30-ish weeks - and - how to upset a pregnant woman

According to my ticker (which is set by my due date) I'm a little past 30 weeks. According to my doctor and what I count on the calendar, I'm 31 weeks. How did this happen? I don't know...but whatever.


I'm starting to hear comments from people that are sort of along the lines of "You don't look big enough to be 7 months pregnant" or "You can't be that far along." It is then that I want to lift up my shirt and show random strangers just how low this baby is sitting in my belly. In case you were wondering -- the answer to that is really, REALLY low. She's all there -- you just can't see her! Even my biggest maternity pants that fall down when I stand up are too tight on the lowest part of my belly when I sit down. And all of the difficulty that I have doing things like putting on pants or drying my feet off after I take a shower is because there is a tiny little person pushing down with all her might on the underside of my stomach!


I had to crack up a bit when I saw this pic. My belly looks much more square than round! That bump you see at the top -- that is either a head or a butt. I can't tell which, but it manages to squish itself out into the open about 75 times a day, and I just have to push it back in. Unfortunately, that causes the skin on that part of my stomach to be pretty sore all the time. Little Dallas has also become quite fond of wrapping one of her legs or arms around my right side and then wiggling her toes or her fingers. I wish I knew what body parts were where, because it is seriously one of the funniest feelings ever! It is so distracting, though, that I have to work to push whatever it is back towards the middle of my belly. It kept happening last week when I was getting a massage, and I'm pretty sure that the massage therapist was annoyed that I kept laughing and wiggling to try to get Dallas to stop.

My back pain has not gotten any better, and last week I made the decision to stop going twice a week to the chiropractor. I may try to go every other week, but it was just too expensive to go so often -- especially when it didn't even seem to be helping. I just keep thinking -- 2 more months, and it will all be over. I don't even remember what it's like to not be in pain all day long. I've heard so many women say "As soon as I saw him/her I forgot all about the pain" and I can't help but hope that the 6 months of hurting besides the labor will be included in that.

And now...on to HOW TO UPSET A PREGNANT WOMAN. The short version: have the grocery store be out of everything that she feels like eating.

Backing up a little....
On Monday night, our friends Tama and Stuart came over for dinner. For dessert, I made home-made chocolate chip cookies, and we all ate way, WAY too many. With the cookies, we drank most of the 1/2 gallon of milk that was in our refrigerator, but I made sure that I had just enough so I'd be able to eat a bowl of cereal the next morning for my first breakfast. I say "first" breakfast because I always eat again -- my second breakfast -- when I get to work. I'm pregnant, and that's how I roll.

Anyhoo...so I used the rest of our milk yesterday morning for my cereal, and I forgot to stop and buy more on my way home from work. That meant, of course, that I would not be able to eat anything this morning for my first breakfast. That was really okay, though, because what I really wanted was a couple of muffins (Little Debbie double chocolate muffins are the best!) instead of a bowl of cereal. I decided to stop at Publix on my way to work and buy a box of said muffins. Of course, they were out. There were none there the other day when I stopped, either, and I was really hoping that they'd restocked, but I guess not. There was a man with a non-Publix uniform stocking oatmeal cream pies and stuff, so I asked him if he knew when they were going to get any more in. Turns out, he was the Little Debbie Snack Cake representative (cue: Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man...) and he said that they should get some more in by the end of the week. I told him GOOD! Because I eat those like every day, and he proceeded to stare at my belly while rubbing his own and saying something like "Oh yeah, and that must really be bad for you! Because...you know..." Yes. It is bad for me. And good for you -- figuring out that I'm pregnant and all!

So...I decided...if I couldn't have a chocolate muffin, I was going to get a box of Reece's Puff cereal to take to work. I walked to the cereal aisle, and guess what? They were out of that cereal. It was on sale buy one get one free, and some HOG had taken it all. I did one of those things where you just stand there and stare at the empty spot for a minute hoping that a box would magically appear out of nowhere, but nothing happened. My next thought was -- if I can't have a muffin and I can't have the cereal I want, I'll get a cinamon roll from the bakery. They always have those huge cinamon rolls with cream cheese icing and they always look so good, and today I feel justified!

You know what I'm going to say already, don't you? That's right! There were no cinamon rolls on display in the glass case. I asked the lady behind the counter, and she said they hadn't made them yet. I wanted to say "Of course you haven't." I was nice, though, and just let it go. I also wanted to cry, but in the interest of NOT embarrassing myself, I forced that down, too. Instead, I got a box of donuts.

