A Baby Shower for Mojo

My awesome sister, Betsy, threw me a fabulous baby shower here in Omaha last Saturday. I couldn’t believe how many people came to support me and Mojo! It was a great afternoon of chatting with family and friends, and it was so much fun to open all of the cute baby gifts that we’ll be putting to good use in just a few weeks!

Here are a few pictures from the shower:

Betsy putting the finishing touches on everything!

On the deck enjoying the nice weather

Me with Grandma Dot and Grandma Marie

Mojo's Grandmas and me!

The Spider in the Shower

I will post about the wonderful shower my sister threw me this weekend after I get the pictures from my mom's camera, but I wanted to post today about the hilarity that ensued this morning when I was getting ready for work.

Dave was still sleeping, and I was in the shower. I noticed a spider on the ceiling above me. I hate spiders. The spider began to shimmy down towards me on a strand of its web, which caused me to shriek and yell, “Oh my God, here it comes, oh my God!”

In a panicked voice from the bedroom, I hear Dave yell back, “Here WHAT comes?!” The poor guy thought I was having Mojo! LOL!!!

Reflections at 65 Days to Go

My due date is in 65 days. I’ve decided that at this point, I have experienced enough of this thing called pregnancy to make some statements about what is good about being pregnant …and what sucks. I’m not holding myself out as an expert on the subject by any means, but who doesn’t like a good top ten list every now and then?


Top 10 Reasons Why I Like Being Pregnant

10. People feel inclined to compliment me, ask me about the baby or hold the door for me when they see me. I’m not ashamed to admit I enjoy the attention!

9. We have saved a small fortune due to my lack of wine consumption.

8. It is completely acceptable for me to be tired, cranky and demanding one minute and full of cheerfulness and energy the next.

7. I can justify buying all of those cute little baby things you see in the stores.

6. I can go to McDonald’s and eat a double quarter pounder with cheese without feeling too guilty.

5. I have never been more organized in my entire life. The “nesting” instinct came over me pretty early on, and as a result, I have taken our household organization to a new level. (I am fully aware that this will completely fall apart within about a month of Mojo’s arrival.)

4. If I eat too much and my belly sticks out, no one knows it’s because I ate too much – to everyone else, I simply look more pregnant.

3. Dave has started doing a lot of things around the house to help out – WITHOUT BEING ASKED. As such, being pregnant is akin to pigs flying.

2. There’s nothing like feeling your baby kick and move around in your belly. It’s an indescribable feeling. I love it (except when the kicking involves a rib or my bladder).

1. The anticipation! I can’t wait to meet Mojo, and I love daydreaming about being a mom.



Top 10 Reasons Why I’d Be Okay with Mojo Making His/Her Debut A Little Early

10. I have not had a beer since October 31, 2008. Enough said.

9. No amount of fresh fruit, prunes or fiber seems to do the trick. Ever.

8. I have always been very attentive towards my feet (i.e., maintaining “sandal-ready” feet). Now that even touching my toes has become next to impossible, my feet only look good for about the first 24 hours after my monthly pedicure.

7. This gestational diabetes thing sucks. I miss sugar and bread.

6. I am more than ready to take 10 weeks off from work. I understand that these 10 weeks will not be a vacation; however, it is 10 weeks I will not have to sit in a cubicle.

5. Sometimes I feel like I have seriously lost my mind. There are many days when I am downright ditzy.

4. I miss sleeping on my back and without being surrounded by a fortress of pillows.

3. I have not had a margarita since sometime last summer. I smelled Betsy’s the other day, and it smelled like heaven.

2. My back hurts, which is causing me to walk around like I’m 80 years old (no offense, Grandma Dot and Grandma Marie).

1. Especially now that it’s warm out, I miss playing golf, tennis and sand volleyball. I know that I could play golf, but let’s be honest – what is golf without a nice cold beer?

29 Weeks and Mojo's Digs

When we left last weekend for our trip to Chicago, I knew that my mom and sister were going to be painting Mojo’s room while we were gone – but what we came home to was better than I could have ever imagined!

Not only was the room painted a gorgeous light blue that matches the bedding I picked out, but they had put up some cute white bubble wall decals that coordinate with the bubbles on the bedding; the valance that my mom had been hemming was up; the recovered cushions for the glider ottoman were in place; the changing table me and Lyndsay had painted Easter weekend had been moved up to Mojo’s room, and the new knobs had been installed on it; and – get ready for this – the crib was there and assembled! The room looks so perfect! I love, love, love it – they did such a great job.

