I'm Back!

I have been thinking about my blog this past week, and when my friend Shannon mentioned the blog's absence last Friday in conversation, it made me miss it. And, that my friends, is what I had been waiting for. When I embarked on this hiatus, I told myself I needed to wait until I missed it before resuming writing; otherwise, I was just doing it to do it. So, here I am. You can go ahead and resume your prayers for world peace -- this prayer has been answered.

So, what's been up with Jess? Running, wife-ing, mom-ing, teaching, and baby brewing. Frankly, it's been a bit exhausting. But things are good on all fronts:

• I've been running regularly and raced a 5K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving and am tentatively planning to run a 5 mile race this weekend.
  
• Jerry and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary on Thanksgiving as well (he's very thankful for me, and who wouldn't be? I'm a kickass wife).


• Norah is doing well: She's talking and getting into all kinds of toddler mischief -- chief mischief right now is unwrapping wrapped Christmas presents, the stinker!


• Teaching has been busy, but I'm almost done with the term. Just a few days left, and a bazillion papers to read, and then it's Christmas break!


• Lastly, the baby brewing is tiring, but going well. Chief among my reasons for the blog hiatus was that with all of the above, I felt I had very little energy left in me at the end of the day to devote any meaningful time to blogging, and for me, baby brewing in the first trimester is an awful combination of nausea and fatigue. In some ways, this pregnancy has been easier than when I was pregnant with Norah because I have known what to expect (whereas, with Norah I had no idea I would feel THAT sick for THAT long); but in other ways, this pregnancy has been a lot harder for me. Mostly that's because with the first pregnancy I had the luxury of just taking care of myself, which meant that I napped nearly every afternoon, and if I didn't feel good, I could often just lay down for a bit. But, with Norah, I don't have the convenience of napping whenever I feel tired. So, taking care of a toddler and working full time and brewing a baby definitely zapped me of just about anything extra.

But, at 16 weeks and 2 days, I now feel as though I'm beginning to feel better and some of my energy is returning. I have more good days than bad ones, and it's been 5 days since I last barfed -- a new kind of streak! Here's a pic I snapped of myself last Friday before I went for my run: I am definitely showing earlier than I did when I was preggo with Norah, even though my weight gain, so far, has been about the same. To compare, below is a pic of me preggo with Norah when I was 18 weeks. Looks about the same. In fact, I dare say that at 18 weeks with Norah, I looked less pregnant than I do right now.
"They" say that you show earlier after the first pregnancy, and it seems to be true for me.

Anyhoo, I do have a stack of papers to get to, Christmas shopping to finish, and a few finals left to procter, so I can't linger here in the blogosphere long, but I'm hoping that after my term is over (Thursday!), I'll have some time to begin posting again regularly and catching up with all of you. Hope all has been well with you guys in my absence: I'm sure it was tempting to ball up in a corner and cry while I was gone, but I hope you were resilient!