There Are Some Silver Linings

I mentioned yesterday that I’m frustrated about the timing being screwed up now for when we’ll (probably/hopefully) have a baby. But that’s not to say that it’s all bad. I have thought of a few things I’m thankful for within all the bad.

-I was never due before Christmas, so when I see “baby’s first Christmas” stuff, it isn’t upsetting. This was never going to be a baby of our’s first Christmas, so I can stick with looking forward to next Christmas being their first. I guess if we have issues that push our potential due date into 2015 this one will come back to haunt me a bit, but we still have around 6 months to get (and stay) pregnant before it’ll be that late.

-We’ll almost certainly have a much younger baby when their first Christmas does roll around. I was a little sad that the timing we wanted meant no itty baby at Christmas. It just makes for SUCH cute Christmas pictures. And the holidays are frequently the first time they see a lot of their extended family. It’s nice if they’re still young enough to not mind being passed around some. Plus they’ll be a toddler/preschooler for a while, so you’ll get Christmases at that stage no matter what. But they’re only an infant for a tiny window of time. So I’m happy that Christmas might fall in that window this time.

-Same thing with Halloween. I’ll likely get to do a baby costume, not just toddler and above ones. So that’s the trade-off for missing my Halloween prego opportunity.

-I will (probably) get to be visibly pregnant at my husband’s annual company trip. I’ve always looked forward to actually looking pregnant and getting comments and questions (though really not looking forward to the people trying to touch my belly). I missed being able to enjoy that at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but this trip will have everyone from his company, so LOTS of people I know but haven’t seen in a while will be there and I know I’ll get attention from being pregnant. Yes, I have a bit of an attention problem. Shush.

-I’m not sure, but I’d assume the whole maternity wardrobe investment will be cheaper with being biggest in the summer. I should need fewer layers, and thus a smaller number of clothes. And just avoiding the cost of a winter coat should be hugely helpful.

-Morning sickness is usually worst in the early months. Cold air has always helped me with nausea. So hopefully getting the first trimester out of the way during winter will be a positive.

-I’ll get to be pregnant on Mother’s Day. Again. Ish. We got the positive test with Stormy a few days before Mother’s Day this year, so Christopher did get me a card and a gift card for a mani-pedi. But it wasn’t like I was showing or even telling people yet at that point. This time around it’ll be more obvious. And similar to being happy about having an itty baby at Christmas, it’s a small window to be able to be visibly pregnant on Mother’s Day, so I’m pleased to be able to possibly pull it off.

-I’ll get to actually be pregnant on Father’s Day. We lost Stormy just 4 days before Father’s Day, so I didn’t get to do anything for Christopher. It’s much less of a big deal since he really doesn’t care, but I feel like it would sort of give us a re-do. Silly, but I care.

I know there are more, and that I’ve even thought of more when mentally planning this post, but that’s all I have for now. If you can think of anything else to add to the list, let me know!

Random Update

I haven’t posted anything in a bit, so I thought I’d just do a quick update. I do have some actual topics I want to write about, but I’m too brain dead right now for anything that I have to actually think about.

The job (as an inventory person) is going pretty well. I’m completely past the training phase, so I’m on a more regular schedule. We work in two man teams, and I’m with the same person, Precious, every day. She’s right at my age, with two kids, and really nice, so it’s not super hard for me to find things to talk about. (I’m very socially awkward, and I always dread being in a situation where I have to make small talk. So this is a huge relief.) She’s also very patient, which is great. Because I’m still SO slow at counting. And I keep making mistakes. Thankfully they’re almost always easily correctable, and very normal mistakes for someone who’s new. But it’s a bit discouraging. In general, I pick things up quickly. Even if I’m never great, I’m usually at least good right from the get go. But this is slower going, and I’m not used to that. But like I said, Precious has been patient with me. Let’s hope I get better before her patience runs out. At least it’s amusing when she goes to check my counts and I’m like $21,000 over. (Once I made it into the millions. Not sure how on earth I managed that.)

