So that’s what heartburn feels like – and other making-a-baby stories

So, I’m still working on making this baby.  Sometimes, it feels like it’s taking for.ev.er. and sometimes it’s like “what? I’m due in three months?”

And sometimes it’s like “what’s this weird feeling in my throat?”  I wondered about it for a full day before I realized…it’s heartburn!  Now, ever since I was a kid, I’ve wondered what heartburn is.  I’d had headaches, bellyaches, scrapes, stubbed toes, and, one time, a bruised lump on my forehead so big that my skull is permanently bump-scarred.  But I always saw these commercials with people rubbing their chests with pained faces and wondered what exactly they were feeling.  Every once in a while I’d have a pain in my chest, and I would think is this heartburn?! but it never was.  But this…this is heartburn.  And now that the novelty has worn off, I don’t like it.  I’m trying not to do the normal things they tell you not to do, like eat a lot before bed, spicy foods, fatty foods, etc.  But sometimes it doesn’t really matter.  Sometimes I have to fall asleep sitting up, and then when I wake up in the middle of the night and think I can lay down, I get heartburn and have to sit up again.

There are other side-effects to baby-building as well…

• waking up at 4:30 for no good reason.  And staying awake.
• getting flour on the ever-growing belly
• really, really, really sore calves
• and charlie horses
• a once-deep belly button getting rather flatt-ish (still crossing my fingers it won’t poke out or anything)
• hips so sore I’ve already started waddling
• really quickly-growing fingernails
• extreme variations in appetite (sometimes, I feel like I could eat the whole world.  Sometimes, all I want is a bagel all day)
• everyone offering me the soft blue chair in my Danish class…

That’s no comprehensive list or anything but it’s what’s been happening recently (especially the flour on the belly thing).  And just now, I thought of my belly as a separate identity.  I was watching the baby dance around to some music I had playing, when I had to take one of my many potty-breaks, and as I was sitting there, I thought “oh man, I might be missing seeing the baby moving around out there!”  Then I remembered that I had, indeed, brought my belly into the bathroom with me.  And that I hoped the baby wouldn’t move around, because it always weirds me out when it does that when I’m on the toilet.

Andreas and I went to our first parent-preparedness class last night!  The night’s theme was more focused on the changing family dynamics, and how important it is to prepare and protect your relationship as a couple, which we’ve already talked about a lot, but it was exciting just to go to one of those classes.  We also got to play briefly with Legos, which was probably my favorite part of the night. There will be three more classes, the next will be about birth, the next about breastfeeding, and the last one will be after all of our babies have been born!  There were five other couples there (there were supposed to be three more) and I’m pretty certain they were all significantly older than Andreas and I, but I expected that, and it really doesn’t matter to me.  I’m much more excited for the next ones, as I think they’ll be more interesting, but this one was good in that it did give us more things to talk about, and start a lot of conversations.  Afterwards, we wandered around for a bit before finally deciding to eat at an indian restaurant where I ate a ridiculous amount of food.  The funny thing is that I was totally keeping an “eye” on how I was feeling.  I thought every once in a while “should I stop eating?” but I felt fine, and it was really delicious, so I just kept on going!  Then, the moment I stood up, I totally regretted it.  Oops.

But the weekend is starting, and Andreas is bringing home a package from the post office when he comes, which has our first cloth diapers in it!  Very excited, since this is the first thing we’ve bought for the baby besides six pairs of socks.  We’ve still got three months…that’s forever, right?

Sorry about the weird picture quality…we keep forgetting to take the camera off of “close-up” mode when we do these.

Note: I was supposed to post this a while ago, but decided to wait until I could include a picture.  Since then, the calves and hips have stopped hurting which is wonderful, and as of today, I’m apparently in my third trimester (and running out of clothes that fit)! 

Catch-up

So, I just realized that my last post was sort of a ditch of half-depression, and that I’d better get back to posting, lest everyone think I’m still living in perpetual “blah.”

