I'm having a baby. In five days.

Poor baby number two. She's not even here yet and she's already playing second fiddle. As in, when I was pregnant with Norah, I at least attempted to have regular updates. And here I am, nine months into this pregnancy, and I'm just now writing about it.

Part of the problem, okay, the majority of the problem, is that this is what pregnancy feels like to me (except there's no way I could currently lay on my stomach):

And it's not that I'm more sick than anyone else or that there is anything in particular wrong, it's just...nope. Every day is pushing through that feeling of oh my goodness how am I supposed to do anything when all I feel like I can do is absolutely nothing?

But we have been doing things. Lots of things, actually. And it's turned out to be an amazing summer full of dance recitals, soccer, swimming, camping, boating, birthdays, friends, and family. Nic and Norah have been amazing and have dealt with my nope-ness like champs.

So instead of regular pregnancy updates, here's a succession of photos, starting when I was like five months pregnant in May at the Goldilocks bike ride:

And since this is my blog, I get to create my own reality and post only the pictures of me when I wasn't wearing basketball shorts and Nic's old work shirts, which was about 1 percent of the time.

Nic ran the 13-mile Spartan Beast on June 28. I walked the half-mile kids course with Norah because I'm tough like that.

 

Boating at Pine View for the Fourth of July.

And last week. Again, I'm tricking you by posting pictures of me in a dress. Suckers.

Costa Rica

I'm not a planner. I tell myself it's because I'm not good at it, but it's really because I plain don't like it and it gives me anxiety. It drives Nic crazy--because even when I do make plans, I always fail to tell him in a timely manner. You know, so he can make plans based on the sort-of plans in my head. It gets even trickier when he asks for details. Stuff like, "When is this 20-mile bike ride?" Me: "Um, Saturday?" He's a patient man.

Earlier this year, Alissa called and told me about a surf camp in Costa Rica she was thinking of going to as a way to get some perspective in this tricky balancing game we play of being moms, wives, friends, daughters, and also, you know, humans. I would have never planned anything like this on my own, but when Alissa said she was going, I told her I was too. And as far as I was concerned, I had my plans. I was going to Costa Rica with Alissa in February. Where in Costa Rica? (My doctor was the first to ask me this specific question.) Um, you know, Costa Rica. In February. With Alissa. Why are you giving me the third degree?!?

And bless the kind, kind hearts of our patient husbands. All I had to do was tell Nic that I was going and give Jon my credit card number to book my ticket. Done and done. I'll just gloss over the part where we arrived in San Jose and had a little confusion with my connecting flight to where we would be staying in Malpais. In hindsight, we should have maybe figured out how to make international calls on our phones before we were out of the country, but remember the whole "I'm a terrible planner" thing? So we spent a little extra time in the San Jose airport and got the next connecting flight. 

See? It all works out eventually. We made it on our plane and to our destination. 

And can I tell you about our destination? Malpais (yes, I did eventually learn the name of where we were staying) is magical. Our little spot on the beach was magical.

You're looking at my favorite spot of our whole adventure: the porch of our cabana. I could sip Coke Light and nibble on chocolate here for eternity. 

Oh, but the surf camp that we came for! Right. We were maybe not the best students. Our instructor, Helen, bless her heart, was amazing. I really did give it my best effort for the first few hours of the first two days. And guess what? I'm a terrible surfer. Like, I am really not good at it. I could barely get up on the board for a few seconds in the white water. My working theory is that being three months pregnant was the problem. It's easier to think that than admit that I was just really, really bad.

 Alissa, however, killed it.

 For a more accurate picture of our surf lessons, refer to these pictures. For me, it was perfection.

We found that we were maybe better suited for boogie boarding.

Also included in this CliffNotes version of our trip is practicing my hermit crab whistling skills, a zip line tour through the canopy, morning yoga on the beach, a Costa Rican rodeo, awards for our awesomeness, and my first baby belly shot.

 

There really is so much more. But if I could only share one thing from our trip, it would be this picture:

This sums up what we found in Costa Rica. And for this pair of moms, it was life changing.

More races

We've done two more Spartan races so far this year. Well, I did one and then Nic and Norah did another. Nic was not well for the one in Temecula in January (you'll have to ask him what was wrong), and I was not well, i.e., 20-ish weeks pregnant, for the one in Las Vegas in April.

Given that the race in Temecula was on a lake shore and the race in Las Vegas was in a gravel pit, I don't feel too bad about missing out in Vegas. Here I am trying to do the barbwire crawl without swishing the tiny little critter in my belly:

We also got the Kings to come join us! Even more awesome is that Jon bought a season pass to the races, which means we get to see them even more throughout the year.

I wasn't thinking clearly so I didn't bring Norah to California even though Alice Jean King was going to be there. Her and Russell ran the kids race, and I made Nic promise not to tattle on me to Norah about the whole thing.

 Prego lady!

For the Vegas race Nic was on top of things and made sure that we brought the kiddo to have a campover and run the kids race with her bestie.

