Too Many Books

Blog Photo Review: A visually stimulating two years August 31, 2008: knot = tied Got Hitched I adored every single inch of my modern wedding... rooftop ceremony, reception in an urban space overlooking a glass-blowing studio.. all the purple and yellow and black and white... the way I looked... the euphoria of pulling off the event... love is grand, but a kick-ass wedding is, too. Sept. 2008: Fish outta water! Honey, moon me... Hubs and I spent the week in Myrtle Beach, SC and were there for Tropical Storn Hanna. Not a highlight: super hard wind and rains. Definitely a highlight: forcing my new husband to take my photograph on the beach, me sportin' my wedding dress, even though our wedding took place back in Louisville.  November, 2008 I spy a Hoosier!  Floor Seats in Assembly Hall, Bloomington Yeah, we played nobody IUPUI. It was still top-ten on my most awesome life-experience list. Summer 2009: Got a new ride. I drove all night... to get to you. Her name...

Stella Claire Murphy 12/14/2010 5 pounds 12.9 oz 19.25 inches long Birth Story: not for the weak-bellied Monday night, Dec. 13th -- I went to bed around midnight. Monday night became Tuesday morning, December 14th... at 2:30 a.m. I woke up with searing pain in my thighs and lower back. I decided to try to go back to sleep because we'd just been to the hospital 2 nights before with a false alarm and I did not want to be the pregnant woman who cried wolf. I got out of bed at 3:30a.m. and started coffee. I sat through an hour of contractions that were spaced 4-6 minutes apart. The pain was so different than what I expected -- I thought it would feel like a fist clenching and unclenching in my groin. Nopers. More like someone poured kerosene on my kidneys and then intraveiniously pumped it into my thighbones as well. At 4:45 a.m. I went and sat on the edge of the bed -- hubby's side -- and made him aware of our situation. He'd heard me moaning and figured I was up ...

I started a post and scrapped it... it was titled: "TMI Thursday, Monday Edition: Childbirth Photos." Then I was going to write "PSYCH!!" as my opening line. Anyway... Blog world, she's here! Please help me welcome: Stella Claire Murphy 12/14/2010 5 pounds 12.9 oz 19.25 inches long A few things: yes, she's almost 7 days old already... sorry this post is delayed but I have been busy sacrificing my body, boobs, and bedtime for another human life. Plus, if you've befriended me on facebook, you already knew! Still, as a reward for your patience, I will post a few photos of this December darling (and a few of them aren't on facebook yet... so they are super special.) You'll have to settle for captions tonight, but I promise there are stories to tell -- get ready for TMI's out the vagina wah-zoo. please note: she doesn't sleep here yet. Once she does, the crib will be empty of toys and other such hazards. (Musings of Amber Murp...

Lost my mucus plug yesterday. Word. (If you know about those, then you know how TMI that is. If you don't know, then google it.) (Hubs came up with a pretty decent descrption of it, though... "It looks like you blew your nose after you had a bloody nose.") (I'll pause for regurgitationspice.) Still no baby, though. I'm six measley days from my due date on December 16th, and I'm starting to feel like a beached whale. No, not just a beached whale: an impatient beached whale. I'm 1 cm dialated/ 50% effaced as of my last appointment. What is she waiting on?! Christmas?!

I shouldn't even be allowed to blog anymore because of the irregularity of my posts and my lack of keeping up with my reader. Still... here goes. A post! How novel! Top Ten Pregnancy FAILS (my due date is December 16th... about two weeks and two days to go!) 1.) Secretly, the car seat is still in the box. 2.) Secretly, so are the stroller, pack and play, and high chair. And the crib is still in transit and coming via Fed Ex. 3.) Secretly, my bag for the hospital is only half-packed. So is the baby bag. 4.) Secretly, I only have four pairs of pants that still fit, and only three of those fit comfortably. 4.5) What are jeans? I've forgotten. 5.) Secretly, I don't plan on buying Christmas gifts for anyone under the age of seven this year. 6.) Secretly, I've considered wrapping baby clothes and other pre-purchased items to give my baby gal on Christmas morning. And I might fill her stocking with little nursery necessities from the now-stocked changing ta...

