee, a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, disappeared. A month later, her body turned up in a city park. She'd been strangled. Her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested for the crime, and within a year, he was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. The case against him was largely based on the story of one witness, Adnan’s friend Jay, who testified that he helped Adnan bury Hae's body. But Adnan has always maintained he had nothing to do with Hae’s death. Some people believe he’s telling the truth. Many others don’t.

Sarah Koenig, who hosts Serial, first learned about this case more than a year ago. In the months since, she's been sorting through box after box (after box) of legal documents and investigators' notes, listening to trial testimony and police interrogations, and talking to everyone she can find who remembers what happened between Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee fifteen years ago. What she realized is that the trial covered up a far more complicated story, which neither the jury nor the public got to hear. The high school scene, the shifting statements to police, the prejudices, the sketchy alibis, the scant forensic evidence - all of it leads back to the most basic questions: How can you know a person’s character? How can you tell what they’re capable of? In Season One of Serial, she looks for answers." via Serial Podcast

My thoughts: I realize I am way behind the times here, but I'm not a huge podcast fan. Now that I know podcasts like this exist, my commute to and from work is so much more bearable. It was like listening to an episode of Law and Order play out each week, and it was incredibly interesting. 

Should you listen to it?: Yes! And it's free. 

What have you been reading this month?

16 Weeks: Things I Want to Remember.

Practicing for our real picture. I hid cheese behind the ultrasound to get him to look at it. Mom of the year already, guys. 

We are four months today, people. FOUR MONTHS. HOW. I think this is the part where I maybe start to panic because I still know nothing about having a baby. I should really be researching and list making and learning about how to take care of a baby, but instead I'm ordering and eating pizza because it makes the baby happy and really, isn't that just as important? 

Don't answer that.

Moving on. Here are some things I want to remember from this week.

• I swear, Gatsby can sense the baby. He gets real close to my stomach, cocks his head sideways and looks at it, and then nudges and sniffs and licks my stomach. It is the cutest thing I have ever seen, and I'm hoping it means he's going to be bff with the baby. 

• Chipotle is back! As I mentioned on Wednesday, Mexican food has been off the table for about 9 weeks now. But on Monday, I woke up thinking about Chipotle. I could taste the barbacoa. We got it for dinner, and it has never tasted so good. So happy to have a favorite back, and to be able to eat something other than chicken!

16 down, 24(ish) to go. Somebody panic with me. Or maybe just order me a pizza.

First Trimester: What You Need to Know.

I realize that everyone has different experiences with pregnancy. I also think that once the baby is actually here, people tend to sugarcoat everything that happened pre-baby, because the baby is so great that everything else pales in comparison. I want to blog about it all along the way, not just after. So let's do this.

The first trimester was the worst for me. I've never been so sick. So in all of my 15 weeks of wisdom, here's the best advice I can offer you:

Go to the doctor right away. Do not pass go. Do not wait. Go right away. They don't schedule your first appointment until 8 weeks, so I spent 3 whole weeks vomiting every single thing that I ate right back up, because no over the counter medicine worked for me. It makes me cry to think that I could have gone to the doctor the day after I found out and got a Zofran prescription. So do it. If you're sick, do not wait. 

Don't eat a ton of your favorite foods. I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to eat my favorite foods when I knew I'd be throwing them right back up. Terrible, terrible idea. Now that I can actually eat, my favorite soups are off limits, as is any meat other than chicken, and, worst of all, all Mexican food. Do yourself a favor and just eat bland foods if you're throwing up a lot, otherwise you might ruin some foods for a long time.

Cut yourself some slack. I'd never been so sick, and I'd also never been so tired. I couldn't do anything, and it made me feel like the biggest slacker. Pregnancy is 40 whole weeks, surely I shouldn't already be out of commission at only 8 weeks. But dude, you're growing a human and it is sucking all of your energy. If you need to go to sleep at 8 to function, do it.

Don't freak yourself out. I wasn't planning a baby, so I immediately felt behind. I know nothing about having a kid or being pregnant! So, of course, I turned to Google. Big mistake. Because who knew that you're supposed to quit caffeine, and that doing ab workouts squish your baby, and eating too much chicken makes your baby hairy, and a thousand other bizarre, confusing statements made online.

And then I go to my first doctor's appointment, and the entire list of instructions from my doctor were as follows: Don't eat raw fish, don't smoke, don't ride a bike, and don't eat lunchmeat.

Well, that was easy. Take that, Google.

Make the best decisions for you. People all over have millions of different of opinions about what you should do or not do. There will always be a $200 stretch mark cream that you need to buy, people who tell you that going vegan is what's best for the baby, people who advocate only organic everything, people who say that you should or shouldn't take certain medicines, people who will tell you that if you choose to vaccinate your kids you're basically signing their death certificate.

Unless any of these people are a doctor, their opinion has no more weight than yours does. So talk to your doctor, of course, but then make the best decision for you. This is your baby, after all.

It gets better. I feel so much better this week than I have in 14 weeks. It is magical. So, just keep going. It gets better.

Here's hoping that the second trimester continues to be so much better than the first!

It's a Monday.

It's a Monday.

Just like any other day, really. A 24 hour window with the potential to be the best day of your life, or to change your life. But it probably won't, because it's a Monday. And we just treat Mondays differently.

We snooze the alarm a few more times than we would on, say, a Wednesday, or a Friday. We put less effort into getting ready, because it's a Monday, and the focus is going to be on doing the least amount of work possible before heading home and collapsing on the couch. We're still mourning the weekend, see.

So we'll try to rush through it and gripe about it when the clock at work seems to be moving so slowly. We'll heave sighs of relief when it's finally time to go home, because Thank God that's over.

The rest of the night will look similar to our day, just at home, and in more comfortable clothes. It's a Monday, after all, and you can't expect too much from those. They're the worst. 

But then one day, a week or a month or a year from now, we'll wonder where all our time has gone. Why it feels like life is flying by, why we never have enough time to finish our to-do lists, when really, we basically throw away an entire day of our week. And is it any wonder we hate Mondays so much when we treat them the way that we do?

It's a Monday.

Another day, another 24 hour window with the potential to be the best, life-changing day of your life. And it might be, because it's the first day of a brand new week.

It's a Monday. What will you do with it?