kcaleece

Thanks! You know it's been rough when my husband told me this morning without any hint of joking that he hopes we'll get more sleep after the baby gets here 😅 (Hopefully she does better in that department than her brother did, though that's a very low bar...he wasn't colic-y but good gods did that child hate sleeping. Still does somewhat!) But gods bless my husband, since he speaks fluent Spanish and has tomorrow off work, he has volunteered to help grade at least some of my writing exams 🥲🥰 Those take forever and a year to get through, so I will be PSYCHED to get even just a few of them knocked off my plate! Quest One: Nutrition Goal #1 (one "good" dinner a week) - Went ahead and knocked this out early on Tuesday, and thank the gods I did because I am so exhausted at this point that even box food feels like a lot of work. Are we sure it's not healthy to just eat dry cereal for dinner? Goal #2 (drink 80-100 ounces of water) - Well I did break 70 on Tuesday but not by as much as I expected to with a final total of only 80 ounces. (Partly not helped by the fact I accidentally forgot my water bottle at home when we were at baseball practice) Yesterday I got to just about 70 ounces, and today so far I'm behind again with a current total of only 57 ounces at 4:45pm. (Today was entirely because it was exam proctoring day because I was constantly sipping on water outside of exam times.) Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch Goal #1 (sweat or stretch 4x a week) - Tuesday walk home from school got me to 2x for the week, but I'm not even going to get in Friday's walk home from school (the husband is doing it since I have an OB appointment) so I'd better stretch or walk on my own or I won't make it this week! Quest Three: Work Goal #1 (stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy) - Everyone is prepped for tomorrow (though I'm still short 1 set of copies) but only 1 class is planned for Monday, which super sucks. Goal #2 (one assignment graded for each class every week) - Whew! Everyone has gotten an update now, but I'm still behind on 1st hour Spanish 2 in particular. And none of my advanced classes (French 2, Spanish 3, Spanish 4) have seen even a part of their exams graded yet. At least I got through Spanish 2 and French 1 listening sections today. Goal #3 (maternity leave plans) - no more progress yet outside of getting Spanish 3 Unit 4 set up on Canvas but I may take a few minutes tonight to try to get that bellwork knocked out so I can at least be comforted by that unit being officially done at that point. I also want to at least make progress on another unit, but haven't decided which yet. But I also want to plan next week, grade, and sleep, and it's another late night home alone with the kid, so...yeah, if wishes were wings we would all be flying, right?

Hmmmm. My husband does a vast majority of the cooking, especially over the last few years, but I am the one who is more interested in cooking. My husband appreciates a well-cooked meal, but the actual act is more of a necessary chore to him whereas I'm the one who tends to be more excited by the idea of cooking (I just don't have time or energy!) Though the things I want him to get a lot of are usually things that I know we'll eat and won't go bad, like black beans or chicken that I can wrap up and freeze.

And it's time for the next descent into madness, as we have taken to calling it. After two days of reasonable human schedules, we now enter the next period of being stretched way too thin. It's not entirely our fault this time - my husband discovered that his AD at his school thinks they need more than twice as many soccer games as they actually do (the state won't let teams play in the postseason even if they qualify if they play less than 8 games during the regular season, but his AD thought the rule was 18 games) so they're cram packed with games this week, plus baseball season is heating up for my son with two practices and two games, plus it's parent-teacher conferences for my husband's school, plus my OB appointments have increased to every other week instead of every month. Throw in our nephew's 7th birthday plus one of my son's friend's birthday party plus a state conservation event we agreed to help at before we knew how busy this week would turn out to be, and there isn't another day where we can breath and relax until next week Monday. I also broke the challenge rule of "only buying cute baby stuff when I finish a maternity leave unit plan" because I realized three things: the box of newborn clothing I saved after my son outgrew it does not contain a single pair of pants for whatever reason, despite me knowing for a fact that he owned newborn pants (were they all that messy and I've forgotten in the intervening almost 6 years?); baby girl is definitely going to be born into some very cold weather and thus will undoubtedly need pants; and Carter's was having its semi-annual baby clothes sale. $150 later (ouch!) and we have an order in for a handful of newborn pants, a pack of newborn onesies, an extra newborn sleeper, a precious little Christmas dress, and a dress shirt and some Christmas pajamas for my son. No regrets though! Anyway...a challenge update! Quest One: Nutrition Goal #1 (one "good" dinner a week) - Nothing yet, but this should be pretty easy. We have leftover meatballs in the fridge and that's usually a good go-to for me! Goal #2 (drink 80-100 ounces of water) - Yesterday I fell short but didn't do poorly considering I was stuck in meetings all morning until 11:30 and legit couldn't get out to refill my water bottle for about two hours. I'm almost to 64 ounces today though and it's only 2:45, I'm excited to finally break 70 for the first time in quite a while! Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch Goal #1 (sweat or stretch 4x a week) - We did go on a short family walk on Sunday - and thankfully it was very short because I forgot my compression socks and started swelling up faster than I expected. Quest Three: Work Goal #1 (stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy) - Still behind here with only 4 out of the 5 classes prepped for tomorrow so far and even worse, only 1 of them printed and copied. Will definitely have some work to do tonight despite being tired. Goal #2 (one assignment graded for each class every week) - I have one more Spanish 2 class to go, then Spanish 3 (who have not had grades put in for quite a while now). Then I'm going to try to tackle French 2 projects even though they got their normal classwork and homework in recently. Goal #3 (maternity leave plans) - I decided I really needed a win so I have been working my butt off on Spanish 3, Unit 4 and it is very nearly done!! I have all 20 lesson plans done at the moment and all 7 extras, but I still need to put them onto Canvas (I just don't publish them yet obviously) and make all the bellwork prompts. I'm far enough behind on stuff I actually need for *this* week that it might very well not be done by tonight, but it should be soon at least. Thursday at the latest, I'm hoping!

