Whoops, I blinked and it was five years later

 Well, well, well, look who's back at the blog (it's me). There has been a lot going on in my life lately, but I feel really uncomfortable sharing things on Facebook. I always feel like I'm howling into the void of That Freshman Who Was In Music Theory 101 With Me, That Mom I Scheduled One Playdate With In 2011, and The New Acquaintance That I'm Hoping May Turn Into a Friend; and they have to listen to me howl on their feeds whether they like it or not, whether I have actually spoken directly to them in fifteen years or not. Despite being open for all to read, blogging feels a little more intimate because if someone is reading this, it's because they cared enough to navigate over here. So anyway, hi! It's been awhile!

Adam has gotten grayer, the kids have gotten taller, and I have gotten fatter. 

One thing that hasn't changed? My kids still don't know how to smile for the camera.

So what's been up with me? Probably the highlight up till this summer is that I got chickens, which should tell you how exciting life has been. We traveled a bit, the kids did sports, I made literally over a thousand pies, we hung out with my parents next door, I got involved in a lot of local groups like 4-H and the library board. Everything was swimming along for the past several years in our little remote corner of Washington. Enter this summer, when we up and moved to a different remote corner of Washington. So far, it has been fantastic for Adam and the kids-- Adam is really enjoying his job and the career possibilities that come with it, and the kids have made a ton of friends and have been experiencing amazing growth through the activities they're involved with here.

More sledding opportunities, for one.

 As for me, not going to lie, it has been ROUGH. Our new milieu is just fine, with gorgeous scenery and friendly locals; but I lost a lot in the move, and I'm not just talking about my cake pans. There's a lot to grieve about. I'd say the top three things I've had the hardest time with are 1) The loss of my ride-or-die people I could call upon for anything at anytime 2) the loss of identity. I'm not a homeschool group leader, pro pie baker, co-op facilitator, volunteer, or any of the other community pillar hats anymore. What am I now?? What purpose do I serve? Some days I just feel like a husk. 3) the loss of solitude. We are in a much smaller house and I can't send the kids next door to my parents anymore when I need a moment of peace. It is ironic to be in a place where I'm simultaneously lonely and surrounded by people ALL. THE. TIME. Literally 24/7. Psychologically, these past six or so months have been brutal.

This move has broken me in a lot of ways I wasn't expecting, but I think with time things will be better. In the meantime, I'm just kind of chugging along. In an attempt to plug into our new community, I abandoned my cardinal rule of One Activity Per Child (And It Will Probably Be the Same Activity Your Sibling Is Doing) and signed them up for all the things. I have made loads of acquaintances and become best friends with my minivan if no one else. We bought a house (first-time homeowners!!) and there is plenty in our fixer-upper to demand my attention. That is all probably worth several future posts, so I'll leave you on that cliffhanger there and hopefully write something else before another five years passes by.

My First 5k!

Last Friday, I ran my first 5k. Well, technically, it's not my first first, because right before I got pregnant with Cici in 2014, Adam and I did The Color Run. However, that is a super relaxed event (you can't really call it a race, because it is untimed), and I only ran about halfway before I had to stop, huffing and puffing, and walk the rest of the way, so I don't really count it as really running a 5k.

This race was pretty special because it's the first event I have done since starting a new journey towards fitness last June. About nine weeks after Cici was born, I decided it was high time to get in shape. When I first got on the treadmill, I could barely walk ten minutes before I got winded and my C-section incision started acting up. However, I stuck with it, and soon I could walk for twelve minutes. Then fifteen. Once I could walk for thirty minutes at a stretch, I started peppering the workouts with a minute of slow jogging. Next time, a couple minutes of jogging. Next time, I upped the speed a tiny bit.

It took about five months of doing that- just trying to outdo myself each time, no matter how tiny the change- until I was ready to tackle the Couch To 5k program. It took me fourteen weeks to complete the nine-week program, but in spite of my glacial progress, I am now consistently running 2-3 miles, three times a week! To someone who had previously never run three miles in her life, this is pretty incredible. For the first time in my life, I actually enjoy exercising.

(Next on the workout agenda...)

Friday's 5k was oodles of fun. It was an evening event, so we ran along the river as the sun set. Adam promptly shot up to the front of the pack (he ultimately finished in fourth place), leaving me to enjoy the beautiful evening. Fish were jumping in the water, and the city was quieting down... what a lovely run. I struggled a bit because I forgot to grab a snack when we left home, so I was running on empty by the time the race started. But I still ran the entire thing! WOO! 

