Time Flies...

It has been many moons since I have updated my blog and so many changes to speak of.

The first and most important one is that I am pregnant with my first child, Madeline Lily. I am a little over halfway done with my pregnancy now (a little over 5 months along) and things seem to be proceeding nicely. We've gone through genetic testing due to my age and everything was A-OK with that. That's when we found out that we were expecting a girl, which, in our heart of hearts, we really wanted all along. I didn't have a ton of issues with morning sickness my first trimester and, besides no sleeping a full night in three months plus, have been pretty comfortable physically.

My issues are all mental. Everyone that I know that is or has been pregnant all seem to be deliriously happy, taking pictures of their cute belly bumps and oohing and aahing over all things baby. I feel like there is something wrong with me that these things don't occur to me. Don't get me wrong, Madeline has a ton of stuff I have gotten her already, with help from the grandparents, of course. I have been reading a ton to gear up for not only pregnancy but for being a parent. That is the part that scares me the most. Will I be a good mother? How will I balance work and seeing my daughter and being a part of her life? How will this affect my marriage? How will we cope with the store and trying to be good parents? Questions and more questions that go around and around in my mind on a never ending tape. Everyone says that you will just know what to do, instinct takes over. I guess as an older mom I question everything more. Will I resent her for changing my life that has gotten comfortable after so many years of answering to no one but myself? I am excited to be having a child, but I also feel very disconnected too, like it isn't real to me yet. I am sure it is a coping mechanism, to protect myself from being hurt if something is wrong with her or something happens with the pregnancy. I wish that I could be like every other mom out there. Or at least how they appear to be on the outside.

To add to my already overflowing stress level, we will be adding moving to it. We have been trying, in vain, to get a loan modification on our house. It has been a frustrating and stress inducing mess of a process and we have gotten nowhere for months. We desperately need to get our housing costs down, especially before Madeline is born. So, we met with a realtor this weekend and have listed our home. Open house this weekend - woo hoo! We eally don't want to leave and have tried every which way we can to stay here, but to no avail. Our hope is to sell quickly and get settled at a new place quickly. We have a lot of the stuff for the nursery and can't set it up due to not knowing where we will be living in the near future. So we have added selling our house and moving to the mix. Let's do it all at once! We may have a meltdown in the process. I know I will be the one to have the meltdown too.

If we could get through the whole house issue and feel a little bit settled, start decorating the nursery etc, I think that we both would feel better about everything. I want to take a babymoon to Vancouver B.C. and I am hopeful we can still do that. I think it would be really good for us to do before the baby is here. We plan to travel with the baby, but this would be a nice romantic trip just the two of us before our new family member arrives.

Brian is busy making blankets and a mobile for Madeline. He has all this talent to do this stuff that he just discovered fairly recently, since we started our store. It is amazing to me to see this whole other side to him that I never knew existed. Musically, he has always been creative, but the crocheting and everything else is all new. I love it.

He has been so supportive and excited during the pregnancy so far. He reads some of my books and tries to take care of me, even though I don't let him as much as I should. He's very excited to be a dad and I think he will be a great one. I do think he needs to get a bit more organized, especially when Madeline is here and time for him will be precious. He will be the primary caregiver to Madeline while I am at work so he will have his hands full.

So that's the big stuff going on here. I'll have to update more often. It helps getting my thoughts out...

2008 - a look back

I guess it is that time of year. To look back at the previous year and make plans for the next. Brian and I tend to live pretty boring lives, but this year was a little different. We started our store, Rock the Cradle, which involved lots of work as well as blood, sweat and tears. While we were getting that off the ground, I suffered a miscarriage. It was kind of a surprise because I thought I was incapable of getting pregnant. It was doomed from the start and ended in February, not even two months along. One of the most horrible things I've ever experienced and I never want to experience it again. I really wish Gerber and other companies, however, would quit mailing me stuff for my nonexistent child. It's really fun to get that coupon book for your four month old child that doesn't exist! :) We've moved on and continue to try and get pregnant but no such luck yet. We may have to look in the adoption direction soon, but right now, we're continuing on this path.

The store opened in April and we've been pretty successful given the economy and gotten some local press love as well as high ratings from customers on sites like Yelp. We wish the business was making more money, but we're pleased with the progress. I had to go back to work to pay our bills and get off COBRA, which was killing us. I'm hopeful that the store may be enough to support both of us sometime in the near future, but we're making due right now on my salary and keeping more in the business.