Hmmm. Never thought about it before now, but that is exactly how my husband and I are as well - he's the person who waits until the very last minute to stock up, and I'm the one who always bugs him to buy extras and then gets mildly irritated when he shows up with only one of whatever item we were talking about. My parents had money but always talked a lot about how tight the budget was, how we couldn't afford to keep eating "like this", etc. and it wasn't until I was a young adult trying to live on my own for the first time that I realized they were exaggerating their problems. I'll have to ask the husband what his parents were like in regards to this - my guess is that he heard very different messaging, as I do know his mom was actively trying to learn how to "cook like an American" and might have wanted to buy various things for specific recipes fairly routinely?

Vitamin C I've heard before - I was always told to take it with orange juice, which annoyed my husband because I would never drink it except to take my pills which meant it routinely went bad before I finished the carton - but vitamin B12 is a new one to me! I'm pretty sure I have some in my cabinet, so if I can find the bottle (and it's still good!) I'll have to give that a try. Can't hurt at least! Otherwise it's been a busy few days, per usual. Friday night my son played a baseball doubleheader and on Saturday we were running a bunch of errands and then I was contracted to supervise the school Homecoming dance. I was super grumpy about it because I didn't sign up for it or anything, but the district decided that they would just assign teachers to various dances and make it part of our contracts this year so they didn't have to beg us to sign up or pay us extra (and also it didn't end until 11:30 and that is well past my bedtime, not to mention we still had to stay to clean up and I live 30 minutes away from school). But they at least gave me a seated job and I survived, so now I'm done with required extra supervision for the year! Which is why I didn't try to switch with anyone (which we are allowed to do) - I figured it would be better to get it done and over with now so I don't have to worry about it while I have a newborn at home. Challenge update: Quest One: Nutrition Goal #1 (one "good" dinner a week) - The husband's soccer game on Friday got canceled due to a lack of refs, so he came home early and made dinner for us again. Which was lovely! So I technically did have "good" dinner but kinda "cheated" in that he made it. Again. Oh well, I still got good dinner into me and it's so nice when he can be home! Goal #2 (drink 80-100 ounces of water) - Well I got to 70 ounces yesterday at least for the first time in a while. I bought some of those powdered flavor packet things to help but my favorite flavor unfortunately has caffeine in it and I have been able to handle my coffee again (had my first successful try on Friday!) so now I feel like I can't use them, womp womp. Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch Goal #1 (sweat or stretch 4x a week) - I only got to 3 walks last week with no stretches, though I did try a little bit on my own. It's far more effective when I have my husband to brace against to get really good stretches. Quest Three: Work Goal #1 (stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy) - A bit behind here, as I'm not even ready for Tuesday yet (next day with students). 3 out of 5 preps are 100% ready for Tuesday, but the other 2 are like 90% ready. And no one really has Wednesday prepped yet, though 2 are largely done (maybe 80%?) and 2 more have materials made but they're stored in a very obnoxious way I was required to use last year that is going to be a massive pain to convert back to "normal" files. And the last one isn't even started yet. Oops? Goal #2 (one assignment graded for each class every week) - Spanish 2 got grades in at least, which always takes the longest because that's the majority of my students. And I'm currently happy with where French 1 is, which is my next biggest class. So...while not actually done yet, I'm in okay shape. Not great, but okay. Goal #3 (maternity leave plans) - Spanish 2, Unit 6 is now 100% done as is Spanish 4, Unit 4! I did in fact get them both done by Saturday, yay Torn between working on Spanish 4, Unit 5 - technically have the first two days done for this actually, since that got me through a calendar week as Unit 4 will test on a Wednesday - and maybe Spanish 3, Unit 4 because that one will have a lot of copy+paste like Spanish 4, Unit 4 did, since I was reasonably happy with how that unit went last year and it won't need like massive restructuring or anything, just some edits and rearrangement and that sort of thing. I like the idea of trying to get another unit knocked out of the way as quick as possible so I can feel less panicked about having 11 units left to prep in about 11 weeks - there are 10 weeks and 5 days until our projected C-section date, to be precise - but I also like the idea of continuing with the idea of knocking out a whole prep at a time.