The very last bit of the race, I decided to increase speed to pass the guy ahead of me; a minute later, when I started the descent down the hill to the finish line, that same guy went flying past me. I was't about to let him get ahead of me so easily, so we had this full-blown, pull-out-all-the-stops race! It was pretty exciting, and although he did ultimately beat me, it was by just a hair (we had the same official finishing time). My finish time was 29:09, Adam's was 20:41, and we were both very pleased with our results!

First post on Momonym!

All right! Tonight marks me moving the blog from Downright Domesticity to Momonym. How exciting! Well, that's about all. Here's a picture of a maze Oscar made a couple days ago-- a scene from My Neighbor Totoro:

Well, Oklahoma, it's been [somewhat] nice knowing you...

I didn't write a Knead It Monday post yesterday, because I was spending the day with Hubs before packing him onto an airplane this morning. But here's a short blurb about the bread: it was sourdough, from a starter I made myself! The resulting loaf didn't taste like sourdough at all, but I'm just happy that we didn't die from eating something that sat on my counter for an entire week. So there's another bread that I plan on revisiting sometime this year.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that we are moving! Here is where we're going:

We're not moving into in the White House itself, but we will be in the Washington, D.C. area! Adam's studies are Government/Pre-Law, so this is the place to be. We'll also be closer to his side of the family! My side is a little put out that we're not moving to Washington State, where they live, but I'm sure a trip to all the cool monuments when they visit will appease them somewhat.

As a girl who was raised in a pretty unhistoric state and relocated to another boring state, I'm stoked to be living somewhere with monuments, old buildings, and an interesting past! I'm really fighting the temptation to fall to American Tail Syndrome (I coined that one myself!)-- thinking that everything under the sun will be so much better in our new location.

Washington. D.C. is hardly the land of milk and honey, but I'm still very optimistic. :-) Our lease is up at the end of March, so we'll be moving sometime next month. We are very much flying by the seat of our pants on this one! Adam has gone ahead to line up work and living arrangements, so I guess we have a new Man of the House:

My first decree is to destroy the Moby Wrap!

Let's hope we get everything lined up soon. :-)

Fun at the Aquarium!

Yesterday was Adam's birthday! He turned the big 2-5. Since he's a big fish enthusiast, I surprised him with a trip to the aquarium! I didn't get many pictures of the actual fish, because it was too dark. But here's what I did shoot...

The birthday boy with the tickets! 

The aquarium was all decked out with spooks!

Notice my finished sling? :-D

The balloon ghouls didn't care that it was Adam's birthday!

How did Adam measure against the Gar pike?

A little better than Baby D did!

The way to the shark tank was fraught with peril.

Here are some fish!

We took a video of a really funny fish.

When we returned an hour later, he was still at it.

All the excitement was just too much for Baby D.

The whole family, on our way out.

And that was our day at the aquarium. I hope Adam's day was fin-tastic!

The Birth of Baby D: Part 3 (The Hospitalization)

Now here comes the hardest part to write about. What had happened to me was of little consequence: the laboring to exhaustion, the major abdominal surgery-- that was not nearly so bad as watching what happened to my little boy next.

When I came to, either Adam or a nurse (I forget which) came by to let me know that Baby D's blood sugar was dangerously low, so they had put him on an IV and placed him in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). I'm a little fuzzy on what happened next, but eventually, I was settling in my hospital room. The NICU was closed at the moment, so I couldn't visit Baby D, but Adam turned on the TV and flipped the channels until we came to a live video feed of our little guy. What a cutie! Since we couldn't really do much else, we both fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later and asked the nurse what I needed to do in order to see Baby D. She promised a wheelchair shortly and left.

The nurse for that day was simply not on the ball. She had to be asked repeatedly for everything-- pain meds, breast pump materials, and... the wheelchair. Around 11 a.m., I was starting to lose it-- it had been twelve hours since Baby D was born, and I hadn't even gotten to get a good look at his little face yet, much less hold him. Adam woke up, saw me crying, and walked out into the hall, where there were a bunch of wheelchairs parked about twenty feet away. Nursing FAIL!!

Adam wheeled me into the NICU, where we were instructed to scrub our hands/forearms intensely and don disposable hospital gowns before actually entering the room. Adam led me past several beds of tiny, tiny preemies before stopping at the bed of a massive bundle.

My baby's birth weight? 9 pounds, 9 ounces. He was truly a giant among NICU babies!

My poor little guy was hooked up to all sorts of monitors, as well as an IV drip. With all the cables and cords everywhere, it looked like I'd given birth to a cyborg baby! I gently picked him up...

... and it was LOVE.

Adam and I talked with the nurses about Baby D's situation. In order to get discharged, Baby D needed to stabilize his blood sugar enough to get completely off the glucose drip. It would probably take a few days, so all we could do was wait it out.

