Is there a medal for that?

I really should get a medal after this weekend. Or at least some kind of recognition. This weekend consisted of me, 6 months pregnant, camping, attending an outdoor all day music venue with 40,000 wasted idiots. They may not ALL have been wasted idiots but there was plenty of beer around, just none for me. If you know me, you know I love to sit outside, with a cold beer, listening to live music. No beer and a fuse that gets shorter by the day meant I thought this was going to be pretty rough.

Last week was the Larry Joe Taylor Fest (LJT) in Stephenville. This is our 4th trip to LJT and 2nd in a row. We took off one year when we got married. It's a week long drunk fest with almost every Texas Country / Red Dirt music act you can think of.

Bands start at noon and it's one after the other until midnight. It's in the middle of a HUGE pasture and everyone brings campers, busses, tents and some just bring a sleeping bag in the bed of their truck. At least that's what the young kids do. My idea of "camping" still has to have an A/C and a flushing toilet.

We usually try to get there on Thursday sometime and then stay until Sunday. Kb took the bus (motorhome) and set up on Thursday and since I'm really trying to save my PTO for when Baby 'B' gets here (actually, I knew I could only handle the drunks in limited doses so I was putting it off) I opted to stay and work on Friday and head there Friday afterwork with a few of the girls that also had to work. Somebody's got to work around here.

Good Lord you should have seen the people. The average age is probably 18-25. Clothes are clearly an option and they must have confiscated sunscreen at the gate. Anything can be made a cooler or wagon to haul food and booze and the kids are really getting creative with ways to comsume alcohol. We used to just have keg stands and beer bongs. At the most we may have made jello shots. Now they're walking around with soaked gummy bears, multi funneled beer bongs wtih a trough at the top, squirt guns, bags of wine and whatever homemade hooch they can find on Pinterest.

We parked under an oak tree with all the other old folks and watched the lazy river of drunks stumbling back and forth from the pit to their respective camp sites. Entertainment for hours I'm telling you. I looked around and thought Whew! I sure am glad I don't have to worry about a daughter stumbling around here all slutted up wearing next to nothing, drunk off her underage ass with boys drooling over all her goods on display. Then I thought OMG I have to worry about having one of the wasted idiot boys walking around here in little more than his jock strap with a beer bong and soaked gummy bears trying to get girls drunk so they'll get a peep show. I don't know what's worse!?!?

For the most part I think I handled it pretty well. Saturday there was a chili and bean cook-off, which I entered so that kept me pretty busy.

Out of 64 entries, I didn't win or even place, which tells you people don't know good chili when they taste it. Our crew didn't have a problem with it.

They had a live auction, a silent auction and passed the hat to raise money for West. They raised over $50,000 in an afternoon. It was awesome to see the support.

Saturday afternoon it was back out to the oak tree chasing the shade and listened to the best type of music around. I'm so proud of Kb, he was a perfect gentleman. He made sure I was comfortable, always had water and stayed by my side the whole time. I'm so proud of him.

He even tried to convince me we could bring Baby 'B' next year by pointing out those that had a little one under the shade. Umm, that's a big fat NEGATIVE Ghost Rider, not a chance.

Baby Showers? O My!

Friends and family are starting to schedule showers. This scares the shit out of me for 2 reasons..

1 - Holy CRAP! I'm close enough to the end of this thing to have a shower, like with gifts and stuff for a baby that will be here in a few months. Wait... someone's going to trust me with a BABY in a few months!?!?!?

2 - I get anxiety when I even think about registering. What if I register for things I don't need? What if I don't register for things that I do need. Can't showers just be a time when people bring you things  you can't live without. I feel like there's so much stuff it's easy to get a ton of stuff you won't use. But what if there's something out there that would be a life saver if I had it. There are so many different brands and types of baby things. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S WHAT?

Kb and I made our first attempt at registering at Tar-jay. We ended up in an aisle with another clueless couple. I could tell the guy was frustrated and the girl looked like she was going to cry. I didn't want that to be us. We picked out a few things then our gun quit working. We took that as a cue to quit for the day and go get something to eat. Story of my pregnant life, when in doubt...eat. I figure I can do some cleanup and register for a lot of stuff online.

On a lighter note, we had a good weekend. Kb, me and Baby B went to our first Texas Ranger game of the season. Which they won BTDubs...

Toward the end of the game it got pretty exciting so I was jumping up and down and Baby 'B' started moving around. He's got to be a sport fan to put up with us.