Wow, two posts in a row! But it has been a packed morning, so why not So I got my blood test results back already! That was a surprisingly fast 5 business days 😂 Anyway the good news is that my thyroid looked good, though borderline too low (I'm only in range by 0.1) and I don't have gestational diabetes. Yay! I am, however, anemic. That is not a surprise - the only time I have not been anemic in the last 18 years was when I was pregnant with my son, interestingly enough. The nurse suggested adding an iron supplement every other day. I don't have the heart to message her back and say that I already take 4 a day and that a 9.6 is actually above my average result (normal starts at 12 and I typically come back vaguely around 8). Maybe I'll throw in a 5th pill every so often and try to eat more hamburger, it won't hurt 🤷‍♀️ Otherwise my husband almost gave me a heart attack this morning when he was talking about how excited he is to reach third trimester on Saturday and how that means there's only 11 weeks until the baby is born (due to me needing a planned c-section). I agreed and then promptly went into panic mode about how I still have 12 units to prep for maternity leave. Plus my normal prepping, plus grading, plus trying to not completely ignore my family, plus trying to take care of myself and keep my stress levels low (HA!)...holy fuck it's all so much. I did get some good work done on my maternity leave plans last night and a little more so far today, but I am terrified and have no idea how I'm going to make this happen without a mental and/or physical collapse along the way. Quest One: Nutrition Goal #1 (one "good" dinner a week) - Last night my husband ended up getting off work early, so he made us all paninis for dinner Goal #2 (drink 80-100 ounces of water) - Same old story here. Though I did get a little over that 64 mark yesterday and am in better shape than normal so far today! Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch Goal #1 (sweat or stretch 4x a week) - my husband encouraged me to walk to the school yesterday to pick up my son, even though I was getting him from after-school care (I normally pick him up without even stopping by home first, but I went home yesterday to meet my husband so we could go together). So now I'm at 2 walks for the week with a 3rd scheduled for our normal Friday pick-up! Quest Three: Work Goal #1 (stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy) - I'm now prepped for this week, though not entirely copied, and I'm making headway into next week. I forgot there are no students on Monday (more teacher meetings. Oh joy.) but I have Spanish 2 and French 1 ready for Tuesday and Spanish 3 and 4 will go fast because all they need is a few edits from the same activity last year. French 2 is going to take a hot minute though for sure, these review days always take forever and a year to prepare. Goal #2 (one assignment graded for each class every week) - no new grades in yet because the new gradebook software was throwing fits when I tried, but it seems to be behaving itself now so I'll try for some this evening probably. Goal #3 (maternity leave plans) - Last night I *almost* finished Spanish 2, Unit 6 by making all the bellwork and knocking out 2 of the 3 required video lectures. 1 more to go and then Spanish 2 will be 100% set! I also got the first week of Spanish 4, Unit 4 done last night so that was what I returned to this morning. I am now through day 9 of 19 (with no unit extras yet), though that also includes 2 yet-unmade video lectures and also-still-unwritten bellwork prompts. I'm combining some old activities to increase my copy+paste rate, so I'm really hoping to get the lessons at least knocked out no later than Saturday, especially since I know Spanish 4, Unit 5 didn't exist last year so that'll go much slower as there is nothing to copy+paste from...sigh. I think it will improve the class overall though, so I'm going to try my best!

