17 AND 18 weeks

I initially wrote this entry over a week ago, but it never got posted because I've been in a fog of sickness, boo. This week (number 18 to be exact) has been full of exhaustion, and lots (LOTS!!) of tissues and snot. I think this really is the cold that never ended, because for most of this month I seem to have had congestion of some sort and my poor husband hasn't gotten any sleep at all because of the snoring it's caused, oops! So... no photo for week 17, this week's will have to do for both weeks, but I'll still let you read the post that I wrote:

"Week 17, I'm not so sad to see you go.... I'll start off by saying that I've really had it easy the past four months. One of my biggest "complaints" is that I haven't felt very pregnant and I know there are some women out there that have TERRIBLE symptoms from start to finish. If that's you, please feel free to call me a wuss haha. This week was hard because I just didn't feel like myself, which I think is probably my body's way of reminding me that I'm NOT just myself these days. I've been silly emotional about things I have no control over, and I've likely been making my husband insane because of it. Also this week... my sinuses! I can't breathe out of my nose and not because I'm sick, just for fun it seems. I've also been getting these acute sinus headaches the past few days that have left me in a daze. Thankfully my body is holding up pretty well despite some back pain and cramping when I'm sitting down for too long and don't have the option of reclining (like when I'm driving, ugh). I've been a champion sleeper (can't get enough) and my hunger hasn't slowed yet. I've been trying to cut back on snacks, but Thursdays experiment led to a very lousy feeling day, soooo I'll be eating away from now on. How many more weeks of winter? I can't stand to be bombarded with artificial heat much longer, I just want to breathe normally again and not get bloody noses weekly. You can take the girl out of Florida, but you can't make her like the weather, or get used to it for that matter."

Week 18 was another frustrating week. Normally when I have a cold I just work through it and wait until it passes, but this little baby bug has not so kindly let me know that this isn't an option anymore. Monday and Tuesday I came home and could do nothing more than get straight into bed and wait for Keith to bring me some food. Wednesday I got to work and immediately knew I couldn't make it through the day, and had to leave. I think this is one of the first "sick days" I've taken in... forever. It has all been such a learning process, and when I had to leave Wednesday I got really emotional, feeling like I had to "give up". I know that isn't necessarily the case, but it was a good wake call that I need to slow things down a bit. I'm still not feeling 100% even today, but hopefully this week I'll be able to finally kick this cold!

Baby is the size of a mango right now, and in just ONE MORE WEEK we'll be finding out whether this bug is a boy or girl! We're getting antsy, can you tell? Otherwise, no big changes to speak of. Some heartburn, still a little back pain, feeling like I weigh 1000 pounds... normal stuff I think!

Fingers crossed there is no more lingering sickness this coming week!!

Into the Woods

Last weekend I was oddly feeling really sick on Friday night which continued a bit into Saturday morning. Thankfully the weather couldn't have been nicer, and even though I had zero energy, Keith still agreed to take me on a hike to Radnor Lake. I think the fresh air did us both some good, and I always love having some uninterrupted quiet time to talk to Keith. 

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and then of course... quiet time to cuddle on the couch with this little bug (when he's not out killing all the cute baby animals in our yard, ugh)

Quarantined

We just cannot seem to shake this winter sickness over here. I feel much better than I did last week at this time, but I'm still full of snot and much more tired than usual. I hate that just in time for Valentine's Day that I passed along my cold to Keith, but it was inevitable with how much time we spend together. He has been trying his hardest to shake it, but unfortunately he had to come home early from work Tuesday, felt terrible all day Wednesday, and then stay home all together on Thursday. I've been doing my best to take care of him as well as he took care of me last week, but I must say he's much better at tending to a sick person :) I am a lucky gal!

Keith does has great taste in sick day food though, why have lousy chicken noodle soup when you can have tortilla soup from Mas Tacos? Even Theo was trying to swipe some...

Here's hoping that everyone in our house gets better this weekend!

Recover

I promise that we haven't completely fallen off the face of the Earth, this weekend has just been centered around trying to feel better. As I previously mentioned, I've been fighting off a nasty cold this whole week. I went to work on Friday believing that I was on the mend, but ended up feeling worse than ever by the time we went to bed in the evening. My poor husband, what a trooper, he has spent the whole weekend getting me more tissues, filling my water bottle and bringing me food and medicine. I feel like I always forget how terrible being sick is until it happens again :/ lets hope this is my one bad virus for the year.