Now here's where the frustrating part came in. The hospital has a strict feeding schedule. Every three hours, a baby is given a very specific amount based on some scientific formula. I firmly believe that this made my baby stay in the hospital unnecessarily long. It was a crap shoot as to whether Baby D would actually eat at the appointed time, because sometimes he'd just be dead asleep. Other times, I would have to sit there and watch him fuss and root around for an hour because he happened to get hungry an hour early. His feedings could ONLY last a half hour or less, because the hospital staff was quite paranoid about him burning calories.

So, oftentimes, his feedings looked like this: either me or a nurse waking him from a dead sleep, trying to force feed the drowsy baby, and giving up after a fruitless half hour. Baby D would then wake up hungry later and would be denied food because it wasn't exactly on the next three hour feeding slot! I can't tell you how maddening this was!

With Baby D's inability to conform to the hospital's feeding schedule, he was labeled as a "lazy feeder," and now not only did he have to get off the glucose drip, but he also had to perform up to the hospital feeding schedule in order to go home. One morning, when I walked in to see my little boy, he had a feeding tube running out his little nose. Apparently, he had slept through too many feedings.

On Tuesday, I was discharged. Baby D was not.

The days after that were a never-ending cycle of driving back and forth to the hospital, holding the baby, dealing with nurses, eating fast food, and getting up at all hours to pump milk. Since I wasn't supposed to drive for two weeks after birth, Adam had to chauffeur me everywhere. Oftentimes, he'd simply drop me off early, and I'd basically live there for the whole day while Adam went to work.

Poor little Baby D was such a trooper! In spite of being surrounded by beeping monitors and screaming preemies 24/7, being taken care of by an ever-changing assortment of nurses, as well as a mommy and daddy that always had to leave, and enduring so many painful medical procedures, he was very mellow and hardly fussed at all. He had an IV needle that was always changing locations. One day, it would be in his little hand. This never lasted long, because he was always pulling it out there. Other days, it would be in his foot or even in his scalp, which always made him look very Borg-like. On more than one occasion, a nurse would stop me at the door and say, "You probably want to wait a minute," and I would hear Baby D scream as they put the IV in somewhere else.

Poor Baby D's heels were full of scabs from being pricked so many times for the glucose blood test. One nurse told me that it would be a good idea to give Baby D foot massages because NICU babies often start associating pain with people touching their feet. Isn't that sad??

My mama bear rage moment came one day when one of the older nurses took the IV out of his scalp. She must have been feeling lazy that day, because to my horror, she skipped using any type of adhesive remover and just ripped the tape right off. Baby D cried, of course, and to this day he still has a bald patch on his head. I was livid, and so was Adam when he found out. Fortunately, that nurse never was assigned to Baby D again, so he got to keep the rest of his hair. >:-(

The one bright spot in all this was our breastfeeding relationship. Baby D latched on like a champ right from the beginning, and I never had any problem getting him to take the breast-- except, of course, the feedings when he was dead asleep. We tried using a nipple shield a few times, but we did so much better without, that I finally ditched it. My milk supply was great when I pumped-- so great, in fact, that the lactation consultant recommended I pump less, lest I get engorged once I had baby home and wasn't pumping anymore. As I've said before, the only irritating part was the hospital feeding schedule. They'd weigh Baby D before and after a breastfeeding session, to see exactly how much he got (however "short" we were, they'd give the difference through that feeding tube). I could only try feeding him during the feeding time slots, and they'd basically say, "Okay, it's 12:04, you have thirty minutes, see what you can do." Somehow, in spite of the pressure, and dealing with a sleepy baby so much of the time, we still managed to do well anyways.

Long story made a little shorter, one morning we walked into the NICU to see a nurse unhooking Baby D from all his monitors and breaking down his little station. The nurse practitioner came up and said, "Well, are you ready to take him home?" We were dumbfounded and quite unprepared! So we called my parents, who were in town at the time, and had them run the car seat and some baby clothes over.

Baby D finally came home! I was starting to wonder if we'd EVER get him out of the hospital! He was in the NICU for 12 days altogether.

We're doing great at home. We're breastfeeding on demand, and he's gaining weight just fine! In spite of all the obstacles, Baby D and I have bonded wonderfully from Day 1, and it totally makes my day to just hold him and enjoy his little personality!

I realize that women who go through what I've been through are prime candidates for post-partum depression, so I've been monitoring myself like a hawk. Of course, there is grieving that naturally goes with this. I'm very sad that my birth plans blew up in my face, and that with the C-section, I'll be facing severe obstacles to getting a natural birth for subsequent babies. I'm really sad to have missed out on Baby D's first hours, and you have no idea how bad I feel that Baby D had to spend his first two weeks in such a sterile environment and endure all that pain. I seriously feel sometimes like we're victims of some horrible crime.

