I have a confession to make.  From the moment I was a little kid, I was a tomboy.  Not only was I (and still am) a sports fanatic, but I'm one of those who just always got along better with the boys than I did with the girls.  I hate shopping, I hate makeup, I don't feel like spending hours getting ready for something, I'd much rather talk about who's going to win the Stanley Cup than Paris Hilton's lack of talent.  In any case, my best friend (besides Leif) is a guy, and that's ok.  I definitely have female friends, but I've never felt like I "fit in" properly with any of them, but again, that's ok.  I still consider some of them good friends, but I'm definitely not going to be the first one on anyone's call list for stuff.

I say all this just to put things in perspective, and also to say that my becoming pregnant has given me more in common with my female friends than I ever had before. Even though I still refuse to go on pedicure runs with them, they've all (and I'll add that "they all" includes all my neighbors including those I am not necessarily very close with) made themselves available should I have any questions on babies or pregnancy, they've given me very much solicited advice, and have generally made me feel like I fit in somewhat. :)

2 things have happened recently to make me realize more than ever that it's the quality of the people you know, and definitely not the quantity.  First, today was a random, ordinary day - nothing exciting was going on, and I was counting the days (2 months) until the baby would arrive.  Suddenly, the doorbell rings, and it's the postman with a package from Big Picture Scrapbooking.  As I do the tech support for them, sometimes I'll get random things in the mail, but I definitely wasn't expecting anything.  Imagine my very pleasant surprise when I opened the box, and found a load of baby stuff in it!  Washcloths, onesides, burp cloths, an outfit, hats, socks, hooded towels, and a really soft blanket.  Paula, Kayce, and Stacy, you guys are the best, and it was so cool of you to send this to us!

The second thing hasn't technically happened yet, but I still feel very grateful.  A few months ago, I was talking to one of my neighbors, Mariela, who informed me that I absolutely had to have a baby shower.  I really didn't give it a whole lot of thought, until later on she informed me that not only did I have to have a baby shower, but that she was going to put it together for me.  Honestly I didn't know what to say.  Not only did she handmake all the invitations (with stamps, scrapbooking, and ribbon!), but apparently she's going overboard in decorating her house (which she won't let me see until Sunday), and several other neighbors (we invited the whole cul-de-sac) have volunteered to bring various food dishes (all homemade), and help decorate.  For these people to do this for me, the local tomboy who's never really had any close female friends, is just fantastic, and words just can't describe how much I appreciate having these people in my life who will go above and beyond for me.  

These aren't the only people who've helped out a lot during this pregnancy. As an example, Brien and Beth Wankel sent us a whole box of baby clothes that their kid grew out of. Granted a lot of them are for the summer, but there's definitely a bunch I can use as well!

So yeah, I'm probably doing a "hormonal rambling" on this post, but it's ok, I'm allowed to, I'm pregnant, dammit. :)

From baby.ogre.com - Getting There

I decided to spend part of the day migrating my site from Wordpress over to Drupal. All of our other sites are on Drupal, and mine was the only one that wasn't, so figured now was as good a time as any. I've been playing with it a bunch, so had a pretty good handle on things, and what made it tons easier was finding the Wordpress Import Plugin which imported all my tags, comments, stories, pictures, and pretty much everything I needed from my old site. Everything from the old site will redirect to the home page of this site (same URL for the main page) since Wordpress links are different than for Drupal. I like the theme I picked too much better, and think the site looks nicer.

I also messed around with setting up a Baby Blog, which looks nice and is, again, a pre-made theme, even though I changed a bunch of it.

I have several favorite scrapbookers besides Stacy Julian, and Cathy Zielske happens to be one of those at the top of my list. I love her clean style, and I always look at her layouts thinking "wow, that looks really nice and simple, yet I love it". She started teaching a class over at Big Picture Scrapbooking called Design Your Life, all about becoming a better scrapbooking layout designer. Although I do tech support for BPS, I haven't really taken a lot of classes (I peek in at a bunch though) since I haven't had the time, but this is one that I'm jumping at the chance to do. I figure I can attempt to keep up with it at least until the baby arrives, and then I'll have to finish the assignments sometime next year. :)

In any case so far I'm doing pretty well. The first assignment came out today about balance and symmetry, and I've already completed the first layout.

