The Ups and The Downs

Hi Friends!

It's been a while, I know.  To be honest, I haven't really had anything that great to write about and didn't want to bore you with the mundane day to day stuff that you go through just like me.  Plus I knew I had a big day coming up on Wednesday (yesterday) and I was holding out on you for that.

If you've read any of my previous blogs you know that I'm not a huge fan of pregnancy.  Well . . . let me re-word that, I'm not a huge fan of being pregnant myself.  On that note, lets start with "the downs" or at least the major down for me lately.

Sleep.  Oh my long lost dear friend sleep.  Where have you gone?  I miss you so.  I know, I know, all you mom's out there would like to explain to me that my body is preparing for lack of sleep once the baby gets here and that I'll never sleep again and blah blah blah blah blah.  I know this.  I am fully aware of this.  Doesn't mean that I don't miss my sleep right now, right this minute.  What is with pregnancy insomnia anyway?  I mean really, why am I waking up at 1:30 in the morning with eyes wide open and fully prepared to go clean my house?  Not only that, why am I waking up at that ungodly hour and not able to go back to sleep again?  I'd prefer to catch up on my sleep now so that when Baby Fia is here I can get an overload of lack of sleep.  On the flip side, at least when I'm up all hours of the night I'll have myself a little buddy to keep me company in about 8 weeks from now.

If anyone else is up at such hours please feel free to play Words With Friends with me, my screen name is ocjenjen10, haha!  I need some practice anyway, my co-workers just keep killing me!  They are some smart ladies with much bigger . . . eh . . . larger . . . vocabularies then me that's for darn sure.  So please, lets play :)

Enough of the downs, how about "The Ups!"  

Hooray for the ups!  When I love the ups I really love the ups too!

Like I said, Wednesday was a big day for Marc, Baby Fia and I.  We got our maternity photos taken!!!!

Did y'all know there was such a thing?  Oh yeah, just like a Babymoon, maternity photos are also all the hype these days.  How fun that we get to be part of the trendy crowd, I've never been trendy or very popular so to be part of the "in crowd" has got me excited.

My friend Michelle from high school has become a "momtographer."  A mighty good one I might add!  So I saw some of her work on her blog, www.taylorrosephotography.blogspot.com and contacted her a while ago about taking our pictures one day.  Well, seemed like I sent that email years ago and now here we are at the end of March taking our photos!  On one hand it feels like I've been pregnant forever but on the other time is going fast, does that make sense?  

We met down at Laguna Beach around 4:30 to take our photos.  Of course yesterday was a beautiful day at about 75 degrees which means Laguna would notoriously be packed . . . and it was.  We found our parking spots, found Michelle had our bags packed with lots of goodies for picture taking and made our way down to the beach.  The reason we chose Laguna rather than Huntington or Newport beach was for the beautiful cliffs that they have down there.  I love the look of the cliffs and rocks that are out in the middle of the water, makes for great photos!

Michelle works wonders with a camera let me tell you!  Plus she is hilarious and super fun to work with. She made it easy for us to feel comfortable and just do whatever she said, it was great!  After about an hour and half of photos and filling her camera until the memory couldn't take one more Marc and Jen picture we called it quits.  

I'm really bad because I'm the kind of person that much rather enjoys instant gratification over delayed.  On the way home from the beach all I could think of was how I couldn't wait to see some of those photos!  Luckily for me, Michelle is a hard worker and she likes to do what she calls a "sneek peak" of her photo sessions.  She actually stayed up until about 1:30am editing some of our photos and putting them on her blog and on facebook.  She rocks!

Here are just a couple of photos:

I'd post all of the ones that she edited but that wouldn't be fair to her blog so please visit her blog site at www.taylorrosephotography.blogspot.com to check out some of our others.  You will love them!  

I can't wait to see all the others!  Now that is an up side to pregnancy thats for sure!  

