general life, preparing for baby

A Rough Couple Weeks

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It’s been a rough couple weeks for us. The week before last, my Grandma passed away relatively suddenly. I had only just gone to see her the weekend before, which was both good and upsetting that life can change so quickly. She was hospitalized after becoming ill the following evening. Grandma aspirated into her lungs during a procedure and developed pneumonia which ended up being too much for her. We took her off the ventilator and she passed peacefully. I spent most of my weekend then at her house with family, going through pictures, and making the memorial boards for her.

I am disappointed and sad that she will not be around to meet our baby. The weekend prior, we had just been talking about how she needed to be patient with her wrist which she had broken recently and let it heal so that she could hold the baby. She didn’t tell me, but told my aunt and uncle that after she saw me and the way I was carrying, she thought it is a girl. It was hard seeing her the previous weekend, fairly helpless without the use of her wrist, but harder and still somewhat weird to think that she will never be in that house again.

The same week, I took a gestational diabetes test. I had failed the hour long screening test at the doctor’s office, and had to go to the hospital to take the three hour test. Brian decided to spend the entire time with me which was very nice to have company. They take your blood after fasting, and then every hour for three hours after drinking the glucose solution. It came out that I do have gestational diabetes. My fasting numbers were normal, the first hour was barely normal, but the following two were undoubtedly abnormal.

So far, this hasn’t affected my diet too much, simply because I haven’t been able to meet with the diabetes counselor yet. They weren’t able to schedule me until nearly two weeks after diagnosis. I am seeing the counselor and taking a class tomorrow morning. The doctor told me that I will be given a meter which I will use to take my blood sugar levels two hours after every meal. At my next appointment two weeks from now, we will look at my levels and determine whether the diabetes can be controlled with diet alone or if medication is needed.

The diabetes is disappointing, because I very much like my carbs and sugar! So hopefully things will be back to normal shortly after baby Peapod is born.

This past weekend I spent at my parents’ and helped my sister get ready for Homecoming dance for her Senior year. Holly had a lovely dress and I straightened her hair and did her make up! It was a lot of fun and she had a blast for her first dance. On Sunday, I went to an old friend’s new house, Katie, who is also pregnant and due two weeks after me. We had a get together with a bunch of us old high school friends, which was great. Katie’s nursery is an antique and monkey theme (Monkeys were her husband’s choice!)

My nursery is just about finished; we have hung up all our photos upstairs finally and included the baby room pictures. So soon we should be able to take photos! All I need is a mattress, so that I can properly show off the bedding.

Recently I have been getting a lot of questions about names! So far, Brian has been willing to tell me what he really doesn’t like, but has not shared his favorite names. So the names I have picked so far haven’t been officially approved. However, we have decided on middle names. If it’s a boy, the middle name will be Charles after his grandfather; if it’s a girl the middle name with either be Rose (my own middle name) or Eleanor (after my grandma on my mom’s side). I did debate briefly about using my recently passed Grandma’s name which is Genevieve, but right now I am leaning away from it, for a couple reasons. 1) She hated her name and always said that and 2) I am not sure I could hear the name without feeling sad about it right now.

That’s all for now! As soon as I hook up my camera I’ll have a few more pictures of Grandma’s memorial boards and her house; I’m also waiting on some nice photos of my sister in her Homecoming dress!

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general life

Aug. 12, 2009

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So I’m sitting here with a glass of red wine, working on work stuff and I thought maybe I should take a break and write a post–it’s been a long while since I last updated. I think it was about the wedding. It’s crazy how much time has already gone by since the wedding.

A lot of people have asked me if things are different after you’re married. Of course this depends dramatically on if you have lived with your fiance beforehand… for Brian and I it wasn’t different at all, except maybe that we’re both much more relaxed than we were in the months leading up to the wedding. I get to sign my name different, that was difficult. I have said my new name out loud a few times now and it still sounds weird. But I like being Mrs. Hilary Thomas.

I still miss Sir Chewy, still expect to get another one after moving… and moving seems closer and closer. Come January I think we’ll start looking (cross your fingers!). Brian is contacting landscapers this week to schedule the front yard to (finally) get re-done. It needs regraded, house needs waterproofed around the basement, not to mention the flower beds we’ll need to re-add and plant new plants. The shrub/flower planting can wait until next spring but the grass needs to get in around the end of this month.

The garden is so-so. Guess that’s what happens when you plant late, get so busy you don’t weed, and forget about the running water sprinkler or likewise forget to water altogether. We’ve gotten some beans, will get some pepper and perhaps a cucumber or two. Basil is returning to life after being mutilated by japanese beetles, so we’ll get some tasty pesto sauce with that.

Work is stressful. We’re in the middle of an upgrade and soon we’ll be coming in on weekends on a “volunteer” basis (if we don’t come in just to get more work done on our own…). Thank you’s need done, basement needs thoroughly clean, pictures need put on walls (we have frames empty but no photos in them haha). And time keeps flying by, I feel like I’m barely keeping up! But I’m enjoying every moment with Brian.

In recent news, I went to visit Sara at BG this weekend and that was a blast! It was great to get away. We ate at a tasty Italian joint, Zia’s, on the river-front. We visited the art museum and made our own glass flowers! That was a amazing and scary; they had us really stand in front of the 2,000 degree furnace holding molten glass the temperature of lava. Mine turned out great, I saw a picture though I haven’t seen it yet. I have to pick it up from Sara, maybe sometime Brian and I will visit the Toledo zoo or something. We also spent some time in some cool bars, one of which was a re-done old time cinema which was very cool.

Ciao for now!

