A few weeks ago, UNC held its annual internship/career fair. Josh handed out something like 15 resumes, and has been getting lots of interviews!  We are excited by the prospect of a summer internship that could possibly lead to a job come graduation next year!  Thus far, he has interviewed with four companies that I can think of (he should probably be writing this post, because he obviously knows more about all this than I do) and currently has one job offer. He is waiting to her back from two other places before he makes a decision.

It is fun for me to hear about the interviews because I love hearing about anyone else who realizes that Josh is the greatest ever!

The other day at snack time, I was explaining to Fay that Daddy didn’t go on the bus that morning because he went to an interview. I told her a little bit about what an interview is, and why Josh was having so many, and then I asked her if she wanted to have an interview too. She said that she did!

 

Lest any of you are unaware, you should all know that Elisabeth Monson loves St. Patrick’s Day! There isn’t really any particular reason. I just do. And as such, we celebrate it with all our might!  Allow me to show you!

So, basically, this St. Patrick’s season, all the credit goes to Josh.  He thought of all the super fun stuff and made it happen! About a week and a half before St. Patrick’s Day, Josh surprised Fay and me with gifts!Fay received green nail polish, as she loves painting nails; and both of us girls profited thereby!  I got this clover necklace that is the perfect blend of festivity and classiness! Josh also found the fabulous book “The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day” that was the gift to the whole family!

And that’s not all, either!  A few nights later he carried on the tradition of making “conversation shamrocks.” When Kathryn and I were living in Provo (my freshman year of college), we had a discussion about conversation hearts. I expressed the sentiment that it was a shame that there weren’t any other “conversation” items for other holidays.  Kathryn was like “what would there be? conversation shamrocks?” Yes!  I loved the idea! But then she said “What would they say on them? “Text a Leprechaun” or something? Yes again! We got together at her apartment that March and made cookies which we then wrote phrases on!Though I am clearly no food photographer, here is a picture of some of the shamrocks we made this year! I know that leprechaun is spelled incorrectly on the cookie, and it isn’t because I don’t know how to spell it; it is because I ran out of space.This is Josh working on his cookies. I don’t know if you can tell; but the cookie in the lower right corner of the pan says “txt a pot o’ gold.” That cookie kind of made my life!

The day before St. Patrick’s Day was Sunday this year, and so I felt the need to dress green for church! I was so tempted to tape a piece of paper that said “leprechauns” over the word “fairies” on Fay’s shirt. But since it was church, I opted against it.

Another thing that Josh does for me every year (seriously, he is the best ever!) is give me flowers on St. Patrick’s Day. When we were dating, we talked about how ridiculous the price of flowers is at Valentine’s Day. Josh said he was more than happy to buy me flowers if that is what I wanted, but that if it was all the same to me, he would buy them on a day when they were at least somewhat decently priced.  I told him that I love St. Patrick’s Day, not Valentine’s Day anyway. So, he is the best husband in the whole world and gets me beautiful flowers for my favorite holiday!He was super sneaky about it too! I woke up on Monday morning and found this gorgeous bouquet on the table (along with the little shamrocks)! He had taken Fay early to the store and had them all ready before he woke me up!

St. Patrick’s Day evening, we had the sister missionaries over! We had to go all out for them, of course!  I wanted the meal to be festive, but also healthy. So, the main dish was a vegetable soup (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and spinach) which was made very green by the spinach!  Then we had a fruit salad and rolls, AND we had something I remember having growing up, which was lime sherbet and sprite floats!  They are tasty and ever so green!  Plus! Josh’s family has the fabulous tradition of putting coins in the food! (I washed them and wrapped them in aluminum foil first.) We mostly just put the coins in the missionaries food, because Fay probably would have eaten them, and well, they were Josh’s and my coins to begin with. 🙂  I’m sorry that I don’t have pictures of the dinner or our lovely Sisters, but I was running late when they got here.

And after all that, can anybody really wonder why I love this holiday so much?!

I have been fantasizing about spring break ever since March of 2009–my first Winter semester at BYU. Since we knew we would be doing grad school not at BYU, I have had this plan to go somewhere really cool and see lots of really cool things! Afterall, that’s what spring break is all aobut! I had this same plan all the way up until about November of this past year, when it dawned on me that I would be WAY pregnant over spring break and that I can’t be trusted to stay as pregnant as I should be, and that I have to go to the hospital weekly for a shot anyway.  Suffice it to say, we did not take an epic vacation this spring break. However! We decided that this would be the perfect opportunity for us to see the things around us that we haven’t yet. Hence, “staycation”!

