Awkward Pregnancy Stuff #1

I ate right before this picture, so my belly is a little bigger than usual, but still, it's gotten bigger. :D

Sometimes, people ask me funny questions about being pregnant.

I had heard from previously pregnant friends and family how awkward the questions and gestures can be. But I didn't anticipate this for a while. 

Alas, it's already begun.

Mostly I find that the questions are good-natured and well-intentioned, but I always find myself wondering how I should answer.

For instance:

1. How are you feeling? - This one seems pretty common and basic, but I'm asked that probably 2-3 times a day. Often, like the other day, I'll forget that they are referencing my pregnancy, and I'll say something like, "Oh, you know, I have a bit of a cold today, but I'm pretty good." Then I realize what they were actually asking about and I have to backtrack and say something like, "Oh, and yeah, no morning sickness or anything, so I've been good." haha It's like being pregnant means that that's all I should be thinking about. When they ask me how I'm feeling, I should just know that they are referencing my pregnancy, not my current state. I'm learning.

2. How's your baby??- This one cracks me up. I get asked this almost more often than the previous question. It seems to make sense to the people asking it, but to me, I'm like, "How do I even answer that?" --"Um... my baby is doing fine, I guess. Still in there, so that's good..." or "You know, I think he/she's still growing. Getting his/her fingernails this week, so I'm sure that makes him/her happy..." haha, I dunno. Maybe people with more grace and tact have better answers for that question, but I haven't come up with anything yet. 

3.Can I feel your baby?- Yes, I'm only 16 weeks along and I've already been asked this more than once. Usually my response to this is to look at whoever asked that question, look at my belly, and then just look back at them. In my head I'm thinking, "Um, my baby is currently like 2 inches big. If I can't even feel my baby, then you sure as heck aren't gonna try." 

4. "You're getting sooo big!"- Another classic. And I have no response. What do people expect me to say? - "What really? *Looks down at belly* Oh, you're right!" or "Yup, turns out that that happens when you're pregnant." or, usually my response. "Um.. thanks." 

5."Give me that baby!"- Ok, so this one technically doesn't count because it's from one of my two year olds who tells me that almost every day. She has determined that I'm just being silly by not giving her the baby in my belly. She thinks it's a game. To me, her request is equivalent to the ones listed above, though.

Anyway, I guess being pregnant changes the way people look at you. It suddenly becomes this information fest where they are allowed to ask you any question about your life and you get to answer. Suddenly, you're not just a woman anymore, you are a pregnant woman. There's a big difference, I guess (haha literally!). But I take it all in good stride and laugh to myself often. 

Updates and Decisions

It's been a while. And I have excuses.

I'm currently writing this from Isaac and I's new home.

We moved a couple of weeks ago and have since been settling into our new abode.

My excuses

More excuses

Empty apartment

In the new house- Are you convinced of the justified nature of my excuses yet?

2nd bedroom

Our little house

We are pretty content with the place overall. Sure, we have to light the pilot light on the heater before it works, there's a hole in one window that lets bugs and air in, there's a couple of couches in our backyard from who knows when, and we don't have a dishwasher or garbage disposal. But we're happy. It's fun having our own house and the neighborhood isn't too crazy. We have been enjoying giving directions to people though. "Just turn right before liquor store and you'll be there!" It all seems a tad more sketchy than it is, I suppose.

Beyond moving, Isaac's been chugging right along with his classes. He admitted to me one afternoon that school isn't something he enjoys, even if he's pretty good at it. I told him that that just makes him normal. He's doing really well though, and I'm proud of him for sticking to it.

Another exciting, weighty happening was that we found out Isaac isn't the only one who will be in classes this fall. As it turns out, I've been accepted into the Marriage and Family Therapy Master's Program here at Tech. I attended an intense day of interviews and after a couple weeks finally heard back from them. It was a hard choice to make, especially with the munchkin on the way (due only 2 weeks after the 1st semester begins). Ultimately, though, after prayer and a bunch of phone calls to friends and moms, Isaac and I decided it's an opportunity I can't pass up. The program is 2 years long if I go by the track they have listed, so the timing should work great with Isaac's schooling. It just seems like the right time and the right place. We'll see how I feel after I'm halfway into the program with a 1 year old on my hands. :)

Though we've been busy and stressed with a lot of new life-changing decision, we're happy. Life is treating us well and we know we are blessed.

