It's Getting Closer...

I'll be 32 weeks on Wed!  Crazy!  That will mark the end of waiting a month between appointments, I'll have to start going every other week.  How fun.  Baby C is really getting big, I can feel big lumps depending on where it's laying.  I think today has been a sideways day, which isn't terribly comfy for me, but I've been able to feel a baby bum, maybe a head, and a leg here and there.  Not much longer!!

I started an afghan for Jared earlier this week, he drew up a pattern of what he wanted and now I'm making it.  It's going to take a looooong time.  I have to make 960 individual squares and then attach them all.  Yup, 960.  They're 2" squares and it only takes about 5 min to make one, but that's still a lot of squares.  It's going to be pretty epic when it's done though.  Video game themed, of course. :P  60 squares down, (only) 900 to go!!

Time for an update

Baby bump as of 7/14! We actually just took another picture yesterday, but I'm not sure where it went... We have so many pictures on our computer that sometimes it takes forever to find stuff. It would probably be a good idea to burn those onto cd sometime in case something happened to the computer... But not today, lol. Today I'm working on Thank You cards from my shower and baking zucchini bread. Yum!

Kind of an interesting moment at work yesterday - We manage a lot of our work through "tasks", which are basically automated reminders through our claim system. Anyway, I set one to show up 90 days from now and when it put the dates in they were after my due date! I had one of those "Holy Shit" moments, because that means D-Day is less than 3 months away! I think it's something like 2 and a half. That's still a ways away, but at the same time not really. The girl who sits behind me is getting married on Aug 20 (popular day this year, I know a couple of other people getting married that day too) and she had her "Holy Shit" moment when she set a task earlier this month for 45 days out and it landed on wedding weekend. It's pretty funny, we talk weddings and babies quite a bit. And crazy claimants too, of course. :P

In other exciting news, the maintenance guy is here fixing our toilet as I type! It's been having flushing issues (clogging up when there's literally nothing in there) and it likes to just run a lot because there's a little leak in the seal of something or another. Not even going to pretend like I know anything about the inner workings of a toilet, I know how to flush, plunge, and clean and I think that's all I need to know. :P But I'm pretty pumped that it's getting fixed because our water bill has been ridiculous lately because the stupid thing would keep running just a tiny bit.

And finally... My year in my current position is up on Tues! That means I'm finally eligible for another promotion if/when a spot opens up! I want to actually handle claim files instead of just doing all of the paperwork and taking overflow calls, and I think I'll have a pretty good chance. *Crossing fingers*

Aaaand... the toilet's fixed! Woohoo! The maintenance guy just left so I'm going to take this as my cue to use the little girl's room. I'm spending more and more time in there, because this baby is getting BIG! :)

It's been a while since I've included one, so here's a pregnancy tip: Do lots of yoga! I haven't had any back pain at all, and I think the yoga I did pre-pregnancy and during first and early second trimester really made a difference. I had to stop because it was starting to give me headaches, but do it while you can!

Ok, and a second one. Plie squats do wonders for sore hips. My hips kill me at night because of the extra weight, but plie squates really stretch your hips out and help relieve some of the pressure. If those don't work to help you sleep, you can try sleeping in a recliner or throwing your leg on top of your sleeping husband instead of using your body pillow. :P Your husband will probably prefer that you sleep in a recliner.

Wow, it's been a long time...

I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted! I mean, I knew it was a while, and I knew that I kept forgetting to get on here and post, but I didn't think it was almost a month and a half already! Crazy! Well, here's the latest baby bump pic. We're taking the next one in a few days, so I have to try and be a little more snappy in getting it on here. :P

That white tank top is getting awfully grubby (didn't realize that until I saw it next to a white wall!), but I'm not too worried about it because I'm going to throw it away post-baby anyway, along with a bunch of other tank tops. Why spend lots of money on official maternity tank tops when the cheap ones from Kohls stretch out just fine?? Money saving tip for people with babies in their future. ;)

Right now Jared and I are in full-on get ready for baby mode. We have a big list of stuff taped to our cupboard of things we want to get done before we won't have time anymore: clean behind the fridge and stove, clean/reorganize the closets, put up curtains, stuff like that. Today's project for me is to clean out and reorganize our filing cabinet and shred all of the stuff that we don't need anymore. That thing has been filling up with crap for the last 2 years, so I want to go through it now before we have to start adding more folders to it. I've gotten part of it done, so now I'm taking a little break. Tomorrow might be curtains. We're probably going to do both bedrooms because we have a light right outside our window which makes it hard to sleep sometimes, and the baby's room gets hot during the day so we want to be able to keep the sun out and keep it cool in there.