I’m not, but honestly I’m not feeling the greatest yet either.  I’m still super stressed out about my test (both written and oral), fairly discouraged (depending on the day), and anxious about the future.  But…The trees are for real budding, and it hasn’t reached below freezing in probably two weeks now!  The bad news is that Andreas is still sick.  Still!  It’s been one thing after another, and if he isn’t sick for a day, he has allergies, but finally he’s going to see our doctor about it all and maybe get a referral to find out what he’s actually allergic to.  But his being sick meant that our three-day weekend (thank you Big Praying Day!), while not exactly a bust, wasn’t super fantastic either.  We’re crossing our fingers (yet again) for another good-weather weekend so maybe we can get out and do something FUN!  Like…you know…go downtown and use our Groupon deal at the super big candy store…

Danish classes have been going medium-well, probably.  The classes themselves are actually really good, and I feel like I get a lot out of them.  I’m also starting to feel comfortable with the other women in the class, so I’m generally not as nervous.  Except for today, when I had to give my little oral presentation in front of everyone, and my heart started pounding like crazy, and I spoke at a superhuman speed, and could barely catch my breath.  (Sorry, baby).

Hopefully we’ll still have quite a few writing assignments between now and the 22nd of May (which is the date of my written exam), and I can continue to get better.

In other news, I’m obviously pregnant.  As in, obvious to anyone who sees me.  I’ve been told I’m really big, I’ve been told I’m small, I’ve been told I’m having a boy, and that I’m having a girl.  I have yet to be offered a seat on the bus, but I don’t mind, since I’d usually turn one down, anyway.  Also, if it’s a short busride, I try to avoid sitting down, because I tend to forget to get off.  I’m not even going to pretend that’s due to what people call “pregnancy brain” because that’s just the fault of “Zeta’s brain.”

And in miscellaneous news, I made a chocolate-spotted cheesecake yesterday, and I am super duper looking forward to eating it, but I think I’m going to make myself wait until Andreas comes home today.  Just because.  I’ve also gotten a second (or, you know, seventeenth) wind with regards to the whole mealplanning/cooking thing.  I think it actually has something to do with the fact that when I have daytime classes, it’s super easy for me to stop at the grocery store on the way home.  This makes meal planning a bit less of a have-to-do-it-all-on-the-weekend-and-then-do-a-huge-shop sort of thing, and makes it a bit more flexible and fun, so I’m happy about that!  If I do the shopping by myself, it also gives Andreas and I a bit more time together in the evenings/weekends, and we’ve been using that time wisely.  By reading Mistborn out loud to each other…and the baby, as I realized today.

So now you’re mostly caught up, and I can maybe fit some of the more themed posts I had planned in the next few weeks.  We’ll see.  I’m trying to be easy on myself until my exams are over, since I’m super stressed out about them.

At risk of sounding emo…

I’ve been sad kind of a lot recently.  It’s a mixture of a lot of things: having a lot to do, being stressed about any one of the hundred things I have to be stressed about, and facing huge life changes (and little mini ones, too).  Part of what’s really hit me within the last week, though, is loneliness.

Not loneliness in that I never see anyone, or I have no one to talk to or care about.  But Andreas has been sick for a week straight now.  I’ve been on nursing duty, which I actually generally really like, but I’ve also felt a bit like I needed taking care of recently.  When Andreas is sick, he just can’t be there for me in the way that he normally is.  That isn’t to say that he doesn’t want to be, or try to be.  But when you’re trying to pour out your woes to someone who’s cutting you off with their coughing every other word, it just doesn’t seem worth it.

I guess it just made me realize (again) that when Andreas can’t be there for me, I don’t really have anyone else.  Sure, I have my family and my friends, but they’re all really far away and have their own lives with their own stuff going on.  And I don’t want a proverbial shoulder to cry on.  I want a real shoulder to cry on.  I wouldn’t say that I have a super hard time making friends, even though I do get really anxious, nervous, and shy.  But I’m well aware that it takes a long time to really create the kind of friendship that I’m yearning for, and amidst all my other worries and life changes, it just seems like it’s not going to happen.

I worry that of the friends I have left from my “old life,” having a baby is going to distance most of them even more than they already are.  I’ve also heard that having a new baby in the house can be extremely isolating, and I’m worried that since I’m having mine before I’ve made any real, strong, solid social ties here, I’m just further dooming myself.

I don’t mean to sound like a super-downer, and these feelings will pass at some point (and show up again at some point later, I’m sure), but I do want to keep this blog as a sort of real portrayal of what my life has been like after the move across the water and before/during the starting-a-family thing, and a big part of my reality is loneliness, or rather worrying about loneliness.

More positive post coming up soon, hopefully!

 

The Discouraging Weeks

I try, for the most part, to stay thankful.  Not really optimistic, but just in a state where I can remember everything good in my life and let if just sort of overrun all of the bad things.  But sometimes, I just sort of get swept into a strange, negative, discouraging current.

