12 weeks

The babe is growing! Finally in the last week of the first trimester. Baby seems to be doing good in there...I just ate most of a frozen pizza (not my proudest moment...but, it happned) and listened for the heartbeat with my doppler right afterwards. I found it immediately...I think baby Prokop likes pizza, just a guess. Finding the heartbeat is getting super easy now. The baby should be about 3 inches long, so I'm betting that's why he/she is easier to find.

Frank is still in Romania and won't be back until around the 22nd...booo! Oh well, I really shouldn't complain. Three weeks is a walk in the park compared to how long some people have to be away from their spouse in the military.  He was able to go do a little exploring last weekend. He and some friends went to Sibiu and Brasov. They were also able to check out Transfagarasan, they really wanted to do these roads by motorcycles, but they weren't able to rent any. They also went to a castle, I believe it was Dracula's Castle. Yesterday at "work" he flew in one of the Romanian jets, a Mig 21, I'm sure he had a blast and it was probably a highlight of his trip.

Other than that, there hasn't been much more excitement going on around here. We are trying to come up with a "babymoon" plan. Thinking of a big vacation in October-ish? Maybe later. I'm not sure where I want to go, but I've thrown around some ideas in the Caribbean, Belize, Maui....and Iceland. Yeah, not sure what I was thinking when I was looking into going to Iceland in October. I really want to go, but Oct/Nov probably isn't the best time! It seems most businesses and tours shut down for the winter around Sept./Oct., so that's pretty much off the table now. Too bad, maybe some other time!

Oh yes, sooooo.....the Olympics are now over and I'm wondering what to do with all my spare time. Then I remembered....SHARK WEEK! Yes! I am convinced that Shark Week is strategically placed right after the Olympics so as to suck in everyone who has been glued to the TV for the past 3 weeks. Well, it worked.

11 weeks

How far along? 11 weeks

How big is baby? 1.5-2 inches long, .25-.5 ounce...growing! Fig week.

Total weight gain/loss : Still hovering around 0, maybe +1 pound...wondering when that's going to change because I have been eating A LOT! Like, more than it should be legal to eat, seriously! Someone take this carton of ice cream and hide it! It's getting out of control.

Maternity clothes? Nope! Still rocking my normal clothes, but 9 times out of 10 I have a hair band holding the button closed...shhh! Dresses are my friend.

Bump? There's a small one. You can only tell if I'm wearing something really tight, most of the time you can't tell at all. I can tell that my stomach is rounder and getting firm...eek! It's definitely not as flat as it was before. Since I'm pretty tall and thin, I think it will be a while before I show since the baby has a lot of room in there.

Sleep: Back to my normal sleeping schedule. There were a few weeks were the sleeping got a little ridiculous, as in 14+ hours a day. Sleeping on my side most of the time now, just because it's more comfortable. I'm noticing that I wake up earlier on my own and it's hard to go back asleep. Kind of frustrating on the weekends because I know my days of sleeping in are coming to an end pretty soon, and I'd like to enjoy it while I can! But nope, waking up at 6:30 no matter what day it is and it's impossible to sleep in.

Best moment this week: Probably listening to the heartbeat on the doppler. That's always the highlight of the day or week! Best sound ever. It's been staying around 170ish, sooo "they" say that higher heart rates mean girl, but I don't really believe in that. I still thinking we are probably having a boy! But, who really knows? Also- bought my first onsie sleeper at Kohl's this past weekend :). Since we aren't finding out the gender I'm going to buy whatever cute gender neutral stuff I can find since it's so hit and miss. Can't wait until the baby is here and I can do some real clothes shopping :)

Most Ridiculous Moment of the week: On Saturday I was really, REALLY jonesing for some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream so I drove to Publix and bought some, with some sugar waffle cones (of course!). On drive home from the grocery store I was soooo excited that I busted out in come crazy made up song about how the baby wanted some ice cream. I was singing it at the top of my lungs and doing a little happy dance in the car while I was driving. It was the funniest song ever, and I was seriously cracking myself up. I swear, pregnancy is making me insane! Thank goodness no one was there to witness the ridiculousness!

Worst moment this week: Having to leave mass early for the 2nd Sunday in a row due to almost fainting. I've found out that it seems to happen when I'm kneeling or right after. Everything goes completely black, noise is muffled, I get really hot, sweaty, and dizzy and feel like I can't breathe. It really sucks. I had to leave before Communion this past Sunday, that was a bummer. I was at Mass by myself and didn't want to risk making a scene and passing out during Communion with no one there to catch me!

