Sock it to me!!!

I love this. I love socks! I love Kym!

My socks came from somewhere in the midwest from someone whose name I can't remember! I'm such a jerk! I got rid of the shipping information before I could write down my person! If you are the awesome blogger who sent me these fantastic socks, leave a comment so I can fully acknowledge you. Thank you!

Updated: Kym let me know that my socks came from Beautiful Mess at Life induces thoughts, mostly random. I'll be catching up on her all day today. Thanks!!!

Let's start by checking out my fantastic pedicure from my girl's weekend:





You know, it's kind of a shame to hide feet like that with socks. But I love socks.

Now, I got two pairs of socks. They are perfect. I do not wear plain socks, even when I am trying to be professional. These can go into my daily rotation.

So, which do I like better? The green fancy ones?

Or the yellow duckies?

Or how about both!

So, how has the blogging community supported me over the past year? Can I even put that into words? I had the darkest time of my life this past summer... if I didn't have this place, I'm not sure I would be in one of the brightest times right now. I was able to see that my feelings were normal, I wasn't alone and others had survived the sadness of losing a pregnancy and gone on to have babies. My friends here held me up and carried me through the scary first weeks with this pregnancy. Now I'm trying to send those positive vibes to others who are just starting to get out of the dark days.

Everything is still going wonderful over here. I've officially been kicked during my dreams. We are picking up the nursery furniture on Saturday. I've been invited to my baby shower! Wow.

29 Weeks

The title of this post should be: Why does water give me heartburn?

Things are still truckin along. I got a phone call last night telling me that our furniture is ready to be picked up. Oh Shit!

This evening (and maybe tomorrow and/or Friday if this new Snownami shows up), I am going to start gathering my craft things together and move them down to the basement. It’s cold down there, so I’m reluctant to move… but it’s worth it!

The good: The baby had hiccups again last night during the ski-cross. M couldn’t really feel them, but I could. I’m still getting nervous when I don’t feel a lot of movement, but whenever I sit still and have some food, it starts up again.

The bad: Hip pain sucks, but it goes away if I change position. I’m waking up in the middle of the night for hours and feeling wide awake. Everyone says this is practice for the baby. I think those people are full of S. I spend the time awake either planning my work day (which does not help at all) or thinking about a little yellow nursery with new furniture (which does help).

Also, I'm frickin STARVING.

The Ugly: Heartburn all over the place. Heartburn after breakfast. Heartburn at 3 am. Heartburn after ice cream.

28 Week Appointment

I’m back from my 28 week appointment. It was a quick in and out for the doctor part. The baby’s heart rate is in the 130s, which is lower than before, but baby is getting bigger. I’m measuring exactly on time. Hooray!

Um, weight… not that it’s a big deal but I am now officially heavier than I have ever been in my life. I weigh more than I did my junior year of college when I lived next door to the best on campus dining hall on the east coast and discovered that beer was better than liquor. This is expected and I’m fine with it. But I can feel the heaviness!

The glucose test was fine, I guess. I really didn’t think the drink was that bad. I have a huge sweet tooth… so drinking orange sugar drink is kind of a treat for me. I waited for an hour and had the blood draw. The whole time I was SO hungry and thirsty. I didn’t get my normal morning carb load and that made me cranky. Then I had a headache. Those things didn’t make me feel too excited about the results. I will load up on sugar and carbs for the next few days just in case.

I got McDonalds on my way to work and now I am happy!

We registered this weekend! And we bought our furniture! And then I took a nap!

Stretch Marks!!!

Oh Shit!

I was feeling all proud of my non-stretch-marked self for having such elastic skin and being so frickin beautiful.

Then, last night, I was getting punched in the belly while I brushed my teeth. I lifted up my shirt to see if I could see the punches from the outside when I saw something awful. Two little blue lines snaking around on my right side. M decided that I was getting bruises from the punches because we have the strongest baby in the world. I had to tell him the awful truth.

I have one small container of lotion for this stuff (I'll get more this weekend). I was rubbing it all over my belly and M was just laying in bed laughing. He said he wants to rub the belly from now on. Then he told me I look like Tim Allen in The Santa Clause. I love my husband.

28 Weeks

Ok, now I can really say I’m in the third trimester. I can officially be cranky and waddle a little. I was sitting on the stairs, talking to our neighbor and struggled to get up. M told me I was getting up like a pregnant lady. Ha!

The good: I’m round and waddling. I had a prenatal massage. The baby had hiccups on Sunday night. Those were cool, but pretty uncomfortable… and the fact that they happened around 3 am didn’t help with my sleeping.

The bad: I’m sick of peeing all the time. Who isn’t? It sucks. I’m sleeping like crap. BH contractions whenever I don’t drink enough water… blah.