Last week was really tough for me.  It was hard to be starting a new class.  Andreas and I had separate plans almost every evening, and I knew that over the weekend, Andreas had a conference so I couldn’t be with him.  It was just overwhelming, and then came a series of silly mishaps that were frustrating at the time, but which I can’t even recall now (except that I lost my bus pass.  That’s still a bit deal).  It was just annoying enough that it put me in a sort of funk that I haven’t sorted out yet.

Danish class has been okay, but after getting back a few assignments today, I’m feeling less confident than ever about the test coming up in May, and just discouraged in general.

Times like these come and go, and I know that, and I still have about a million things to be thankful for but sometimes I just have to put on my grumpy face for a day and hope for better news the next day.

Dreams!

I have always, always been a really vivid dreamer.  That means that since I was a kid, I had awful nightmares (mostly about my dad being executed, or being run over by things) but also ultra-realistic good dreams (like the time I dreamt I got a kitten and it was sleeping on the en of my bed.  Boy was I sad to wake up that morning.)  But I’ve also just always had a lot of dreams.  A lot.  Which is probably the reason I tend to dream the same sort of dreams over and over.

When I got pregnant, my dreams kicked it up a notch.  I’m usually able to remember my dreams at least 3-4 times a week, but suddenly I was dreaming every night, all night.  I’ve dreamt the baby is a girl.  I’ve dreamt the baby is a boy.  I’ve dreamt the baby is five years old and I’m still pregnant with it.  I’ve dreamt the baby was a girl, but we had to give it up for adoption to three lesbians who were all married to each other, and then when we went to visit the baby a month later, it was a boy, nine years old, and had a full beard.

One dream I’ve had throughout my entire life is the buffet dream.  It’s always in different settings, with different foods, but the gist is this: I’m at a buffet and EVERYTHING looks good.  I take a little bit of everything, worrying the whole time that I’ll have to pay extra for taking too many of a certain category of food (this was sort of a big deal at our school lunches, so I think it’s an ingrained anxiety by now), and then…well, then I get to the dessert section, but my plate is already full!!!  But I end up taking a massive amount of desserts anyway, hoping that “eclairs” is its own food category, and then, before I get to eat, I wake up.  I’ve had that dream far, far too many times to count, but since I’ve moved to Denmark and been pregnant, it’s changed.

I still have the dream, but now, instead of everything looking really, really delicious, everything is sort of “meh.”  It’s not gross, but I don’t feel the need to take too much of anything.  I even had a candy store dream where I had specific candies I was going to look for, but they were all out, and nothing else really looked good to me.

Now, I’m going to go all dream-interpretty on you all.  All my life, I always felt like there were so many things that I wanted, that I needed that I was just waiting for, that I couldn’t get yet.  I wanted a certain toy, my own room, my mom to let me watch Friends, a boyfriend, to move out of the house, to have more time for friends, to marry Andreas, to move to Denmark, and always, always, to have babies.  Suddenly, I’m pretty content.  I have pretty much all the big things I’ve been reaching for.  Sure, I still have goals and little things that I want (like to be a midwife, and to have Skittles) but I’m thinking my dreams are reflecting my “no thanks, I’ve got what I need” attitude that I’ve been lucky enough to find for the time being!

Or maybe it just means that my belly is always so full of baby that there’s no room for dream-me to even want to gorge on delicacies.

As for all the rest of the weird dreams, they don’t mean anything.  Only this one.

Warm Fuzzies

So, since my last post, there’s something I’ve been doing a lot.  Unfortunately, it isn’t yoga, working on my puzzle, or eating much other than cookies, but it is going through old chat/message archives.

It started with homesickness, which always leads to some level of nostalgia.  This time, I fed the Nostalgia Monster, and went back to the very first messages that Andreas and I sent back and forth.  I’ve read it time, and time again, but for some reason, this time I suddenly very vividly felt like I did the first time I read it.  He’d probably take away my internet access if I posted that message here for the world to see, but it started with “Zeta, please read this when you are alone.”

I got the message when I was visiting my parents for the weekend.  I was sitting on the futon in my little sister’s room, and when I read the first line, I looked up to make sure I was, in fact, alone.  It wasn’t a love letter by any means, but it was the first acknowledgement that there was something there that was strong enough to keep going and to get stronger despite the fact that we wouldn’t see eachother again for nearly a whole year.

