8 Weeks: Still Boring

A certain friend of a certain blogger whom you all happen to know has requested that I post something about this whole pregnancy business.

It's not that I'm not excited about it, it's just that so far there isn't much to tell. I haven't had an ultrasound yet; haven't heard the heartbeat. In fact I mostly feel like I'm just me but feeling kind of crappy with the occasional wiggly business happening in my abdomen area. I don't know what the wiggly stuff is all about, but if that's the kid he/she sure is a wild one! Oh, and I sometimes have this annoying tinge of pain at my belly button to which Mike replied, "That's the umbilical cord." I know I'm new to this but I'm pretty sure the remnants of what made up my umbilical cord do not become the umbilical cord for my kids! hahaha! He's pretty funny, that Mikey. I love him.

The cool news is I have my first OBGYN appointment next Friday afternoon! I think that's the one where you hear the heartbeat, no? All I have to rely on are movies, people. If you happen to know more about this (Leisa, Mom, Gabrielle, Kaylene, etc.) feel free to share. I was demonstrating for Mike what it will sound like (swishy swish swishy swish) and I think he's skeptical. Again...I get this info from movies and TLC and that's what the baby heartbeats sound like from my television speakers.

So here's my pregnancy so far:

• No throwing up to date. Just the constant nausea and the occasional bad nausea.
  
• I'm constantly starving but nothing sounds good so I have a hard time eating.
  
• I'm tired and it is causing me to fall asleep, which in turn puts me in a bad mood because I hate to take naps. I'm beginning to accept the naps though, so the bad mood is becoming a thing of the past.
• No real mood swings. The nap thing doesn't count because I have always hated taking naps. I am a little more emotional, though. Definitely manageable!
• Weird wiggly business going on in the abdomen area. Also, little pop pop pops happening--I feel a bit like a popcorn machine.
  
• Not constipated, as people told me I would be. Gassy, though. I know you wanted that info.
• Not dizzy any more. That's a plus!
• Also a plus: bigger boobs. Or just "boobs" altogether. We Laney's got shafted in that respect, so it's nice to see how normal women live.
• Lastly, I have to pee a lot.

So there's your update. Now you know why I haven't posted much about it! When it gets more exciting I'll definitely let you know!

If You Find Yourself Hungry...

I mentioned in that Valentine's Mystery post that Mike and I had planned to go out to Tucanos for dinner (and we all know that didn't happen).

Well, this past weekend Mike's family visited, along with Nick's girlfriend Michelle. For dinner Saturday night we went to Tucanos (I made reservations--something I was not permitted to do on Valentine's). This place is fabulous. I'm really not much of a meat fan, and being a Brazilian grill one would assume it would not be my cup o' tea. As it turns out, I'm obsessed with their garlic sirloin (though not as obsessed as the waiter seemed to think as he brought it around 4 times).
We had a great dinner, stuffed full of meat, mashed potatoes and Brazilian lemonade, which is really quite limey. I had a "free meal" card the company had sent me for my b-day and along with that comes a drum-happy crew of waiters who made me dance for some ice cream. According to them I won the "most energetic" award. Unfortunately that came with no extra ice cream, not that I could have eaten it anyway!

At least I am still considered energetic! This kid is making me tired and has caused the occasional accidental 2-hour nap (that's saying a lot for someone who hates taking naps). But that's another story for another post.

And...We Have Basement!

This past weekend we had the basement drywalled. In other words, you can now tell what the end-product will be! WOOHOO!

I wish the entire basement was finished at this point, but the drywall was a huge milestone. Yesterday we passed the drywall inspection and were all hyped up about the mudding/taping dude to come at 7pm. Naturally he didn't show. Can't say we're all that surprised! He's supposed to be here at 4pm today so we're keeping our fingers crossed!

UPDATE: I never finished this post yesterday so I'm happy to say the mudding/taping dude, Francisco, did come last night with two other men. They got a great amount finished and will be back for more today! I can't wait for them to do the texturing so we can get the rest finished! I'll take a picture sometime and post 'er up for your viewing pleasure.

Stolen Steak: A Valentine's Mystery

This Valentine's Day, Mike and I decided to go out to dinner. Now around here that is a difficult thing to pull off. For some reason restaurants in the area don't believe in taking reservations on holidays (particularly this one) and instead end up with multi-hour waits.

