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.

The state of Kenny, the sequel

As of late, everybody asks me how Kenny is doing. I think he should get some weekly pictures too perhaps. This is Kenny two weeks after having been let go:

He has a tendency to do this when he's unemployed. And by this, I mean grow facial hair and cut back on showering. See exhibit A. I am not a fan of facial hair on him. It hurts to kiss him and he's just so pretty clean shaven. Luckily, a day or two after this picture was taken he got an interview with a design temp agency.

Couldn't you just eat him up? He looks just like Darren from Bewitched only cuter. He's been very busy networking and applying and signing up with agencies and working on his self-promotion campaign--not to mention all of the work involved in taking care of me. I am a handful.

Speaking of me, this is 31 weeks--I call it the bumblebee picture.

We're in the single-digit-week countdown now. The baby has shut down all normal operation of my stomach. I can now eat bland food in small quantities dispersed throughout the day. It's like the first trimester is back only with less vomitting and more pain and difficulty sleeping.

This whole birth thing is coming so soon and there is still so much reading and preparing yet to do. I have entire books on infant sleep and breastfeeding to read not to mention another one on birth. Oh, and we need to start weening affection from the dogs. We'll start that any day now I'm sure. At least we have a place for the baby to sleep and way to bring the baby home. I'm sure we'll work the other details out.

The theme is..Swedish

In other words, the nursery is about 75% from Ikea. We finished putting together the nursery last night. The room just makes me smile when I'm in it.

In this picture you'll see our previously featured crib. I contacted the designer, retailer, and manufacturer of said crib to find a mattress that was not too small and thus hazardous (as the first one we got was). I finally got a voicemail last night from the manufacturer who said that the (Target) crib is designed to be upscale and therefore needs and upscale mattress. She suggested I try Babies R Us to find said upscale mattress. Oddly, we went to Babies R Us two days ago and brought home what we determined to be the largest mattress there after taking each one out and comparing them to each other. We bought the fattest mattress pad we could find and voila! A crib that will hopefully not kill our baby.

Also featured in this picture are a set of blocks glued together by Megan to read Kodner Bun in the Oven and baby's first piece of Packer propaganda--a Packer piggy bank courtesy of his/her grandparents of course. The white dresser will be a changing table once we get a changing pad to put on it.


In the picture below, you will see curtains that feature frogs, elephants, and I think mice dressed in clothes. Also, we've installed a picture ledge which is temporarily housing artwork abandoned by our ex (deadbeat) tenant.

And me at 30 weeks in a festive red scarf since we're having a holiday party at work today. I'm not sure I can really tell a difference from week to week now. I think once the belly is a certain size it just keeps being big.

Mish mosh

I would like to be assembling furniture and hanging things up in the baby's room right now (or at least hovering over Kenny's shoulder while he does so), but I have been banished and told to go blog. So here I am. It's mostly Kenny's fault that I didn't get to write last week. I've become accustomed to him uploading the pictures and sending them to me, but he didn't do that this week. Apparently he was busy trying to find a job or something silly like that.

We spent most of Saturday at baby class. The class was just like they are on TV. We got to bring in pillows and blankets, we watched graphic videos, and we practiced saying "hee hee hee." My favorite part of the class was this one woman who kept asking questions about the placenta and how she could go about taking it home with her.

When we got home Kenny knew something was up when he spotted a wrapper for a dog treat on the floor. You see, we keep a bunch of treats in a jar on the window sill in the kitchen. The lid to said jar was on the floor in the kitchen. The jar itself? Was in the living room, empty, sitting on the couch.

This means that not only had Leroy gotten the lid off the jar, he had also carried it somewhere else more comfortable to gorge himself. He'd eaten about 20 days worth of treats in one afternoon. His belly was huge. After careful questioning and examining of the stomach, it was determined that Jack played no part in the heist and refused to partake in devouring the spoils.

When we were little my brother and I used to put up the Christmas tree on November 1 (as that was safely after Halloween and we never had Thanksgiving decorations). Since sharing a home with somebody not quite so into Christmas, I now hold off all the way until after Thanksgiving. My tree is about 4 feet tall. Putting the lights on required a moving squatting position. After I tried and fell over twice, Kenny kindly took over. For a Jewish boy, he's amazingly good at decorating a tree.


And, as always, the belly picture. This is me at 29 weeks in what must be an embiggening shirt. I frightened many people the day I wore it.