Thanks! I'm still not at a "not panicking" stage, but it helps to know that one entire prep is (super close) to being ready. Of course, I did start with the easiest one... And yes, technically I did report her, but I was in no state to do so at the moment. I ended up sticking with the OB I met in the emergency room (I was super done with my previous OB, whose shenanigans included literally forgetting I existed in their waiting room a few days before the ER trip, making me wait nearly 5 hours to be seen, and then promptly informing me that I couldn't get any of the testing I wanted done because it was too late in the day and everyone had gone home - not blaming them for the loss, I was only 13 weeks along so there was no saving that baby, but it still pissed me off something awful) and reported her to him, but what he did with that information I will never know. He was very much a caring kind of guy and I do know that it was only a few months afterwards that his entire clinic no longer delivered babies at that hospital, so...maybe it was related? Or a last straw kind of deal? Which was sad, because that hospital system had long been widely considered the best in the city only a few years before this all happened, and now they've seriously declined to "meh" status even in most of their other buildings (imo, there are still people who swear by them of course). There have been a lot of little things happening with the pregnancy lately! I had a bad few days of an upset stomach, vomiting, etc. starting only about an hour after my last post - according to my OB, apparently you can get a second round of morning sickness at the start of third trimester. Which for me is Saturday, but close enough. It's not like my stomach is sitting there with a calendar, you know? The doctor said it rarely lasts more than a week or two though, and I've already noticed it starting to subside, so I won't bitch too much. I also got my gestational diabetes screening done just this morning, which included some extra blood draws to check on my anemia and thyroid, so now it's a waiting game for those results. The lab said up to 5 business days, so I'm not holding my breath. And we've started accumulating baby things in the house again! Not going to lie, it kinda freaks me out a bit - I really am uneasy about buying lots of baby things after our repeated losses. But I found the cutest little green sleeper with a precious applique bunny on it and figured why not? It's adorable and I "earned" it with my maternity leave plans, after all. So I bought that in 0-3 months so it would last longer than newborn (though I bought very little newborn sized stuff for my son because he kept on measuring big on the scans, only for him to fit into newborn sizes for a solid 5 weeks!) And my husband bought a set of onesies with the local soccer team logo on them in 0-3 months and a Rolling Stones sweatshirt in a newborn size because that's the kind of thing he gets excited about. And then we discovered that the bassinet I wanted was on a surprise sale for only $215 (normally $270) and that was a little bit more of a discount than I would have gotten if we waited for the coupon in October, so we bit the bullet and it arrived yesterday! It was surprisingly easy to put together and I'm so happy with it 🥳 Though it did freak out my husband when he forgot about it in the middle of the night and saw a large black shape in the room with us, the poor guy 🤣 My son was talking about the baby last night because my belly is starting to push him off my lap a bit, hahaha, so I asked him if he was excited to be a big brother. He said yes, so I asked what he was most looking forward to doing with the baby. My precious boy thought for a while and then said, "I really want to show her what rainbows look like after it rains" ❤️❤️❤️ Oh, how my heart melted! He doesn't do transitions well but moments like that make me think we'll be okay 🥰 Quest One: Nutrition Goal #1 (one "good" dinner a week) - ...I genuinely can't remember what I've eaten for dinner this week so far. Like, seriously. Even just what I ate last night is a mystery to me right now. Is that bad? Goal #2 (drink 80-100 ounces of water) - Ugh, still limping my way to 64 ounces the last few days, but I'm going to go ahead and blame that on the upset stomach. While I can keep water and other fluids (and most foods) down, even just a generally upset stomach does slow down how much I want to drink. Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch Goal #1 (sweat or stretch 4x a week) - only at 1x this week so far with Tuesday's walk home from school. Quest Three: Work Goal #1 (stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy) - Well things are a little scattered at the moment, with unit exams coming up next week, but most classes/materials are prepped through this week/Monday and just not put together into my nice little student agendas. I do need to finish those though, and I am behind on the actual act of making copies. Being ready to copy doesn't count if the copies aren't actually made! Goal #2 (one assignment graded for each class every week) - well now French 1 grades are in but no one else has new grades up, hahaha. I have some Spanish 2 grades done on paper that just need data entry though (and a LOT more that are still yet to be looked at...) Goal #3 (maternity leave plans) - No more progress on Spanish 2, Unit 6 yet. But I did technically start both Spanish 3 and 4 (the first "welcome back to second semester!" week is identical for those two classes) and got a single day of Spanish 4, Unit 4 done, so...guess that's what I'm working on next? It'll probably go a bit slower than Spanish 2 since last year was the first year anyone was brave enough to sign up (versus 3 years of polishing on the Spanish 2 curriculum), so the curriculum for 4 is super new and admittedly really rough, but at least a previous curriculum exists to work from, right?

That's exactly how I learned how to cook, honestly - repeatedly follow a recipe super precisely until I feel okay about messing with tiny things, then tracking how those change the final product until I feel okay about changing big things. It's the same energy behind my husband precisely weighing and timing the coffee every morning. Now I've kinda made up a second set of rules about what I can and can't change, plus how to change things when I can. But I was very much the only cook in the house until I started my first MA program, so I got a ton of practice! Now my husband is actually the primary cook but he has yet to develop a wide range of dishes - he just got good at making maybe 10 different things, so we rotate our way through those until I find a good day for me to cook something new. He still overcooks my beef more often than not though 😆 It's not really his fault, the concept of rare meat is not one that he dealt with until I came along (it's not really a thing in his culture).

