The Nursery

So I've slowly but surely been putting together the nursery. This is what I have so far and I'm loving it! The beige rectangle across the back is the color on the walls and the fabric swatches are what I'll be using for the bedding (and a throw pillow & changing pad cover or two). I also got this awesome wall decal set, but with dark yellow birds instead of blue. I'm so excited for it to get here so I can see what it looks like up on the wall! I think it's fitting for a girl whose name means "Of the forest." Just a couple little projects here and there and this place will be all ready for my Sylvie!

Book Review: The Hour I First Believed

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


When I started this book I had no idea what it was about. I just heard it was good... plus I wanted to listen to a book narrated by the audiobook guru, George Guidall, just to see if he lived up to the hype. Ultimately I'd kill 2 birds with one stone by testing out a famous author and narrator at the same time.

Unfortunately I wasn't very impressed by either Lamb or Guidall. Guidall was just ok for me as a narrator. Not the best, not the worst. Lamb is going to take a little bit more explanation.

I liked how this book started out. It's told from the point of view of Caelum Quirk, a teacher living in Littleton, Colorado. Initially the story follows him and his wife, Maureen and their marital troubles. After reconciling following infidelity on her part, they begin to get their lives back on track. And then the Columbine shootings happen and everything goes to crap.

Maureen is a school nurse and is in the library when the shooters go on the rampage. Caelum is a teacher there but just happens to be out of town when the incident happens. The rest of the book is about how the couple deals with Maureen's PTSD (amongst MANY other things).

Now, had the book ended about 1/4 of the way through, or just focused on the Columbine incident, it would have been a decent story. But for some reason Lamb feels it's necessary to blend this story with all of the main historical events during an almost 10 year time period (Hurricane Katrina, Iraq war, etc.) as well as Caelum Quirk's entire family history (comprised of a million boring flashbacks). I never did figure out why he added the family history part in. Completely unnecessary. I felt like he just had a goal of writing a really long book.

I hear Wally Lamb has some other "good" books out there, but this yawner made me want to avoid them entirely. If I'd have had another audiobook on hand, I would have stopped listening around CD #5 instead of torturing myself by dragging through all 20. Glad to finally be done with this one.



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Week 26: English Cucumber

Man I swear the time is just flying by. I can't believe I'm already at 26 weeks! I'm still feeling great though and can't believe how easy I've had it. I have to say I expected much worse. I expected crazy mood swings filled with crying and irrationality and outbursts. Nope. Nothing. I swear my chemicals are pretty much the same as they are normally. I also haven't had any cravings of any kind, which I have to admit is a little disappointing. I thought I'd at least be able to get away with a midnight pie demand or two.

I am definitely slowing down as the days progress. I walk slower and notice my feet start to hurt from standing a lot earlier than they used to. At my last appointment my doctor mentioned how I'd "blossomed" since last time. Meaning I'd gained a bit of weight. But after man-handling my legs he chalked it up to fluid retention. I've definitely gotten puffier these last couple weeks. My wedding ring barely fits and I've had to skip a couple days because my finger was just too fat to get it on (and have any confidence I'd get it off again!). I'm also starting to get some serious cankles, especially on my left side. I tried to put on a pair of strappy sandles this last weekend and could barely get the thing done up because my foot was so chunky! And speaking of strapping on shoes... it's getting to be almost impossible for me to bend over that far. Tying my shoes, putting my pants on, & picking things up off the floor is starting to be quite the challenge. I either have to stand on one leg and balance or do a sumo squat to get down far enough. I look very graceful.

My sleeping situation continues to be going well, although the rolling over from side to side is becoming more of a challenge. Sometimes I feel like a turtle stuck on its back. Every night when I get in bed and shift around to get comfortable it sounds like I'm running a marathon or lifting a 200 lb. barbell over my head.

I failed to mention we have a name picked out! Sylvia Kay Hanson. I think it's got a nice ring to it!  I think our little Sylvie likes it too from all this kicking she's been doing. Seth finally got to feel a good kick or two. He's also taken to doing tummy blows on me as his way of saying "hi" to his baby girl. He's such a good dad already! I also finally picked out some colors for the nursery... here's a swatch of the fabric I got for the crib skirt. I'm probably going to add some yellow/green accents in the room too so it's not too pink. 

As the weeks fly by I find myself getting increasingly worried about our girl coming early. It seems like there's so much more to do and I hope I can get it all done by the time she gets here. Extreme preemie babies aren't uncommon in my family so I'm hoping she'll listen to me and stay in there until at least week 36 or so. We'll see how well she listens to her mother!

Retain Submitting the Very Good Function

I thought it'd be funny to use lines from spam comments as titles of posts. Thus the nonsensical gibberish you see above. Moving on...

