happy birthday, eiffel tower.

thanks for letting us visit you last summer. 

hopefully we'll see you again sometime soon.

10 things not to do when you're pregnant (if you're me...)

1. don't get your hopes up that maybe your belly will stop growing, and don't feel bad about it. just be grateful it's as small as it was today, because tomorrow it will be bigger.

2. don't ignore your nose. if something smells funky, eliminate it from your environment. does that sound dramatic? i don't care. ELIMINATE IT.

3. if that means that smells from cleaning and cooking make you sick-- don't apologize. just ride the wave as long as you can and enjoy it. your husband does not resent you for not cooking or cleaning because it makes you vomit horribly. he's a nice husband.

(let's be honest: you were never the perfect cleaning and cooking housewife to begin with. very little has changed...)

4. don't skip a meal. ever. your baby will make you pay.

5. don't make lofty goals during your pregnancy like exercising, learning languages, or studying instruments. make goals of sleeping. you can do that for sure. you will rock at sleeping.
(except at night, when you want it desperately...)

6. you're not going to cook. unless its cold cereal. so don't buy cookbooks.

7. don't take rude comments about baby name ideas too seriously. ("oh, you hate the name that's at the top of my list? you think it sounds dumb? you're dumb." -like that. don't do that.)

8. don't be too hard on yourself when your skin gets even worse, you lose the desire to shower, and you've started wanting to do incredibly lazy things like drink milk straight from the carton.
(still shower. even if you don't really want to...)

9. don't think about those pictures of celebrities who are pregnant. i'm looking at you, blake lively...(she's joking, right?)

10. don't daydream that maybe this is the last day you'll get sick. just appreciate that you have a cute little bathroom to throw up in.

babymoon.

we were eating dinner one night, looking at our calendars and realized we were completely slammed till the baby's due date-- except perhaps for some potential time off in a few days. so we moved our schedules around and planned a last minute 5 day trip to the oregon coast. 

there was a quick stop in our beloved city of trees including seeing some sweet friends.
thanks again for a lovely lunch everyone! Delishdelishdelish.)

the only thing better than boise are the people who live there. 

We also stopped in portland for a bit of fun. It was weird.

the rest of our time was spent visiting astoria, seaside, cannon beach, and driving up and down the gorgeous coastline. the weather predicted rain and wind, but we got lucky on the last two days.

i can't even tell you guys how beautiful and fun it was.

we stayed at cute little bed and breakfasts, shopped at small shoppes and ate at funky restaurants.

i think the best part was how much we made each other laugh as we drove.

(there was lots of driving.) he's getting funnier and funnier.

have you guys been to the tillamook cheese factory?

gid asked me to go through the cheese tasting line twice.

he really wanted to go three times but got a little shy.

didn't want to get kicked out of a place he respected so much, i guess.

we ordered a huge amount of ice cream and the baby was kicking the whole time really hard ("whatever this stuff is mamma, keep it coming!!")

we walked along the beach and watched kids fly kites.

so fun to touch the ocean- even if i wasn't wearing a swimsuit.

 it was a pretty quick weekend, but it was the most fun we've had in a long time. 

see the bump? it's getting bigger every day!

that's all.

on curtains being closed.

I stared at my ceiling with tired eyes and resolved to commit five solid minutes to hashing out this problem in my brain. "Problem" seems to severe of a word. Issue? Question? Problem?

Problem seems to be the most appropriate word to me.

I've been feeling a little down lately. I'd love to blame it on pregnancy blues, but it'd be a lie. I've been feeling this way on and off for over a year.

Sometimes I find myself getting sucked into this weird hole of anti-social introversion. I first noticed it when I was working on my thesis. I stayed inside all day with the curtains drawn, writing and rewriting my paper draft after draft after draft. I avoided socializing, because the thought of having fun or going out when I still had another draft due was too much to handle. The only person I wanted to talk to was gid. And maybe the take-out food guy on the phone.

My thesis is done. I've defended. I've published. But I still kind of avoid people.

This is going to sound silly (because it is) but it's like my belly button. I was born with a suupper outie belly button. When I was a kid my family would joke when I'd wear swimsuits or leotards; it would stick out stubbornly, even with the spandex trying to flatten it. Around the time I got into middle school it started making it's way in, and by the time I was in college it was as much of an innie as it used to be an outie. Sorry I talked so much about my belly button- that was a weird comparison.

I don't want to go outside if I see people I know hanging out in the courtyard. I keep my curtains drawn, even when the weather is nice. I dread things that used to be super fun like lunch dates with a friend (even if the person really really is a friend). When I go on campus to visit gid for lunch, I strategically avoid the building I took classes in. I've gotten pretty bad at answering text messages. I've started exchanging small talk for silence. Silence used to make me a little uncomfortable.

I'm worried that  I'm starting to not like people very much. Not all people!! I probably like you, whoever is reading. (No guarantees, of course.)

It's a bad sign if I'm starting to feel closer to people over a digital platform than I do in real life, right? That's something I've always thought other people would have a hard time with. Not me.

Last night a girl from church texted me, asking if I could cover her shift in nursery. I responded yes, and then, realizing it was friday, and sunday was only two days away, started feeling really uncomfortable. Church gives me major anxiety lately. I have to pump myself up before and sleep afterward. I don't look forward to it. Once I stepped out of class because I started having a hard time breathing. That could've been because the baby was in my lung space, to be honest...