I'm not 100% happy with my title - I was going to go with "Doggone Weird", but I'm trying to use up stuff in my stash, hence why it's "King of the Castle" instead. Thor does think he's the king though, even now at 11 months. He always has the "I'm so cute, so you can't be mad at me" look.

A few weeks ago I received an email from Stacy Julian. She had this great idea to do what she called a scrapbooking blog blitz. On the same day, a bunch of bloggers whom she invited would all post parts of a mini-album that they did, which she entitled Present Moment Scrapbooking. Between September 17 and October 1, you were to take 10 photos which represented your life at that exact moment in time, and then put those photos into a mini album. On October 1, write a blog post illustrating some of these photos you took and why.

I thought it was a great idea since too often as scrapbookers we're caught up in scrapping events, or people, or anything besides just what's going on at that exact moment in time. Since my life is in complete flux right now, I jumped at the chance to do this, and it will be interesting to look back on this mini album in a year to see what's changed, since I know once the baby is born in December, everything will.

Although I'm only posting a few images here, here was my hierarchy of photos. I'll go more in depth on the ones I post (the ones where the photos aren't linked directly below like the others).

Posing - picture of me
Tugging - Loki/Thor
Slugging - Odin
Waiting - ultrasound and belly picture
Caring - Linnea, Leif
Working - Yahoo, Big Picture Scrapbooking
Playing - iPhone, Rock Band

As I'm a very simple scrapbooker, and a computer geek to boot, I didn't do a whole lot with my cover. I really am missing the creativity gene, which makes it so weird that I like to scrapbook.

I chose to highlight my "Waiting" page because that's probably the biggest thing going on in my life at this exact moment. We don't have kids, weren't sure we were going to have kids, and finally made the decision to start trying, and then I got pregnant. Both of us are very active people, and it's been extraordinarily difficult for me to give up that lifestyle. Much more than I thought. No snowboarding, no scuba diving, no dirt biking, no wrestling with the dogs, etc... I've encouraged Leif to keep up with our activities, and he has gone dirt biking almost every Sunday, but I wish I could participate as well. Now that we're getting closer (2 1/2 months to go), we're both getting more and more excited, especially as we see the nursery taking shape, and especially as we not only realize that our lives are going to change (hopefully for the better), but as we realize all the cool stuff we'll be able to share with him once he gets a little older.

The second page I'll highlight is my Playing page. Although I can't be as active as I want to be, I still have found ways to keep myself entertained. My biggest saving grace has literally been my iPhone. It's so much more than a phone. I use it for music, videos, movies, surfing the web, email, todos, games, if it can do it, I probably have as well. I keep it on the nightstand next to me, and since my sleep pattern has lately consisted of "waking up every 90 minutes to go to the bathroom and not being able to fall back asleep", I've been using the iPhone to kind of help me relax again so I can fall asleep. If it angle it the right way, the light doesn't bother Leif at all, so that's been nice to have. Also when I was recently in the hospital, I was able to use it to text people, surf the web, and just generally keep in touch.

Besides the iPhone, I've really been enjoying Rock Band, and now Rock Band 2. I splurged and bought the Ion Drum Rocker for Rock Band 2, and it's so much better than the set that comes with the game. I'm hitting notes I never could before, I'm able to do the 16th notes which I usually suck at, the cymbals are fun, and I almost feel like I'm playing drums (maybe I am. :). Considering Rock Band 2 has songs like Livin' on a Prayer, and Hungry Like the Wolf (I haven't unlocked Round and Round yet), I've been having a grand ol' time with it. Even when Leif doesn't want to play in our band, I'll think nothing of booting up the Xbox 360 and practicing Livin' on a Prayer on Expert mode.

The Rock Band picture especially is interesting to me since you can completely see how pregnant I am, and I'm still not used to looking at myself like that.

