Life On The Other Side

Many moons have passed since I last updated here. Plain and simple, I’ve been busy. Our son is almost seven weeks old and like any seven week old, he needs a lot of attention. We’ve been sleep deprived while enjoying every minute with him. He’s grown quite a bit and you’d never know he was premature.

Some other milestones to note since the last update… the hubby and I celebrated my 37th birthday on June 14th and our first wedding anniversary on June 17th. It was also a joyous first father’s day for the hubby! I can’t believe we’ve been married one year already! It really seems like we’ve been married a lot longer but in a good way. We really enjoy each other’s company and we are really each other’s best friend. We’ve done quite a few things this past year together and look forward to doing more with our son.

After only 35 weeks and 5 days, our son was born on May 17, 2006 at 9:39 PM. He was 6 lbs, 14 oz and 20 inches long. The last few days have been a rollercoaster ride. I was diagnosed with PIH or pregnancy induced hypertension which facilitated the speedy birth of our boy. We were fortunate enough to have ourselves a healthy baby boy although he was considered premature due to his gestational age. The whole family is home and happy and adjusting to our new lives.

The past few weeks I’ve gone through a mini depressive state. I hide it well. Frankly, it’s got more to do with hormones than anything else. I admit that I’m only human and I can’t help feeling angry, upset, or jealous. But I don’t feel it’s right to talk about those things. I can only control me and what’s in my realm. After all, it can’t only be about me, right? One thing I’ve come to realize about myself is that I like attention. For a person who doesn’t crave attention, I do like to have some kind of attention. It’s not that I take it away from other people but I like the inadvertent attention given to me. I guess that’s the vain part of me. It’s the rooster part of me. I was born the Chinese Year of the Rooster and roosters are show offs. So that’s where my attention hogging comes from. Like I said, a lot of it has to do with hormones. Thankfully, it has passed and I feel good. If it gets worse or something I begin to get concerned about, especially after the baby is born, I won’t be calling Tom Cruise for advice.

I’ve been neglecting this blog because I started one exclusively about the whole pregnancy and birth. But I will try to post at least once or twice a week from now on. After all, this is my “secret” blog for me to rant and rave on though it seems like I rarely do.

Spring is here and with a vengence. It’s been darn hot some days (and humid) while others have been cool. I’m lucky that I have my personal built-in heater (baby) so that when the temperature changes back to cold, it isn’t making me take out my coat again. Let me tell you that being hot and pregnant does not make a woman happy. I am so looking forward to feeling “normal” again.

So it’s been one year since I moved to the South. Yep, the day came and went (I think it was April 27) that would have been exactly one year since we pulled into Charlotte and unpacked car and kitty. Not sure what I was thinking about that day except probably something along the lines of “thank goodness we don’t have to drive another 8 hours tomorrow.” Living here has had its high and low points. As with anyplace I’ve moved to before, I’ve experienced some type of “homesickness” and it was no different here. Yes, I miss my friends and being able to see my family more often, but in retrospect, my life has also changed so much. Would I change what I did one year ago? Heck no! I am happy and content with the decision I made. I’ve adapted and made the best of it. I love the direction my life has taken and where it has taken me. I never thought I’d be here today and then again I am.

There is a lot to look forward to in the next year and the years to come. None of it would have probably been possible without moving here. Well I really shouldn’t say that because it would have been possible. I’m just glad I’m here with my husband, our cat and our baby on the way.

There aren’t many weekends left that the hubby and I can enjoy by ourselves. The weeks seem to go by rather quickly as the due date for the baby approaches. This weekend we didn’t have much planned so we decided to take a drive. We woke up Saturday to a bleary and wet day, and decided to jump in the car and drive east. On previous trips, we had gone north, west and south but never east. The drive was pleasant and not bad for a rainy day. We drove from Charlotte to Rockingham taking the scenic route through Indian Trail, Monroe, Wadesboro and assorted other small towns along the way. The hubby and I enjoy seeing small towns and the beautiful North Carolina countryside. True there wasn’t much to see but it was beautiful and green. Rockingham is mostly known for its dragway which we didn’t bother to visit. However, we did visit an outdated Hardee’s and had a mediocre lunch. Despite the appeal of the taco salad on television, the real thing has a lot to be desired.

