aloha! 20 weeks - exactly halfway! (or maybe one week over)

i'm posting this week from kauai! it felt like the longest trip ever. if you add up total travel time (from the time the cab picked us up to take us to the airport, to the time we arrived at our hotel) it took 18 hours. 11 hour direct flight to honolulu, then a transfer to kauai (45 min plane ride) and then grabbing a rental car and driving another 45 minutes to our hotel on the north shore (and stopping at a supermarket on the way for groceries). everything took longer than expected bc of island time. every time i complained sh would remind me to chill my east coast personality. -_- it was pretty brutal, and traveling with a kid makes everything harder, but lana was SUCH a champ the whole way. she barely cried, was in a great mood and was pretty easy to entertain with snacks, play-doh, kindle and tv. what shocked me was for an 11 hour flight, we didn't get one free meal. they came around twice with options to purchase meals but the second time they ran out of meals so all we could buy was snack boxes. we were all starving by the end of the flight, and it's ok for adults to be hungry but i felt so bad to lana who was also clearly really hungry. all these extra fees and charges by airlines are really starting to annoy me, but it's a completely different thing to not even offer real meals to purchase. 

but what's important is we are here! it is so unbelievably breathtaking. we went to maui and big island for our honeymoon but kauai is very different. it has that small quaint feel of big island (kona) but with a more ethereal quality to it. it's hard to describe. after a rough day traveling, it was so nice today to veg, eat an awesome sunday brunch (i ate a lot!), hang out by the pool, take a nap, and finish off the evening with cheap chinese food and the most amazing ice cream (lappert's - i got "kauai pie" which is kona coffee ice cream swirled with chocolate fudge, coconut flakes, macadamia nuts and vanilla cake crunch). i had second thoughts about this trip bc of the flight time but i'm so glad we did it. it is so relaxing and i feel myself just unwinding and getting some much needed rest. and  a vacation without a blackberry happens like maybe twice in a lifetime! 

in pregnancy news, i went to the OB on friday and gained 4 pounds! i am now up to -2. 😁 i am slowly starting to eat better but the progress is just that - slow - and some days are still bad. i have my 20 week ultrasound next week. excited to see baby again and get confirmation of the sex and due date. no bump pic this week bc i look bleh and am already in bed! island laziness. hope everyone stays warm back home and the polar vortex isnt as bad as last time! 

19 weeks

this past sunday marked 19 weeks of pregnancy (or 20). pregnancy-wise, it was not that eventful (in other words, pretty good). still not much change in my eating, but i'm managing to slowly get a little more variety into my diet. my next OB appointment is friday - hopefully i'll have gained some weight. my legs have been achy and crampy, but luckily no charley horses yet (the trick is to point those toes up in the air!). i've been wearing my compression tights on and off and they are SO helpful. also, i'm still feeling a lot of pressure and strain in my lower back/hips/lower belly so i went with kay (my fellow prego) to get prenatal massages on saturday. man, i wish i were rich so i could go like...every day. it was so good. if you need a good prenatal massage, check out hoboken women's wellness (our therapist was nikki). it looks like a hole in the wall from the outside (kay said: "uh, this looks kinda scary" when we walked up to it) but inside it's quaint and cute. no frills but it has everything it needs. and i don't really care what it looks like as long as it's clean and the massage is good. it's definitely not cheap but i think once in a while, it's worth it, esp. during pregnancy.

other than that, we had our gajillionth snowstorm of the winter. thank the lord i'm in my i-gave-notice-so-who-cares stage, so no one cares that i'm not coming into the office. i've just been working from home most days, but i don't have any real work. it's just a lot of organizing, transitioning and wrapping things up. my last day is tomorrow. it still feels a little surreal. i'll definitely miss some of the awesome coworkers i have but i'm excited to leave the law firm behind and work less hours. and hopefully under less stress.

the biggest news of this past week is my mom came on sunday! in the 3 days she's been here, she's already put lana to sleep a few times, bought me lunch, cooked dinner twice and taken me to costco (and paid for it), all while crazy jetlagged. now i'm not sure what i did without her the past six months! -_- lana has been ecstatic. once we told her grandma was coming, she had been anticipating her arrival so much. she'd say during dinner "grandma's going to sit here next to me" or "i'm going to hawaii with grandma" or "grandma and i are gonna go to the playground." when she finally came, she went NUTS. it was so heartwarming. also, side note, when my mom came through the front door, she ran right past me and hugged lana. -_-

three more days till hawaii!! i am so ready to go, along with my trusty compression tights and footrest (you tall people will never ever know). the packing is stressing me out a bit though. kids require so much crap.

bump pic - i think it looks smaller than last week! i DID eat (some) dinner right before the pic last week...

18 weeks

oops, i just realized i forgot to write my 17 weeks post last sunday. the weeks all blend together...

i'm 18 weeks today (or 19?). some highlights (and lowlights) of the past two weeks:

- i got to go to jean georges this past tuesday because we have a very generous vendor at work (though i guess what's a couple thousand compared to the amount of business we give him), and i probably ate more in that one meal than i have my entire pregnancy. maybe i have food aversions to everything except fine dining, haha. luckily most of the meal consisted of seafood and there was only one meat course which i avoided. the waiter looked at me with suspicious eyes (how dare she not lick every plate clean at JG!) and asked if everything was ok, so i had to assure him it was me, not the food.

- i almost fainted on thursday. this happened to me with lana too. i talked to the OB and she said it could be a number of things, including anemia (though my last blood test showed ok iron levels), the asthma, low blood sugar...since then i've been feeling light-headed and dizzy on and off. she told me to get some otc iron pills and keep eating. i hate iron pills! they are so constipating. and the eating, well it's the same old. although bc i hate iron pills so much, i decided to get iron by eating galbi on fri night. out of all the types of meat, i'm least bothered by beef. i actually ate pretty well but now as i write this I cannot imagine eating galbi. -_- every day is so different in terms of what i can stomach. the lightheadedness really makes me feel off. i hope it goes away soon.

- the belly pains have started. my skin feels like it's being stretched to the max, and i get random sharp pains throughout my torso and hips. time for more massages.

- baby is moving like crazy. he seems to hates it when i sleep in fetal (har har) position bc that's when he moves especially a lot.

- the big news of the past two weeks is i got a new job! praise the lord! i gave notice at my current job and my last day will be 2/20. we leave for hawaii soon after that and i start work in early march. this is an answer to a prayer i've been praying, well, since maybe week two at the law firm haha. but more recently, i was really worried about how we'd make it work with two kids and my job. thankfully, the hours at the new job will be much better and more regular so hopefully juggling everything and attaining the whole elusive "work/life balance" will be a lot more doable. i'm still really nervous about doing it all with two kids but i guess you just do it somehow. -_- i'll be vp of legal at TD securities. I am really excited to go inhouse and leave behind billable hours forever.

- my mom is coming next week! yippee!!

ok here is the first bump picture. i am a selfie newbie - where do you hold the phone? how do you position your body to fit it all in the pic? selfies may require more skill than meets the eye. i made SH take all the bump pics for me when i was pregnant w lana. why do i feel and look so huge when i'm not even eating anything?? -_-