Monday, August 24, 2009

Escaping The Heat - An Attept


Swimming near the ducks - the highlight of the day for Nate I think. I was not so enthralled with being so close to them.


We found freshwater snails which is what I'm showing Ben here. Though it looks like he's holding my hand through a contraction.


Nate and his floaty; nothing like summer love.


It feels SO much bigger than it looks in this picture. I think I'm hiding half of it on the other side of the lake.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Craft Belly

Evidently my nesting instinct has kicked into high gear. I'm thoroughly obsessed with scrubbing things lately. Really, it's weird! I get great satisfaction from scrubbing the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink and the tub. Like really, I do dishes just to empty the sink so I can break out the Comet and the blue scrubby pad and go to town. What the hell is the deal with that?! It makes me feel good for some reason, but it's also a compulsion, like I HAVE to do it, I NEED to do it. The dumbest thing about it is that it really doesn't help a whole hell of a lot. Especially when you consider that I have an entire apartment (and a good sized one at that) that is in need of cleaning. There's laundry to fold and put away, clutter to get rid of and organize, toys to pick up, curtains to make for the porch. Baby clothes to sort through and wash and put away. None of that interests me in the slightest. I want to scrub damnit! I want to Windex the windows and I want to bleach the floors - which is beyond laughable because we have linoleum from 1960 I think and it's impossible to ever make it look like it's really clean. But that's not going to stop me from trying! I went to Target yesterday and when I came home I victoriously announced to Tim that I had found the carpet cleaning solution for our steam cleaner for $5 and a huge six pack of paper towels for $3!!! This from the chick who has family cloth in the bathroom. Yeah, I suddenly need 6 double rolls of paper towels.

Anyway, the point of this confession is that today I decided to try to change my nesting and put it to a different use. I knew that cleaning the sink would feel good but it's an empty reward really because it just becomes full of dishes within a few hours of being clean and, like I said before, it doesn't really do anything to improve our quality of living or the boys' general happiness or anything. So, today I put the nesting energy to crafty use! I made a pair of pants for the baby here thanks to the pattern from here. It's not a great pattern because they don't give you the measurements for different sizes, but I get around that by just tracing a pair of pants in the size I want and making them a little longer and wider for seams. So far I've made about 4 pairs of pants for the baby and last year I made Nate a pair of pants out of a cute flannel that held up well. They aren't going to be sold anywhere that's for sure, but they look cute and I felt good after I finished and I had something tangible to show for it!

As you can see, the crafting with a belly at almost 33 weeks (tomorrow!) is posing some interesting dilemmas. I can't get as close the sewing machine as I usually like to and my belly now serves as a repository for scrap fabric and thread - just in case I need it you know? All in all, I think this attempt at tricking the nesting, compulsive scrubber in me worked pretty well. I am totally planning on breaking out that carpet cleaner later today though. Everything in moderation right? (except laundry, those piles will be there when this baby goes off to college)



The amazing scrap-catching belly! Covered mostly in blue thread here.



The finished product. I really hope they fit!!!



Close up of the pattern, the elephants were just too cute to resist!



My handy helper, he hands me other pieces of fabric I'm not working with in the off chance that I might want them. He also works shirtless.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Ticker

I'm not sure why I put that little baby in the bubble ticker thing on this blog now that I look at it. It seemed like a great idea at the time. I thought it'd be so much fun to watch the days dwindle by and realize we were getting closer to the big day. Now, I look at it and it says 56 days and i realize that's a little over a month and that's not a lot of time and I kind of start to get sweaty and breathe funny and feel shakey.

Really, we have 8 weeks left as of now. That's two months, and we could even go another 10 weeks if this baby is overdue so there could, potentially be a lot of time left. BUT, in my head we only have about four weeks left. This is totally due to having Nate at 36 weeks (due to pre eclampsia) and it swarms around my thoughts constantly. Even though this pregnancy, our living situation, our care provider, our support network are all vastly different and much better than they were with Nate's I still can't shake that feeling that this baby will come early too. I take my blood pressure everyday and it's never been more than 130 and that was during a massive headache at like 22 weeks. It's consistently low when I take it here at home and at my midwife's office. She's even commented that if she hadn't read the report from my last pregnancy she wouldn't have believed I had/have blood pressure issues. This is incredibly comforting to me. It doesn't gurantee anything of course, my BP with Nate was in the normal range until 36 weeks, but this vote of confidence in things does make me feel better.

So for now, I'm just getting through. A big part of me wants to be done being pregnant. I'm having major back pain lately and it's getting a lot harder for me to walk around - especially first thing in the morning. I'm just reaching that end phase of pregnancy and yes, I'm lusting for that newborn phase and seeing our family complete. BUT, I'm not ready to be there just yet. Do you hear that BP? Stay down! I can take the back pain, the leg cramps, the limited wardrobe, the winded walks up the driveway - I'll happily take all of it to get a healthy baby and have a peaceful, not induced birth. Fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I'm going to stop looking at the ticker. It seems arbitrary now given that it's just counting down to the day that I'm most likely to give birth, and not the day I will. It's no crystal ball.