Has this ever happened to any of you? I've never felt like I don't belong so much, particularly in a place that insists that everyone belongs.

I used to really love sundays. Sunday was the day to recuperate, the day to invite friends over for a nice relaxing dinner. Maybe even play games. I used to love church.

And as I type, I'm cringing with closed eyes, because I know this is probably too much honesty. (Who do I think you are, my therapist?) I was reading an article the other day about being aware of the image you create for yourself on the web and one of the top warnings was to be cautious of how honest/frank you are in your writing. "It has the potential to turn readers off or offend," the article said. (My baby just started kicking really hard-- I wonder if he's trying to send me a warning to not publish this post on pain of losing readers.)

I don't care about readers nearly as much as I care about being authentic. Sorry little baby...

To be fair, I do better in small groups, and especially well with long time friends. I even talked with a girl who I've never had conversation with for over 15 minutes today. She said I was "funny" and "outgoing". I paused, smiling at her and actually took a second to check if she was being sarcastic. She wasn't; I don't think. I think I come across a lot more comfortable in social situations than I really feel.

I don't have a problem with introverts. Most of my closest friends hate social situations. The thing is, I want to be more social, so I should just keep trying, right? Fake it till you make it, right?! The only problem is I'm not sure how much longer I can keep that up. It's exhausting. I'd rather just not.

So I stare at the ceiling. It's a creamy, almost buttery color and right now all I want to do is to paint it a muted gray. 

I think my five minutes of hashing is up.

ps- my belly button is starting to become an outie again because of my growing belly. maybe the belly button example is an appropriate comparison after all. maybe pregnancy/having a baby will force me to be social again.

but really, i could use some help...

okay mamma friends, i need help. they say the first step is acceptance, right? does that mean the second step is reaching out for help? i'm going to pretend that it does.

i need help you guys.

i don't know what i absolutely need, versus what is a "luxury" nursery/baby item, versus what all the blogs and websites tell me i should do. pregnancy has stolen my brain and especially my gut instinct of what the heck i want.

have i mentioned i work at a little baby boutique part time lately? you'd think i'd have my crap together. i don't.

anyway, we just bought a darling crib and dresser (after months of agonizing over the which one), and i've started chipping away at bedding, which is so much harder than i thought.

this weekend i'm planning on purchasing a crib mattress, car seat, and our stroller. i have a million questions, but the one i'm struggling with the most isn't which stroller i should buy, it's which color.

advice? which color? why is this so hard??!

choice A is the black seat with the silver frame, B is the teal seat with the black frame (this is the one I'm leaning the most on) and C is black seat with black frame. i feel like black is always a safe choice, but the teal looks a bit more friendly to me. is that silly?

i'll probably have a zillion more posts on facebook or on this blog asking for more advice, but i'm too overwhelmed to try to figure out how to write them all down, and i'm getting sleepy just thinking about it.

i would not be disappointed if you all left comments about all of the essential things you needed for the first year of being a mamma.....

an update.

as i write this, i'm so hungry. so so hungry.

i sleep all the time. like, all the time. i don't shop anymore. i sleep.

i miss lunch meat more than i should.
did i even eat it before i was pregnant?
why do i want it all the time?!

i still haven't bought maternity clothes. not humble bragging. i'm confessing that i have nothing that fits me except for sweat pants and loose peplum tops. i know i should go buy something, but i feel like its all expensive and not cute. and i already don't feel cute.

i only post pictures of my belly that i think are flattering. and i always suck in, which is pretty stupid (and ineffective). i hate how i do that. like seriously, alyssa- who are you trying to impress?

i have a weird urge to go for a roller coaster ride. probably because i'm not allowed to right now (unless i want a milkshake baby), and this is as close to rebellion as i get.

gid bought me black out curtains. just when i thought i couldn't love him more.

i'm still throwing up, you guys.

i don't know why i'm procrastinating buying stuff for our nursery. our baby will be here in three months. you know it's bad when gid is pushing me to buy stuff.

i feel like netflix and hulu+ are more important to me than regular people.

my skin has never been worse. i always felt like my skin was the one thing i really had going for me.

every day i ask gid to make me a milkshake. he's so good at them and they stay down.

some days i feel like i don't really know who i am anymore, and then i wonder if i've ever known. and then i think to myself that this is a totally healthy thing to think about and i deserve some ice cream for exploring it in my brain.

i want to start playing the ukulele and guitar again, because it sounds like a sweet way to bond with my baby. but every time i think about picking up an instrument, i fall asleep.

i haven't exercised since before i found out i was pregnant.
that was over 6 months ago.
i gotta do some squats or something, y'all.
just thinking about it makes me hungry.

did i mention i'm hungry?

sister shoot II.

My sister is expecting any day now. 

Isn't she lovely? 

All she can see when she looks in the mirror is her growing belly, but I'm all "holy smokes, your legs (and everything else) look AMAZING!" 

She didn't believe me. She never does. So I pulled out my camera.

And did my best to put her at east, and hopefully make her laugh a little.

I don't think it's normal for little sisters to think their big sisters are this beautiful.

My photography doesn't do her justice, but I did my best.
Imagine an even prettier pregnant lady, if you can.

And in a shocking turn of events, mimi wanted in on the fun.

 I can't handle it.