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Bumpday – Week 30

I do have pictures this week! The Ambitious One took photos of me last night at the pool. My hair looks kinda crappy (as it’s prepping for being in a swim cap), but there I am in all my maternity suit glory!

The water was pretty cold, which is why I look so surprised in the second picture. Also, holy cleavage, Batman!  I had no idea that was happening in that suit.  CRAZY!

 

And now – on to the updates!

Baby size:15.7 inches-ish; 3-ish lbs (about the size of a cabbage)

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I’m feeling: Not too bad; better than I have the last few weeks. My pelvic region is feeling much better; very little pain with walking. ALSO, I went swimming last night and it was A-mazing.

Physical changes: The belly button is still an innie!  It’s pretty shallow, and I keep expecting it to just pop out with a little cartoon popping noise. Less round ligament pain & cramping this week, which is great. Now that I’m just big, I can’t tell if I’m getting bigger each week, or just staying at the same level of bigness. No stretch marks, or varicose veins, or any of the other stuff I’ve been told to expect. Just the itchy skin!

Baby stuff: Alvie Bean is a little less kicky this week, although still very active. It turns out that when I’m less stressed, he is, too. Weird!

Body Image: I felt pretty cute in my maternity suit (and the clothes I wore to work yesterday), so as long as I don’t think of things in terms of weight, I am okay. It’s kinda fun having a big round belly!

Food stuff: No real cravings this week. I would still kill someone for chicken & dumplings (didn’t get it done last weekend), but other than that, just my go-to foods: carrots & bananas. I have been eating a LOT of dairy recently. A glass of milk a day – haven’t done that since high school probably. Alvie Bean is stealing all my calcium reserves!

Things I miss: Belts. Beer. Sleeping on my stomach. Not having to pee every 90 minutes.

Prep Work (Things to do between now & Alvie Bean Day)

January: Find a pediatrician, lock down a daycare, recycle all the old electronics in the office, get the carpet cleaning appointment made, find a maid service for quarterly deep cleans, finalize shower list for shower giver! And now, find a new doula, since mine quit last Monday – interviewing one tomorrow!

February: Attend childbirth & breastfeeding classes, take babymoon, make sure all essentials are purchased (diapers and carseat at this point!), pack hospital bag

March: Finish getting less essential essentials (rocking chair, crib, changing table, other random stuff), make a plan for freezer meals, finish getting nursery ready, sign up for FMLA

 

In conclusion:

Much better than last week. I can see lights at the end of my work-stress and school-stress tunnels.

I am so glad that I have the architect, even if he is the one who got me into this whole mess! He is totally my anchor and I don’t know what I’d do without him. I love that he’s getting so excited to meet our bean & loves to feel him shift around inside me.

Less than 10 weeks to go!  It’s the FINAL COUNTDOWN!

Three (3!) Things Thursday – super depressing edition

1. Last night’s swim wasn’t very good. I’m trying to not be too hard on myself. I got dressed (first time since Monday morning!), left the house (again, first time since Monday!), and got in the water. Also, I looked cute in my maternity suit. BUT – after 250 yds, I started to cramp up in my lower abdomen. Ordinarily, I’d just push through it via my patented process of “ignore the pain until it either goes away or completely sidelines you for an entire season.” However, I am trying to be a good girl and NOT push through pain right now (apparently not as recommended in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy, or honestly, in life). So, I stopped for a breather. Eventually I decided that maybe it was dissipating enough that I could give it another go. yeah, not so much. I ended up walking in the last bit of that lap as soon as my feet touched the ground.  I wouldn’t have been so alarmist, except that’s where all the false labor contractions started earlier this week, and I really would like to not do that again for at least 10 more weeks. SO – all that being said, I totally forgot to have the Ambitious One take a picture of me in my cute maternity suit. SORRY!  Pretend, instead, that this is me:

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2. My dad is finally awake again after his surgery on Tuesday. I don’t think he’s very alert yet, but he was extubated this morning & is breathing on his own. I am going to try not to talk about this too much on my blog because (a) my family reads this blog, and I’d like to try to keep this as a place we don’t have to deal with this too much; (b) I write this blog and am trying super hard to be upbeat, positive, and wicked relaxed/Zen, because I hate crying while writing blog posts;  and (c) I am not here trying to garner sympathy or whatever. Shit happens. Currently shit is happening to my family. And that shit has happened in the form of brain tumors. There is good news – the largest tumors were successfully removed via the surgery. And now, there is waiting. Waiting for the biopsy results so a treatment plan can be made. Waiting for my dad to fully wake up from the surgery. Waiting to find out prognosis. Waiting to have this baby – in NOT LESS THAN 10 WEEKS, Alvie, so stop punching me in the cervix…that avenue is closed – so that I can take him to meet his grandfather.