We got to travel a little bit this year. We were able to go to Las Vegas over Valentine's Day for a trade show and see the show, Love, which I highly recommend. We have always wanted to go to Austin, TX, which we did in February too. Went to Cali in September with my family and lots of trips to Phoenix to see my family, especially my nephew, Colin. Hopefully, we'll find a way to travel a little more this year. Now that I have a new nephew, Aidan, I'll be headed down to Phoenix as often as I can.

So this year has been a bit of a struggle and I'm not sorry to see it go. We've had some good things happen and some not so good things. I'm ready to go into 2009. I have a list of things I would like to do or accomplish this year. Here are a few:

1. Start our own line of children's clothing.
2. Pregnancy or headway on adoption.
3. Travel to a city we've never been before.
4. Try to enjoy life more and stress less. This will be nearly impossible, but I also don't want to have a heart attack before I'm 40 either.
5. Get our house sold and downgrade to a more reasonable mortgage now that only one of us is working.
6. Try new places, restaurants and events and really enjoy all Denver has to offer.

There are more, but I keep adding to it. I think that a list is more attainable than resolutions. A list is things you want to do and resolutions are things you want to change about yourself. I would rather experience and accomplish things than trying to make myself perfect. Because that will never happen...

Where you wander, I will go

As I look around at all the businesses closing, people freaking out and the general malaise of the country these days as well as personal experiences, particularly my husband's father's death, I've been thinking more about what I want for the rest of my life. There is this belief in this country that we work ourselves to the bone until we reach 65 or 70 and then we travel, enjoy ourselves etc. We do all the things we've always meant to do, but put off due to work, family etc. I can't get behind that. My father in law worked his ass off for many years and never got to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Never wanted to close his practice and lose the income coming through the door. He died at 59, 4-5 years from his planned retirement. So, basically, he worked for this future life of leisure he never got to experience. I can't see living my life that way. Life is way too short for that. I want to travel the world, experience new things, maybe even live overseas for a while and I want to be young enough and healthy enough to enjoy it. I was reading an article that stated that experiences make people happier than things. I agree. But I also love to buy what I want to buy when I want to buy it. I want to get to the point where we downsize our house and have more freedom, find a new way to live. There are so many things I want to experience that I need all the time I can get to complete them. I am only 35 years old and have so many regrets of things I didn't do or say or places I didn't go because I was too scared, too unsure of myself. I don't want to look back and say that I just let life push me through wherever it wanted to take me. I want to look back at all these travels and experiences and feel content in a life well lived. Now, I just have to come up with a plan to accomplish it all...

Conundrum

I am one of those people who have never really needed a ton of friends to feel satisfied with life. But I constantly fight the need to do more, be more and have people like me. I think it's more that I want people to want to hang out with me, but not actually do the hanging out. It probably makes no sense to anyone else, but I sometimes feel like friends and spending time with other people are a drain on my energy. Who said what, where are we going, are her feelings hurt etc. Who has time for all that crap? I've done all that before. Then, other times, I feel bad that I don't have more friends, that somehow I am not a worthwhile person, not fun and that's why I don't have friends. A conundrum. I'm sure I give off the vibe of not pursuing friendship so I probably only have myself to blame. Luckily, my husband is on the same wavelength as me. We need our alone time, he playing guitar, video games or wasting time online, me reading or watching TV. We love hanging out with each other, because we can be boring together. We don't really do anything with anyone else besides family and that works. But that doesn't stop the desire to be more entertaining, life of the party, getting those invites to do fun things with people. I swear that sometimes, I have two separate personalities that fight with each other. The boring one usually wins though. :)

Mixed Feelings

I just found out that I got the job that I interviewed for last week. It means we won't starve as we build the business and that I can finally get off COBRA insurance. It is positive for us as a family personally, but personally, not so much. I'm back, after maybe 7 months off, doing the same things I've been doing, being who I was before and losing sight of the business that started as my idea and letting Brian run and plan and do everything for the business. It makes me really sad to have to leave all of the business activities behind, to become another schmuck in a cubicle again. It was really hard making ends meet personally and now that stress will be gone. But I am dreading the return to the status quo, to the 9-5, away from my baby, my business. I know I just need to suck it up, to do what is right for the family, not just me. It will really take me a while to get back in the swing of things, to go to sleep so early, to work M-F again. I am just at a loss of how not to be upset and resentful of having to become what I swore I never would again...

Bloggin' Time

Welcome to my blog! I am new to the whole blogging thing, but I needed a place to sort out my feelings, talk about random items of interest and just basically unload. There will be a wide range of topics and stories on here, but, hopefully, it won't be a boring read. Welcome to my life!