showered

Being on the receiving end of a shower is a surreal experience for me. People you love bringing you gifts, celebrating something about your life and spending time together in one place is like this huge bubble of joy. Change (even good change) is sometimes hard and showers seem to be this way of bringing happiness and reassurance that everything will be okay and remind you that LOTS of people have walked this road before and that you are supported. Is that corny?? Is it just me that feels that way? I felt so renewed and replenished and supported after these baby showers were over. My cup was runnething right over.

My friends threw Robert, the baby and me a couples shower in Dallas and Robert's mom's friends threw us a ladies brunch shower in Houston. This summer, if all goes as planned, we will have a Sip and See in Carlsbad. (I know you were all DYING to know my baby shower schedule? ha)

I can't rave enough about what a great job the hostesses did for the Dallas shower. It was the perfect party, the decorations, the set-up...everything was awesome and most importantly lots of fun. Also, my parents and Robert's parents came in for the shower in Dallas from New Mexico and Houston making it an extra special time.

My mom took over 100 pics on her iphone at Dallas shower. Yes, one hundred. The best part about this is,  she was making people get together in pictures that didn't know each other. She would be great a fraternity mixer Party Pics person..."get in there, everyone!!" (Party Pics. Sigh. The painful online photos of yourself at social events before Facebook.)  I still haven't seen the pics on her phone and I really can't wait. Jamie took some great pics too and I'm so thankful. I actually went old school and ordered prints of those that I'm going to send them to my parents, Robert's parents and make an album for the baby's room. #memories

I thought I'd share some mobile uploads that my sister and mi amigos took at our shower in Dallas. I forgot my phone in the car during my Houston shower and only took like 2 pics at the end. Boo. Thankfully Robert's mom's friends got some real pics, so I will have some eventually.

Anyway, I'll share a little Dallas shower recap...not full recap in the least because there are a lot of pics that aren't included and a lot people not represented...but here we go....

Here's the invite for the Dallas shower. I loved it. Loved the Spanglish. Loved the bright blue and green. Loved the pinata. Loved that it said "Senorita Norton". If you know Senorita Norton, you know how funny this is. Most of all I love every hostess name on it because I love each of those girls so dearly. One of my favorite bloggers designed it. Click here to check out her blog and creations. 

Now onto shower pics....

Mom and sister. How gorg are they?

Oh this is pre-shower!! Lindsay Hartley, me and sister. 

Soooo, let me just share with you what one of my best friends, Adrienne Leigh Jones Kleckner did.... This might blow your mind. It blew mine :). She insisted on paying for me to get my hair and make-up done on the day of the baby shower. This is just so I would look and feel great at my baby shower. I fought her on this, but she really wanted to do this for me and insisted. I finally gave in and accepted her gracious gift. I can't tell you how wonderful it was to not have to "get ready" the day of my shower and actually feel pretty. I don't think I've really "felt pretty" in a looooooongggggg time. This was an amazing gift she gave me. I'm not crazy about being the center of attention, which you are at your own shower, so at least I got to feel good and confident after getting pampered by others. It was like therapy. This is what Adrienne set up for me - I got my hair "blown out" and "did" at Lure Salon, which was fantastic and then Lindsay Hartley did my make up at L. Bartlett in the West Village. If you ever need your make up done for ANYTHING, please call Lindsay Hartley. She was the sweetest and she was SO GOOD. (and she went to OU...Boomer!) I kid you not I loved my make-up and hair more for my baby shower than I did for my wedding?? haha. That sounds crazy, but I did! I dragged my mom and sister to watch me get all done up. I mean - full out diva...who am I? I told Adrienne, I really did feel like Beyonce. I mean, who gets their hair and make-up done for a baby shower??? haha. Luckily, my sister got to squeeze in some shopping in the West Village, so she didn't have to sit there and stare at me the whole time. ;)

sis and me. kind of sporting coordinating colors. such a good aunt already. giving up a precious college weekend to shower her nephew

sister and Sarah. Sarah might as well be a sister though :) (note me chugging Coca-Cola in the back ground #attractive) 

Lauren's little bro, Drew, surrogate little bro to me, I've known him my whole life, and sis hanging on the patio. Drew just got into UNM med school by the way. SO SO proud of him!!!! (and how handsome is he?? hehe)

Bob, me and Bella the pug

OMG - BELLA. I must share what my hostesses pulled off. I still cannot believe this.