(I was secretly pregnant in this picture. Please admire how I am managing to NOT look like I’m five seconds away from barfing on everyone! I am a champion!)

3. Um – so something happy? Alvie Bean is super active this week, and when he’s not punching me in the cervix, it’s actually kind of fun. The architect has got to feel a lot of kicks in the last couple of days, which is awesome, because previously the fetus would freeze up every time someone even thought about touching my belly. (He has a bit of performance anxiety.) (Funny side story – I got home from the pool last night as said to the architect, “Guess who kept punching me in the cervix while I was trying to swim?” His response, “The Ambitious One?” ha ha ha ha – fortunately, not.  I think I couldn’t be friends with her anymore if that were the case!  :) )

 

This is a dramatic reenactment, as that is not my belly, and as far as I know, those hands do not belong to the architect. (Used under Creative Common License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) )

 

So – there you are. I hope I didn’t bum anyone out too much. I am going to try to be my regular glass half-full, sunny side up, cheery person, blue skies, puppies, rainbows & unicorns self soon!

Happy (?) Thursday!

Better late than never?

My weekend report (I know it’s been killing you all day that I haven’t told you what I did when I wasn’t regaling you with my life stories):

Thursday night: book club! And science lesson! It was pretty awesome. Even though I hadn’t read the book (for shame!), I felt extremely well educated by the end of the evening. Thanks, Mr. Pi for the free, impromptu science lesson!

Friday: I worked in the morning, started my lefse, and watched eleventy hundred episodes of Torchwood. I feel like I must have done something else productive that day, but I couldn’t tell you what. I know that I certainly didn’t leave the house.

Saturday: I went for a run/walk, discovered that all the park bathrooms are padlocked for the season, and then spent the afternoon making lefse! YUM! I also did some cleaning & cleaned out my entire dresser! YAY!

Saturday night, even though I was exhausted, apparently I wan’t exhausted enough. I woke up about 1:30 am and was awake until about 5. Needless to say, I was a cheery, cheery beacon of fun Sunday morning.

Sunday morning was spent cleaning out the fridge (I am slowly but surely making my house clean….of course, by the time I get to the last room, I’m pretty sure that the first room will be completely filthy again; of course also by then, I can make dusting a mandatory chore for my pre-teen). Sunday afternoon, I went swimming with the Ambitious One, and then headed to my favorite theater to see Breaking Dawn.

It was just as insane as I expected. No – it was more insane than I expected. I especially enjoyed the wedding night sex bits. Valuable lessons:  sex is truly terrifying, it might kill you, and when you wake up covered in bruises the shape of your husband’s hands, you should definitely reassure him that a) it’s okay; b) he didn’t mean to; and c) you liked it, really. Great message for our teen girls! Although since pregnancy and childbirth involve a lot of broken bones, blood (both for drinking and for making messes of) and emaciation, perhaps it’s a really great way to keep the kids from getting it on. (A well-placed message about birth control wouldn’t have gone amiss, either.)

ANYWAYS – I thoroughly enjoyed the shitstorm, giggled through most of it, and had a great time with some super fun girls women.  My only real complaint (because my issues with how sex & violence were handled are not real) is that Jacob only takes his shirt off once, and that was in the opening scene. What good are sexy teen wolves if they’re always clothed? I’ve read the books, and I believe there was supposed to be lot more nudity. WHERE IS YOUR ARTISTIC INTEGRITY?

This is why I enjoyed the previous movies:

 

Gratitude Journal

November 21, 2011: I am grateful for my excellent co-workers that make my days much less crappy (and more productive).

November 20, 2011: I am grateful for my beer theater. It is close to my house, has $4 first-run movies before 6 pm, serves decent pizza, and has beer and wine. Also, it has bottle water, which is what I had today.

November 19, 2011: I am grateful for random port-o-potties on my running route.

November 18, 2011: I am grateful that I have a connection to bits of my cultural heritage; I can’t imagine a world without lefse, and am so pleased that I have learned how to do it and have a skill I can pass on to Alvie Bean.