Monday

We decided that one of the best things about vacation is that you get all your favorite treats for the road–you know, the ones you love, but never have a really good reason to buy most of the time.  So, we did that!  We started out by going to Rise in Durham for cronuts and biscuits! Their biscuits should probably be illegal or something, because they are SO GOOD!  Then we took Fay to the park, and then we went to Aldi and got a jillion snacks!   We still had some time before lunch and Fay’s nap, so we decided we would go work in our little garden plot (Baity Hill has a bunch of plots that residents can enter a lottery for, and we got one!).

Fay helped out by playing with rocks! She also ate a mouthful of dirt!

After naps (I took one too!), we headed out for a place that is very near and dear to my parents’ hearts: West Point on the Eno.  Fay loved the waterfall, and throwing rocks into the water.(This is just a picture of Fay being adorable in the car)

Tuesday

This was the nicest day we have had thus far this year!  It was warm enough at 9:00 in the morning when we headed out that we didn’t need jackets!  Later in the day it was even hot! Perfect day for the zoo!  We did the park in the morning because Josh had a phone interview at 11:00 that turned out not to be until 2:00. And then we headed out to Asheboro to go to the North Carolina Zoological Park! Josh ended up just finding as quiet a place as he could to talk at the zoo. While he was doing that, Fay and I just saw a few more animals than he did.

Waiting for the tram to take us to Africa!

So, this little girl saw Fay and just NEEDED to be best friends with her. It was pretty much adorable to watch her try to explain everything, and Fay just happily went along with it! Also, don’t Fay’s shorts just kill you?! I love them! She will probably wear them about 77% of warm days until she grows out of them.

Fay loved the gorillas! One even came right up to the glass and stared at her!

This is the worst picture ever, but I just had to prove that I was there!

Wednesday

Our activity for the morning was swimming! Fay LOVES playing in the water! This pool was much more accustomed to having a little kid playing in the water than the last pool we tried. (If you want to hear an amusing story, ask me about the first pool we went to in Chapel Hill.)Fay got a new swimming suit for this season! She is adorable in it, of course!

After lunch and naps, we went to Carrboro and visited a cool little toy store there. There were a lot of really fun things, and we all had a good time!  After that, we went to dinner at this restaurant that we had a recommendation for. I won’t mention its name, because I don’t want anybody to hate it just because of us. But we did not have a positive experience there. The food was very expensive and not what we were hoping for.  Oh well. I still didn’t have to cook that night!

Thursday

We had been quite busy the first half of the week, and we decided it was time for a morning of relaxing.  Josh worked on his robot car (he’ll have to do a post on that soon, because it is way cooler than I can describe!) and I worked on some sewing projects. We did this while sort of tag teaming playing with Fay, and during her nap.

In the afternoon, we went to UNC campus! We have been wanting to see the art museum forever, and we needed to get some UNC something for our baby (that was my compromise with Josh after I bought a Duke sleeper for Kid at a consignment sale). So, we took the bus (Fay was very pleased) and went to the museum first. It was smaller than I expected, but there were quite a few impressive pieces. Josh specifically noted the Durer prints!  After the museum, we walked around campus (it was a little different to see it so empty) and saw the Old Well!  Then we went to the student store and got  a really cute onesie for Kid (I don’t have a picture of it; you’ll have to wait til he tries it on!)

 At the well!At the student store!

Friday

This day went quite differently than we were anticipating.  We had planned to go to Raleigh and play at Marbles (a kids museum type place) and then we had dinner plans with friends that evening.  However, on Thursday, we noticed a crazy rash thing developing on Fay’s face. By Friday morning it was out of control, so we took her to the doctor (we were just there last week for nursemaid’s elbow, but oh well). It turns out that somehow she got exposed to the “hand, foot, and mouth” virus. The doctor said that she was in the early stages of it, and we have seen that to be accurate.  By Friday night, it was getting worse on her face, and showing up more on her hands and in her diaper area. Saturday, she was blistering all over. Fortunately, the blisters don’t really hurt or itch. But Fay does have a tendency to pick at them which then causes pain because she has open wounds on her face.This picture is actually from Saturday, but it shows the blisters really well.