Food cravings : Everything. Ice cream. Salty things. Sweet things. Peanut Butter. Cheese. Fruit. You name it and I probably want it.

Food Aversions : None this week, they seem to be going away, thank goodness! I ate eggs for breakfast and it didn't gross me out...woohoo! Thinking about eating steaks or chicken (by themselves) still kind of makes me feel a little weird, but it's better than it was. 

Pregnancy Symptoms:   Hungry, tired sometimes, headaches off and on, thirsty & peeing all the time! Feeling generally lazy and unproductive 24/7.

What I miss : My husband! Feeling energetic and productive. And wine...mmm...wine.

What I am looking forward to : Frank coming home from Romania in 2 weeks. Also looking forward to actually showing and not just looking like I've had too many beers.

Upcoming appointments/events:   Next appt. is Aug 20th, and it's just a standard appt. No ultrasound :(.

Resolve for the upcoming week: Eating healthier. Now that the weird food aversions are mostly gone, I am going to start eating better. I did a big grocery run and stocked up on a ton of veggies, fruit, and meat. Looking forward to healthier eating!

One on the way

Soooo...we are expecting!! Baby P will be making his or her debut around February 25! We are soo excited. A couple of things have been going on since my last post....which was FOREVER ago. Looks like I took a little summer hiatus from posting, but I plan on getting back into it. Especially to write about pregnancy things and keep everyone posted :)

Since the last post:

*Settled into the RV

*House sat for a few weeks

*Went to Destin for a couple of days over Memorial Day weekend with some friends, decided we were having too much fun to go back to work on Tuesday, so we drove to Atlanta afterwards and stayed in Buckhead a night and met up with some friends! It was an awesome weekend

*Recuperated from a year and a half of house renovations...

*Went to a military dining out (fancy dinner- It was interesting stepping out of an RV in a formal gown!

*Flew to Michigan for Frank's cousin's wedding and his sisters baby shower

*Day after we got home from Michigan...found out we were pregnant!

*Another weekend in Destin with some friends

*Looked at a few houses, actually put an offer on one that needed some renovations

*Decided that a house probably wasn't a good idea right now for various reasons, revoked the offer (that was close!)

*4th of July on Lake Martin

*Zap's retirement party at the squadron, sad to see him go!

*Moved out of the RV and into an apartment

*First pre-natal appointment, awesome!

*Frank leaves for Romania for 3 weeks :(... (this was today)

I was pregnant in this photo and had no clue.

Going back to the pregnancy...I'm 10 and a half weeks right now. Things have been great for the most part, so far the worst was around 6-8 weeks. I never got super nauseous or threw up (besides the day I found out...that's how I knew to take a test!), but I felt pretty bad. Super, suuuuuper tired, food aversions, starving, general blah feeling. I think I was going to bed around 6:30 PM for about a week straight. I'm doing much better now, not nearly as tired as I was, and feeling much more normal. Some days I feel so normal that I have to remind myself that I am actually pregnant! Frank has been such a blessing and has been doing so much to keep things going at the house, cooking meals, cleaning, letting me sleep my life away there for a while, making sure I'm comfortable all the time...I feel super lucky to have him :)

The first appointment was on July 21 and I was exactly 9 weeks. The ultrasound went great and we got to see the little guy/girl squirming around in there, little heart beating away at 184! It was really awesome and such a relief. Some people don't know, but we had a missed miscarriage soon after we got married, and it was hard to not worry until I saw a healthy baby in there. It took about a year and a half after the miscarriage to get pregnant again, so I was definitely a little nervous. I still am, but I'm feeling much more confidant this time around. One thing that has helped, I bought a doppler to hear the heartbeat at home. I honestly didn't really know if it would actually work or not, but it does! I found the heartbeat at home around 9.5 weeks and I've had no trouble finding it since. It gives me a lot of peace of mind to know that all is well in the belly :). It is seriously the coolest thing ever to be able to hear the heartbeat at home. No belly yet...starting to feel like I'm getting a little rounder in the stomach region, but no one but me can really tell yet. Pants are feeling tighter, though...I have a feeling the big girl pants will be coming out soon! Frank asks me daily if I need big girl pants yet, hahaha.

