Excuses, excuses...

I truly hope I haven't lost all of you, my internet friends, due to my FOUR MONTH absence from blogoration. And even worse, especially since this is supposed to be a food blog and cooking is something I vowed to make a central part of my home-life, I didn't even step foot into the kitchen for about TWO months of that absence. My excuse is simple...a UFO abducted my DSL line and kept me off the internet! No, not really. How about, a new life form stole my appetite, made brushing my teeth something I had to do near a toilet, made 12 to 14 hours of sleep a day mandatory and forced me to live off of cheese and crackers for about ten weeks? That's more like it! Figure it out yet??? We are expecting a baby! We had a positive test right about the time of my last post (yes, that was the end of September, ghaw) and soon I began feeling the morning sickness (more like all morning, day and night sickness) that stuck around 4eva. Not fun, but worth it. Props to the ladies out there with the m/s.

Now for the baby stats. As of this moment, I am 23 weeks into my pregnancy. Don't ask me to convert that to months. My doctor and my trusty pregnancy book both refer to weeks when discussing gestation length, it just seems easier. My due date is May 25, 2009, Memorial Day, how cool is that? Last Memorial Day I was drinking a beer or five on the lake with my husband and our friends Amy, Shawn and Lanie. I don't expect Memorial Day 2009 to be quite the same, but then again, I know our lives changed that day last September when the two pink lines appeared on my Target Brand First Response test stick.

In mid-December we found out that Baby Smith is actually Baby Boy Smith! I felt him kick for the first time right around Christmas and his dad felt him kick for the first time last Sunday! My favorite thing is to feel him rearrange himself when I roll over in bed at night. Not only do I have to rearrange my nightgown, hair, pillows, etc. when I roll over (yes, it's a process) but he also has to get re-situated.

We have a lot of baby related things to do in the next few months including setting up the nursery, registering at a few baby stores since my wonderful friends have offered to throw a baby shower for me, and taking some childbirth classes **epidural, here I come**. I will post baby updates here since lots of my readers are family and friends IRL. And yes, now that I've returned to the land of the non-nauseous, I will be posting about FOOD again. A huge thank you to those of you who have stuck with me through this delay. I know a quality blog includes timely posts, and I know how disappointed I am when my favorite blogs go awhile without posting. I will try not to let this happen again.

Oh, and a new part to my blog: I love good music and I'm always looking for new suggestions. I'm going to try to remember to end each post by sharing the musical selection I was enjoying while writing. Today it was the self-titled album The Bird and the Bee. Very dreamy, very clubby. Good inspiration!

And thank you to my boss for closing the office today due to the massive ice/sleet storm that's been moving through Tulsa since yesterday afternoon. You rock, dude. (I can say that to him because I'm relatively sure he has no idea I have a blog, let alone care to read it).