What I've done today: * Made a list of things I still need to do * Drank my daily allotment of coffee (sadly, 1.5 small cups) * Organized the baby loot Bath Items. Kitchen Aisle. * Ordered a few a massive amount of baby things from Target online What I should be doing: * Completing the tape-the-nursery-walls since my mom and mother-in-law are coming over tomorrow afternoon to help paint! And since I told said mother-in-law that we've already finished taping... whoops! Remember the M & M people?! They've been primed-over. Hubs cried. He said the yellow one ended like Old Yeller. * Finishing the cleaning of the living room, then obsessively scrubbing the laundry room to complete my deep clean. * Spot cleaning the rest of the house, as to keep it clean now that my "deep clean" is basically complete. * Taking the final--ish load of giveaways to Goodwill * Going to the daycare I chose... to pay my deposit and, also, begging to God I ...

Pardon my almost-month-long blogging hiatus. See, I had this dream that I wouldn't become a mommy-blogger, but that idea, my friends, was for the birds. I'm less than six weeks away from my due date, and there is absolutely nothingspice else on my mind but getting ready for baby. I'm off work again this week, and thankful that I hoarded my vacation time so that I can continue with my borderline OCD nesting. (Ohhh, you guys didn't get to hear about that week when I was off work in mid-October, did you?! I spent the entire week cleaning my house. I'm talking wall scrubbing. Every inch of wall space. It took me 2.5 days to do the kitchen.) Today: I tackle the living room. But, before I get started I wanted to pop in to say that I miss EACH one of you so much!! I am unforgivably (but, understandably) behind in my google reader. I can't wait to catch up on your lives! Before I go, enjoy these preggo pictures. I know you'll just love to see how much I...

I'm pretty sure I'm officially obsessed with shopping for the (as-yet-unnamed) baby. Wanna see some of my finds?! I found this red and black baby carrier at a consignment sale -- it was a steal at $45. Those things are normally like $100. And, they're all the rage. I'll look soooo awesome with my baby strapped to me! This little dress is probably my favorite purchase so far. Technically, it was free because a bank customer gave me a $25 gift card to JC Penney as a gift for the baby. (In real life, it was $20, which is a little more than I want to spend on any one thing that will only fit my baby for the first 0-3 months of her life.) Don't you think she should wear this dress for her first photo at the hospital?? (I do! Hubs wants her in a Louisville Cardinals sporty onesie or something. Pishawspice.) I also love and adore this art ($5.99 at TJMaxx) and it's become a bit of inspiration for my nursery design ideas. I think I'll paint the walls that pr...

I'll just dive right in without any excuses for my three-week disappearance from blogging. First and foremost, how bout some Stamos on Glee last night?! (Okay... this is kind of funny. When I started this blog, I almost didn't use it. A year-ish amount of time passed, and when I decided to blog regularly, the way I broke the ice involved John Stamos. That was in September of '09.  Take a gander .) And, for more on my love affair with Uncle Jesse, click here.  (That post totes rocked. I'm probably going to have to re-post it at some point. It's top ten, fo sho'.) Anyway: confession. I secretly just made a little vlog to show you peeps my baby bump, but it was so white tra-shay that I am not able to post it. I was holding the camera up to the mirror in my bedroom whilst I recorded, and it's soooo dark and blurry (not to mention the unmade bed behind me...) that I just have no choice but to feed it to the bowels of the internets....

Friends, if you miss me half as much as I've missed you then we're in business... let me just get the "I suck at blogging and life" pity-party out of the way. Okay. Donewiththat. Here's what I've been up to since we last spoke. 1.) Convinced hubs to let me paint over the creepy M & M people in our nursery-to-be. (As you may recall, this wall art is leftover from the previous home owners.) 2.) Driven to Goodwill 6523 times and donated about 531213 pounds of clothes and other trivial junk lovely home decor. 3.) Cleaned out EVERYTHING from the baby's room... except for the furniture. After one more trip to Goodwill and pick-up from Cedar Lake Lodge (we're getting rid of a full sized bed, a random could-be-a-breakfast-table table, and a few other large items) I'll be ready to move the furniture out of the room and it will be empty and ready for painting! (Yeah, no. I'm not moving furniture. I'll have someone else do that.) 4.) ...

