Not respecting the turkey this year

I know; I'm awful. And? A hypocrite, as I've always advocated for waiting until November 26th to deck the halls. I have even scoffed and passed judgment upon entering department stores that choose to decorate and play Christmas music as early as September. Okay, my offense isn't quite that bad, though (right?) Halloween is over, and our decorations are going up this weekend. Why the sudden change in our standard operating procedure?

Deprivation. Only once in the last 5 years have I been able to throw my heart into decorating and really getting into the holiday spirit. Here's why:

2007: we were packing up to move at the end of December and our 3 month old kittens tried (and succeeded) in taking down the Christmas tree a number of times - see below
2008: the one time we were able to decorate.
2009: we took a 2+ week road trip from Wisconsin to Phildelphia, then Boston, and back before Christmas
2010: we probably should have went all out decorating this year, but I was as huge as a whale and so tired. Carina arrived just 3 days after Christmas.
2011: we moved from Wisconsin to Connecticut (with Carina and cats in tow) in December. We actually couldn't find most of our decorations amongst all the boxes.

This year? There is nothing stopping us. Except maybe the cats...and Carina. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Christmas 2007: are those furry ornaments?

So the bottom line is I am SUPER excited to go crazy with decorations this year and I want to do it now and you can go ahead and judge me ;)


When do you decorate for the holidays? Do you have just a few things you put up or do you go all out?

I die from furry baby cuteness - Toddle Along Tuesday

Okay wait, that came out wrong. My baby is not, nor has she ever been, furry. I mean baby and furry cuteness, together. You get it.

No lie, the first night home from the hospital after Carina was born, Mike and I slept in shifts because we were afraid one of our cats would jump in the crib and smother the baby. ::laughs at self heartily::

We quickly realized that while our cats Rufus and Layla weren't huge fans of the screaming and crying, they seemed intrigued by the baby rather than intimidated or threatened by her. Over time, they came to tolerate her...sitting there calmly as she pet them (I use "pet" loosely of course because baby/toddler petting is more like squishing/poking/prodding/hitting/chewing). We knew it was time to take her away when their little meows of contentment escalated into loud almost-shrieks of "GET THIS THING AWAY FROM ME, YO".

Sharing our chair with Layla

Now? She understands how to be gentle (for the most part - last week she whacked Layla with her Super Why magic spelling wand - sorry, kitty) and enjoys laying her head on or next to them. They even approach her and plop down by her side, inviting her to rub their eager furry bellies.

It melts my heart. We adopted the kitties when they were just 5 weeks old and fit in the palm of our hands. They're almost 5 years old now, and were our babies before we had our human baby. The fact that they love each other so much (or at least I suspect, on the cats' part) brings tears to my pregnant & hormonal eyes.

Kitty snuggles

And hugs

Nap time on Rufus

For more on our cats - one of them might have broken my water when I was pregnant with Carina, and a while back I took a stab at making some Lolcats. Enjoy ;)


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My co-host for Toddle Along Tuesday this week is Caroline from Aidan... With Eos and the topic is babies and pets! Share some cute photos of your little ones and furbabies! I am fully prepared to die from cuteness. There are no rules here, except that you link up a relevant post (old or new) rather than your whole blog.


Next week I'll be on vacation! That's right, I'm heading straight from BlogHer to Virginia Beach with Mike's family. Please cross your fingers that Carina doesn't get carsick on the long drive. TAT will return on Monday night, August 13th with the topic Finding Balance! How do you manage everything in your life? Please share any tips, tricks, relaxation techniques, etc.

If you like advance notice for TAT, check out the bottom right of my blog - topics for the next couple months are listed. Would you like to submit a topic idea and/or volunteer to co-host one week? E-mail me!

Flashback: Did my cat break my water?

Someone recently asked me what caused the slow amniotic fluid leak that led to an induction at the end of my pregnancy with Carina. Truth is: other than just random occurrence, the only other thing I can think of would be the time my cat fell from our 12+ foot loft railing and landed on my stomach.

I went back through old blog posts trying to find the one I wrote about this semi-traumatic event so I could see what date it actually happened, but as it turns out, I never blogged about it. So I will now because I don't want to let it get lost in time...

I *think* it was less than two weeks prior to Carina's birthday. I was sitting on our couch, in the corner directly below the railing in our loft apartment. All of a sudden, BOOM. My 11 lb. cat who is usually quite agile awkwardly landed on my very pregnant belly. She had fallen about 12 feet. She bolted into the other room and I chased after her, wanting to make sure she was okay. Then I cleared my head and realized that I should probably make sure that I was okay, too.

I freaked out. I didn't remember much from physics class but I did know that a not-so-skinny kitty + a 12 foot free fall = sizable force on poor little still-baking Carina. I called my OB and he assured me that so long as I wasn't cramping or experiencing any spotting, all was likely fine and that I should just try to relax. So I did.

A few days later I noticed what I thought was an increase in discharge. But of course when I finally went to the hospital to get checked out on December 27th (as it had progressively gotten worse), the amniotic fluid swab turned positive before I could finish saying "I'm sure it's nothing." I was induced, and Carina was born 18 hours later.

Did kitty want to meet Carina?

Could the force of kitty landing on Carina have caused the slow leak? Who knows. But it's interesting to think that maybe Layla (the kitty) was impatient and just wanted to meet the baby already.

Has anyone else ever had a slow leak?

Merry Christmas from the kitties

Rufus and Layla took time out of their busy schedule of attempting to knock over the Christmas tree and eating/breaking ornaments to say Merry Chistmas to you!

Since I am too pregnant to travel, M and I are having a low-key Christmas at home.  We're having a few friends over tomorrow night for Christmas Eve Dinner.  We will be making a traditional Italian dinner of the 7 fishes which will include fried calamari, steamed mussels, seafood risotto (with clams, shrimp, and scallops), baccala (a salted cod dish), and baked salmon, all from scratch.  Can't wait for all of the awesome food!

Back from the doctor's office...

I ovulated on Wednesday (finally, on cycle day 21) and I had ovulation pain on Tuesday and Wednesday, like I usually do. Thursday, it went away but returned at night. It was so bad I went to bed early. Every time I moved around it hurt. Fast forward to this morning; it still hadn't gotten any better. When I went to the bathroom around lunch time it was so awful I broke down and called the doctor.

The OB who saw me was very nice. When I told him about my ovulation pain he said its definitely possible that what I'm feeling now is the follicle that released the egg. It could have gone a bit out of control instead of going away after I ovulated. I just hope the egg actually got released!

He had me take a pregnancy test (despite my telling him I am only 2 dpo - days post ovulation) and he checked my pee for an infection, but everything came back negative. He gave me a prescription for Tylenol + Codeine to help deal with the pain. He said if it gets a lot worse to come back for an ultrasound. Otherwise, I'm just supposed to wait for it to go away.

Uggh.


And now for something completely different. Here are a few of the first pics I took with my new iPhone:


Our furbabies Layla and Rufus

And now for something completely different...

I'm home early today because I donated blood and the guy stabbed my arm so badly looking for my vein that I am in excruciating pain. He tried so hard to find it, and finally did, but he only found a vein with a tiny bit of blood so after a couple minutes he decided to take the needle out. Sad. So I wasted 2 hours (there was a long line), my arm got butchered, and I don't even get to save any lives. Oh well.

So onto the completely different thing. I want to make my cats famous on the LOL cats website so I've been making pictures. They're not very good, but I'm trying. Have you ever made any LOL cat photos?