10 Things I Learned in November

It could be the pregnancy hormones talking, but today my heart is practically bursting with gratitude. This rush of sap may be a result of the impending Thanksgiving holiday, marshmallows in my cocoa, (because sweets are emotional, obv.), and the fact that I’m almost positive I felt the baby kick this morning, but I can’t help feel like November was blessed.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m often terrified as I think about becoming a parent and potentially never fitting back into my skinny jeans. Half of my brain is devoted to worrying and the other half is devoted to donut holes. But today is a day when I’m overwhelmed by the simple beauty of life.

The snow (which I wholly despise by January 2) is beautiful. The dry cows lowing in our pasture are beautiful. The gentle movements of my half-baked child are beautiful. The love of friends and family is beautiful. And, if you ask Dairy Man, even the effective use of teat dip on the dairy is beautiful.

As you all prepare your minds and bellies for Thursday’s holiday, I hope you take advantage of quiet moments to appreciate the beauty in your lives. Or to take a nap. Turkey can knock the stuffing out of you.

Until then, let’s take a look at 10 things I learned in November.

1. Baby F is a … BOY!
DM and I had our 20-week ultrasound last week. At our request, the tech wrote the baby’s sex down on a sheet of paper, sealed it in an envelope, and sent us on our merry way. Two dear friends made cupcakes with blue frosting on the inside and the rest is history! DM is thrilled to have a little farmer on the way. Now we just have to wrap our minds around the fact that we’re halfway through this pregnancy. Eek! Time to nest.

2. Dairy Man plans to be a unique kind of dad.
Creative, hands-on, and a dinosaur-enthusiast? Perhaps he’ll do the same thing with a band of mischievous farm animal figurines.

3. Pregnancy has increased the likelihood I’ll have catastrophic home accidents.
I’m generally not a clumsy person. Sure, I’ve had those moments where I bump a glass of milk with my elbow and nearly send it crashing to the ground. But I always catch it. No more. Pregnancy seems to have thrown off my equilibrium and slowed my reaction time. In the past month, I’ve experienced two calamitous incidents of clumsiness. First, I knocked a full 40 oz. jar of honey off a shelf in our pantry. It shattered, getting shards of glass and honey, STICKY HORRIFYING HONEY, everywhere. The floor, the wall, the shelves, my hands and arms. It took me over an hour to clean up the disaster. I can’t escape the feeling that my shoes still stick to the floor. In the second incident, I tipped over a BURNING CANDLE FULL OF HOT LIQUID WAX. I spent the next hour scraping wax from the floor and wall with an old credit card and ironing the cowhide rug. I shudder to think what is going to happen next. Please do not give me anything breakable for Christmas.

4. Much to my chagrin, I cannot deny my Michigan accent.
Despite years of theater and show choir (yes, I’m showing a little bit of my high school nerdiness now), I’ve apparently not managed to adopt a place-neutral accent. So much for my future in TV news broadcasting. According to this online quiz, my American accent is “Inland North,” and yes, I grew up saying “pop.” How about you? What American accent do you have?

5. We have cows at the end of our rainbow.
Our small town didn’t escape the crazy violent storms that crashed through the Midwest a couple of weeks ago, but we were blessed to escape with minimal damage and minor flooding. And something amazing happened. Between two of the storm systems, the sun thrust itself outside of the black storm clouds and created an awe-inspiring double rainbow. It’s confirmed, folks. We have cows at the end of our rainbow.

6. Dairy Man and Ron Swanson agree about skim milk.
This clip is one of DM’s favorite things on the Internet. Sometimes I think Ron Swanson is his spirit animal.

7. There comes a tragic day when you can’t wear your favorite pants and grow a baby at the same time.
And I hit that point about a week ago. Hellooooo leggings.

8. Real love can be “boring” … and beautiful.
This letter from a mother to her boys has been bouncing around the interwebs and I think it’s a wonderful depiction of real, everyday, life-changing love. A relationship still needs date nights and fireworks, but ultimately “the real romantics are the boring ones—they let another heart bore a hole deep into theirs.”

9. Cows vurp. A lot.
Vurp: to burp and vomit at the same time. It doesn’t seem like the most ladylike thing in the world, but there’s a unique step in a cow’s digestive process. After she chows down on her delicious feed, she’ll regurgitate, or “vurp,” each bite and chew it some more. This is called cud. A happy cow is a cow chewing her cud. Fun fact. You’re welcome.

10. Jersey has discovered a loophole to our “no dogs on the bed” rule.
This is what comes of putting a bench at the end of the bed. Cheeky bugger.

I hope you all learned a lot this month and have a wonderful, turkey-coma-induced Thanksgiving!