The ugly: I’m growing out of the work pants I bought. Oh well. They are going to have to last me 12 more weeks and I don’t care if I stretch the hell out of them by then. Heartburn is not funny anymore. My belly button is getting shallower and shallower. I hate it when anything touches near it. And I hate the way it looks. I am upset about this and if it pops out I will probably pass out for the remainder of the pregnancy.

The usual: I had a great weekend with friends. I was pampered at the spa with my massage. I think I will always have a prenatal massage. I liked cuddling with the body pillow. I had the fancy manicure and pedicure because I deserve it. I loved the pedicure. My toes look awesome. I still wonder why I get manicures. I stare at my nails and I want to peel! the! polish! now! Also, the extreme nail growth means my brand new manicure already looks about a week old. But the color is pretty!!!

What else… I am really registering on Saturday and so excited to spend quality time with my mom! M is going to miss the first hour or two because he’s going to an information session for an MBA program (hooray!). He is actually kind of upset about it, but I told him not to worry. We’ll focus on thermometers and bottles while we wait for him. We are really going to order our furniture. And… I have a real baby shower scheduled. Wow. It seems crazy to be doing all this stuff. I’m nervous that my appointment on Monday won’t go well, but then I have to stop myself and hold still and wait for a little kick to tell me everything is ok.

The baby does have a pattern of activity. It is one day of insane movement followed by 2-3 days of just kicks here and there. I am in the down part right now and I hate it. I was freaking out this morning so I laid on my side after breakfast to see what would happen. I got back up after 4 minutes because the baby had already kicked 7 times. And I consider this to be “down time”… what’s my problem?

Work is nutso, but should calm down after this week (and it did calm down a lot today… I’m finally writing this and catching up with everyone else). My horoscope for March said I would have a lucky work day on the 1st. I am going to try to talk to the bosses about maternity leave that day. I’m nervous!

One last thing, my husband is so great! I left him alone on Valentine’s day to be on my girl’s weekend and he did all the chores AND left flowers for me to find when I got home on Monday morning. He is amazing!

27 Weeks

Isn't this really the end of the second trimester? Do I really have to wait another week? M and I discussed this over breakfast. We decided that if I am really cranky this week, it will be the 3rd trimester. Judge for yourselves!



The Good: Baby is back on its regular kicking schedule. Sleep is still going well. I am getting a prenatal massage on Sunday at it better be the best thing ever. If I fall asleep during it I am going to punch somebody.



The Bad: More Braxton Hicks! Ugh! I hate that stuff. I think it was caused by me being kind of stressed out yesterday and being a little "stuck" if you know what I mean. I took a break at work and stretched myself out and played some internet games for about 15 minutes. The contractions went away and when I got home I was able to fix the other problem.



I cut my toenails last night. That was harder than I expected. I have a girl's weekend coming up (hence the massage) and I'll be getting a pedicure, too. I HATE the feeling of someone else cutting or filing my nails (fingers and toes). I like to get that done myself before the appointment. It looks like I'm going to have to get over that pretty soon. The good thing is that I guess I have to get more pedicures now... poor me!



I have old man heartburn now. Just prop me up and send over the tums.



The Ugly: Like everyone else on the planet, I'm a little tired of hearing about Snowmageddon. And I'm living in the center of it. I'm not at work today (which is awesome!) but I have to take vacation time for it (which sucks!) and this is the most busy I've been at work for a while. That is why I'm kind of stressed out. Life will be better in a week or two. The bright side: at least we have power!



I think I'm working on a post-college record of not seeing my mom. It makes me sad. I hate you, Snowmageddon!

Here is the view from our office/future nursery window right now. I can actually feel the wind blowing from my chair. We really need to get new windows before I make a baby sleep in here!

P.S. A bunch of you gave me that awesome award and that is awesome. Thanks!! If I can get my sh!t together, I'll do the random facts. My only random facts right now are about snow and they are all angry.

What I did on my snowy weekend

I think I’m a little tired of snow. We broke the records for snowfall in Maryland and we’re about to get more. I’m not nearly as tired as poor M, who had to shovel us out. We are so lucky to have friends next door, so M doesn’t have to shovel alone. It’s more like hanging out with his friend instead of being a chore. I like watching them dig and laugh together.

I left work early on Friday afternoon when the snow started picking up. I’m not about to risk anything with this baby. It didn’t really start to stick until after I would have gotten home normally, but whatever. I got all of the weekend chores finished before it was even officially the weekend!! That was awesome.

Anyway, snow, snow everywhere and I was the only one who couldn’t drink!

This is a view of the windows looking onto our deck. The snow was drifted, so it looks a bit worse than it really is... but it's deep! The piles between driveways are over 7' tall!



