33 Weeks Down, Seven To Go

Well, the new school year is upon us. We start day after tomorrow. Open house is tonight. I'm excited to see the kids again. I decided this year to forego using butcher paper on my boards and went for the cloth option (which I'm noticing is a lot more popular this year). This involved going to my local fabric store and buying 11 different fabrics. No, I'm not going crazy with this idea. I use a cool curriculum called Recorder Karate, which borrows the belt system from the martial arts. There are nine belts. I bought fabric for each of the nine belts for my RK board, plus an additional solid color to use as a band across the top where my lettering is (that part is just paper cut on the Ellison machine. I cut out the fabric this weekend and tried sewing it together on my sewing maching, which isn't working properly and is really annoying me right now. Sunday night I just wanted to take it and throw it onto the highway from the overpass by my house. I spent a couple of hours last night at my in-laws sewing the things together. It looks fabulous! The board is about 4' tall and 11' long - which just so happens to be a length that is evenly divisible by 9 (for the belts)! That certainly made the math easy on how wide to make each strip. The kids will put their cards on the appropriate color when they earn the belts by playing a specific song. They move their cards along the board as they progress. They really enjoy it and it's highly motivational. Too bad I wasn't the genius who came up with it (though I am on an e-mail list with that genius!)

I'm doing my best to keep things organized and uncluttered this year. For those of you who know me well, you know that this will take major effort. I'm making this my goal ostly so that things are nice in here once I go on maternity leave in about 6 weeks. (Yikes! Is it really that close!?) I'm due in 7 and off the week before, provided the baby doesn't decide to come early. As long as I'm still pregnant on October 12, that will be my last day until January 3.

I was hoping to escape without any stretch marks on my belly. No such luck. I only have a few for now and they are relatively small. They probably appeared when I 'sploded last month. Hopefully I'll be able to keep them to a minimum.

We were awakened (or at least I was) at 5:00 this morning by about half a dozen fire trucks (just the engines and lights, no sirens thankfully). The house two doors down caught fire. It was under control pretty quickly and I don't think anyone was hurt. I never ended up going back to sleep. My alarm was set for 6:00 so I could be at work by 8:00. I was out the door shortly after 7:00. By that time, luckily, the Battallion commander's SUVs were moved from in front of our house so I could actually get out, as were all but two fire truck. At least the SUVs would have been easy to move had I needed to get out earlier than I did.

My plan tomorrow is to get class lists somewhat in order so I can be totally prepared for Thursday morning. I want to have my room ready to go the second I walk in on Thursday. Things where I need them, books and CDs in the appropriate places, stereo set up, etc.

Kids will be here in 2 hours! Yay!

31 Down, 9 to Go

Well, as you can see from my latest belly shot and it's caption, we had a major growth spurt these last five weeks or so. I looked at that picture after Jeffy took it, compared it to my 6 month belly shot and sorta freaked. No wonder I feel like I'm rolling out of bed like a beached whale.

As of yesterday, I am 31 weeks pregnant, that equates to 7 months on the nose. I can go anywhere from 6-10 or 11 more weeks. I'm down to counting on my fingers how many more weeks I have to go.

Childbirth classes continue to go well. The first week, we learned a little about relaxation. This week, we actually started learning some breathing as well as 'non-verbal touch' communication. The non-verbal part comes from Jeffy, not me. To simulate contrations, our teacher had us hold a handfull of ice for 60 seconds while we did breathing and swaying and while our partners did the massage thing. We also got to watch a couple of birthing videos. One was on the three stages of labor and birth (early labor, birth of the baby, birth of the placenta). When we got to the placenta part of this one, I had a really hard time dealing with it - flashback to last October, Jacob was still in his sac and attached to his placenta when I was holding him. My therapist told me that it would hit me when I least expected it. This was one of those times. It's been a rough week in that arena. I've been thinking about Jacob a lot.

The other video was following a woman through labor and to the birth of her child. The coolest part about that one was that during her early labor, she and her husband were walking around Wash(ington) Park in Denver. (For those of you who don't know, that's where I grew up.)

Seven Months...I 'sploded!

A Doozie of a Day

It is 7:15 p.m. In the last 24 hours we have been to the hospital twice. Once last night for the childbirth class, which was great. I'll elaborate more on that in another post. The second was this morning to visit my father in law who had a minor heart attack last night. He's ok. Will be released tomorrow in the morning. Can go back to work on Monday. Then while we were there, we found out that Jeffy's sister in NY is also in the hospital. No diagnosis yet. I promised my mother in law that I'm not going into labor anytime soon so not to worry about me. She smiled and laughed. At least we got the chance to time one route to the hospital on our way there this morning to visit my father in law. (8 minutes if anyone is interested.)

Painting and Panting

Jeffy is working on getting several rooms in our home painted. This weekend is the hallway. Once that is done, he'll do a couple of small touch-ups in the bathroom, then we get to start on the nursery! (Ok, he'll get to start on the nursery.) The two spaces he's painted so far (bathroom and hallway) look really nice. They've been off-white since we bought the place three and a half years ago. Color is a nice change. Makes it feel more like home and less like just a house.

As for the panting, I've been doing a bunch of that lately with the heat. We also are starting our prepared childbirth classes at the hospital this week. We have class each of the remaining Tuesdays of this month plus the first Tuesday of next month. I'm very excited. I can't believe it's time for these classes! I also can't believe that I'm really getting into the home stretch of 30-40 weeks. It's getting more and more real as each day goes on. I'm both excited and scared about everthing that will be happening in the next 8-12 weeks...mostly nervous about exactly what will happend during labor and birth. I hope that our classes will help prepare us for that, but I also am expecting that there will be surprizes involved in the whole process.

To Miss or Not To Miss

The stroller is put together, and the counted cross stitch for the wall is as done as it's going to get until October. I just realized today that we have 11 weeks until I'm due and there is still a huge amount that needs to be done. The nursery isn't even close to started, let alone finished. Ahhhh!!!!!!

Here are three short lists: Things I'll miss when the baby is born, things I won't miss when the baby is born, and things I'm really looking forward to once the baby is here

To Miss - feeling Bob moving inside of me, having Jeffy cater to my cravings, generally being pregnant, being able to get a fairly solid night's sleep

Not to Miss - feeling Bob moving inside of me when I'm trying to sleep, the various stomach ickieness (heartburn, indigestion, reflux, etc.) caused by said movements, only being able to sleep in one position, peeing all the time (or at least it feels like it...)

I Can't Wait - to see what this person is, to watch this little person grow, to be a mommy, to watch Jeffy being a daddy (he's going to be awesome!), to hold my baby for the first time, to begin life as a family of three instead of just the two of us, to see which traits come from my side and which come from Jeffy's side.