Dear Mom

Once again, it's Thursday which means that it's time for MamaKat's Writer's Workshop (which is about the only day of the week lately that I can put together something that is slightly creative...I blame the baby).  The prompt is...
1.) Dear Mommy and/or Daddy…(write a letter to yourself from one of your children)

Oh Mother Dearest~

Just a few thoughts that I had in utero that I think you could do to help make me a more relaxed child.  Because quite frankly a few things that you do stress me out...a lot.  Please refer to the list below and refrain from these actions.  Thanks in advance.

1.  Your singing is really really bad.  Please refrain from belting out songs in the car as loud as you can.  You're not alone anymore and my hearing is being permenantly damaged.  If this is too difficult, at least refrain from singing "I want to be a millionaire".  That song is just bad and I already don't like Oprah.

2.  I don't like caffeine so please stop drinking it.  I realize that it's fun to feel me move around a lot after you have a soda, but it makes me feel like a nutso.  Time to start putting me first.

3.  I realize that you were a gymnast not too long ago, but doing handstands against the couch just so you can see if your center of balance really is changing is making me nauseous.

4.  Please stop poking me.  Everytime I'm near the front of your belly you begin poking me either in the butt or in my head.  This must be enjoyable to you, but really, it's just annoying to me.

5.  Chose my name already and get over it!  Or at the very least, if you have a name in mind don't "try it out" by yelling the first and middle name as if I was in trouble.  You're setting me up for failure.

Again, please refrain from the above actions or you just may end up with a neurotic first born.  Thanks Mom!

Love,
Baby Radz

Boring Friday

It's Friday at 4:00 and I have officially hit the wall here at work.  To the point that I'm going to blog about something just so I'm not staring at this screen anymore.  Things have been just trucking along in the Radz household lately...bit ho hum.  We got work, we eat dinner, we squeeze whatever projects need to be squeezed into the remaining time and then we crash into bed.  How we're going to find time for all of this plus a baby I haven't quite figured out yet....but I'm sure we will.

We have a full weekend coming up too.  I scheduled a pregnancy massage for myself tomorrow morning and can't wait!  I'm not too sure how it works, but I'm sure it'll be heavenly.  I'm following that up with a trip to Babies R Us to start my registry and then headed down to the campground for Trivia night.  I'm kind of a trivia junkie.  I love it!  And (if I do say so myself) hubby and I are pretty good at it.  His bank of useless knowledge covers just about everything that mine doesn't so we make a good team.  After that busy Saturday, I'm headed up to Mass to spend time with some old co-workers who I haven't seen in entirely too long.

I realize that I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but that's what boring blog posts are for, right?  I was just thinking that trivia is a guilty pleasure of mine.  Among many others.  Here's a few I can think of off the top of my head.
1.  Pringles....I love them and they're horrible for you.  I know this, but oh well.
2.  Cheesy teenager TV shows (like MTV's Teen Mom).  I could watch them for hours.
3.  Standing in the shower under the scalding water for 5 extra minutes even though I know this is not environmentally sound.
4.  Eating breakfast for dinner.
5.  Being home alone with nothing to do but curl up with a good book (that's not really a guilty one except that I often prefer that to spending time with people....hello introvert?)
6.  Cutting coupons...that I'll never use.  Must be something about the cutting that is therapeutic.
7.  Lately, allowing people to pick things up for me just because I have a big belly :)

What about you?  Any good guilty pleasures....

Electric Lint Removers

I'm actually on time this week and figured I'd post a response to MamaKat's Writer's Workshop.  If you have some time, check it out.  It's fun.  Anyways, here's the prompt....

4.) The craziest reason I ever got in trouble as a child.

Now I don't know that I ever actually got into trouble for this, or that my little sister even remembers this happening, but it's worth sharing.  I am the oldest of three children.  My sister is 4 years younger than me and my brother is a year younger than her.  Growing up, that usually meant I always had someone who went along with whatever I did thinking it was cool.  Now, I wasn't a mean child by any means but I was a curious little kid.  I asked a lot of questions and tried out a lot of things (maybe why I went into science).  Anyways...