Pregnancy is still going well, I'm almost to third trimester! Yikes!! Right now I'm 26 weeks 3 days, and 28 weeks is the start of the next trimester. Almost to the home stretch! Second trimester has been really good, lots of energy, no morning sickness... That whole getting up in the middle of the night to pee thing only really went away for a week or two (they said it's supposed to be gone for most of the trimester, liars!), but I'm pretty much used to that. Now I've been getting hip pain in the middle of the night which I guess is from ligaments stretching to get ready for giving birth. Usually all I have to do is roll over, but sometimes I have to actually get out of bed and walk around for a bit. Not fun. Plus, I've been swelling. My feet swell, my ankles, my calves, sometimes it even makes it up to my hips, sausage fingers, and occasionally my face if it's really hot out. Not really bad swelling, but annoying. It goes away overnight, so it's not a problem. I guess if it sticks around all of the time it's a bad thing, but mine is just a normal pregnancy thing.

But in the good news, I can feel the baby moving around like crazy! Right now it's rolling around, probably looking for a comfy position to sleep. Sometimes Jared reads to my stomach at night (sounds silly, but it's fun) and once the baby hears him talking it will roll around and feel around in there, kick a little bit, and then just hang out until he's done. It's pretty cute. :) Whenever Jared puts his ear to my stomach to try and hear a heartbeat the baby usually kicks him in the head, which is hilarious, but this last time I was egging it on and it kicked me in the ribs instead. It hurt! Jared nearly died laughing, but I was less than amused. Little stinker. That has been the only kick that has hurt so far, usually my stomach will just lurch around a little when it gets a good whack in. I guess I still have the painful ones to look forward to. :P

All in all, it's been a good month. Fireworks on the 4th at one of the parks on the river which was a lot of fun, a long weekend for our anniversary (3 years already!), some new baby stuff, and a happy, healthy baby that we get to meet in a little over 3 months!

Halfway done!

Not exactly sure how far along I am now, because the ultrasound tech said my due date is probably going to change. Sooner, rather than farther away, woo hoo! I'll find out for sure tomorrow at my appointment though. Sooo impatient for October! Jared was actually able to feel the baby kicking yesterday morning, it was so exciting! I was still laying in bed and I could feel Baby C squirming around and having a little party, so I had Jared come in and put his cheek on my belly. He was able to feel tiny little taps! I'm really happy that he's able to feel the baby now, I was thinking that it's kind of unfair that I get to feel the little one the whole time and he just has to sit on the sidelines so to speak. Now he gets to bond with the baby too. I guess the ears are formed enough that it can hear me talking, and probably Jared too when he's next to me. Pretty exciting. :)

Registries are done (I think), so now it's getting the apartment ready. My parents are having a rummage sale in a few weeks and I'm going to go down and help, so we've really been going through things to see what we can get rid of. We've gotten quite a bit so far! We're going to need that extra space, plus the extra money is always nice if any of it sells. I want to try reorganizing all of the closets too, get all of the crap out and tidy up everything else. Hopefully I can get everything done before the showers start and it's too hard for me to do it!

In the nerd craft department, I finished two more projects!

This one is a baby blanket for a co-worker, I think it turned out really cute. The colors look a lot better than in the picture. Two blankets down, two more to go!

And for Gaia, I made her a little fish toy. It only took me about 15-20 mins, and she really likes it. I stuffed it with the plastic windows from envelopes so it's nice and crinkly, and then this morning I rubbed some catnip into it which she went nuts for. Now when she stashes her toys somewhere for us to never see again, I can just make her a new one. :) Someday I will find that stash, it has to be pretty big by now! Pattern from here: http://www.crochetville.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12224

Almost 19 weeks!

