It's a Boy!

We had our 20 week ultrasound today and got to see our sweet baby for the first time.

It was beautiful, I teared up just a tiny bit and we got to find out what our sweet baby is.

It's a BOY!

We tried to get a good profile shot, but baby boy was happily napping under my ribs so this blurry one was the best we got. But we did get to see his sweet face with his tiny mouth open making an 'O' face.

You can see a little bit of his hand under his chin. So cute!

285 of 1,000 Cranes

I am officially 28.5% of the way done with my goal of making 1,000 cranes for our baby.

In the week and half since I started this project I've managed to fold 285 tiny paper cranes. 

285 tiny paper cranes

5 colors down and I'm still not sure how many to go. 8 or 10 colors left by my count, but it's really hard to tell what all I'm dealing with as the paper in this tiny little box and you can't see the what's in the bottom. I guess it will be a surprise! 

I've had different #'s for each color so far ranging from at little as 33 all the way to 62. I'm interested to find out how many large cranes I'll have to make once the box is all done.

I finally figured out on the third color that if I don't pull the wings/puff the body out I can get more cranes 'nested' in a bag. I'm trying to protect them until I'm ready and ziplock bags seemed like the safest way to go.

I'm happy to be getting done with the lighter colors and making progress. I feel confident I should be able to get this done by June at the latest. Collin and I already have a plan to hang them as a 3-tiered chandelier/mobile. I think it's going to look amazing. I'm already proud. :-D

Pregnancy and body image

I promise that my next post will be fun, creative and not serious. But for today, you're going to have to deal with a little bit of seriousness.

I'll start with some good news just to get us started. Now that I've officially entered my 5th month of pregnancy I'm starting to feel SO MUCH BETTER!

I can finally eat what I would like to (for the most part, still no turkey sandwiches :-( ) and I don't throw up nearly as much as I used to. I still have not so good days, but they are thankfully fewer and farther between. I've got a ton more energy and I'm starting to feel like me again which after 4 months of feeling like hungover zombie, I'm more than thankful for.

But there are other issues I'm struggling with.

You may or may not know this about me, but I suffer from really low self-esteem and complete lack of healthy body image. I've felt fat for as long as I can remember. Like all the way back to being 11.

I had a chubby phase in elementary school and was made fun of about it. Kids would moo at me, tell me to eat the salad bar but then tell me not to eat it all. I once had a girl tell me in the most disgusted manner she could muster that she saw how much butter I put on my bread. I was in 4th grade at the time and it really messed up my psyche. I also had an older brother who used every opportunity to remind me that I was fat. After a couple years of this, I began to believe them. Everyone must be seeing something that I don't. They must be right.

After I went through puberty and grew a few inches I wasn't fat anymore but I still felt like it. In fact, most people would probably say I'm thin-ish. I'm only 5'3" and in high school weighed 115lbs. I was too fat then. I was too fat in college when I weighed 125 lbs.

At one point in college I had gained the dreaded freshIman 15 putting me at 138 lbs and one of Collin's friends remarked to him that, "Man, Jenessa's gotten fat." Collin then for some reason decided to tell me this information. My relationship with that friend of his was never the same after that.

After Collin's friend said I was fat, 138 became my 'scary weight'. That's the weight I feel essentially obese at. Sadly, at that weight my BMI is a little over 25 so I'd barely be considered over weight.

Obviously these body issues are all in my head...

And now I'm pregnant. My body is practically changing daily and it's been really hard for me. I felt 15lbs over weight before I got pregnant. Remember this post? Literally days after I wrote that I found out I was pregnant. A week after that began the epic battle with morning sickness.

So I started this whole pregnancy thing in an uncomfortable place body wise. I'm currently 140lbs. The exact same weight I was when I got pregnant 17 weeks ago. I'm grateful for that. But I'm still mourning the loss of my body.

Being pregnant is a beautiful and magical thing and I'm blessed to be creating life, but it's also hard having a closet full of clothes and having nothing fit. It's depressing walking into a store and suddenly not knowing what size to try on.

Okay, enough whining. I just had to write this in case there are other pregnant ladies out there struggling with this too.

1,000 Origami Cranes

There's an ancient Japanese legend that someone who folds 1,000 paper cranes will have one wish granted by a crane. The act of folding 1,000 cranes is called Senbazuru. I've always loved origami and have always wanted to do this. I have decided to make 1,000 paper cranes for my little baby baking in my oven. I'm putting all my hopes and love into each one and will hang it in the baby's room. I hope it's something they'll think is cool and hold on to.

When I was in high-school I just happened to buy a box of tiny origami paper. It was multicolored and seemed like a great deal. Later on I found a crane pattern on the bottom of the box. Now over a decade later I was able to put two and two together and realized that all those years ago I had purchased my own Senbazuru set of 1005 sheets of tiny origami paper. In my defense all the writing on the box is in Japanese so I really had no idea what I was working with.