I'll forgive my local Publix this time, but on my next trip, they BETTER have at least ONE of the many unhealthy junk food options that I enjoy eating. That -- or the trip might not end with me being as good as I was today. And in case you were wondering, I've only eaten two of the donuts so far. See? I'm strong.

A fun game

Where's Baggie?


There she is!!


Where's Baggie?


There she is!!

Some people play with their kids....some people talk to their imaginary friends....some people play video games....this is what we do.

Bushes and shopping and tiny socks -- OH MY!

I am proud to say that I had a very productive weekend. You may not be able to tell it by looking at my house, but really, we really got a lot of stuff accomplished! First off -- Saturday morning we continued with our gardening in the front flower beds. We had terrific plans to have the soil prepped for planting by the time we stopped for the day, but.....we live in Florida, so of course it started raining...even though weather reports didn't show any rain until later in the afternoon. *sigh* Still, we at least got all of the weeds pulled up and bagged.

Last week while we were working we came across a wire running from the house to underground somewhere. We marked it so we wouldn't forget about it when we got to that part of the flower bed, but when we got to that part and pulled it up the other day, we found another one that had been cut off.


We couldn't figure out what it goes to or where it led. It was really dirty and crusty, though, so we're thinking that it must have happened a long time ago. Everything in our house still works, so we've decided not to worry about it.

Just in case, Dustin dug a hole and buried it. You can't tell from the picture, but at this point it was raining pretty hard, so I helped by holding an umbrella over him so he wouldn't get soaked. It didn't really help, but at least I tried!

And this is as far as we got. After it stopped raining and dried up a little bit, I swept the sidewalk so it doesn't look quite as bad. Hopefully we'll finish up with the soil this coming weekend and can start planting flowers before too long!

While we were outside, I decided to also take a picture of one of our neighbor's bushes. Remember how I told you about our yard people who do a really terrible job? Well, they decided to bless us by mowing our back yard this week, but to make up for that, they left all of the grass and debris from the bushes that they trimmed all over the sidewalks in our neighborhood.


It's like they're pointing out -- LOOK! WE ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING TODAY! HERE IS THE EVIDENCE! Nice of them, huh? We're really hoping that our HOA gets rid of this company and soon.

On Saturday night, we met with a big group of friends for our friend Son's birthday. His wife Julie had planned for us all to go to this Brazilian restaurant called Tento Churrascaria that Son had been wanting to try for a while. It was supposed to be a surprise....but he somehow found out. Oh well. It was a really cool restaurant -- although a little on the pricey side. The big draw to the restaurant is that they serve a bunch of different types of meat all cooked in different ways -- and you can eat as much as you want. The down side for me is that DALLAS DOESN'T LIKE MEAT! So...I ordered only the salad bar (which actually had a lot more than salad on it) and just watched as everyone else stuffed themselves to the point of near illness with beef, and pork, and chicken and lamb. They would cook a ton at a time, and then bring it out on the end of a huge knife that looked a lot like a sword, and they'd cut a piece off for whoever wanted some. All of the meat looked really good, but I really didn't feel like I missed out at all. Dustin gave me two or three bites of his, but for some reason the thought of eating meat still just doesn't appeal to me. I would like to go back to this restaurant again once I'm not pregnant so I can really enjoy the experience.

After we finished eating Dustin and I went for a walk on the beach with our friends Tama and Stuart. Tama thinks that we (meaning me and Dustin) are neglectful and unappreciative of the beach because we've lived near it our whole lives. Not true....we just don't have time to go very often, and if we get out there 2 or 3 times a year that seems sufficient. It's always interesting to think of the beach experience through the eyes of a person who isn't used to having it so close.

On Sunday afternoon, I talked Dustin into running a bunch of errands with me. I needed to take a bunch of stuff back to different stores and I wanted to stop at a couple of places to buy little things for the nursery. The good news: I now have about $95 in store credit to Babies R' Us. The bad news: we spent about $75 at Old Navy -- most of it on Dallas, though! We also stopped by our friends Devin and Erin's house for a few minutes to drop off some painting supplies. Erin just got her baby's bedding in last week, and when we went in to see it, she already had it washed and on the bed ready to go. She said she'd also finished washing all of baby Collin's clothes! That pretty much gave me the kick in the pants that I needed to start on my own growing pile of baby laundry. As soon as we got home from running errands I started pulling off tags and sorting everything into piles. I had a pile for most whites, a pile for colors, and two piles of just pink stuff -- one light, and one dark. Haha!