Just as a side note, Marc sent flowers to my work today just for the heck of it!  Yes, that is me rubbing it in your faces :)  To be fair though, Marc NEVER EVER sends me flowers, brings flowers home, has anything to do with flowers so this was a really really big deal.  Downside to pregnancy, I was trying not to cry when they brought the flowers in my office.  Up side to pregnancy, I got flowers sent to work from my husband!!  

Yep, I'd say I'm pretty spoiled and have a pretty darn good life!  All the glory to God thats for sure!

Hope you all voted for your next American Idol last night!  Results show tonight my friends.

Have a great night and happy almost Friday to you!

Cheers!

Jen :) 

Bad to Worse . . . Good to Great!

Well hello my friends, its been a few days!


I must admit, I have a lot to tell you about last weekend and I'm very excited to fill you in on the latest . . . brace yourself, its going to be a long one! 


For those of you that don't know, Marc's birthday was on March 15th.  We did a lot of fun stuff for him but I thought it would be nice if I did something special for him as well.  A few months ago I was looking up different little getaways where we could celebrate Marc's birthday as well as a little "Babymoon" if you will :)  


A Babymoon is all the hype these days, didn't you know?  Well I didn't really know until I read about it on a hormonal pregnancy message board one day.  Apparently, some couples plan a Babymoon as one last little couples getaway before the baby arrives.  I figured I would plan a Babymoon and Marc's birthday all in one weekend . . . being the wonderful wife that I am :)


So, I researched some California hotels that carry a Babymoon Package . . . who knew???  Apparently there are quite a few places that have this package, but the one that suited us best was in Pismo Beach.  They seemed to have had the best deal with the best package for our personalities.  I wouldn't call myself a planner, but I'm definitely NOT a procrastinator that's for sure!  I booked the package I'd say back in January.  I thought to myself that the end of March would be perfect!  Gosh, I figured it would be nice and sunny and we can lay around out in the sunshine soaking up the Vitamin D like there's no tomorrow! That's when things went from bad to worse.


The bad.  


Mr. Weatherman and his Mega Doppler 25,000 called for rain!  Boo!  I was hopeful that Mr. Weatherman would be wrong since he so often is.  Figures this is the one time he is right!  


Well . . . our package came with a $50 voucher to the hotel's restaurant called Marisol.  I of course made our reservations for dinner right after making our reservations for the hotel.  We were all set for 7:00 on Sunday night and I had told the guy that we were celebrating my husbands birthday and everything.  They took down Marc's name and it was sure to be a great time!


The worse.


Marc got home from working a 48 hour shift on Sunday morning.  He was tired, as he should have been after working a 48 hour shift.  Plus he had allergies, great!  So he came home, took some Benadryl (sure to knock out a grown man for a few hours) and went to bed.  In the meantime, I get a phone call from an 805 area code, assuming its the hotel to confirm our reservations . . . wrong.  Its the restaurant calling to let me know that the storm had come through Pismo Beach with full force and that the restaurant had been closed down due to severe water damage.  They were happy to give us a referral to another restaurant location nearby though.  I must say, the manager was really nice and it wasn't his fault, but I was pretty disappointed.


You know when you have expectations of things and they just don't seem to go your way?  That's how I was feeling.  I was so excited to plan this for Marc, he had no idea where we were going or what we were doing and I just wanted things to be perfect.  Bummer.


The good.


Driving the 101 Freeway Northbound is always a great drive.  I mean we were in a torrential downpour about 90% of the way, but regardless, its a nice scenic drive :)  So, we get to the hotel which is pretty beautiful:

Upon arrival they give a sheet of paper that explains what the Babymoon package includes, which was far more than I had read about online when booking, Yippee! 

The great.

One thing that it did say online that was not on the paper above was that we each got a 50 minute massage as part of the package as well!  I made appointments for our massages after making our dinner reservations back in January, I swear I'm not a planner.   

So we get to the hotel, we get this paper that says all that is included in the package and we head to our room.  Our room that has a view of the pool and the ocean . . . 