Sadly I used quite a bit of it before I realized what it was for so I'll have to supplement from my regular origami paper collection and make some full sized cranes.

So far I have 36 tiny cranes (35 in pale pink, 1 medium pink). Ever wondered what 35 paper cranes look like? Wonder no more:

35 pink paper cranes = 3.5% DONE!

If I keep up this pace I could be done in a month. That's my goal.

More crazy dreams

Last night I got a full 8 hours sleep in one go. No bathroom breaks, no midnight snacks. There is one side effect to all this sleeping I've found. I have more dreams. And they're not like my normal non-pregnant dreams. I understand why I have most of my dreams and it seems my mind is playing out all my worst and most irational fears to prepare me for motherhood. Most of my dreams are incredibly real and emotional now. No more fun 'I CAN FLY!' dreams.

Here's the latest batch of strangeness to come from my mind.

• Had a dream I was a student in high school taking a class on how to be the best employee. There was this long list of things on the chalkboard about what made someone a better employee than the rest and I didn't have one quality on the board. Oddly I don't remember anything that was on the board, just that I didn't have any of it.

 *I'm pretty sure this one stems from my transition from a working person to housewife. *

• A very emotional dream where I screwed up the knit pattern on a baby sweater I'm making and I had to rip the entire thing apart. I vividly remember crying in this dream over how upset and frustrated I was. I honestly thought the dream was real when I woke up and was really upset.

 *I was afraid to look at the sweater the next day for fear it was all true. Luckily it was all a horrible dream and my baby cardigan is coming together. I've gotten quite a few compliments and feel very proud to have made such a lovely gift.*

• Collin and a gaggle of girls are all disagreeing with me and I have no way to talk to them. They're dismissing everything I say and treating me like a child. I got so upset by them not listening to what I have to say. I took my wedding ring off and threw it at Collin saying that if he agreed with them so much that he could be with them too. 

*Pretty sure this one is my fear of Collin and I disagreeing over circumcision and him siding with people other than me. I just can't stomach someone cutting at my baby's genitals for cosmetic reasons. We aren't religious we wont use that as a reason, so for us it would be cosmetic. I know there is anesthesia and that boys don't remember it, but I can't get around it.  It's hard holding your own opinion when everyone tells you how they disagree with it. But at the end of the day I believe in standing for what I believe in and only changing your opinion when someone can show you evidence to support their beliefs. Collin and I believe in compromise and I feel like we've found a way to solve our disagreement that meets both parties needs. So if we have a boy, Collin will take him in for the circumcision and care for it for the following week so that I don't have to be a part of something I don't feel comfortable with. Both parties happy.  I just keep hoping for a girl. ;-) *

Late 20s

Today marks my official entry into my 'Late 20s'. I don't feel old, but I don't feel young either. I'm at this strange point in my life where I've accomplished quite a bit, but there still is so much life left to live. I'm starting to feel my own mortality creeping in.

I've always been aware of the impending demise of myself and those around me. Now that I'm pregnant, my desire to keep everyone safe and healthy has increased thirty-fold. I'm worried about my parents who to me in their 50s and 60s aren't old yet. But then I think of my grandparents, I remember being a child and them being in their 60s. I know how hold they are now that I'm adult. Some are gone, others are passing. I'm reminded that as my children grow up, so too will my parents, and quite honestly I wish I could just freeze time for them. I appreciate my parents more now than ever and all I can think about is how scared I am to lose them.

Every day I'm reminded that this little baby will never meet their grandma Judy and it makes me sad.
Will we be able to convey who she was to them? Will they believe us when we tell them that surely she loves them just as much as if she had been with us? What do we tell them about the afterlife? Do we tell them about the heaven we don't believe in, or teach them laws of physics about energy never being destroyed?

I just keep hoping that no heart attacks or cancers fall upon us, but I'm not naive enough to believe that. Getting older is both a blessing and a sad passing of my youth.

As cliche as it is, you don't realize how precious time is until it's almost gone.

Pregnant Dreams

Last night I dreamt about:

• My husband and I hanging out in the woods. I see two foxes acting aggressive in a steam. Then Collin sees a skunk. I turn around and watch the skunk climb the tree. When I look back at Collin there is a second skunk and it sprayed near him. We then had to exit though very thick mud, very slowly so as not to make the pair of skunks upset.

• Getting a manicure after having broken three nails. In reality I broke a nail last night and I must have been more upset about it than I thought.

There was more that I can't seem to remember, but those two stood out. It's amazing how vivid and detailed they were. In my dreams I kept telling people I was pregnant.  Like it was important information that explained every situation I was in.

Being pregnant is very strange at times.

I'm happy to report that the past two days I have successfully left the whole night through. I've also had vegetables two days in a row and not thrown them up. While I still have nausea, I'm sleeping better and throwing up less and it seems like the biggest victory in a long time. I'm hoping I feel awesome for Our first wedding anniversary coming up.

Keeping my fingers crossed.