Good Fortune

So I have so many fun stories from Christmas and beyond to tell. I just COULDN’T blog then – I didn’t trust my fingers not to tell the exciting news!

There’s one particular story that still gives me goosebumps:

On December 23^rd, Patrick and I finished wrapping, baking, all with the exciting merriment in anticipation of Christmas. In the evening, we went downtown to pick up my purple brocade dress (because a piece of clothing has never appealed to me more for obvious reasons: purple. brocade.) from the tailor, and before venturing our annual drive-around to see Christmas lights, I got this immediate I-need-to-eat-and-I-need-it-to-be-Thai-food. After a great dinner at Thai Lahna – one of our faves – the ceremonial fortune cookies arrived.

I opened mine and this is the first thing I saw:

I dropped it out of my hands, I was so in shock, and I knew that I needed to take another pregnancy test.

At about 4 a.m. the next morning, I decided not to be cynical of fortune cookies anymore.

The Meltdown.

Now before I start this little journal entry, let’s just get one thing straight. I am, of course, SO excited to be pregnant. We feel overwhelmingly blessed, we’re so happy, and I am never not grateful to be having a baby.

But I’m not going to lie – there are some dirty, nasty, not-so-pretty things that happen, especially when you are first pregnant. And the real conundrum is that nobody tells you all this until you are in it yourself. I had no idea about all this because I think everyone very demurely just says, “oh I’m fine,” and that don’t tell you that they just puked their brains out for the 20th time – today.

Anyway -

Yesterday was a bad day. A very, very bad day. I had my first meltdown. It started when I felt sick and trapped myself in my work bathroom for an hour. I finally got out, called Patrick to come get me (we carpool), then when I got in the car, I just started bawling. I mean – weeping. And after Patrick tried to comfort me for a few minutes, he asked for what he knows I always want at times like this – “Do you want to call your mom?” “Yeh-eh-eh-es,” I say through my pathetic crying. And of course, she helped a lot. I still cried the entire way home.

Then I get home, Patrick runs out to get me some stuff, and at another low moment, I did the second thing I always do when I’ve felt really sick so far. I called Logan and Jake. I guess it helps me keep my eye on the prize. Jake got on the phone, told me he was watching Wubzy and that he has a friend Sophia in his class. Oh, and that Logan was playing with her Polly Pockets.

I mean, is there anything that could make you feel better than this little guy?

Thank goodness the meltdown ended. Though today, when I paid for my lunch at the APS cafeteria, the lunch lady told me to have a nice day and I started crying immediately. I guess some more grandma-and-godson therapy might still be needed.

All the details

Ah! So the news is out! Finally! It makes everything so nice and easy to not have to hide it anymore – I can’t even tell you. You should see my pitiful wardrobe – I have very few loose shirts, and now all the plans I don’t make aren’t suspect to being unfriendly.

Anyway – at this moment I am 9 weeks, 2 days along, officially due on August 28th. It feels like an eternity away, honestly. I’ve felt better in my life; I guess I’m the standard story of nauseous, tired, and hungry all the time. Thing is – I just didn’t know that this is how it goes. Maybe I just don’t know enough pregnant people, but I truly didn’t know you got this tired, the cool feeling of being starving and going to be sick at the same time and just overall lackluster energy. Truth be told, I was just feeling a little frustrated with feeling bad all the time. Nothing like actually seeing your baby to cure that.

So last Monday, we went to the doctor for our first appointment and got to see the little one. After like an hour of talking about little tips like eating Flinstones chewy vitamins instead of prenatals, we got to see this:

The baby is upside-down, and at the top is the start of two legs. You can also see the start of one of the arms by the head. How WEIRD that this is the very first photo of our child, ever. They said we are really lucky to get such a good view so early. We have a few more photos of the umbilical cord, etc., and we can see both hemispheres of the brain too. She even isolated the “wand” so we could see the blood and nutrients moving in the umbilical cord. That’s crazy. All this for something that’s not even an inch long.

It still kinda blows my mind when I think about it, but frankly, it’ll be a lot more real when I start showing. Right now it’s just a lot of bloated-ness.

