Status: 6mos, 1 day (24 weeks, 1 day) (15 weeks and 6 days remaining)!
Cravings: frozen yogurt, orange juice, peanut butter (and pretty much anything I see on TV that looks delicious)
Feeling: fine. My back pain has even improved a lot! I guess my body got used to being front-heavy. The only thing I have now is a tendency to moan like an old lady every time I have to get up and down from a chair or bed. It’s harder than I thought it would be! Saturday, I needed a hand up getting into a truck!
Next Dr’s appt: Friday at 11:30am. I have my first glucose test.
Improvements: acne has mostly cleared up, back pain is rare, not exhausted all the time
Mood: mostly steady with a chance of crazy every now and then
Weight gain: 18lbs (on track to gain about 35)
Fun stuff: Vera is kicking like crazy! Q is still apprehensive about feeling it; he gets weak in the knees. I am not sure how well he’ll fare in the delivery room. I might have to instruct Nicki to be on faint-watch!
I’m also really excited about completing the nursery/going to my shower! Q hung the chandelier last night, and it is adorable! It’s a little more off-white/beige than I thought it would be (the pic online looked white) but it matches the paint, so I am ok with it. I also think I am going to let him do the built-in. Now that the walls are framed, it does seem like it won’t be that hard (he installed the front of the bottom cabinet to sell me on the idea). After I agreed, he thanked me for “letting him do something for Vera” ha ha! Am I that bad? Anyway, I thought it was sweet, and I know he’ll do a good job. I definitely made him a punch list of all the other house projects he can do/finish for Vera too. :)
Today at work, I had to inquire about the meaning of a phrase I hear people on my team using often: “like talkin’ bout.”
They told me that it refers to the abundance or frequency of something, which I find very interesting (and confusing). Here’s an example of how it’s used:
“Sydney, do you ever drink diet coke anymore?”
“I drink one every now and then, but not like talkin’ bout.”
Anyway, I doubt I’ll ever use this, mainly because it doesn’t make any sense. I just wanted to report it to all of you in case you work with college kids and need to decode their language!! (Wow, that was a very old lady-sounding sentence)!
Here’s the urban dictionary link. The synonyms don’t seem to coincide with the definition, but the example sentence is hilarious.
As promised, our 3rd anniversary picture! (This is me being bossy while Q cuts shoe molding. We are in the middle of a “getting ready for baby” mini-renovation). Click here to see the first two.
Sorry this took so long, but we had a crazy weekend:
-Courtney’s wedding rehearsal on Thursday
-Courtney’s wedding on Friday
-Car got broken into Friday night
-Police report, change house locks, etc on Saturday
-Lacey and Paul’s wedding Saturday night
-Fuf’s baby shower on Sunday
We have a couple of anniversary traditions. The first one is to follow the anniversary table of gift-giving (we thought it would be fun - it also steers us in the same direction). We try to get creative with it. This year, the traditional gift is leather, and the modern gift is either crystal or glass. I was having a hard time thinking of something Q would want or need that fell into those categories, while also keeping it inexpensive (we’re about to buy a car with leather seats - does that count?). Anyway, I remembered that a while back I thought of getting him Tervis Tumblers, because he doesn’t like a sweaty glass. I knew I wanted 16oz, but they come in hundreds of designs, and I was not sure which he’d appreciate. If I were getting them for myself, I would get the circle monogram, but Q’s not really a monogram kind of guy, so I had to pick something else. The problem is - Tervis Tumblers can be pretty cheesy, and I wanted the present to be useful and funny. Then it dawned on me - random animals. I know this seems crazy, but Q and I have a joke about the fact that he gravitates toward animal art/sculpture. One night we were in our favorite Chinese takeout place, and he wanted to ask them if he could purchase their 3 foot, lacquered wooden bull. (I strongly discouraged the idea). Another time, we were in an art gallery, and he joked about purchasing a HUGE giraffe painting (but I swear he was only half-joking). Anyway, we found him a smaller scale bronze bull for his office, and he ended up finding a really neat, non-animal painting to hang in there as well. So, to continue the animal joke (and to incorporate wildlife into our home in a way that I don’t find upsetting), I ordered 5 random animal tumblers (a black bear, a red crab, an elephant, a lion, and a sea turtle). In retrospect, I have no idea why I didn’t get the giraffe. I have no doubt that he will appreciate the joke, and the glasses. I can’t wait to see which one ends up being his favorite. Mine’s either the sea turtle or the crab.
Our other anniversary tradition is taking a picture each year. It’s been pretty fun. Last year’s was awesome, so I hope we can get another good one this year. I will post all 3 of them tomorrow night or Thursday, after we take the new one).