We have about an hour to kill before heading down to our massages.  So we do what most couples would do on a romantic getaway vacation . . . we watch college basketball.  Well . . . I took a little snooze and Marc watched college basketball if you want the 100% truth.  

Then we head down and have our massages in a couples only room.  I had a prenatal massage and Marc had the signature Cliffs Resort massage, whatever that means.  It was awesome!  Loved every second of it and wanted another one the next day!

After massages we got dressed and ready for dinner.  While getting ready we had a knock at the door.  And here comes on a tray and all, another babymoon package item:

A diaper, a Cliffs Resort onesie and a bottle of champagne!  Too bad it wasn't sparkling cider, but hey at least we will have something to drink after the baby is born! I don't think Marc was quite as excited about the delivery as I was :) 

Oh since the restaurant was closed due to water damage they were serving the same menu in the bar so we just ended up eating in the bar for dinner.  It was really nice because the bar had a full view of the ocean, and the clouds parted for a little while as the sun set, I felt spoiled.  

Here we are in our best dinner getup.

That's my sexy maternity shirt, yow! :)  Haha, that's a joke by the way.  

After using our dinner voucher we owed a whopping $4 tab.  Must have been my shirley temple that put us over the limit.  We also had a voucher for a free half bottle of wine for Marc but he chose not to use it, he's not a huge drinker and especially if he has no one to join him.  

It was still raining then so we chose to go back to the room and use our free movie voucher instead of a crazy night out on the town.  We watched The King's Speech, wow, what a great movie!  We were able to pause it about half way through and order our free ice cream too!  I ordered vanilla and Marc ordered Mango sorbet.  Ice cream in a bowl doesn't photograph very well so I'll spare you that picture.  By the time the movie was over and ice cream was eaten it was about 10:30, wayyyyyy past my prego bedtime that's for sure!

The next morning we had a voucher for free breakfast also.  That was delicious!  It was buffet style with an omelet station, potato station, bread station, fruit station, meat station, and all kinds of deliciousness!  The clouds had broken up and it was such a pretty day on Monday.  We went for a little walk to check out the scenery in Pismo before heading back home.  Here are some of our sites:

Very pretty.  Then we just took our time getting home and toured downtown Pismo Beach a little.  We decided we will retire there one day.  A very quaint and cute little town, our kinda place.  Oh and we stopped by the dunes and picked up some camping information as well, we will camp there with our children one day...

We made one very important stop on the way home, UCSB.  Being that Marc is a UCSB Alumni we had a very important purchase to make:

I suppose if we have a little Leah Marie Fiamengo we will have to plop a cute little yellow bow on her hair to make her less of a Tom Boy :)  Although I'm not a Gaucho, I'd say this is a pretty cute little purchase.  Marc wanted to buy one in every color and he wants Baby Fiamengo to come home from the hospital in this as well.  Too bad we got a 3-6 month size so this will most likely not be "going home" attire for our little one.  

I guess you can say we had a good time.  Thank goodness we get along, right?  After seeing how our trip went from good to great, the bad to worse doesn't even exist in my memory anymore.

Thank you for joining me on memory lane for our sweet little Babymoon!

Happy American Idol Night!

Love Jen :)

What's a Mangolicious?

Hi readers!  Hope you are all enjoying your weekend so far!


So, I was thinking that some of you just might be wondering, "what the heck is a Mangolicious?"  That is a very good thought too.  I'll get to that in a minute.


First, I thought it would be nice to share with you the story of Marc and Jen . . . in a somewhat condensed version of course.  


Oh the love story that is Marc and Jennifer . . . 


