My Calves are Permanently Flexed

As a little girl, I used to love holidays like Easter and Christmas when my mom would buy me a new pair of shoes with little one-inch heels.  I would leave them on all day and walk up and down our hallway until my mom would yell at me to stop because I was making her dizzy.  I remember asking her if I could wear my fancy heels to school, but she would say "no"  and that heels were just for "special occasions".

Then, sometime during the peak of the Spice Girls craze, also around the same time I started plucking my eyebrows (should've started when I was 5! They were monstrous!) and wearing lipstick, my parents decided to let me wear heels to school.  Most of my friends were obsessing over Eastbay catalogues and talking about which Nikes they were going to get next, but I wasn't really into that.  I liked wearing my heels. I loved the way wearing heels made my walk feel more graceful and feminine... not to mention, I was freakin' 3-inches taller!  I wore heels everyday to school from the 8th grade until I graduated high school (changing during P.E. and badminton practice, of course).  Same in college. To this day, you will rarely see me in flats... no matter how much I wish I could.

This is how I feel standing next to Matthew in flats

You see, I'm short... and my husband is not. He's 6'3'' while I am 5'0'' (give or take 1/8 of an inch).  That's a whole 15-inch difference.  Without shoes, I reach his chest.  If he were to walk looking straight ahead, I probably would not be in his line of vision and he'd walk straight into me (this has never happened of course, but I'm sure it could)!  Matthew loves me and doesn't care about my height, but I sometimes feel super conscious about it.  I'm totally fine around my family and circle of friends since we're all roughly similar in elevation, but when I'm around my hubs' family and friends that's a whole other story. 

I'm not sure if they're ready to make their blog debut, so I've drawn a representation of what it looks like when I take a picture with Matthew and his siblings:

This is with heels, too!  I know no one really cares and most of the time I don't either, but sometimes I wish I were just a few inches taller.  Because I'm not, I've resorted to constantly wearing high heels.  They need to be at least 3-inches, but can be as high as 5" before my walk gets compromised.   Unfortunately, the only type of flats I have in my closet are either running shoes, uggs, or flip flops. 

When I take pictures with flats on, I make sure to stand on my tiptoes so my legs are elongated and I can continue the illusion that I'm 5'3''.  There are so many cute, stylish ballet flats and sandals that I am always so tempted to buy... but I just can't pull the trigger.  There have been many days where I just want to make a quick trip to the store and wish I had some cute slip-ons to wear for comfort, but since I never buy any, I have to strap on my 4" stilettos just to buy eggs!! It's insane. 

I am so concerned about this stupid height thing that I almost wore 7-inch shoes on my wedding day!  Thank goodness I did not because I probably would have face planted numerous times throughout the day! 

What about you... were you blessed with the height gene and don't have to worry about being tall enough to reach the cereal boxes on the top shelf? 

I Got the Fever

source

Yes.

Baby Fever.

I mentioned in my first post that I love to read motherhood blogs even though we don't have a baby. I just love looking at cute faces with miniature clothing -- how could you not like reading mommy blogs?! It never bothered me one bit that Matthew and I don't have a mini version of ourselves just yet. We have a plan and are planning on sticking to it. We've always had a plan.

You see, it started like this:

Matthew and I started dating our senior year of high school. We were (and still are) madly in love, but we were just kids. During the first few months, we fantasized about what our future would be like and we even discussed marriage. But that was all it was - talk. We were both going to separate colleges (albeit only 30 minutes apart), and did not want to worry about planning a huge party without the financial stability we would have after graduating and obtaining a steady job. Within the first couple years of dating, we decided 2009 would be our year - July 11, 2009 to be exact. July 11, 2009 would have been our 8 year anniversary and it fell on a Saturday, so we thought it would be perfect. We would have been 4 years out of college and hopefully established enough in our careers that we could focus the time and energy into planning a wedding.

circa 2002

Unfortunately, things didn't exactly go according to plan.

We both graduated college in 2005 and started working at companies we love. Everything looked good so far.

Fast forward to 2008 when Matthew proposed to me and we started looking at wedding venues. We fell in luuuuurve with Ruby Hill Golf Club and decided that was the place we were going to give our vows:

Me: We love this place and would like to put in our deposit stat! July 11th is available, right?

Ruby Hill Coordinator: Hmm... let's see here.... July 11th?... oh, sorry, honey. That date is already booked.

[record screeches to a stop]

Needless to say, I was irrationally upset that our date wasn't available. I did not like the fact that I would need to remember two different anniversary dates (see - irrational). I got over it eventually, and we picked out a date in August. The wedding was perfect and all was well. It actually turned out to be a blessing that we couldn't get our original date, because now we have TWO dates to celebrate, meaning TWO presents and TWO fancy dinners :-D

Anyway, during our engagement, we talked about our future family and when we would start producing our own little clan. Even though we had been practically living together for months before the wedding, we wanted to have a couple years of time to ourselves to adjust to married life.* In the end, we decided to start trying to conceive in 2011. We'd have 3-4 children, 2 years apart, so we would be done reproducing by 2018 and both be 35 years old. That seemed to be the ideal plan for us.

Then, all of a sudden, it hit me. Baby fever. And not just a slight temperature, but FULL-ON fee-vah! I want a baby in my womb and I want one NOW. Yup. That's how I feel.

I told Matthew and he was surprisingly supportive of my feelings. He said he had been thinking about it, too. Whhaaa?!!? My man has the fever, too? Impossible.

So.... we are changing our plans. We will probably start trying at the end of this year and hope to have our first little munchkin by the end of 2011.

And of course, I started thinking about ideas for the nursery and began searching online baby stores for cute outfits (oh em gee - there are sooo many cute things!!). For future reference, I'm a little crazy and tend to get obsessed about things.

Well, I had a brilliant idea and came up with a design for a onesie I'm going to make for the baby should we have one in the future.

Cute, right?! "Lola" means 'grandma' in Tagalog and I am going to make one for my mom and a "Lolo" one for my dad. Of course, I would make "grandma" and "grandpa" ones for the in-laws.

So, for now... this onesie design will stay stashed in my computer, only to be printed when the time is right...

What's that? No, of course I didn't already purchase the onesies and iron them on yet....

Well.... so what if I did?! Don't make fun of me... I already told you I'm a little crazy....

Did you and your significant other have a plan? Did you divert from your plan, too?

*From the articles I read, people made it seem like getting married and moving in together would be such a huge adjustment, and perhaps for some people, co-habitation is a huge change. Luckily for us, it was easy and our lives didn't change too much. I think the only difference nowadays, is that I don't clean up after myself as much as I used to (haha! I tricked you, Matthew! You thought I was a neat freak!!!).