We'll start at the beginning. I was in a meat mood (and Mike is always in a meat mood) so we decided we'd go to Tucano's, a Brazilian grill where meat wanders around the room (waiters are holding it; they don't have animals just wandering or I'd never go there) and you decide what you want and how much you want. We got there at about 6:00 thinking we were smarties for being there early, though clearly we were mistaken when we were told the wait was 3 1/2 hours!

Side note: if you haven't caught on, I'm pregnant. This hasn't changed me much besides the fact that when I'm hungry, I'm hungry; I'm practically starving, as if I've not eaten in weeks! And it comes on very suddenly. I'll be sitting there quite content and then BOOM! FEED ME NOW!

Anyway, there was no way I could have possibly waited 3 1/2 hours (or even 1, to be quite frank) so we decided to look elsewhere. We tried one of our favorite Italian places, Carrabbas, but to no avail. They had a 2 1/2 hour wait. So did Chili's. (Luckily Mike has these phone numbers in his cell so we just called and didn't have to tromp in and out of so many restaurants.)

Finally (okay, it had only been about 8 minutes since we left Tucano's) I decided we should just go to Papa John's and get a pizza to make at home. Not romantic in the least, but I was feeling pretty good about it. Then somehow we ended up at TGIFridays.

We stayed there because we walked in and were immediately seated--no wait at all! And remember: I was probably going to die of starvation any moment if I didn't get food in me.

The meal was okay. But the waitress was weird. She wasn't very friendly to us, but she was quite friendly with any and all groups of men, as well as the single men at the bar. I ordered a steak, which wasn't very good. I was dreaming that I was at Ruth's Chris, though, so that helped a bit. But then it happened.

As is almost always the case, I was forced to shove my food out of arm's reach so as not to eat more than would allow me to stand and walk. The waitress comes over and asks, "Are you done with your food?" We say yes, and Mike asks for "boxes" (plural). Then she took my steak. I figured she was being nice and was going to box it for me, but then she came back with one box for Mike and no steak. I never saw that steak again.

My hypothesis: she hadn't eaten dinner and saw that I had only eaten a small bit of the steak (because I was very focused on the cheesy mashed potatoes). I believe she ate my steak for dinner.

Framing? Why not add a whole new room?!

Mike and I have been putting some time into the basement lately. Seeing as we need to sell our home, we are finishing the basement to get the most out of the sale. Good plan, no?

Anyhoo, we were under the impression that we had finished framing the ol' basement. Last spring/early summer Mike's family came and helped frame out most of the basement, as well as run a bunch of the electrical. More recently with the help of our friend Cade we (basically meaning Mike and Cade) were able to frame out the bathroom and hallway, as well as extend the closet in the second basement bedroom to make it large enough to actually hang clothes in. Yay! I must say we were very proud and relieved to have the framing complete. And then...

Sunday afternoon we got a phone call from our friend John who happens to live in the same model of house as we do. John has been helping to finish the basement in his house and their process is nearly complete, so they thought maybe we'd want to come check 'er out while we are in the process of finishing our basement.

Now first off, this basement was fabulous. They put in all these great additions like hardwood floors, fireplace, kitchenette, etc. Seeing as we're simply finishing the basement to sell the house we aren't that interested in putting the work in for hardwood floors, a fireplace and kitchenette, but I tell you if we were going to live here another 4 or 5 years I would be totally into that plan!

Something else they did in the basement, however, was to truly utilize the utility room. Any of you who've seen our basement know that the utility room is much larger than necessary. I've been telling Mike for months that there must be a better way to use that space but we weren't able to come up with a great solution. After visiting our friend's basement, however, the solution has been made very clear: box off the actual utility area and use the rest of the space as a sort of homework nook.

I'm calling it a nook and I think Mike likes that name because he called it a nook this morning. The poor boy stayed up all hours of the night framing the nook out and it looks great! (To be fair I stayed up and helped as much as I could, but eventually my brain and eyes shut down and I had to go to bed.) He had to rewire a light and cut a doorway into what used to be the hallway wall, as well as frame out the utility area, and he did an awesome job. The change not only adds usable square footage to the basement, it also keeps the open feel of the upstairs floorplan and totally adds a fun twist to the area. It's not a huge space, but it offers a great desk area for the family computer and we are so excited about the change! We think buyers will really love it and hopefully it will be a bit of a selling point to the house.