So, remember when I posted about the Valentines pug gram? Well, Robert tried to get me one for Valentines, but the reservations were already full and it didn't happen. I totally understood, but I was sad, I just wanted to support the pugs! And I wanted to see a pug and hold a pug :), I love pugs. haha. My friends knew this desire and secretly contacted the DFW Pug Rescue to bring a PUG GRAM TO THE BABY SHOWER!!!! They also made a donation to the pug rescue on our behalf. Best gift ever. Two very gracious ladies from the DFW Pug Rescue came with the rescue pug, Bella. I will never forget this. I thought I saw a little dog in the front area of the house and said, "is there a pug in this house?" and there was. There was a PUG in the HOUSE at my baby shower.....omg...I will never recover from that surprise :) My gosh, I want a pug so bad. But first comes baby and then comes pug...someday...someday.... I would love for my pug son Doug, who lives with his grandparents to come live with us, but as I've mentioned, he has a bit of a bladder control issue anddddddd Robert says he can't come live with us at this time. Boo. 

Seeing Bella definitely fulfilled my pug void for the time being. What a sweet little girl she is! p.s. My mom offered to adopt her and she had already been adopted. Yay rescue pugs finding homes, makes me so happy :)

Daddy, Mom and sister. Obsessed with them. 

I know there were a couple girls at the shower that didn't make this pic :(! But, this was most of them. I love them so much. Thank you so much for coming!!! 

A gift from one of Robert's good friends. I'm sure a lot of you have seen this forward. It's been made into a book (obvi). It's hilarious. My mom was reading it at breakfast on Sunday and was laughing so hard.

sister, Mary, me and Jamie. Mary came in from OKC and Jamie from Tulsa. #bffs

this was post-shower at Swig/The Gin Mill. yes, I kind of "went out"...I mean I probably won't see the inside of a bar or club for years after el bebe arrives, so might as well get it in, right?  JZ makes this pic. He wasn't exactly supposed to be in it, but really captures the "we are best friends taking a girl picture!!!" face and it's one of my fave pics of the night for sure. 

Also taken post-shower. This might be the closest I show of a belly pic/maternity pic...enjoy! haha. The baby has a sombrero on and I'm massive! Hi, cute husband Robert in the background! 

Bella and me. She's not freaked out at all here. 

Tiny sombrero makes an appearance again. This is David Lackey aka Dallas's Renaissance man. If you don't know him and Nick Robertson, you're not really living.  They purchased Baby Scarff a sleep sack from Party Barn Kids, the card said "sleep well young Scarff" ahhhahahha. 

Post-shower once more. This ended up on FB and I commented that Sarah and Cox's faces both accurately describes how I felt about having a baby. Sarah is channeling confused/scared/wtf is going on...while Cox is channeling joy/excitement/happiness. 

The End. If I could re-live this night again, I would. Who knew pregnant girls could have so much fun? ;)

hello there

Blogging has been on pause for over a week. No blogging was done about The Bachelor Final Rose ceremony OR After the Final Rose. ppppppffffffffttttttttt. Sorry, if any of you out there care. Neil, I know you are especially upset about the lack of Bachelor posting :).  I have no excuses expect I've been tired and moody. Doesn't being pregnant sound FUN? ha. I've also been cleaning and organizing my boss's desk, he has documents from 2009 on it, so that's been super fun too andddd I've been writing lots of thank you notes for baby showers. So, I guess I do have some excuses. Not very good ones mind you, but there they are.