November 17, 2011: I am grateful for coffee. I know it seems like I mentioned it yesterday, but yesterday I only said I was grateful for the coffee maker (in a list of other things). But I really wanted to draw attention to coffee as deserving of its own special day. Coffee is the best beverage ever invented. I don’t understand how I got through so many years never drinking it and thinking it really wasn’t that great. Mmmmmm……coffee.

November 16, 2011: I am grateful for all the little luxuries I have that I often take for granted…my car, my phone, the coffee maker (so very grateful for my coffee maker). It’s so easy to caught up in the things I don’t have that I occasionally forget how very lucky I am. My life is so freaking awesome.

November 15, 2011: I am grateful that I have the kind of job/life/etc. that allows me to afford pretty shoes, and the level-headedness that keeps me from buying (very many) shoes that wouldn’t be practical.

November 14, 2011: I am grateful that I work in a place with lots of little food nooks. It’s always an easy walk to grab more food. Which I do more often than ever, lately.

November 13, 2011: I am grateful for streaming Netflix (and Hulu Plus!). Also, I am grateful for John Barrowman. And my new found love of Torchwood.

November 12, 2011: I am grateful for my awesome friends! I got so much good quality friend-time this weekend! Walks & cocoa & thrifting with her! Ornament painting and dinner and movies with Alisa, Jen, Lisa & Sarah! Cocoa and a chat with her! (I should maybe also mention that I’m grateful for hot cocoa.)

November 11, 2011: I am grateful for laid back evenings at home with the architect.

November 10, 2011: I am grateful to live in Portland, Oregon. It is so beautiful here. I love that we have four seasons, and I especially love autumn.

November 9, 2011: I am grateful for modern medical conveniences that help eliminate unnecessary surprises from my life. Yay for ultrasounds!

November 8, 2011: I am grateful for my brand-new employee who started today, who I am hoping will help take some of the financial reporting burden off my plate & allow me to do a better job on the more big-picture things.

November 7, 2011: I am grateful for weekends and the opportunity to relax and recharge.

November 6, 2011: I am grateful for running – and grateful that I am still able to run. I am also grateful for my proximity to the most awesome running park in the history of the world: Forest Park.

November 5, 2011:I am grateful that I was able to discover enough courage to join Toastmasters. I know this sounds super cheesy, but it’s really made a HUGE difference in my life.

November 4, 2011: I am grateful for the internet, which gives me the ability to work from home, in my pajamas, this morning.

November 3, 2011: I am grateful that I have a good job that is challenging & interesting, if not necessarily catering to my life interests.

November 2, 2011: I am grateful for the architect, who is simply wonderful. He picks up the household slack when I’m busy with schoolwork, brings me chicken fingers on his way home from work, and is simply the most wonderful husband I could ask for…

November 1, 2011:  I am grateful for my (so far, knock on wood) easy and wonderful pregnancy.

Three (3!) Things Thursday!

1. As I may have mentioned, I am currently working on my Capstone project for my Master’s degree. I am in the preparation phases currently, and am doing a lot of initial reference searches. Last night, I was searching for information GIS and food security. 99.9% of the results were either for food security, GIS, or, in rare but exciting occasions, both! However, the second search result in one of my searches was an abstract on Elizabethan attitudes towards menstruation and sexual fantasy. Not quite what I was expecting!

 

2. I went swimming again last night, after taking last week off. My swimming partner is fantastic. When I told her I was quitting, she convinced me to do 3 more laps, just to get close to my original goal. She was absolutely right – I was just nervous because we were circle swimming and the guy breast-stroking in the next lane over had some leg control issues and kicked me twice (NEXT LANE OVER!). I get all tense when I have to share a lane with that many people, especially since even before I got knocked up, I was usually one of the slower swimmers (unless I was there during senior citizen swim, and then I could count on being faster than 1 or 2 people). Today? My shoulders are SORE! Not sure how that happened! I swam fewer laps and for a little less time than 2 weeks ago, and I wasn’t sore then. Maybe it was the 500 yards of pulling?  Anyways – LOVE IT!

 

3. Hasn’t it been beautiful these past few days? I love fall like this. Cool and crisp and gorgeous. I got to see the sunrise by Mt. Hood yesterday morning as I was getting to work, and right now the sun is shining through all the golden leaves outside. BEAUTIMOUS!

 

Gratitude Journal

November 10, 2011: I am grateful to live in Portland, Oregon. It is so beautiful here. I love that we have four seasons, and I especially love autumn. (Of course, if you ask me in a few months, I will definitely cite spring as my favorite season – the SADs haven’t gotten me yet!)