Way back when (13 years ago!!!) I began working at the best pizza place in town, Lamppost Pizza!  I remember telling my cousin Mike that this guy that worked there was sooooooo cute, he had blonde hair and blue eyes and was "like so totally cute!"  That of course would be Marc :)  I was 15, he was 17 and it was sure to be love someday :)


So we met at Lamppost and began dating.  We dated for about 4 years before Marc headed off to UC Santa Barbara for college.  We were going to stay together and make the distance work but we were both young and still had a lot of growing up to do.  One of the best things we ever did was break up for a few years (I'd say it was about 3 years or so?) and learn more about ourselves.  We continued to talk to each other on the phone throughout the years that we were broken up and we still saw each other every now and then too, there was just something there that kept us connected.  We both dated other people which was also one of the greatest things we could have done.  We quickly realized that the people we dated did not bring out the best in us and that maybe the grass isn't greener on the other side after all.  Once Marc graduated from UCSB and moved back home things just fell into place perfectly.  Marc broke up with his girlfriend at the time, I broke up with my boyfriend and just like that we were back on track!


After a couple years of dating Marc proposed and 9 months later we were married!  He gave me a ring pop, best wedding ring I've ever tasted! 

Flash forward almost three years now and we are in our cute little condo expecting our first child.  What an awesome life we have.  

Here is our 1st Anniversary ...

Our 2nd Anniversary ...

Our 3rd Anniversary will look a little different since we will have Baby Fia with us this year!  Yippy!

So anywho, what was the point of this blog?  Oh yeah, what is a Mangolicious?  

If you don't already know, our last name is Fiamengo.  Say it with me people Fi (Fee) A (ah) Meng (Ming) O (O), Fiamengo!  Pretend you are italiano for a minute and then say it, FIAMENGO!  Granted, it can be a difficult last name to say when you don't know it, I understand.  Being that it is difficult for some, they like to make up there own last names for us.  Working at a school and a fire station you can only imagine some of the things we've heard.  Lets name a few, the famous Flamingo, Fandango, Mango, Fia, Flippy Floppy, Fidamingo . . . I'm sure there are more, but those are the most famous of all. The strangest ones come from my students at work, like Flippy Floppy???  Huh?

So anyway, one of the more popular names is Mango.  Some refer to the two of us as The Mango's. 

Well . . . Marc had a friend in Santa Barbara named Alaina, she has since become one of my really good friends.  In fact, she and I talk far more than her and Marc do.  She lives up North but she is such a great person and I'm so glad that by default we have become friends.  She listened to all of my woes and cry me a rivers while Marc and I were trying to conceive.  She is a great listener, she is funny and she is just an all around good person.  Well amongst my woe is me complaints she decided she would call me Mrs. Mangolicious.  Once I told her I was pregnant (which she was the first person to know!!! I didn't tell you all about that in my blog) she then named me Mommy Mangolicous.  Hence the name of my blog, Mommy Mangolicious.  

I figure I should give credit where credit is due and Alaina gets all the credit for the title of my blog and for my latest and greatest nickname.  Thanks Alaina! :)

Well . . . [insert heavy sigh here] I'm off to supervise the Sadie Hawkins Dance tonight at my work . . . too bad the dance starts at my bedtime of 8:00.  This is going to be a long night . . . 

Oh yeah and I'll fill you all in about mine and Marc's little weekend getaway when we get back on Monday!  Woo Hoo! 

Sleep well my friends and think of me rockin out to "Sadies Gone 80's" tonight while you are in your comfy beds dozing off!

Jen :) 

So You Say It's Your Birthday . . .

Well, even if its not your birthday or my birthday too . . . it was Marc's birthday!  Yay!


Yep, on March 15th 1980 little Marc Fiamengo and Bryan Fiamengo were born.  Oh yeah for those of you who don't know, Marc has a fraternal twin brother Bryan as well.  


So to start of the big birthday celebrations we had a little BBQ on Sunday for Family Day just for Marc.  It was a really fun day.  Marc's two younger brothers and step dad were there and several members from my family were there, from cousins to grandparents to uncles.  Per Marc's request we had hot dogs, brats, chicken, my moms famous macaroni salad and a whole bunch of other delicious things!  Also per Marc's request, my mom and I made a homemade German Chocolate cake!  I'm not a fan of German Chocolate but I heard it was delicious!  You would never know that we have a member of the family that owns a bakery by the looks of our cake, but at least it tasted good, right?

