Emotional Crazy Lady

Dear  new symptom,

 You can go away before my dear husband decides to sleep in the other room on his ten day break! 

Emotional crazy lady made a visit last night. Sure I've always been a pretty transparent person. Matt always knows how I'm feeling. Usually before I do.  And sees right through my "nothing I'm fine" and "I don't knows". 

What happened you ask (since no one is really reading this, and no one really asked, let me continue)

Matt wasn't really using his blanket last night so I pulled some over to my side to cover my feet and the following conversation insued....

Him- "stop it I was almost asleep."

Cue tears!  I cried silently trying not to sniffle because I felt bad I woke him. He has such a hard time sleeping. 

Him- "Do you need another blanket?"

Me- (shaking  my head no because I knew I'd start sobbing if I talked.)

He of course asks again because it's dark and you cant see a head shake in the dark. 

Me- (burst into uncontrollable tears.)

Him- "Why are you crying? What's wrong?"

Me-  "I don't know."

Him- (chuckling). "Stop crying,  there's nothing to cry over." (covering me up with a blanket)

Me- (sobbing now that he got out of bed to cover me up after I woke him up)  "You yelled at me." (more sobbing) 

Him- (he walks out of the room- surely shaking his head- which I can't see because it's DARK) 

I find him on the couch and ask what he is doing.  "(He's) staying there so he doesn't ruin my night" (or something along those lines)

Emotional crazy lady please go away. He has put up with my insane emotions  our entire relationship. But this! I don't know how long he will stay around for this. 

It all ended happily ever after though (at least I think). He came back to bed and there were no more blanket stealing or sobbing- that I can remember at least. I'll have to ask him when he finishes mowing the grass. 

Dear Future Baby Registering Momma-to-be

Dear Future Baby Registering Momma-to-be,

The very first thing you must register for is one of those mirrors that you attach to your back seat so that you can see your bundle-to-be as you drive down the road. This is essential unless you want to continually pull over and unbuckle to check to make sure baby Pressley is alive and well. 

                                                                        Your welcome in advance,

                                                                             Momma Worrier

Today I helped a good friend of mine out by babysitting her son. Let me tell ya. Every stop light and stop sign I would readjust my mirror to see if his toes were twitching. 

How do new moms not poke their babies while they lay blissfully sleeping to make sure that;  yes they were indeed sleeping and not dead. 

I still sometimes poke my dog and we've had her almost two years. 

Oh boy do I have lots to learn. Let the adventure begin, or shall I say continue.

Bloodwork and peeing in a cup

We had our first doctors appointment today. I braced for boring. I knew there would be peeing in a cup,  lots of questions to answer, an  internal exam  plus blood work.  But I didn't expect to hear our babies heartbeat.   So surreal.  

(What does that word even mean?  

According to Webster " very strange or unusual : having the quality of a dream")

Yep, my first appointment was indeed surreal.  I still feel as if this is a dream.  That I will wake up tomorrow and be late for school and will not have to urinate every half hour. 

But it's not a dream. I am having a baby!  I  heard my baby boy or girls heartbeat today!   138 beats per minute.   I am going to be a mom!  Matt is going to be a dad!  So surreal!  

The Making of the Chalkboard

Since so many of my friends and family are living in different states (and those living close by I don't get to see enough) we decide to document my ever-expanding belly in some fun way.  What we come up with was a homemade chalkboard.



We set out one afternoon to Lowe's and bought all the supplies.
The actual frame came from Hobby Lobby.



Since Matt has become very protective of me and his growing baby, I was only allowed to watch the process unfold.  First he sanded the piece of plywood.

Then he primed it (two coats).

Then came the chalkboard paint that we bought.

And here we have the finished board!  We are thrilled with the way that it turned out.  We can't wait to write on it on a weekly basis.  That won't come until after the first trimester though (Daddy's overprotective and Mommy's paranoid)  Stay tuned!

No massage for mommy

Well Matt and I had massages scheduled for today. I however am sitting in the waiting room instead, while he's in there on that glorious heated bed feeling all relaxed. I wish we could have stayed in the couples room and I could have taken a nap beside him. I would have still paid!

I've been doing really well not worrying until yesterday. My doctor is out of town and the first available  time I can get in there is the end of August. That puts me at 12 weeks. Or possibly closer to 16. According to my lmp, I think we are due March 12, I however didn't have a period in May, but didn't test. So we need to wait for an ultrasound to determine how far along I am. I'm still going with a due date around the 12th though.

I think I was also worrying because we were telling Matt's parents. And me being the worrier I am, can't help but to worry when we tell someone new.

We told his mom and Gary last night. We went to Olive Garden for dinner and Matt gave them a Tarheels onsie. They seem excited. Matt's sister is out of town staying with her other grandma so we plan to tell her tomorrow after church. I think she will be really excited!

We also got the chance to go to Matt's grandma Anne's and told her the exciting news. This will be her third or fourth great grandchild. She hopes it is a girl. I just hope it is healthy.

Grandparents and Great-grandparents

Well today is my last birthday as a married woman with no kids. This time next year a chubby little baby face will be giving me a present that his/her daddy helped him/her pick out. The thought makes me smile.

