Just to annoy my mom...

My mom thinks it's really not fun when I put pictures of food on my blog. But it's my blog, so ha! Plus, I have heard a few people like the food pictures.

We had a ploughman's lunch the other day (well we had it for dinner, but still!) complete with homemade bread, salsa verde, cheese, and olive oil/balsamic vinegar dip. How incredible does Bech's bread look?

Lentil Burgers! I absolutely love lentil burgers. Bech likes them alright, but he humored me by eating some the other day.

Bech's homemade chai tea

Bech and I try to only eat grass fed beef, which is more expensive. Thus, we don't get to eat a lot of meat. But last week we splurged and bought sirloin steak. Bech cooked it inside (too much snow around the grill!) and I made parmesan mashed potatoes...so good!

25 weeks!

How far along: 25 weeks and 1 day!

Baby size: 13.7 inches, 1 1/2 pounds

Maternity clothes: yup

Sleep: I have had great sleep lately...and lots of it!

Best moment this week: Bech's parents sent us some happies for Jack!

Movement: He is a little kicker (I can totally see Emily saying that..."Look at him kicking, he's just a little kicker!). Bech gets to feel him a lot now.

Food cravings: Coke Icees

What I miss: Margaritas. I know I say it every week, but I really do miss it!

What I am looking forward to: DC next week. So yeah, that has nothing to do with Jack. But not everything I look forward to has to do with Jack, so I think it's okay.

Milestones: I never know how to answer this. Um...we have a crib now...is that a milestone?

Pregnancy Symptoms: Heartburn started this weekend :(

Stretch marks: nope :)

Here's a few random pictures from this past week...

Alright, here's an update on the Coke Icee situation in Vermont. Apparently, they don't call them Coke Icees here. And they don't have the coke flavor at a lot of places. But you can find the cherry flavor if you look for a "slushie" or a "slurpie." Crazy Yankees. But I shouldn't complain because now I know where to get them!

Here is the crib and the mattress. And of course we are using it to store things in! Right now it's holding my diaper bag, nursing cover, stuffed animals, and a piece of art I need to frame.

Our friend Michael is here visiting us. His wife and he gave us this really cute giraffe stuffed animal...I love it!

Here's a picture of our first package from the Evans. Jack got socks, a blanket, a "lovey," a towel, washclothes, an outfit, and two nightgowns. We got another package a few days later with some monogrammed blankets, burb clothes, and bibs.

New, fun Etsy shop!

Our friend from Malawi, Beth Robbins, just started a new Etsy shop! The jewelry is all super cute and really affordable. She's doing a giveaway on her site to kick off her new site.

Here's how it works:

• Visit CITY THISTLE and tell 5 of your friends to go there, too. Leave a comment on her blog telling her what your favorite item is.
• Only one entry per person.
• Giveaway ends on February 25th at 5:55pm central time.

You all should definitely check out her site. I am thinking some of this jewelry will make great Mother's Day and birthday gifts!

My favorites:

I love the soft green of this necklace. It looks perfect for spring!

I absolutely love this necklace. It has a sort of vintage-Anthro feel (for a fraction of the cost).

So don't forget: Check out her blog and her etsy site!

Random Post...

First of all, I am ready for Spring Break! This past week and a half of school has been tough. I had a test in Greek civilization plus a take home midterm in Greek (which is really really long!). Only a week and 2 days until the break! For the first part of the week, I am just going to be working in the library and maybe getting ahead on some homework (or working on French).

But then on that Thursday (2 weeks from tomorrow!), I will be heading to D.C. to see the cutest little page in the Senate! Katy and Mom will be coming too. I am ready for a fun long weekend full of Tangy Sweet and laughs. And warmth. I know all of you down South have been enjoying amazing weather, but we are still in the 20's here. Actually yesterday was in the teens, I think. So D.C. (which should be around 50 or so degrees) will feel very warm to me!

My study breaks have been filled with Jessica Fletcher. And let me tell you, this lady gets around! I didn't pick up on it when I was younger, but guys are always hitting on her. And since netflix has all 10 seasons of "Murder, She Wrote" on watch instantly, I can now spend lots of time with Jessica. I need a life...

I don't think it's very fun to be pregnant up here. They are lacking in whatever I seem to be craving! Like for instance, I really really really want a snow cone. But are there sno cones anywhere in Vermont? Nope. Bech says its because of all the snow and cold. But that's a lame excuse.

(This is a picture of a strawberry shortcake snowcone with cream on it from Miss Gussie's/the Snowhaven last summer---mhmmm!)