Our power went out at 3 am on Saturday morning. This means M didn’t sleep at all after that as he went into man mode and needed to protect us. At first, he just laid in bed and complained about being cold and yelled at me for throwing the covers off. He was trying to keep warm by spooning me, which just made me sweat like a pregnant lady. He got out of bed around 7 and somehow he got our neighbor, A, to start a fire in our fireplace. We made a fire back in 2004 and never did it again. We have a small woodpile under the deck with a ton of old wood. It wasn’t ideal, but they did get a small fire started. It didn’t become a FIRE with HEAT until 2 pm. The 4 of us were laying on our couches and covered with blankets not speaking and frowning. Someone’s cell phone rang and we all thought for 2 seconds that the power was coming back on. That was funny. When it did come back on for real (The roar of our old beer fridge let us know), we started cheering.

In the meantime, the men shoveled, the women laid on the couch and my mother in law called over and over again to freak out.

Note to MILs everywhere: If you are freaked out about your DIL’s pregnancy, don’t call her when there is nothing anyone can do. It’s not like my main priority was shoveling the snow. I spent the day wrapped in blankets and keeping my core temperature normal. Sure, my nose and toes were chilly, but my house never fell below 53 degrees! I wouldn’t have had a problem if she hadn’t kept calling us. M actually yelled at her. So when the baby wasn’t moving much on Saturday night, I was extra freaked out.

Sunday was a finally a fun snowed in day. I made 4 (FOUR!) scrapbook pages for the baby book. I was afraid to start, but now I can’t stop! M made chili, I was warm and the neighbors came over for the superbowl (the baby LOVED Carrie Underwood singing. WTF?). I was sad when the front end loader came out around midnight to dig out our road.

So here I am, at work and everyone is talking about the 12-18” we’re supposed to get on Tuesday. Note to the weather: This is MARYLAND! Not the arctic!

On another note: I found out all the details of my short term disability pay from work. And it is CRAPPY. I get 6 weeks past my due date at 70% pay. That sounds good, right? Except that I have to be out of work 29 days before that kicks in. Meaning I will get paid for the 29th day through the 42nd day. That is 13 days (minus weekends). I will get 70% of two weeks of pay and we wanted me to stay home for 12 weeks. Haha! My job is to now sit down and go through the budget and find out how long I can stay home without making a huge dent in our savings. You’d think this would mean we would go into savings mode right now, but we’re trying to get new windows before the baby gets here. I need to make some spreadsheets.

26 Weeks

The most exciting thing about this week is LESS THAN 100 days!!! I am down to double digits. This is awesome.

The good: Most everything is good this week. I’ve been going to bed early, only waking up once or twice. I’ve had dancing in my belly and lots of frozen yogurt.

The bad: There’s the whole peeing thing (thanks for making me feel less weird about it… I figured it was just one of those things no one talked about). I’ve been having weird dreams (not a pregnancy symptom for me – I always have detailed wacko dreams) that sometimes include miscarriage dreams (or me getting eaten by sharks). The dreams are still scary, but the reassurance of a few kicks when I wake up help so much.

I can’t do much on weeknights. My back starts to hurt pretty bad after cleaning up from dinner, so I have to limit myself from doing anything after dinner. That’s not too bad, I guess. We’re late eaters and M does all the cooking. Good thing!

The ugly: I am very very very angry about the snow (Snow last weekend, snow this morning, snow this weekend). I’m supposed to have a great weekend planned. WTF, Snow?? I live in Maryland. It’s supposed to snow here twice a year and just be annoying cold rain the rest of the time. My mom is planning on coming down on Friday and then we’ll go register on Saturday morning. If she can’t come down this weekend then who knows when she’ll be able to visit again. I feel like a whiner. But this was going to be such a special weekend! I’ve been thinking about this for years!!! Ugh.

An entire post about pee

I think I’m pretty close to the crazy peeing part of pregnancy. It would be nice if I was already there and this was as bad as it gets. But I’m pretty sure it will get crazier. I have to say I love getting classic pregnancy symptoms! It makes me feel normal!

I’m pretty sure I have pee on my knee right now.

I get an amazing pressure in my belly area when I have to pee. It doesn’t even feel like it’s supposed to, it’s like I’ve had to re-learn that feeling. But it goes away the second I pee. And I pee a lot (as in a large amount) and it goes all over the place. I have to “be neat and wipe the seat” every time.

My favorite part of the day is when I get home from work and I can pee freely. Like take off my pants and contort my body into any position necessary to get all the pee out. I can’t do that in a work bathroom.

Over the weekend, M and I were doing...you know... and in the middle we had to stop so I could run to the bathroom. I had somehow gotten myself in a pee position and I almost peed all over him.

I wear only sweatpants at home because it is easier access for peeing.

I’m not even going to start with gas….