I recently started reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers," a book about how/why people become successful. It's been hugely enlightening to me so far and I've really enjoyed it. There are several patterns researchers have stumbled upon as to why people are successful in different areas, and one of them involved analyzing the so-called "naturally talented." People like Mozart or Michael Jordan. Those we look at and are amazed at their skills. I always thought a lot of that was due to inborn talent. Apparently that's not really the case. Turns out practice really does make perfect. 10,000 hours of practice, that is.

That's right. 10,000 hours. Researchers analyzed many amazingly talented people and determined that it takes on average about 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. So of course I had to figure out how many hours I'd spent doing various things to see how much farther I had to go. I thought I'd spent quite a bit of time practicing the piano... on average about an hour a week for the last 25 years. That amounts to 1,300 hours. Huh. A little surprising. No wonder I haven't progressed very much. Moving onto something else, I figured out how many hours I had spent on cooking. This one is a little harder to determine, but I figure if I went with 5 hours a week for the last 5 years, that would be pretty close to a lifetime total. Oddly enough that also came to 1,300 hours. Geez. Ok so no career as a professional chef in the near future for me!

I wondered how long it would take to get to rack up all those hours if I were to really dedicate myself to something. Well, if I were to spend 8 hours a day, 7 days a week practicing, it would take 3 1/2 years to become an expert. Or if I wanted to slack off and just do 4 hours a day, it would take 7 years. After looking at those numbers, it's not too surprising that there aren't very many Michael Jordans out there.

I've decided that there isn't anything out there I care about enough to spend that much time on. It seems like it would be easy to get burned out on something after spending so much time on it. To me, having a wide variety of interests is more exciting than being really good at just one thing. Plus, I'm really, really good at being average. I've got over 270,000 hours of practice under my belt after all!

“Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”  
-Malcolm Gladwell

Book Review: Confessions of a Prairie Bitch

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Arngrim

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I didn't know anything about Alison Arngrim before reading this book... just what I saw from watching Little House. This was a great insight to her life and all the trials and triumphs she experienced. I really admire her attitude. She was dealt some pretty crappy stuff early on and didn't let it destroy her. I like that she doesn't have a chip on her shoulder from playing Nellie Oleson. In fact she embraces it and uses it to her advantage. This book made me want to watch Little House episodes again just to see her. Probably one of the better memoirs I've ever read.


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Book Review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is about the intertwining lives of a young, super smart, rich girl and the older, intellectual, social recluse of a woman who is the concierge in her Parisian upscale apartment building.

I really liked the depth of characters in this book. The old woman, Renee was my favorite, maybe because I could kind of identify with her introverted ways. And the fact that she loved her cat, books, and good food. She also seemed a little more believable to me than the 12 year old Paloma. While I understand part of Paloma's character is being extremely smart, I just don't see a twelve year old having that deep of thoughts about life, politics, and society. Her character seemed much more believable when talked about from Renee's point of view.

I found myself tuning out during some of the more intense/long philosophical thoughts of both the main characters although I still found this to be a very enjoyable book. I'd say it borders more on the line of 3 1/2 stars, but I'll give it the extra bump, especially because the audio version was so good.

Full disclosure: I hated the ending.


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Week 23: Eggplant

These last few weeks have been really low-key and easy for me, which I definitely appreciate. I can tell this little girl is getting bigger by the day. She's a regular mover and kicker and seems to be most active in the later morning hours, always kicking me when I'm sitting at my desk at work. She isn't quite big enough to feel her regularly on the outside though. I've only felt her kick a couple times and Seth felt her once.

My belly continues to grow and the stretch marks and itchiness have definitely come on full-force. They seem to be spreading out all over... my belly, inner thighs, hips, & bewbs. I was always scared of the stretch marks but now that they're here, they don't bother me like I thought they would. I see them as a sign that my daughter is getting bigger and they've become kind of a badge of honor. She's definitely worth a couple battle scars.

Along with my belly getting bigger, I've found that normal sleeping positions just don't work for me anymore. A few weeks ago when I was sick, I slept propped up on pillows to keep from coughing, and found it was actually more comfortable to sleep that way instead of flat. So, these days I sleep on two pillows and get much better quality sleep. I can get my normal amount of sleep without waking up with an aching back.

I've started trying to plan what I want to do with the nursery and finally got the room completely cleared of office junk. Now it contains one large dresser (complete with one adorable newborn outfit from one of Seth's co-workers) and one large upholstered glider chair & ottoman. I've taken to using it as my reading room as the large window lets in a ton of sunlight and the glider is super comfy. Gracie also took an immediate liking to the chair and spends just about every morning snoozing away in it. Good thing the cat hair vacuums off easily. Anyway, I'm hoping I can pin down the rest of the decor in the next couple weeks. I think I'm going to go with a light aqua/turquoise and add some coral, light green, and/or yellow. Something gender-neutralish, colorful, and not too cutesy. Because I can tell you one thing, there's no way during all those hours of sitting and rocking and feeding my baby, that I'm going to stare at some garish huge vinyl cut-out of Winnie the Pooh on the wall (I hate Winnie the Pooh, can you tell?). Gotta please mom first, then baby!