the home stretch

less than one month left. four weeks and some change. considering how quickly the last month passed, i'm expecting/ hoping the last will do the same. although, considering a little miracle some of you may know as jude (who was due 4 days after my baby) has made his way into the world 5 weeks early, i'm aware that anything is fair game at this point!

 i wouldn't say i'm miserable, in any sense of the word. i'm still enjoying pregnancy. but i am achey, tired, and uncomfortable. seats that i've planted my hiney on for hours at a time on multiple occasions are now uncomfortable after about 20 minutes. in fact, i'd say 20 minutes is my limit in any position. 

i've also been fighting a sinus infection for close to 3 weeks now. i thought it was just a cold, but i should have known better. i never just get a cold. it's always a sinus infection. i already finished a round of antibiotics (5 days ago actually) but it seems to be creeping back. luckily i go to the doctor once a week from now on so it's easy to get that checked out. 

i'm glad to have had a small christmas break and few days off work to rest and enjoy time with family that next year will be replaced by the challenge of traveling with an 11 month old. the days of packing our bags in an hour and hitting the road are officially over. 

speaking of christmas, i received this little jewel from my list and i've been enjoying it ever since i opened it: 

it is laugh out loud hilarious. i've heard good things about it from friends and i'm glad i remembered to put reading it on my before-baby to-do list, because it is so good. and a little comical relief from the not-so-comical parts of pregnancy that can otherwise be frustrating. if you buy it and read it before or early during pregnancy, make sure to read it again at the end, because you can also reminisce about the parts you may have forgotten (or are just so glad to be done with that you've placed them out of your mind).

and speaking of to-do lists, the nursery is put together at least. the crib still needs its mattress and bedding, and the walls are still blank, but it's for the most part baby-ready. thankfully my mom is coming in a week and has offered to sew the crib bedding for me after i get it cut and pinned into shape. 

and in case you missed the facebook post, here is our christmas card from this year. they never got sent out because i never got around to ordering paper and printing them, and because stamps are not in our budget right now! but enjoy the photos (as taken about a month ago) as a semi-recent update of the baby belly. a co-worker took them for me (for free)! she takes most of our ad photos and does a great job, so i asked and she graciously obliged. 

as far as other pregnancy experiences and observations, not too much has changed. i have, however, developed an increasing aggravation with people who have little personal spatial awareness...or maybe that's just because my spatial awareness has increased...or maybe just my spatial requirements. if you're a little confused, imagine the following scenario i was caught in yesterday: i ventured with my husband's family to crestview walmart (actually a better experience than i imagined), and as i brought up the caboose of our line, a group of people to my left and a group of people to my right decided to pass on the same side of the aisle. instead of just letting my pregnant butt pass through this awkward intersection, all of them just proceeded on walking and i was caught in the middle of a creepy stranger cluster, instinctively hugging my belly and making angry faces while i shouldered my way out of the pile-up like a running back in hot pursuit. after safely escaping, i wanted to turn around and point angrily at my belly and yell "watch it! don't you people have any respect for a pregnant woman?!" 

i think maybe that people just don't have any respect for each other in general anymore. similar to however many times i rode the tiger transit (the auburn university transportation system) standing up while carrying two armfuls of drafting tools, while 27 frat guys sat comfortably with nothing but a cell phone in their pockets. this is the world we live in now. and situations like yesterday's probably have nothing to do with respect for pregnant women, and a lot to do with my mama bear instincts rising up. i can't imagine what i'll be like once baby is actually here. i might actually snarl at someone.

in other news we toured the birthing ward at the hospital today. it was so peaceful and the staff was amazingly nice. on top of that, as we were talking to our guide (jackie, the surgical prep nurse and nicest lady ever) we found out they encourage a lot of the things i would have requested anyways of our hospital experience. so we were glad to hear that we won't have a struggle in that area! i think they'll take great care of me :)

also i gained five pounds in the last two weeks. there was a number on the scale that was .2 lbs away from a number that i thought for sure i'd freak when i saw. i actually walked away, turned around, and got back on the scale just to see if it was right. BUT all-in-all, i'm still only up 26 lbs total. that's totally fine, and by the looks of my belly it's mostly baby...ok and maybe christmas food. 