And almost time for the next ultrasound! We go in the 24th for that, we're both really excited. This is the one where they could be able to tell what the sex is, but we aren't going to find out. I can't wait to see Baby C though! I can feel the little bugger moving around quite a bit now, it's definitely a strange feeling. But I like knowing that someone is in there. :) The baby isn't big enough for Jared to feel it moving too, but that isn't very far away!

Since I know so many people that are having babies this year, I decided that I'm making their presents. It's cheaper than buying all sorts of stuff, plus I figure that since I'm excited about my homemade stuff they will probably like it too. I started a blanket today, and this is a picture of it so far.

It's basically a bunch of little squares made into big squares made into a blanket. This is one of the big squares - four little squares stitched together with a border. It's about 11x11, so we'll see how many I need to make. Probably two of these by 3, because I'm putting a border around the whole thing too. Should be big enough. And, it's all really easy too. I did this square today. The only stitches you need to know are double crochet, chain stitch, and a slip stitch. All pretty basic. I got a pattern for a basic granny square online, and then just used a bunch of different colors. The border is double crochet all the way around. I think it's going to be cute. :)

Aaaaand.... The picture! Quite the bump. :) Definitely wearing maternity clothes now!

Almost 17 weeks!

17 weeks on Wed, actually. I can't believe it's been that long already. I'm almost halfway! I'm supposed to be able to start feeling Baby C move any time now, so I'm really excited for that. :)

I definitely have a bump now. That one was taken in the middle of April, so we'll take the next one in a couple of weeks. We're trying to take them all around the 13th of the month so they're evenly spaced. But, I'm in maternity pants now and am starting my collection of maternity shirts, so I'm really expanding.

No weird cravings yet, but turkey sandwiches really make me happy (I have to heat up the meat though, boo...) and I had a huge hankering for green grapes over the weekend. They just looked amazing when I walked past them at the store and I had to get the biggest bag I could find. :) At least they're all really healthy cravings so far! Well, except for the root beer but I suppose there are worse things.

The turkey thing is probably the most annoying thing about pregnancy so far, I think. You aren't supposed to eat cold lunch/deli meat when you're pregnant because you're far more likely to get listeria (a type of food poisoning) and it can do some serious damage. The chances of getting it are super rare, but better safe than sorry. So because of this, I have to nuke my turkey before I can eat it. That also means toasted subs at Subway. Not really a big deal, except I don't like toasted subs or warm meat on cold sandwich. *Sigh*

And the blanket is done! It's a little bit lopsided, but still not too bad for my first "big" project. It's about 3' x 3', so a good size for a little baby. Next up is a cocoon - basically a sack - with a little hat and booties. Quite a bit trickier than a blanket, so hopefully those turn out ok.

And last but not least...

The crib! Jared's parents came over for Easter, so they got the futon taken apart and set the crib up. My brother is going to borrow the futon for his apartment, so the frame is stashed in our garage and my dad took the mattress home after he brought Mark back to his dorm. So exciting! :)

Aaannd... Second Trimester

Well, I'm now 13 weeks 3 days. Goodbye morning sickness! Halleluja! We had the latest doctor's appointment last Wednesday, and we got to hear Baby C's heartbeat. It was very cool. It kind of sounded like a helicopter. :)

Otherwise, not much new. I'm working on crocheting a baby blanket (Broncos colors, of course), and it's coming along really fast! I also found this nifty crochet website called http://www.myrecycledbags.com/ where this person decided to make yarn out of plastic bags from stores and newspapers. We have oodles of plastic bags, so I think I'm going to try and make some "plarn" and crochet something out of it. We'll see how it turns out.

Almost over the hump!

Tommorow I will be 12 weeks, and on the last week of the first trimester. The morning sickness is virtually gone, which is pretty exciting. There was one day last week that I had to leave work early because I was sitting at my desk gagging, but I'm hoping that was my hormones' last hurrah. Apparently, this is the part where the placenta takes over the hormone production and all that jazz which gives me a bit of a break. Now it's just waiting for the fatigue to go away. People keep telling me about this big surge of energy that I'm supposed to have, but I'm still skeptical at this point. :P It would also be nice if I didn't have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, that's always a drag. I guess that's supposed to go away in the second trimester, only to come back in full force in the third. I'll definitely take the break.

