Struggling to Get Regular....

As a pregnant person, I can't tell you how that means soooo many things to me right now, LOL! Seriously, I do want to get back to posting regularly - like I was, only better. And I may actually have the opportunity to get back on track with many things this week. See, Sweet Pea turned 6 on Thursday, and we had a party for her yesterday. Today, she left with my mother to visit in Mississippi for the week over spring break. She will loooove hanging out with Mom and her friends (who love to spoil little girls and let them pretend like they are grown!), as well as hanging out with my dad, kicking around in his gardens, and being a Tractor Girl.

My parents are both retired, and Dad has gotten into finding old tractors and restoring them - which is great since he's a mechanic by trade and is one of those people I want around me if the Apocalypse ever actually occurs - and he tells Sweet Pea that these are THEIR tractors. So the week for S.P. will include entertaining and being entertained by Proper Southern Ladies, as well as learning the finer points of self-sufficiency and riding around on my parents' property on whichever John Deere she and Dad decide upon at that moment. Life is good for the Pea. :)

So while we have a quieter home for several days, some of the goals on my neverending list of Stuff I Have Got to Get Done are:

• Get the freakin' laundry caught up and put away (instead of frantically digging through the pile on the couch every morning)!
• Get the freakin' dishes cleaned in totality and put away (instead of wishing that we could just eat off of paper plates until Jesus comes)!
• Get the floors clean - swept, mopped, and vacuumed (instead of wishing a street cleaner could fit through our front door and scrape off my floors)!

Clean, clean, clean....everything clean! Beat Hubby and make him clean! Yesss!

As well as:

• Catch up on organizing. What to organize, you ask? Ha! What's NOT to organize?! OK, really...if I can just get things cleaned cleaner than they have been in the last long while, I really won't focus on this very much as I will have earned myself some "ME" time.
• Catch up on my scrapbooking. With Baby Sister on the way, I must-must-MUST get farther along on Sweet Pea's stuff than I have gotten over the last 6 years. It's shameful - if I actually thought about it - and I have this table behind me with hundreds of $$ worth of scrapping things that has been neglected for so long that Hubby thinks it is now a storage place for some of his crap, as well as the old printer he replaced and that I have no idea what he wants to do with. Inconceivable!
• Get back into the baking that I have been missing. Really. Missing. With the job I started last summer (stupid crazy job that I regret taking, except that the other one bored me to tears, but where my perpetual "not using the gifts God gave me" lament continues) I've been thrown off even more than I ever thought I could be. It's been a struggle to just do the things that MUST be done....much less the things that I enjoy and that make me ME, that make me HAPPY. Yes, it's been a sad little hole I've been sitting in, folks, and I'm trying my best to crawl out of it. By darn. So cooking and blogging and writing about food, and my amateur attempt at food photography - I'm doing it all.
• Just doing things I like to do. Window- and mini-shopping at Tuesday Morning-type stores. Over-shopping at Whole Foods. Playing my guitar. Writing. Pondering. Spending time outdoors. And the like.

So those are my plans for the week. Sure, I don't expect to strike 100% of that off as completed, but just knowing that I'm going to focus on these things that have been all but forgotten kinda gives me a lift. There's a hopefulness that's been gone for a while that I'm gonna get back, by gosh. And I'm really looking forward to doing it and putting it on here.

Shamed Into Blogging

I get into one of my emails, the one I check least often nowadays ('cuz honestly, I'm loving gmail and this other one provided by my ISP is irritating), and find a note from one of my best-best college friends saying, "Hey, I have started a blog!" So I go to check it out and let me tell y'all - this girl has tricked out her blog site bigger than crap!! This isn't surprising, considering she was an ever-so-cool art major and an extremely bright and creative person in general. But I was reminded of how looooong it's been since I blogged, and in my humiliation and shame I thought I'd throw a post out there.

So here you go.

I'll give an update, though, since it's been so long since I just actively put something out, which is the biggest reason why I've been under the radar for quite a while. See, I went to visit my parents over Thanksgiving and noticed I was feeling kinda....weird. Couldn't put my finger on it, but something wasn't "right" (I refrain from using the word "normal" because, well, I'm not really). Anyway, in the next couple of days it hit me, and the following weekend when I was out of town at another college BFF's wedding, I decided to buy a pregnancy test.

Well, guess what - it was positive!! Yay! Now, I'll admit this wasn't something we'd been "trying" for -- plus, I've always hated that phrase "we're trying"; it reeks of desperation and just brings the bedroom out there to everybody and doggone it, that's my biz. ;D No, seriously, we already have Sweet Pea, who'll turn 6 in a couple of weeks, and I've been feeling strongly about another kiddo since she was about 3 or so, but I rationalized that it didn't need to happen for various life reasons.

Then I became forgetful and a little lax with my b.c. patch, and well.... There you are.

Anyway, I was thrilled and so was the Big Guy when I told him. However, that BFF Wedding Weekend was the beginning of several weeks of siiiiiiick for the mama, here. Very uncool (albeit an apparent necessity for my body when beginning a new life - since I went through very similar stuff with Sweet Pea) . One good thing was that I have since dropped about 15 pounds; which, if you saw me last fall or so you would likely have recognized that I've never been that freaking fat in my life. Ever. It was scary and appalling. Anyway.

Fast forward to this morning. Hubbs and I dropped Sweet Pea off at school and headed up to our nearest Big City (i.e. Little Rock) for a Level 2 ultrasound. FYI, a Level 2 is just a more detailed version of what most of consider a "regular" ultrasound. My local ob. does the regular ones, but I was referred to the medical sciences area for the sole reason of: AGE. LOL! I turned 39 on Feb. 21st - dang it, I don't feel of "advanced maternal age"! Whatever; we went. It was really cool and they took a long time checking out the baby. I personally thought that they were pretty darned thorough, and the doctor there said she thought everything looked fine, but she wanted me to come back in 4 weeks to just check again and make sure. Seems like the Little Bean was on its tummy and the ideal position to see every.thing on the ultrasound is for the baby to be on his/her back.

They were able to get a look at the hiney, though, and it seems that Sweet Pea is going to have a LITTLE SISTER! Whoohoo! Now, I didn't care one way or the other. The really cool thing about having another girl, though, is that I never got rid of any (and I do mean any) of Sweet Pea's clothes this entire time.

Sweet Pea herself was thrilled, and screamed when I told her the news in the car after school. She has been begging for a sibling for a couple of years, and most recently a sister. As a matter of fact, right before I found out I was pregnant, she said, "Mama, I want a little sister....and I want her NOW!!!!!" followed by a stamping of the foot. Okaaaaayyy, kid. Just a few days ago she told me that if the baby was a boy that we could PRETEND it was a girl and dress him in her old clothes, anyway.

Dad - you know how guys can be sometimes - made cracks about "shooting blanks" and the like. I honestly don't get the need some guys have for feeling like they "must" have a male child. I know that ALL guys aren't of this mindset, but lucky me has one who does feel that way a little. ;P Eh, I'll humor him until he freakin' gets over it (aren't I the supportive wife)!

Anyway, I'm excited and can't wait until the end of July to meet this precious cherub in real life! Now that I'm feeling better and not wanting to sleep 18 hours out of the day, I'm hoping I can catch up on all of the things I've let fall by the wayside as of late. =:D