and this has gotten long enough for one entry, so i'll leave the rest for the next. and i'll try and update more frequently since these last weeks will fly by!

burn, baby, burn

*disclaimer: i cannot figure out why there is phishing within my blog body texts. i've tried switching host sites and had the exact same problem. i give up. so for now i'll just keep blogging. just please don't click on any links! i did not put them there!*

so back to the blog...

less than 8 weeks until i no longer have a pregnant belly and instead have a baby. EIGHT. gulp!

as christmas approaches, part of me wishes little monks was already here so we could spend the holidays with our little bundle. but the other part of me knows that i will probably enjoy having the stress of the holidays over so that it's just us and baby. the closer my due date gets, the more and more anxious i am to the time when baby gets here. i want to know the sex, i want to know if he or she will look like me or jeremy. i want to know if he or she will have lots of hair and big feet and be fat (like the both of us were). i want to know i will pass down my surprising newborn alertness or if our kid will get my husband's 4-day-old jabbering (that apparently never stopped from that day forward). i want to know who this baby is!

but i also have really enjoyed pregnancy, for the most part. apart from minor aches and pains, pregnancy is a breeze compared to my normal life. i don't know how to say this politely, so i just have to say it: my "time of the month" was hell. i dread it's return more than labor and delivery. mood swings, depression, breaking out like a 16 year old, cravings, and feeling like my body wants to kill me. in fact, one of the tip-offs that i was pregnant was how normal i felt when i knew i should have been hunting down cheesy carbs or crying over the thought of smelling a real french bakery (why so specific, you ask? because that has actually happened...i have actually teared up while daydreaming about the smell of a french bakery). so maybe, juuuust maybe i'll be one of those lucky cases who's hormones level out a little after pregnancy. if not, i have no choice. i'll just have to get pregnant again and repeat the cycle until i decide i'm done. and i'm only half kidding about that.

in other news, we got swindled into going into babies r us. talk about overwhelming. who knew you need so many things for a baby?? well, i guess you only need very few items, but with all these cool new things they've developed to make parenting a newborn easier, why not? so we now have 2 registries. i have yet to look at babies r us online to check the list because (much like our wedding registry) my husband was in control of the scanner. and he gets a little out of control. he's the reason we have 2 sets of nerf guns.

anyway, here are some new things pregnancy has brought on in the last couple of weeks:

• heartburn. ay! i guess i'm at that stage. whatever i eat leaves me burping and my throat sore, so that my voice gets froggy from time to time. 
• i also can hardly breathe after i eat. not big meals. normal sized ones. it's getting crowded in there! just getting situated in bed leaves me out of breath. i feel like an incredibly out-of-shape person.
• i cannot shave my legs by myself (partially because there is no ledge of any sort in our shower for me to rest my foot, but mostly because i cannot bend over that far anymore). my husband had to do it for me before a wedding
• i also need my husband to help me take off my boots
• shirts that i never thought i'd grow into...well...let's just say they fit
• our baby moves all the time, sometimes to the point where i hope my skin holds up and a baby foot doesn't bust through my mid section like an alien
• hiccups! it took me a little while to realize what they were until one day at work i kept wondering what baby was doing in there to create such rhythmic bumps. and then a light bulb came on! 
• i've developed a peace about my "health care provider." she is amazing. the more we spend with her the more i feel like she really respects me and that i'm not just another job to do. she knows the answers to everything, and i love her honesty. i truly feel like i'm in good hands. if you're having a baby in pensacola, please ask me about her! i would highly recommend her.
• i'm very much looking forward to my maternity leave (despite that it's unpaid and i haven't quite figured out how we're going to swing that). i haven't had a vacation from work in about a year, minus the holiday here and there. although it won't be a vacation per se, at least it will be some time to focus on something other than the 8-5. 