The baby is also doing well for those that are wondering. I'm well into my second trimester now, so the sick part has mostly passed which makes baby developing a lot more fun. It's starting to hit me more how permanent this whole baby decision is and though that's a crazy thing to realize, it's super exciting, too. My next appointment is in a couple of weeks. And then, at the beginning of May, we'll be able to find out the munchkin's gender! I'm super pumped about that. It'll make everything more real.

Anyway, so that's life with the Olive family right now. I thought I'd do another long general update for y'all so that next time I get on here I can write about something random and simple like watching Barney with my 2- year-olds and feeling so grateful for parents who stuck through years of crazy barney fanatics with me as a child. There's something inherently creepy about that purple dinosaur and his little dino friends.

Getting to Know You

Sometimes as I watch my 2 year olds play, I wonder what kind of 2 year old this little person in my belly will be.

Will she be the kind that talks up a storm, even when I wish beyond anything that she'd just be quiet for a while?

Will she be the kind that plays well with the other kids, or will she be more reserved, content to just watch what's going on?

Will she be stubborn, always needing to get her way and telling me what's what, or will she be tenderhearted, ready to cry at the slightest sign of disturbance?

I know what I hope her to be and any of these personalities would do.

Whatever personality she has, I hope she's able to see this cruel world through optimistic eyes.

I hope she'll be able to appreciate art, music, and football even if she isn't the greatest at creating/ participating in these things.

Beyond anything, I hope this little one will be able to grow up feeling that she is loved. I hope she'll know that she can turn to her mommy and daddy for anything, especially her Heavenly Daddy.

I can't wait to meet her, get to know her, and teach her all of the good and bad lessons I've learned.

I hope she feels the same about me.



(I'm hoping for a girl. And I try not to call our baby "it". So picking a gender to write with seemed easier for this entry. All of the above are just as applicable if our munchkin is a boy.)

Pregnancy, a House, and Grad School

The weather outside makes me so excited for Spring. It's 75 degrees with a nice breeze right now and all of the trees are blooming. 

Also, the fact that I'm starting to feel much better pregnancy-wise helps. I'll be 12 weeks on Wednesday and that makes me very excited. I'm starting to show a little now, and have already done a little maternity clothes shopping. Both of those facts make me sad and excited at the same time. For now, I still look like I've just gained some weight. I look forward to actually looking pregnant instead of just fatter. 

My monthly appointment is on Wednesday as well, so I'm excited to go and make sure everything is still growing like it should. :)

As far as other happenings, Isaac and I are 95% sure we've found our new home. It's not the little house we mentioned before, but it's another little house. (Picture to come once we seal the deal.) It's very close to Tech and in a price range we like. The best part? It's a house! We'll have a little yard and a garage. It's a place we can actually make our home. I'm very excited about this new place. We'll be moving fairly soon, so it'll be good to get settled there. All that's left is some paperwork to sign and it'll be ours.

On Friday, I had my Graduate School interview. It was actually a very fun day. I got to meet lots of great people and made some good friends. The interview part wasn't all that nerve-racking and I felt like I gave the best answers I could. So I guess we'll see. At this point, I feel like even if I don't make it, I'm really glad I got to go to the interview and associate with all of the other people. 

Anyway, kinda a boring entry this time, more informative than anything else. I'm sure later I'll have something witty or imaginative to post, maybe even some pregnant belly pictures. For now, life is just life. :)

Real Men (and I'm not talking about Home Depot this time)

Today, I realized one important thing:

The Gospel makes real men.

I'll go as far as to say that any good, devoted religion in a man's life helps to make him a real man.