November 9, 2011: I am grateful for modern medical conveniences that help eliminate unnecessary surprises from my life. Yay for ultrasounds!

November 8, 2011: I am grateful for my brand-new employee who started today, who I am hoping will help take some of the financial reporting burden off my plate & allow me to do a better job on the more big-picture things.

November 7, 2011: I am grateful for weekends and the opportunity to relax and recharge.

November 6, 2011: I am grateful for running – and grateful that I am still able to run. I am also grateful for my proximity to the most awesome running park in the history of the world: Forest Park.

November 5, 2011: I am grateful that I was able to discover enough courage to join Toastmasters. I know this sounds super cheesy, but it’s really made a HUGE difference in my life.

November 4, 2011: I am grateful for the internet, which gives me the ability to work from home, in my pajamas, this morning.

November 3, 2011: I am grateful that I have a good job that is challenging & interesting, if not necessarily catering to my life interests.

November 2, 2011: I am grateful for the architect, who is simply wonderful. He picks up the household slack when I’m busy with schoolwork, brings me chicken fingers on his way home from work, and is simply the most wonderful husband I could ask for…

November 1, 2011:  I am grateful for my (so far, knock on wood) easy and wonderful pregnancy

November 2011 Goals

And, of course, the October recap….

October 2011 Goals

  1. Finish the bathroom by 10/29/11. We can do it!  All supplies are purchased! I can paint like a mad woman! And make sandwiches for the architect while he tiles. (I am not allowed to tile due to my propensity to say, “eh, fuck it! That’s good enough!”) I am excellent construction support staff. – FAIL! But we are so very close!  We should be done by Thanksgiving.
  2. Get the rain garden outlined, dug, and partially planted. – FAIL! I have decided to hold off on this project for now.
  3. Finish summer garden/start fall garden. – Partial SUCCESS! The summer garden is done, and the plans are complete for the next phase…just need to execute said plans.
  4. Remove all extraneous computer crap from the house. Like the printer that doesn’t work. And the CRT monitor that weighs 375 lbs. And the 50 (approximate count) PCs (both laptop & desktop) that are just sitting around doing nothing. NOTHING! Except gathering dust. – FAIL! But, there is progress in that we have now determined which things need to go. I just need to wait for an electronics recycling day to happen so I can be all environmentally responsible.
  5. Finish my very last class of my Master’s program with an “A” before starting the final project phase. – SUCCESS! Class is done, A was achieved, terminal project is now in progress
  6. Throw the ass-kicking-est 2nd Annual Halloween bash ever! YAY for Halloween!  We will have a howling good time! – SUCCESS! I think, anyways – I had a good time.

October Training Goals

I have them! My gym membership expires this month, and I will not be renewing it. So, I want to spend more time outdoors. Running, jumping, biking, hiking, etc. I have been slacking on yoga lately, too, and need to make that a regular practice again.

I have definitely been better about working out in October now that I’m not quite as tired.  Not at the level I’d like to be at, but better than September!  Go me!

November 2011 Goals

  1. Survive the first 4.5 weeks of my terminal project without going crazy.
  2. Make lefse! With her! We will have so much fun.
  3. For reals, get the garlic in the ground & build the cloche
  4. Visit the daycare that looked awesome on paper (or, the computer screen, rather) and beg them to take my as-yet-unborn child
  5. List one thing I am thankful for every day (thanks for the inspiration, Alisa!)

 

November 2011 Training Goals

Since I am pregnant, this is harder than usual, but my goal is to work out a minimum of 3 times/week; 30 minutes/time. I had a decent start last night with a trainer ride, although I wasn’t able to hit 30 minutes due to the extreme discomfort of my bike shorts which apparently are not baby bump accommodating. (Why do I never spell accommodating right on the first try? WHY?!?) Any suggestions for bike short comfort? I really don’t want to shell out bike short money for something that I’ll wear for a maximum of 5ish months (I’m pretty sure that biking will not be the first exercise I’ll get back to after giving birth…just a feeling I have). (Also, 5 months? Seriously? That’s it?  ACK!)

I already have a swim date for Wednesday evening, and yoga plans for Friday afternoon, and will try to run on Thursday and/or Sunday….I am hoping to convince the architect to start doing weekly long walks with me on a weekend day. I’m pretty sure I’ll be mostly walking my half marathon, and want to start getting some serious distance on my feet.

 

Gratitude Journal

November 1, 2011:  I am grateful for my (so far, knock on wood) easy and wonderful pregnancy