Then last night I decided I wanted a coke icee. We went to several gas stations, but no coke icee's. I don't think they even know what coke icee's are. This is a sad state.

But I did make myself some cheese grits for lunch, and am currently eating Flavor Pops. So I feel much better.

On another random tangent, Jack has been kicking so hard lately that you can see my stomach move. It is fairly entertaining. I tried to do that whole earphones to your belly and play music thing, but it didn't work. I was playing Lecrae, and Bech thinks I may have scared him. Ooops!

24 weeks...

I was a great poster for a few weeks, and now I am horrible! But I have a test on Tuesday, plus a HUGE Greek midterm. It's a take home midterm, but that means he just made it even longer!

So here is my 24 week update. No picture of me this week. I tried to get Bech to take one this morning (after he took it, he handed the camera to me and said, "I'm leaving the room while you look at this." Ha...I just don't like pictures of myself right now!) But I wasn't crazy about them, so maybe next week!

How far along: 24 weeks and 1 day!

Baby size: 12 inches, 1 1/3 pound--whooo! He is over a pound now--that is crazy!

Maternity clothes: Actually today I am wearing a non-maternity shirt--but most days, yup!

Sleep: I have been sleeping great lately, except for when I have random hot flashes.

Best moment this week: The crib came in! And we bought the mattress yesterday. So we spent yesterday afternoon organizing his room. The crib is set up, so now I need to start on the skirt and curtains!

Movement: He moves a LOT! And sometimes it hurts. Which worries me--I mean, he's really small right now...what's it going to feel like in a few weeks or months? Also, Bech has been able to feel him a lot. Plus, when he kicks, you can sometimes see my stomach move, which is weird.

Food cravings: Jolly Ranchers and frozen yogurt (but the whole state of Vermont is obsessed with their native Ben & Jerrys, so no frozen yogurt at all! But I will be in DC in 2 1/2 weeks, so I plan on eating at Tangy Sweet at least once or twice!).

What I miss: Margaritas. I know I say it every week, but I really do miss it!

What I am looking forward to: Continuing to put together the nursery

Milestones: I don't know--I guess that Jack is viable now. Meaning, that if something crazy happened and he was born tomorrow, he has a chance for survival.

Pregnancy Symptoms: I think I have cried 5 times this weekend!

Stretch marks: nope :)

Blog Award

Yay...I got a blog award! Thanks, Lindsey!

I am supposed to share 7 facts about myself, so here goes...

1. I was a mathelete in Junior High. Like seriously. I actually went to the national Mathcounts competition in DC in 8th grade. I know...how dorky can I get? But I really did like math competitions. Plus, it was great flirting practice! All those dorky guys, very few girls...

2. I was "emo" in high school. People are always surprised by that fact. I think it's because I'm a pretty happy person, so I don't seem like I could have ever been emo. But I was. I was constantly rocking my checkered vans, torn jeans, thrift store shirts, and sweat bands. Plus, I went to a lot of band shows.

I tried to find some pictures to prove this fact, but I don't really have any! This is the best I could do. It's from freshman move in, so on the edge of my emo days. Notice my awesome lego soccer jersey (that I bought at a kids store!) and my checkered vans...man, I loved those things!

3. I used to write an opinions column for The Purple and White, the newspaper at Millsaps. Once I wrote about tolerance, and how if you claim to have tolerance, it's not fair to get upset for other groups for being intolerant. Because that's not tolerant of you. Anyway, I got a hate letter in my mail box signed from Jesus. Seriously, who does that? Not cool. But I kept the letter, and I still have it (somewhere in a memory box).

4. I dream about Malawi all of the time. Seriously, I probably live in or am visiting Malawi at least once a week in my dreams. I just miss it a lot. Bech and I would love to live in Africa again, but we just don't know how our specific skills apply to Africa or Malawi. Maybe Cape Town (because of the University there)...

5. Someday I want to have a Westie named Wilcox (for David Wilcox, one of Bech and my favorite singers).

6. I could eat at Little Tokyo's in Jackson EVERY single day and not get tired of it. I love it that much.

7. My little sister is a page in the US Senate this semester. If you go to c-span.org and click live TV then channel 2, you can watch her. Well you are actually watching the Senate in session, but when nobody is giving a speech, they show the view of the front of the room. And then you can see all of the pages. And there she is. She is almost 6 feet with white blonde hair, so she's pretty hard to miss. Anyway, through watching C-Span, I found the new love of my life:

John Thune, who is actually going to be running for president in the next election. Seriously, how cute is he?