Needless to say, we didn't do much venturing out this weekend and we certainly didn't see very many people. We left the house on Saturday so that Keith could run a few miles at the gym (and I walked... very slowly haha) we grabbed lunch, and briefly listened to a lady who was no help at all with our taxes. Today we only left to go work at church and to walk through our new place. We did watch quite a few Redbox movies though, like Bridesmaids, What's Your Number, and The Art of Getting By. It's always nice to have a relaxing weekend at home, but now I just feel like I need to disinfect every inch of our home because I have inevitably sneezed, coughed or snotted on everything. Gross.

Here are a few instagram photos from the weekend:

The mega pot of soup I made which included, tomato juice, pulled chicken, potatoes, turnips, carrots, tomatoes, corn, purple peas, and a touch of cream. So hearty and tasty!

Girl scout cookies which boosted my mood a bit, even though Eve let me know they were the worst thing I could have been eating to make me feel better haha

We had planned on cooking dinner last night, but burgers sounded SO much better. We tried Pharmacy again and it was so delicious. I particularly loved my falafel burger mmm mmm mmm! I could eat another right now haha

Hope you guys had a better weekend than us, all quarantined in our house haha, anything interesting that we missed out on?

Ps- going to visit our new house today was SUCH a tease... we CANNOT WAIT to move! now about that packing...

Remedy

These have been my only saviors these past few days. Hey unavoidable winter sickness... GO AWAY! I've been feeling a bit down ever since our run on Saturday, but my symptoms are just lingering. Not getting any better. Thankfully I have Advil cold and sinus on my side and lovely throat coat tea! Now let's just cross our fingers that none of the gross little booger factories I work with pass along anything more, feeling sick is NOT helping my training one bit.

In the mean time I wish I could just spend the rest of the week in bed. Can't I just try again on Monday?

Georgia Weekend

It's Monday night and Keith and I are STILL recovering from our whirlwind weekend in Georgia. After my cousins were in town talking about all the theme parks they had been to this summer, we realized that we had never been to a theme park together and vowed to make a trip to Six Flags Over Georgia before the summer was up. Obviously if we were going to make the drive to Atlanta we had to make it to a Braves game, and they very conveniently happened to be playing an afternoon game on Sunday that fit into our schedule perfectly. Things did not go exactly as planned... but we still managed to have some good time with Keith's mom and brother. Ready to hear my crazy story?

So I've been having some trouble with my contacts lately, and I chocked it up to being in and out of the pool, the seriously oppressing heat in Nashville, or just keeping them in too long. After our trip to Florida, and being in a couple smoky bars my eyes were NOT my friend (and all of the photos from Catie and Erick's wedding prove that haha) and I decided to keep my contacts out to give my eyes a break. It had been two weeks, so I thought I would be ok to wear them again at Six Flags on Saturday since I knew it would super bright and sunny, and I wanted to protect my sensitive little eyes. Not a great idea. I started the day off fine, went on a bunch of coasters, had a blast... lunch time came around and my eyes started to get scratchy and I could tell they were getting red. I checked them out in the mirror and I was DEFINITELY looking scary. As the afternoon went on, it started to get unbearable and I hadn't brought my glasses but decided to ditch my left contact anyway. I wasn't able to see out of my left eye or even hold it open, and my right eye was headed that way as well. When we left the park I ditched the right contact as well, but was feeling absolutely miserable. I was completely handicapped, and needed assistance just getting out of the car. We stopped for dinner and everyone at the restaurant was very concerned for my well being because of how terrible I was looking. I figured I just needed to sleep it off and give my eyes some time to rest without contacts, but when I woke up on Sunday I was feeling the same if not worse. I couldn't hold my eyes open and if I did manage to get them open a crack they had no luck focusing on anything and I was absolutely blinded in the sunlight. All plans came to a halt and Keith immediately took me to a walk in clinic to get checked out. It's not nearly as dramatic as I just made it sound, but I just had a really bad contact related eye infection. Who knows why my eyes are suddenly rejecting contacts after wearing them for half of my life... but you'll be hard pressed to find me wearing contacts ever again haha So instead of getting to go to the Braves game with everyone, I laid in bed all day with eye drops and a cool towel over my eyes trying to convince Tami and Joe's kitten to play with me. I'm SO thankful that it was nothing too serious and that I'm completely fine right now. It was no laughing matter on Sunday morning, but as soon as we found out it was just an infection and could be cleared up in a couple hours we were all laughs and happy times once more. Keith got to go to the game, and afterwards we made it home to Tennessee safe and sound. In the meantime, I got to spend all of Sunday sleeping, which wasn't all bad ;)

Here are some photos from our trip:

Headed Southeast on Friday evening.

