Not Fat ENOUGH?!?

So, I'm in my 18th week of pregnancy, and things are going well. I had an appointment a couple weeks ago, and all is great. We have set up our sono appointment, too, so we'll know if we're having a Benjamin or an Emily in less than two weeks!!! We're pretty excited. I realize that different days (or different times of the day), I want a boy, or I want a girl....I can't decide. Good thing it's not up to me. Benjamin always wants a boy.

Last week, I talked with somebody, and she had her little "chart" in front of her, and she told me that I wasn't gaining enough weight. She told me I was 4-5 pounds lighter than I should be by this stage in my pregnancy. She told me I should try to eat 300 more calories each day. I was a little bit surprised to hear this news..."Is she actually telling me I'm too skinny? America is already FAT enough!!!" But after thinking about it, and talking to an all-knowing and EXPERIENCED sister or two, I'm no longer concerned.

Besides, I've never eaten so healthy in my life...I mean, in terms of what I take into my body, I've never been so aware of whether it is nutritious or not. I'm getting a much more balanced diet than ever. So can you blame me for gaining slowly after nearly eliminating deep-frying foods from my weekly diet? (and we did typically have dinner fried two or three times a week) And trying to eat more carrots, instead of candy? We got some good sweets over Christmas, and generally, I would expect the candy to be scarce in our apartment by President's Day. But we still have a full bowl in our living room. I appreciate the help in snacking on it when we have game nights (thanks Merry and Katie...it wouldn't be fun to see the full bowl every day!!).

So, pretty much, the moral of the story is, I'm going to eat a little more candy. And ice cream. I'll keep being healthy, but I'm going to indulge, too.

How do you solve a problem like Maria

We've had the same neighbors for over a year now. Every time I've wanted to post something about them I had to restrain myself because I never had anything nice to say. Now we are posting because we need your help. There is a poll set up for you to help us. Let me explain the situation.

Jorge and Maria moved in a year ago. Jorge was awesome but we never liked Maria. She yells and screams at Jorge all of the time. She's called the cops on him multiple times (but she's the crazy abusive one). She smokes incessantly. The smoking is the real problem. It's against the contract of the duplex we live in (which she never read because she doesn't understand english very well) and we hate it because the smoke seeps up through the floor into our apartment. We've gone to church smelling like we just came from a bar because of the second hand smoke. We've used pregnancy as an excuse and talked to her about it, and we've complained to management about it half a dozen times. Last time we complained we were told that for every complaint we gave they were fined $100 and next time we complain they'll get evicted. So we felt bad and didn't complain for a while.

Now, Jorge has been evicted by Maria, and her smoking has increased.
Should we call and have Maria and her 8 year old newly baptised son kicked out onto the street, so we can be smoke free for another month?
Or should we just suck it up (literally) until we move?

"Guess and Check" Morality

I must first give praise to Emily for being the best pregnant wife ever. She never complains, acts sick, or eats laundry detergent, like some pregnant women do. Still, pregnancy has been quite the roller coaster ride... like riding a roller coaster blindfolded, so you can never prepare for the next whiplash turn or stomach wrenching free-fall.

There was once a time in my life when I knew right from wrong. Of course, I still made wrong choices when I didn't think things through carefully or when I was just being contrary, but I could always think back about the decision and decide what the right choice was.
Well, either my mental capacity has reverted to my seven year old level (highly possible) or something fundamental about this universe's administrator of justice has changed. The justice of this universe seems to be directly linked to my wife's hormone levels which vary unpredictably and on the timescale of seconds.
I have completely lost the ability to decide what the "correct" choice is, no matter how hard I think about the situation. Even the used-to-be-easy decisions have become muddled.

"Hey honey, hows you're day?"
"You're making dinner again? Why are you cooking? You think I'm incapable don't you? You wish you'd never married me... I can tell. I'm no good for you... sniff, sniff."
"Emily, I love you"
"Don't say things like that and expect it to fix things! "

wow, two strikes already. Making dinner and saying I love you. Clearly those were two very bad choices, but no amount of careful analysis could have predicted those were going to blow up on me.
Everything becomes trial and error. should I pick up my dirty socks?... only way to find out if that is the second unpardonable sin is to try... looking cautiously over my shoulder to see if the administrator of justice approves.
There is no predicting. No deriving. No logic. No relying on past choices.