But, I am soooo happy to finally have Baby D here with us, and what's past is past. It's been smooth sailing since we've been home, and I'm very eager to keep on moving forward. Writing about all this, however boring it may be for everyone else, has been a step in the right direction. I've been wanting to post all this for weeks, and now that I have, I can get on with the posts showing off my incredibly cute little boy. :-D You're all dying to see him, right? Right?? :-D Okay, since you asked so nicely, I'll close with a picture from a couple days ago:

The cats are very happy that I've found something else to stick in the Moby Wrap. :-D

The Birth of Baby D: Part 1

The Birth of Baby D: Part 2

The Birth of Baby D: Part 2 (The Birth)

When we got to the hospital, my midwife Heather was there to meet us. Oh my word, let me just pause here and say that I will NEVER do another birth without a midwife/doula! Heather was such a great support during this entire ordeal, and having her there really helped take a lot of the pressure off Adam.

We got checked in, and spirits were somewhat high. Adam and I were joking around as the nurse had me fill out paperwork and got the IV in. Around 9:30, I was induced. Before long, the Pitocin started to work its magic-- although I couldn't feel them yet, the monitors were picking up contractions.

The first few hours passed pretty uneventfully. My sister Annalynne, who currently lives a few hours away, called to let us know that she was on her way. "Don't have the baby without me!" she said. Har har har. I tried to get some sleep, knowing that it would soon become a precious commodity.

To make a very long story short, Annalynne needn't have worried. I labored all day Friday, with very little progress. The contractions became very painful, but nothing that I thought to be unbearable. My doctor came in periodically to do a cervical exam (which seriously hurt WAAAAY more than any contraction) and discussed that he really wanted to give me the chance to do a natural birth, which is why he was letting me labor so long. I was fully aware that most doctors would have thrown in the towel after about twelve hours, so I appreciated the opportunity to keep laboring! Starting around noon or so, the nurses came in and increased the Pitocin, until I was at the maximum dosage by around 6:00 P.M. Still no progress. I tried to sleep, but I was woken up every few minutes or so by a contraction.

I think I dealt pretty well with the pain. One thing that helped immensely was humming low scales during contractions to help focus my breath and relax. I'm sure everyone else was sick of hearing scales by the end, but it really did help me deal with the pain! Adam was a trooper, and held me as much as I needed him to. I did a lot of walking around, as much as the IV and the zillion monitors strapped to me would allow, as well as sitting or bouncing around on a birthing ball. Another thing that helped was applying an ice pack to my back. Heather says I was her first client that had actually requested cold and found it helpful. Whatever works, I guess!

One lame thing was that the hospital didn't allow me to eat. At all. Their logic was just in case I needed a C-section, and just in case I lost consciousness, they were afraid I'd regurgitate and then aspirate my food, or something highly unlikely like that. Adam, Heather, and Annalynne were all like, "Heck with that!" and continuously sneaked food to me all day. Every time I ate, the contractions picked right back up. Hooray for hospitals and their sometimes counterproductive rules!

Around 10:00 P.M, my doctor came in and had a talk. After laboring all day, I was only dilated to a 6, and I had been stuck there for quite a while. At this point, he thought that it was counterproductive to labor more. As for me, I was exhausted and really weary of the contractions every two minutes. The doctor told me that after having so little progress after so long, that further labor would probably not be productive. It was time for that which I had worked so hard to avoid: a C-section. He prayed with us, and then left us to prep for the surgery.

I shed a few tears. Heather assured me that I had done wonderfully and given it my best shot. At that point, I had been in labor for twenty-five hours. Adam put on a funny-looking set of coveralls for the operation, which barely fit his 6'2" frame. The nurse unhooked me from all the monitors (hooray, freedom!) and wheeled me into the operating room.

I will not deny that I was quite a bit scared. I'd never had surgery before, and the operating room was a scary place. It was unnaturally cold in every way possible-- an unearthly shade of white on the walls, cold tile floor, and a freezing physical temperature. Adam wasn't allowed into the room yet, so I was all by myself.

The anesthesiologist got me all set up with the spinal block-- immediately, my toes went numb, and before long, I was completely numb from the waist down. Weird stuff! The nurse set up a screen over my waist and led Adam in to sit down beside me. He grabbed my hand and said, "Well, if it's a boy, I guess we're naming him _____, then?" Yes, that is right, ladies and gentlemen, we were still debating a boy's name right up into the operating room!

The doctors got to work, and I could feel tugging and pressure on my abdomen. Just a couple of minutes of that, until I heard....

A little cry.

And then the doctor: "It's a BOY!"