There's something about putting others first, always being honest, not coveting your neighbors' stuff, keeping morally clean thoughts and actions, and always remembering that God should be involved in every aspect of your life that shapes men into unique, responsible, caring people.

Today, as I talked to a gal a work about her relationships and their ups and downs, she sighed at one point and said something to the effect of, "I just thought he was different. I thought he was that one guy that really could be this good. Then I realized, they all start out different, but in the end they're all the same." As I listened to her, I could feel her pain. I could feel her longing for something better, something she knows must be out there, but something she somehow can't find.

Then, as if remembering something, she said, "Except for your guy! Where did you get him?!"

My response was something about Isaac's good, moral upbringing and how important that is. But my ultimate thought, and my thought long after our conversation was that Isaac is the man he is because of the Gospel. There's nothing else to it, really.

Isaac grew up in a home that taught him how to love and how to be loved. He learned that lying is bad, that immoral thoughts should be controlled and replaced by moral ones. He watched his parents and how much they love each other. He learned that love is work, and it can be hard, but it's so worth it. He learned how to feel emotion, and that crying is ok, and that if he's feeling hurt he can always pray to a loving Heavenly Father. He learned that complete devotion to one person through marriage is more important than anything else he'll ever do in his life. In his childhood, these things were taught to him. But as he grew older, he began to understand them for himself.

Isaac is a real man because he continually chooses to live the Gospel.

And the reality is that because the Gospel is something him and I share so deeply in our relationship, it's a standard that we both hold one another to.

I didn't start out our relationship feeling like I had to mold him into the "good guy" I wanted him to be. I already knew what I could expect of him, because he expected the same thing of himself.

It's interesting to me how strongly I felt about this point as I thought about it today. In a time where society tries to push religion off as being unnecessary or even invasive, it's become increasingly clear what a world without religion looks like. These men without religion continue to try to find ways to be happy, ways that the world is telling them to be happy, but all they find is an unquenchable appetite.

Some of you may be thinking, "But hey, there's this one guy I know who is an atheist and he's really great" or  "I know this guy who has plenty of religion and he's the worst." In both of those instances, I completely agree that there are exceptions to this idea. Not all people everywhere follow the standard. But if we're looking for a standard to follow that would turn out as many "real men" as possible, the Gospel would be it.

Such destructive cycles between men and women have been shown in the scriptures time and time again. All I wonder is what kind of plague, natural disaster, or utter destruction will it take for our society to find the good again? What will it take to find more "real men" in our society?

I don't really have an answer for that. But I know that I'm truly blessed to have real men in my life. I also know that I will continue to fight for the real men in my life and the values that they follow until the day I die.

Sundays and Little Houses

Sometimes church is like this:

And I want to take a bunch of notes and sit and bask in the Spirit of the moment.

Then other times, like today, church is like this:

And I secretly wish our baby had already arrived so we could play with him/ her to pass the time.

Lately, we've had a bunch of interesting meetings for church. Last week, for instance, one of the deacons forgot to pass to the pianist during the Sacrament, so he went back up to pass to her and when he came down, he tripped and the bread flew everywhere. I felt bad for the poor little guy, but it was pretty funny.

Church is church, and we love to go. The unique meetings just make it more exciting. Isaac made me laugh today. Concluding a somewhat long meeting, we sang the song "Did You Think to Pray?" and when we got done, all of the Bishopric members started looking around at each other. One of them eventually got up, realizing that the person that they had asked to pray wasn't coming up. As we kinda chuckled about this to ourselves, Isaac whispered to me, "I guess someone didn't think to pray." haha, right? K, maybe you had to be there....

Anyway, life has been pretty good here at the Olive household. Just the same old stuff, really. We think we may have found a new spot to live, but we're still checking it out. It's a little 2 bedroom house that looks like it would be fun, but we haven't seen the inside yet, and we figure that part is pretty important. We're getting more and more excited to move, though. Even Isaac has expressed his excitement every now and then.