Had that been all, Friday might have gone smoothly. But I also added to the drama by waking up with contractions.  Before we even went home from Fay’s appointment, we went to the women’s hospital and I stayed in triage for about 4 hours. I was having regular contractions, but fortunately never dilated. And after a bunch of water and an IV, the contractions slowed down and we are still pregnant!  This is me looking like death in the hospital. I’m not really sure why I put it in…

I got home around 2:30, and we spent the rest of the day at home. We opted against our dinner plans because there was a baby going to be there and hand, foot and mouth disease is apparently very contagious. Our fabulous next door neighbors, the Paces, brought us dinner, because when Josh asked them to watch Fay (at our house, so that she wouldn’t get their little boy sick) so he could come to the hospital to be with me, they decided that we had had enough for one day, and didn’t need to worry about dinner.  We are SO grateful for them!

Saturday

We mostly spent the day at home in an effort to avoid spreading Fay’s rash to others. But it was just such a nice day, and Fay was getting stir crazy, so we took her to the park.  We let her swing on the swings for a while, but other than that, we tried to do more exploring than playground-ing.  She started doing the cutest thing: hugging rocks!

 

After the park, we went to dinner at a place on Franklin Street called “Buns.” It is a hamburger place that we’ve heard about and was really good!  We are no longer afraid to go to new restaurants! 🙂

This weekend was our stake conference. Josh let me go to the Saturday evening session while he stayed home and put Fay to bed, and did all the dishes! (He’s way too good to me!)

We have loved Spring Break, and we are getting more and more excited for summer!

So, I’ve been getting requests from quite a few people to shed some light on how things are going with this pregnancy, as well as one request for how I am dressing this pregnancy.  So, here you go.

As of today, I am 33 weeks and 2 days pregnant. Fay was born at 33 weeks and 5 days. We are not ready to have a baby in 3 days, so this little feller better stay where he’s at! 🙂 I am feeling mostly good. I am having more and more trouble doing things that were still easy 6 weeks ago. For example: I have a hard time getting comfortable sitting and especially laying down. I am definitely worse at bending over than I have been in a very long time. And I am short of breath a lot of the time.  I am aware that these things are just par for the pregnancy course, but it doesn’t make them fun.  I saw something on facebook recently that said it all very well. My friend (who is also pregnant right now) posted a quote: “Pregnancy is the happiest reason ever for feeling like crap.”  I absolutely agree!

(By the way, I am putting random pictures of Fay, because I know I am way more likely to read a blog post if there are lots of pictures!)

For those of you who don’t know (aka: those who I have been neglecting–please do forgive me!), because of Fay’s premature birth, I am being watched a little more closely than mothers who have no history of problems, and I have the great privilege of getting a weekly shot of progesterone–a hormone the body creates naturally, but apparently makes less of when preparing to go into labor. This shot, called 17 P, is administered weekly from weeks 18 to 36 and has been shown to be highly effective in preventing preterm labor in mothers who have a history of spontaneous preterm labor (like me!). So, I only have a few more shots to go! According to my limited research, it is fairly normal for women to go into labor somewhere in the vicinity of 10 days after their last injection. I must confess, I wouldn’t mind if he came at 37 weeks! (Especially if he was really ready to come!)

Other information about the pregnancy includes: I have gained roughly 22 pounds over the past 33 weeks (normal, I hear). My nails grow super fast, and my leg hair grows super slow! Baby Kid (his name in utero) is very active! Today he kept kicking me in the exact same spot and kicking me HARD! But, he likes to pretend to be shy when either Josh or Fay try to feel his kicks.  Fay has felt him kick, and I feel like she is getting a better idea all the time that we are going to have a baby at our house.  I am very interested and excited to see how she responds to him. 🙂

As for the maternity style request, allow me to give a disclaimer. Though I will admit that I have the capacity to be a fairly well dressed pregnant woman (I was given a great wardrobe from a fantastic sister in our ward who is done having kids), I must be the very least photogenic pregnant woman in the whole world. I promise that all of these outfits looked WAY better in the mirror.  Maybe it’s the lighting in our house. Maybe it’s just me. I don’t know. But here you go, Lacey.

The first picture is me at 32 weeks 0 days. We went to a play that night (Our neighbors took our baby monitor and listened while Fay slept. You’ve got to love living in an apartment building!) so of course I had to dress up for my hot date! The second two pictures are more of my every day sort of look. In the middle picture I had gone out on errands and such, in the final picture (taken at 33 weeks 0 days) I was just home with Fay. I had to take that picture myself which is why my head is cut off.

People keep telling me that I barely look pregnant. People told me that last time too. I was always so confused as to why, and this time I was expecting to get way bigger because apparently you get bigger faster with subsequent pregnancies. But no. Still little (according to the people around me).  But, one of my OBs told me that I show less than some simply because I have a long torso. Who knew?! I always thought that you had to be tall to have a long torso! I was so wrong!