Now, please keep in mind that German Chocolate cakes do not picture well at all!  Oh and you see, Marc turned 31 and of course we had to use a Star Wars Darth Vader as his "1" on the cake :)  That was actually for Dylan because Dylan wanted to help Uncle Marc blow out the candles.

They did a good job :)  Uncle Marc has been a celebrity these days with the nephews!  They have been all about him lately and just love him so much.  You can't see Wesley in the picture above but Marc's got him in his arms too.  Such a good uncle! 

Here are some of the characters that were at Marc's shindig on Sunday.

Marc, his brother Bret and his other brother Eric.

We all know and love these two cuties, Wesley and Dylan!

My cousins Brian, Kacie and Baby Madison.  Then of course we've got Dylan, Wesley, Molly and Shane.

So, Sunday was a really fun day and Marc had a really good time.  Then, Tuesday was his actual birthday!  I'm off on Tuesdays, Marc was off on Tuesday and my mom took a furlough day on Tuesday so we could spend the day with Marc.

We spent the day in San Diego, it was SO beautiful!  The weather couldn't have been more picture perfect, it was absolutely beautiful!  We started out at one of the best restaurants in San Diego called Nicky Rottens.  Ugh, they have the worlds BEST sweet potato fries!  Oh man they are so delicious!  Lets see, Marc ordered a teriyaki chicken sandwich, I had a BBQ chicken sandwich and my mom had turkey burger sliders, yuuuu-uuuum!  Oh here is Marc outside of Nicky Rottens :)

We walked from Nicky Rottens in the Gaslamp District down to Seaport Village for the rest of our day in SD.  

Here we are in Seaport Village, Marc at 31 years old and me at 30 weeks pregnant! 

We also made a really cute purchase for the baby room :)

They are actually magnetic salt and pepper shakers but we will use them as decoration in the baby room instead.  They are just so darn cute!  My mom also bought us a turtle magnet that sits on our refrigerator as I type!  Oh yeah, and we of course ended our day with a little Ben and Jerry's ice cream!  Yum again! I had mint chocolate chunk, mom had lemonade sorbet and Marc had Chunky Monkey!

Overall, I'd say that Marc had a good birthday.  Dylan called him that night and sang Happy Birthday to him so really how could you go wrong with a 4 year old singing to you, right?  SD wasn't the last of his Birthday celebrations either!  We are going to his mom's tomorrow for dinner, we are going to breakfast on Saturday with his brothers while Bryan is in town (Sheesh thats a lot of eating!) and then Sunday and Monday I'm taking him to a secret location for a little getaway!  What a lucky guy!

With ALL of that being said, Happy Birthday Marc!  You are loved by so many!

Hey, its hump day everyone!  Hope you get through the hump today and enjoy rolling downhill for the rest of the week!

Much Love!

Jen :) 

  

As promised . . . All Things Baby, Part Duex

Happy Sunday morning my cyber friends!


Hope everyone is having a great weekend so far!  As you know, our Sunday's are Family Day's so we have a big day ahead of us today.  Plus, Tuesday is my husbands birthday so we will be celebrating his Birthday today for Family Day also!  Fun stuff going on around here!


Anyway to get back to the real topic of the day, baby!  Oh wait, there was one little story that I forgot to tell you about last week on my rant.  This is not a rant but just an awkward story really.  So at work last week I was meeting with a parent whom I had never met before.  We'll just call her Mrs. V for now.  Well, she was very sweet and we had a nice little meeting.  By the end of the meeting I had mentioned to her that as of April 29th I will be out on maternity leave and that she can contact my job-share partner if anything comes up at the end of the school year.  Then I stood up to say goodbye.  Well . . . she didn't realize I was pregnant until I told her about the maternity leave and stood up.  So it was a very awkward moment, as she reached out her hand towards me (I was assuming she was reaching out to shake my hand as I usually do when saying hello and goodbye to parents anyway) I reached out back to shake her hand, she meanwhile headed straight for the belly.  So as she was rubbing my stomach I was reaching out for a cordial handshake and it just made for a very weird and awkward moment.  Then she awkwardly left my office and I sat back down in my chair just feeling all awkward for a little bit :)


Geez I get sidetracked so easily don't I?  