The rest of the weekend was less exciting as we did our usual Target run on Sunday and spent some time at the bookstore looking for new reads. Oh, and baseball season is in full swing now but our beloved Braves haven’t been doing very well. They beat the Dodgers but lost to the Giants on the road. Tonight is their opening game at home and I hope they do a lot better.

I feel rather confident we have all the tools to raise our son. By using the word “tools,” I mean that both the hubby and I are rather well-rounded folks. We have many varied interests that I hope will make some connection with our son. For example, we both like to read and read about different subjects such as science fiction (hubby), history (both of us), chick lit (me), social issues (both), etc. We also enjoy things like music, museums, movies and traveling. We watch a variety of sports though we don’t actively participate in any. But that’s okay because if the “boy” as my hubby calls him wants to participate in any sport, we’ll be the first ones out there helping him. We’ve also done other things in our lives that can and will contribute to the boy’s life such as camping and fishing. I mention these things just because of a conversation I had a few months ago with with the hubby’s sister-in-law before we found out the gender of our babies. She said she wasn’t sure what they would do with a boy since they don’t like sports. Well now they have to figure something out. But the hubby did point out that since it’s their son, he would most likely have similar interests as his parents. So having a boy doesn’t necessarily mean raising a sports player or even someone interested in sports.

In other pregnancy news, I am almost at the end of my 29th week. Only ten more weeks to go before we meet the boy. It’s both exciting and scary at the same time. We still have a ton of things to do. The weight and the cravings remain steady. I’ve started a new blog specifically about the baby and the pregnancy for family and friends who don’t know about this one. If you’d like to be included, let me know.

I haven’t written an entry lately about my observations on living in the South. I don’t suppose this is really an observation but more of a change in lifestyle.

I must confess that I now watch NASCAR. I know the sport itself has become wildly popular in the last few years but I’ve never been a person to even consider watching it. Of course I’ve heard of certain drivers before like Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the Busch brothers, Kyle and Kurt. And in the years that I lived in Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway was built. Being completely honest here, I always equated the sport with rednecks and I don’t mean it in a positive way.

In the last few weekends, I have found myself in front of the television with my husband watching the current NASCAR Busch Series. In addition to watching the races, I have become familiar with other drivers, their major sponsors and their standings as well as the mechanics of the race itself. I don’t cheer on a particular driver yet and don’t know if I even will. Frankly, watching a bunch of men race around a track can be exciting just because of the dynamics of their pole position at any given time during the race and the potential for wrecks. In fact, even my husband is surprised at how much knowledge I’ve acquired just by watching a few races.

But don’t expect me to be one of those women groupies who follow a driver like they are a movie star or paste stickers on my car with the number of my favorite driver. I may be assimilating to the South but I do have my boundaries.

Right now I am obsessed with the HBO original series Big Love. I am not nor will I ever be a proponent of polygamy or any other multiple spouse type of arrangement. I think the most fascinating part of the show is how this one man tries to balance his time between three wives and three families. Frankly, I can barely balance my time with my one husband and my one family so thinking about having to rotate between another two seems impossible. Of course I’m speaking from the standpoint of a woman so maybe it’s a little easier for a man though I highly doubt it. Polygamy itself used to be associated with the LDS in Utah but was outlawed by the Church in the late 1800s. However, it seems that there are certain factions within that religion that still support such a lifestyle going against the Church’s view.

My main interest in this show stems from my time in Las Vegas. Despite the city’s reputation, there is a very large Mormon population there. Of the Mormons I have known or do know, none of them practice or subscribe to the polygamy lifestyle. I know from watching several types of news shows that polygamy still exists in Utah and some other parts of the United States. I wonder how a show like this will affect how people view or feel about it. I also wonder how the Mormon population including the Mormon Church feels about a show like this one. I’m sure there will be some controversy if there hasn’t been any already.

