Monkey see, monkey do

After a few months on the "home renovation" exercise plan, Nick is back to his usual fare of P90X with a sprinkling of Insanity thrown in. My work-outs lately consist of biceps curls that involve moving the spoon from the ice cream container to my mouth. With that background in mind, here's a story for ya.

As part of his stretch and warm-up routine, Nick was sitting on the floor with both legs extended, touching his toes. Ellison decided it would be fun to parrot him. Only her version involved getting her legs up in the air to do so (somewhere between full teaser and a human pretzel). I giggled, and she decided I should get in on the action, too. She took my hand and led me to the spot where Nick was sitting, then patted the ground. "Sit down, mommy." OK, ok. I'm sitting, just like daddy. She then took my hand and pulled it toward my toes. I haven't seen my toes for several weeks now. But she insisted. So I leaned forward and actually managed to touch all my fingers to all my toes!

Ellison was quite proud of me. And Nick was just a little jealous, considering he was struggling almost as much as me. And then Ellison put us both to shame with her little human pretzel bit.

The end.

My ticking time bomb

So in case you'd forgotten, I'm still pregnant. Sigh. I know, it seems like forever to me, too. But I'm in the homestretch as signaled by the switch to weekly visits with the ob from the biweekly I'd had for the last couple months.
I went yesterday, and after examining me, the doctor told me I need to slow down for a week or so. "When can you stop working?" Oh, what a familiar tune. He asked me that last time. I can stop working when Widget hits the eject button. But I explained that it isn't really work that's the problem. I basically sit in front of the computer manipulating spreadsheets, writing notes, shopping online (kidding, Dr. R! mostly). Home is the problem. Between the recent packing/unpacking ordeal, all the projects around the house, the usual household chores, and oh yeah chasing Ellison, home is a lot more work than work. What she should have told me is to stay at work longer and be home less.
But I got the message. And even though we celebrated fetal lung maturity last week, the little booger needs to bake just a little longer. So I'll slow down.
Refinishing Elle's dresser counts as slowing down as long as I do it in steps, right? More on that later this week.

Today's play by play

So I just looked at the clock, and I have no idea where the time went.

5:10a-7:15a - getting myself and Ellison ready for the day
7:15a-7:45a - driving to work
7:45a-1:30p - clinic, clinic, clinic
1:30p-2:15p - yeah, I really don't know what I did. Stuff on the computer? Reply to messages? I don't know.
2:15p-3:30p - around and around and around we go on rounds
3:30p-3:45p - get in fight with computer. Listen to others all around the clinic getting in fights with their computers. IT guy appears and announces that everyone everywhere is having the same problem.
3:34p-3:47p - debate about whether it's ok to leave early since all the work I need to do depends on the computer, which isn't working anywhere
3:47p-4:10p - drive home
4:10p-4:30p - make my way through the maddening crowd at the teeny weeny itty bitty HEB on Braeswood
4:30p-5:20p - piddle around the kitchen and debate dinner plans with Nick - leftover beef stew or carry-out pizza? Let Ellison settle it. She chooses pizza.
5:10p-5:30p - watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with Ellison finishing said work on the computer from home
5:30p-6:00p - eat pizza
6:00p-6:15p - chase Ellison around the house trying to clean her hands and face
6:15p-6:40p - start making cupcakes for tomorrow night's Craft Club; get distracted multiple times, getting no further than mixing butter and sugar
6:40p-7:00p - Ellison's bath and pj routine; jump and shout and sing and dance when she gets like 4 drops of peepee in the potty
7:00p-7:23p - again, no idea. Where did that 20 minutes go?
7:23p-7:27p - wrestle with Ellison over brushing her teeth (fyi Bethie was the victor but at too high a price)
7:27p-7:29p - Ellison in time out for crying about something, no idea what. Perhaps spilled milk? No, literal spilled milk.
7:29p-7:35p - read books and tuck that baby girl in
7:35p-9:24p - actually prepare and bake aforementioned cupcakes; prepare and bag frosting; debate important philosophical topics with Nick; get tuned out by Nick before we get to the great baby name debate topic
9:24p-9:35p (right now) - waste precious time during which I could be sleeping typing out a minute by minute narrative of my day

Wow. That was exhausting. I'm going to bed. See ya later, alligator!