Just Guess and Check.

Shoes

I have a confession to make! I own 45 pairs of shoes.....What in the world?!?

We are slowly trying to thin out our possessions, since we're moving before long. So, we lined up all my shoes so that I could make rational decisions about which pairs to donate away. We kept lining them up, then we found more in the back of the closet, and kept lining them up. And we found more in our other closet, and it kept going and going.

In my defense (it's lame, I know), I need comfortable shoes for by internships and my clinical therapy sessions. Typically brown or black...and I always keep my eye out for some more pairs that fit that criteria. I also have a number of Sunday shoes that are leftover from my mission, and then some cute Sunday shoes that my sisters encouraged me to get right when I got home. They hurt my feet, and leave funny sores, so I never wear them, but I think they are cute, and I INTEND to be cute, so they stay.....Not anymore. They're outta here.

So, I thinned out, and have a small number of them that I will keep until I finish my internships, and then they will stay in Utah when we move. I won't tell you how many I still have, but just rest assured that I have fewIt feels nice to know I'm thinning out. It also feels silly that the "girl" stereotype of having so many shoes has definitely found place in my life. Hopefully I can keep a better handle on it in the future.



At least I can honestly say that I DID NOT pay full price for ANY pair of shoes that I have. Some have been around since high school, others were inherited from roommates or sisters. Still others are DI or clearance options.

Prospectus Meeting

I had my Prospectus meeting on Friday, March 13th. It was the official time for all the professors on my thesis committee to get together, review my thesis proposal that I have been working on for months, and to officially "accept" that proposal. It was approved! So now I can move forward with IRB approval, recruit participants, and collect my data. This is the kickstart to the "middle" of my project, the end of the beginning process.

We were pretty excited, so we headed to the BYU Creamery for some ice cream to celebrate. I've noticed that if we say we'll do something to celebrate an achievement later, it never happens, so we went immediately to the Creamery, and stuffed ourselves with dairy goodness.

Hopefully we'll be celebrating the next step before too long!

My Internship

I'm finally doing my first internship for my program. I am going to Life Care Centers of America at Bountiful fulltime for 8 weeks. It is a nursing home, and I work a lot with residents on practicing swallowing exercises, and strategies to make swallowing stronger. Many of them have had pneumonia a number of times when their food and drink enter their airway, rather than the esophogus. It's a serious problem, and it's nice to see some progress over time. I also work some with individuals with dementia, and try to help their cognition a little bit. It's interesting to learn how much Medicare limits what you can and cannot do with residents.

It is quite a commute to and from Bountiful, but it's worth it to be earning my clinical hours and to finally be working towards graduation in that sense. It has been difficult to get up and out of the apartment by 6 every morning, but it's helped that I drop Benjamin off at BYU before I head out. At least we're both dragging by 8:00 pm, and ready for early bedtime. We can do anything for just 8 weeks, right?

To help it go by more visually, I made a paper chain so that I can tear a link every day, and SEE how the appointed time is getting shorter all the time. It really helps. This is a picture of the chain closer to the beginning. It's looking superlong, isn't it?

15 weeks

Hello everyone.

I have felt wonderful all throughout the pregnancy so far. I have had very little nausea and have lost my breakfast only once in the 3.5 months we have known we are expecting. Since so little has happened, I haven't been inspired to post anything.

To answer questions we've been getting, we are fully planning on finding out the gender of mini Heaton as soon as possible, despite the wording on our announcement card. August 27th is still the expected due date, and hopefully we'll know in the next 5 weeks if we'll have a Benjamin or an Emily.

We haven't taken any pictures lately, except my weekly documentation. So, although it isn't flattering, we'll make an effort to take more pictures in the future. This photo is my 14 week picture, taken three days ago. Enjoy. We also had just eaten dinner, with I've noticed helps the effect.