Okay, done rambling. Consider yourselves caught up and informed on the lives of Kylie and Mike. I'll let you know if anything exciting or important comes up.

Buy My House!

It's official: our house is for sale.

Yesterday morning I was hauling some wood out to the trash can, trying to get rid of some of the scraps in the basement, and what did I find in my front yard? None other than my friend and now real estate agent, Carlee, pounding a sign into the snow in search of solid ground. Luckily she got it in there (at least we think she did, but we'll see if it still stands once the snow melts) and our house is now on the market. It's on the MLS as well and we're keeping our fingers crossed that it will sell before May!

Of course we realize we should have put the house up...oh, a month ago, but whatev. It's up now. To be quite honest we wanted to wait until the basement was drywalled so people could see what the end-product would really be. That will happen soonish, so I guess we're not too far off track.

On that note, if you happen to know anyone looking to buy a home in Springville send 'em our way, baby!

And the Advice Begins!

One thing I worried about when deciding to tell people we were pregnant was the advice. You know, the advice that starts flowing in whether you ask for it or not.

Well I'm happy to report the only advice I've received so far has been useful and unobtrusive. It has been given genuinely and I have yet to be annoyed. Of course the annoying advice will come eventually; I'm sure people will start telling me things like, "Babies need to be fed often" or "Babies go the bathroom all day! Let me teach you how to change a diaper..." Those people will receive a dirty look and possibly a slap. Let that serve as a warning to anyone considering telling me something I have known since I was 4! Luckily most of the people I know actually have common sense so I shouldn't run into too much spazziness.

Then again, I can count on one person giving me spazzy advice. That's my fabulous aunt Cathy. Her spazzy advice is purposely given to be spazzy, so she is excluded from the clueless group. So being the loving aunt she is, Cathy wanted me to know some of the basic Dos and Don'ts of caring for babies and even sent illustrations so I would not be confused! See below for just a handful of this necessary advice:

Nice Peeps

I love nice people. Today has pretty much been packed with them. I think it also helped that it was finally sunny today (I forgot the sun existed!) and I was very happy to see snow melting away!

We'll start with my old pal Terry whom I met as a freshman at BYU. Well, Ter sent me a message on Facebook to congratulate us on the baby. That's nice! But it gets nicer...he also found out that we are moving to Houston and sent me an email with all these great houses for sale in the cities he recommended to us. Nice! I didn't ask him to do it at all, so we'll even call it extra nice!

Also, nice = Grandma Laney. She's just so cute. She is always sending me home with a big box of canned food. Maybe she thinks we don't eat, I don't know. But I carried this big box of canned food up from her basement and then proceeded to tell her I was pregnant, to which she immediately reacted in two ways:
1. She was very excited and gave me several hugs. If you know Grandma Laney you know what I'm talking about here.
2. She then became entirely concerned about how I had carried the big box of canned food. She has scorned me for doing so and insists that I not lift anything that might possibly be heavy. How cute is that? Also...seeing as Mike was there, it was very nice! Now Mike will probably insist on carrying everything for me. I'm glad he's so nice.

I know I said the day was packed full of nice peeps but I'm now tired and can't think past those two. There's a lot of niceness there, though so pass it on! (The niceness, not the actual post...you know, like Hayley Joel Osment in Pay It Forward.)

Preliminary '2008 Firsts' List

(Disclaimer: this is a preliminary list, meaning the items described are anticipated and not necessarily written in stone. In other words, the list is subject to change. If it does, a secondary list will be provided. Thank you!)

The word is officially out: we are pregnant!

Yep, this will be a year of firsts for the Comfolteys. Let me list our firsts for 2008:

• I just turned 24 in January (it's the first time I've been 24, believe it or not!).
• I also just created my first widget. No, that's not a nickname for the baby. My widget is that little baby countdown guy you see on the right side of the page. I am freaking awesome. This must be why Leisa calls me 'Lord of the HTML'...
  
• Mike will graduate in April. It will be his first bachelor's degree. Yay!
• We're taking our first real vacation in May--Hawaii, here we come!
• We'll be moving to Houston in May, hopefully after we sell our house. So this will mark our first sold home! It will also mark the first time either of us has lived in Texas.
• Mike will be starting his first real job on June 2nd. Exxon Mobil, the wonderful company it is, will be paying for said first baby. Who doesn't love free babies?
• Of course, we'll be having our first baby sometime around October 9th. That's what kicked off this list, but I prefer to order things chronologically. Once the baby is born there will be way too many firsts to list so I'm stopping here. :)

The baby is due October 9th (as aforementioned), to which my mother has already requested a 3-day advance so the baby will be born on her birthday. That, or we'll have to wait until the 26th so it can be born on my dad's b-day...I say let it happen when it happens! If there's one thing I know about babies it's the fact that they follow no timelines.

