It has begun...

So the first five and a half weeks of this pregnant business weren't too shabby. People would ask me, "How do you feel?" and I would respond with, "oh, I feel great!" Yea...not anymore...

It all started on Wednesday. We were going to my sister's for dinner and I was really looking forward to it. We got there the food looked delicious and I had an enormous appetite, but for some reason, I found myself taking very small bites and it was getting progressively more and more difficult to get them down...I then started thinking about when this was going on before and it turns out I had been having a difficult time getting my cereal down in the mornings, and my lunch in the afternoon, and dinner...hmmm...then I got to thinking...Is this that "morning sickness" women speak of?

So, for the men out there who are actually reading this, if any, this feeling that has come over me feels like the day after you party hard and drink too much, but without the headache. You look at food and it doesn't look appetizing. Just a constant bout of nausea looming in your stomach. Of course come late evening of that day you start to gain your appetite back and then you forget about what an awful day you had and drink hard the following weekend. Well, the feeling hasn't gone away from me. To tell you that on Friday night Armando made some killer tri-tip and I had none of it. It made me quite sad. I never say no to any meat Armando cooks! It's madness I tell ya!

Well, for those women who have been there and done that, some words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated. I know I'm not the first woman in the world who's gotten knocked up, but this is all new to me. I will keep you posted on the nausea status...lol

Martin Stewart

So... before I get into the what the typical Martin Stewart project would be I wanna share some shenanigans... I was trying to come up with a cool/funny pic for this portion of the Blog. The goal was to try to somehow combine a Martha Stewart face pic with mine. The simple solution was just to cut and paste my face onto a Martha Stewart pic I poached from the internet... This was the result:

Pretty standard right? It's rough and shows zero technical skill, but it gets the job done. Then I remember coming accross this site that lets you take two photos and blend them together to get one pic. I figured this was ideal seeing how the whole gimmick to this segment was to show a manly version of Martha Stewart... Well... the result of the "blend" was ... disturbing to say the least...

Pretty horrific right? So now I'm debating on whether or not to attempt this again or just use one of the two pics... Its like watching friggin' surgery.... I wanna see what's going on, but it hurts to look at.

Well... Enough of that. On to point of the segment!

That's our sewing machine right there... its all shiny and new... and green. Then if you look in the back you can see Claudia all concentrating on something. Then if you look really close you can see part of Claudia's bike, and behind that is our blinds and a lamp... Notice how we never took the manufacturer's sticker off the lamp? Yea, we don't pay much attention to details like you obviously do...

The reason I highlighted all that was to divert your attention away from the terribly crafted yellow balloon monster with legs thing sitting on the sewing machine... (Did it work?) Well, that's the first completed Martin Stewart project! I took some 29 cent felt, drew a super simple monster design on it, cut two pieces, sewed those bad boys together with our trusty sewing machine, stuffed it with some shredded old tee-shirt (I'm not gonna pay for friggin' stuffing...), and viola! We have a 40 cent crappy stuffed animal/dog toy/paper weight/blog subject.

If you look close you can see some terrible hand stitching on the left side of the terribly crafted yellow balloon monster with legs thing (it would technically be the right side of the terribly crafted yellow balloon monster with legs thing). I know I had to leave a hole for stuffing, but I have no idea how to close the hole without showing the stich... If anyone out there (supposing anyone reads this) knows how to do that, or can just tell me what the stich is called so I can do a bit of Google research on the hows and whys of the stich let me know!

Welp, that's it for the first Martin Stewart post. If anyone has any suggestions or, like, patterns laying around the house they'd like to see me fail at trying I'd be more than happy to attempt it. Stay safe and remember: when changing your spark plugs, don't cross the wires.

(The website I used for the blend was: http://www.morphthing.com/)

Baby Books!!

So you guys know how much I LOOOOVE to read....so much that we actually decided to stop by our local Barnes & Noble (mind you, Borders was our bookstore of preference but the losers closed down) and picked up a couple baby books.  Now if you are still believing that I love to read, I really don't. Actually, I utterly and passionately despise reading! I think it's in part because as a child I was never read to by my parents but mostly because the crap we had to read in school was hella boring! I mean, really? Who can stay awake reading through Great Expectations (for those of you who actually can, I don't mean to offend)! Anywho, on another side note, the service at Barnes & Noble is ridiculously terrible! I asked the lady to point me in the direction of pregnancy books and she was a total bitch telling me that there was another "customer" that was waiting to be helped so she had to tend to her and I had to wait.  What was so difficult about her just lifting her fat ass arm and point towards the baby books?!? Believe me, if I was trolling with my ghetto attitude (which I hardly ever do lol) I would have socked that bitch up (verbally, of course!)