So I thought today would be a good day to let you all in on the progression of the nursery!  Yay!  Marc and I are really excited about the nursery these days.  It's just turning out so cute and let me tell you, if I were a baby . . . or even a 28 year old adult, I would want to be in that room.  


Before it was a nursery, it was an office and the dogs (Sierra) room.  This is a general idea of what it looked like before any work was done.

When that picture was taken we had already started taking things down, but as you can see the computer and dog crate and other mismatched things were in that room.  Plus we had a whole wall that was dedicated to fire stuff also.  

Then Marc prepped and got ready to paint.

We had decided that we wanted a Sea Turtle theme for the nursery since we don't know the gender of the baby and underwater/sea turtle type of stuff is somewhat neutral . . . and very cute!  That being said, we went with a very bright green!

The blue tape really accents the green right? :)  Anyway, its difficult to tell in this picture but its a very bright green and a very happy color for Baby Fiamengo.  I of course got made fun of for picking such a bright color but all those nay sayers are laughing now because with the furniture in there it looks great!  Speaking of which, here is Marc putting together some of the pieces of furniture (thank God he is the patient one in the family).

Marc put together the changing table, the dresser and the crib!  He did such a great job too!  Sidetrack for a minute . . . Baby Fia currently has the hiccups as I write this, poor baby.  Hiccups are ok for the first two, then they just suck!  

Where was I?  Oh yes, the furniture.  So as you can see in the background there, we had a couple of murals painted on the walls too.  They looks amazing!  We love love love them!  Check them out.

I wish I could take the credit for these paintings but I definitely can't!  One of my moms friends has had this lady, Lori Hannah, do paintings in her house throughout the years.  So we snagged her and she did all of this in 4 hours!  We just plopped her upstairs in the room and you would have never known she was even in the house.  We are SO happy with the work she did!

We are obviously not done with the nursery yet.  There are still a few things that we need to get such as pictures and wall hangings and whatnot but here are the rest of the pictures that I have of the nursery that I think you might enjoy.

Uh, please ignore the dog crate in the corner! :)  Don't worry, we won't be putting the baby in there if its fussy! :)  Actually that corner will have a glider in it but the glider hasn't come in yet, should be here any day though!  

So thats what the baby has got so far!  New carpet, baseboards, crown molding, new paint, mural, and new furniture!  What a lucky baby!  I'm telling you, I just want to pull up a sleeping bag and sleep in there myself.  I guess I shouldn't ask for that because that is what will be happening a few short months from now anyway, yikes!

Hope you enjoy all the pictures.  I'll keep you posted on anything new that we end up getting and any new pictures.  In the meantime, be on the lookout for All Things Baby, Part 3! :)

Have a very happy Sunday my friends!

Jen :) 

"Oh I just love being pregnant!"

Nope.

You know the whole "Oh my gosh I loved being pregnant" attitude that so many women have?  I don't have that.  I thought that I would, but I just don't.  

What makes it even worse is that I have had a GREAT pregnancy with no complications, no sickness and no issues whatsoever!  I feel terrible because so many women out there have had horrible pregnancies and here I am with this smooth pregnancy and just not liking it.  I really wanted to enjoy it and I really wanted to be that person that says, "I love being pregnant, its the best!"  I'm just not that person I guess.  

Now don't get me wrong, I am in love with the fact that God is able to create such an amazing life within me, and I do love feeling the movements and kicks and punches.  I really love hearing Baby Fiamengo's heartbeat and seeing the cute little ultrasound pictures every month, I do love that part.  Its the rest that I don't love so much.

