32 Weeks

We are getting increasingly lazy about taking weekly pictures...or biweekly pictures for that matter. It doesn't help that I'm spending more time in sweat pants. So here's Lee and I at a wedding this past weekend! (Confession: I've always been a bit anal about the separation of brown and black. This is the only thing I have ever disagreed with Stacy and Clinton on. It even goes so far that I regret not wearing my hair up at the wedding because I hate the way my brown hair looks when it's down against a black top. Note: Khaki and camel go lovely with black.)

I'm getting tired of being pregnant. It's not that I'm that uncomfortable, I just miss my normal clothes. This sounds shallow and vain and horrid but, I miss skinny me. I don't like not being able to run or eat raw fish or drink too much wine. Recently at a bachelorette party a dear friend had no one to do tequila shots with her and I totally would have! What a tragedy! I'm tired of the extra attention. I'm tired of strangers touching me. I felt the same way toward the end of our engagement: I just want life to go back to normal again. And I know things are never going to be "normal" again, but I'm ready for the new normal.

At this point my biggest fear of birth (and Lee's) is me being afraid of birth and dissolving into a state of panic. So far though I think my fears are staying reasonably low. As suspected, I'm still more afraid of needles than actually pushing out a tiny human, which I think is a good sign.

We have a pediatrician! (We actually have two since we're giving birth in an Indiana hospital and our Louisville pediatrician can't go to Indiana for the in-hospital things they do.)

I have fabric for the nursery! Finally! There are many important baby decisions to make, and I'm sorry to admit that this is the decision I devoted the most brain power to. I should probably save my apologies for Elizabeth. Pictures and more details on all those plans will hopefully come around next week.

Baby shower 1 of 2 is this weekend and I'm super excited. It's actually a shower for me and one of my oldest friends hosted by two of our other oldest friends. There's something quite wonderful about knowing someone since kindergarten and still being a part of each other's lives over 20 years later. One of the hosts has a 1-year-old and I remember meeting him and thinking, "I first met his mom when she was closer to his age than our current age." which just seems crazy. In four years there will be a kindergartener running around whose mom I played with in kindergarten. Crazy. Awesome, but crazy.

I joined the Louisville Mommies forum yesterday. Part of me feels like a total dork, but all of me knows that it's important to know other moms in the area. Or at least that's what I gather from friends who have lamented not having other mom friends.

Friday I hit the 33-week mark, which means we are definitely in the single digits for weeks remaining! Wow.

Recent Accomplishments

I've spent 2011 freelancing and trying to get an Etsy store going. Since I only work at the coffee shop a couple days a week and Elizabeth is currently as low-maintenance as she'll ever be, this seems like it should be relatively easy. But now it's May 17 and I feel like I haven't made it nearly as far as I wanted to or should have. Some of it is my fault, sleeping in and such. Then there's the gray area where I occasionally play the pregnant card and can't decide if that's good that I'm recognizing that I might need an extra break, or if I'm just milking my current condition for another nap. And some of it, I think, is just things taking longer than anticipated.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

I've been getting frustrated on a daily level too. It seems practically impossible for me to ever complete a full day's to-do list on that day. I'm currently still working on yesterday's to-do list. By the end of most days, I'm grumpily stewing over the one or two things I haven't done and seem to have completely forgotten the things I did accomplish. I'm starting to think I set my daily goals too high, which is why this week I only have 3 tasks per day. We'll see how that goes. They are generally not small tasks.

So in the spirit of being positive and spending more time celebrating accomplishments than cursing things still not done, let's look at what I have accomplished so far this year:

+ I'm still growing a tiny human, who seems to be as healthy and happy as a fetus can be. That's pretty impressive by itself.
+ I've filed all the paperwork and general nonsense to be legally self-employed.
+ I designed (several times) my own website in WordPress after years of being in Blogger. (Actually I just redid things a bit a couple weeks ago if you're reading this in Google Reader or something and haven't seen the changes yet. I think it's pretty adorable but welcome kindly-worded feedback.)
+ I have an Etsy shop and sold something to a total stranger.
+ I have mostly re-instated my daily(ish) chore chart, which means my back doesn't hurt horribly after cleaning and the house is generally cleaner.
+  I have gotten one small, recurring freelance writing job and one large, one-time web writing job.
+ I'm working part-time at a coffee shop which is actually kind of fun. Sometimes I think that if I was there for more than 10 hours a week I wouldn't like it as much, but that's irrelevant.  I prefer it to several jobs of my previous jobs. I'm sure the free coffee and day-old pastries help a lot too.
+ Nursery progress is finally (!!!!!!!!!) being made. Crib and mattress are in the mail. Fabric has been selected. There is a legit plan. (More details next week I hope.)
+  Thanks to the first time home buyer tax rebate, we're doing a lot of stuff around the house which is very exciting. Boo on painting, but yay for shopping!