So...surprise! If you don't already know, this will serve as your official notice. Congrats to us!

Palm Trees on the Mind

There is way too much snow outside. Even if my car was in working order, I wouldn't be able to go anywhere because of all the snow! Utah generally doesn't have this much snow so I must say it's getting old. Yesterday we had some sun and I was so happy, but today we're back to snow. It's very gray and white...and beige (well, all the houses are the same color and the fences match!).

What I'm ready for, as Mike will attest to, is a vacation. He has suggested that I start planning our trip to Hawaii. Yep, we're planning to take a trip to Hawaii before Mike starts working because he gets very few days off during the year.

Our hope it so take off and relax on both Oahu and Maui. That way we can see the sights Mike didn't get to see on Oahu, but still get to enjoy Maui and remember how fun our honeymoon was. I'd give anything to get out of this cold, white business right now! But...we'll wait 'til Mike graduates (otherwise he probably wouldn't graduate, eh?).

If anyone happens to have flight info or rental info we'd love to hear it! We had our hearts set on staying in this adorable place on Oahu, nestled up by the mountains--so gorgeous--but unfortunately all reserved for months. So we're back at square one! Feel free to do your own research and report back to yours truly!

We're Moving to Fiji!

That's a lie. We are moving to Houston, but I love "The Truman Show" and that happens to be a quote from the movie.

So here's our plan, hopefully in order:

• Put house up for sale (ASAP).
• Take trip to check out Houston area and figure out where we want to live.
• Sell house in Utah (ASAP).
• Graduate Mike from BYU in April.
  
• Buy house in Houston (hopefully before we move...).
• Take trip to Hawaii sometime in early May.
• Move to Houston in mid-May.

So if things turn out correctly, that is how we would like to see the next few months progress. This week has been a frustrating one so far, full of stress. Mike's car broke, but we were able to get it fixed without selling any limbs. Also, my car has decided that it no longer works. We have to try to get that fixed before Mike's family comes to visit on the 22nd of this month. Normally we wouldn't need 2 cars, but with Nick's GF Michelle coming along we have 1 too many people to fit in one vehicle!

I'll let you know how "the plan" is coming along...

Done!

I've done it. Myriah and Leisa should be proud. No more of this "why don't you have an awesome blog like mine so you can be as totally awesome as I am?" business. Now I do. Yay! I mean, awesome!

As you can see, it's called "Kylie and Mike." I tried to call it "Mike and Kylie" but that was taken. Side note: we'll just forgive Mike for never putting any posts up. Maybe one day I'll get him to put a post up...like if I'm suddenly unable to do so at a time when a post ought to be posted! He's great so he would definitely step up to the plate. End of side note.

Two days ago I listened to a lesson on goal setting given by a friend of mine. She said, "Don't tell people your most important goals. Keep personal goals personal so you only have yourself to answer to." You can always brag later and show someone the goal you wrote down anyway, right? And who doesn't love to brag after the fact? Suddenly you can say, "I lost 20 pounds!" or "Look at me, I'm completely rich!" and they will be shocked because they didn't know you had that goal to begin with! I just love that shock factor.

So anyhoo, I have decided to share one of my goals with all of you despite that two-day-old advice. This is appropriate seeing as it is directly related to this blog. Okay, goal = blog at least 2 (two) times per week. Phew, I said it. And I wrote it out to clarify that 2 = two. You can't really read any further into it that way. You know, like...you can't think that maybe I simply mistyped a 2 when I meant to type a 4. Nope. It's 2 (two) per week.

I realize 2 posts per week isn't much (especially considering the fact that I post 5 posts per DAY for the company I write for), but to be perfectly honest all I do these days is 1) blog (for other people, and now for myself); 2) clean and organize the house to get it ready to sell. Not exactly big stories there!

Luckily for you, I will kick this blog off with several posts before only expecting of myself 2 posts per week. And once we move, I'm sure I'll have more to blog about! Maybe I'll bump it up to 3 posts! Not yet...