Why we are not as cool as the rest of the world.

Sometimes, I am reminded why I try to avoid wildly popular music, movies, or television shows. I don't always succeed. Which is why all this Lost madness is driving me crazy. Jessie and I got hooked, and we have a Lost party every week as our family home evening activity, because we are wildly spiritual. (Jessie has class on Mondays, which is why we have FHE on Tuesdays, lest you are confused.) But then, the stupid powers that be decided to air the finale on Sunday instead of Tuesday, which didn't work out for us for several reasons. So now we're the lame people who don't know what happened on the biggest series finale of the year. And because I promised my husband I would watch it with him, I have to wait until tomorrow night. Which shouldn't be a problem for an awesomely patient person like me, who is totally unconcerned with pop culture. But sometimes a certain two year old bleeds dry the ole' well of patience, and there's none left to deal with my strange television addictions. What a sad life I lead.

Anyway. That's two woe-is-me posts in a row, so we'll move on to better and happier things. We had a good weekend with a lot of happy perks. I ate some food and I liked it. We got to go to a family baby blessing, which made me want a baby. Good thing we're working on that. And we got to go to my little brother's seminary graduation, which made me want a son to send on a mission. (Give me twenty or thirty years and I'll work on that one too.) And much as I love nursery and my happy little kids, it was nice to have a week off. Because sometimes head, shoulders, knees and toes can really wear you out if you put too much oomph into it. So happy days all around.

Let us have a moment of mild belly aching.

Allow me to take a moment to gripe. Then we'll pretend I didn't. Okay? Great.

Someone stole my second trimester happy place. I'm kind of upset about it. I've been telling myself for the last month that one day I'll randomly wake up, have energy, and have an appetite. And probably gain twenty pounds in a day when that happens. But although the nausea has lessened, it refuses to go away. And food continues to be public enemy #1. Madeline can eat a carton of yogurt faster than I can, and I tell you, I am one jealous yogurt consumer. And I am one unhappy camper if I don't get my daily nap, as poor Madeline can attest. And I'm getting fatter without really gaining any weight, which is, I admit, the one pleasant side effect of this whole food fiasco.

So basically, I'm afraid eating will never be pleasurable again, and I'm bitter at all the websites that are telling me the second trimester should be the best part of my pregnancy. And I forgave Madeline for all the pregnancy ills she ever inflicted on me, since she had the decency to quit making me sick at 14 weeks. Bless you, Madeline.

Anyway. It feels good to get that off my chest. Venting is my new favorite hobby. If anybody asks, officially I love being pregnant and I'm glowing with joy and pregnancy hormones. Happy happy joy here in pregnancy land. Don't worry, I really do love it. I'm just bitter because Jessie is eating Doritos.

Did you miss me?

Welcome back to Camiville, world! I took a little unannounced break, because I could, and I wanted to. Basically the last few weeks have been a little weird because we had a bit of a pregnancy scare, which was a bit stressful, and Madeline spent a lot of time hanging with Grandma, and Jessie had a conference for work, and I did absolutely nothing. Lest anyone freak out, rest assured that things are looking good now, and everything should be fine, and we even got to have an ultrasound today and see the little baby flipping around and stretching its legs. Which was pretty awesome. So really it was all just an excuse for me to have a week and a half long Mother's Day, with free babysitting, a clean house courtesy of my husband, a relief society retreat, and a lot of pampering in general. Sometimes I am pretty smart like that.

So, other exciting things that happened in the last two weeks, in random order: Jessie and I got eye exams and I ordered new glasses, since Madeline has smashed mine to smithereens. Jessie got his eyes dilated and apparently it was very traumatic. Madeline switched from her crib-bed to her real toddler bed, and now we have a crib sitting in our spare bedroom and I keep thinking there should be a baby in it. As mentioned before, I went to a relief society retreat at the Heber girl's camp, which was awesome, except that it was freezing and apparently long car rides on curvy roads make me puke. Thank you, pregnancy. We got to stay at the Marriot in downtown Salt Lake while Jessie was at his conference, which was exciting, because Madeline now loves elevators. We now entertain Madeline on long car rides (defined as over five minutes) by locating and chasing large tricks, school buses, Walmarts, and temples (i.e. church houses.)