This is just the whites pile! It turns out, Dallas has way more clothes than I thought! We still need a few more things for her, but it's much easier to tell where exactly we're lacking now that everything is out of the bags, boxes and packages and washed and sorted into drawers and shelves by size. I also got all of the towels, blankets, bedding and other things we've received so far washed, and I ironed the bed skirt, so we're just that much closer to having the nursery all finished! Next up -- we need to accessorize! One thing I already did was to cover the bumper pad ties with ribbons. I did not like the way the white strings looked (seen here), so I bought green satin ribbon and tiny flowers and attached them to the top. Unfortunately, the bottom ones are just going to have to show. Doesn't it look pretty?



I'm also going to make a canopy of sorts to go over the bed. I'm hoping it will look pretty and not make the room look cluttered. We'll see. I must confess, neither the bows on the bed or the canopy were my idea. I sort of stole them off of another blog that I found a long, LONG time ago -- before we even knew we were having a girl. I'd credit the person...but I don't know how I found said blog and I don't know that I'd ever be able to get back there. If someone sees my pics and wants credit, I'll gladly give it! Anyhoo...I'll put up more pics (like I have to tell you that!) as I make more progress. Dustin and I agree (and I'm sure Baggie would, too...if she could talk) that Dallas's room is our favorite room in the house!

We can start putting things on the walls now because...

WE'VE GOT FURNITURE!

I am so excited! We ended up getting a changing table/dresser and an armoire, which is more than what we really needed, but it was a really nice set, and it will last FOREVER. It is solid wood -- really good quality -- and very sturdy. We blew our hoping-to-find-something-for-$50 budget WAY out of the water, but I think we made the right decision with this purchase.

View from the doorway -- that's a lot of furniture!

The rocking chair now officially sits by the window.

The closet is to the right of the crib, and the doorway is just right of that.

The beautiful new changing table and armoire!

As you can see, there are several glass-front drawers on each piece, so I'll have plenty of room for storage....at least for now. The right side of the changer has two large shelves, and the armoire has a bar to hang up (tiny) clothes and three more large shelves. I was able to put away all Dallas's new blankets and quilts on the shelves in the armoire.

Tama and Stuart came with us to pick up the furniture from the seller and get it to our house, and once it was in the room, Tama and I started unpacking a few of the things I got from the shower. We still have a long way to go, and now our office is a disaster area with all of the gift bags and things, but it is so much fun to see things finally shaping up!

Wonder of wonders and miracle of miracles!

Someone actually contacted me back about some furniture for sale on Craig's list!! The seller must have read my blog from earlier today. We're going to look at a dresser and armoire in about 45 minutes or so. They're asking quite a bit more than what we were hoping to spend, but the lady seemed to really want to get rid of the stuff, so maybe she'll come down on her price. We shall see!!

I'll let you all know how it goes. Hopefully by tonight I'll have a place to start putting away things from my shower!

P.s. Eleventy billion bonus points for whoever can tell me what movie the title of this post comes from. Hint: it's a musical...and this particular song is sung by a man running through the woods.

Who is this Craig guy anyway?

I have a SERIOUS love/hate relationship going on with Craig's list right now.

Do you want to know what really, REALLY bugs me? PEOPLE WHO DO NOT TAKE THEIR POSTS DOWN AFTER THE ITEM SELLS. Also, PEOPLE WHO DO NOT RETURN PHONE CALLS OR E-MAILS TO PEOPLE INTERESTED IN BUYING THINGS. Why do people post things online without pictures or any decent contact information for themselves and make it so difficult for anyone to actually BUY THINGS?!?

Just an FYI to everyone out there -- my over-use of CAPS LOCK means that I am REALLY, REALLY angry right now.

I am SO TIRED of looking at Craig's list every day. I am TIRED of looking for baby furniture. It is not fun anymore. And I'm pretty sure that Dustin is tired of my looking (and whining), too, as evidenced by the text message he sent to me last night when I informed him that the furniture we'd been hoping to get had been bought out from under us YET AGAIN. The conversation went something like this...

Me: "This makes me so sad! We're never going to find a dresser!"
Him: "You're probably right. We should just stack Dallas's clothes on the floor in the corner and get it over with."