Oh, I'm sure that happens all the time. But if you weren't prepared to deal with that when you agreed to with in L&D, maybe you should rethink your career decisions. Such a lack of empathy is natural over time, honestly, but you have to learn not to show it. It's part of any job that works with the general public - as a teacher, I actively work on not showing the families I don't like that I in fact don't like them. (They (mostly) didn't even do anything that awful, but when I have around 100 students a semester, I'm not going to think all of them are super awesome people.) All it does is make people who are already worried feel even worse and make them less likely to come back when they feel like there's another problem - and especially in something like L&D, what if they're right the second time? There's another hospital that I will not even step foot in again after a nurse rolled her eyes at me and audibly mocked me to her friend because I was loudly crying while being wheeled to my D&C with my first miscarriage that refused to pass naturally after nearly 12 hours in the ER. (And yes, she knew exactly why I was there and why I was so upset) That was August 31, 2016 and I still feel sick and upset every time I remember that bitch, but she certainly doesn't remember me. I will not hesitate to drive 45 minutes to get to the good hospital even though that one is less than 15 minutes away from my house - almost entirely because of that interaction. Ugh you guys, I am absolutely wiped. Can I get a weekend to recover from my weekend? And I didn't even get any grading done... Quest One: Nutrition Goal #1 (one "good" dinner a week) - I only kinda got that other half credit because my husband ended up getting to come home early and took over dinner responsibilities for me! Which is cheating, according to my own rules, but he just made the leftovers I was planning on making, so it's not entirely cheating? Goal #2 (drink 80-100 ounces of water) - I've done even worse here this weekend and have barely made it to 64 ounces the last few days. I feel like I should say something else here but I am straight up too braindead to think of anything. Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch Goal #1 (sweat or stretch 4x a week) - got to #4 with Friday walk-from-school and a quick stretch on Saturday Quest Three: Work Goal #1 (stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy) - tomorrow is a PD day so I can plan and copy between meetings. I have all my classes prepped for Tuesday except Spanish 3. Spanish 4 is done for the whole week though which is nice? Goal #2 (one assignment graded for each class every week) - everyone has this except French 1, who got zero grades in this last week. I'll try to sneak in a few tomorrow. Goal #3 (maternity leave plans) - This has been my massive brain drain over the last two days. I finished all of Spanish 2, Unit 5 (yay!) and then got to work on Spanish 2, Unit 6. The 6th unit will be interesting in all my classes, since I will be coming back partly into it, but maternity leave is so difficult to predict exact dates. Right now I'm projected to return on the 18th, but it could be anywhere in a wide range that kinda sorta vaguely centers on the 18th. So I've decided to just prep through the entire month of March (which gets me to class #14 out of 19 in the entire unit) under the idea that I will also appreciate having a buffer of plans prepped for my return so I don't have to worry about it while I'm on leave. Meaning I need 19 plans in total for unit 6 (14 classes + at least 5 extras). I have worked my butt off on this over the weekend because the whole not having maternity leave plans thing is freaking me out so badly, so I currently have 16 out of those 19 plans done and ready to go (technically 17 but that's including 1 more extra than I actually "need"). The final 3 plans are outlined, but they require video lectures that haven't been made yet, so I won't cross them off the list until that's done. And technically I need to do bellwork prompts for the whole unit but that shouldn't take terribly long and I'll probably do it during a meeting tomorrow.

Awww, that's so adorable! I tried to do that in high school once and got yelled at because my friend's mom was convinced my cookies-and-soda package was a bomb (even though it was very clearly labeled and the contents visible, may I add), hahaha. That does sound lovely! Bats are so much fun to watch. Also, I can highly recommend the NY Times beef bourguignon recipe if that's what you choose to make. I made it for the first time last fall and it was delicious!

I was doing that over the summer, kinda - I tried for my first 32 ounces at breakfast, second 32 ounces at lunch, and third 32 ounces at dinner. If I didn't finish at a certain meal, I had until the next meal started to finish. I've been trying to do a similar thing at work, just being aware that I'll never have time (or the bladder capacity) to drink that much at a meal while teaching, but I was originally trying for "1st set by advisory (which is hour 5 of 8), 2nd set by contract time, 3rd at home". But I swear it's like the busier I get, the less I want to drink? I rarely even reach that first goal and there have been days where I'm just finishing my first set by contract time. Not even honestly sure why, maybe it's just some kind of weird psychological thing? Lots of us don't drink that much during the day because there are so few opportunities to go to the bathroom... So it turned out that I didn't get to see *my* OB on my birthday - she got called out of clinic suddenly when another woman went into labor early. Well and to be fair, they told me I could wait for her and they'd have her see me when that was over, even if it was after their normal hours, but I had to get to my son on time so I agreed to see another doctor and just hoped it wouldn't be the one I hated in the hospital 😆 Thankfully it was not! The appointment was faster than normal because the substitute doctor didn't really know what else was going on with me and really only had the most basic information, but Halfling passed all her checks with flying colors. The doctor did say I could start doing kick counts if I'm concerned about movement even though they normally suggest starting that at 28 weeks, but Halfling has been moving really well for weeks now so I could try as long as I was also aware that my results at 26 weeks would still be a little more inconsistent than they will be at 28+. I haven't had great luck with going to L&D early - I went pre-C-section date three times with my son and all three times the nurses rolled their eyes at me and were clearly very annoyed that I was bothering them, even though two out of those three times it turned out I was legit in early labor and they had to give me meds to stop it! - but this baby will be delivered at a different, better hospital so if I do have to go in, hopefully it will be a less obnoxious experience. And of course since then Halfling has been merrily kicking away just fine, so I haven't had to worry much in the last few days! Quest One: Nutrition Goal #1 (one "good" dinner a week) - I had a kind of middle dinner on Monday where I had leftover meatloaf but with a side of box mac and cheese. So I'm giving myself half credit? And hoping/planning on getting at least another half credit today at dinner, since it's going to be another late night. Goal #2 (drink 80-100 ounces of water) - Well I got to 80 ounces on Tuesday pretty well and then yesterday I struggled my way across the 64 ounce line right before bedtime. Trying to focus on getting that first 32 ounces down early in hopes that will help? I have the first 16 done already today, but I often do by this point... Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch Goal #1 (sweat or stretch 4x a week) - walking home from school on Tuesday gets me #2 for the week, and I wanted to do some stretches last night but ended up falling asleep while putting my son to bed on accident, so it didn't happen. Maybe tonight? Quest Three: Work Goal #1 (stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy) - I have limped and fought my way to being prepped for the rest of this week despite the tough start. Monday is a PD day so no massive worries there about sneaking in some time to copy, which will be nice. I do only have 2 out of the 20 lessons I will need for next week done though. Goal #2 (one assignment graded for each class every week) - I finished Spanish 2 grades yesterday and entered French 2 grades as well, so my only class left for this week is French 1. Hoping to get their work in fairly quickly, since it was a project week and there's not a ton of different things to sort through, and maybe even get a head start on grading the week 3 stuff? (next week is week 4 of instruction but grading is typically 1 week behind since they of course have to do it before I can grade it) Goal #3 (maternity leave plans) - Ugh, I really hoped to be able to say this was done by today, but it has really slowed down like crazy. Out of my 25 plan goal (19 classes + minimum 6 extras) I have only gotten to...technically still 17 done (12 classes + 5 extras) but I have 2 classes that are almost done to get to 19. One class just needs a homework assignment and the other class needs me to finish making an answer key, which is tough to do while I'm at work since it's a listening assignment I had my husband record for us last year and I don't often get quiet minutes to listen to the recording (because I no longer remember his precise wording and of course it's a cloze-style "fill in the missing word" assignment!)