So. That is what we have been doing. We're here. We're alive. And life is good. The end.

More Madeline Madness.

Once upon a time my brother complimented me by saying that I was able to make my normal boring life interesting in my blogs. (At least I took it as a compliment to my writing skills, and not an insult to my boring life.) Receiving compliments from your teenage brother is always flattering. But I'm afraid not even my trademark wit and amazing blogging skills can make a life of nausea and fatigue interesting. So instead of blogs complaining about my ills, I am forced to blog about the only other interesting phenomenon in our household. If you're sick of information about my toddler and would prefer pregnancy whining and griping, please note your dismay in our suggestion box.

Anyway. Some random quirky things about Madeline:

She switched to a bed a month ago, and after the initial panic attack upon facing change, has done really well. My major concern was that she'd now be able to get out of bed unassisted and wreak havoc on my house and sanity. Or hop into bed with me. But alas, I worried far too much. Madeline has an imaginary wall around her bed, and refuses to get out until I come into her room and tell her it's okay to leave her cell. This is a pretty awesome setup, in my opinion. The only exception is when she occasionally rolls out of bed at night. But she usually doesn't wake up when this happens, so no harm done. (I used to do that as a kid too. I'm glad she inherited some useful skills from me.)

She's getting really into temper tantrums. Which I mostly have taken to ignoring, because I have no energy to deal with them unless it's life or death. It works pretty well, because if she is really set on something and doesn't get her way, she works herself up into a angry tizzy, then informs me that since she's not happy, she'd like to go to bed please. Because that will teach me not to withhold things from her. Then we both take a nap. Sometimes if I'm really tired, I kind of hope she'll throw a tantrum. Does that make me a bad parent?

She's recently obsessed with trucks. Garbage trucks, mostly. She asks about them several times a day. And when she's cranky, we hop on Google and look at pictures of garbage trucks or school buses until she feels better.

Whenever she trips or hits herself with a toy, she apologizes to herself. I'll hear a thud from the other room, followed by "Uh oh! Sorry." She does not extend the same courtesy to Jessie and I when she elbows, hits, steps on, or otherwise maims us.

Yesterday, when I went in to get her from her nap her first words to me were: "Mommy! I have toes!" I was very happy for her.

So there's some tidbits from our life to feed your insatiable desire to know every minute detail. We are still alive and kicking and have not gone crazy yet. (Jessie might disagree, but you can take my word over his because his Master's degree is still fake for a few more months.)

A post about Jessie, who is cool and stuff.

So the big news at our house this weekend: Jessie graduated. Mostly. He has this habit of pretending to graduate and then going to class for a few more months. What a faker. But he got to walk and take pictures and all that jazz on Saturday, and we're excited because it means he is close to being officially done. I took pictures of his handsome graduating awesomeness, but blogspot still hates me. So just imagine. Jessie now has more formal education than I do, so I'm a little jealous. I might have to get a Masters in Pregnancy or something to make me feel better. Because they totally should give degrees for that, based on the fact that a) a couple pregnancies take just as long as a degree, b) it's a 24/7 job, and c) your spouse suffers. Also because graduate robes are great maternity wear.

Anyway, Jessie wasn't sure what to do with the extra time he'll have in a few months. But our stake president is on top of things like that, so just for Jessie, he split the Elder's quorum in our ward and Jessie was called as a counselor in one of the presidencies. I told him it was totally the Elder's quorum president getting revenge on him for elbowing him in the face during ward basketball. I warned him that would have consequences. All in all though, I'm happy with the trade off, because Elder's quorum meetings are not as long or as far away as school. And he gets to hang out with people in our ward instead of sitting through powerpoint presentations. Everyone wins.