So there ya go. I gotta go get something else to eat – but I have lots more to write soon.

Lots more on Baby Cooper to come.

This says it perfectly

I got to meet Nie!

I almost forgot to tell you.

But since I’ve had a couple posts now about Stephanie Nielsen, aka NieNie, I thought that I should tell you that I got to meet her!

So Jaimee Rose is a journalist at the AZ Republic who has done a multi-part series on NieNie, and she tells me (really, Tweets me) that Stephanie will be at Domestic Bliss on a particular Saturday. So I am bursting at the seams, and I am trying to find someone to go with me. JuliAnna is friggin in Houston (how could she miss this?! shouldn’t she fly back for this??), Lesley was in San Francisco, Julie had a book fair…the list goes on. I was flipping out (I cannot go meet her ALONE!).

So I beg, cry, plead at Patrick to go with me. No go. He had plans.

Ugh, fine. I’ll go by myself. So I drive all the way down there and I had five minutes before they were supposed to leave. So I am frantic through this fair thing, I finally find them –  I spot Christian (her husband) under this gazebo thing (they can’t be in the sun).

So I was a couple people back in line (where WAS everyone? Don’t they know – this is NieNie we are talking about.). And it’s my turn when a guy brings them water and I’m thinking they are going to cut it off when it’s my turn.

Instead, Christian turns to me, gets a huge smile on his face, outstretches his arms and walks QUICKLY at me saying, “Hey! I know you!!”   Now WHAT do you say? So I said, “Haha, I know you! I am not sure if you know me though.” But he insists he knows me. So the only thing I could think was possible, was I said, “Well i used to shop in the store all the time when Stephanie worked here.” and he was like “That Must Be It!” So he goes, “Stephanie, Stephanie, she knew you from the store!”

So I get to talking to them and I start talking about what an inspiration she is/they are, as a mother (not a burn victim) and GUESS what I do. Big Shocker…

I start like sobbing all over them.

OMG it was so embarrassing and the whole time I can picture myself calling Sarah, telling her I cried. Of course.

And you know, they were sweet about it. I changed the topic to like the weather or something and those cool bikes they have. We moved on. We group hugged like four times. They were so neato, and I gotta tell ya, just the nicest.

So in the store I get to talking to Jaimee and I tell her I cried and how embarrassing. Well, us three (Jaimee, Stephanie – she came in to shop – and I) get to talking about Christmas trees and Stephanie tells me you just must get two trees.  Then I tell her I’m embarrassed about crying on her. She laughs, says it’s those moments she thinks about the most, and then we go back to talking icicles.

She gave me some great Christmas decor advice, it turns out.

So i don’t have any pics (didn’t seem right), but funny enough, on her blog, she wound up linking to my work blog, called The Hot Sheet, where I write about the best places in Phoenix. Now she doesn’t know that’s my blog, and I don’t know if she would take the link down or possibly link to it more often, if she knew it was the girl who cried on her at Domestic Bliss. But now I can truly say I’m blessed to have met her.

 

 

 

Kitchen!

I really believe that there’s nothing a coat of paint can’t fix. I LOVE to paint.

From the moment we moved in, I wanted new cabinets, but then I watched [one too many] episodes of Divine Design with Candice Olson. Mom and I watched this one where she did a glorious kitchen and I got to thinkin’ I could do that.

So I googled a video on how to paint cabinets, eh voila:

Before:

 

This pic is from before we moved in!

 

 

After:

So, we’ve been a little busy. We did it in one week, and can’t believe the difference. I LOVE paint. Give me a little VOC and I’m good. just kidding.

Really, it wasn’t that hard. This one, however, did not help:

And I’m glad it’s done. Our new website for work (the thing I was hired for) is about to launch next week – we show it to our CEO on Tuesday so it has been nothing short of crazy. I can’t wait to show it all to you!

But I have a lot of stories to catch up on so I’ll try to post a couple more before d-day.

The Deen Brothers

It’s been crazy since we got back from San Fran – I’ve been sick with a sinus infection, work has been nuts, and now I’m leaving for Chicago this morning for the week for work.