So, back to the books...I finally found the baby book section, no thanks to Fatty McMuffin customer service rep lady...and then we both just stand in front of the section. Just stand. And read the titles. And stand some more. Until I grab the #1 Bestselling Pregnancy Book in the World!!!

Then we do more standing. And scan the rest of the book titles. Go through a few more books. You know, stuff a MAN can read without feeling like a pansy because he's trying to understand his spouse on this long journey. So, finally, after much discussion, Ed settles for this one...

So there you have it. This is what we will be reading throughout the pregnancy. I'm super bummed my book has no pictures but I did learn that I was able to skip the first chapter because it was for those women who were  trying to get knocked up...I already was...so on to Chapter 2 for me!

Buckle Up!

Holy smokes we're about to have a kid... I was in disbelief when Claudia showed me the "proof," but then a follow up test, and finally a doctor visit confirmed it. There was some initial anxiety that set in, but after like a day of reflection it all kinda fell away. I realized that we can sit around stressing that we didn't have enough boxes checked off of our life's to-do list, but would we ever? So instead of spending energy contemplating countless minor (and some major) details, we can spend our energy gearing up for the biggest step of our lives in a positive way.

With that said we've rolled out some pretty cool goals for the next 40 or so weeks, and we'll try to share all of that with you guys.

Here's what's to come:

Martin Stewart

We bought a sewing machine last week because we were thinking how can we go through parenthood without one right? Future rips and tears, potential Halloween costumes and the like all demand that we have this appliance! The kicker is, neither of us really know how to use a sewing machine, especially me... Since I'm the one with the goal behind Diaper Count, I figured I'd better get crackin' on developing some sewing machine skills. So, Martin Stewart will showcase some attempts at different sewing machine projects with the goal set on getting good enough to make a quality reusable diaper... Let's see how it works out!

GrizzliED vs. Baby Bump

I had this idea of growing a 'Maternity Beard.' The goal being that I don't shave my face until the delivery day. I can see it in my head now... Our first picture is gonna have an exhausted and frazzled Claudia and a grizzled foot-long beard on either side of this pink little baby. So we'll be updating the status of Claudia's belly along side my soon to be glorious face-fro.

Gain One Lose One

We all know Claudia's gonna be putting on a few extra pounds during this whole ordeal. We thought it would be cool to see if I could keep up the inverse of that. Throw in a little trash talk and I think we have an interesting little game here. Only question is, can her minor weight gain keep up with my major weight loss? I. Think. Not.

Diaper Count

I really wanna try to use reusable diapers... But, I wanna take it a step further and make those diapers. So, we'll be updating a diaper count, hopefully a picture of like a diaper tower or something...

This Week in Outfits

This really won't kick off until we find out the kid's gender, but the idea is to pick up an outfit a week and post something about it.

"Holy Toledo?!"

This is going to be a segment on interesting tidbits we didn't know about pregnancy, or babies, or whatever, or things that just blow our minds. For example, I was talking to my brother who told me his newborn is going through, "easily 10+ diapers a day," to which we replied, "HOLY TOLEDO! 10+ a day!?"

That's the plan! We're gonna have as much fun and stay as positive as humanly possible during these next months! So buckle up, it's gonna be an interesting ride!

Ding!

So Yea...It has happened...we are with child!

We found out Wednesday, October 5th 2011! How did we find out you ask?  Well...we took a pregnancy test and...VOILA!

We were in disbelief at first, attributing the positive test to a faulty "generic" pregnancy test, so we went and boughtt a "first response" one and it said the same thing lol.

We hope that you will be a part of this journey with us! Please leave us any words of wisdom as we embark on this epic adventure. If you have baby stuff gathering dust anywhere in your house that you wouldn't be sad parting with, we would be more than happy to take it off your hands...lol.

Ed and I are EXTREMELY happy and can't wait for the lil guy, or gal, to join our lives!