The doctors continued their pulling and tugging. Adam went over to be with our new son! After a few minutes, a nurse came by with Baby D., let me give him a kiss, and whisked him away.

I, my work accomplished, totally konked out.

(and guess what, I never aspirated and died on that food I was sneaking) :-P

The Birth of Baby D: Part 1

The Birth of Baby D: Part 3

The Birth of Baby D: Part 1 (The Diagnosis)

Wow, what a crazy three weeks it's been! We increased our household by 33% and our cumulative cuteness by about a gazillion percent. Check it out:

I've had the bulk of this written for a couple weeks, but I've been just a little busy. :-) This was kind of a painful story to write, but I think it's important to share, at least for me, in order to get it off my chest.

PART 1: The Diagnosis

So, as I've mentioned before, I was having some health issues towards the end of pregnancy. On Wednesday, my midwives took a blood sample and sent it off to be tested. On Thursday morning, I got the call: it appeared that I was in the early stages of toxemia, and it was now necessary for me to transfer care to a physician. My midwife Heather gave me the number of a doctor that she highly recommended, and I called his office and set an appointment for that afternoon.

That afternoon, before the appointment, Adam and I made a very delicious stop at Famous Dave's. My mother-in-law had very thoughtfully arranged for us to get a hearty meal there; we just hadn't been able to have a convenient time when Adam and I would both be off work! So, we thought, "Well, we're not doing anything this afternoon, and who knows when that baby's coming-- let's go eat!"

Little did we know that this would be a VERY good idea.

After finishing off the last of those BBQ ribs, we made our way down to the doctor's office. Let me tell you one immediate benefit of midwife care: NO WAITING!!! Out of the two or so hours spent at the doctor's office, I think we actually saw the doctor for twenty minutes. Next time I go, I'm bringing a book!

So when we finally got to see the doctor, we did all the tests: blood pressure, urine, and... the cervical exam. Dear God, that was seriously the most painful part of the entire birthing experience. Contractions were nothing next to that! After all that unpleasantness, they took my blood pressure again, and for some odd reason, it was sky-high. Gee, I wonder why!

Anyways, the doctor left the office, and returned a few minutes later with his prognosis: my condition was starting to get dangerous, and he very strongly felt that the best thing would be to induce labor as soon as possible.

And the slot for "as soon as possible" was in two hours. The doc told us to go home, do whatever we needed to do, and come back at 7:30.

We drove home and I kind of wandered around in a state of shock. We were not prepared at all for Baby D's arrival! I had always thought that when labor started, I'd have some time to tidy up the house and do other last-minute baby preparations. I had Adam throw a random assortment of baby stuff in the laundry, because I hadn't even washed any of Baby D's clothes at that point. I called my midwife. I had NO idea what to pack for a hospital birth, because I wasn't supposed to be giving birth in the hospital.

So, we tried to relax, packed some things, and took one last preggo picture:

I tried to choke down some food, but for once in this entire pregnancy, I had no appetite. Good thing we had that giant meal at Famous Dave's!

The Birth of Baby D: Part 2

The Birth of Baby D: Part 3

Pause. Breathe.

I can finally now relax. Somewhat. I am a mom now, after all, so there's not a whole lot of relaxing to be done!

We just finally brought Baby D home today.

I've been trying to write Baby D's birth story when I can, but unfortunately, that story ended in a twelve-day stay in the Intensive Care Unit, so for the past week and a half, I've been living in the hospital. Today is the first day I finally got to hold my baby without a tangled mess of cords and monitors attached, and the first time I've gotten to breastfeed without a legion of nurses saying, "Okay, you have twenty minutes, let's see what you can do." Whew!

So I am very glad to be home. WITH Baby D! Well, I have some hard-core snuggling to do, so I'm off. Here's a picture for your daily megadose of cuteness!

What did YOU do this weekend?

I didn't do much...

besides have a baby!!!

The whole story will be coming later, but for now, I'll just leave you with a thousand words:

A Brief Life Update

I'm back! Wow, life has been crazy for the past few weeks, and I apologize for being such a blog slacker. So here's what's been going on in a nutshell:

~Adam got sick. And then I got sick. It was some sort of nasty respiratory sickness, which I'm still recovering from as far as sniffling and congestion. Since I'm exceptionally loathe to take medication, being pregnant and all, I tried a device called a Neti pot. It's like a small teapot that you fill with a saline solution and use to rinse your sinuses out. Go here if you'd like to see a weird lady demonstrate it on Youtube. I do not recommend those bending exercises, though, unless you want boogers all over your floor!!! Just sayin'. I'm not entirely sure how effective the Neti pot was for me, but it was nice to feel like I was doing something about my cold.

~My work replacement started with the company last week, so I've been training her. And by "training", I mean playing solitaire while she does my job. Ahhhh, these will be a glorious last few weeks at work.

