Maternity Style // Week 33

If you guys follow me on Snapchat or Instagram stories, you probably saw how excited I was about the snow we got last friday.  After years of not having a snowy winter (I luh you, PNW, but I missed me some snowy winters!), that first morning of waking up to a crisp, white landscape felt like waking up on Christmas morning.  Usually that first snowfall doesn't stick around very long either, but it's been cold enough that it's stayed put!  

These days I feel like I have the opposite of a phantom limb.  Instead of feeling something that isn't there, I don't feel something that is there: my bump.  I forget that it's so big and then I'll go to touch it and it's like, whoa!  It is certainly a most bizarre experience to have your body be taken over and change so drastically in such a relatively short amount of time.  I've been going to some prenatal yoga classes and it's funny to be among a group of other women who are all dealing with the same thing, but who are all at varying stages of pregnancy.  It's weird to look back on the days when I wasn't showing yet.  I'm entering the final stretch here pretty soon, and I think with the holidays fast approaching it'll make everything go by even faster.  Honestly, I still wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and feel like I'm still dreaming.  Being pregnant still doesn't seem real, even though I'm, oh, almost 8 months into this process.

Coat : Tulle | Leggings : Jessica Simpson via Motherhood Maternity | Boots : Vogue Footwear
Top : Motherhood Maternity | Plaid Shirt : Thrifted

Maternity Style // Week 32

Welp, I'm caught up on outfits now!  Well, sort of.  Technically I'm 33 weeks now, but I'm such a procrastinator that I usually shoot my outfits on the last or second to last day of my gestation week, which means that I probably will never have an outfit posted in the actual gestation week I'm currently in.  I can't remember if us pregnant gals aren't "supposed" to wear horizontal stripes, but I don't care because this dress is soft and stretchy and feels like jammies.

As you can see, the lake is now frozen, though only a couple inches, not nearly thick enough for walking on yet.  It's interesting seeing the world around me transform to winter as I transform into a larger and larger pregnant person.  The more wintery it gets around here, the closer I get to having a real live tiny person.  We haven't gotten snow yet, but it's supposed to snow soon, and the peaks of the mountain peaks surrounding town are all dusted with snow creeping down closer and closer.

Dress : Thrifted (Target) | Cardigan : Dear Creatures | Boots (similar) : c/o Seychelles
Hat : some roadside shop in the redwoods | Mittens : The North Face

Southwest Inspired Baby Shower

Last Saturday we had my baby shower, and despite the Alaskan winter knocking on our door, I decided to go for a southwest inspired theme for the party!  Which basically meant I could buy more cacti without feeling bad about it.  Pretty much everything was DIY, except for the macarons (which I've made before, but was in no mood to bake a fussy dessert.  These ones from Sweet Caribou here in Anchorage were to die for).

My mom baked the cake and made the frosting and I frosted it and decorated it.  It was an apple spice cake and super yummy!  I'll make sure to grab the recipe from her and share it here soon!  The pumpkin cupcakes and maple frosting is from a recipe I posted on the blog a few years ago. 

One of my favorite little DIY details was the "Happy Pushing" sign.  Originally it was going to be a cake topper, but ended up being too wide for my skinny little cake, so I popped it into two baby cactus pots and it just hung out on the table.  It was a fun and simple DIY, so I'll be posting the tutorial soon!

I wore basically the same outfit as my last outfit post (just trading out the hat for a succulent flower crown to go with the southwest theme), so all outfit details/links will be on that post!

After looking up baby shower activities and grimacing at how many corny, weird baby shower games were out there, we opted for keeping things simple.  One of the only 'programmed' activities was a birth/labor affirmation prayer flag.  Everyone who came wrote a short encouragement or affirmation for me to focus on during labor, which I'll be transferring to some home-made "prayer flags" (basically just little square bunting flags) that I can take to the hospital when I'm in labor to meditate on and gain encouragement and strength from.  

With only 7 weeks left to go (give or take some days/weeks depending on when this human decides to make an entrance), things are getting weirdly real!

Introversion, Moving, and Community.

I had my baby shower this past weekend.  It was a more "traditional" baby shower in that it was all ladies and lots of baby gifts.  Since I don't really have any friends my age here in Anchorage (yet), everyone who attended was my mom's age and more so my mom's friends that mine, but they've known me since I was a little kid and have loved me for decades, so it was special to have them all there.  We'll be having another "baby shower" next month in Tacoma with all our friends our age, it'll be co-ed, and more like a regular 20-somethings party with the reason for the party being that I'm growing a human as the only thing that really defines it as a baby shower at all.