Sorry, Nic. I didn't get pictures of your race, but how adorable are these?!?

Getting it together

With moving and living in the basement for all of last summer and into the fall, I let a lot of things slide on the parenting front. Things I swore I'd never do, like use Pull-Ups or let a three year old have a binky. But you see, with all of the chaos, Norah regressed on her potty training and it got to the point where I just DID NOT CARE if she wore Pull-Ups at night for the rest of her life. And the binky thing? She didn't use it during the day, but at night? At night you better believe I gave her the plug. There was also the waking up multiple times a night. I knew I needed to get rid of the binky and help her figure out how to put herself back to sleep, but bleh. She had been being such a good sleeper that I was in denial of having to go through the whole process again.

The point is that when we finally got settled into our new house we had a lot of work to do. And when I say "work," I mostly mean bribery. It started with the binky. I took her to the store to let her choose a prize for when she threw them away. She opted for some cheap princess high-heels and plastic jewelry. The first few nights were kind of a novelty and she did pretty well--but then it set in that she couldn't have her binky. I would tuck her in and she'd say, "Mom, I need something. I need something." I'd ask her what she needed and she would proceed to describe a binky to me. "I need something round...and green..." It was like the most exhausting game of Catch Phrase you've ever played. But she did it. She was binky free for good.

And that's when the obsessing about her blanket started.

She started out waking up screaming because I needed to "flip" her blanket. I would try, desperately, to flip that stupid blanket and it was NEVER RIGHT. Then she started to want the corners tucked in where her bed met the wall. I could also never do that right. The "blanket" she was using was a yard and a half of Minnie Mouse fleece, which still had a white selvedge edge on one side because I'm awesome like that. One night she was obsessing about which side the white edge was on, giving me the grand idea to just cut off the white. Perfect solution in my mind. I started cutting and she lost. her. mind. I tried to backtrack, even taping the stupid thing back together. And that? That was our lowest point. If she was an adult, I would have had her committed. Actually, I would have liked to commit myself because then I wouldn't have to deal with the blanket tantrums.

While she was obsessing about her blanket at night, she was also dreaming about a kitty costume during the day--a "pink kitty costume with a nose and whiskers and a pink kitty belly and a tail." So we agreed that she could have a kitty costume if she stopped screaming about her blanket. This is what I came up with:

 

What a cute little crazy person, right? My sole motivation for making that kitty costume was to tell her I was going to throw it away if she started crying about the blanket situation at night. I had to use the threat a lot, but it worked. 

She did great at night for a while, but slowly started waking up again. She didn't scream about the blanket anymore, she just screamed. At this point I had also found out that I was pregnant, and I seriously could not bear the thought of having a newborn and a toddler who wouldn't sleep through the night. I resorted to bribery again. This time she wanted a mermaid tail for the swimming pool. She saw it in a magazine at Grandma Debbie's and HAD to have it. So I put the smallest amount of effort possible into a goal chart to stick on the fridge. At first I told her that she had to get ten stickers to get the prize, but that quickly changed to five. (I couldn't even be bothered to buy new stickers. I pulled the Minnie Mouse ones out of her coloring book.) It took her a few weeks, but she did it. 

And now, months later? Now she is doing great. *Knocks on wood* No more binkies and no more screaming at night. We also got rid of the Pull-Ups because she just stopped wetting the bed at night (which seemed way too easy...).

Before Norah was born, I thought a lot of things about parenting. One of those things was how I wasn't going to bribe my kids. Hahahahahaha. Hahahaha. Ha.

That's all.

My birthday

For my birthday, we flew back to California for another Spartan race. Yes, another. Remember the other one when I wanted to die on top of the mountains in Virginia? Well, this one was much, much better. It helped that it was only 3+ miles instead of 8+.

You guys, it was so much fun. This one was held in Malibu. Before we got there, I had visions of myself running along the beach in the warm ocean air. When we got there, however, it was 40 degrees and raining. I was SO not prepared for it to be cold. Here we are pre-race. I think we're trying to make tough faces, but it just looks like we're constipated. It was SO COLD!

Here's a few of us in action:

And post-race. It was so cold!

After being so completely and utterly unprepared for the race in Virginia, this was a real confidence boost. We'll see if I feel the same after the next 8-miler in April!

Thanksgiving road trip, part II

For dinner on Thanksgiving, we had takeout nachos and tacos and it was divine. We then celebrated with a proper Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. When we went to check out at Trader Joe's, the guy was super confused as to why we would be purchasing all the makings for a Thanksgiving dinner the day after Thanksgiving. I couldn't get these weirdos to take a decent picture--but here it is: proof that it happened. And none of this was my doing, by the way. We supplied groceries; Jon and Alissa did all the actual work.

And now for the real reason this post needed two parts: more pictures! There is nothing more magical than a photo shoot at the beach with my favorite people. It didn't take Norah long to get topless.

Just two more of these best weirdos: