Friday, April 29, 2011

29 Weeks

Here's your picture. I'm having a bad day and I am too cranky to write a post. Blah.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Picture Perfect


After many months of begging and pleading and demanding and threatening Kyle finally bought me a new camera. I suppose I could have just bought myself a new camera, but somehow I got it in my head that he should buy me one, so... Clearly, we have a camera, or else you wouldn't have all these lovely terrible pictures of me. But it is really bad at taking pictures. At least ones that are any good. Because we bought it to take high speed video. And it does that very well. But that's about all.

Anyway, with the birth of my child imminently approaching, I was starting to get desperate. It's one thing to have blurry bathroom mirror belly photos, but it's another thing entirely to have unclear and unfocused snapshots of MY BABY OH MY GOD. You know.

I demanded a Canon. Kyle bought one. It showed up the other day. I am in love.


Thusly, BFF and I went to the Tulip Festival. When we were there last year we discussed what a perfect place it would be to take maternity photos. And here we are, both pregnant, so...






On the way home we stopped by the outlet mall to visit the Carter's and the Gymboree. Sigh. Today was a lovely day.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Trimester the Third

Well then. Yesterday marked the first day of this last trimester of my pregnancy. The home stretch! 12 weeks right now feels about 10 weeks too many, but I know the time will just fly by. The last trimester certainly did. I have no idea where the last three months went.

And happy third trimester to me, what should I find when I leave my house for work but my brand new stroller waiting for me on my front step. (Kyle's aunties all chipped in.)


Yay! I was expecting it, but still. I probably let out some sort of high-pitched yelp when I opened the door.  It feels like a huge weight off my shoulders to have some of the big stuff out of the way. I'm expecting our crib to arrive tomorrow. A gift from Kyle's parents... you know, on top of hosting us and throwing me an awesome baby shower and making me that beautiful mobile. Cool.

Another exciting third trimester milestone: yesterday was the first time I peed myself a little bit when I coughed. Awesome.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Cleveland Part II: The Luck of the Irish


Kyle is half Irish. Yeah. His dad is the oldest of nine. He has approximately a billion cousins, ranging from age 6 to almost 30. Almost the entire family live in the same zip code. Holy cow is right. While we were in town, Grandma held her annual Irish corned beef and cabbage feast. Because they like to celebrate St. Patrick's day for a whole month. Because they are really into being Irish. Here is some of the decor, but I will have you know that their house looks like this year round, not just for this particular occasion.

Shamrocks on everything!

Just in case you forgot!

They do it up right.

Kyle's grandparents live in a modest suburban single family home. Approximately fifty people were at the party. And it was still too cool to move the festivities outside.


Yes you did count six tables. Suffice it to say, family gatherings can be overwhelming and exhausting. But also fun when you only have to do it once a year.

My brother-in-law, Chris with our cousin Kelly

Bonnie explaining the meaning of all of her bracelets to my mother-in-law.


Omigosh! An iPad!

We also spent some time with our friends and took in a baseball game, and Kyle ate at a few of his favorite local restaurants. One Chinese place in particular remembers him and still knows his regular order! We had a good trip, but I am so so glad to be home. 

From Seattle Rain to Cleveland Showers

Well, we're back in Seattle, and so glad to be home. Our trip was great, but spending time with Kyle's family is exhausting, and it's a relief for things to return to normal,  or at least as normal as they can be on the eve of my third trimester.

We got into Cleveland on Wednesday morning, but we didn't do a whole lot that day. Kyle caught up on sleep, as he is terrible at red-eye flights. Mostly just some catching up with the in-laws, and enjoying some free time off from work and home responsibilities.

On Thursday night Kyle got a chance to spend some time with some of his college buddies when my Mother-in-Law threw me a baby shower. It was fun, if very traditional and totally not me. I joke that I get to have a midwestern version of everything. We had our traditional midwestern reception in Ohio after our offbeat Seattle wedding, and this was definitely my traditional midwestern shower.


MIL got the whole set of corny decorations, and had me put my merchandising skills to work doing the decorating.




The shower was "small" with "only" very close family. So, about seventeen of us. And lots of wine. It was rowdy, to say the least. I think rowdy is the only way that Kyle's family does things. We'd played dumb shower games, and had some of Kyle's cousins show us their latest Irish step dancing routine.


We made out with a ton of loot, including some of the "big things" that I was starting to get anxious about, but my favorite gift was inexpensive and homemade. My MIL sent a piece of origami paper to each home in Kyle's family and had them all write us a wish. And then she folded them all into paper cranes and turned it into a mobile.



It is beautiful. Like, I gasped. It was hanging in the dining room when we first arrived, and I noticed it right away. "Wow, that is so pretty, when did you get that?" I asked. I was totally blown away that it was for me. For us.


I can't imagine taking it apart, but I also can't wait to see what's been written inside all of the cranes.  I think I'm going to unfold each one, take a picture of the message, and put it all back together, and then make a blurb photobook or something, so we can enjoy all parts of it. Seriously, I love this.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Long Away

Greetings from Ohio. No time yet for the full writeup, but I wanted to post my week 27 picture before I forgot/avoided doing it altogether. Super not cute, but you wouldn't look so hot either after a red-eye flight. And my husband is no good at taking pictures. Or rather he is not patient enough to take approximately 57 frames so that I can find the one that's not quite as crappy as the others since our camera is so terrible. But whatever. Here you go.