I think I forgot a pregnancy tip in the last one (big surprise, I think my head is full of mud right now), so here's a good one: One of the less glamorous pregnancy symptoms would be crazy gas. One of my pregnancy books compared it to a bus full of high school football players only worse. My advice is to use it to your advantage. Feel free to just let it rip around your other half, and then when they whine about it just tell them to stuff it because now they know how you feel. Maybe they'll get the point. :P

I added my two pictures thus far, but those are unfortunately mostly just chub. And bloating. The next one should show a bit of a difference though, I feel like I'm definitely starting to expand. Hooray!

9 weeks, 4 days

Holy moly do I still have a long ways to go! But, the first trimester is almost over. Woo!! I'll be really happy once my uterus gives my bladder a little more space and I don't have to get up at night to pee anymore (for a while, anyways). :) It's not so much the getting up part that annoys me, it's the fact that once I do I'm either so hungry I could eat my pillow or I feel like crap. Then I usually have to go get a snack or try not to throw up and toss and turn for an hour before I manage to fall asleep again. Thursday night I was up for about two hours, I was not a happy camper. The nausea seems to be getting a lot better though, so that's good. I still want nothing to do with apple juice and pepper still grosses me out, but it's getting a lot easier to eat.

Now that I'm starting to finally feel better (watch, now that I said this I'm going to be spending some quality time with the mop bucket tomorrow :P), I'm going to try and start a regular exercise schedule. Plus, now that it's finally starting to warm up a little I really want to get out and walk. So, the goal is to alternate that with my yoga dvd. I ended up getting Shiva Rea's Prenatal Yoga, and I really enjoy it. She has modifications for each trimester, so if something is getting a little tougher to do there is always someone else you can watch. The pace is pretty good too, so once I'm bigger than a beached whale there will be enough time to move from one pose to another. She includes lots of standing poses and things like squats, lots of stretches for your back and sides, and lots of focus on breathing. There is also a kegels section which is supposed to help throughout pregnancy. My only complaint is that all of the ladies are in these spandex onesie things and kind of look like Teletubbies, but oh well. Can't have everything. :P

On the non-pregnancy related front, this last week was a huge waste of my time. In order to work with CA workers comp claims, we have to go through so many hours of training each year (I think I have to get 80 or something like that). We had 18.5 hours last week. It wouldn't have been so bad if we were in the room for 3 days solid or something like that, but instead it was spread over the week with an hour at your desk here, half an hour there which meant that nobody got anything done. There were 6 of us that had to sit through everything and we were completely stir-crazy by Friday afternoon when we finished. It didn't help that it was all over the phone either. We have an on-staff attorney who does all of the CA training in our office, but last week she was in the AZ office, so we had to sit in this room all week and try to listen to this big conference phone... Aaagh. Needless to say, we gave up trying to pay attention and just left the mute button on so we could sit around and talk. That helped the time go by, but we were still stuck in this little room all day. I'm soooo glad that's over! Next week will be tough though, because I have to catch up on everything that I didn't get done this week (which was pretty much everything) plus cover for someone else that will be out of the office all week. Yikes. I'm going to try and do a kick-ass job of getting everything done though, because that will definitely help with the getting a promotion thing. We'll see how this goes. :)

We're going to take the second picture of my expanding stomach (I can notice, anyway) this weekend, so then I'll post them together. I was going to post the first one, but I just look chubby so hopefully with another picture there will be something to compare. Some of my pants are getting a little snug, so there should be a difference. Yay!! :)

This is what we made for my parents. They loved it! I handed my mom the package, and she was like "Oooo, what's this?" Then she opened it and started reading, and once she figured out what it was, she got really quiet, looked up, and asked "Really??" Then she handed it to my dad and got all teary and started clapping, and my dad had a giant grin on his face. It was fun. :)

We're making something for Jared's parents too, but that one isn't done yet so once it is I'll get a picture of that one too. We told them over Skype. We said hello and were chatting, and then Jared said, "Hang on, someone else wants to say hello too." They thought we had gotten another pet, but Jared covered up the webcam and when he uncovered it again I was holding a word balloon next to my stomach that said "Hi Grandma and Grandpa!" There was definitely some shouting coming from their side. :)