**Loooooong sigh...**

I know a lot of people out there are wondering why we don't just buy something online or in a store, but I just have not seen anything that I really like that gets any sort of quality reviews for under like $350. And I CAN'T STAND the thought of paying that much!!!

This rant has been a long time in coming, and it's probably going to come up again at some point. As soon as we finish buying the stuff we need for Dallas's room, I'm going to find a way to BLOCK Craig's list on every computer I come in contact with.

Seriously, Mr. CRAIG, I hate you.

Awesome

Dustin and I saw this bumper sticker on a truck in a Wal Mart parking lot this past weekend. You know I had to pull out my camera for a picture! It makes me laugh every time I see it....

A sign I may spend too much time in the blog world

I had a dream this past weekend that Dustin and I were robbed. It was quite scary, but not just for the reasons you might think. I dreamed that we were being robbed by a woman whose blog I read. I have never met her, and I think I've only seen her face in like one or two pictures on her blog, but somehow I knew it was her, and it was very creepy. Oh, and she was just robbing us of all of our gardening supplies. Pretty random, huh? One of the weirdest things was that she had a gun! Who brings a gun when they rob people of mulch and shovels?

Anyhoo, there are two definite reasons for why I dreamed about lawn care:

Reason #1:

We have a lawn care service which we pay through our HOA that comes every Thursday to do yard work for our neighborhood. This is a good thing in that we never have to mow our own lawn, but it's a bad thing in that: a) we have to pay a stupid fee every month, and b) since this is the only house we've ever owned, we never bought any lawn care equipment, so if the people do a bad job, we have no way to fix it short of borrowing a lawn mower from one of our friends. Case in point -- this past Thursday, I heard the yard guys starting up their mowers down the street, so I ran outside (in my pajamas, mind you!) to open the back gate -- because they will not mow our back yard unless we leave the back gate open (a rule I find extremely stupid). The weeds are seriously high back there, and I didn't want them to skip it. When I got home Thursday afternoon, I noticed that they had closed the gate back for us. I was thinking how thoughtful these people were, until I looked out the back window and saw that they'd closed the gate without mowing the yard. SERIOUSLY? That really ticked me off. That was blatant laziness right there. Of course I called our homeowners association immediately, but they didn't really seem to care. The guy I spoke to on my second phone call ("second" because the first girl who answered hung up on me "accidentally") told me that I need to send them an e-mail for their files. He wouldn't give me any sort of answer on whether or not they'd make the mowers come back and actually do their job. Needless to say, the yard is still about waist high in weeds, and I hope that when the yard people go back there this week to cut it that their mower gets stuck. That'll teach them.

Reason #2:
This is what Dustin and I did over the weekend:



That's right! We ripped up our front flower beds. We should call them "weed beds," for obvious reasons. I forgot to take a real BEFORE picture until after Dustin started doing stuff, but as you can see, we had a disgusting fountain right in the front with tons of rocks and stuff around it, and the rest of it was all pretty much just weeds with some monkey grass mixed in. I have hated that fountain since the day we bought our house...since that was the day that it stopped working properly and became a cesspool of of algae and mosquitoes.


Dustin thought he was going to die from the heat. I thought I was going to die, too.





Unfortunately, we only got to do the front of the house so far. This actually took us two mornings, and we still have such a long way to go. Part of the reason it took so long was that under the mulch we dug up in the front part of the flower bed there were tons of tiny landscaping rocks. I just started hoeing up the plants on the side of the house, and I don't think there are rocks mixed in with that part. We're hoping to at least finish getting the soil prepped by this weekend so we can start putting the plants in soon. I am so. stinkin'. sore. from the work....even though I really wasn't able to do much. And before anyone freaks out about my doing yard work while I'm pregnant, believe me -- Dustin monitored what I was doing very closely and didn't let me do anything too strenuous, and I drank a TON of water the whole time I was out in the sun.

In the largest spot in front of the house (where the fountain was) we're going to put a pink hibiscus tree. We already have another hibiscus tree on the other side of our garage door, so this will even things out a bit. Around the rest of the house we're going to do knock out roses. I have heard that these require little maintenance and are really hard to kill, which makes them my kind of flower. I know we're crazy for starting a project like this in the middle of summer when the average temperature is somewhere around shades-of-hades, but it just had to be done. The weed block that was already in the flower beds from when the previous homeowner had done some landscaping was completely shot, and the mulch on top of it was pretty much gone. I was just not able to keep up with the weeds, and I figured that it's pretty much now or never for getting things done in the yard. We're going to put down the red lava rocks around the plants instead of mulch so when we're done we're hoping that very little work will be required to maintain a decent looking flower bed. I'll keep you all posted on our progress.