My last post got me thinking of this, so I thought I’d share my thoughts.
The craziest thing about pregnancy for me has been the worrying. From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I began worrying (well, really, I worried long before that, because I’d had a miscarriage and an irrational fear of infertility, but that’s another story). In the beginning I worried about losing the baby mostly. Every time I went to the bathroom I would check for blood. If I saw any, I would read every book I had and every blog entry/message board about early miscarriage, trying to figure out whether what I had was normal or not. I tried to resist the temptation to call the Dr. at every cramp (and I was pretty successful). Luckily, since I’d had a miscarriage, they checked me often in the beginning - they checked my hcG levels, progesterone, etc. They also did an ultrasound at 8 weeks, which was wonderful. Until I got to that 8 week mark, I was tortured by the fear that when I got to the ultrasound, there wouldn’t be a heartbeat. Well, I got there, and there was, which was a HUGE relief (risk of miscarriage goes down to less than 5% once you’ve heard the heartbeat). That relief lasted about 2 days before I started worrying that something bad was going to happen before I got to 12 weeks (another miscarriage landmark). I would check my boobs to make sure they were still sore, get nervous if I wasn’t “sick enough” on a certain day, etc. Eventually, I made it to 12 weeks, and got to hear the baby’s heartbeat via doppler, which was really neat. It was also a relief to hear that little heartbeat again. After 12 weeks, it was easier to prevent paranoia (because if I got really crazy, I could go to my friend Fuf’s house and use her doppler [she’s crazy too, and she bought one]) but I would still have mini (usually self-contained) freakouts about whether or not I bent back too far stretching, and perforated the umbilical cord or something. Luckily, I started to feel her kick around 19 weeks, which was wonderful.
I am 21 weeks now, and things are a lot more fun. If I start to worry, I can drink some OJ or take a warm bath, and she’ll kick, so I know everything’s ok. The worry has been replaced (mostly) with anticipation and excitement for the next step - being able to feel/see the kicks from the outside. I really want Q to be able to see that (even though it will probably freak him out a little). This usually happens around 23 to 25 weeks, and I can’t wait!
I realized one day in a conversation with my mom that this mixture of worry and excitement is here to stay. I am sure that once she’s born I will have a whole new set of worries that will renew with each milestone. Mostly, I have to remind myself that most of this is out of my control, so I should relax and enjoy it while I can.
nudawn:although i was born in new york i was really raised in miami, and the first time i visited new york as an adult i felt immediately connected to it. very very few other cities feel like that to me. they include London, San Francisco, Austin, and New Orleans.
just like people, every city has its own energy, quirks, and soul. many are fantastic in their own way, but the yardstick by which i measure my affection for a place is “could i live there” and more importantly “could i be happy there.”
there’s a logical way to answer this question (cost of living, job opportunities, etc), but the cities i love all have one thing in common. they just feel like home. they induce euphoria akin to the first flush of love. there’s no real logic to it, and the only way i can describe it is feeling like you lived there in another lifetime or dimension.
this isn’t the first time i got all gay about nola. read here.
so apparently in a past life i ate seafood. this is the scene of the crime (Crawfish Boil) that happened somewhere near Baton Rouge. i didnt have any, but i’ll fucking say it, i had the best jambalaya of my life at this shindig.
big ups to syd and nicki for making me feel like part of the family.
also, banana pudding tastes very banana-y. in case you were wondering.
So, Nicki invited Nudawn to our family crawfish boil, not realizing that she didn’t eat seafood - ha! She took issue with the crawfish in particular because she didn’t like “their little eyes looking at her,” which I thought was pretty funny. Anyway, she did eat some of the corn (seen buried in the pile here, along with lemons and potatoes) and enjoyed it. She also had some jambalaya, which she said was the best she’d ever had (but I am not sure how good the jambalaya she’s had before was, because she expected it to have red beans in it, which I’ve never heard of. Typically, jambalaya is served with white beans on the side, but it’s not often mixed in preparation).
Anyway, I was glad she came all the way to Dville, although I feel bad that I didn’t do a better job of introducing her to people. My brain is all mixed up these days!
updated with nudawn’s commentary
P.S. I can’t believe I forgot about her hilarious disgust for banana pudding, which by definition IS SUPPOSED TO TASTE LIKE BANANAS!
This Saturday at Jazz Fest, in addition to lots of other food, I had two things that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.
I will write more about Jazz Fest and nudawn’s visit later, but I had to share these links with the world. Yum!
P.S. The cracklin was as delicious as Mills said it was.