Hopefully, I can get back into the swing of blogging a bit before I have a baby. #duedateApril29. ahhhh. Mostly I hope to blog for therapeutic reasons. Hop on board and read along if you dare or if you are extremely bored.

I hope everyone had a good St. Paddy's. Roberto and I spent St. Paddy's at Baylor Medical Center attending a "Prepared Child Birth" Class. I was apprehensive about going, but my doctor kept strongly suggesting it and I want her to like me, so I signed us up. I'm really glad we did it. I've read and I am reading books about pregnancy/birth/babies, but something about actually being in a class setting and hearing confirmation from someone with years and years of experience in this stuff about what REALLY happens, helped to give Robert and I a little peace of mind.

Our instructor was great. She is a doula. You can click the link to see what that is. (I didn't know until I saw a Rachel Zoe Project episode and they go to a doula. See- you can learn things from Bravo.) Anyway, she is a doula and has been a nurse at Baylor since '97. Also, she has FIVE kids. Meaning she's done this whole childbirth thing 5 times. Wow. She said there is always a curve ball concerning someone's birth story, just something you completely do not expect- it could be a big or small thing. She thought for her 5th birth, she had it down, but there was a curve ball. Omg. Curve ball with Baby #5?? Good grief. Give me morphine.

Speaking of, she did give me a little perspective on the whole "drugs during labor" bit. I have always been very PRO drugs. I know myself and have assumed that I will need them to cope, but, she gave the analogy that "you wouldn't take an advil BEFORE you had a headache" Meaning you don't need to walk into the hospital and hook up to the epidural before you really know you're going to need it. You could be through the worst part and it's possible you won't even want the drugs??  So, I guess I'm just going to be open to seeing what my body does and how I feel. I don't think I'm going to have a natural birth by any means, but I'm a little less scared of experiencing pain. Plus, one of my besties had a baby boy 2 weeks ago and almost went all the way with out drugs. She didn't mean to at all, but it just happened. She's amazing :). So that and this class has reminded me that our bodies where made to do this. Saying that, I have fainted when I have had to give blood and I shake and my teeth chatter when I have to have a dental procedure. (yes, it's weird. they bring in blankets and crank up the laughing gas to calm me down.) So, no matter how much I psych myself up, I know when it comes down to it,  my track record has shown that I tend to physically shut down in some way, so I will be happy to take these drugs to get through this in a healthy manner. The drugs exist for a reason. Plus, I might as well continue to support the pharmaceutical companies that have gotten me through the last years, right? ;)

I also liked that our "prepared child birth" instructor mentioned she had an English bulldog AND a chihuahua. Yay dogs.

We took a tour of the labor and delivery unit, the labor room and the post partum room (where we will be right after).We found out we will have an iPod dock in our labor room. After class, Robert  made me a chill/low tempo playlist and a pumping-up/high tempo playlist. I might have to share these - they are great mixes. The high tempo play list is 3 hours long. Let's hope I don't need "pumping up" for that long.

At the end of the class, the birth videos were played. I swore that I would never watch these videos. I had been instructed by several who have seen them to NOT to watch them. But, by the end of the class Robert and I oddly found that we wanted to watch the birth videos? When in Rome? They were short and probably filmed in the late 80's or early 90's, so definitely dated and cheesy. There was a c-section one and a normal birth one. The c-section one was...hmmm..maybe graphic is the right word? I don't know, it was not pretty. I think I imagined c-sections to be like "oh there's a little incision and here's the baby!" It was a little more "discovery channel health show" than that. But, obviously, I'm not someone that deals with medical things well, so any surgery is not going to be fun for me to watch. And in the end, the baby and mama were fine and that is really all that matters.