My parents bought the crib for us (very generous!), and I was under the impression that it was going to be ready to pick up at Nebraska Furniture Mart at the beginning of May. Apparently, it came in early, but they decided to keep that a secret from us so they could surprise us when we returned from Chicago. My dad and Mark, my brother-in-law, put it together for us, which is so awesome (except that from what I understand, many beers were consumed while it was being assembled…so I told Dave that he needs to check the crib’s stablity before we put Mojo in it).

Thanks, Mom, Dad, Betsy and Mark! Here are some pictures of Mojo’s digs:

And here is my 29 week belly picture:

Dave and I went to our first wedding of the year this weekend - congrats, Laurel and Bob! Gorgeous spring wedding at Saint Philip Neri in Omaha, and the reception was at the 1316 Jones building downtown - LOVED the venue they chose for the reception and the decorations were fabulous.

A Whirlwind Weekend

Dave and I went to Chicago this past weekend – our last trip before we become parents. It seems strange to me that the next time we go somewhere – whether it is a relatively close destination like Chicago or Kansas City or somewhere farther away like Baltimore – it will involve significantly more planning and preparation…because we’ll either be hauling a little one with us or leaving said little one with the grandparents.

We had a wonderful time in Chicago and got to catch up with a lot of good friends. We arrived on Friday evening and had a nice quiet evening at Sandee and Nick’s place – and we finally got to meet their baby (now almost 9 months old), Charlie! What a cutie!

Here are the 28 week belly pictures that Sandee took at her house:


On Saturday, we dropped Dave off at a bar around lunch time so he could hang out with his friend Curtiss all afternoon; then Nick dropped me and Sandee off at my first baby shower!

Angie, Aly and Sandee had organized a shower for me at The Drake Hotel. My dear friend John and his friend Ryan joined the four of us for high tea in the gorgeous Palm Court. Let me tell you – if you’re ever in charge of planning a small wedding or baby shower for a friend, consider doing something like this – it was SO much fun and such a special experience. Here are some pictures from the shower:

After the shower, Angie, Aly and I wandered down Michigan Avenue and eventually made it to Angie’s apartment just over the river at the south end of the Magnificent Mile. We enjoyed happy hour there before heading to Café Ba Ba Reeba to meet up with Dave, Curtiss, Sandee, Nick, and Reid (Aly’s boyfriend) for tapas. I think I had more bacon-wrapped dates than anyone else at the table, but no one was counting since they were all busy drinking sangria! Oh, how I look forward to drinking sangria and margaritas this summer after Mojo arrives…

We moved the party to Glascott’s (a Lincoln Park pub) after dinner, and John and Ryan met back up with us there. This is about the time that it became obvious to me that it may not have been the wisest decision to drop my husband off at a bar so early in the day…by this point, he was having a jolly good time, to say the least!

The next morning, we all reconvened for brunch at Uncommon Ground, and afterwards, I bought a happy new yellow purse at the M2 Boutique on Southport. (My justification for this purchase was that my husband had probably spent a small fortune at the pubs the day before – it was only fair that I get to spend a little money while on vacation, too!)

We left Sandee and Nick’s house at 3:00 PM on Sunday to go to the airport for our return trip to Omaha. We supposed to have landed in Omaha at 6:35 PM…instead we landed at 5:30 PM on Monday. Yes, you read that correctly: Monday. It took us a total of 27 hours to get home from Chicago. Here’s a quick run-down of the events that led to this remarkable travel experience:

Sunday, April 19
3:00 PM - Leave Sandee and Nick's house to go to the airport
(NOTE: A small hole in the back pocket of Dave’s jeans had ripped on Sunday morning, but he was too tired / forgot to change them before leaving for the airport - little did he know that he would be forced to wear these same jeans for the next 27 hours! LOL!)

5:30 PM - Board our DIRECT flight to Omaha at O'Hare

6:00 PM - Plane begins to take off, and right before the nose lifted off the ground, the pilot slams on the brakes. This is highly unnerving to all passengers, especially those sleeping like my hungover husband. :) The pilot announces a system failure and heads back to the gate.

6:30 PM - Pilot announces that the plane is fixed but now has to be refueled.

7:00 PM - Plane is refueled. Pilot turns plane back on and system fails again.

7:30 PM - Pilot announces that we are not taking this plane to Omaha, so we all get off.

8:30 PM - Gate agent announces cancellation of our flight.

9:00 PM - We are rebooked for the following: leave O'Hare Monday at noon on a flight to Dallas, followed by a 3:45 PM flight from Dallas to Omaha. They also book us a room at a strange little hotel called the Jameson Suites in Arlington Heights and give us $30 of food vouchers to use the next day.

9:30 PM - Shuttle picks us up at O'Hare. We convince the driver to take us to a grocery store to get some toiletries since American Airlines hadn’t allowed us to get the suitcase we had checked before leaving the airport.