~My sister's birthday was on Tuesday. Since our birthdays are so close together, she made the three-hour drive down here so we could celebrate it together! Our cake was INSANE. She wanted a raw cookie dough cake, and I wanted an ice cream cake. So we combined and made a ridiculous double-layer chocolate chip cookie dough cake with a full carton of ice cream spread over the top. Calories don't count on your birthday, right? Right?? Oh yeah, and since my sister was turning twenty, and I'm turning twenty-four, we put forty-four candles on the cake. I dare you to find a more ridiculous cake (and one that makes a bigger cloud of smoke).

~So what am I doing on my actual birthday, which happens to be tomorrow? Well, not much-- I'll be spending most of the day at work. I'll also be celebrating Arnold Schwartzenegger's birthday, as well as National Cheesecake Day!!! This is probably going to involve me bringing some sort of cheesecake dish to work tomorrow. Adam probably has some special plan up his sleeve because he's sweet like that, but otherwise, that's what my day looks like.

~Today, we went to the local water park for free, courtesy of Adam's workplace. Since I can't really go on any of the slides, and Adam's favorite ride was closed for maintenance, we hung out there for a couple hours, said, "Well, this is lame," and went home. I am SO glad that we got in for free, because they way overcharge for everything there!!! I highly encourage any readers in the area to find alternative means of entertainment, because you will be charged theme park prices for a less-than-memorable experience.

~We are watching a dog for some friends who are currently out of town. The household menagerie score: DOG +1, extremely happy and excited to see our cats. CATS -2, throwing literal hissy fits and spending the past approximate 36 hours under our bed. ADAM AND MARIA +5, extremely entertained by how much the dog still loves the cats anyway.

~My midwife appointment on Tuesday actually took place at our apartment, so that they could scope things out and not worry about finding the place when B-Day actually arrives. Luckily for me. they did not take one look at my apartment and shriek, "NO WAY are you having a baby in this MESS!!!!" which is probably because I spent the two days before doing some hard-core cleaning. Not surprisingly, my blood pressure was high. Of course I wasn't going to tell them, "Yeah, I was under stress to get the house clean!!!" so now I have to actually formally exercise and eat more protein. Oy veh. On a more positive note, tomorrow marks nine months!

So that's what's going on at the Downright Domicile. Hope you all are beating the heat just fine and enjoying the rest of your summer!

The Big 100 and a GIVEAWAY! {CLOSED}

Important things come in one hundreds.

One hundred pennies make a dollar.

One hundred years make a century.

One hundred centigrams make a gram, if you're into the metric thing. By the way, it's a good idea to know your metric system before taking a honeymoon in Canada, because otherwise, you will order way too much special Canadian tea and will still be drinking it two years later. This is the voice of experience, y'all.

Well, it only took a year and a half and tons of tooth-pulling, but I have finally hit an important milestone:

ONE HUNDRED POSTS make my blog!

That is really exciting to me! For one thing, it is proof that I have had one hundred coherent thoughts. This will be so very useful the next time Adam catches me doing something completely chicken-brained, like setting the house on fire. Not like that has ever happened here or anything, mind you.

So, in commemoration of having a very grown-up blog, I am doing a very grown-up blog thing: hosting my very first giveaway!

Remember that super-cute apron I made several months ago? One lucky winner is going to receive this hand-made apron with a delicious cherry-pattern fabric, in this pattern:

Special thanks to my husband for lending his sweet photography skillz!

Let me tell you, one look at that cherry fabric and the chocolate-brown trim to go with it, and you will be craving a sundae!

(As soon as I finish the apron [which will be within a few days], I will put up a picture of the finished prize.)

So, how can you win this great excuse to bake cookies?


Mandatory entry: Answer me this: what sort of home-sewn items (besides aprons, of course) do you think make great gifts? Leave a comment!


Additional entries: (please leave a separate comment each time you do one of these)
1. Follow this here growed-up blog! If you're already a follower, leave me a comment, telling me so.
2. Write about this giveaway on your blog.
3. Mention this giveaway (with the URL) in a facebook status.
4. Tell me what your favorite cookie is to bake.
5. Tell me if you have ever set your house on fire. But only if it's true. And for goodness' sake, don't set your house on fire just so you can have this apron.

Entries will close on Tuesday, 05/02, at 6 PM CST.

Thanks for celebrating with me!

Why this will be the best Valentine's Day ever!

My husband has been telling me all week that he was planning something wonderful for us for Valentine's Day. I was thinking that he was planning a nice dinner, and then something quirky and unexpected after. That's just the way my husband rolls.

How about a nice dinner, and something quirky-- in another city?

