The week I drove nearly a 1000 miles

So I have a pretty good reason for missing last week. I was out. And by out I mean I was in New York. I unexpectedly ended up doing a fair bit of traveling. Scott, Addie and myself drove down to Queens to spend Easter with my Nonna. It was my little family, plus my sisters and dad all squeezed in Nonna's apartment. We drove down Saturday morning. Then we were pretty much just hanging out and watching movies, while Nonna fussed over Addie (no one can resist the urge to kiss her pudgy cheeks). Then Saturday night was when my uncle's family came over and great quantities of food were eaten. Sunday was more hanging out, this time with Easter candy, then just like that it was time to go! 

  

This is actually from Christmas, but I can't help but love this picture of Addie with Nonna.

Then less than 36 hours after getting home I got a text from my aunt asking if I wanted to come out for a visit while she was on spring break. I jumped at the opportunity to have a mini vacation-ish-type-thing. So Addie and I drove out to my aunt's house in the Hudson Valley for a few days (again New York, it's upstate...in a good way). It was perfect timing, I needed to get off the beaten path for a few days. I was getting a little nutty from all the day to day crap. My aunt's house is a good spot to catch your breath, good people, good food, pretty surroundings, all the essentials.

I will leave you with a song that I simply couldn't stop listening to all week.

-M

Adeline

So I find myself wanting to talk about my pregnancy, but honestly even though it was only 7 months ago, it feels so much longer. It is pretty unbelievable just how fuzzy my memory is on this. I have a handful of particular memories, but overall I had to consult Scott on the experience. Also, full disclosure, I was a fairly consistently unhappy pregnant woman, with maybe the exception of the second trimester. I'm going to boil down those 9 months without blathering on too much. 

In the beginning I had the hardest time wrapping my head around being pregnant. One moment there was nothing, the next there is something, just like that. I think I must have gone through all the cliche cycles of emotion, but under all of that excitement, terror, and wonder, was a kernel of complete disbelief. It wasn't until I became a slave to morning sickness (insert all day sickness joke here--once I ended up in the ER to be rehydrated--did I mention I was an unhappy pregnant woman?) that I was able to accept that something I have thought about since I was a kid had come to life. Scott, who has known he wanted to be a father since he was very young, was completely beside himself. He went through a true whirlwind of emotions that ended with him suddenly deciding he had to go to the grocery store that very moment, that I needed superfoods! Thinking about it still makes me laugh.

Our announcement 

The second sonogram where we found out we were having a girl!

Like I said earlier, the second trimester went by without any major issue. We found out that we were having a little girl! There were so many people who thought we would have a boy, but oh well, the Lietz clan got another girl! (Scott's brother has 4 girls.) When I was talking with Scott about it earlier, he described the second trimester as "all midwife visits, pizza and calamari". The only other thing I would include in the second trimester synopsis is the love affair I had with strawberries. For a while, I would eat at least half a pint of strawberries a night.

The third trimester was a different ballgame, that's when things suddenly got very very uncomfortable. I'm a tiny gal. So that combined with summer and extra amniotic fluid made me, well, a bit of a bitch. I felt like I had gone from nicely pregnant to comedically disproportionate. At least it wasn't an excruciatingly hot summer. We got to have a couple of really great beach days and I got to rock my awesome maternity suit.

Then at 35 weeks (fyi, average gestation is 40 weeks) I started to go into early labor. It through Scott and I for a loop. We were so unprepared. We hadn't packed a hospital bag, for God's sake, we didn't even have diapers yet! I left work to go to the hospital, and there we sat, for hours, the contractions slowly becoming more painful, the two of us trying to stay calm. After some tests it was concluded that I had a minor infection which was causing the labor. I was given antibiotics, was told to be careful, and was sent home. Scott packed our hospital bag that night.

The reality that our baby girl could come at any moment started to mess with us. Suddenly the waiting became unbearable. After the 35 week scare everyone just assumed I would not make it to my due date. That surely I would have this baby this week, if not tomorrow! But, Lord, they were wrong. I still had 7 weeks left after that scare. That may not seem very long to the average person, but the combination of desperately wanting to meet the little wiggly baby I was carrying and my general level of discomfort, made 7 weeks feel like an eternity. I remember being told to just try to enjoy the end of my pregnancy while I could, that I would miss it. I wanted to punch that person in the face.

40 weeks - full term

Despite all of that, I was determined to wait as long as was allowed until I got induced. (I know I could have put off induction, but that would have involved staying in the hospital and being constantly monitored. I'm just not about that.) So at 41 weeks, 6 days I went into the hospital to be induced. And that in of itself is it's own post for another day. But nearly 48 hours later my beautiful baby Adeline was born.

