We're pregnant! Husband's perspective part I- finding out we're pregnant

We have been a little busy in the last couple of months and thus our blog has been neglected, but we are back in a little bit of a swing of things, so let the blogging commence!  The past few months have seen the saying goodbye to several of our friends here in Asia, a trip back to America where I tested my feet in the graduate school pool, and oh yeah, we're pregnant.  This happened back in April, so at this point we are about halfway through the pregnancy.  I thought that this would be a great blog theme.  There are several blogs about pregnancy, books about pregnancy, movies about pregnancy, and with the exception of a terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, almost all of them are for women.  This makes sense seeing as pregnancy is largely a woman's issue.  However, I thought it would be a good idea, and I hope that I can stick to this plan, to track pregnancy from the impregnator's point of view.  (Come to think of it "The Impregnator" sounds like a Schwarzenegger movie.)  I am already behind seeing that Shelley is now 4 and a half months pregnant, so I will post several "catch up" blogs over the next couple of days to try to catch up to 4.5 months.  I will start with "the announcement."

You always see wives telling their husbands that they are pregnant on movies and they either react with extreme joy or extreme surprise followed by extreme joy.  I expected it to be like that.  Shelley would have tears of joy and I would pick her up and swing her around.  Instead, our "announcement" went something like this:

Shelley: "I took a pregnancy test and it said I might be pregnant."
Me (brushing my teeth): "Hmm."
Shelley: "Like, these lines here mean I might be pregnant."
Me: "How do you know if you are definitely pregnant?"
Shelley: "The lines are darker, but then you have to go to the doctor to find out."
Me: "Hmm." 

"Maybe pregnant" was nothing new to me.  Ever since we pulled the goalie I figured we might be pregnant because I knew the possibility was out there, so that announcement was kind of like the President giving the State of the Union, which I find to be one of the most interesting political traditions of all time.  He literally stands up there and gives a slightly optimistic view on what everyone already knows.  No one ever wakes up thinking "I wonder what America is like?" because we all know already.  And yet three branches of the government gather once a year for him to make an applause-interrupted speech about something that is no surprise to anyone. Can you imagine anyone getting the attention that this guy does for telling the state of something that everyone listening already knows about?  Just once I want the President to get up and say "The State of our Union... well we can't exactly call it a Union anymore because I sold West Virginia and Oregon to Micronesia yesterday for my own private island.  How is that for budget control House!?!?  Straight from the lower 48!  PREZ MAKIN PAPER!!!" and then walk off the stage with a microphone squeek.  That would be worthy of a State of the Union address.  All that to say that when Shelley told me she was "maybe pregnant," it was kind of like a State of the Uterus address.  Nothing I didn't already know anyway... 

...Until we were walking the dog later on that morning and she told me how disappointed she was in my reaction and how stressed she was.  I still did not understand what there was to be stressed about.  We were not trying to not get pregnant, and therefore we might have been pregnant, so... maybe pregnant.  Then she explained to me that "maybe pregnant" on a pregnancy test means that a hormone is present that would only be present if one was pregnant but not enough of the hormone to make the lines dark enough to give a green light.  Ohhhhhhh... so maybe pregnant meant she was pregnant.

This was one of the most confusing things to me.  A pregnancy test measures a hormone, and this hormone is only present if one is pregnant, and the test is only turned pink by this hormone... so why is there a maybe option?  It seems that there are 2 options, pregnant or not pregnant.  The only purposes that "maybe pregnant" can serve are the following:

1. Do Jedi mind tricks on a woman who is anxiously waiting to find out if she is pregnant
2. Make you buy more pregnancy tests
3. GET THE MAN WHO DOESN'T REACT STRONGLY ENOUGH TO "MAYBE PREGNANT" IN SERIOUS TROUBLE WITH HIS WIFE!!!

In our case, it achieved all 3 goals.  Thank you Dawei pregnancy tests.  A week later, Shelley came to me with a pregnancy test absolutely positive.  Only this time we weren't really that excited, because we already knew... maybe.

I will say at this point that this means so much more to the woman than it does to the man, and women, I beg for grace here.  Nothing changes in us at this point the way that it changes in you.  When we picture a child, we typically picture it able to run, walk, throw a ball, and ask us for money.  We don't have a picture of the 3 years and 9 months prior to that.  When we picture you pregnant... well we never picture our wives pregnant, just naked.  We don't know what pregnancy is like until you go through it for the first time.  I don't know if any of that is right or wrong, but it is what it is.  For Shelley to be pregnant was a huge deal to her, and it was a huge deal to me, but not as huge of a deal because it wasn't me who was staring down the barrel of body metamorphosis and morning sickness and different clothes and diet and labor and delivery.  I now understand that better than I did at the point that the announcement was made.  My tip to any other guys out there who is not trying not to get pregnant: make it a big deal because it is to her.  And maybe means definitely.

