I definitely have been nesting the last few weeks – literally and figuratively. I decided a month or two ago that our house is consistently too dirty, so I decided to make a cleaning schedule. Now a reminder comes up in my Outlook to-do list each week to clean the bathroom and kitchen surfaces, every-other-week to vaccuum the house and mop the kitchen floor, and other tasks on different schedules. It helps and gives me a good reminder to do things like cleaning the humidifier that I would normally put off. Crossing the task off the to-do list is often incentive enough to actually do it.
And, I’ve been literally nesting too – my favorite thing lately has been to build a “nest” in my bed with pillows and quilt and curl up there and read and nap. It is so comfy cozy. Good thing there isn’t a TV in our bedroom – I might never leave my nest. Mike is gone for a few days, and last night I didn’t even get under the covers – I just slept under the quilt in my nest.
My belly seems to be growing larger by the day, but my belly button hasn’t popped out yet. The top ridge of it is kind of sticking out a bit, so that you can see it through my clothes depending on what I am wearing, but the whole thing isn’t protruding yet. Now that my belly is bigger my boobs (which are HUGE) don’t seem quite so ridiculously enormous. It is a little more proportional now. Though I have to admit that I do miss my marathoning-body, I do love my pregnant body too. My thighs rub together (which they didn’t two years ago), my arms have more flab on them, and it isn’t just my belly that’s getting bigger. But who cares!? My body is finally doing this amazing thing that I thought it was going to reject altogether. I’ll lose the weight eventually (which will definitely mean cutting down on the sugar intake that I have been following throughout my pregnancy), and for now I am not too worried about it.
Every few days the baby has a crazy-active day and then I spend the next few days worried because he isn’t so active. Every time I go to the gym I think he gets lulled by the motion and I don’t feel him for a while – that is always a little worrisome. Today he is having a less-active day and I have been focusing, trying to feel movement several times today in order to make sure he’s still alive in there. You read things in magazines and hear stories about late miscarriages and stillbirths and infant death and though I know it is rare, it is hard not to worry about it, especially when it isn’t easy to just get pregnant again. Just have to stay positive…
I am kind of thinking about cloth diapers at the moment, but what a pain in the butt with our laundry two floors down (the outside stairs) in the basement… but I read that disposable diapers don’t decompose for 500 years if at all… with around 6000 diapers over the course of this baby’s babyhood, that’s a lot of damage. The gdiapers seem cool, but way expensive, and so I am back to maybe cloth. Mike will resist this… but maybe he can be convinced. I thought it was going to be way harder to convince him to not circumsize this little boy, but I won that battle pretty easily once I presented him with the facts. I still need to do some research. I’m not that into it at this point, but feel environmental (and financial) guilt when I can save those diapers going into the landfill, and potentially a couple thousand bucks…
31 weeks tomorrow. This weekend I need to go order our glider chair (we opted for the world’s most expensive one it seems) which should arrive in about 6 weeks. Hopefully before the baby does. It is very comfy and modern, though, and can move into our living room once we’re done with it in a nursery capacity. We’ll just have to be really careful to keep it as clean as we can. I am a little worried about baby spit up on the brown upholstery. I guess that’s why god invented burp cloths.
The back storage area is slowly but surely getting cleared out. There is still some more work to do, but we can’t take the bed down and put the nursery furniture up until after my shower on April 18 anyway since both of my parents are coming to town with their significant others. One set will stay with me and one set will stay with Mike’s parents. But we definitely need to offer a decent place to sleep since once the baby comes their options will be the pull out sofa and an air mattress. At least until we move…
I am just working a few more weeks, though they are pretty slow weeks with two clients out of town for two weeks each. I also accepted the contract grant writing gig that I did last year. I raised my price by a whole $1000 and they accepted. It actually should be a little easier this year, but with four being accepted last year, I now have a demonstrated record of success, so I think they’re willing to pay a little more. Mike warned me not to ask for too much because of the economy, but I started high and they accepted without any negotiation – so I feel pretty good about that. The deadline is April 21, which is coming up pretty quickly as far as grant deadlines go, and should give a pretty good cushion between the deadline and my due date. And I should still be totally done working by my shower, which will give me four weeks to relax and get ready for the baby. I am pretty spoiled that I am able to do that. I am pretty spoiled in general (says the girl who will get a 90 minute prenatal massage tomorrow). At least I appreciate these things, though, and don’t expect them or take them for granted…And I do what I can to contribute – like taking the grant writing job. Sometimes I feel a little guilty that I am not bringing in more income to help out, but I am really so much happier now professionally than I ever was working in an office, and that counts for something (fortunately for me I have a husband who understands that fact too.).