so the real countdown begins! so glad i have Christmas to distract me from my impatience. i am so ready for that little peanut to be here!

nursery fever

29 weeks. 29 inches of baby tummy. 15 pounds up. still healthy, and my cute little baby kicks have turned into "owww! what are you doing in there?!"

other than that, i'm becoming increasingly aware of how little time i have left to get everything "prepared" for this baby, especially considering our guest room is being inhabited for another month. i was reminded by my friend that this can be pulled off successfully in four days, which makes me feel a little better, knowing it can be done. but i still have a hard time trying to quiet my nesting hormones telling me to make way for this little guy or girl. 

and so begins the "nursery design" issue. 

below is a bird's eye view of my guest room/nursery. we rent so wall color/trim is staying the same, which is white walls with sage trim. the floors are medium stained original oaks. there is a brown jute rug in there that i'll probably trade out for the softer wool powder blue one in our living room. there is a queen bed, a night stand, and small dresser that are part of set that is pewter and natural wicker. as you can see there are a lot of doors and windows, making space planning difficult. the door to the right leads to the entry space to the house. we don't use it. i would center the crib on the door and use it as a backdrop, but then we may not have room for a chair (which is actually wider than the one pictured). and i can't decide if i want the crib centered with the door or with the bed. because the bed has to be centered with the window. i'm too anal not to have balance.

moving on. this is my guest bedding. i love it. love love love it. 

and these are the fabrics i like for baby. i've decided to take on making my own crib skirt and bumper. i can't find any out there i like enough to spend the money on. and i also cannot stand the way pre-fab crib skirts just hang and blow in the breeze. it's like window treatments that don't hit the floor. drives me bonkers. on top of that, i want to be able to cover the space beneath for storage. 

i'm for sure using the middle fabric, and either the top or bottom with it (not both). you can't tell from the picture, but the dots on the top fabric are actually a darker turquoise than the stripes. it's cute. i also really want to add pom-poms to the bottom of the crib skirt. 

i already have turquoise and orange accents in the room. i don't and didn't intend for the two room plans to blend or go together well. i think i just really like the color combo. 

with the middle fabric i'll most likely go with a natural crib finish and leave the wood--gasp! unpainted wood? whoever heard of such? anyway. i already gave my bit about the curtains, i'll leave painted wood alone. and i'm guilty of it myself. i just painted and repurposed a wood dvd shelf over the weekend. sometimes it is necessary. back to topic--the wood finish will help keep it more masculine since that fabric is definitely more feminine and i'm about 85% sure i'm having a boy. a white crib would be too girly.

so that's what i've got for now. it may change. 

oh and we have a real live registry now! with real things on it! who knew you need so many things for a baby? i think we had fewer things on our wedding registry.

now. back to my quinoa-roni and cheese.

gearing up for 3rd

time is officially flying. october is almost over. my favorite month! what did i do for it?! everyone keeps saying that with the holidays coming up, my third trimester will fly by and the baby will be here before we know it. i think with or without the holidays it will fly by, if the rate it's going now is any indication.

today is our one year anniversary! i can't believe that in three months we'll have a baby. while i won't say we weren't caught off-guard by that fact, the closer it gets, the more real it becomes, and the more exciting. 

to celebrate our last anniversary without kids to worry about for a lonnnnggg time, we went away to fairhope, alabama for a couple of days. it's not something we had in our budget, but we went anyway, cherishing our time away from life. we took the back roads there and on the way we passed a yard-side flea market at which i spotted a pretty neat looking dresser (we've been looking for a dresser to use as a changing table for a while now). the dresser was ok and we ended up not getting it, but the real treasure was a crib! a jenny lind crib frame for TEN. DOLLARS. it was missing the springs/mattress platform but i thought, hey, for ten dollars, we can get one of those off of ebay and make the dang thing work. 

