I had a baby and fell off the face of the Earth.

It's been awhile since I've written anything. I'll be honest, I didn't have my life together before I had a baby and now it's even less together, but I have a cute kid to show for it. Being a mom has changed me and yet I'm still the person I was before. I just don't get to devote as much time to myself or my thoughts.

Currently, Desmond is napping in his swing that's he's almost outgrown. He's 6 months now and the last time I posted was in June, so allow me to photodump the last 10 months of my life.

I went into labor on October 4th at 4:30pm, handled it like a champ. Got to pushing and couldn't push my massive 9lb baby out my tiny hoo-ha. After a failed home birth (I still hate saying that.) we drove to the hospital where I was given an epidural to help me rest and then a few hours later Desmond was pulled out of me using forceps.  I was given the option of forceps or emergency C-section and at the time I thought forceps was a better idea. It still took me 6+ weeks to heal so I'm not sure what would have been the best choice.

But I got my baby, and he's awesome sauce. Here are (a crap ton of) photos from his first 6 months.

Month 1

Daddy picking up Desmond for the first time to bring him to me

Meeting baby for the first time

Holy crap! I'm a mom!

Tired little family

Daddy's hand

Leaving the hospital

First time in the swing

Napping on Mommy

Napping on Daddy

I love napping!

Month 2

Baby videos with Daddy

Playing PS3 with Mommy

Family nap time

Opa, and cousin Jaxsen hanging with Des

4 Generations

Getting bigger!

Month 3

Christmas Elf

4 Generations of Hooper Men

All the Hooper Men together

Des and Grandpa Hooper

Des and Grandma Hooper

More naps with Papa and the beginning of his beard

Month 4

Snoozing with Opa

Super Hero Baby. At some point in time he lost all his long baby hair.

Month 5

Meeting Abuelo Wally for the first time

My dad, Desmond and I

Updated family photo

Month 6

With Grandma in the Gnome Sweater I made him

Snoozing on Grandma

Confused with Grandpa

With Grandpa and Grandma Hooper

Hold a baby and taking a picture is hard!

Papa reading Green Eggs and Ham

Impromptu Easter Photos

Fin.

Our Babymoon

Collin and I decided to take a weekend trip and have a 'Babymoon'. It's a little something to help you celebrate each other and have a romantic moment before the baby is born. We went up to Spokane and ate some amazing food and stayed at The Davenport Hotel which is where we were married. We love it there so much!

On Saturday night we went to Shogun and had yummy hibachi steaks. The whole table was really social and we all got to know each other a little bit which was really nice. There was even another pregnant couple there due a few weeks before us. Sadly, the food and entertainment were so good we didn't take the time to take pictures. Oops!

My parents had a giftcard for The Davenport (which isn't really their 'thing') so they were awesome enough to give it to us to use. Collin was able to get us a beautiful room that included a $75 credit to be used at the hotel, which was beyond perfect because we had planned to have their Champagne Sunday Brunch the next morning.

When we checked into our room I was greeted by a lovely bouquet of flowers that Collin had waiting for me. It was smelled wonderful and was so sweet!

The room was beautiful and had three windows which gave us a great view of Downtown Spokane. 

We woke wonderfully refreshed on Sunday (even though I had not one but two charlie horses in the middle of the night) and got ready to go to brunch. I managed to take a 23 week belly picture before we went down, but I didn't take any pictures at brunch. I was too busy eating all the delicious foods!

We sat for two hours and ate until we couldn't eat anymore. I think Collin had 7 mimosas. It was a celebration so why not? They were free and he has always has a designated driver. I even celebrated a bit and had a mimosa of my own. My midwife gave me permission and it was wonderful. Our waiter was awesome and had a great sense of humor. He even gave Collin a mimosa to take back up to the room with us. Collin felt like a true baller. LOL

Since we were married at The Davenport on a Sunday and served brunch at our reception, going to their brunch is like having our wedding meal all over again! We love that we'll be able to take our son there when he's older and let him eat all the yummy things that were at Mommy and Daddy's wedding.

I made sure to take some pictures of the hotel's beautiful flower arrangement they had in the lobby before we checked out.

I seriously love it there and can't wait to go back again! Lucky for us my parents live in Cd'A and I'm sure that once Desmond is born they'll be happy to take him for a night so we can enjoy a romantic evening together. It couldn't have been a better weekend!

Memorial Day Weekend

So I've been really lazy about blogging lately. I wish I could say it's because I've been SUPER busy getting things ready for the baby and having lots of adventures but mostly I've been napping on the couch. So here's a photodump blog for you viewing pleasure of our Memorial Day Weekend.


Collin and I took a trip to Seattle to visit his mother's side of the family. Since his Mom passed we haven't visited them nearly as much as we should so we took the long Memorial weekend to rectify that. 

Our first day there, Saturday was absolutely gorgeous for Seattle. Pretty gorgeous for anywhere really, mid-80s and sunny. I started the morning taking pictures in Collin's Uncle Clay's garden.

Then we drove north to Mount Vernon to visit Collin's grandmother and then to Whidbey Island/Deception Pass to go on a hike and visit his mother's resting place.

Her couch was so deep I was having trouble sitting in it for the picture. Being pregnant makes for some awkward photos :-)

The next day we were absolutely exhausted from the day before and decided to keep it simple. We walked to get some coffee and found this awesome blue flowering tree. I'd never seen anything like it. There were millions of tiny blue flowers and bees everywhere. I love listening to the hum of bees in flowering trees/fields. Reminds me of working with canola in college. 

After some quick discussion we decided to take the day and drive down to Tacoma to visit Collin's grandfather too while we were in the area.

Collin's grandfather, Wayne, is one cool man. He's a WWII vet who loves music, computers and cameras. We always have so much fun when we visit him. There's always so much to talk about. Collin took the opportunity to take some pictures of his Grandpa's old cameras.

And I took the time to take some pictures of his Grandpa's flowers.

And I made sure to play piano for Grandpa Hooper. If I don't automatically do it he always makes sure to ask and I'm happy to please. 

We ended the trip with a family photo and a trip to get Chinese food with Collin's sister Marney. I didn't take any pictures though.

Grandpa, Grandson and Great-grandson (in utero) pretty sure I'm 23weeks pregnant in this picture.

It was a lovely trip and we were happy we were able to get over there to visit while I was still pregnant. Can't wait to visit again soon.

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.