I have never been a person to go over a certain weight, so the weight gain is tough to deal with.  I know, I know, I've heard it all "you're supposed to gain weight you are pregnant" or "you're pregnant, you're glowing" or "if you didn't gain weight your baby wouldn't be healthy."  Well to pull a Charlie Sheen, "duh!"  I totally understand all of that and of course I completely agree, that doesn't mean that its not difficult to sit there and watch your body turn into something its never been before.  I mean cheesy legs, soft and squishy looking arms, hips the size of a hippo and a giant stomach that doesn't allow you to hardly bend over let alone breath?  It's just not the greatest thing in the world for this girl that's all.

What about all the things that come with being pregnant?  Who loves peeing every 12 seconds?  And who loves feeling full 24/7 but still having to eat?  What about, well . . . you know . . . eating and nothing ever coming out of you!  Who loves that?  Did you really love having to sleep on your sides, flipping back and forth all night long to avoid the pain in your hips and shoulders?  Trust me, I can go on and on but I won't do that to you, I know that all you really want out of this blog are some pictures anyway :)

With that being said here we go . . .

12 Weeks pregnant:

It's funny to think that I thought I was fat in this picture!  Oh man, if I could go back in time and tell myself then what I am feeling now I would slap myself in the face!  Anyway, here I am at 18 weeks:

Um, I guess you can say I "popped" at that point in my pregnancy.  18 weeks was a tough time for me because I just kept getting bigger and bigger and there was no stopping that sucker from growing at that point!

Here I am at 25 weeks:

I'm ok with that picture because that is my favorite maternity shirt so it makes me smile a little bit.  That's another thing to complain about by the way!  Maternity clothes! For one, they are very expensive if you shop at the actual maternity stores.  Most of my purchases come from Target but they only have about one rack to choose from so I do have to head to the big wig maternity stores every now and then.  It is not "fun, shopping with your mom" for new clothes kind of shopping.  Its more like "how can we spend the least amount of money while trying to squeeze into something that makes you look somewhat decent kind of shopping," not fun.

The most current picture of me at 29 weeks:

Now I just feel like I look like a mom.  You know how you see some ladies and you just know that they are a mom even if they don't have their kids with them?  I just have that mom look to me nowadays.  

All this complaining is not me by the way.  Not the real me anyway, its just the pregnant me.  I'm typically a positive person that doesn't complain often but just let me vent to you for today.  I know that I'm lucky to be pregnant and to be healthy and to have a healthy baby inside me, I just wanted to complain today.  Plus I'm tired so give me a break just for today, please?  Thank you.

How about this, today is Lent right?  I'm not Catholic, but there is no reason why I can't participate in Lent for the next 40 days . . . for Lent I will give up complaining!  By the time Lent is over my pregnancy will be getting close to the end so that is prime complaining time for a pregnant lady!  That will be tough to give up for 40 days but I'll do it!  I'll do it for you, my valuable blog readers, so you don't have to hear another rant from me again!  Deal?  Deal!

I'm thinking that I'll go back to my "All Things Baby" blog tomorrow . . . part 2 that is :)  

Sleep well my friends!

Jen :) 

All Things Baby . . . Part 1

Baby, Baby, Baby . . . 


I figure I can't call my blog Mommy Mangolicious and not talk about my "Momminess!"  Silly me.


Well . . . as of tomorrow I will be 29 weeks pregnant!  29 weeks!  Unbelievable how fast time flies, 29 weeks down and only 11 to go.


So, I actually have a lot to say about all this baby stuff so I guess I'll start at the beginning and go from there, makes sense right?


Marc and I had a little journey when trying to get pregnant, I'm not going to delve into it but let me just start at the important part.  I got to see Baby Fiamengo as an egg!  Yes, my child that I will hold in my arms sometime in the month of May 2011 was shown to me on a monitor as an egg.  I've literally seen Baby Fiamengo grow up from an egg to a 29 week old human being within my body.  I know that with modern technology there are quite a few people that can say that nowadays but I still find it completely amazing that I can say I saw my child as an egg.