*sad puppy dog eyes* You want to share with me, right? What I wouldn't give for a proper baguette...haven't had one in years and the local bakeries are unfortunately only able to produce sad imitations. Why does the Midwest seem to think that baguettes should be bendy??? It is starting to cool down here too and it has been such a blessing. My husband complained that "it didn't feel like summer anymore" when he went to the neighborhood pool but I told him it's September, it is time to move on! I hope your outside evening tea turns out lovely

Right?? I mean, that has kinda been the theme of this pregnancy - I'm doing poorly but the baby is just taking everything she needs from me without hesitation and is chugging along merrily - but it's still nice to confirm every so often! And we're super happy to hear the hole in her heart might have closed; we weren't super scared of it per say because it sounded like it wasn't going to have a huge effect on her life, but it's still nice to remove those restrictions that she *could* have needed to live under. I am glad that I see my regular OB today though, because baby girl has been moving noticeably quite a bit less over the last few days. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't been forcing myself to eat when I don't really want to (less constant food could logically mean less constant movement?) or another perfectly reasonable reason, including "I'm only 26 weeks along and there is a reason they don't tell people to do kick counts until 28 weeks". My husband likes to tell me to calm down because the scan was less than a week ago and went so very well, but with our history, I dunno, I just feel like there's always a point in these kinds of losses where you go from okay to very much not okay, and the fact is that we could have hit that point in the days after the scan, so while I try not to worry, each calm from good scans and appointment doesn't "last" as long as most people think it should. And how nice it will be to get a good report from the doctor on my actual birthday! 😁 Because I do expect I will get a good report and be told that I need to calm down already, hahaha. I celebrated my birthday with my husband and son yesterday on account of the fact today is actually super duper busy - I have 2 doctor appointments, one with my GI this morning and one with my OB after work, and my husband is coaching his school's soccer game tonight as well. We went to the city zoo, which just opened their brand new aquarium on the 1st. Our nursery is "under the sea" themed after we learned about our first ever pregnancy the day we went to the oceanarium in Lisbon on our honeymoon (plus we both agreed that underwater scenes are relaxing to us) so it was rather fitting! Then we got Panda Express for dinner because I'd been craving it for a few days For my challenge: Quest One: Nutrition Goal #1 (one "good" dinner a week) - I did have a "good" dinner of rice and leftover chicken last...Thursday or Friday, I can't remember which. I did drop slightly over 2 pounds since my last post, but I gained almost one back this morning (probably due to the extra salt and stuff in my Panda Express dinner). I am definitely in charge of dinner today, tomorrow, and Thursday...we'll see what I do, it's tempting to say I can knock this out tonight since it's going to be easiest to stick to leftovers tonight given how late I'll be back after my appointment. But I could also see myself deciding I'm too stressed and in need of comfort if the appointment doesn't go as well as I'd like... Goal #2 (drink 80-100 ounces of water) - Very glad I lowered this to 80 to start, as it's already proving quite challenging! I am pretty good at making it to 64, but that jump up to 80 seems to be the main sticking point. I only made it twice since my last post! I'm considering lowering my first goal to something like 72, halfway between, to make it a little easier and maybe score a few more wins to start building the habit again. Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch Goal #1 (sweat or stretch 4x a week) - two days barely knocked out last week with another walking-home-from-elementary-school day on Friday (this is why I set the goal at 4x a week, because I walk my son home 2x a week already) and stretches on Saturday. This week so far I'm counting walking around the zoo on Sunday as #1 because that was actually quite a bit of walking, even if it was less than we normally do at the zoo, but it was still quite a ways for me and I was definitely sweating despite it being much cooler than last week. Quest Three: Work Goal #1 (stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy) - UGH I am barely here (and technically not there at all!) with all my classes prepped and copied for tomorrow and Wednesday except 1. But, in my defense, that is because that one last class requires color copies - yay discussions about art - and I do not have access to a color printer or copier here at school, so I had to outsource it to my husband who does. Goal #2 (one assignment graded for each class every week) - Spanish 2 grades are in, even if there is still 1 more assignment to go until I consider last week "finished". Spanish 3 and 4 grades are in as well. But French 1 and 2 grades haven't been started yet for the week. Maybe tonight, we'll see? Goal #3 (maternity leave plans) - I did get a really good bit of planning done here on Friday!! So out of the goal 25 plans (19 classes + minimum 6 extras) I now have 17 done (12 classes + 5 extras). I just have my last week and the study guide/exam to go. Future units will go slower - this one is going fast because it is one I have taught before and just need to edit/tweak/otherwise improve - but hey, sometimes it helps to get the low hanging fruit picked first, right?