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pets

A Memorial

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I thought my first post back from the honeymoon would be about happy times, and fun times, but sadly it is not to be… I’ll save it for another post. We came home around 1 am on Tuesday to find Sir Chewy barely moving at all, at first we thought he had passed. We rushed him to the emergency vet that takes in small exotics and left him overnight. The prognosis, at first, was good and we just thought he had a broken leg or maybe had pined for us being gone so long and stopped eating. However, by 4 pm the vet was telling us it was probably a neuro problem, which can be caused by anything from bacteria and virus to I guess a chin stroke to… anything. We got there around 5 to see him and he was almost entirely still. We were going to put him on anti inflammatories for about 3 days and if no response, a decision would have to be made. However, we left and 5 minutes later the vet phoned us because Sir Chewy had made his own decision. We put him to rest yesterday in the backyard in the middle of a flower garden. We buried him with his fleece hammock, a fresh ball of wood, cinamon pet pasta, a big apple stick, a piece of lava rock, and his fleece frog buddy in a cardboard box on which Brian and I wrote thoughts about him on.

Sir Chewy loved apple sticks, they were a treat for him. His favorite treat though was cinamon pet pasta and he would do anything for it. Brian like to make him reach for it, and when he did I swear Sir Chewy stretched to almost a foot tall. He had salt and pepper fur, which was gray after his ash baths; he had a curly tale. He like to shave his fur into a mohawk. He had such a great personality, he had opinions and he let you know them. He liked carrying around his fleece buddy, but he didn’t like being carried around himself much.

If Sir Chewy could have had two wheels in his cage, he would have found a way to run on them both at the same time. That’s why I didn’t get a second friend for him, I thought he’d hog the wheel too much. He was way spoiled, getting only the best food and hay. He was picky about his hay anyway and didn’t like to eat anything but Oxbow Timothy. He never bit, only nibbled, and he was so curious about everything. He was named because he chewed on everything under the sun; I had to get him a cage made out of wood and a glass waterbottle. He chewed through the plastic bottom of his first cage and water bottles. His favorite move was the kangaroo hop, which he did when he was exceptionally happy. He enjoyed frightening Sasha and was never afraid of her. He loved Brian to scratch under his chin and would through his front paws wide in pleasure. For some reason, I myself could never hit the right spot.

He was a member of our family, and I will miss him so much. I thought he had years left before we saw him pass away. The hardest part right now is sitting in his room, Sir Chewy’s room, as we called it, and seeing his empty cage and hearing silence instead of his running wheel and having no furry guy to rub or hold or talk to. I love him so much. Goodbye Sir Chewy.

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general life

Good Times & Sad Times

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Brian’s 30th birthday was last weekend; it was a bit anticlimatic but I think he enjoyed it. Saturday he spent with JP working on putting new counter tops in the kitchen (which is still not quite done). I cleaned and did laundry, which was good. The weekend was just perfect for that. Sunday evening we spent at his parents house. They got Brian a super nice chair from Ikea and his sister got him a gift card to get some bike stuff.

Brian opened his gifts from me on his actual birthday on Monday; I got him a new camera (not a DSLR, but a fancy point and shoot that’s really thin). I think he’s pretty pumped. I also got him a big 6 window picture frame and letters from alphabet photography which is basically like 4 x 6 photos of shapes in our everyday world that look like letters. I spelled out our (or right now, his) last name. It was spelled out with a faucet, ladder, dandilion fuzz, hanging sheet, and I can’t remember the “A”, and a picnic bench arm for the S. Brian couldn’t figure it out at first, but he thought it was pretty cool. I had to get him something that he wouldn’t know about since the camera was a given; he had to tell me what he wanted.

I made him dinner, which was super impressive for me. I made cucumber salad which chilled most of the day, and then I improvised one of the recipes (it seemed too small; and Brian doesn’t like warm cherry tomatoes much so I switched it with asparagus). The dinner was (whole wheat) pasta combined with chicken (one of the few times I’ve ever cooked meat!), asparagus, mushrooms, onion, fresh oregano and basil with a light white wine and chicken broth sauce. Parmesan cheese on top. Then I made peanut butter cookies with honey for dessert. Yeah, it was impressive 🙂

While I was making dinner/cookies, my mom called once and texted. Turns out my grandpa passed away that afternoon. This was both expected and unexpected… he hasn’t been in good health and has had a lot of trouble taking care of himself for the past year. But he never had to be in a nursing home which he really didn’t want, and he didn’t spend time in a hospital which I’m sure he didn’t want either. I never figured on him even being able to come to the wedding even if he was still with us. So it’s tough.

Good times and sad times. 🙁

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general life

Looong Sad Two Days

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Just got back from funeral for Brian’s grandma. This was different than his grandpa was a few months ago on the other side of his family. His grandma and grandpa on this side are members of the Byzantine Catholic Church. I’ve been to Roman Catholic Churches before and in general they’re not that far from Lutheran. I’ve been to a Roman Catholic Church funeral.

This was completely different; the entire thing was chanting/singing and it was very long. The Church was domed and had bright colored, odd paintings inside. I say odd because they reminded me a medieval paintings except we are not in medieval times. The priest dressed in red and swung incense (I have seen that part before). He spent a minute describing some of the symbolism for us. Altogether, it was very much a ritual and I think a comfort to his grandfather. And in the end, that’s all that matters.

It was different for me too this time because I had only met her once and I didn’t have much interaction with her since she could only speak very softly. It is always hard to see people you love upset and grieving, but it wasn’t as tough to stay collected as last time. She has been sick for a long time.

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