Adam has been planning a romantic weekend getaway for us! I'm super excited! He wasn't going to tell me where we were headed, but I quickly figured it out, and it's a really neat city that neither of us have been to. We will be leaving immediately after I get off work tomorrow. I promise I will take lots of pictures!

Oh, and did I mention-- SQUEEEEEEEEEE!

NaBloPoMo: Baby-Talk? Tonguetwister?

Try saying it ten times. I bet you can't.

NaBloPoMo, or that thing I've been talking about for the past few days, is short for NAtional BLOg POsting MOnth (you can view the website here). What cracks me up is that this applies to EVERY month of the year, so why not call it National Blog Posting Year? Anyways, the premise is that you commit on their site to post something on your blog every. single. day. for a month. Now, if you've been following my blog for any amount of time, you've probably noticed that I do really well to post more than ONCE a month! So yeah, after almost one straight week of posting, it probably feels like I'm spamming your reader right about now. Sorry. :-P

A Day for All Chores

I realized that I haven't really been talking much about what's actually going on in the Downright Domestic household, which is a shame, because that's definitely one big reason why I read other blogs! I enjoy witnessing the vicissitudes in other people's lives. It's kind of like a TV show in real life: Did So-and-So have a great vacation? Did XYZ ever solve that gardening problem? Tune in next time to find out!

Yeah, you can tell that I don't watch much TV. Am I the only one that feels this way about the bloggy world?

So the past few weeks, I've been working at a newly-opened grocery store. It seems that there's something wrong with an entity called The Economy, so people aren't as willing to hire new graduates. So I'm doing the whole minimum-wage job thing. However, there is a definite perk to this job.

My husband is also working there!

If I'm going to spend one third of my day not sitting in front of the TV eating bonbons, I might as well spend it with the one I love, right?

I like to imagine that it's similar to the Olden Days, when the wife would go out in the fields and work side-by-side with her husband. Only now we're shaving deli meat together, ha ha. Nothing says romance like making large vats of potato salad with your husband, right? But we seriously are enjoying working together, and I think it's doing our coworkers some good to see a healthy marriage lived out.

We got Sunday and Monday off this week, so now I'm gearing up to do all sorts of fun stuff like cleaning, banking, and... grocery shopping. At our place of employment, nonetheless! They just can't keep me away!

P.S. Does the font on my blog appear smaller than usual? I was playing around with the HTML earlier, but I can't tell if I messed up the blog itself or just our web browser.

Cat Attack!

Yesterday, I mentioned an event that pretty much turned the entire Downright Domestic household upside-down.

We began Friday with a trip to the beach with a friend who will be leaving town soon; we ended the day by taking these home:

Please don't tell our landlord.

We were ecstatic because we both love kitties and have been considering getting one for a while. This could be an opportunity for a free kitten! we thought.

Ever hear of Baby Think-It-Over? It is a life-like baby doll with real-life crying intervals and care needs that high schools programs will give to teenagers for a few weeks to convince them that having babies in high school isn't such a good idea.

More than once, I have turned the kitties upside-down and checked for batteries.

They are incredibly cute and fun to play with, but we are realizing quickly that we simply don't have the room for a cat. There isn't any good spot for a litter box or food.

I have boarded up and stuck more towels in nooks and crannies than I can remember (just how did I find out about these secret passages? Guess). Last night, I rounded up all the kitties to put them in the bathroom for the night, as usual. After much time spent fruitlessly searching for one lost kitten, I decided to just leave him out for the night. Maybe then he'd learn his lesson!

I woke up at four this morning to ear-splitting screeching from the kitchen. Where did I find this lost kitty? Inside my closed table-linen drawer. Don't ask me how. I'm still scratching my head over that one.

In spite of all the kitten adventures, Mama cat has proven to be the worst of the bunch. We have been the lucky recipients of a non-stop monologue from the cat. When one of moves to the other room to get away from the noise, she follows us, meowing all the way. We go to sleep listening to her vocalize. Come to think of it, this cat may be a perfect specimen to try this hilarious idea.

So, all in all, I'm having fun with the kitties, but I will be even better when my friend returns in a couple weeks to get his cats back!

Evidently, this whole marriage thing is working out

I am pleased to announce that, as of yesterday, Adam and I have been blissfully married for one whole year!

According to tradition, the one-year anniversary gift is supposed to be paper. This could be a book, a love letter, tickets to something, or whatever else your imagination comes up with. 

Adam told me he was going to buy me a ream of paper. What a romantic! (and a kidder, of course. I hope. For his sake.)

We actually didn't end up giving each other anything because we had an event that disrupted our entire weekend, which I will write about tomorrow. So I'm still open to suggestions as to what to give hubs for our one-year mark!