There you have it, my life as of October 1, 2008. As a bonus, I'm challenging others who are reading this to create their own Present Moment Scrapbook. Take 10 photos of your life right now. Compile these photos in a really small mini album, and keep this album someplace where you can refer back to it a lot. In 1 year, create a scrapbook page about your experience, including how much things have changed or stayed the same during the past year.

Friday night I was ready for what was looking to be a semi-enjoyable weekend. On Saturday we were going to take Loki and Thor to Labfest for some swimming fun. I was going to cook a new lasagna recipe on Saturday night. Sunday Leif was going to go dirt biking and I was planning on doing some photo or scrapbook stuff.

All that was shot. Saturday morning at about 4am I started feeling odd. It just kept getting worse until I was convinced I had food poisoning (although it turned out to be a stomach virus). I sipped on Gatorade and thought I was keeping it down, so after talking to the OB on call at about 10am (to make sure I wasn't doing anything bad to the baby), I stayed in bed all day Saturday and watched the Disney Channel. Hey, I really really needed something completely brain-dead, and I definitely discovered that for an adult, "That's So Raven", "Hannah Montana", "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody", and those little Jonas Brothers shorts they did every hour fit the bill (however the Jonas Brothers have started growing on me now, scarily enough).

I thought I was feeling better, and I'll spare you all the sordid details of the day, but around 7pm I finally decided to call the doctor again. My constant thirst was kind of the key at this point, and the fact that all I wanted to do was chug a giant glass of ice water, even though I'd been drinking Gatorade all day. She told me to come to the ER, but more specifically Labor and Delivery so they could check me and the baby out (and skip the long ER lines too). I turned off Camp Rock, got Leif, and off we went.

Once we registered in the ER (about 10 minutes), I went upstairs to the Labor and Delivery area where they took a urine sample, and hooked me up to some sort of baby monitor. The nurse took one look at some chart and said "yeah, you should be up here at the top if you're not dehydrated, and you're way down here (like 2 rows from the bottom), so it's good you came in. Oh by the way, you need about 4 of these bags of IV fluids, so we're keeping you overnight." Not only was my heartbeat elevated, but the baby's was too. Poor baby.

They hooked me up to an IV, started me on fluids, gave me a Tylenol since everything ached, something they call Liquid Gold which removed all of my stomach pains, and an Ambien so I could sleep. Leif left at that point since there was no reason for him to stick around, and I went to sleep pretty quick.

The next morning I had my blood drawn twice (I still hate needles), and saw the doctor who really wanted to let me leave that day, but first all the tests had to come back ok, and I had to try and keep food down. I ate a few small packages of Saltines, and then they let me order food off the menu - Applesauce and Cream of Tomato Soup. That all sat ok with me, and finally I got to go home sometime in the afternoon. Both my heartbeat and the baby's heartbeat were back to normal. I spent the rest of the day at home fortunately, even though I was in bed.

Now I'm feeling almost normal, and even managed to eat a semi-real dinner of spaghetti.

So went my weekend.

While I hung out at Cathy's while she was making peach cobbler, peach chutney, and peach jam with a box of fresh peaches she got, Leif was able to actually go out and do things (that I couldn't :(. First, he and Randy headed off to Ramparts for their poker run. 25 miles later, and all he ended up with was a pair of jacks (which, apparently, was better than Randy). During the run however he apparently ran into a tree, or over a root, or something dumb like that, so spent the rest of the day complaining about how sore he was. Just like a guy. Trying being pregnant, dammit, then that'll give you something to whine about! :)

After that they headed off to try some indoor skydiving. Now for those who don't know, Leif used to actually be really into skydiving, having completed just short of 1000 jumps (although he hasn't done it in about 15 years). He used to compete with a team in formation jumping, as well as being the camera man for newbies taking their first jumps (and people who just wanted a video souvenir of themselves), so he's been very excited to try this. I was able to go watch them participate in this, and brought along our new video camera, the Flip Mino. After getting some info from Andy and deciding we needed some sort of video camera for when Beavis is born (no, we're not really naming him Beavis...), we bought this, but hadn't really used it yet.

