We're moving to...

As if launching a blog, and announcing I'm pregnant wasn't enough big news for one day, I've got one more.  We're moving to Alaska!

A few months ago when I was still on the road in the Brave the plan was to come back home and move into the Brave with Dan.  Well, turns out things didn't quite work out that way, and while I still have dreams and plans of some day being a full time RV family, for now Alaska is the best choice for us for a variety of reasons. 

My parents live in Anchorage and since Dan's family no longer lives in the Tacoma area, we don't have any family support down in Washington any more.  Coupled with some health care reasons, moving to Alaska made the most sense for us, at least for my pre-natal care, birth, and newborn months.  We don't know if this will be a permanent move, for all we know we'll be back in the Seattle area some time next year, or maybe somewhere completely different.  Our living situation beyond a year from today is pretty up in the air, but for now being close to my family and having that support is most important.  It's hard to move, especially with so many unknowns, but we're taking this leap and seeing where it takes us.  I have no clue where we'll be one year from today!

And on top of that all, we're actually moving today.  Yeah.  Our little Honda CRV and our 5x8 Uhaul trailer are all packed up and later today we are driving away from our cute little Tacoma house and heading up the AlCan.  Of course it'll take us 5 or 6 days to actually get to Alaska, but if you've been following on snapchat and instagram you've been getting some behind the scenes teasers about what's going on.  Packing up, cleaning the house for our renters who are moving in right after we leave, and loading the Uhaul!  We're hitting the road!

We will be living with my parents (#lifegoals).  They have a small apartment over their garage, so we'll have our own space, which is nice, so over the next few months I'll be working hard to make it our own, get it feeling like a home, and creating a little den for our little one!  I'll share some before photos of the space soon, I'm super excited to give it a fresh look!

Guess what!

I'm growing a human!  Yup!  I'm 23 weeks along and we are super stoked.  I didn't really intend on waiting this long to publicly announce it, but time flew by and I was waiting for the blog to be live again to make the announcement, so here we are well over halfway through with this pregnancy!  I'm actually 21 weeks along in the photo about and 15 in the photos below.  I've been taking weekly progress/outfit photos ever since week 8 so I'll be putting those up a couple times a week until we catch up to where I am currently.  I didn't want to dump a ton of maternity photos on you guys at once.

If you're wondering, no Delightfully Tacky isn't going to become all things pregnancy/mom.  Obviously it will show up in some ways, like maternity outfits and putting together the baby's new room, but I really want to keep the focus of this space more on creativity.  Honestly, I want Delightfully Tacky to be less personal, in some ways.  I still love writing about life and thoughts but all that stuff that doesn't really fit here.  My solution was to start a different blog where I can feel free to write about more personal stuff, more lengthy, word-vomit posts, and stuff about becoming a parent and anything related to that part of my life.  Having a fresh place for just that stuff feels so great and I'm excited to be able to blog about life without feeling the pressure of having to look a certain way to bring in sponsors or new readers.  It'll be way more casual and journal-like.  If you want to head over there and read along, the new blog is called The Brave Life.

But anyway, Dan and I are excited and have many thoughts and feelings about the whole thing.  We won't be announcing the sex online (at least that's the plan for now), mostly because I'd like to keep some things for myself.  Sharing life publicly on the blog for so many years has made me appreciate having some special secrets for myself.

We have some (sort of) baby related news that I'll be sharing later today.  Lots of big life changes!  

Welcome to the new Delightfully Tacky!

Woo!  It's been a long time coming!  I'm excited to have this place freshened up and live once again.  All my archives should be intact, but let me know if there are any broken links or errors! I've got more news and fun stuff to share in the next couple hours, but in the mean time, go ahead and click around!  If you're new and want to add Delightfully Tacky to your reader, you can follow on Bloglovin' here! 

Sacred Secrets

17 weeks pregnant and no one knows except those friends and family we've told verbally.  To be honest, it's refreshing.  For someone who has had her life broadcast online for years, keeping this to myself has been really nice.  Not dealing with droves of unwanted advice or attention, being able to feel normal, and feeling like this isn't a big deal has been incredibly nice.  I know I will announce online at some point, at least when I'm so big it's not possible to deny the fact that I'm carrying around an extra human inside me, but for now, just letting my life be mine is a luxury I haven't let myself have in 8 years.  

That being said, I am looking forward to talking about it online, since it does affect a lot that will be happening soon.  I want to share baby den decor ideas, get advice from other moms (ah, that word is still weird to think about applying to myself) on various things, talk about us moving to Alaska and why.