Anyway, one of my most favorite memories of all time was telling Marc that I was pregnant.  That was one of the best days of my life next to my marriage proposal and my wedding day.  From the top . . . it was September 10, 2010 when I took a pregnancy test, just to see . . . negative.  Ok, so no big deal, I took the test and it was negative.  Sure I was bummed out a little, but I had so many negative tests over the year that another one really didn't set me off.  Then, it was September 11, 2010.  Marc had just gotten off work that morning and we were heading to San Diego for a little weekend getaway.  We couldn't check into our hotel until later in the afternoon, so Marc decided to take a nap that morning after getting off work before we left for the weekend.  Meanwhile, I just felt "different."  Not sure what it was, but something just felt different.  I thought to myself, "self, you should take another pregnancy test just to see."  I mean, I know I had just taken one the day before so I wasn't really expecting different results but something was telling me to just do it anyway.  So of course I did!  I took the test and jumped in the shower and forgot about the test.  About halfway through my shower I remembered and peeked out the door and took a look at the results, POSITIVE!  Oh my word, it was positive!  I was shaking out of excitement and fear and shock and every other emotion you could possible think of.  


Marc is still sleeping.


Now, in a neurotic woman's mind you can't just take one pregnancy test and think that's good enough . . . no, no, no you must go get more!  So I took off to our local CVS and bought another 2 pack of tests, one more for that day and one for a few days later . . . just to continue to ease my nerves.  Keep in mind, nobody knows at this point, just me and my little crazy head!  


Marc is still sleeping. 


I had bought an LAFD onesie months before this day and that was how I was planning on telling Marc that he was going to be a father.  I had hid it at my mom's house right when I got it, so naturally I ran over there to get it.  Well . . . my dad was home and the onesie was in the same room as my dad!  I dug through the drawer where I had previously put it and when my dad asked what I was doing I had told him I was looking for some of my old CD's!  What the heck?  Why did I say that?  I don't know, but lucky for me my dad doesn't ask too many questions.  Long story short, I could not find the dang onesie!


Marc is still sleeping.


Still, I have not told a soul.  I feel all weird inside, that is not a secret that you keep inside and tell NOBODY!  Finally, Marc wakes up and gets ready and we are headed to San Diego.  I'm pretty quiet on the drive there because I'm trying to think of how to tell him, what to tell him, when to tell him, all of those things.  We get to our hotel, which was beautiful by the way, and our room wasn't ready yet.  They told us we could go up to the pool on the rooftop and have some drinks at the bar while we are waiting.  So we do.  Marc orders a beer, I order a water, and we are just checking out the awesome view of SD from the roof of this hotel.  My thoughts, "should I tell him now?  What do I say?  Should I wait until he has another beer?  Is it the right time?  I'm going to explode!"  Two beers in and Marc says to me, "You should be taking pictures of the view up here and stuff, its awesome!"  I told him that was a great idea.


As I'm taking pictures of everything I'm saying aloud to Marc the things I'm taking pictures of.  So I say, "oh I'll take a picture of the bar!"

"And I'll take a picture of the couches and seats up here too!"

"I'll take a picture of the view and get Padres stadium in there!"

"I'll take a picture of you after telling you, congratulations honey you're going to be a daddy!"

Marc's response was, "wait, what did you say?"  Me, "congratulations you're going to be a daddy"

The only other person we told was my mom . . . I can't keep secrets from my mom, its literally impossible for me to do :)  We didn't want to tell anyone else until we were in the "safe zone" if you will (after the first trimester).  So we came home from SD, I found the LAFD onesie and took a picture of it with the positive pregnancy test on it.  I told my mom to go through our pictures of our weekend in SD and among those pictures she saw this:

Of course she was completely shocked and surprised and thrilled all at the same time!

What a great day that was.  And what great days we've had ever since then.  

For most of the United States of America, September 11th is remembered as a sad day in history.  Although in our minds those thoughts will never leave us and they are in fact devastating to think about, The Fiamengo Family has a new memory of September 11th, one that brings us great joy!

I can't wait to share with you more about "All things baby!"  This just might be a 100 part series! :)

Happy Monday night to all!

Jen :)