I choose to go through so much of life alone.  I don't know exactly why I do this.  Part of it is certainly due to my introversion.  It's easy for me to be alone and do stuff alone. It takes so much more effort to go out and do stuff with people, or to try to coordinate with others to do stuff.  And now that I'm in Anchorage and know virtually no one, I spend my days alone almost exclusively.  

I wasn't prepared for how much introversion would effect me as an adult.  Growing up, introversion isn't really something that gets in the way of interaction with others.  You go to school five days a week, do after school activities like sports or other things with other people, and we even lived with another family that had kids, so we were always playing outside together, choreographing crazy dances together, and sharing mealtimes.  College is similarly easy to remain social as an introvert.  Classes 5 days a week, constant programming from clubs and dorms, intramural sports, department events, and living in a dorm where other people are always running around doing something or other. 

My biggest struggle since graduation hasn't been that I wasn't prepared for the job market, or didn't have enough education, it's that I've lost the community that was built into the school system.  I was lucky enough when I moved to Tacoma that Dan had basically grown up there and had a huge network of friends that I easily slipped into, but even that wasn't easy for me.  As an introvert I likebeing with people, but initiating things on my own, as opposed to having a veritable buffet cornucopia of events and groups to attend, has been probably the hardest transition from graduating college 7 years ago.  Ugh, seven years it's been that I've been struggling with and trying to figure this shit out.  That's not frustrating at all.

I'm afraid that becoming a parent will make my tiny social circle even tinier.  I don't want to spend the next seven years stuck in the rut I've apparently been stuck in since graduating college.  For as much as I ached to get out of Tacoma for so long, now I'm feeling like I threw away the closest thing I had to a social community of friends since college (not that I threw them away, they're still there and we can still go to them and have that community there waiting for us, hence our Tacoma baby shower party).  I felt so stuck in Tacoma, and was so looking forward to a fresh start, but it's been harder than I anticipated to have no friends or community of people our age to socialize with here in Anchorage.

Maybe this move was just to show me how valuable that was (don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?").  Renting out your home and moving 2500 miles is an obnoxious way to learn that lesson though.  Who, What, and Where does this next year have for us?  I don't think we'll stay in Anchorage long term.  Is it back to Tacoma?  Is it to the road in the Brave?  Is it somewhere totally new and different (Nashville? Joshua Tree? Portland?)?  For now, all I can see through is the end of 2016 where we'll be holding a new tiny human, celebrating the Holidays.  2017, you are a crazy mystery to me.  Be nice to us, okay?

I don't want you to be a gentleman.

I listen to pop music in the car, I'm not sure why because the lyrics always drive me bonkers, but I guess it's fun to sing along to and upbeat background music.  I always end up thinking way too much about the messages sent in song lyrics and lately the one song that's been driving me bonkers is Shawn Mendes' current song:

I won't lie to you
I know he's just not right for you
And you can tell me if I'm off
But I see it on your face
When you say that he's the one that you want
And you're spending all your time
In this wrong situation
And anytime you want it to stop
I know I can treat you better than he can
And any girl like you deserves a gentleman
Tell me why are we wasting time
On all your wasted crying
When you should be with me instead
I know I can treat you better
Better than he can

First off, as a woman, KTHXBYE for your opinion on my relationship and your assertion that you'd be better for me.  Just what I need, another man telling me how I should live my life.  The song should be re-titled, "I Know I Can Mansplain You Better."

Cynicism aside the word "gentleman" stands out to me.  And it's a word that I kind of want to be done with.  It's veiled sexism at its finest.  Because I don't want men to be gentlemen to me, I want them to be decent humans who treat other humans who happen to be women like they treat male humans.  They respect women the way they respect men.  They honor women the way the honor men.  They pay women the amount they pay men.  They fight for women to have the same privileges and rights as men because they are fellow humans who deserve that.  

You can treat her better?  Why don't you fight for her rights?  Speak up when your shitty friends are slut shaming girls.  Be an advocate for equal pay.  Stop saying things like, "she's just being hormonal," and saying that things done weakly/poorly are done, "like a girl."  I don't want your condescending gentleman shtick.  I don't want you to bring me flowers and open a door for me.  Get in the trenches and be a real advocate for women.  Maybe she is dating a lame-o, but being a gentleman isn't what she needs.  She needs a feminist.