Once I ran through all the Facebook messages we sent to each other during that first year apart, I decided to go back and look through our MSN chat logs.  Hey, I might as well take advantage of having as much time to myself as I have at the moment, right?  Anyway, besides reliving the warm fuzzies and the thrills of many of our “firsts,”  I’ve also been getting the thrill of reading something we wished, and realizing that it’s totally coming true.  Like, right now.

We talked so often about how much we looked forward to getting married, how we both wanted to be married young, how we so often thought to ourselves throughout the day “if only _______ were here, this would be at least twice as good.”  Andreas even said at one point, that he was struck with the random thought that he would like to have kids at around the same time as one of his sisters, so they would be around the same age.  It’s like each one of our little thoughts and hopes was actually a mini prophecy.  Getting married was the best thing that’s happened to us so far.  We did get married young.  Grocery shopping, doing puzzles, watching TV, and even cleaning up after dinner is at least twice as good when we’re together.  And why yes, your mom does love me.

But it wasn’t all warm fuzzies.  Rereading our conversations and messages reminded me how tough of a time I had sometimes in school. Being sleep-deprived, overworked, overhomeworked, and dealing with drama between friends was really tough.  I was often depressed, and sadder than I remember being when I think back on my college days in general.  It reminded me that nostalgia is all well and good, but that what I have now is so much better.  Moving to Denmark, dealing with visa issues, language barriers, frustrations, and homesickness has not been easy.  At all.  But sometimes I forget how hard things used to be, when Andreas didn’t come home to me every night.  Things have changed so much in the last few years, and even though I haven’t really made fast friends here yet, or feel very at home, or feel like I’ll ever get over my homesickness, things, on average, are a lot better than they ever were before.

I’m nervous for the next step in our lives.  I’m nervous for my Danish tests, and sometimes sad that I don’t have friends to hang out with, get coffee with, or sit around and do a puzzle with.  But I am so, so thankful to have gone through everything I have, and to be done with it and to have reached where we are now.

I also realized the other day that there is one respect in which this whole moving-overseas thing has been easy for me.  I never, ever think about not having done it.  Maybe it’s just because it was sort of my plan for so long, or because we worked so hard for it, but I never have considered the fact that maybe it was a mistake.  It wasn’t.  This was the best thing we could have done, for Andreas, for me, for us, and for Baby ZA (Zeta+Andreas…also, that’s not actually its name.  Don’t freak out.)  Knowing this helps me get through the hard times, because I can’t really think of anything that, without some sort of magic wand, could be better.

This was longer, and sort of lovey-dovier than I expected, but sometimes you just need a little confirmation, and sometimes you have to type out that confirmation to make sure that you remember it.  Things are actually going really well at the moment, but I’ve been  busy with plans Andreas and I have with others, and starting my new Danish class this week that it’s been a lot overwhelming.

But the sun has started to shine, and one of the high temperatures for the week is 10! (celcius!)!   Also, after a really long 3-4 days of facing my spine and kicking my intestines, the baby has turned around again, and I get to see  and feel it kicking my belly again, which cheers me up considerably.  Also, also, I made really, really delicious peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chip cookies the other the day, and although I’ve been eating way too many (seriously.  I’m not even going to write how many I eat each day because it’s embarrassing.  No, I should.  I’ve eaten like 10 each day.)

I hope everyone else’s spring is springing and they have as much to be thankful for as I do!

Excuses, excuses!

Oops.

I forgot to write for a while, guys.  I have a bunch of excuses, but none of them are very good, so I’ll spare the space and just get one with a catch-up post!

Things are definitely starting to move faster, now.  When I was in the beginning weeks of my pregnancy, I would count down the days until I could be in the next week, longing for double digits and a sense of security that sort of comes with that.  Now that I’m smack dab in the middle of the fun part, I wouldn’t mind staying where I am for a while before I start to get really big, really heavy, and turn into that whale/elephant/hippopotamus I hear shows up in the eight/ninth months.

Life is also starting to move along at quite a pace!  The last week or two have been sort of out of the ordinary for us.  I took my module test for Danish, which went perfectly fine, but caused me to have a pretty busy and hectic week.  Then after a visit to our little niece, Andreas and I both came down with rough colds, and by the time we recovered from that, it was Andreas’s “spring break” which was also when his family came to visit for the long weekend, and we had a string of get-togethers which were all very lovely, but as usual, made me feel more homesick than usual.  No matter how much I feel accepted by and lucky to have Andreas’s family, every time I’m with them I’m rammed with double-feelings.  Happy to be with them, and suddenly really sad to not have my own family around.  I think it’s been a lot worse since I”ve been pregnant, and more prone to feelings in general, haha!