My favorite kind of Sunday

I spent Sunday afternoon breaking in my new kitchen. I've cooked a few meals - spaghetti, pancakes, frozen sweet potato fries. The usual. But Sunday I spent the entire afternoon and evening in the kitchen, putting my shiny new appliances through their paces and in general (according to Nick) acting exactly like my mom, who basically lives in her kitchen and wouldn't even notice if the rest of the house disappeared. And can I just tell you, this kitchen fits me like a brand new pair of Cole Haans - juuuust right.

Now I took pictures, but they don't make my food look appetizing. Like at all. I either need to learn how to photograph food or stop blogging about it I suppose, but my 1000 words will just have to do for now.

1) Beef stew: Among my favorite comfort foods. And I'd been wanting it for weeks but couldn't make it because I had no functional stove. Oh, it smelled so good. So, so good. We like it plain and simple - just carrots, potatoes, and lots of perfectly browned beef. But what good is beef stew without...

2) Homemade bread: Now before you go applauding me too much, let me come clean and make it known that I use a bread machine. I like baking bread by hand from scratch, but it is so time sensitive and takes up so much of the day. I knew I had a lot to accomplish, so me and my Breadman teamed up. And I can't even tell you how good our whole house smelled. Maybe instead of using oil diffusers or candles I should just bake lots and lots of bread. And pretending it would last through the beef stew, I also made...

3) white chicken chili: Introduced to me from Kimberly by way of Jamie (after Ellison was born), this one is almost embarrassingly easy. You literally dump cans (and a package of chicken breasts) into the crock pot and walk away for 8 hours. No chopping. No browning the meat before you put it in. Just shred the chicken at the end while you talk to a good friend you've been missing lately (like Meagan), and oila! Magical deliciousness. But now all this savory has left me with a hankering for something sweet, and I still haven't used my oven today...

4) Nutella-stuffed browned butter chocolate chip cookies: Also from Kimberly (thanks, Abbie, for organizing the WUBC cookbook!). I've been totally digging cookies lately but was getting tired of the same ol', same ol' chocolate chip. No, wait. That's a lie. I never get tired of those. But in my adventurous culinary mentality of the weekend, I wanted to try something a bit more challenging. And I do admit these cookies were a bit of work, and I nearly forgot the sprinkle of sea salt right at the end. But oh, so worth it. So. Stinkin'. Good. I mean, so good. I'm actually fighting the urge to abandon this blog post right now and go eat yet another one.

And the best part? As I stood at my swank new drop-in gas cooktop, I could see and talk to Nick and Ellison in the living room. No more kitchen solitary confinement! You should come over sometime; I've got a tall stack of recipes ready and waiting for a guinea pig.

The chaos that surrounds me

Egads, Murgatroy! I just realized I wrote this post in late November and never actually published it! Oh no! So while I'm afraid it is way out of date, the sentiments expressed still apply. So here's what I was thinking 6 weeks ago.