My friend was saying that I'm probably documenting this whole process because I'm a blogger, but actually, I haven't been.  Maybe I'll regret that later, but for now, I don't have to blog about it, and that's nice.  And honestly there hasn't been much to blog about "it."  I haven't felt sick, I'm not really showing very much (just feeling chubby-ish), and feel pretty normal all around.  I think I may have felt the first flutters of "it" moving inside me a few days ago, but other than that, not a lot that is noteworthy has happened.  I had my first prenatal appointment when I was up in Anchorage 2 weeks ago and got an ultrasound where I saw the baby, which was bizzare.  But most of my thought energy has been consumed with editing and taking wedding photos for my clients and trying to make a final decision on whether or not we're moving to Alaska.  Boring stuff, really.  No profound thoughts on being a mother or carrying a child.  No solid answers to the endless, "how do you feel?" queries, and I'm never sure whether they're referring to my mental or physical state, and either way the answer is pretty boring.

Something's Growing

It's been a while since I've put pen to paper, or rather, blinking cursor to vast white expanse.  This post will actually end up sitting in my drafts for a while, as I haven't yet announced that I'm growing a human, but so much of my thoughts and so much of the decisions we're making right now revolve around that.  

I don't feel like I'm the type of person to be pregnant.  At least in our culture.  I'm so tired of our culture and the confined boxes it constantly tries to put people in.  Being pregnant is like being shoved into the tiniest box, which is a bit uncomfortable as you're supposed to be growing.  Everything tells you to be one way, or to feel one way, or to do things one way.  I remember being only 5 weeks pregnant, in Maui, and reading in my pregnancy app that I probably wouldn't feel like squeezing into a teeny bikini, to which I replied aloud, "screw you, I'm in Maui, yes I do want to don a teeny bikini."  And so the pregnancy-fat shaming seemed to begin.  

But it's a double edged sword because then I get that person coming up to me at the buffet line at a wedding covertly telling me that I was lucky that I could eat whatever I wanted for the next 9 months.  Which also confused me because, hi, I'd like to remain eating and feeling healthy, which means not shoving my face with ice cream and fast food for the next 9 months.  Yes I will be gaining weight, but being pregnant is not an excuse to eat unhealthily with no consequences.  And I can eat whatever I want any time of my life.  I choose to eat or not eat certain things to maintain my health.  A fetus isn't a get-out-of-unhealthy-habits-free card.  And since I haven't had any morning (or other time of day) sickness, I get people saying stuff like, "well, you might later."  Thank you?  I'm so glad you're wishing nausea and vomiting upon me later on in my pregnancy because I haven't experienced it during the typical time.  

And then there are feelings.  Or the lack of them.  I see pregnancy announcements everywhere with phrases like, "over the moon" and "tickled pink" and honestly I don't feel those things.  It isn't because we aren't looking forward to the future with this new person in our lives.  Sure, we weren't "trying," but we also weren't being super strict about our birth control method, so I knew it was a possibility.  I don't have feelings of love and awe towards the thing that's inside me.  I don't feel like a mom, and I don't know what that even means.  Conceptualizing pushing a human out of me and then having it be in our lives forever just isn't happening for me.  I don't know when it will hit me.  For all I know it won't be until it's out of me.

I get the sense that the way I feel and how I talk about all this could be off-putting to some people who can feel those "over the moon" feelings, and who can't wait to hold their infant in their arms, and who feel in love with the tiny baby growing inside them.  I'm pushing back against that seed of shame that I'm already screwing up being a parent by not feeling the "right" way during pregnancy.  

I remember reading Mellisa's blog "Dear Baby" which she wrote while she was pregnant with her first child.  I remember wanting to do the same thing for my future baby, write letters to them while they were in utero, but here we are and I'm like, "I don't know what to tell you except I imagine you will LOVE orange juice based on how much OJ I'm ingesting these days."  Nothing profound to tell them.  No huge orations of love and amazement.  I'm not a feeler.  I'm a thinker.  I often wish I felt more often and stronger.  As a woman, I feel expected to feel strongly.  But my feelings are deep currents, usually lingering below the surface, not producing waves.  Articulating words to encapsulate those feelings is especially difficult.  Thinking comes much more naturally.  But I get the sense that I come off as unfeeling and curt because in my communication with most people I'm all information, very little feeling.  In fact, when I write emails, I almost always write out the email how I normally would (all info), then have to go back and insert pleasantries and "feelings," just to ensure I don't come off as rude or uncaring.  I imagine men don't deal with this same pressure.  I wonder what it would be like to not feel the pressure to be touchy feely.