Anyway, this week is also quite busy, with just a lot of things going on, but I’m looking forward to tonight and the next few days where we can relax and get back into our normal routine again.

It also seems that spring has sprung, and although it’s a cold spring, it’s been sunny and above freezing (for the most part) for several days!  There are rumors of a snowstorm on Friday/Saturday, but I’m choosing to ignore them and be optimistic.

I’m also going to be starting a new daily routine as of next week.  I’m going to have Danish classes four days a week from 9-12 am, and the fourth day I”ll have my evening grammer class.  I’m excited to have a schedule, and a reason to get out of bed in the morning instead of stay cuddled up in bed with my laptop until nearly noon, and while I’m a bit nervous for starting what feels like a “real life” here, I’m sure it’ll be fine, especially once I get started.  The bad news is that I checked out the class schedule for the summer/fall, and I won’t be able to complete any of the six-week “modules” but I’m hoping that with maybe online classes combined with some real-life ones, I’ll be able to keep up with some of it.  We’ll see if I even care, come August…but I know it’s really important for me to keep going so I can go onto real school, and I know Andreas will help keep me on track.

For now, I’m going to bust out the puzzle I bought at the flea market last week (along with some other sweet finds), try to get into a real routine, and look forward to everything that’s to come (summer weather, baby, visit to the US) and forget about all the other things (big Danish test, cold weather, stress, and homesickness).

Cake, cake, and cupcakes

So a long time ago, I made a cake for a devotional meeting/potluck with some Baha’is in the area.  And ever since, I’ve been meaning to make a post about it, but haven’t.  Now that I’m more-or-less couch-ridden (Andreas and I have both come down with some something icky), I thought I finally would!

The cake was really delicious, though very heavy, but kept well.  The cupcakes were all eaten, but the cake was ours to take home.  It took me a week and a half to eat the whole thing, and when I got to the last piece, it was still moist, and in good condition!

 

Andreas helped me out with these, and the chocolate designs were all his idea!  He even made the ones atop the cupcakes.  I think the best part about bringing them to the potluck was sharing the compliments, and getting to brag a little bit about Andreas.

Now hopefully he can use his creativity to think of something we can eat without having to go out in the cold.  We’ll do anything to stay in our pajamas.

 

Well, this is kind of embarrassing…

So I promise that I have another mouth-watering cake post coming up (I know that it’s mouth-watering, because I just finished taking the photos and I almost drooled on the camera).  But before that, I have to write this post, which is less fun, and a lot more embarrassing.

For the past few weeks, Andreas and I have debated whether or not we should find out if the baby I’m growing is a boy or a girl.  At first, I was all for having a surprise, but as the ultrasound got closer, and I realized more and more how much easier it would be to gather all our baby-things if we knew the sex, it was pretty tempting to find out.  We were at a standstill, but the lovely woman from MontgomeryFest acted as a tie-breaker, and we decided we’d find out!  We wanted our friends and family who are far away, and excited about the coming baby, to be able to feel more “a part” of what’s happening.

So, the scan was scheduled for Friday, and after a late night on Thursday, I woke up at 4am.  And couldn’t go back to sleep.  I spent the morning baking cake in a half-stupor, only staving off a severe case of the grumpies because I was excited about our afternoon appointment.  Andreas came home early, and we set off for the hospital.  When we got there, the waiting room was rather full, and we waited a bit longer than usual.  When they called our name, we went into a sort of strange room, where a student was going to do the first part of the scan, and her teacher, the second half.

Now, I had planned to tell Andreas ahead of time that if they don’t offer to tell us the sex, or ask if we want to know, that he would need to ask.  I know myself well enough to know that I would have a hard time speaking up, especially when I’m on a table with goo on my belly and a stranger prodding around.  But in my sleepy stupor, I’d forgotten to tell him.  Now, when I get overtired, I don’t just get grumpy (although goodness, do I get grumpy), but I also get anxious.  While they were doing the scan, showing us all the heart chambers, and the halves of the brain, I was taking it all in, and filing it under “things to be grateful for” in my brain, but I was also desperately trying to get up the courage to ask about the sex.  I couldn’t seem to find the right Danish words, and I sent Andreas some pleading looks, but he mistook them for beaming joy or something, because he didn’t say a word.  I was so anxious, I was practically paralyzed, my mouth just wouldn’t move.  I couldn’t ask.