Our neighbors haven't been making us any eager to stay. After the whole car-hitting thing, we haven't cared for our neighbors very much. But last night made me hate living in an apartment even more.

I was awoken by a loud thud on our bedroom wall (a wall shared with another apartment). As I sat up, I heard a guy and a girl shouting at each other. I went to the bathroom (because let's be honest, I have to do that all the time anyway...) and when I came back, I just listened for a while. It was easy to hear every word they were saying, because they were shouting at each other at the top of their lungs.

Apparently, Aaron, the guy, got kicked out of a party and the girl came to pick him up. But then Aaron got mad at her because she was texting some unknown phone number on her phone, whom Aaron assumed must be another guy. When I woke up, the first think I heard Aaron shout was that he was an "f-n police officer" and I thought, "Oh good, maybe the cops are already there." But then the girl shouted back "No you're not, you got fired you @#*%^ ..... @&@**$" And the conversation went on from there. I was ready to call the cops just to file a noise complaint, but then I heard this:

BAMMMMMMM!!!! (Against our bedroom wall)

And then the girl screaming, "You don't have !&@^  to  !*&#@&# get violent!"

To which the guy yelled back more profanities. And that's when I knew I'd be calling the cops.

Isaac woke up around this time and I told him what was going on.

The cops came quickly and knocked on the wrong door for the noise complaint. They actually knocked on the door of the neighbors that hit our car, so we kinda had a laugh, wishing we could tell them to just talk to those guys, too. But we directed them to the other apartment and they took care of whatever was going on.

Anyway, long story, but ultimately, I lost 2 hours of sleep and ended up sleeping on the couch because I could still hear talking from the neighbors and was worried it would get escalated at any moment. Isaac sleeps like a rock, so he was out after the cops came.

Fun times. Needless to say, we're excited to be out of apartments and (possibly) into that little house soon.

Life

About 5 weeks ago, I took a very important test. It was a type of geometry test, one that required me to determine two small parallel lines placed on a  flat plane. I felt like I had studied sufficiently, but I didn't know what the outcome would be. As I read the results of the test early that morning, I realized that despite all of the preparation I felt I had had, I could never be prepared for a result such as this.

As the results became clearer to me, I remember looking in the mirror. I saw me, saw my surprised and dazed smile, and I felt my heart leap. Then... I saw my belly. I realized that inside that space, there was now a little life multiplying in size by over 1,000 times a week.

After the realization set it, I checked the test just one more time to make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me. Once I was sure, I went out to tell Isaac.

He was still sleeping, but I woke him up. Then I said the 2 words that I know every husband wants to hear at 6 o'clock in the morning... "I'm pregnant." Isaac took a few seconds to digest my words, said something like, "really?" (with a tired smile), and then got up to look at the test himself. As he studied the results of this test that had already changed my life, he said what every newly impregnated wife wants to hear at 6 am... "I don't see anything...."

Though this drove me crazy, I do have to admit that at first, the test wasn't as definitive as the one pictured above. That first day, the second parallel line was much less visible.

But as the days went on, Isaac was slowly able to see that line get darker and darker, and slowly it sunk in to him that he had gotten his wife pregnant, a fact that he began to take much pride in.

Now, a couple of doctors appointments and an ultrasound later, we actually have a picture of our little munchkin.

With a heart beat at 145 bpm, and the size he/she needs to be, it looks like our baby is doing just fine.

It's crazy to me that a baby, Isaac and I's baby, is actually developing inside of me. So far, I have felt his/her presence in only a few different ways: nausea, food aversions and cravings, and fatigue, lots of fatigue. All remind me that this baby is still doing a good job in there. He/she is still working hard and growing fast.

Each week it's a new adventure for me to read about or research what our baby is growing and how big he/ she has become. I'm so grateful for modern technology that can quench my thirst for extensive knowledge about this munchkin before I'm even able to feel him/ her inside of me.

Our official due date is September 19, 2012, so we still have a while. But I'm excited to finally tell everyone because it's all I think about these days.