And I'm pretty sure we caught the Lake Waco Record Black Crappie (Pronounced croppy for those out of the know) I'll have to be sure and tell him about it when he's older.

Confession Time

Confession #1: I've been a bad blogger. I thought with this pregnancy I'd have so much to say but in the words of my OB I'm fortunately "having a 'boring' pregnancy". I haven't been sick, I haven't had any crazy cravings, I don't have any weird pains to speak of, hair isn't popping up in strange places, the ultrasound showed a healthy baby boy who is right on track.

Confession #2: I'm OBSESSED with other pregnant women. When I was in Babies R Us the other day I was fascinated with all the pregnant women in there in all their various stages. I started comparing myself to them. Do I look like that? Will I look like THAT? I can't get enough of pregnant bloggers and pregnant celebrities. It's crazy that no matter where you are in life or what you do if you're going to have a baby, you have to be pregnant, unless you adopt or surrogate of course, but someone has to be pregnant for 9 months. actually it's 10 but who's counting. I find myself wondering about their cravings and what their pregnancy is like.

Confession #3: I'm scared to death to be a parent and I'm afraid I have no idea what I'm doing. When I'm looking around obsessing about other pregnant women I find myself looking at moms of LOs. Some of them I think, wow, if they can do it I can too. I mean, women, a lot younger than me with a lot less education and life experience have had their children and they've been fine. So I can do it too right? My friends have repeatedly told me, Jenn don't worry so much. It's actually pretty crazy how your instinct kicks in. I promise you'll be fine. I told a friend about my anxiety about being around a newborn and how I haven't had that much practice with one. She said something that really hit home "My son's going to be 13 this year, I don't have any practice with a teenager. I'm STILL learning as I go" I think I'm just putting too much pressure on myself to be "perfect" when I really need to just remember to do the best I can and trust my instincts. Things are going to go wrong and there are going to be times where I don't know what to do but I just have to learn from everything.

Confession #4: I've been really slacking on my workouts. It's not that I go home and park my ass on the couch, we're just really busy. Right now it's so pretty outside we've been going fishing almost every night. I love that time with my husband and know this time next year we'll have a little one and maybe we can't go and do like we do now so I'm savoring every moment. For our anniversary this week, we made sandwiches and had a sunset picnic on the boat. It was peaceful and lovely.

Confession #5: I'm up 5lbs in the past month.  I'm pretty sure I put on 5 pounds last week when we were in Galveston for a work conference. We entertained clients everynight. Momma ate really well. My favorite was Gaido's one night which was AMAZING. (Thanks for the suggestions Crissy!) I told my Dr this when he told me to "pull it back" a little. He said he appreciated my honesty since most women just tell him "Shut up doc, Momma hon-gray" Also confession #4 doesn't help.

Confession #6: I'm putting off the nursery. I guess I think no nursery, no baby. Like he's just going to wait for his room to be finished before he makes his appearance. For some reason I'm having a hard time getting it together. I've picked out the bedding which is super cute I think, but that's as far as I've gone. Friends and family are putting showers together so I guess we need to get registered somewhere. I don't have a clue what all I need. While I've finally embraced my pregancy now I'm having trouble accepting it and getting my shit togehter. It'll happen I guess.

Confession #7: I can't stop reading about pregnancy. I'm one of those people that like to be informed. I want to know if whatever I'm experiencing is normal. I'm NOT one of those people who won't go outside because the sun causes skin cancer. I'm not a hypochondriac I just like to be "in the know". I've talked to my Dr about being honest with me. I'm a tough broad and I know I can handle the truth. If somehing's going to suck, let me know it's going to suck and what we can do to make it suck less. Now that I'm over the 1/2-way point I'm reading about labor and deliveries. I'll admit I'm afraid of the unknown but most of what I've read is people saying it's not as bad as they thought. Sure there are those horror stories out there and I understand that ANYTHING can happen so I'm just taking everything in and hoping for the best. One of my favorite things I've read is when a couple were recounting their son's birth story and the wife said "I can't believe we remember the same day so differently. I don't remember it being that bad but he says he doesn't know if he can go through it again" I think it's funny how God gives moms mom-nesia about the pain and suffering of childbirth but not dads. Eve may be getting "punished" for eating that apple but joke's on you Adam. HA! Anywhoo..

Well, that's it for now. No name yet, we've got a solid maybe but we're still test driving it to see if it sticks.