The woman tried to get some good photos (although the baby had its head buried somewhere around my hipbone) and then wiped off the ultrasound wand, and told me I could dry off my belly.  Andreas and I were left alone for a few minutes, while they filled out some paperwork, and I could finally spill what I’d been dying to tell him the whole time.  Turns out, Andreas forgot to ask.  He just completely forgot that we could probably find out the sex today.  He asked when they came back, but they said that they don’t look unless we ask, which we hadn’t, so we thanked them, and went on our way.

When I get tired, I’m also prone to overreacting, which I promptly did, as I tried in vain to hold back my tears on the way back to the bus stop.  I knew that I was being ridiculous.  We had a healthy, perfect-looking baby, and I hadn’t even been that set on finding out the sex until a few days before the scan.  But I knew, at the same time, that I wasn’t crying because we didn’t know if Baby Us is a boy or a girl.

I was crying because I felt helpless.  I felt vulnerable and cowardly and really out of my depth.  I felt like “how am I going to be a mother here?  I can’t even speak to people here.”  I was mad at myself, and so frustrated about my anxiety.  Even now, when I’m not overtired, and I’ve had plenty of time to get over the disappointment of not knowing, it brings tears to my eyes.  I know that I’m incredibly lucky.  I have a perfect-for-me, loving husband (who totally understood why I was crying), who I get to live with and see every day.  I get to live in the Magical Land of Denmark that enchanted me from the moment my plane touched down three years ago, and we have a baby on the way–something I’ve dreamed about since I was small.  I know that my life is wonderful, and I’m incredibly grateful.  But that doesn’t mean it’s been very easy, or that it will get a lot easier anytime soon.

It’s just discouraging when I feel like I can’t get over my anxiety enough to do a “normal people” thing, like asking a simple question.  Some days are better than others, but the bad days are still just as discouraging as they ever were.

The good news is, that even though my anxiety doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, my writing skills are improving a lot with the class in Danish grammar that I’m taking these days!  Hopefully in a few weeks, I’ll continue with this class, and also start the one to help me prepare for my big Danish test that’s coming up in May!  Crossing my fingers to get into a daytime class!

Spring Carrot Cake!

So, apparently spring “officially” begins in Denmark on March 1st.  This year, it is forecasted that the temperatures will not drift above freezing until sometime in April.  So it doesn’t feel like spring.  We did have a couple of glorious sunny almost-warm days at the very beginning of March, but since then it’s been nothing but a big bummer.

However, we have to get into the spring mindset somehow, and baking is obviously the way to do this.  So even though I’m fasting from cakes/candies/yummy things during daylight hours, I was able to volunteer to bring a cake to our Ruhi study circle last week, and therefore had an excuse to bake one!

I’m pretty sure I chose carrot cake because I wanted something to go well with the cream cheese frosting I had been daydreaming about, but any reason to make a carrot cake is a good one, and I can tell you I didn’t regret this at all!

Of course, I had to decorate accordingly.  It was pretty cute, if I may say so myself.  I didn’t want the plastic wrap to ruin my sweet little carrots while it was in transport, so I finally, FINALLY bought some toothpicks.  I have been wanting toothpicks since last August when we moved from the last sublet that had toothpicks in the cupboards.  I don’t use them on my teeth, but for testing done-ness, cleaning odd things, and, of course, holding plastic wrap away from nicely decorated cakes!  The problem wasn’t finding them.  Toothpicks are probably just as common in Denmark as they are in the US, the problem was remembering to buy them.  Ever.  But finally, I had a good enough reason to scoot out to the store just for the sake of buying toothpicks because I couldn’t stand not remembering again.

And it was a good thing I did, because they came in handy with the cake-baking I did yesterday, as well!  That’s right.  Two cakes in one week.  Luckily they were both to share, or I think I would have added substantially to my minimal weight gain.  The other cake post will be coming up shortly, I promise, but for now, here’s one more picture of the carrot cake.  (By the way, it was super delicious.)  Also, I may have overdone it with all the little carrots around the edge, but they were so fun that I couldn’t help myself!