Yup, somehow I'm in month 6! I think I skipped a month somehow maybe, because it doesn't seem possible. Saturday makes 26 weeks, though my belly is so big people have started assuming I'm like 8 months along. Baby girl is just popping out way more and faster than my son did for whatever reason. I started wearing maternity clothes around this point with him and with her, I've been wearing maternity sizes since the end of June 😂 I like your reaction better than my husband's though - his logic was that since the C-section will likely be scheduled for either December 8th or 11th and I was telling him this on September 4th, he technically had more than 3 months, so he didn't have to worry about it yet 😬 On that note, I saw the high-risk OB yesterday for the fetal echocardiogram. Baby girl did not make it easy on them - she was far more interested in showing off her yoga moves than letting them get a good scan of her heart - but the doctor said that he didn't necessarily see the hole they spotted in her heart in July! He did tell us that since they couldn't get all the pictures they wanted to, he couldn't say for absolute sure that it had filled in, but he feels confident that it has at minimum gotten smaller and that if it is still there, we're probably looking at over 50% odds that it will be gone by the time she is born. They'll still do a full check of her heart after birth to make sure, since that's even more accurate than his super specialized equipment, but we'll be able to do that in the hospital and at this point he does not think we need to contact a pediatric cardiologist. Yay!!! He also let us know that her growth so far looks really good - she's in about the 65th percentile for length and head circumference so far, and their best guess at her current weight is about 2 pounds, 1 ounce (the goal for this stage of pregnancy is anything around or over 1 pound, 12 ounces). And while he can't say for 100% sure, based on everything he saw, he's thinking the part of her lungs that make super pre-term birth so dangerous are either fully developed or very close to - while of course we don't want her to be born this early for many reasons, that's a really important mark to hit because it essentially quadruples the survival rate if she was to come this early and they couldn't stop it. 🥳 Quest One: Nutrition Goal #1 (one "good" dinner a week) - nope, not yet. Between Tuesday shenanigans at my son's school (long story short, they forgot Labor Day was a thing and followed his Monday plan while I was following his Tuesday plan and for about 15 minutes, no one knew where my kid was when I came to pick him up!) and yesterday's doctor appointment, quick and easy has been the name of the game for the last few days. Thinking I'm going to try for some leftover chicken tonight, even though it's another busy one. Goal #2 (drink 80-100 ounces of water) - I fell short on Tuesday, ending the day with about 70 ounces down. But I (barely, but it counts) made it to 80 yesterday! Off to a strong start this morning since I'm exhausted but can't handle coffee yet, sigh. Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch Goal #1 (sweat or stretch 4x a week) - well I most certainly was sweating on Tuesday with the walk to and from school, plus all the walking around checking various spots trying to find my kid! And last night I got my husband to help me stretch out my calves since they've been hurting the most. So 2 days down, 2 to go! Quest Three: Work Goal #1 (stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy) - today I need to have everything copied through Monday. I have all my classes planned through Monday except French 2 - this unit is going to be the death of me, I swear. Copies themselves are barely started though, with only Spanish 2 and 3 ready to go for tomorrow and no one ready for Monday so far. Goal #2 (one assignment graded for each class every week) - well I put in grades over Labor Day, but nothing since yet. French 2 is getting non-grade feedback on their first drafts of their first writing assessment today though, so I'm counting that. Need to do that same for Spanish 2 tonight to hand back tomorrow. Goal #3 (maternity leave plans) - so for ease of tracking, each unit is a minimum of 25 plans (19 classes + 6 extras, though the number of extras may vary a bit if I have a lot of stuff). I currently have 11 plans (9 classes + 2 extras) done for Spanish 2 Unit 5. Ugh, was really hoping to be farther on this by today 😓