{for those of you unfamiliar with jenny lind, she was a popular singer/song-writer in the mid 1800s. this type of wood spindle furniture came out around that time and was named for her. originals would probably be worth a lot more than $10, but it has been inexpensively replicated for years and years and has always been regarded as very classic, especially in children's furniture.}

the stain on the one we found is coming off around the edges, and it's a medium stain (lighter than the picture). not something that particularly matches anything i have. although i'm usually an advocate of wood and saving an original finish, this crib may need paint. 

for six months i have managed to hold back any need to create an elaborate nursery. mostly because we don't have cash monies for that, and also because i think (no, i know) the baby won't really care. in 3 years when our kid is into dinosaurs and we have to create a dinosaur themed room, then i'll get into "designer mode." people have been surprised that we are not finding out the sex, not only for clothing preparations, but also they say "aren't you a designer?! how are you going to plan the nursery?!" easy. we find a crib. we find a changing table. done. that's all we need. 

that being said, now that we have a crib--now that we have a starting point--my gears are finally starting to turn. this is the bedding i have picked out (the one thing on our registry). at this point i'm not sure if i'll keep it or not, but these are at least the colors: light turquoise and tangerine.

we're not exactly sure what to do about our nursery situation. we have a 2 bedroom house. one of those bedrooms is ours (and is very large) and the other is a guest room, which is very important when all of your family is out of town. we originally planned to have the crib in our room, but we've heard from more and more people that having a baby in your room equals no sleep for mama. too much temptation to jump up at every little breathing pattern change. a crib will fit in our guest room, so i think that it will go there. which works out well because the colors in there are very similar. and it just so happens to have the prettiest bird bedding which would keep the unintentional bird theme. so either way, we have options. we will be putting casters on the crib so we can wheel that little bugger wherever we want.

so enough about that. here's a 6 month picture for you, taken in downtown fairhope. i hope that dress fits for a while! i wear it nearly every weekend. it's comfy and one of those "i'm obviously pregnant" outfits.

not much new in the way of pregnancy news. i feel more movements. i can feel when there's a head pushing to one side. typically the baby is head up and feet down. i've gotten a lot more bladder kicks. that is interesting. one of these days i won't be so lucky to control them and i'll tee-tee myself. sometimes my blood sugar acts funny in the morning. i called my doctor in a panic thinking surely i had  gestational diabetes. they told me low sugar in the morning is perfectly normal and not to panic and just drink some orange juice first thing in the morning to help level it out so it doesn't spike after i eat. 

other than that i still feel great and i am still growing outwardly (as the picture above shows). people now, very confidently, approach me as a pregnant lady and ask me questions. i have to admit i kind of like it. i definitely gave pregnant women the "aww, you look so cute" all the time, so to be on the other end of it feels kind of neat :) 

i've also been so enjoying the company of my friends who are mamas. i've gotten to spend several nights (up past my bedtime) chatting and listening to parenting stories all the way from pregnancy to toddler-hood. i think the most important thing i've taken away from everyone is that there is no one single method that works for every parent. you kind of have to just find what works for you and do it. 

i welcome any advice, so long as it's given in a nurturing way. it's funny how some people deliver their advice in a "you can never be prepared enough" scare tactic kind of method. as if i have a choice. the baby is already coming! i'm no more prepared than they were with their first, which is why i love to hear people's stories! but luckily there are very few of those, and more often than not they are acquaintances. or perfect strangers. and they don't count.

i've come a long way since knowing no one in pensacola when i moved here, to starting a family here and having such a great network of people around me for support. i may not be mentally prepared for a newborn, but i have a lot of friends who have been there and done that. and for that i am grateful! 

pregnancy brain

today i am 25 weeks and my body is officially out of vertical storage space for this baby. it happens when you're short and short-torsoed. so this baby can only grow out, which is happening quickly. and strangers are no longer afraid to refer to me as being pregnant.

another thing that is happening quickly is the deterioration of my brian, or "pregnancy brain" as i've heard it called. i noticed in the first trimester a general forgetfulness, like forgetting to bring my lunch to work or forgetting my phone. little things. now i've moved onto decision making processes that kind of make me appear to be an idiot. especially at work.