Both sets of parents are excited, my mom has called to see how I'm doing, and Jared's mom naturally calls 10,000 times a day. She and Jerry actually came up last weekend to buy us a crib! It isn't set up yet, it's still in the box in the extra room. We have to figure out what we're doing with the futon before we do anything else. We have plenty of time for that though. :)

In other pregnancy news, morning sickness blows. And when they say morning sickness, they really mean feel like crap 24/7. I basically feel like I'm about to throw up all of the time. Hasn't actually happened yet, but sometimes I wish it would just so I would feel better for a little while. Only 5-6 more weeks of this. *Sigh*

Also, it would seem that apple is not my friend. I always keep a box of instant oatmeal in my desk at work, and the current flavor was Apple & Cinnamon. I made some the other day, but had to throw most of it out because it was grossing me out. The next day, I someone else made some, and the smell made me want to hurl more than usual. Needless to say, I gave away that box of oatmeal. I'm going to give Maple & Brown Sugar a shot, hopefully that one doesn't bother me too much. Today it was apple juice. I read that drinking something sugary helps with morning sickness, so I thought I would try some apple juice. Mistake. I opened it up and the smell was overpowering. I made myself drink some of it because I know it's good for me, but it tasted terrible. So that came home to Jared, and he had to drink it where I couldn't smell it. I was also seriously grossed out by my tomato soup today (which makes me sad because I love tomato soup), and black pepper isn't a good thing either.

As miserable as I am with all of this going on, at least I know that there's a little one in there that is the cause of it all. :)

Pregnancy tip #3: Keep some saltines next to bed so you can eat them before you even get up in the morning. It helps postpone the queazy a little bit. Also, keep lots of ice cream in the freezer. That stuff never tastes bad!

Oi.

This baby stuff sure is a lot to take in. What can I eat, what can't I eat, what exercise can I do, appointments to make, stuff to buy, symptoms, what's normal, what's not... Lots of changes all at once. The early symptoms are really starting to kick in now... Dizziness, nausea (I'm a little queasy as I type), my boobs hurt, I'm really tired, and I'm ravenously hungry all the time. Seriously. All. The. Time. They joke about a pregnant lady eating you if you don't feed her, and, well, it's true. The Subway lady was joking about having trouble getting her gloves on instead of making my sandwich, and I was about ready to hop over the counter and punch her in the face. It's entertaining after the fact, but at the time I was pretty pissed. There aren't any foods or smells that really bother me, so maybe I'll get lucky and escape that one.

Our first appointment was on Thursday! We got a lot of good info, but it wasn't quite what we expected. We went over medical histories and all that jazz, talked about all of the upcoming appointments, picked our doctor, talked about basics (food, exercise, etc), then they drew some blood for the initial tests and that was it. Afterwards I was thinking, "I know that you say the home tests are really accurate, but don't you want to make sure I'm actually pregnant before you start all of this stuff???" Guess not. I'm not really doubting that I am at this point, but it's still kind of hard to believe.

So... Pregnancy Tip #1 (for all those who may be trying for a baby in the near future :P): Start your prenatal vitamins early! Folic acid takes a few weeks to build up to useful levels in your system, and it's needed most in the first few weeks of pregnancy (before you even know you're preggers) when the spinal cord develops.

Pregnancy Tip #2: Keep a lot of food around. A lot. I haven't told everyone at work yet, and they're probably all like "What the hell?" because every time someone walks by my desk I'm stuffing my face with something. Granola bars, apples, applesauce, crackers, popcorn, and things like that are good to keep around, because you won't get outrageously fat from pigging out on that stuff. Easy on the stomach too. The nurse said the need to feed (and feed, and feed) will taper off after the first trimester, so enjoy endless eating without repercussions while it lasts.

My parents are coming tomorrow (!!) so that's when we're going to break the news to them. I'm excited, I'm sure they're going to be VERY excited. :) We're going to tell Jared's parents this weekend as well, probably over Skype. We made some cross-stitch pictures for them, so once they're 100% finished and framed I'll post them.

In other news, I finished my scarf! I also made a really cute crochet hippo. Pictures also forthcoming. Crochet is like crack, I really really enjoy working on it! My next project will be a frog cocoon, hat and booties (found here: http://crochetme.com/media/p/117171.aspx) which hopefully will turn out well. So pumped!