30 Days of Thanksgiving (part 1)

It's hard to believe the month of November and the 30 days of Thanksgiving is almost over.  I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the daily updates complete with pictures from those who've been participating in the 30 days of Thanksgiving!  There is nothing more contagious than a joyful, thankful heart.

Here is my list for the 30 Days of Thanksgiving:

1. The snow that's gently falling outside today.  It is so beautiful and peaceful!

2. My husband.  I'm thankful he chose to work from home today.  It's so nice having him available, even if it's just to share a funny comment or two.  I'm thankful that he is able to get a lot more work done by being away from his office.  He has almost zero distractions while at home, except from me of course!

3. Our wood stove, humming along and heating away.  So far this season, we have yet to use our electric heat!  I just love the coziness of a wood stove, there's nothing else quite like it.

4. The strand of colored lights that I put over our mantle.  At night, these lights go on, and oh how I love to look at them!  Christmas is less than a month away!

5. All you blogging ladies.  Your prayers, encouragement, understanding and your simple presence in my life.  Thank you for welcoming me into this wonderfully prayerful community!  I don't know if I would be where I am right now if I hadn't stumbled across this little corner of the internet.

6. My Grandma in heaven.  Thank you for always praying for us.  I have so many wonderful memories of you and am so thankful for the holy and loving life you led.

7. The sweet kicks of my baby.  Who am I to be so blessed to be a mother?  Words simply cannot express the wonderment and awe I have at being pregnant.  Me.  A mother.  A mother to my daughter. Tears fill my eyes just thinking about it all.

8.  Confession.  Thank you Jesus, for the sacrament of Confession!  I always have to write my sins on a piece of paper so I am not worried that I left anything out.  There's nothing like tossing that sheet of paper into our wood stove after returning home from Confession.  Thank you, Jesus, for giving us all so many ways to grow closer to you and to remain in the state of grace.

9. Humidifiers in the winter.  When you live in New England, and more especially, when you own a wood stove, you really cannot live without these water misting gems.  

10. My lovely home.  Our house is a cape.  It's not huge, but it's cozy and beautiful.  We bought when the interest rates were super low (maybe they still are?) and if it weren't for that, we may still be renting.  The low interest rate allowed us to afford to sign up for a mortgage.  God and St. Joseph's hand were in it through the whole process.  I really cannot think up or picture a better house than the one we have!

11. My Mom.  She just emailed me to tell me she has the pack n' play that she bought for baby bear in her car and she'll be bringing it over tonight!  She said, "I think it'll be great for you! (Tell baby bear she's going to like it!)" hehe  I am so blessed to have a Mom who is so loving, generous and oh so excited to be a Grandma.

12. Water.  This is something I think I take for granted way too often.  I have this mega huge water jug, and by mega huge, I mean 64 oz.. huge! And I have it with me almost all the time.  I started drinking lots of water when I found out I was pregnant and I haven't stopped since.  This jug of mine makes drinking lots of water really easy.  I'm guess I'm really thankful for both water and my water jug. :)

13. My extended family.  I come from a small immediate family, but I have a very large extended family.  I have a few cousins my age who are like sisters to me and we have been best friends our whole lives.  I often take this for granted and sometimes I think, doesn't everyone have cousins they're close with?  Then I remind myself to be thankful for my wonderful, faith-filled extended family.

14. Gluten-free and dairy-free foods.  I have no proof of this, but I feel inwardly convinced that the gluten-free and dairy-free diet I have been on has helped make it possible for me to conceive.

15. Along those lines, I am thankful for the Gi.anna C.enter in N.YC.  About a year ago, I had my first appointment there and would never want to go anywhere else.  The staff is caring, helpful, and prompt.  And the doctor there is very knowledgeable, respectful, understanding and a real inspiration for hope.  She even called me right back on a Saturday in order to set up an immediate blood draw for me when I discovered a positive pregnancy test.  At the same time she called in a script for oral progesterone, just in case, and I had that in my hands the same day.  Then, she monitored my progesterone throughout the first and most of the second trimester and made the whole process so easy for me.  I cannot thank her and her team enough!

16. My comfy robe.  I had been searching for a zip-up robe for a while, and S.ears came to my rescue!  A couple weeks ago we purchased a lovely green robe and I have been basking in it's comfort ever since.  I love to throw it on over whatever I'm wearing, it's lightweight but warm enough for winter.  Sometimes I feel frumpy in it, but my husband has assured me that it's okay that I wear it often!  Thank goodness for comfy robes and husbands who like them!

Stay tuned for the second half of 30 Days of Thanksgiving!

T-Day and T-Day Weekend!