Photo: http://www.overstock.com/ What's that? You want to buy my baby a gift even though I never have time to a)blog with regularity or b)comment on your blog with regularity? How kind of you! Just click here.  (P.S. mother, Amber Murphy, Kentucky) What?! It was worth a shot!

Oh, I've just been so busy, though... and I hate to just pop in for a quickie post. See, this whole writing for examiner.com thing takes up my lunch hour now. That time used to be reserved for blogging. Le sigh. I've sold you out for a paying gig. (Um, so far... it's not paying much. So don't get too excited.) Check me out, though. Today, I wrote about Birth Plans. And so far, my most popular article was about these quintuplets born in Louisville about a week ago. So, that's cool... but I miss you guys! *** Fear not! I will still shower you with lovespice. There's plenty of me to go around. (There's even more of me than there was before, thanks to all this pregnancy weight.) Let's see... here are some random updates. * When deleting spammy comments from my posts, I often think to myself "how ruuuude" a la Stephanie Tanner's Full House days. God, she was adorable before she bacame a crack whore. * It feels odd, but I am cur...

BABY! Oh, wait. You guys already knew that, didn't you? You want to know whether or not I'm having a boy or a girl... especially if you entered my gender-guessy contest with the as-yet-unrevealed mystery prize. So, without further ado... I would like to take this moment to announce that we are having a GIRL! I'm reallllly excitedspice. I decided not to post the ultrasound pics of the special parts, because my daughter will emulate neither Lindsay Lohan nor Britney Spears. No. crotchshots. Also, hubs bought me pink flowers yesterday! Okay, on to the winner. These people guessed girl: Lilly Jen Vicki Rocho Frankie Diane Mallis Christine Danek B.E. Sanderson Natalie Murphy ND Linda Henderson Rose Cooper tucsoncordovas carissa These guessed boy: Jenna Wallace MJenks pinkflipflops jayme @ kentucky blonde a little pink in the cornfields Simon Larter Ashley Stone Guesses it's a Griffin: Travener   Random.org chose number 9 (out of all 20 guessers) so I just...

Boy  or girl ? Tomorrow, I have an ultrasound. I'm almost 22 weeks pregnant. If the baby does not reveal his or her special parts, I shall be very disappointed. Hubs is convinced it's a boy. My mom is attending the Big Show with us, and if it's a girl she and I plan to point at hubs and say, "In yer face." I know that most of you have already cast your votes. If you haven't, feel free to comment with your gender guess. I wish be giving away something blue or something pinkspice. These people guessed girl: Lilly Jen Vicki Rocho Frankie Diane Mallis Christine Danek B.E. Sanderson Natalie Murphy ND Linda Henderson Rose Cooper These guessed boy: Jenna Wallace MJenks pinkflipflops jayme @ kentucky blonde a little pink in the cornfields Simon Larter Guesses it's a Griffin: Travener Housekeeping: If you don't see your entry here, leave your guess in the comments below. Yes, the prize is still a mystery. If you don't like that, too badspice.

This morning I went to my 20 week appointment with my OBGYN. It pretty much amounted to an hour of wait time in which I felt guilty for reading THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO instead of parenting magazines. My reward: a few precious seconds of hearing a little heartbeat on a fetal monitor. So, yeah. It was still cool. I scheduled my next ultrasound -- Tuesday, August 10th! This should be baby-boy-or-baby-girl day. Oh, the anticipationspice! Update on yesterday's post: overwhelmingly, you readers do not dig the M & M motif for my future infant. Don't worry -- I'm on your side. If only hubs knew about my blog, I could explain that by popular opinion, they've gotta go. Perhaps I should do a facebook poll. Ohh, I know... I'll post it on The Bump . Those ladies will rip it apart. They take no prisoners. Le sigh. I must haul my bump back to the workplace.