So now I get to pass this award on:

Megan @ The Passwaters

Kate @ Nightlight Art

Alison @ Ross Ramblings

So I have a request...I would really like to know who all reads this blog. I am especially interested in who from Burlington reads this blog. I have a little tracker on the side of my blog that shows me where readers come from, and I have had a good amount hits from the Burlington area.

I totally don't care if I barely know you or don't even know you at all! I read sooo many blogs of people I don't know or just barely know, so I am totally okay with that! I guess it just kinda weirds me out that people I may see on a daily basis are reading my blog but not telling me!

So please leave a comment and let me know if you read my blog--you will just be helping satisfy my curiosity!

Nursery Plans...

Okay, so I've been thinking about this a lot and looking online a lot! But I think I finally have some direction.

I had an idea of what I wanted, but couldn't quite pin it down. But then I saw these two nurseries, and knew that I wanted something similar.

So I totally stole these pictures off someone else's blog. I don't actually know this girl. Lately I have taken to clicking on random links in hopes of finding blogs of pregnant people. That way I can see their nurseries, check out what baby products they are buying, and console myself with other pregnant people gaining weight also!

I absolutely adore how simple this nursery is. It is calm and beautiful, exactly what I want! I love the little shelf holding the day gowns! I plan on checking out Lowes soon to see if I can find an unfinished one to paint.

This bedding is Pom Pom at Home, which I adore. The problem is, it's pretty expensive, at least more than I want to pay. But I love the look!

This next nursery is off of a design blog.

I love the look of no bumpers. This is a Jenny Lind crib, so our crib will look really similar. I like the few patterns and the calm colors. I wish we could paint our walls a blue!

They have a little shelf as well. I just love those! Doesn't this room feel so calm?

So now onto my plans:

We are going to use brown and blue as the colors. We will move a printed brown armchair from the living room up to the nursery. I want to get this changing pad (or one like it) to bring more brown into the room.

I am going to order this fabric for a pleated crib skirt. I also might use it for a pillow in the crib. I want to do just plain white sheets. And I want one or two white pillows, maybe with his monogram on one of them.

This is the crib, which hopefully will be here in the next week or two. I am hoping we don't have to keep on those ugly black wheels! I know they would be useful, but they just aren't very cute!

Our changing table (which is already in the room and put together!). I want to find some sort of baskets to put on the shelves to hold his diapers and changing supplies. I have looked at Target and Lowes and don't love anything there. I need to check out Bed, Bath, and Beyond as well. Any suggestions?

We also are looking for a white dresser (or one that I can paint white). There was the perfect one listed on craigs list, but by the time I emailed, it was sold. So back to hunting. If I can't find the perfect one, than I guess I will settle for a storage/bookshelf sort of thing.

I like this Martha Stewart shelving unit. I could stick baskets in some of the cubes to hold his clothes and use some for books. So if I don't find the perfect dresser, I'll go for this.

Anyway, that's what I have so far! Thoughts/suggestions would be great!

questions...?

Okay, I need some extra opinions!

Bech and I have a 20% coupon to Babies R Us that expires in a week and a half. I wanted to use it on the crib, but it was out of stock through Babies R Us (I found it through Amazon and actually got just as good a deal!). I think we should use the coupon on one of the more expensive items we'll have to buy, so that we'll save more!

So we started checking out the travel systems. A few months ago, I decided we should get a Graco travel system. You know, one with an infant car seat/carrier and a stroller that it attaches too. The problem is, we don't like any of them. We looked at all of them last night, and they are all bulky and kinda ugly (at least to us! sorry if you love yours!).

[Travel System by Graco]

So Bech said, "Why do we even need one of those strollers? I've seen people use lightweight strollers that I like a lot better." He's talking about an umbrella strollers, which are super lightweight. The problem is that those are only for slightly older babies...you can't put an infant in one of those.

So we started talking about how much we would actually even use a stroller while the baby was under 6 or 9 months. And we realized that it wouldn't be very often. We don't go out and about much now, and I doubt we will with a child. And I am much more interested in wearing a baby sling or wrap most of the time. So the stroller wouldn't be missed that much.

But the carrier is a different issue. It would be great to use when going out to eat (again, we don't go out much, but still, when we do...) and if the baby fell asleep in the car. But is that enough of a reason to pay a lot for a travel system we really don't like?

I also remembered that people sell old infant seats on craigslist all the time. While I wouldn't use those as a car seat (I've read never to buy a secondhand car seat), we could use it as a carrier.