Minutes after being born

The Strangeness of Today

I think I have sat down to write four or five times today. I keep vacillating between writing about the fog I've been in today and not writing anything at all. I will say that I did a fair amount of procrastinating by falling down a CSS editing hole, where all that mattered was that I solve the Google font crisis of 2015. ( I figured it out, but I still don't know if I like it. So frustrating.) Oh and then I watched this spectacular video. It did an excellent job at motivating me! But by that point the baby woke up, so I seized the opportunity to dance around with her.

So here I am 10:40pm, and that's really all I have to say for the moment. I'll get back to updating next time.

Here's a song to listen to. It's stuck in my head right now.

-M

A Year and a Half Later

So...

Err...

This is awkward...

I honestly have no idea where to start. This has been such a huge year for our little family. It's funny because all I can think is about how my last post was all "how hard can it be to write a weekly post for a blog...", turns out, very. So this time, it's clear that I have to approach blogging differently. Sometimes (okay--almost always) I forget to stop stressing and just enjoy the moment. So that is what I am going to try to make this blog about. I'll post pictures because I love taking them, and I don't take enough. I'll write about what's going on; the good, the bad, the neutral. Also I'm thinking there will probably be some awesome recipes peppered in here and there. Sound good? Sweet.

Why have things changed so much? Well my husband and I have had a baby girl! Oh and we moved! So yeah, things have been a bit topsy turvy for quite some time now. I will go into more details about all of that in later posts, but for now here are some of my favorite pictures from the last year and a half!

      -M

First Anniversary

Oh dear, I've fallen behind again haven't I? You sit down and start a blog thinking how at the very least you should be able to post once a week, but then the week flies by! I have a new found respect for those that post several times a week, let alone everyday. Well I have a lot of catching up to do, so some belated posts will be coming down the line...

...but because I like to make things confusing, I won't write them in chronological (huh, I don't think I have ever written that word, so weird when that happens) order. Yesterday, Scott and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary! Well we didn't really celebrate yesterday, we celebrated our first wedding anniversary over the weekend! After the 4th, we packed our things and took a trip up to Camden, Maine. It was so wonderful to get away for a few days. We stayed in the Blue Harbor House Inn, which was lovely and comfortable. Overall, we didn't really do to much while we were there, but that was also the idea. We poked around in the village on Saturday, eating delicious food and doing a little bit of shopping here and there (I honestly could have spent all day in the latter). Then on Sunday, after a late breakfast we went down to Owls Head State Park for a walk. It was quite beautiful (dragonflies everywhere!), but it was also ridiculously hot and humid, so we didn't stay for too long. After that there isn't much to report, we took a long meandering ride back down to Massachusetts, stopping in Darmiscotta and Freeport (for just a little more shopping) on the way down.

So there you have it. It was an excellent trip to commemorate that a year ago I got to marry my guy, who is super sweet and silly. Sorry, had to slip something just a little smarmy in there.



And of course, a few photos from the trip...

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I will leave you with the song we had our first dance to, while I go eat some more of that cake :)

-M

Camping, Screaming Frogs, and Pictures

Over the weekend Scott and I went camping in Myles Standish State Forest. We arrived on Friday and were stunned by our waterside campsite. It was the most beautiful spot I've ever camped. Once I stopped taking pictures, I joined Scott in setting up. It was then that I realized the ground we were setting up on looked roughly like this. Basically we spent the weekend perpetually about to fall over. At least we got used to it fairly quickly. 

Once we settled in, Scott made a fire and heated up some pulled pork that we made earlier (slow cooked for 8 hours - yum!). I took the time to explore a little. I noticed that there really weren't very many mosquitos, which being right next to the water surprised me. However, for every mosquito I saw, there were 10 spiders. I've never considered myself arachnophobic, but the sheer number of spiders did freak me out a bit. At least we weren't in a constant battle with mosquitos, right? *shudder*

The time passed, and we went to bed. As we lay there, Scott reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle and me reading The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, we heard what we thought was a child screaming at the top of their lungs. It was pretty unsettling. Since the screaming sounds went on for so long, we figured it had to be one of the world's most obnoxious frogs. And it was! I have since found out that lovely blood curdling sound comes from the petite Fowler Toad. 

Thankfully, that was the last of our camping surprises. Saturday was a gorgeous sunny day. We sat around, read our books, ate delicious food, played Bananagrams, and went for a swim in the pond. All in all it was a fun trip. It looks like we will be doing a fair bit of camping this summer, I guess there will be more to follow. 

This was the view from our campsite, I still can't get over how beautiful it was.

 Scott in the middle of his dinner prep.

Snapped this when we were on our way to the store. 

Sunday morning, 7am

Sunday morning, 7am

This was actually taken on Thursday evening in my driveway, just seems to fit in with this set of pictures.

And last but not least, this is a quick little stop motion I made of Scott putting up our new tent for the first time. It's just 49 seconds of silliness.

As always, you can check out my instagram if you'd like to see more photos. xo -M