I’ve been pretty busy the last couple of weeks since we’ve been home from our vacation. We’ve begun taking some of the classes offered by the hospital we plan on having our baby at as preparation for the changes ahead. The first class we went to was more of an informational seminar than a class: epidurals. I have yet to swing either way when it comes to having or not having the epidural. Frankly, I’m pretty middle-of-the-road if that’s possible since I don’t really know what to expect or how I will be feeling when the time comes. Also, I learned that there might be some point during labor where it would be impossible to even get an epidural so I really have to be middle-of-the-road. Truthfully, I really hate needles with a passion and anything that resembles a needle or goes inside my veins (i.e. cathether) so it’s going to be a challenge for me to overcome the hatred or rather fear. In any case, I know the pros and cons, and what to expect and that’s more than I could ask for at this point.

The second class we took was an infant CPR class. It really was more than a CPR class because we talked about potential dangers and hazards a child might encounter in the home, what to do in an emergency, what is an emergency, etc. I think every new parent should take some kind of class like this because what you think you might know about handling things like fevers, cuts, bites, etc. goes out the window after you hear this information. Plus, you need to hear things from the perspective of a child or rather an adult who has a better idea of what a child might encounter. Things we take for granted such cords, outlets, cleaners, small objects, et al become deadly for an infant. I would definitely recommend this class for any parent.

In other news, I finally have a job. It’s not a job in the traditional sense where I get up and leave the house everyday, but rather I have a stay-at-home job. I applied to do some editing for an online secret shopper type of company a few months ago and got an email about a month ago to do a test for that job. Well I passed the test and was put into their apprentice program. Last week I spent doing their online orientation and this week I started doing some editing. It’s been a slow process because of the training and now the apprentice program. The apprentice part is expected to be about four weeks and once that is done, we have two chance to pass the junior editor test. Once we pass, we’ll be junior editors but if we don’t, well you can guess what happens. This job sounded interesting because it was a chance for me to get back into something I haven’t done professionally in awhile which is editing. My editing mainly came with writing for a newspaper many years ago and it’s a pretty thankless job not to mention without much recognition. However it is important if not one of the most important aspects of any written piece. This job will give me a chance to brush up and sharpen my editing skills while making a little bit of money.

Finally, the last bit of news is that the hubby and I went out on a “blind couple’s date” with another couple we met locally. Rather, I met this girl through a local online board and we decided to meet up for dinner with our husbands. She and I are both pregnant with our first child and they are due about two weeks before we are. It’s nice to finally make some connections with people in town and we’ll see how it goes.

The hubby has decided that he has earned a well-deserved vacation. Here! Here! I totally agree! So this weekend we’re off to visit family and friends in Georgia. It’s always nice to getaway even though the getaway is only a couple of states away. Part of this vacation will be spent near the coastline of Georgia and I am looking forward to that. I haven’t seen the ocean since our last trip to Charleston, SC which was last July. Even though my FIL (father-in-law) says there isn’t much to see because of the brown ocean water, I still marvel at the vastness of the ocean and how open and unencumbered I feel when I’m around it. The ocean brings back so many good memories of growing up and spending time with my own family there. I can’t even begin to count the numerous times we’ve gone swimming, fishing, camping and had picnics by the ocean in Hawaii. All those were the best times growing up especially because my dad loved the ocean. I hope our son who will have the honor of bearing his late grandfather’s name as one of his own feels the same way. I hope to take lots of pictures on this trip and to post a few here to share. I haven’t been to the coastline of Georgia so I’m looking forward to a couple of things besides seeing the ocean. I’m looking forward to the drive there because it’ll be somewhere I’ve never been before and I am looking forward to visiting a new town. Really, the significance of this visit is to meet some of my hubby’s extended family members that I have never met before, not even before we got married or at our wedding. In fact, I have only met my husband’s immediate family so meeting extended family is exciting to me. On this trip I will meet his only living grandparent, a cousin or two and an aunt and two uncles, I think. Like I said, it should be fun and I enjoy spending time with family. Updates when I return!