In any case, I brought along the video camera and recorded all 3 of their runs (each). It does a pretty good job, with the exception that the zoom is digital so you really don't want to zoom in. I knew this already, so didn't bother trying, but got a decent video of Leif. The instructor told him he looked better than pretty much all the beginners who come in, but Leif never bothered to tell the guy he used to skydive. In any case, both him and Randy had loads of fun, even though the flying time is short, and it's expensive.

Today was my birthday (yeah yeah, I've heard all the "wow, what a birthday" comments), and the only thing we had planned was for Leif to make me dinner tonight. Well, I did go see Avenue Q last night with neighbor Cathy which was a good time. Second time I've seen it, and first for her, so it was a lot of fun to go with someone who was a newbie at it!

Anyways, I'm working at my computer during the afternoon, and suddenly my Adium (IM) window goes bezerk. Half my buddies on my buddy list are flashing saying they have new messages for me, and I notice all these tabs start appearing in my main window. At first I thought something was down at work that was really important that I didn't know about, but it became evident after looking at the tabs, that it was all people wishing me a happy birthday. Leif meanwhile is in the kitchen laughing hysterically.

Apparently I have the best husband who gets uber style points and originality for this one. Early this morning he IM'ed people (lots of people) and told them to wish me a happy birthday at 2pm. Then he emailed some people and told them to email me at 2pm. Then he sent texts to some people and told them to text me at 2pm. Even after that initial deluge, I was still getting emails and IMs at 6pm from people who had been in all day meetings. I even got stuff from people I hadn't talked to in months, so that was really really cool. AND, some of those people had told other people I knew which he hadn't contacted (because he didn't know I knew them), so I got IMs from THEM too!

Having a dorky smile on your face for the rest of the day is just great. :)

Leify, you're the bestest!! And to show how bestest he is, here's his 1984 yearbook photo:

Nothing specific is going on, so figured I'd write down some random thoughts.

Went to Vegas last week for our "last trip just the 2 of us before the baby is born" vacation. Just from Tuesday-Friday, so nothing that long, but that's about as long as I can handle Vegas anyways. Saw David Copperfield, ate dinner at the Eiffel Tower restaurant, played some blackjack, and just relaxed. Leif was picked to be in David Copperfield's grand finale. I managed to get a couple pictures of him onstage before they told me to put the camera away. I'm a scrapbooker dammit!

Only 3 months and 1 week!! Not that I'm counting the days or anything. Still not enjoying this. I'm guessing the person with 18 kids just had the last few slide out at the end.

Is it wrong that I dislike both presidential candidates? I mean, one seems to be concentrating on the fact that he's a war hero and doing a lot of personal attacks, and the other wants to tax the middle class to oblivion. Maybe what they say is true, that the people who actually are qualified for the job are too smart to run, so we're left with the runoff. Sigh. I just wish the election were over so whomever gets elected can go about destroying this country even more than Bush has.

I love my puppies. I haven't taken any pictures of them in awhile, but I have the best dogs ever.

I read Twilight, and don't get all the hype. It was "ok", but I guess I'm way outside the demographic (teenage girl) for it. This book is not the next Harry Potter - the writing isn't that good, the story isn't that good, and I'm wondering what all the fuss is about. I'll read the others in the series just to see what happens, but I'm really glad I got it out of the library instead of buying it.

Excited to see Avenue Q tonight. I've seen it already, but love the music. I mean, how can you not love a musical when one of the first songs is "It Sucks to be Me", and another song is "The Internet is for Porn"?

Cathy Zielske is doing a class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I'm excited for this since I love her stuff so much!

That's it.

Honestly there hasn't been too much to write. Pregnancy is not this "wow this is amazing!" thing that so many people seem to think it is. I mean, it's cool and all, but I can't imagine churning out kid after kid after kid. As it is, time seems to be crawling at the slowest rate ever, but at least I'm past the halfway point now.

Got this picture taken at the last doctor's appointment. I think it looks like Leif:

In any case, no more ultrasounds unless I want to spring for one of those 3D/4D places. Still haven't decided. It's pretty cool I was able to get that one at the doctor's office, and may want to get another one at 30 weeks or so, but they don't do any more unless they have to.