My Best Frenemy. Food.

I've always lived to eat.  My vacations with my best friends (and now with my husband) consist of planning out the new restaurants we will visit, and then we fill up the time in between meals with talking and maybe planning a thing or two (including where our next meal will be).  I live to eat... until recently.

The last 3 months since we found out we were expecting our baby have been super backwards for me.  Not to say I haven't been eating all the time, because I definitely have!  But I don't want anything.  I'm mostly eating because I have found out the hard way that not eating makes me feel even worse.  In the beginning of my pregnancy, I had a constant slideshow of food running through my brain.  I would just let each picture pass through my brain, saying, "Gross.  Gross.  Gross.  Ooh, maybe.  Ew, never mind.  Gross..." until I finally found something that I thought might not make me sick.  So, food became a frenemy.  Sad times.

Let me just say that I am so thankful for my husband.  Money is tight, but he saw how helpful it was for me to be able to just eat what sounded good to me during my first trimester.  We didn't do much cooking, because I couldn't handle the thought of anything smelling in the kitchen before or after we ate.  So... we did a LOT of eating out.  We are hopeful that February will be the month where things get back to normal.  Or at least that we'll have a new normal that will include cooking at home a few times a week.  This will be better for our budget and our baby :)  

With the help of some Zofran (which I finally got some more of... don't get me started on how the insurance company only covers 21 of them for every 30 days), I am feeling a little better.  Here's a sign of change for the better.  For the last 3 months I couldn't look at Pinterest or think of cooking (scrolling made me feel sick, and also I couldn't bear the thought of sight of random food in pictures).  Today, I used it to help me make a 2-week meal plan so that we can actually stick to a budget this month!  Here's to trying, even if we fail :)

The top is the chore chart I made, and the bottom is our meal plan.
It's basic, but at least it will help us a little bit!  

Tin Roof... Rusted

Our first ultrasound at 9 weeks - barely recognizable!

     We found out on our 2nd anniversary that God has blessed us with a teeny tiny Baby Batista - due July 29, 2014!  We were very excited, scared, thankful, overwhelmed, and mostly in awe of the great responsibility that comes with this news.  

Our second ultrasound at 11 weeks - looks like a baby! 

    
     We have learned a great deal about trusting in God already in the short 12 weeks that he or she has been part of our lives.  We know (in our heads... I'm sure we'll have to learn it thousands more times in our hearts) that this baby is a gift from God, which means that though we love her or him fully, it's with an open hand, trusting that God is ultimately her creator and father.  Who can love someone more than the One who made it?  Having suffered loss in other areas of my life, I can tend to assume things will go wrong. I have constantly had to pray and give my anxieties over to God.  It's only been 12 weeks!  My goodness, parenthood is a lifetime of learning to trust God in a completely different way.  I'm scared to be a parent, but I know the timing was from God and that I will be changed and grow (both spiritually and physically - ha!) in ways that I might not have otherwise.  His ways are good, and I am learning to trust.

     I'm planning to resign at the end of the school year to stay home at first.  As many of you know, TEACHING IS HARD.  I admire the women who can teach and be a mom.  I am the biggest scatterbrain in the world, and I know I couldn't do both well.  I might work in the future, but probably in a different capacity other than teaching.  I'm going to try my hand at the stay-at-home mommy thing for a while, and then take it one step at a time.  One really great thing that has helped us be able to do this is that 2 days after we found out we were having a baby, Alex had an interview for a new position in his company as a wellness coach.  He got the job that very day!  This new position, along with some budget overhauling and revisiting of being a mega-couponer will enable me to stay at home.  I am both excited and nervous about this, but given the two options, I just don't think teaching is feasible for me while I have a little baby.  So, we are thankful again for the wonderful timing of Alex's new job and our news!

     I've failed on taking the weekly "growing belly" pictures, because I feel like there's not much change at first.  Now that I can't button my pants (TMI?), I think it's time for me to start actually taking the pictures weekly.  The two pictures I did take show a little bit of a difference... although the 11 week "bump" could be because the only things that have sounded good in the last 6 weeks are Cook-Out and McDonald's.  Lots of friends have been encouraging though - once the nausea subsides (please, God, please let it be soon), I can make up for it and eat lots of healthier things.  I hear that 14 weeks is a magic number for some women.  I hope I hope I hope I hope! 

     I will be trying to blog more with updates on how my pregnancy is going, and when we find out the gender (although we have a little while before we will find out)!  We're excited and thankful! 

"Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!"  Psalm 118:1