A brief tour

There is much evidence of approaching babyness around our bedroom. Note the elephant humidifier purchased for baby's room that may never actually end up in baby's room.

And here's a picture of the headboard we finally finished. This is a project that had been on our to do list for months and really ought to have triggered labor upon its completion. Our bed looks kind of gaudy here, but I don't think the colors look this way in person. I hope not at least.

This is where baby will sleep (courtesy of Kenny's cousin) in the beginning.

This is Kenny testing the new glider with our usual stand-in baby.

And these are our bags packed for the hospital. Items range from pillows to electronics, powdered gatorade and tennis balls. It's kind of a hard trip to pack for, you know?

And this was the belly at 38 weeks. See? Plenty big enough for a fully grown baby to come out of it right NOW.

Like the night before Christmas if you had no idea when Christmas was

I want to meet the baby noooooooooooooooow. This could be a really long month. At the midwife today, we briefly discussed what we might want to do if baby still hasn’t shown up by March. By March. March is a lovely time to be born. I was born in March, but if this baby gets any ideas about waiting for a March birth it’s going to spend the first 3 years of its life grounded. As it is still 2 weeks before my due day, I really need to chill out.

In a vain attempt to hasten the birth, we’ve gone into super nesting mode. I think our Saturday really sums up life as of late. We ran a few errands in the morning, got home and napped for an embarrassing number of hours, eventually got up and found ourselves cleaning out the fridge until after midnight. It now glistens. I’ve reorganized every cabinet in the kitchen at least once. The floors have all been cleaned. Bathrooms are shiny. All clothes in my dresser have been refolded. All clothes in my closet have been rehung. I even gave the washing machine a good scrubbing and vacuuming. I feel like maybe baby is just waiting for us to get one more project done. After we made and hung our headboard Sunday night, I fully expected my water to break.

In other news, our new computer arrived yesterday. New computer replaces 7 year old computers that are so old everything we try to do on the web laughs at us. Want to upload pictures? Good luck. Want to do your taxes? Taxes are for people with computers that don’t have electric tape on them. We skyped Kenny’s mother and video g-chatted my brother last night. Apparently this is what modern life is like!

I’ll post the pictures of the belly and the last week’s accomplishments in baby preparations later.

Workplace hyjinx

So, last Friday I was a bit bummed. I had to wear a suit (or what I classify as close-enough-to-a-suit-I’m-too-big-for-real-clothes) instead of the usual jeans casual. I had a client meeting scheduled for 4:00 and client meetings=you have to dress up. My boss told me that our receptionist would call when the client got there and asked me to print off a bunch of stuff for the meeting in the meantime. I walked down to the meeting with her, past what I did not realize at the time were all empty desks. When we got to the room I thought it odd that the door was shut.Seemed kind of rude to have our client all shut up in the room by himself. I opened the door and was greeted by my entire office shouting “surprise,” a clothesline full of onesies, and a table full of cupcakes and falafel (from my favorite falafel place). Oh, and a Kenny. The Kenny part really threw me off much as Megan’s appearance at my birthday last year threw me off. I have a hard time with people being in the wrong context. I said, “you’re not supposed to be here” and kept asking him why/how he was. There was a flipchart full of boy names since my coworkers all know that yes, we have girl names figured out but can’t agree on a single boy name. They came up with many winners including Moonshine and “The Situation.” We had sparkling cider (or champagne if you happened to not be pregnant). I thought the onesies on the clothesline were my present and was surprised when they handed me a big gift bag full of baby bathing paraphernalia and a Babies R Us gift card. I introduced Kenny to each and every one of my coworkers. I think it’s good for him to have a face to go with the names he hears about all the time. Overall, I would describe the experience as awesome.

In related news, I am now over 37 weeks pregnant. That means the baby is full term (though the due date is not until Mardi Gras) and is basically just freeloading and trying to get fatter right now. At my midwife appointment last night I found out I had gained a centimeter and lost and pound in the last week. My scientific explanation for this is that the baby is eating my fat. To be on the safe side, I have been eating pretty much non-stop today. I’ve had a bagel, bowl of oatmeal, protein bar, manicotti, and a Hershey kiss so far today—and we’re really just 6 or 7 hours into the day. None of the pictures this week were good, so you get this one:

We finished most of our household projects this last weekend. It’s as if we’re finally ready for that housewarming party we were going to have. Also, you just really can’t have a baby when there are pictures that need to be hung. I mean, I’m sure you can try. I just know it’s a bad idea. We are officially allowed to have the baby after we make and hang our headboard this weekend and get onsite recycling set up. Below is a picture of Kenny’s masterpiece. I talked him out of making himself crazy and trying to hang them in straight lines. The idea is that we try to have at least one picture of all of our family members and friends. This is how baby will remember who each of you are.