10:30 PM - Dave and I dig in to turkey and ham Lunchables after having checked in at the Jameson Suites. Dave surveys the damage to his jeans; the hole is definitely bigger. He curses American Airlines for not letting us get our luggage while I laugh hysterically.

Monday, April 20
10:30 AM - We return to O'Hare after a leisurely morning spent over coffee and rice (yep, rice for breakfast) at the Jameson.

5:30 PM - I'll speed this up a little; our flights to Dallas and then to Omaha were on time, and my mother picked us up at the airport. We were happy to see our suitcase that had been waiting patiently for us to arrive. The hole in Dave's jeans is now close to 8 inches long.

6:00 PM - We get home. Nina is happy to see us but had torn into the bag of bagels I had left sitting on the counter. The garlic bread that had been sitting next to it was nowhere to be found. Apparently, she was mad that we hadn't returned home when we said we would.

10:00 PM - We go to bed after unpacking, eating dinner, and unwinding. Dave finds the loaf of garlic bread in his closet upstairs in our bedroom. We decide that instead of killing the cat, we would just go to sleep.

And that, my friends, is why we are driving the next time we visit Chicago.

Since this is already such a long post, I’m going to create a new one that details the progress that was made on the nursery over the weekend while we were gone – after all, it looks so awesome that it deserves its own post! Stay tuned!

The Verdict Is In

And the verdict is in – I have gestational diabetes (GD). Oh well – in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t a big deal and will just take some discipline on my part to eat a low-carb diet for the rest of this pregnancy. It hasn’t been very difficult so far, actually; it’s kind of like not drinking alcohol when you’re pregnant – when you know something is in the best interest of your baby, it’s easy to go along with it. In all honesty, the diet that I’m following is probably closer to how each one of us should be eating in our everyday lives – carbs in moderation.

We are now the proud owners of a Baby Bjorn. Here is a picture of Nina helping Dave test it out:




Last week, a friend of ours lost her husband of only 20 months to brain cancer. It’s an understatement to say that my heart is broken for her. And I’m angry. I’m angry that cancer took away Joey and Seth’s dreams of growing old together, buying a house, having a family…all of those things that many of us tend to take for granted.

Every day, progress is made in the fight against cancer, but we’re obviously still a long way from the end of this war. If you’re not already actively involved in a cancer fundraising or awareness movement, I encourage you to find one that speaks to you – whether it is the American Cancer Society, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, or one of the many other worthy organizations out there that have made it their mission to fight cancer head-on. If you need ideas, there’s a lot of great information on my Cancer Roadmap website. And please send up some prayers for Joey during this very difficult time.

A Well-Deserved Break from the Nebraska Winter

Dave has been working his butt off in real estate since the local market started picking up in January, and this past weekend, he finally got a well-deserved break – we travelled to the Greensboro, North Carolina area to visit his brother’s family. Sunshine and 65 degree weather has never felt so good!

Dave’s brother, Todd, his wife Nicole, and their two adorable children (Kaitlyn just turned four and Ethan is well on his way to three) live in a grassy, tree-lined suburb of Winston-Salem. We spent a relaxing weekend catching up and playing outside with the kids. Dave even got to play a round of golf for the first time this year!

Dave and Ethan

The highlights of the weekend included the neighborhood Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning and dinner at The Filling Station on Saturday night (great food and atmosphere if you ever find yourself in the area). A cute story I have to share from Saturday evening: when the baby-sitter arrived to watch the kids, Todd introduced her to me and Dave. Having watched his father make the introductions, Ethan piped in and remarked, “There’s a baby in the belly!” as if to scold his father for not introducing his soon-to-be cousin, Mojo! What a riot! Kaitlyn and Ethan are at such a fun age, and it was wonderful to be able to spend so much time playing with them this weekend.

Ethan, Dave and Kaitlyn

On the pregnancy front, I’m starting to freak out a little. On Friday, I’ll start the third trimester. Holy cow. Today, my pregnancy ticker at the bottom of the page says 95 days until my due date…and for some reason, that makes me want to hyper-ventilate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very excited to meet Mojo…there’s just so much to do at work and at home before he / she gets here! It seems like just yesterday, I was somewhere around the 180 day mark! Where did the time go?!

I took the one-hour glucose test yesterday (that’s the test that all pregnant women have to take to see if they have developed gestational diabetes, or “GD”), and sure enough, I failed it miserably. Sigh. The next step is the three-hour glucose test, which I’m scheduled to take on Thursday. I’m not keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll pass it, but, hey, there’s always hope. It’s not the end of the world if I have developed GD, it just means that I have to watch my blood sugar closely throughout the rest of my pregnancy – more of an inconvenience than anything.

Oh, and Dave finally felt Mojo move for the first time! He was so excited to feel that little thump – you should have seen how his face lit up!