But on Saturday, I pulled it together enough to go meet the Jamie and Bobby Deen, better known for their mom, Paula Deen. The boys have some cookbooks that we love, and I was invited to attend this special food & wine day at the Fairmont Scottsdale.

May I just tell you how funny and kind they are (and easy on the eyes, if I must say)! Patrick and I wound up talking to them for like 20 minutes. Anyway,  you should get their cookbook.

Okay, San Fran pics to come when I’m back, plus, you may get an extra-special post about nasal cleansing. You are so lucky.

And we’re off!

This was supposed to show photos of my bloated suitcase, but there’s no time for that.

I’ve got the iPod, cookies, shloads of jewelry, my “fancy” jeans, my jacket, my camera and my purple brocade dress.

Oh, and the Southwest drink tickets. How could I forget.

We’re staying right in Union Square, and I’m dying to see mom’s reaction since the last time she was there in the late ’60s.

We’ll be the hotel room playing “Take Your Mama Out” by Scissor Sisters (go download NOW if you don’t have it – what a fantastic song) on repeat, if you want to come meet up with us.

We’ll be snapping pics as if you were here too

Adios amigos!

Chairs: before and after

Some things are so serendipitous.

All of a sudden, I had become very stressed about a dining room table, as I mentioned. So weird of a thing to stress about. Anyway, we were up in Oregon, and I was mentioning it, and Dorian said that we should come look at her step mother’s table, because it was big and sturdy and great. I was thrilled (truth be told, I couldn’t wait to get back to Phoenix to go look at it – Dorian’s step mother lived here.)

Anyway, thanks to a lot of help from Chris’ and Patrick’s biceps and hamstrings, the table made its way into a U-Haul we rented one morning. We are absolutely in love with it. It’s huge, dark wood, and 15 of my closest friends can sit at it together comfortably. (I would show it, but the table is getting ready for Christmas.) The only slight misnomer for the room it’s in were the chairs.

But a chair rehab-er, I would become. (I think.) But what to do with caning.

before.

After some consult with my fellow designer, I decided on black and cream (the whole room will be those colors), and off went the project.

Lo and behold, le chairs.

After.

Disclaimer from the lawyers: This post is meant for design inspiration purposes only, and not to brag about the adeptness of skill portrayed by Kelley and Patrick Cooper. Resulting thoughts from this post should be, “Oh, if they can do that, I can do it, and probably better than them,” or, “next time I do this, I will enlist their help since they have no problem getting spray paint over their entire bodies, or their dogs who happen to run through the trail of spray paint,”  or “I should really call Joye next time I want to recover fabric!”

Mom: her face and the race

Well, as you know from Julie’s blog, mom is a local celebrity.

We knew she was going to be on billboards around town, but the certainly not the biggest, hugest one on 40th Street and Camelback? Oh yes, she is. And it’s HUGE in person.

mom with camelback mountain in the background

If that weren’t enough, you can see it going the other way too.

So, we were lucky to escort this famous lady to Race for the Cure! Julie (pushing Jake), mom and I all ran together for the 5k throughout downtown. Mom and I got there early for the parade, which turned out to only be about a block long. But it’s the thought that counts!

Mom at the parade!

Mom and I meandered through the little race village and it was so fun to see everyone in pink and so festive. It was truly one of the best times all year.

Mom and Polly at the starting line!

Mom made a friend on the course

After the finish line - woohoo!

She did it!

Mom never stopped running once and we had a great time! Logan and Ryan even saw us finish all together. By the way, notice mom’s running number? It happens to be the year she was born.

Mom – we love you and we’re so proud of you!  We love you sooooo much and are so excited you are over that whole cancer thing. We had so much fun at the Race, just like we do all the time. We love you!!

So to complete the mom-is-so-over-breast-cancer trifecta, we are packing our bags and heading to a San Fran celebration! Mom, Julie and I leave on Thursday morning for four days of California fun and we can’t wait! There is a lot of dining, sight-seeing, bridge walking, shopping, drinking and FUN coming our way!