One fun thing we did was buy the game of Life and play it on a blanket at the park. Adam is awesome because he lets me cheat. I was doomed to go through Life without landing on a single kid space, so he turned a blind eye when I landed on the kid spaces anyway. :-D

So, thank you, Adam, for putting up with me for a whole year! I love you, and am ready to celebrate another hundred anniversaries with you!

IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIVE!

As you may have noticed, I have not been blogging for about a month or so. This is how it feels, coming back to the land of the living:

This is also a very close representation of what I go through every morning before I've had my coffee. That being said, I have been reading and somewhat keeping up with my favorite blogs- I just haven't had any creative blogging ideas for a while.

This has been a crazy month! I finally graduated from college a few weeks ago, thank You, Jesus. My parents came down from Washington State, and unfortunately, they were the only ones taking pictures, so it might be a few years before you ever see any graduation photos besides these two:

Yes, I am standing in front of a giant pair of hands. My university is like the Disney World of academia. 

Adam is such a giant compared to my family! I'm thinking my parents agreed to let him marry me because they were afraid he'd beat them up. :-P

Every year, the Music department chooses one instrumentalist and one vocalist from the graduating seniors to do special performances for the hooding ceremony. I was honored to be the chosen vocalist! So on the day of hooding, I got up in front of a packed house in my regalia, and started singing. A few minutes into it, I felt my mortarboard hat s.l.i.p.p.i.n.g. off. And then it just fell off right in the middle of a cadenza! ACK! Everybody laughed, but fortunately, I'm very experienced at humiliating myself in public, so I was unruffled. That's one hooding nobody will ever forget!

Tomorrow will be one week since my last day at the Mexican restaurant. I'd been feeling impressed by God for a while to give my two-week's notice, and one day I finally stopped saying, "God, are You CRAZY?" and handed in the notice. So now, both Adam and I are job-hunting. It's kind of an uncertain time for us, but I'm trusting that God is not playing some sort of April Fool's joke on us, and that He'll provide for us what we need.

My Favorite Things: Crocs

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, and I've decided to finally take the plunge. Every Thursday, I will write a post dedicated to a product that I find to be fabulous, inexpensive, cute, or a help to the Downright Domestic way. Since my name is Maria, and everybody is always singing the Sound of Music at me, why not title this little series, "My Favorite Things"?

So for my first installment, I will bypass the talk about raindrops on roses and whiskers on

 kittens and tell you about one product my feet just love:

Wait wait wait! Don't close the browser on me yet!

Crocs have evolved way beyond those first ugly ones with holes in the top that look like garden shoes. Now, they have products like this:

And this:

But it's not the looks that make me love Crocs. It is their wonderful comfort. These shoes are so light, it feels like you're not wearing anything at all. The shoes are sized slightly bigger on purpose, so that your feet have room to expand-- no pinched toes here! They have little massage nubs on the soles that feel great when you first put them on, but don't irritate you after ten minutes (like some athletic sandals I've tried).

When I first got my waitressing job, it took me about three weeks of achy feet to break down and buy a pair of Crocs specially designed for restaurant work. It was a good investment! Not only do my feet feel better at the end of a long shift, but I'm not slip-sliding over greasy, wet floors, either, like my tennis shoes do.

They last a long time, too! I wore my first pair nearly every day for a year before they gave out on me (I wore a hole clear through the sole! LOL). And when it's time for them to go to Shoe Heaven, you can just drop them off at designated retailers, and the Crocs company will recycle them and give them to impoverished people around the world!

So, are you convinced to go buy yourself a pair sometime? Well, you're in luck, because you actually have an opportunity to get them for free! Simplemom.net is hosting a $50 Crocs giveaway here. The giveaway ends Friday the 10th at midnight, so make sure to get over there soon!

Thank God It's... Tuesday?

Tuesday starts my "weekend", since my real weekends are spent serving people burritos. Today, I am thinking about rollerblading because the weather is glorious and I feel like a quick trip to the hospital! Just kidding about the hospital part-- but if you ever saw me rollerblading, you'd know why I say that.

In October, I planted a few daffodil and tulip bulbs and hoped for the best. So far, about three daffodils have bloomed, and it looks like one tulip will make an appearance in a few days. Unfortunately, these are the sole survivors of an apartment maintenance man's Weed Whacker holocaust. Boo!

Spring has sprung! Trees are blooming, the weather is warming up, and I now have to start worrying about what my toenails look like. Spring Break is next week, so Adam and I are trying to figure out what to do that week. Right now, we're thinking about hopping on a bus and visiting Six Flags over Texas, if we can figure out accommodations! I am really excited about that idea because I've only ridden on the same three roller coasters my entire life!