High Five For Friday

Happy Friday, kids! You know how this goes...

1) On Sunday I spent almost an hour and a half on the phone with one of my best friends. She doesn't live nearby so it's not often that we really get to catch up on each other's lives, but when we do it's like we've never missed a beat. It was so good to hear her voice and to catch up with her and to just hit the pause button on life for a little while.

2) Thanks to the phone conversation above, I was able to reconnect with an old friend from college who I haven't talked to in 10 years. <--- how is it possible that I can refer to some of my college days as "10 years ago?" That should be on a Low Five list somewhere...Anyway, I am so happy to be back in touch with her and I'm looking forward to being involved in each others lives again.

3) The turkey's done! That's right - I've hit the 37 week mark which is full term. Baby J is now fully cooked and could be making his grand debut any day now.

4) Earlier this week when Col and I were grocery shopping, two complete strangers came up to me (separately) and told me that I looked wonderful and that they couldn't even tell I was pregnant until I turned around. I could have kissed both of them. Just one more reason to love Wegman's - nice people shop there. :)

5) This video may have made my entire week. I think I've already watched it 5 or 6 times. How can this not make you smile? If you didn't like Sesame Street as a child, we can't be friends.

High Five For Friday

Happy Friday! Jumping right in to my top 5 moments of the week...

1. The nursery tour post is almost done and should be up early next week! It was all I could do this morning to not skip High Five For Friday in place of this. I had so much fun putting both the room and the post together. Here's a little preview that some of you may have already seen if you follow me on Instagram. 

2. Fall weather. Need I say more? It's starting to get pretty chilly here, especially in the mornings and evenings. I've worn both a scarf and my Uggs at various points this week and it feels oh-so-good to be reunited with them.


3. I started my weekly doctor's appointments this week. For those of you who don't know, most obstetricians and midwives see their patients once a month during pregnancy until the 36th week (or 9th month) when appointments become a weekly thing. I don't particularly look forward to going to the doctor, but in this case it means we are one month away from meeting our little man.

4. I got a manicure and pedicure earlier this week and am headed to this wonderful place to get a haircut this weekend. This will probably be the last time that I get any sort of pampering before Baby J's arrival (and possibly long after). I wonder 1 - How long this manicure will last (I give it one more day before it chips), and 2 -When I'll ever have time to get a manicure again (I'm guessing sometime after never). 

Nail Color: Essie, Twin Sweater Set

5. In about 9 hours I get to spend two whole days with my better half. It sounds silly, but I appreciate our time together even more than I did before I was laid off. When we were both working outside the home, mornings were so rushed with both of us trying to get showered and ready for work, making coffee, scrounging breakfast, and making lunches, that we barely seemed to have time to kiss goodbye. By the time we both got home at night, we were so exhausted that evenings were usually spent zoning out on the couch in front of the TV, with our respective tablets/laptops/phones in our faces. Weekends were reserved for getting everything done that we didn't get to during the week - cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, etc. I'm not saying this isn't still what life is like sometimes, but not being mentally drained by the drudgery of a 9-5 job has really given me a chance to "stop and smell the roses," as they say. Even when we are cleaning the apartment or building baby furniture or grocery shopping, I'm much more mentally present. Now, I look forward to doing the most menial tasks simply because we're together.

Ok, you can all go make pretend gagging sounds now. I'm in love...get over it. :) And have a great weekend!

High Five For Friday

So I'm still learning about some of this, a lot of this blogetiquette stuff. A few of my regular reads include a "High Five For Friday" post where you post about your top 5 moments of the week. I love reading them and it always makes me think about my own top 5 moments. And I think its important to take time to focus on what's good in life. I believe this lovely blogger  is the originator of High Five For Fridays and that it's the polite blogger thing to do to link to her blog (help me out if I'm wrong here).

So without further ado, here's my High 5:

1) Football season started. Which means fall which means my baby's due date. And also, the Eagles won. I'm a lifelong Eagles and Phillies fan but I've made an agreement with my husband (who is a Jets and Mets fan) that the baby could be a Jets fan during football season if he let him be a Phillies fan during baseball season. Seemed like a fair deal, right? Well, this drastically limits the time that I have left to cheer for the birds because I guess I'm gonna have to jump on the Jets bandwagon when little dude gets here. We can't be a house divided during football season! So this week, I celebrated a big Eagles win over the 'skins. Here's a fun video for all of you Philly sports fans:

What Brotherly Love Truly Means. from Philadelphia Eagles on Vimeo.

2) Earlier this week I took a breastfeeding class at our hospital's learning center. While the class was mostly a refresher of things I had already read about, it reinforced my desire to make breastfeeding my baby work no matter what. I really believe that it is the only way that babies should be nourished until they are able to eat solid foods. Back in the day, there was no Enfamil or Gerber Good Start. If you didn't breastfeed your baby, he/she didn't eat. And babies instinctively know how to eat and where to find food from the moment they're born. Did you know that if you place a newborn baby on his mother's chest after delivery he will actually wiggle his way over to the breast and latch on all by himself? Seriously... Google it. I don't intend to try this because I also believe that we were given opposable thumbs for a reason but how amazing is that?

I realize times have changed and many women need to go back to work or will be separated from their babies for awhile due to health problems. But there are also breast pumps and cars and bottles and coolers. And where there's a will, there's a way. I know it's not going to be easy but many of the most rewarding things in life are not easy.

3) I made this the past two mornings and It.Is.Good. I used regular sugar instead of stevia because I don't eat any of that fake sugar stuff (more on that in another post), and I did not add whipped cream. But honestly, it's so flippin' good that you don't even need it. And I drank it out of a Mason jar which is way more fun than a regular old glass. 

Update: I made this for Colin over the weekend. His comment when I was pouring it out of the blender and into a cup for him, "It smells like fall threw up in there." I took that as a compliment. 

4) As of tomorrow I will be 35 weeks pregnant and I start my weekly OB appointments. I can't believe that we could, potentially, meet our son any day now! Here I am earlier this week taking my weekly bump selfie shot:

5) I signed up for a free trial of Audible and downloaded The Cuckoo's Calling as my free book and have been listening to it all week on my Kindle. I didn't know if I would be a fan of the audiobooks but so far, I'm really enjoying this one. The reader does different voices for the characters and I find that that helps me keep track of the characters and stay focused where I thought I would constantly be zoning out and rewinding. <-- is it still called 'rewinding' if it's not a tape??

That's all I've got for this week. Have a great weekend everyone!