18 Weeks preggo and a funny day

Well, I couldn't decide which picture was best, so I just put both of them on here :) I am 18 weeks along now and have officially lost sight of my feet. Still feeling good, although I've not been sleeping well and have been having some back aches. Daniel has been so wonderful in helping out with everything and letting me have some extra rest during the day. I'm so blessed by him.

Next Thursday (less than a week now!) we go to the doctor for another sonogram, and hopefully will find out if we need to be shopping for blue or pink!!! This week is going to go by so slow, but I know that Thursday will eventually get here. :)

Ok, so about our funny day today.

A language tutor comes to our house several times a week to tutor me and Daniel. Well, during the middle of my language lesson this morning Daniel comes in the room and says he needs me to come clean the couch because Elijah just peed all over it. Well, in my mind I'm instantly thinking "My child still wears diapers. How did this happen?"

So I go and take a look at the couch and sure enough, we have a mess. I hollered at Daniel, who was in Elijah's room getting him cleaned up, and asked him how this happened. He replied "His diaper came off."

Well, I had just laid eyes on my child, who was in very wet, FULL-BODY pajamas, footies included (aren't those the most precious?). So again my mind in wondering "How did this happen?"

Well come to find out, the diaper had mysteriously come undone and worked its way all the way down one of Elijah's pajama legs. We will never have an answer for exactly how this happened, we just know that, although Elijah probably enjoyed his few moments of diaper freedom, we had a mess! It wasn't too bad though and we got everything washed right up.

Now, on to the next portion of our day...

Friday's are always Daniel and mine's date day. My language tutor (who is a very good friend of ours now) stays at our house after our lesson on Friday's and watches Elijah so Daniel and I can go on a date.

Today Daniel said he wanted to go to a certain area of town where there is a large mall that has a Brazilian restaurant in it that he wanted to check out. So, we leave our apartment, hop on to the motorcycle taxi (an experience that will bring you to your knees in prayer sometimes) which takes us to the subway station.

We then take the subway a couple of stops, hop off and switch trains, and then ride for about 5 more stops or so. We get off, figure out which exit to take to get to the mall, and then begin walking.

And walking.

And walking.

My goodness, I thought we would never get to the mall! The underground walkways are so long sometimes, and this by far was one of the longest. I was exhausted by this point.

Well, we finally get into the mall and begin the fun part: looking for the restaurant. Let me back up and share a few details about malls here real quick:

-they are HUGE (this one has 7 above ground floors and 2 below ground floors)

-they are set up nothing like malls in the US. They are confusing, with lots of twists and turns

-the maps/list of stores and restaurants are not in English

To make a long story short, we never found the Brazilian restaurant. Keep in mind that we are both hungry, and I am pregnant. Its taken at least 45 minutes to get from our house to this point, and we are just ready to find something. Now, if we were in the US, this wouldn't be as big of a problem because we could probably find something that we like at most restaurants, even if its not what we were in the mood for.

This is not the case here.

We did find a really cool looking restaurant that was really crowded and thought "Maybe we should check this out." Well, we asked to look at a menu and they showed us a pamphlet that had one item on it: it was a picture of a really pretty lady holding a basket, and in the basket was a chicken. A whole chicken. Skinned. Eyes open. Beak still there. Ready to eat.

I was like "No thank you."

So we continued on.

The next restaurant we come upon was called "Las Vegas Buffet." Now, I know enough to not be decieved by the name into thinking that they had wonderful western food like we would find in Las Vegas, but Daniel was interested so we went in to take a look at the buffet.

I tried to be open to this place.

I tried to have a good attitude and see it for what it DID offer, not what it DIDN'T.

But I have to be honest with you, I was fighting back the tears before we even reached the 2nd section of the buffet. I won't go into detail about the things on the buffet, but many of them would make your stomach turn. They did have a few items that were possibilities though. I was walking behind Daniel and was trying to hide my face from him, because he can always tell when I'm about to lose it. I thought that maybe I could regain my composure before we were done looking and he would never know.

Well, we finished the "tour" and Daniel looked at me, and I just told him to make the decision because I couldn't say anything else without just totally having a breakdown. He said that we would stay so the hostess showed us to our table.

By the time we reached the table the tears were falling.

I just wanted to go on a date like we used to. Where we got in our car and drove to the restaurant we wanted to eat at, one where we could read the menu, where we actually enjoyed the smell of the restaurant and could communicate with the workers. Where we could order our favorite dish and savor every bite because it tastes normal and wonderful and you actually leave full. And then we could walk out to the parking lot and get in our car and go home, or somewhere else, whatever the case may be.

Well, so the tears came. And came. The people around us must have thought I was a crazy woman, no one here cries in public. Daniel was so sweet and tried so hard to find me things I would like and have a really positive attitude. One plus was that they had a chocolate fountain and strawberries to dip in it! And they had chocolate ice cream. It didn't really taste like chocolate, but it wasn't bad at all.

We laugh about it now. We always laugh about my "culture-stress" breakdowns after the fact, and I'm so glad that we can laugh about it.

So guess what we had tonight for dinner??? McDonald's delivery! haha!