That's right, the second day of this challenge is my 37th birthday! 🥳 Happy birthday to me... With that said, I'm definitely feeling backed into a corner. Not by my age - I've never been one to panic about birthdays and aging - but just by all the nonsense that I'm trying to get done all at once while also dealing with this pregnancy. So this challenge is far less about my health and fitness and a lot more about just trying to manage life and my workload in an even kinda healthy way. I get that this is a fitness board primarily, so no offense taken if you're bored with my challenge 😆 But this is one major reason why my fitness fell off in the first place - life gets so damn busy sometimes! My goals are definitely prone to change over the course of the challenge, but here's where I'm starting at least: Quest One: Nutrition My weight is doing so much better! As of this posting, I am 161.8 pounds. Yeah, if you saw my last thread, I have absolutely no idea where those extra pounds came from and I don't actually believe that weight is accurate, given that it is physically impossible to add 4 pounds overnight. But I weighed myself three separate times this morning and even moved the scale to a different room to test if it was like the floor or something messing with the measurement and got 161.8 every time, so... 🤷‍♀️ That's only about 5-6 pounds short of my goal weight, so I'm finally able to back off the heavy eating habits. Not entirely, but enough that I don't have to feel cruddy about forcing myself to eat when I'm not hungry, so yay! However, as I add stress and run out of energy, I tend to default to highly processed foods - boxed mac and cheese, frozen chicken fingers, instant noodles, etc. While these things are okay in moderation, I am...not eating them in anything even nearing moderation. If my husband isn't cooking, that's what I'm eating, especially for dinner but sometimes for lunch too. So goal #1 is going to be to eat at least one dinner a week that is not from my husband, a box, or a bag (though leftovers of home-cooked meals are fine). Even if that's just a sandwich! Goal #2 is even more simple - drink as much water as the high-risk OB wants me to. I was doing really well with this over the summer and it died basically as soon as I went back to work. I've been averaging more like 70 ounces and he really wants me to get at least 100 a day. So I'm going to try my best to get back to doing that! So I don't feel crappy for not hitting this immediately, I'm setting my first "progress" goal at 80 ounces a day, or 5 of my 16 ounce cups I've been using to track this. Quest Two: Move...or at least Stretch "Move" is honestly kinda pushing it. I'm going to keep counting things like when I walk my kid home from school, because for me that is a definite workout lately between my size, the time crunch, and the giant hill between the school and my house. But I have also been starting to develop some really bad muscle cramps, especially in my legs. This is partly a pregnancy symptom and probably partly because I have been spending large chunks of time sitting at work. So my goal is to either move somehow to the point of sweating (my oh-so scientific measure of "work out") and/or do a full stretching routine on my legs at least 4x a week. Quest Three: Work *cue the Imperial March* This is really the source of all my stress. 5 preps is...a stupid amount of work, especially when I'm also responsible for writing the curriculums for all of those classes (and 3 of them are wildly varying from last year and/or have never existed before now). I am currently planned through this Friday (with Spanish 2 done for Monday because I will miss those classes for a GI appointment to check on how my intestines are doing). I also put in grades for all my classes over the long weekend. Whew! Goal #1 is to stay at least as far ahead on my planning as I need to copy - which sounds odd, but my copies take so long to run that I really only do them after school, which means I can only do that on days my son goes to after-school care (if it's a walking day, I have to leave my campus basically immediately to make it on time). So I can only copy on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But then random stuff also pops up, like I can't make copies this Wednesday because I have a fetal echocardiogram appointment in the afternoon and will miss 8th hour to get that done. So I really need to be copied through Thursday right now (which I am...kinda. Oops. I'm planned through Friday but only have copies made through Wednesday for French 1 & 2. Spanish 2, 3, and 4 are copied through Thursday though!). Goal #2 is related - get at least one assignment graded for each class every week. That's still a rate that puts me behind overall, but I want to make sure no student goes with absolutely zero feedback at all for an extended period of time. Goal #3 is maternity leave plans. Oh, how I am starting to panic about these! I was bothering my husband over the weekend about how we only have 3 more months until baby girl is here, so we need to get some more stuff done around the house because we know September and October are stupid busy and then we'll hit the holiday season...and then I realized that also gives me only 3 months to prep everything I need for maternity leave. All 15 units. EEEKKK! Okay, so it's not quite 15 units. I'll come back about halfway through the third unit in each class, and I already have the first Spanish 2 unit done. So it's more like 9 units and 5 half-units. Still, that's a lot! Without checking on things like "oh I don't have to lesson plan for that random PD day on the calendar" it's vaguely around 250 lesson plans left to go. My first progress mark is going to be to finish Spanish 2, unit 5. These are all 19 day units with somewhere around 6-8 extras just in case; I am about to start day 9 with 2 extras done, so a little under halfway through at the moment. I will definitely have to get far past that point by the end of the challenge, but let's just start there before I crumble entirely under this workload, shall we? In order to sweeten the deal a little bit, I have decided that every time I finish a maternity leave unit, I can either buy something cute for the baby like adorable onesies, board books, etc. or choose to put the money I would have spent on that towards the expensive bassinet I really want ($270, and I currently only have $40 earmarked for it though I'm hoping for some birthday money I can add to that. And I can buy the bassinet for $230 if I spend at least $10 on Amazon first though to get a special baby registry coupon in October, so that's mildly better?)