The normal/vaginal birth video came next. I had a couple ups and downs with watching this one. The poor girl in the video was a teen mom. It made me so sad that she was this young and going through this. But, you know sometimes when something makes you sad, it makes you want to laugh?? Well, I was that person LAUGHING during this poor teenager's labor. (Lauren, just go back to middle school youth group and us laughing during the prayer circle and not being able to stop. It was like that:.) I'm sure the other couple's were thinking...who is that immature girl LAUGHING? I don't know what was funny. She had this odd entourage of people with her, Robert leaned over and whispered, "the neighborhood gang?"  The neighborhood gang was with her at the hospital when she was walking through the halls trying to get her labor progressing. I couldn't look at the video and I couldn't look at Robert.....I could not. stop. laughing. It was painful. I somehow pulled it together enough to watch the rest of the video like an adult. The teen girl's mom gets to the hospital to help her and be her coach. That was good, but, uggg, it was harder and harder to watch as it went on. She was just in such pain! I definitely was not laughing anymore at this point. Then, right before she has the baby, the dad (obviously a teen too) comes and holds her hand and that was kind of funny because it was like "well, oh there's the dad?" but I didn't laugh. Thank you God. The baby comes and everyone is so happy and I found myself crying. I was so relieved for this teenager that is was over and of course, it was just so neat to see this little baby...you could feel the joy. Several other girls were crying too, so that made me feel better/less dumb. Anyway, that video was a real emotional roller coaster for me. Whew. I blame hormones for everything lately...so I'll just blame them for that  too.

Okay, afternoon tiredness is setting in......I better go and work on holding my eyes open....

the picture

I found this via Pinterest a couple weeks ago and people are repinning it like crazy. I think it strikes a cord and I thought I'd share.

(I also need to write about something other than The Bachelor. Shout out to Neal Ferrari, who I didn't even know read my blog  :) )

This does screw us up for so long. This picture in our heads of how life is supposed to be.

In high school we are "supposed to have a boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other". Or at least I thought I was. My parents were high school sweethearts. In movies everyone has a boyfriend. Where was my boyfriend? I enjoyed and loved high school, but I remember wondering why I didn't have this boyfriend that fit in the "picture of how my life was supposed to be" and I let it make me insecure. Lame, I know. ( and, yes, I did date a little. but, i didn't have that major high school boyfriend.)

In college we are "supposed to be having the time of our lives". If we fall on hard times we feel cheated. Some of my darkest days were in college and it didn't seem right because that was NOT how life was "supposed to be" at any time, but especially this time. What was wrong with me? (a lot, but there's not a post long enough for that. ha.)

As we get older, the stakes seem higher. We are supposed to have a great job and be on our feet financially. We are supposed to be married. This is the picture we had of our lives, right? Hello, we are almost 30 here? When things aren't happening the way we picture, we spend time and energy wondering why. Time and energy that is taken away from enjoying all that we have, but longing for the "picture". Stressing about the "picture". Trying to figure out how to get this "picture". But you know what happens...when we get that job or we find that special someone and get married, "the picture of how it's supposed to be" doesn't stop haunting us. We have a picture of how the great job should be, pay, look like. We have a picture in our head of the way a married couple is supposed to be and how a married life should look like and we feel jaded when it's not what we thought.

And you know what doesn't help....Facebook. You know what I mean. Look who is engaged, traveling, has a new house, baby...the list goes on. When you are in a bad place, it can take you to an even worse place really quickly.

I don't think Facebook is the problem though. The problem is that damn picture in our minds. We feel entitled to have this fake life we've made up?  

But, you know what I've realized. That our real lives, how things actually are right now, will always be so much better then this picture we have.

For me, I've looked back and you realized how God works and how our lives unfold the way they are meant to. So, I didn't have a boyfriend in high school because my heart wasn't ready for that. and I went through that hard time in college because God was shaping me and teaching me to need him. That nothing else could satisfy what He could fill in me. 

When I look back, I'm not sad that I didn't have the picture perfect past. I am thankful.

So, I encourage you, if you're like me and still somehow struggle with this picture of how life is supposed to be, LET IT GO. Just let it go.

Chances are the picture we have of what we think our lives should be is a tiny smidgen of the joy God actually wants for you. And this, friends, is exciting.

1 Corinthians 2:9

But, as it is written, "What no eye seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him" -