Baby names and other news.

Both the headaches and morning sickness have been pretty mild lately, so mostly I'm just battling with exhaustion at this point. Which is much better and I pray it stays that way. 17 weeks along today! We have an ultrasound this coming Wednesday that will hopefully tell us if we are having a girl or boy! We have no clue on boy names, but we do have a couple of girl names we like. I love the name Evelyn (it was my grandmother's name...I'm a sucker for family names) and Brianna (pronounced "ana" not "anna"...not sure what spelling I like though). It was funny; usually Avery and I never agree on names, but when I mentioned I like Brianna, he chimed in and said he liked it too! I know a lot of people wait until the baby is born to decide on a name, but I really enjoy the closeness I feel by being able to the baby by name and talk to him or her. So hopefully we can come up with some good boy names pretty quickly. William is one of the names I like, but Avery says only if his middle name can be Wallace. :) If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. We like Bible names and unique names, but don't care for names that are trendy, unisex, or sound like last names. (Some of my favorite male Bible names are Paul, Philip, and Caleb, but Avery isn't crazy about any of those.)

Anyhoo, that was kind of jumbled. I'm definitely going to bed in a few minutes. Since I've been feeling better, I've been trying to catch up on housework and take advantage of the gorgeous weather we've been having (sunny and in the 70's!). So I took the kids to the park this afternoon for a little while and was pooped by the time we got home (pushing a double stroller is NOT easy). The kitchen is gradually getting cleaner by the day (still a long way to go though), I'm cooking more often now, and all the Christmas decorations are finally put away. So I think I deserve an early bedtime tonight. :)

Oh, before I forget, Avery got some surprising news when he got to work today. Because of a shortage of officers on the shift following his, he's getting moved temporarily. When he graduated they told him that they would only pull for mandatory transfers from the bottom of the class ranking (a motivation for them to get good grades), but apparently it's easier to transfer within sub-stations, so they just pulled Avery and a girl from his junior class to make the move. Basically he'll be working the overnight shift (10 - 6) for the next month (they promise it'll be only a month, but the official special assignment is for 60 days) with his days off being Monday and Tuesday. And, go figure, he starts this new schedule TOMORROW. Did I mention he just found out today? We're not sure how the whole sleeping thing is going to work. The room we're using for our master bedroom doesn't have a door on it and gets really bright during the day. So I think we're going to move Kirk back into Shiphrah's room (their nap schedules are somewhat close now) and make Avery a temporary bed in Kirk's room so he can sleep. I wish we had an extra twin mattress or something though...I don't think he's going to want to sleep on a camping cot for a month. Poor guy, I hate that he's going to be exhausted for an entire month...he doesn't do well on night shifts...he can't seem to sleep well enough during the day.

Well, I'm off to bed. Goodnight, all!

Just a quick rant...

Excuse me for a few minutes, but I just need to vent really quick. And then I'll be out of your hair, I promise.

Tonight is date night. We haven't had a date night in about a month and I've been looking forward to this one for weeks. It's an entire FIVE hours alone with my husband. (Well, with other people around, but without kids.) Our plans are to browse Lowe's and Home Depot for a couple of hours to pick out hubby's Christmas present (I'm sad there's no surprise, but I just don't trust myself to pick out the table saw that he wants) and then head downtown to his work Christmas party where we will stuff ourselves on delicious food and watch everyone else get drunk. Sounds fun, right? But, of course, I feel downright LOUSY. I have been having the hardest time stomaching anything the past few days and it's wreaking havoc on my body. Just an hour ago I attempted to make myself some tuna and I could barely eat a few bites. (Part of the problem was that we were out of mayonnaise so I had to use Miracle Whip...YUCK!) I have been craving random things (like pizza, french fries, a chicken sandwich from Red Robin, and pancakes from Jim's) and obviously I can't indulge in those very often. As it is my cravings are resulting in a very tight budget. But there's nothing like a good meal that I actually LIKE to help me feel better! Case in point: Tuesday night I desperately needed to get the dishes done and fold about ten loads of laundry but I was feeling awful. Papa John's pizza was (once again) one of the only things I felt like eating. So I ordered a pizza and was able to get all the dishes done and 95% of the laundry put away. AND I cleaned up the dining room table and set out the nativity set. But that evening cost me $15! GAH.

I have an hour and a half until our babysitter gets here. I want to feel better, I want to feel better, I want to feel better!!!

Our New Normal

I know I promised y'all another blog post as soon as things settled down, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. I also meant to post some pictures from our recent escapades, but I haven't uploaded pictures from my camera in several weeks, so that'll have to wait.

Mostly all we've been doing lately is getting settled into our new "normal." I'm about 8ish weeks pregnant, and morning sickness is in full swing. My medication (zofran) is keeping it controlled, but I still feel awful from the moment I wake up in the morning to when I go to bed at night. In addition to the zofran, I also have to eat every few hours, which, as a person that doesn't enjoy food all that much, is rather annoying. Whatever I eat also has to have a high protein content, so I'm rapidly getting tired of eating the same foods over and over again.

Since mornings are hardest for me, I'm very grateful for my husband's 2:30 to 10:30 pm work schedule. It's hard putting the kids to bed by myself at night, but much better than having to get them up, dressed, and fed in the mornings when I feel my worst. Plus, the kids both nap until 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon, so I really only have them by myself for four hours every night, which isn't bad at all.

I'm mostly just taking things one day at a time and looking forward to the day when the sickness eases enough to allow me to handle the kids AND the house.

Well, I'd better go, my 8-month-old has wriggled his way under my computer chair and is fussing at me to pick him up.