Happy Birthday to Me!

I had the best big 30 birthday yesterday!  Tucker took the whole day off, which was so fun!  Honestly, this was my favorite part.  He's like crack-cocaine to me, I just can't get enough!  We first went and had breakfast burritos at Golden Pride.  If you ever come to New Mexico, you've gotta try them!  I just love those green chilies!  We ran errands, got stuff done around the house, ate a yummy cookie cake, and had Chick-fil-A for dinner.  I got to talk to most of my family, so that was fun.  I also got a fun surprise picture of my adorable niece to say "Happy Birthday." 

Here's a picture of the yummy cookie cake.  Unfortunately, it didn't survive the car ride to get a whole picture.  :)

It's a...

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GIRL!

We're so so excited!  The Petty family knows what to do with girls.
Seriously, I know everyone says the guy decides the gender and I know the science behind it.  BUT, I'm really wondering.  It's like the world wasn't at peace when we Petty girls decided to get married and even things out.  Now, the scales shifting again with Claribel and *******.
Tucker's so excited too!  He let out a tear or two when the Dr. told us.  He told me it was because he was so happy and it had nothing to do with the fact that he would be outnumbered, the cost of ruffles and frills, or the idea that he could end up with a house full of girls like my dad did.

The Token Belly Photo

So we've been bombarded with requests for picture updates of the progression of the belly growth.  Now that Rebecca is almost finished with her fifth month, things are really starting to pick up.  As Rebecca always says, "You've got to give the people what they want." (which is way better than what I always say: "A little squeeze cheese makes the peas go down with ease!").  Well you wanted it, so here it is...

This is me after one of my binge milk drinking "episodes"... personally, I don't see that there's anything wrong with having a healthy appreciation for milk (or as I call it "white gold").  As you can see, I opted for the white T-shirt so as to hide any unseemly milk stains.

Now for those of you who would rather see a picture of Rebecca with her pregnant belly, we've got a photo for that too:

We hope to update the blog with some more photos as the belly(s) continue to grow... maybe I'll post a picture after one of my "Cheese Tuesday" events... I'll have to wear a yellow shirt for that one...

COMPETITION

So I (Tucker) went to the gym yet again last week (what is that, like twice so far this year...I'm like an exercise-guru or something).  My normal routine is to run on the treadmill for about 4 miles, or 550 calories (which works off about one heaping bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats), whichever comes first.  I usually try to find a treadmill that has a television attached, especially one that has closed captioning...I can't use my cheap headphones to connect to the t.v., as I usually get a jot of electricity to the ears every 10 seconds from the static electricity that builds up as I run (and I run like the wind blows).  If I can't find a t.v. with closed captioning, I have to settle on watching the little scrolling info bar on the bottom of CNN or Fox News.  Afterward, my knowledge of what's going on in the world is a mile wide, but a millimeter deep:

"Man kills giant eel with Mariah Carey song" (that's not so surprising)

"Conference held to debate status of Pluto's existence" (poor Pluto...it just can't catch a break)

"Researchers warn public against eating ..." (oh shoot, I sneezed...WHAT DID IT SAY?!?!?!?!?)

Anyway, instead of watching t.v. last week, I found something more interesting to make the time pass.  COMPETITION!  BATTLE!  A RACE!!!  This middle-school girl next to me was thinking she was all bad, trucking along at 7 miles per hour (mph).  She would sometimes accelerate to 7.5, but only for a lap or two.  'Hah' I thought to myself...'I can beat that easily'.  She already had about a mile head start, so I had my work cut out for me.  I slowly worked my way up to 7 mph over the span of 10 minutes or so (you can pull a hammy or a quaddy if you're not careful).  But she was still way ahead of me...this time, the gap was 1.5 miles.

With a cold hard determination, the kind which a hunter experiences when he sets down his electric handwarmers next to his mini-t.v. in his tree house ("deer stand") to take aim at the wild prey he has been "hunting" all morning (i.e. the deer eating the Cheetos he spread out on the ground below), I went in for the kill.  I pushed the little button to accelerate up to 7.5 mph to match my foe's speed.  I could see that she started to become nervous, because she started changing the channel on her t.v.  But I wasn't finished...I accelerated even further.  7.7...8.0...8.3...8.5...4.0 (I started to kind of black out here)...6.0...6.5...7.1.