I have a cold though, which sucks. Because of the whole working in two man teams thing, calling in sick is very highly discouraged. It hasn’t really gotten bad enough that I felt like I really needed to call in, but still, it’s been rough working through it. A job that required less physical effort (lots of up and down, like I mentioned before) might not be as bad, but having to do work I’m not really in shape for while sick is very not fun. Plus, a lot of the stores are really dusty. Because really, who’s doing their grocery shopping in a Tigermarket? Most of the grocery items have been there a looong time. I also blame the job for the cold. I’m touching so much stuff and most of it is dirty and it’s pretty much inevitable that I’ll get sick more while I’m doing this, even with the insane amounts of hand sanitizer I’ve been using.

I haven’t decided yet how I feel about the driving all over the place aspect of the job. I could wind up in any store in a 40 or so mile radius, and I’m only really familiar with a few areas of the city, so I’m going to a LOT of places I don’t know my way around. Which on the one hand is really good, because I’ll learn so many new areas. On the other hand, I’m completely reliant on my gps to get me to work (and being on time is really, really emphasized with this company). If I were to type the address in wrong, or if it didn’t recognize an address (which happened yesterday), or if I just mix up my addresses (we’re in two stores each day, and I did go to the wrong one first on Monday), I could have major issues. I’m used to going to the same place every day. With this I can’t even set my alarm to the same time every day, since I could be driving anywhere from 5 minutes to over an hour just to get to work. (And just in case anyone is wondering, I do get reimbursed for some of my mileage.)

The charity auction page I started, Made With Love Auctions, which I believe I mentioned on here once before, is going well. Our first auction (which benefits APFED, in honor of my cousin’s son) is open for bidding, and around half of the items have at least one bid. I’ve noticed in the past that people tend to wait till the last minute to bid, so I’m hoping for a little burst of activity towards the end. But even if we only get what we’ve gotten bids for so far (and I really think it’ll be more), at least we’ve done better than nothing!

Final note before I go play me some Star Wars- slightly tmi, but my last cycle has officially ended, and we are now on a new cycle, so we can start trying to get pregnant again in less than a week! It’s amazing how much more positive I feel just knowing that I’m back to being able to start trying. I definitely have mixed emotions about it, but overall I’m feeling hopeful. It’s kinda confusing though, thinking about timing. On the one hand, I know that the odds of getting pregnant on any given month that you’re trying aren’t higher than around 30%, possibly lower. On the other hand, we’ve been successful on our first month of trying twice now, so I have this automatic expectation that we’ll just get pregnant immediately again. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s really not all that likely that it’ll happen that way again.

It’s also a little frustrating/upsetting on the timing issue, because we deliberately chose to start trying such that we would have a baby early in the following year. I was trying to avoid being super hugely pregnant during the hottest part of the year, as well as avoid sticking a kid with a birthday near mine. I was never thrilled with having a birthday right at the beginning of the school year, because when we moved over the summer I had no time to get to know anyone so I could invite them to my birthday party. Not to mention that I had really hoped to be able to do a fun costume for Halloween. Both of the first two pregnancies would have had the due date exactly in the time frame we were aiming for. Now, it’ll be sometime in August or later. Gah. We could always wait till we get back on the right timing, but I’m definitely not up for waiting any longer. On a positive note though, Christopher has tentatively agreed we can go to DragonCon next year, and the timing would be right for me to be able to do a fun pregnant costume for that. I was going to go with something nerdy like the Death Star anyway, so it totally works. Plus, DragonCon is way more fun than Halloween. 🙂

Oh, and woohoo for trying to make a baby while still living in my mother’s basement! >_< She works a ton, so really it shouldn’t be a problem, but still. Awkward.

Anyway, off to play some Star Wars before Christopher comes home some soup for the poor sick baby (i.e. me). Here’s a nice positive thought for you today. 🙂