It was just after dinner one night and mom was cleaning up the kitchen and dad was helping out and me and the sibs were just lounging around.  I happened to pick up one of those electric lint removers.  You know, they look something like this...

I was curious if it would take off your tastebuds if you held it against your tongue.  It took lint off of clothes after all, and lint looks kind of like tastebuds, right?  I figured that might be a bit painful so I convinced my little sister (who was probably about 3) that she should try it out.  And she did.  And it worked.  Well.

Sorry Kierst.....

Anniversary, pool, and baby's gender!

I've had quite an eventful few weeks and since I haven't posted in a while this might be a bit long.  Have no fear...I'll toss in some photos to make it more amusing.

First, hubby and I celebrated our 1st anniversary on July 11th.  We didn't do anything super crazy, just a nice quiet dinner out just the two of us at a new restaurant.  We went to a place called The Russell in Hartford that is a caribbean-ish themed place. The food was delicious and they even had fried yucca...possibly my favorite thing in the world.  Plus, hubby got me a video camera :) so that means there will prob be some video posts in the near future.  Here's our anniversary in one photo...including the cake (which by the way...TERRIBLE idea to eat it a year later.)

We also finally got our pool up and running.  It needed a new liner and since we're cheap we didn't want to pay to have someone do it.  We got my family and some family friends together to lend a hand and we now have a lovely pool to enjoy.  Better late than never.  Here's the boys hard at work....(I was supervising, I swear).

And last (but certainly not least) we have officially found out what whether we're having a boy or a girl this December.  We had a bit of a rough go of things the past few weeks (I'll post about it one of these days), but thankfully everything is going well and the baby's doing great.  Here's a picture of me at 19 weeks pregnant and I'm finally starting to really look pregnant.

Annnndd......we're having a little.......

BOY!  So excited.  And I'm sure he loves that I just posted his boy parts for all of you to see.  Here's a face shot just for good measure.  Isn't he cute?

Think that's it.  Look forward to another interesting blog entry later this week as a late response to MamaKat's Writers Workshop.

My first date....in a car....

So I'm a day late one this one, but Mama Kat had a prompt that was just too good to pass up.  Despite the fact it was supposed to be posted YESTERDAY, I figured better later than never.  Plus, this is a pretty good story.  Just try to picture it was you read....guaranteed you'll at least giggle.

The prompt was to write about your first date with a boy in a car.  I figured this meant that first date where our parents didn't have to drive us around and though I'm not sure this was really my first it was my most memorable.  Plus it was my first real date...every other time had been with a "boyfriend" not with a guy that was just interested in becoming that...oh high school.

So it was a Thursday after 6th period English and John (name changed to protect the innocent) chose to walk me to my next class, Spanish.  Along the way he asked me if I wanted to go to the movies with him the next night, Friday.  I'm sure I awkwardly accepted as I certainly wasn't as smooth as I am today and went home to share the happy news with my mom.  The next day at school was spent thinking about outfits and what I would talk about and all that other fun pre-date jittery stuff.  My mother and I spent hours after school finding the perfect outfit to highlight the washboard abs I had then (again...oh high school).  And then he pulled in the driveway and even came to get me at the door.  He walked me to the car, opened my door for me, and walked around to his.  I was in heaven!

Now I've left out one detail to this point because it really wasn't important at the time, but John was deaf.  He had cochlear implants that helped him to hear, but if there was background noise he had difficulty hearing and would read lips instead.  Well....cars are apparently lots of background noise.  We started driving to the movies and the conversation started to flow.  Until he asked me a questions.  And I answered.  And instead of watching the road, he was watching my lips.  Yikes!  I saw my life flash before my eyes and it was everything I could do not to grab the steering wheel.  So I did what any sensible person would do and stopped talking so he'd watch the road.  But apparently on a date, not talking is not good.  Needless to say, the date went downhill from there and that was it for me and John...too bad...he was cute...