Oh, boys and girls, Tomorrow is a big day... moving day. We're moving to what we hope is the end-all, be-all, forever home. Well at least a 10 or 12 year home. As a family, we're pretty committed to Houston at this point, so we took the plunge and bought a cute little fixer-upper (translation: old, raggedy, and in need of much love) in Meyerland, which is just about exactly halfway between Nick's and my jobs.
I'm having a hard time deciding which way this post is gonna go, but I'm leaning more toward deeper pondering and reflection rather than descriptions of everything we have planned, largely because I don't yet have any photos of the renovation in progress. So here we go, rambling down Bethie's stream of consciousness.
This house is a big deal. I feel like it really represents a huge milestone for Nick and me, like we've finally arrived where we've been headed for the last 10 years. And that of course makes me think back to the beginning, and makes me think how I can't believe we just dove into the deep end like that and fell in love and got married when looking back we hardly knew each other, let alone each of us what we really wanted in life. I mean, ten years ago I was pretty convinced I wouldn't get married and definitely thought I wouldn't have kids. And work came before play, always. And then suddenly life was completely upside-down, and it was wonderful. Being with Nick taught me to be a person I liked on the inside rather than worrying about what anyone else (including him) thought, where I'd always been rattled with insecurities before. And I like to think being with me gave him some degree of focus that he otherwise would have lacked in life. (Not to mention a broadening of his culinary horizons.)
And we've had lots of "for better" but plenty of "for worse" along the ride. Our time in Nashville for my residency (our forty years in the figurative desert, if you will) was so tough - me in a terrible funk for the first half, and Nick out of work and always feeling like he owed me something for earning all the money. I can't believe we didn't break under the strain. Quite to the contrary, by the grace of God our marriage thrived even in the midst of those trials. Now that isn't to say we never annoyed each other, but we grew into our individual adult selves together. Even though everything I wanted was radically different than 10 years before, somehow our goals and plans evolved into the same rather than opposing things.
And I know how amazing that is because I've arrived in that phase in life where friends are done marrying, and some are having babies. And others are getting divorced. Three people in my residency class before we'd even graduated. And every time I hear about some other couple calling it quits, I ask him to tell me he loves me and won't ever leave. And he always declines to participate in my sudden surge of anxiety. For a while I thought he was just being a booger, as he frequently likes to antagonize me. But more recently I feel like it's because he's almost bummed that I have to ask, that I don't already know it deep, deep down inside.
And tonight. Tonight I got a really good good-night hug from my sweet Ellison. And the explosions from Nick's new Xbox game play a familiar tune, while baby boy turns somersaults inside me. And it feels really good to be where we are, together.

Resurrection of the blog

Soooo, I know it's been a while. Sorry I didn't call. Or text. Or send a carrier pigeon. I've just been busy. It isn't you; it's me. I still love you. I still want to be with you. I promise. No, really. Really. And I'm back now. So here's just a smidgeon of what we Scholzen have been up to lately. More details to be forthcoming over the next few weeks.

There's the part where we bought a house. I think I told you about that part. But did I tell you about the part where we've spent the last 3+ months tearing out, painting, building up, tiling, carpeting, painting, packing/unpacking, and working every single weekend on the house? And be we I mean Nick. Except the painting part. I have surely done my fair share of painting. Here's the prelude to my masterpiece:

Our front hallway. Previously mauve. Now greige on 3 walls, awesome cream and greige horizontal stripes on 1 wall.

And the kitchen. Oh, the kitchen was bad. The stove hood thingie actually blew air the wrong way. And it was mustard yellow. But not the trendy kind. The baby poop kind. Behold the awesomeness, and beware that I'm going to overuse the word awesome a lot when it comes to our remodeling endeavors.

Floor and (awesome) stainless steel backsplash by Nick. And dishwasher. And faucet. Cabinets and counters by someone else because Nick is strong, but he only has 2 arms.

And don't forget about Ellison. She got 2 birthday celebrations this year. One on her actual b-day with just us (and cookie cake) and another celebration Christmas Eve with Gramzie and Auntie Laurie. Then on Christmas Day, this child actually cried because she didn't want to open any more presents. She just wanted to play with the ones she could see, not mess with the ones hidden under paper.

Yes, she licked the frosting off first.

The best gift of all? Facing forward in her carseat.

And I'm on my third straight month of inpatient consults because the renovations on my new clinic still aren't finished. (Story of my life with the whole renovation thing.) And Nick will be happy if he never sees another tile again. But the joke's on him because he still has the hall bathroom to tackle one of these days. And oh yeah, I'm still gestating. Baby boy's real name still TBD. We're not keeping it a secret; we just can't agree. I like Archer, and Nick likes (Nicholas) Alexander. This lack of unified decision making is very unlike us and is making me very anxious. But one way or another this little goober will have a name in 7 weeks or less.

And I think that concludes our tour for the evening. See you again soon. Please don't give up on me. :)