Just another day in the complex...

To the gallows with the gentlemen in the yellow vests!

This morning I was talking to one of our friends on the phone and she said "Jarred can I tell you something?"  I said "sure."  She said "There are like 100 police officers with these guys and they have hoods on their heads like they are about to execute them.  It is right outside of our complex.  I have to tell somebody this."  So I decided to go downstairs where I encountered the above.  There were like 20 people standing around in the rain just watching.  Then the news came to report.  I asked a police officer what happened.  He said "nothing happened."  Oh ok, so I am not supposed to think anything happened when you have bagged the heads of 6 people and are holding them right outside of my house like you are waiting for a scaffold to be built to hang them.  So I decided to ask a security guard who was hanging around watching the action.  He said "They committed a crime."  Ohhhhhhh, so that is what happened.  Thanks for the clarity.  I asked what crime and he said "I don't know, they probably stole some money or something."  I had somewhere to be, otherwise I would have asked the news guy.  The truth is, he probably didn't know and was about to make something up to keep it exciting.  He probably arrived and asked the police officer "why did you call me here?"  The police officer probably said something to the affect of "Oh nothing.  Just take some footage of this and make something up."   

Still have no idea what happened.  A news search for our apartment complex produced nothing.  If anyone is missing money, or a bike, or found someone in a ditch, they have it figure out.  From the looks of it it could be any of the following.  Just another day in East Asia.  Nothing to see here...  

hotel jung

over the last couple weeks we have had a bunch of great friends passing through our neck of the woods which has made life SO much fun! we love visitors and we have gotten to have some great ones. some have been best friends from other cities, old neighbors from a few years ago, new friends from america we barely knew, and even an old friend with his wife we got to meet for the first time! last week one of our neighbor's harrison asked one current guest was staying and when she said with us he told us we should just name our house "hotel jung." tomorrow night we welcome our 7th guest to our apartment in the last 2 weeks. thankfully water times have worked out and our guest sheets have always been clean and ready for new tenants (though they are starting to get holes- woops). we are so thankful for all sorts of reasons that bring all sorts of friends and acquaintances to town!

my mom's chicken salad

of all the things my mom makes, one of jarred's and my favorites is her simply chicken salad. it's so good that my cousin scott requests it every single year that we all go to the beach. but some things are just harder to make on this side of the world. this year, however, a few things new to our world over here have made the process SO much easier and the result is us eating a lot of really good chicken salad sandwiches. 1) for the past 5 years i have only been able to find grapes with massive seeds in the middle, but this spring a store right outside our complex gate has started carrying these delicious, seedless grapes! 2) danielle sold me her nut chopper when she moved home and let me tell you, making sliced almonds out of whole ones is 100 times easier with this thing than with a knife. and 3) though not pictured because who can really pick up those things and a crock pot at the same time is that i learned the best secret of cooking chicken ever is to just throw it in a crockpot on high for 2 hours without even adding water and even if the chicken breasts are still frozen- why didn't i learn this years ago instead of trying to poach chicken. these 3 things plus splurging on some imported mayo has made our favorite spring/summer meal a weekly dinner!

only in asia

saturday afternoon we headed to the old folk's home near us with some of our friends. we love getting to sit and chat with the old people and listen to their stories of how much life has changed for them over the past 70+ years. one man was 92 and it was so fun to talk to him and think about all he has lived through here in his lifetime. my grandpa is 91 this year and it made me think all day about all that he has seen and done in his lifetime on the other side of the world. but, this picture wins for being the craziest of the day- check out this old man with his homemade tobacco bong that he made out of a plastic water bottle- only in asia.

mother's day from afar

we have 2 really awesome moms that we loved getting to talk to and celebrate on mother's day! it's days like sunday that we wish we weren't so far away. we couldn't ask for better moms and mother-in-laws!

a day at the lake

late this morning jarred and i packed a picnic lunch and headed an hour away to a lake near us. it was the best afternoon we have had in a long time! we had 4 hours just to lay in the sand, read our books, listen to music, try to get max to swim again (fail, again) and just hang out in the sun and be together.

a lake here that you can actually swim in!

  

the paddle boats are crazy looking