i've been called "slow" multiple times in my life. both in joking and serious manners. it's something i've come to accept. but one thing people need to understand about me (and my husband knows this well) is that i'm not a slow thinker, nor am i an idiot. i simply have a very detailed thought process. i'm a thinker, and actually quite logical. i live in my head a lot. and sometimes i am having very deep thought conversations with myself while performing simple activities, which might make me appear to be slow. i am not.

but i don't know where my mind has been recently. when people ask themselves "what was i thinking?!" i am asking myself this in a very literal sense, wondering if i was thinking about anything at all. when people give me pertinent information, it seems to disappear whenever i need it most. or whenever it would be a really good idea to recall an important fact (like in which order shampoo and conditioner are applied to your hair)...gone. i hear it gets worse, but i hope not. i feel like a legitimate idiot sometimes.

but really, all in all, i've had a near perfect pregnancy. and i did not expect that at all. so i am trying to be grateful for that. my weight, size, blood pressure, emotional state, etc. all have been stable and perfectly on track. i have developed a strangely overwhelming sweet tooth (in my non-pregnant state, sometimes i don't even like chocolate, nor can i stand the smell of cupcake icing), but i'm trying to combat it with fruit and natural sugar sources, although that doesn't always work when you live within a few blocks of krispy kreme and that daggum "hot now!" sign is ALWAYS on. stupid donuts...

with the third trimester around the corner, i'm trying to enjoy being pregnant while i can. time seems to be flying. this baby will be here before we know it!

we also finally started a registry. there is one item on it. but, in my defense, people have been SO good to us in providing most of what we need. we really only lack the non-exciting essentials, like diapers, burp cloths, and creams (lord help me if i have to use the word "ointment"). at some point we will hunker down and get serious about it. but not just yet. i want to enjoy all that we've been blessed with without thinking about more stuff we need. with our ever-growing "baby pile," we might be broke but our baby won't know it!!

this explains a lot!

so i've been (reluctantly, due to my hatred of being photographed) having the hubs take photos each month to document my progress. it's no wonder i feel so much bigger lately. look at the difference between months 4 and 5! definitely broke the barrier between questionable weight gain and "there's a baby in there."

and last night we witnessed our first exterior belly movements. the mister likes to say in a deep voice "yo, lil' baby monks--this yo daddy! go clean your room!" and we got a few kicks out of that (literally).

sidenote: it's too bad my hair didn't look as good in 4 as it does in 5 (or all the others, for that matter). i'm having a good hair day apparently! must be the drop in humidity which i'm thoroughly enjoying...

our little night owl

so i'm in week 23 and i just really need to ask all the moms on "i didn't know i was pregnant" a question: how did you not feel that?! if i didn't know there was a baby inside of me, i'd for sure think it was an alien. in contrast to the beginning movements, i know this ain't gas!

last night i was awake (as i usually am during the baby's active times of the night) and felt some sort of limb move from one side of my belly to the other. not the usual jabs and punches. from my kung fu days i thought to myself "i think that was the elbow move from line one...yep, definitely the elbow."if it hadn't been dark in the room i'm sure i could have seen it.

but one thing is for sure, the night time movements are much bigger and more pronounced than the daytime flutters and squirms. i'm afraid we're going to have a night baby on our hands. especially considering how much time i spend just lying awake. something tells me my internal clock is being adjusted. bye-bye sleep! see ya in a few years!

there's not much else to report for the last couple of weeks, except that i seem to have grown a baby in a week. sometimes i walk past the mirror on the way to the shower in the mornings and do a double-take. i even googled "23 weeks pregnant" to see if i was a normal size compared to other women. i'm afraid so. i just don't have as much room. considering the baby already monopolizes every square inch of body cavity i have vertically, the only place for him or her to grow is out. just when i think "man, i'm really starting to look pregnant," then i start looking more pregnant. easy logic, i know. but when it's your body changing, it's very much a daily adjustment!

and that's pretty much it. no cravings, no mood swings. just normal me with a growing belly and an active night owl inside.