Then we started looking for car seats that we actually like. Over Christmas I had lunch with one of my high school friends who is also pregnant, and she was telling me how she was just going to get a convertible seat. That way the baby can use it for much longer. Plus she felt the same way about the carrier--she just wouldn't use it very much.

With a convertible, the baby can use it as an infant, all the way up to 3 or so years old.

And then we found this car seat. And we fell in love!

Okay, Bech would probably not describe his feelings as love, because he's not me. But he likes it a lot too. It's the Combi Coccoro. It's made by a Japanese company. It's extremely lightweight and has padding for the infants. It is made for compact cars and smaller cars--while Bech's truck isn't necessarily compact, it's still on the smaller side. Plus it comes in green! And orange!

I have read some reviews so far. Most people seem to love it! There were some unhappy customers, but they were few and far between.

So now I want some advice, please! Did you just love your infant carrier and stroller? Do you think I am absolutely crazy? And at what age can babies start to use umbrella strollers? Do you know anyone who has had a Combi car seat?

recent movies...

And by recent, I mean recent to us!

I got a Wii for Christmas. As soon as we got home, we bought a wireless box for our internet (I am sure there is a really nice technical term for that, but I'm going to stick with wireless box--I think I am becoming an 80 year old!). We hooked the Wii up to the wireless, and now we can watch instantly on our tv! Here are a couple of the movies we've been watching:

Shutter Island - We both kind of wanted to see this when it first came out, but we usually don't go to the movie theatre a lot (it's expensive, plus I don't really like watching most movies in the theatre). We netflixed another movie, Session 9, that was supposed to be similar. Session 9 was pretty good, but I like Shutter Island a lot more! Leo was really good, plus it had Mark Ruffalo (the cute guy from Thirteen Going On Thirty). The movie was scary, but not gruesome and not a horror film. It was much more of a thriller, keeping you nervous, but not filled with gross images.

The Lottery is a documentary about a charter school in Harlem. Let me first say, it's very biased toward charter schools. It's a great movie. It made me want to learn a lot more about charter schools in various places (because sometimes they are great ideas, but in other areas, they are not so great). I am a big supporter of public education, and I really enjoyed this movie.

God Grew Tired of Us is not on watch instantly, but is worth sending off for (if you have netflix) or renting. It's a documentary (so it actually might be at your local or school library) about the Lost Boys of Sudan. I knew a little bit about the Lost Boys before watching this movie, but I learned so much more. This is a sad but uplifting movie that will really tug at your heart strings. These boys (now men) have incredible stories, and I am so thankful to the directors and producers of this film. I think everyone should watch this movie!

On a final note, I just found out that my Greek professor, Jacques Bailly (who won the National Spelling Bee in 1980) is the official pronouncer now for the Bee. He is in Spellbound (a great documentary--hilarious!) and Akeelah and the Bee. How cool is that? He has an IMDB page, a Wikipedia page, youtube videos, plus he's been on NPR! I feel like I know someone famous now!

King Cake...

Thursday in class, I was telling some people about King Cakes, what they are and when we eat them and what happens if you get the baby, etc. Anyway, it made me really want one! I plan on making one myself in a few weeks, but I knew it might not taste like the ones you get every year from the bakery.

I got home Thursday about 6, and on my kitchen table was a box from New Orleans containing this:

A king cake! Bech's parents had one sent to Marley, Bech, and Jack! I was so excited!

Here it is in all it's glory!

As soon as Bech got home from the ceramic studio, we both ate some.

I look like a hot mess in this picture. But I had been at school since 8 that morning, so I think that gives me an excuse.

We have loved our little taste of New Orleans up here...Thank you, Mr. John and Miss Karey!!!

22 weeks

How far along? 22 weeks and one day

Baby size: 11 inches and 15.2 ounces--the size of a papaya (really? where do they get these things from?)

Maternity clothes? yup--and I am in love with my maternity jeans from Old Navy

Sleep: good...but I feel like I've needed so much of it! Friday and Saturday night, I went to bed before 10.

Best moment this week: Mom sent us some clothes and my Uncle Bob and Aunt Marva sent us some clothes too! I have them all folded in his room!

Movement: Lots of kicks! And Bech got to feel him for the first time this past week

Food cravings: I really want a Papa Johns pizza...isn't that random? I don't even really like them at all normally.

What I miss: Margaritas

What I am looking forward to: Working on the nursery

Milestones: not sure?

Pregnancy Symptoms: My face looks like I'm going through puberty or something...ugh!

Stretch Marks: None yet!

Also, I need to add a disclaimer. I don't really like this picture. But I did want to put a picture on here, and this was the one I disliked the least.