Good trip so far, details later.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Dear Baby

Dear Baby,

Hey boy! You are wiggling around underneath my laptop right now. It's wonderful. I'm feeling you move around a lot these days. You are getting big and strong, and sometimes your kicks can even be a little painful for me. No matter, I wouldn't trade them for the world. You do a lot of your kicking in the car when I am driving home from work. I think of that time as us time. I play you lots of music, and I hope you are starting to develop an appreciation for it. I know you won't like everything I do, but I think it will be good for you to be exposed to a wide variety of stuff. Although perhaps today's Avril Lavigne was a little much.

This week is week 26. Things are moving along very nicely. When I say "July" it still sounds very far away, but this means we've only 14 weeks left, and really that's not very long at all. And we've both got a lot to do in that time. You're very busy in there working on getting bigger and stronger. Your Daddy and I out here are doing our best to prepare for your arrival. You already have a pretty nifty little wardrobe, and we're slowly acquiring other gear. In another month here we'll start our birth classes, so we'll be better prepared for your entrance into the world.

Next week your Daddy and I are going to visit Ohio. It will be our first time seeing your paternal grandparents since you've been around. And your uncles and great-grandparents and great aunts and once-removed cousins and honorary Ohio aunties. They are all so excited to meet you. And don't worry, they will meet you on the outside, too. We will bring you there again in the fall!

Baby boy, I can't wait until you're here!

Love, Mommy

Monday, April 4, 2011

Up to here

Yesterday was a hard day.

It started early. I woke up just before 5am from a terrible nightmare in which I couldn't warn my husband that he and our baby were about to be drowned by a nefarious evildoer because someone reprogrammed his number in my cellphone to one that called a nursing home. It sounds completely ridiculous now, but I awoke in a panic, and every time I closed my eyes I would see it again, so I ended up just laying in bed crying for a while.

But then I got up and decided to compulsively scrub my bathroom for a couple hours. Me. Bathroom cleaning. At five o'clock in the morning. Very strange.

It was also very depressing for me, because good god is our house crappy. Two hours of cleaning and the best I could get it to look is dingy.  It's funny, because I am so not a cleaner, and tidy but dingy is normally quite alright with me. But not anymore, I guess. Perhaps nesting has set in after all. But what more could I do? So I took a shower.

Freshly clean with my clean towels in my clean bathroom I am rubbing body oil into my belly to keep it from itching, and the hand towel bar above the counter that is really only very precariously balanced there rather than actually being affixed to the wall spontaneously falls and knocks my bottle of oil everywhere and into my drawer full of hair care implements and I. Just. Lose it.

I sat down, naked and wet, on the edge of the tub, bawling so loud that I woke Kyle in the bedroom, across the hallway through closed doors. So loud that he actually decided to get up and investigate instead of ignoring it and going back to sleep. Which, if you know Kyle, means I was really fucking loud. And I couldn't tell him what was wrong because I could catch my breath between sobs and I couldn't stop crying. Finally, when he got me back to bed, all I could manage was "WE HAVE TO MOVE RIGHT NOW." He assured me that we will move and it will be okay and he would fix the stupid towel rack and I was hysterical because "the lease isn't up until August! I can't put a baby in that bathtub! We can't live here!" Insane.

So yeah. I managed to do a load of laundry, completely scrub my bathroom, take a shower, and have a nervous breakdown all before 8am. And then I had a full day of work ahead of me. Needless to say, I wasn't completely on my A-game. In fact, I felt on the edge of tears for most of the day. My girlfriends have assured me that losing one's shit over something inane like the wrong kind of chicken during pregnancy is totally 100% normal, so I feel a little better. I still don't feel good about our home or how we're going to be able to move when we are scheduled to have a two-week old baby or how we'll be able to afford a place any nicer than the one where we currently reside, but Kyle said he'd worry about it for me, and it seems like I'm better off right now letting him take that responsibility.

This morning brings better news. My sister booked her tickets home from France for the summer, and she'll be back in Seattle on my due date!  And her French boyfriend will be joining her a month later. Now I have two things to look forward to.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Role Model

Okay, can I complain about something perhaps inappropriate for a moment?  How come it seems like nobody I know is any good at birthing?
P.S. 25 weeks

I mean, all my mama-friends are awesome, strong, wonderful women, who researched and planned and prepared and still, I seem to know very few people who have successfully birthed naturally. They all end up laboring for 40+ hours, which leads to hospital transfer, epidural, c-section, NICU or some combination of those things. I don't fault them. I know they did the best they could. But seriously, if they couldn't do it, how am I going to. Little ol' me.

I realize this is a silly thing to bitch about, but I'm starting worry about how I'm not hearing any positive birth experiences, and what if I'm not very tough, and maybe this isn't as easy and natural as I was telling myself and OMG. And clearly I can't talk about this with anyone who would get it, because I would be all," by the way your c-section is totally fucking me up" which is good for nobody because many of them still have not come to terms with it, and I don't want them to feel bad and geez.

But I needed to get that out there. I feel better now.

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