So really, it's been a pretty productive year. And as I keep reminding myself, despite the doubts I have on the subject, I'm sure I will find a way to actually get things done even after Elizabeth is here. (Or at least there are a few kind friends who have told me so.)

No More Frustrations (ish)

I was grumpy last night. After making Lee listen to my list of grievances, I felt it was time to whine to the Internet. I wrote the post, complete with a picture of a grumpy lolcat. In the spirit of good juju or whatever, I did conclude the post with things I'm thankful for, but the bulk of it was whinewhinewhine. I set the post to publish this morning.

Once the post was finished though, I had a pretty good night. I was productive and figured out some tricky web things that had been giving me trouble. I asked Lee for help but he was about 2 seconds away from sleep so obviously not interested and promised to help me tomorrow and then I went on to solve the problem on my own. Three cheers for me. There is much celebrating when I solve my own technical glitches.

Then I woke up to some very bad/very good news. Like "Something pretty crappy and scary happened, but everyone is okay, including my loved one." After a few tears of fear and relief and me chanting "prayers prayers prayers" in my head because that was all the eloquence I could muster at the moment (God is quite familiar with my general lack of eloquence though so that's cool.), I didn't really feel like listing my grievances anymore. They were lame.

So instead, here is a happy lolcat. My favorite lolcat ever to be exact:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

And here is my list of my things I'm thankful for, because they are much more important (although occasionally trivial), more wonderful and more plentiful than any of my grievances.

+ Saw the midwife this week and Elizabeth is healthy and lovely. I was reminded at least twice of why I absolutely love my midwife and why this is one decision I feel 100% wonderfully certain about. (Unlike nursery colors. ;) )

+ I think we're only a few episodes away from Castle and Beckett finally getting together. Or at least kissing. I'm calling it for the season finale. About time, but I'm always a sucker for the will-they-won't-they fictional relationships.

+ My friend's bachelorette party was this weekend which pretty much meant slumber party at my place which was awesome. I miss having girls around to swap clothes with and stay up until 5 a.m. fretting over life's decisions that cannot possibly be solved at that time of morning, especially when tipsy (not me of course), but oh how we try. I pretty much have the best friends ever. Just saying. And best husband, who kindly helped me drive everyone to and from the bars and let us blare rap music and giggle and stay up late talking when he wanted to go to sleep.

+ I finally got some slip covers for the couches and will post pictures of them soon. I need to get them ironed which means I need to buy a steamer and we're about to do some other projects so I figure we'll just wait for the big reveal. But I don't have red couches in my green living room anymore! Thank goodness!

I hope you have many more thankful things than grievances today. If you're going to be grumpy about anything, may it just be Miley covering "Smells Like Teen Spririt". (Sacrilege!) She should really keep it to "Party in the USA", because that's...umm...maybe one of my favorite songs. Although most of the credit for that goes to this video:

Thoughts on Running

At various points in my life I get it in my head that I want to be a runner. Not necessarily a fast runner, or a long distance runner, but someone who can comfortably run a 5K in 30 minutes. And maybe does this several times a week. And maybe because she does this, she can age without gaining a lot of weight and without curbing her mint Oreo consumption. Providing of course that when she's not eating Oreos, she's eating fruits, vegetables, grains and lean meats.

Look at Lee running a mini-marathon. He's kind of disgusting awesome like that.

I'm wanting to run again. Of course I can't run right now with the pregnancy. (It's not that pregnant women can't run, but they shouldn't start running during pregnancy. It's cool if you're already doing it.) So I keep thinking about how I'll start running again after pregnancy. I'll get new shoes and start the Couch to 5K program I had some success with a few years ago (if I can find it). Running can be my 30-minutes of escape from baby for some glorious me time and some quality daddy-daughter time for Lee and Elizabeth. I've even been looking for a 5K to sign up for this fall. I've been working on getting in a more consistent walking habit (It would help if the rain finally stopped. And if I wasn't lazy.) so it won't be as big of a deal to add in some running in a few months.

We'll see how I feel about this in a couple months. ;)