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!  I hope everyone had a wonderful day filled with loving family and friends and good food. :)  We had friends over for an early Thanksgiving dinner and then we went to my parent's house for the remainder of the day.  It was nice having our friends come over, it encouraged us to clean the house more than we would have and we (by "we" I mean, my husband, ha!) were able to cook a full Thanksgiving meal and now leftovers fill our fridge.  My husband is happy, he loves leftover turkey.  We were successful in having a gluten and dairy free meal, too.  Basically, we just substituted butter for Earth Balance Buttery Spread, and for the stuffing, we used brown rice bread and made a nice homemade version of Stove Top Stuffing.  It was really good!  We had pumpkin pie made with almond milk and the best chocolate pudding ever - I still need to get the recipe from my friend.  I think she used Carob powder (which is a naturally sweet, naturally non-caffeinated cocoa powder, dairy free chocolate chips, corn starch, vanilla and almond milk.  It was so. good.  Everything was a success, but man was I exhausted!  Just having people over tires me out.  I don't mind going to my parents house, but for some reason, I'm feel way overwhelmed when we have company.  I keep telling myself, from here on out until after baby arrives, I need to say no to company.  I don't want to be rude, but I need to conserve my energy and rest as much as I can when I'm not eating or doing exercises.  I have no idea how long my labor will be, or when I'm going to be IN labor, so I want to be well rested at all times.
Today, my husband and I plan to make gingerbread cookies.  I'll be able to help and relax when I need to, so I'm not worried about getting too tired.  I'm excited.  I love the smell and of course the taste of homemade gingerbread cookies!
I have been noticing more frequent and obvious braxton hicks contractions.  It helps when I eat something, but this morning I noticed that they were still coming even after I had eaten.  I guess they will continue to come and only get stronger, more frequent, and closer together as the days go by.  This coming week I will be 39 weeks, so baby could come any day now!
We have been strongly considering the name Gianna for our little one.  It's funny because at first, I really really liked it, and my husband had reservations, and now it's switched.  My husband is 100% on board with the name and even said, "if we could tell the nurse her name now, I would want to tell her Gianna" and then silly old me over here is all like, but wait, what about Maria or what about Mary?  For some reason I've always felt unsure when my husband is super sure.  Oh well.  Oh, and that reminds me.  The name Emma has lost it's charm for my husband, so we've moved on from that one.
Well, that's pretty much all for now.  Oh, I should really get a belly shot up here before baby takes up her new residence outside of me!  I think I'll ask my husband to do that today.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!  God bless!

Thankful

I think it's been nearly a month since my last post.  I've enjoyed reading the 30 days of thankfulness that have been on a few of your blogs.  Thank you so much for your positive posts, I find myself drawn to them and want to read more!  That's when I realized, wow, maybe I should write on my own blog for a change! So, here goes. 

I am officially considered full term this week and couldn't be more happy. Thank you, sweet Jesus! I have a midwife appointment today and our last childbirth class (YAY!). My husband and I are both so ready to be finished with the classes, so we'll be very happy after the last class tonight.  

Right now, I'm sitting on our living room floor while our wood stove warms the room.  Remember that old thing from a year ago?  I think I probably wrote about it in every post of mine until Spring.  :)  Well, it's back in business and working like a charm.  In fact, friends of ours are looking into buying a wood stove insert for their own home, they like ours so much.  We live in the east coast, and with last year's snow storm in October causing power outages for a week or more, and then this year, with Sandy hitting NY, NJ and CT pretty badly, we are so very thankful that we can always depend on having heat no matter what happens with the electricity.  So if you had any question about how I feel towards our wood stove, you can rest assured, I really still LOVE IT!

Speaking of things that are warm, last night, I made homemade chicken vegetable soup.  My Grandma had a really simple recipe of just chicken, water, celery, carrots, onion and salt.  It's delicious.  The key, in my opinion, is to by organic carrots and celery.  Then you can leave the skins of the carrots on and add the leaves of the celery to the pot.  You really only need to scrub the veggies before you cut them, because they are organic.  Oh yeah, and use sea salt, it tastes better and is better for you than table salt.

I got my haircut the other day.  I'm really happy I did, because I don't know how long it will be until I can get it cut again, after sweet one arrives.  The only downer is that now it's kinda short and falls out of my elastic band when I try to put it up.  So I'm using bobby pins for my bangs and stuff like that.  Oh well.  I'm happy that he cut most of my old highlight out, so now my hair is soft and bouncy because the old processed, highlighted areas are gone.  That's great news, but I find myself thinking about highlighting again in the Spring.  My heart says "Yes, do it!!" but my head says "No! Be strong and resist the highlights!" :)  We shall see which wins out.

Oh my, I can't believe our baby bear will be here so soon.  We are as ready as we will ever be, I guess.  One thing that has changed many times is the name.  Oh, the name.  Please say a prayer I will find peace about a name, any name!!  Well, not ANY name.  You know what I mean.  I think I'll need to meet her first and then I'll have peace about her name.  I'm still open to suggestions though, so if you've got them, I want them! :)