So this past weekend we went to Pennsylvania to visit my mom and dad and grandparents to tell them the exciting news. Within minutes of entering the house Matt was giving me "the eye" and elbowing me or kicking me. We bought my dad a bib that said "Grandpa's Little Helper" and had tools on it. It goes great with a photo of me when I was less than a year old, sitting under his truck in a diaper 'helping him work'. We bought my mom a Steelers outfit from the outlet mall.

Matt made my parents close their eyes and put it in their laps. I tried to catch it on video. I'm not sure what my dad's thoughts are. He just sat there and smiled. My mom cried and came over to give us a hug.

We also told my brother by showing him the caricature. His reaction "I thought you were showing me what an idiot the guy was for ruining your picture because he can't add." Then of course he said congratulations and that this was the next step in our adult life. That we would make great parents and "I hope you have a boy, because I'm not ready to shoot anyone." I guess if we have a baby girl there will be more than one person protecting her and not letting her go on dates until she's 25.

My grandparents found out the good news as well. Matt took a picture of my grandma, pappy and I. Instead of telling us to "say cheese" he said "say Heather's pregnant". He caught it on video. My grandpa said "Heather's pregnant." and my grandma looked at me, looked at the camera and smiled. Later pappy told my mom "maybe we should have acted more surprised, but we knew it would be coming soon.

It's blurry but you get the point.

It was a full weekend! I'm glad so many people are sharing in our excitement. I have a hard time not thinking, how am I going to tell all of these people if something happens.

The Trick's on Matt

Matt came home Friday and said (paraphrasing of course) "Stacy wants us to go to the mountains with her and Bubba, I wasn't supposed to tell you, do you even want to?". He was worried since he had been gone all week that I would just want to stay at home with him. He told me I had to call Stacy and tell her that he had to tell me. (He didn't know Stacy had been talking to me about it all week. Sneaky!)

Stacy had 'concluded' based on  (what I'm assuming) the fact that I asked for her help to get Matt to the beach so we could get a caricuture done.  (Her parents have a beach house) I believe I had shown her some different ideas of how I wanted to tell Matt when the day finally came.  And well it's sort of random to call up a friend and ask if they wanted to spend the weekend at their beach house so I could get a caricture done.  She had alot of family staying there already so she said that wouldn't work.  But then we were in contact the rest of the week trying to figure something else out.  She researched places and called people to find out if there were caricutre artists there, what their hours were and if it was a semi private setting.

Stacy never told me that she knew that I was pregnant, but yelled at me and said I would not tell her before Matt, so she semi knew and was in on the plan. 

So we got into Gatlinburg TN early Saturday afternoon and "tell Matt he's gonna be a daddy" was in action. We were walking around exploring and ended up at a mall-ish place where a man was doing caricatures. (how crazy?!)  I was worried how I was going to get Matt to do a caricture.  I knew we couldn't walk right up to the place and tell him or he would get suspicous.  So when I saw the place I sent Stacy a text for her to show the caricuture artist, in the hopes that Matt would want to get one done. It was in the corner of the bottom floor.  Stacy and Bubba were going to take the elevator up to a sports store (since they had the stroller with them) And I told Matt to walk up the stairs with me, (giving Stacy time to show the caricture artist).  Matt was complaining, why don't we ride with them.  We ended up getting lost for real though- I didn't realize their were so many levels and didn't know where we were going- so Stacy had plenty of time.

Stacy got us back down stairs near the caricature place, by saying she wanted me to help her pick out candy for Riley's birthday. It was in that candy store, next door to the carciture place that I started working on Matt. He was having no part in it. He didn't want to! But he did eventually give in. (back story: on our second anniversary I had given him a plaque that said "The Pressleys established June 19, 2010). I said I wanted to put our caricature underneath the plaque.

So.... We sat down and Leon got to work. I was NERVOUS!  There were a few people around watching us, and some kids nearby, and I was sure someone was going to blurt out "oh my gosh she's pregnant."  But no one did.  Bubba had the video camera so I was super excited to get the whole thing over with so that I could watch our video.  Only later to find out Bubba didn't turn on the camera until the very end after the man had shown us the picture. I am bummed. 

Well without further ado---- here is how I told Matthew that he was going to be a daddy!

Matt didn't completely understand at first. I don't think he looked at the words- just the picture. I had to ask "do you see anything?". (Incase you can't tell by the picture- it is a picture of him and me with a plus sign between us.  Then =3 on the right side.)

I thought "oh gees I'm going to have to tell him."

Then he said ya "1+1=3".

"1+1=3, are you kidding me Matt", was what I was thinking.  1+1=3????  He said it like that really was true.

But he did eventually get it. "oh my Gosh are you pregnant?" I cried, we hugged...

He has been on cloud nine ever since. He carried around the picture faced out to show everyone as we walked around Gaitlinburg. A few people looked and wispered to each other.  At one point Stacy took our picture in front of a bear?? I think.  And Matt held up the caricture to be in the picture.  A woman standing nearby got excited and asked us about it.  It was fun sharing the news :)

I'm excited to see him so excited and can't wait to become parents and hold our little peanut.



A picture of Matt and I (+ baby) paying for our caricture!