Other than the yard work, we did have a very nice 4th of July weekend with our families. We all met up at my sister's house out in The-Boonies-ville for a barbecue and fireworks. Thankfully it did not rain, and late in the afternoon it even cooled off enough that it was actually nice to be sitting outside. Sorry to make this part of the recap so short, but I was so tired that evening that I pretty much just sat in a lawn chair all night and talked. Fun for me, but not too exciting to write about. And I forgot to ever get my camera out, so...no pictures. Oh well.

In conclusion, I would like to celebrate the fact that this yucky Monday is almost over, and we have only 4 more days until next weekend. Yay! It's the little things in life... :)

28-ish weeks and a baby shower!

This past weekend I had my first baby shower! I absolutely loved opening all of those baby presents and spending time with friends and family that I don't get to see very often. Rachel (who also wrote a post and has tons of pics) and Tama threw the shower for me and my friend Annie hosted it at her beautiful house. This was my shower for most of my church friends and some of my co-workers. My sister is planning another shower for August where I will invite a lot more of mine and Dustin's out of town family and our friends that don't go to our church. I am already excited about it!

Here are just a few pics from the shower...


We played baby shower bingo, and I had to just sit and wait while everyone filled out their little cards. I love that game, but I did not like having to wait to open the presents. I'm such a little kid :)

Opening the presents -- that one's a diaper genie!

Dustin wanted to come in for a while to see all of the decorations. Of course he also had to help load everything into the car.

Me and my party planners -- Tam and Rachel!

My mom, me, my grandmother, and my sister

Dustin's mom, Dusty, me, and Dustin's nana

The diaper cake -- isn't it so cute?!?

This is the quilt that Rachel made for Dallas. Rachel has been very, VERY busy trying to keep up with all of the babies being born in our little circle of friends!

As you could probably tell, we got so much stuff! It completely packed the back of our tiny little car, and now it's filling up most of the floor space in Dallas's room. I haven't even started going through it all, yet, because I sort of get overwhelmed at the thought.

All of the loot :)

Of course, Baggie thinks the presents are all for her!

As odd as it is, the curtain for Dallas's room was probably one of my very favorite gifts. I enjoyed so much watching Dustin put it up. It helps to bring all the decor together, and it makes me feel like the room really has a purpose -- rather than it just being a room with a bunch of stuff in it.

Today I had to go for my regular monthly doctor's appointment. It seems like Dallas (or at least my belly) has grown so much in the last month, and I was very interested to find out how much weight I'd gained since my last appointment. Only four pounds! I wouldn't have been surprised if the nurse had said a lot more! My total weight gain so far for the pregnancy (not counting the weight I lost in my first trimester) is right about 13 pounds. Not too bad, I'm thinking!



Dallas is so incredibly active all the time now. It is nothing for me to look down at night when I'm laying on the couch and see my belly wiggling all over the place. I haven't seen anything specific like a hand or a foot or anything, but I can definitely feel lots of tiny little bony body parts poking me all over the place. And I absolutely LOVE it.

According to my doctor's measurements this morning, my belly says that I'm exactly 28 weeks. Her records show me as being over 29 weeks, though, so who knows really. Maybe Dallas will be on the smallish side when she's born. I'm okay with that! I have to go back in three weeks, and after that appointment I'll have to start going bi-weekly. Goodness, me! I can't believe that in about 2 and 1/2 months I'll be a mommy! It's so surreal!!!

P.s. If you didn't get enough of my baby shower photos, you can see a few more here on my flickr account!

AND THE WINNER IS......

Thank you so much to everyone who entered the giveaway! At the end, there were a total of 71 entries -- including those for people who commented first on the ITEM OF THE DAY posts and who guessed correctly on the clues. The winning comment? This one right here...#53:

That's right! hotpants™ is the winner! I'm so happy for her, too, because she was a really faithful follower throughout this whole thing, and I'm pretty sure she left at least one comment on every single post. CONGRATS HOTPANTS!! If you'll e-mail me your address and such, I'll get your Dallas-themed prize pack in the mail stat!


Stay tuned everyone for my 28 week pic and (finally) some pictures from my first baby shower! I'm actually really excited to be returning to just regular old posting :)