When we got to the park on Saturday I took a picture of each of us before we got in the gate...

Keith's brother Christopher.

Mom.

... and now I show you Keith's amazing photography skills for my photo

really..

REALLY?

Finger over the lens is the best? 

The before photo.

This is where my day started going south... swings made me SO nauseous, ugh.

Then my sunglasses broke haha.

Keith and Christopher on the crazy sling shot thing... they were so high!

This was our after shot... look how hard I'm trying to smile with my eyes open haha.

At dinner after our six flags day.

The sky on our drive home Sunday night.

In the meantime, I am now on the hunt for prescription sun glasses... 4 eyes for life!

Sick

For the second time in a month I find myself on the couch with flu like symptoms :( No fun at all. I love my students, but I've been sicker since I moved to Nashville than ever before (and I blame them, ew). I didn't want to take an entire day off today since I'm going to be out most of next week with my parents in town, so I used my morning to sleep in, but immediately regretted my decision to go in at 3 once I was in the presence of 60 screaming kids. We'll see about tomorrow...

In the mean time, Tuesday night we had a volunteer come in who brought a baby duck! The kids were super eager to hold it and pet it (and chase it and squeeze the life out of it haha). Here are some photos: 

Then Mohamed and I played checkers with chess pieces, and he totally whooped me haha

Bug

I am sick. Like sicker than I've felt since I was a little kid. I don't really know what hit me, possibly some food poisoning? a stomach virus? But I spent most of last night keeled over the toilet and most of today sipping gatorade and munching crackers. No need to go into details, but it was pretty darn bad. I probably told Keith more than once that I thought I was dying haha. Thankfully I have this really awesome husband who came to my rescue and faithfully took care of me all night long (even though I only slept for like 2 hours the whole night ew) and thankfully by around midnight I was able to keep some water down so that he didn't whisk me away to the hospital.

This sick day would have been a lot more fun if I wasn't actually sick. I've been hanging in bed all day being waited on by Keith, watching movies and eating popsicles :) Sounds pretty awesome right? Maybe I can convince him to do this all again tomorrow when I'm feeling 100% haha

Something fun that I do want to share today though is a feature that I did over at one of my favorite blog reads, wattlebird by the lovely Annie. She asked me to participate in her 4 Silly Questions series and it was a whole lot of fun.

Check out who my favorite one hit wonder is, and where I would go if I could go back in time haha

Keith is off all weekend, which is SUCH a treat. I'm hoping that my queasy stomach will calm itself and that tomorrow we can actually leave the house. Have a good weekend all! Anyone have cool plans?

NYC weekend

So as I explained in my last post, I was in NYC last weekend. It turned out to be a nice/semi relaxing visit with Amanda and Jake, and we were able to enjoy some of the wonderful weather that the Northeast has been experiencing.

Here is Leelou soaking up the sun and enjoying her cat grass.. we need to get Theo some, I'm sure he would devour it haha

I got to town on Friday morning and shortly after Jake, Amanda and I made the trek up to North Manhattan to visit the Cloisters Museum. If you've never been, I highly recommend it. Here are some photos from our day.











This is Amanda and Jake with a Narwhal tusk. No big deal haha





Here is Jake posing with one of Diesel's terrible subway ads

We passed a cat shelter and Amanda and I swooned over all the adorable kitties :)

Then we went and got some burritos for dinner, complete with $4 frozen margaritas mmmmm

On Saturday I went with Amanda to Chelsea for a gallery walk with one of her classes. We got to see some strange and interesting art, and above all got to enjoy more lovely weather. Afterwards we made the trek up to Queens to check out all the construction work Jake had done in his bedroom.

Here he is with his master piece of a recording studio/area to play drums without bothering his neighbors room. It smells a lot like wood in his room and it's a little cramped, but it's a pretty neat space and very practical for him

He now has his bed lofted with his desk underneath.. but alas! What is missing? Oh yeah, a ladder to get up on the bed. Amanda and I struggled to get up there.

She succeeded better than I did.. my pants just weren't as stretchy.

She then preceded to crawl on top of the recording studio box like a cat haha

Lastly, this is the tapestry at the MET that I'm writing a paper about, and essentially the reason why I went to the city. Now I just have to do the paper haha

Sunday I ended up having a lot more free time that I anticipated after I met up with my classmates at the Metropolitan Museum, Amanda and Jake met up with me midday and we got to check out the Whitney Biennial.

Wonderful weekend, although I did come home with a yucky sinus infection :( I'm currently recovering, unhappily and hoping the weather stays as nice as it has been.