Would this have scared the beejesus-spice out of you as a child? For the record, these M & M people aren't my handiwork. It isn't like I all of the sudden developed a talent in the visual arts. This is our "other" spare bedroom -- our future nursery. The walls looked this way when we moved in five years ago. At the time we thought, "Ohh, this would make such a cute baby room someday!" Now, I'm reallyreally torn about keeping these chocolate covered creatures of the walls of my little beans bedroom. Aren't they kind of creepy? Or are they cute? What do you think? Keep 'em or dump 'em? (Hubs still likes them. I think he just doesn't want to paint. My big issue is that they aren't really calming. Maybe they were cute for the toddler who used to live in my house, but maybe they also turned her into some hyper-active, manic beast-of-a-child. One who was afraid to eat candy or something.)

This afternoon, I lulled away the day. Yes, I'm off work again... I have to be there this Saturday, so I was entitled to the shedding of a few hours today, an attempt to keep overtime to a minimum. That's just fine with me. I meant to come home and take a nap. (That's always on my agenda. Clearly.) Instead, I caught up on my google reader -- or at least made a hell of an attempt to do so -- read a bit of a novel, watched obscene amounts of a three-hour-long, DVR-ed episode of Big Brother After Dark on SHO-time . (This was, in fact, so mind-numbing that it was almost like napping.) So is the story of my life: watch hours tick away while I make little progress: maternal, writerly, or otherwise. It occurs to me that I probably need to learn how to do things, like, I don't know, install a car seat. Or perhaps start a babyspice-registry. Or scope out day-care centers. Instead, I just made a king-sized Snickers my bitch and poured myself a Sweet Tea. Ahh, m...

Well, I hope you've enjoyed the fourth and have extended your Independence Celebration, as I have, with a paid day off work! Hubs and I stayed in yesterday: I read, he cooked. We ate skewered shrimp and grilled pineapple, made s'mores, and watched our neighbors fireworks show. (I swear, they must have spent a small fortune.) It was a grand ol' time. I didn't change out of my pajamas all day, nor did I complete any tasks that one might call productive. That's why laundry, dishes, and some semblance of house cleaning are on the docket today. But, first: an update on Baby Murphy. I went for the ultrasound Friday, and it.was.fantastic to see my little peanut's face. Crazy/ Amazing. The ultrasound tech got a pretty decent view of the private parts from the rear angle, and said the following, "Well, I don't really see anything sticking out... so I would say I was leaning toward girl, if I could just see a little more detail. " I said, "So, what...

So. Hubs and I were so excited when we arrived at my doctor's office this morning. We kept giggling over silly little things. We couldn't wait for the ultrasound! Seated in the plain-ol'-exam-room, I explained to the nurse (I'd never met this particular nurse) that hubs and I were like giddy little school kids, because we were meeting with the ultrasound tech to hopefully find out the sex of our little bundle!! I refrained from squealing be excited for us! "Um, what? The ultrasound tech isn't here today..." I wanted to punch that nurse in her face. So, she took some blood from my arm (birth-defects-tests) and said she would talk to my doctor. My doctor came in and said, "So, you thought you'd be having an ultrasound today?!" She sounded confused, as if I'd told her I thought pregnancy itself only lasted four days or something. " Yeah. Because that's what you told me the last time I was here, at my twelve week appoi...

It was soooo hard to sleep last night! I'm headed to my Dr.'s appointment at 9:30, and I can't wait to find out if this little person growing inside me is a little guy or a little gal. I had the weirdest dreams last night -- hubs family and my family were "there" and throwing us some huge luncheon for the big reveal. It was utter chaos. At one point, I had to walk down a street to get to hubs (I was trying, frantically, to locate him so that we could ride to the Dr.'s appointment together.) I ended up getting a ride from these four women on a float of some kind. One painted my nails. *Must stop watching America's Got Talent.* Randoms! Anyway, there's still time to enter my elusive gender-bender giveaway. Is it a boy or a girl ? (Pink is so pretty...) Leave your guesses in the comments below or on the original post. I'll be back later with results. SQUEEspice. Best. day. ever.