9 week ultrasound! Little legs and feet to the left and big head to the right :)

Basically, we are ecstatic, and praying everything goes well from here on out.  We love reading about the baby developing and growing every week, can't wait to have our little one here! This week is lime week! I can't believe the baby is about 2 inches long! We won't be finding out the sex...which should be interesting. Frank is thinking girl and I have a feeling it's a boy, but honestly...I have no idea. We will be so happy either way. It's going to be a surprise for sure!

Master bathroom...check!

We are done with the master bathroom! Well, we better be since the renters are moving in….today! We ran into pretty much every plumbing issue you could have, but whatever. It’s fixed now. Out of sight, out of mind! One of Frank’s friends posted a very fitting Facebook status that made us both laugh…”Pregnancy is to women is as remodeling is to men. Something within draws you to do it. It starts out fun and quick, but gets progressively more uncomfortable over the next 9 months. In the end the reward is so incredible that God lets you forget the pain so you can do it again.” Ha!

I haven’t forgotten the pain yet. I need a break! Frank is, of course, already looking for another house to renovate. We drove through a few neighborhoods just for the heck of yet yesterday. I already told him if we do buy another house it better be turn-key ready with maybe just a little cosmetic work. I’m not up for another year and a half of dust quite yet!

Anyway- here are a few photos of the completed master bathroom! The renters didn’t even see photos of the old bathroom, or the new one…so they should be pleasantly surprised (hopefully!) when they get here today. At some point when I get our chaotic life in order, maybe I’ll get a few minutes to go through old photos and post a lot of before and afters of the whole house.

We had the old tub resurfaced and installed a new faucet.



The linen cabinet and robe hooks are in the location of the old shower




New shower- and it works!...we had some issues along the way...




New vanity, lights, and fixtures



Moving Out

Welp - our house is officially empty! Except for some random cleaning supplies and tools.

We've had a busy couple of days. Packing and moving isn't my favorite thing to do, but luckily we got an early start on it and spread it out over about 2 weeks, so it didn't really seem too bad. The master bathroom is basically done except for the cosmetic finishing touches which we will be working on in the next 2 weeks. We also found a company to install a fence around a portion of the backyard to close in the pool for the future families with kiddos moving in. The stress level is starting to go down now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and everything is falling into place. It's kind of like the week before your wedding. A few weeks before the wedding, stress levels are at a 10...but the week of your wedding, it somehow melts away and you figure, if it's going to go wrong, it will, but things will still work out just fine & you could care less!

One of the hickups we ran into was the granite top for our master bathroom vanity. I ordered it online and we were keeping it ouside under our carport for a day or to before we could move it inside. It started raining hard one night, good ol' Alabama downpour. Frank and I tried to get the top moved inside so it wouldn't get wet...well, it cracked down the middle the second we lifted it out of the box! Grr! $500 mistake! I didn't think there was any chance the company would take it back since I already signed for the delivery saying it wasn't broken, but they were actually very nice and told me they would either have us send it back for credit, or let us scrap it and credit us! I can tell you most companies (especially online companies) wouldn't be that understanding! If you ever remodel a bathroom, FaucetDirect.com is highly recommended for bathroom fixtures! We bought our vanity, sinks, and linen cabinet from them and have been very happy with the customer service. I ended up calling all over town to find someone who could have a granite top built to the specs of the old one and have it ready within a week and finally found someone. I actually like our new granite top better, it's better quality, prettier...and cheaper! So it ended up working out in the long run.

Packing everything into our 10x15 storage was like playing a life size game of tetris, but we made it work! On Sunday we were packing the last of our things and Frank asks me if I knew where his guitar lesson CD's and books were...uhhhh....oops, they are packed into one of the boxes. I meticulously labeled each and every box with the contents, and even numbered them all (on all sides of the box) and wrote all the contents into a notebook just in case. Learning from experience...but of course I don't have the notebook with me at the storage facility. So anyway- Frank decides that he's going to find the box with his guitar lessons. I knew the box was somewhere on the back left hand side of the storage which was now packed to the brim. It was soo funny watching him monkey his way back there and digging through all those boxes, I felt so bad for him, but he really wanted his guitar lesson book! He literally had to dig a hole through all our junk and look at each and every box. He got down to the last box at the very bottom, in the far corner of the storage unit and there it was! Haha! Poor guy, it was seriously in the last box it could have been in, in the worst spot ever, but he got his lessons! And to make matters worse, when we were pulling out of the storage facility after packing the last of our things he asks me if I have his phone...nope. He left it in the back of the storage unit! Ha! I ended up crawling back there to find it (under a pillow, on vibrate nonetheless. It was definitely a sight to see. Our storage has a 10 ft ceiling and I was basically army crawling through the one foot space we had open at the top over our matresses, chairs, entertainment center, etc. It was comical to say the least. At least we can laugh about it :)

We've been in the RV 3 nights now and it's actually pretty fun! No complaints yet, so far my only annoyance is having to drain out the shower water every couple of showers, the tank seems to fill up fast. Or maybe I just take long showers? Other than that, it's been a good time :). I will post photos of the RV life soon!