T-27 days, give or take

So, here we are. 36 weeks. I’ve been busy at work trying to wrap up projects or find them new owners. At home, we’ve been busy finishing up projects as well. Last night at dinner, Kenny said, in all seriousness, “We need to restock the spice drawer before the baby comes.” Apparently we will no longer be able to go to the grocery store after the baby is born. I think we’re going to need a bigger pantry. Also, the baby is going to be very disappointed if he or she shows up and we have no thyme or ground mustard.

Sleeping, dressing, and eating have all become great challenges. Earlier this week I lost the ability to sleep on my right side. Sleeping on my back is supposed to be bad for circulation or something. Thus, I am left with sleeping on my left side. That’s really not enough to work with.As far as dressing goes, I’m either sick of, have spilled on, or no longer fit into the grand majority of my maternity clothes. And I’m certainly not going to do anything about it at this point. Today’s picture will actually be from 36 weeks and 1 day because the pictures that resulted from yesterday’s photo session are just too frightening. I was wearing a dress which made it appear that the belly had no end and those pictures will never again see the light of day. And eating?Well eating is just a constant experiment. If I eat the wrong thing or too much of it or not soon enough or too late I suffer.

I toured my first daycare yesterday. It seemed like a decent place and they have a spot available, so it’s nice to know that hopefully baby will not have to come hide in my cube when I go back to work—though I think that might be fun for all involved. We have a couple of other options to look at as well, so I am feeling much better about all of that. I am feeling dangerously close to..."ready."

For some reason, it appears I was wearing a zombie mask this morning. I'm fresh out of cute. Oh, and I get my hair cut tomorrow. Do any of you have any fabulous ideas for that?

Belly, belly, and more belly.

This is last week's picture--34 weeks. Notice the bump's position in relation to my lungs, stomach, and other vital organs.

And this is from today, 35 weeks. I'm so over trying to get dressed in the morning. The clothing options? They have dwindled.

And this is the ridiculous way I look when I get on the train every day--and sometimes I still don't get a seat.

The end is near

I think I have to stop waiting to write posts until I have pictures. I’ll catch up on pictures soon. But for now, there are updates to be had.

Kenny did something extraordinary and exciting last week. He went to work! Yay! He got a contracting position last week and we all breathed a big sigh of relief. He’ll be there for at least 3 and half more weeks—maybe forever. We shall see. The two most interesting things about the job, from my perspective, are that they made him take his tragus piercing out and he has to wear a tie Tuesday through Thursday.

In other news, I’ve had “take infant CPR class” on our to do list for several months. We totally cheated and crossed that item off of our list last night by watching a variety of online video demonstrations. While we were at it, we learned how to give CPR to dogs and got a refresher on CPR for adults. We also finally picked out a pediatrician. According to all books and movies, I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to interview a bunch of them first. We instead started from a list of four that have been recommended to us, looked at their office hours and Yelp.com reviews and chose one. Find daycare remains on the list. I wonder how we’ll manage to shortchange that process J. Actually, I think that’s why it remains on the list—we haven’t found a shortcut yet. I think I’m going to have to actually start calling places and scheduling visits.

About a week ago I was having lunch with coworkers and talking about how great I am at sleeping. I of course have not had a good night of sleep since. I’ve apparently decided to start worrying about everything we need to get done before IT happens, and my stomach and joints are all broken. I look forward to sleeping a year or so from now.

People at work keep asking me when my leave starts. My leave starts when this baby shows up. Statistically speaking, I have about 2 to 7 weeks left. I’ve been spending some time staring at this chart. I think it’s a bit early for this, but I’m starting to feel a bit like a ticking time bomb. Who knows when she’ll go?

All kinds of busy

I would have posted earlier, but I've been busy spending lots of time sitting on couches. We went to Kansas City for Christmas. There were showers, there were Christmases and there was lots and lots of snow. There was a blizzard that kept us locked up in my mom's house for about 3 days.

Since we've been back the dogs have been doing an extraordinary amount of sleeping and cuddling. I think they miss Grandma's thermostat setting.

We had a pretty low key New Year's. We did toy with the idea of opening the is-the-baby-a-boy-or-girl envelope at midnight. Leroy is apparently all about surprises though because he came and stole it away from us.


While just now trying to find a position where baby's feet weren't directly kicking me in the ribs, I had the uncomfortable realization that baby will possibly double in size before this is all over. Kenny was feeling my tummy last night and finally moved his hand away because he said it was freaking him out how much it was kicking.

This is me at 32 weeks, snowed in at mama's house over Christmas.


And this is me the day after we got back at 33 weeks. Between weeks 27 and 31 I hadn't gained any weight. Luckily 4 Christmases of eating and about a week of sitting on my tush got me all caught up.