I was only 0.05 miles behind her now.  Finally, I would be the one in the lead, with no one left to challenge my athletic prowess.  Just when I could finally taste victory, it happened.  She hit "stop" on her treadmill and walked away.

NNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

I was just 0.03 miles behind at that point.  The nerve!  She knew that I was about to win, and couldn't take the bitterness of defeat.  I mean, what kind of person gets so caught up in competition?

I went ahead and kept running, but it just wasn't the same.  I'm like the horse in Seabiscuit...I need a challenge before I really kick into gear to run like a stallion.  But, I had a glimmer of hope when I saw an 90-year-old man slowly approach the vacant treadmill next to me.  'Aha', I thought to myself.  'COMPETITION!!!'

Refreshing...

Last night we had fish tacos for dinner.  We'd been craving them after not having them over the holidays.  They were ohhh so good!  But, the smell that was left in our house wasn't!  I made my own room spray and was excited to try it out.  I just put a mixture of water and peppermint oil in a spray bottle, and whalah!  I just sprayed it all over the house and now we have a refreshing scent filling the air..... much better than fish!  I guess you could try this with any scented oil that you like.  For me, the pure peppermint scent is better than fruity or spicy, especially if you're trying to get out another smell. 

We're having a lima bean!!!

That's right, it's a bean...I mean, baby! At least that's what all the books tell us it's going to be. Rebecca and I got our first ultrasound in October and received the below picture; supposedly you can see the head, arm and leg buds, umbilical cord, eye socket...and a sail boat if you let your eyes go cross-eyed. I'm not sure that I see all that...this could have just been bad reception of the Cowboys/Redskins football game for all I know. However, it's supposedly a textbook fetus (it figures that our baby would already be into studying...that thing's gotta get a life).

It's crazy to think that our baby is only an inch long in the above picture. However, it's 65% head (again, another sign that it's taking after its father). It's so tiny, yet it's making its presence known all the time. Rebecca has felt pretty lousy lately, but thankfully she's almost out of her first trimester. Here I was looking forward to all the fun food cravings that I was going to get to join in on, and to the empathy weight that I would get to put on (I'm nothing if not empathetic). However, food has recently been the last thing that Rebecca wants to see (that, and my mouth full of pickles and ice cream).

We had no idea it would be like this. It's like there's some secret society of moms whose main purpose is to cover up the unpleasantness of pregnancy so that people will keep having babies...for survival of the species, I guess. Apparently there is also a hormone that causes women to forget about the pain of child-bearing. All I know is that I would like to have lots of kids (12 seems like a good number), so I'll play dumb in the future when Rebecca asks me how difficult her first trimester was...I'll have to figure out how to delete this post before then...

3 Down, 3 to go!

I'm so excited!  I just finished the last of the three classes that I was taking this semester.  I now only have 3 more classes until I finish!  Yeah!!!
I'm really dreading the final class that I'll take next semester.  It involves planning and implementing professional development for teachers.  Now, there's one rule that most all teachers go by:  Professional Development= Bad.  It usually takes about 4 extra hours to plan for a sub that day, you may return to a classroom that looks like a natural disaster hit it, you might be bored out of your mind, or feel that whatever the training was about was not applicable to your teaching situation or just overwhelmed you with useless info.  There have been some great professional development that I've been to (none in New Mexico), but they're so few and far between that teachers have come to hate them.  So, now I'm the one who has to do professional development for teachers.  And, I don't even work in a school right now.  "Hi, you don't know me, but I'm going to make you work an extra 4 hours this week planning for a sub, and possibly waste a couple of hours of your 45++ hour work week in training.  Sound good?"  I've been dreading this ever since I entered the program, but it just can't be avoided....
But, right now I'm finished with classes until January!  Oh joy!