It’s the final countdown!!

I can’t help singing that song in my head every time I’m working on something in the house. Things are definitely in full-swing at the Prokop household…and all I’ve got to say about that is hole-y-crap. This is worse than planning a wedding!

It’s almost over, though! And in 3 weeks we won’t be waking up to dust & chaos & boxes everywhere and upturned carpet tack boards that a contractor thoughtfully left on the inside of my closet door (true story, stepped on one this morning at 6am). Regardless of the stressfulness, we are having fun with the last few days at the casa and I have a feeling we will miss having our little project. I know we will miss the house. I’m sure we will find other projects soon enough. I am married to Frank Prokop… :)

 

I wanted to post updated photos of the master bath, but not much has changed in the past two weeks. We had a little hang-up with a tile issue and it set us back quite a bit.  We are hoping the tile will be finished this weekend so we can get in there and do the million little things that have to be done before the renters get here (paint, install vanities/toilet, lights, fixtures, baseboards, caulk, etc., etc.,). It’s just a lot of time consuming stuff, luckily we’ve done it all before several times before so we should be pretty efficient about it.

This past weekend we got a storage unit and started moving lots of boxes and odds & ends in. We also worked on the landscaping of our back yard and laid out about 50 bags of mulch along with some weed blocker fabric. It looks so much better that the weeded jungle we had going on behind the pool. I planted some hibiscus flowers back there a few weeks ago and they just started blooming again yesterday, that makes me happy! This upcoming Saturday we have movers taking our furniture to storage. Having the house empty should make it easier to finish up the little things here and there (and keep us from sitting on the couch and watching hockey playoffs & eating chocolate ice cream, which has been happening more than I'd like to admit..ha).

Anyway- we are surviving, hopefully we get everything finished before the 20^th! That’s our deadline. After that we are soooooooo looking forward to sitting on our butts and doing nothing, absolutely nothing :). I think we are going to Panama City Beach for Memorial Day weekend…it will be much needed!

Here are a few photos from the last few days:

Current state of the carport



Trash from bathroom remodel




Doesn't look like much, but it took hours to weed, chainsaw, cover with weed fabric and mulch this area!



The trash guys are going to love us this morning...there are about 4 more black bags of trash not visiable, it basically takes up our whole curb! Ha! This all came from the area we mulched.



Our new vanity- it's here, just waiting to be installed!



Journaling

I realize this post is probably going to make me look like a huge nerd. But whatever...

I was packing up some things yesterday and came across the box with all my old journals in it. It is impossible to not open that box without taking a few of the books out and reading the words written by a younger me. I was a pretty avid “journaler”…is that even word? (Google says no). The oldest journal entries I have are from when I was 8 years old. I had scribbled handwriting, and mostly wrote about birthday parties, my younger siblings, and my friends that lived next door. As I got older my handwriting, thankfully, got better…and I started writing in glittery, multicolored pens about the awfulness of being an adolescent and how everything was so UNFAIR, and life was so dramatic. Even though my biggest problems were my parents not wanting to drive me to the mall so I could hang out with my friends that weekend. Oh the horror...Ha! I also have several unfinished journals about specific moments in time. Such as my Y2K journal. I kept a journal for the month leading up to Y2K, you know, just in case the world ended. I also still have the journal I kept during my sophomore year during Mr. Loincriers computer class in highschool. He had us type in our journals every few days as a typing assignment. At the end of the year we printed it. I still have it, and it’s long, like 30+ pages. My thoughts during the tragedy at the World Trade Center is covered in this journal. As I got older my writing lessened. I would go weeks with writing every day, then skipping a few months here and there. Then college rolled around and I would go several months or a year without writing, and then make a few entries just because I had some time to kill. My last real journal entry was from my senior year of college (4 years ago), right before I moved to Alabama. It’s always so neat to go back and read the thoughts that were going through my head at any specific time. I love that I am able to go back and read them. It’s like a little window into my past. Maybe someday I will get back into it...