{ Jellybean Jellybean! }

I am almost 30 weeks pregnant, and it's not just that I haven't blogged about it much...I feel like I haven't thought about it much. Between parenting a toddler, two stressful months trying to buy this house, moving, and then unpacking, changing churches, finding a new women's group and a new community group and just generally starting from scratch in so many areas--while still parenting a toddler and realizing that I have a really hard time living in "unfinished" spaces, but lack the time/energy/money to instantly make this house "ours" in all the ways I want to--well, let's just say that this pregnancy has flown by. In some ways it seems like that day in May when I took a pregnancy test was a lifetime ago. And yet, if Jellybean follows his sister's footsteps and arrives 2+ weeks before his due date, we could have a newborn eight weeks from now. THAT, my friends, is hard for me to believe!

 

Oh, I didn't tell you?...

 

We had the 20-week anatomy ultrasound on September 17, the day before we closed on the house and moved in. Mr. Jellybean is happy and healthy; no abnormalities. We weren't expecting to find anything wrong, and while Lainie's 20-week ultrasound was also perfectly normal, Mike and I aren't fearful that something will crop up. The blissful, naïve assurance that a normal 20-week ultrasound is a 100% guarantee of a healthy baby is gone, but we aren't worried. It was reassuring, and we trust Jesus with Jellybean's health and development. We might get a non-diagnostic ultrasound in the next few weeks if we can schedule one, just for fun, but it's not a big deal if it doesn't happen.

 

He was curled up in the coziest little ball for most of the exam, his head and hands and feet all mixed up with each other. He was playing with the umbilical cord, which the tech said babies often do, and practicing breathing and just generally pretty chill and obviously quite comfy. The ultrasound measurements put Jellybean in the 93rd percentile for size {Lainie was usually in the 30s to 50s, if I remember correctly}. I found that hilarious, because my bump was/is pretty small. Even up till a few weeks ago, there were times when it was really hard to tell I'm pregnant--especially when I laid on my back, I didn't look pregnant at all. {Just FYI: That is no longer the case.} Our midwife, after feeling Jellybean and measuring me, is skeptical: "This is not a 93rd percentile baby. I've felt a lot of big babies, and this is not one of them. I'd guess he'll be about seven pounds." I'm inclined to agree with her assessment--especially since every.single.person. who asks how far along I am/when I'm due, is flabbergasted that I'm not bigger!

 

Take a look for yourself:

:: weeks 17, 18, 22, 23 ::

 

:: weeks 24, 26, 28, 29 ::

 

I have a couple of observations about these "bump progress" photos.

1. It appears that some weeks, my butt grows more than my bump.*sigh*

2. You can definitely tell which days were rough...or which days were preceded by rough nights. ;-)

3. I sincerely hope that if and when he looks at these photos, Jellybean doesn't think that we didn't love him as much because of all the weeks we forgot to take pictures. Honestly, we forget!

 

With Lainie, the placenta was attached to the front of my uterus, providing lots of extra padding between her and me, so I rarely felt her move. This time the placenta is at the top of my uterus, so I feel Jellybean moving a lot compared to his sister! That doesn't necessarily mean he is more active--though it's possible--just that his placenta is in a spot where it doesn't prevent me from feeling him moving. Like Lainie, he doesn't move much when I am active, but he really goes to town if I sit or lie down for awhile.

 

On Sunday I dug out my notes from our childbirth class and my hypnobirth book, and then our doula came over for dinner and a chat about Jellybean's birth, and suddenly having a baby is seeming a whole lot more real. I'm not necessarily feeling more prepared--but is anyone ever really ready for their life to be exploded by a newborn?--but it's seeming a lot more real. Suddenly...I don't really know how or when it happened...but we are almost in the home stretch!

 

To close, here is a sweet little picture of my girlie wearing my scarf {any type of dress-up means putting the item around her neck} and blowing a kiss.

{ Halloween 2013 }

Pretend with me, for a moment, that it is not already the middle of November. Literally the middle.

 

*gulp*

 

Pretend it's November first and it's still cool to talk about what you did for Halloween, k?

 

K. Our friends Luke and Joanna threw a Halloween party. Joanna is pregnant with their first baby {he and Jellybean share a due date by some calculations, by others Jellybean is due five days later}, and in spite of the fact that I'm not "into" Halloween, I was excited to go because you just never know how many opportunities you may have to dress up a pregnant belly in a costume. However, I couldn't figure out anything to "be" that I really liked...

 

...until Mike's parents came home from a trip to LA and gave him a luchador mask.

 

I will be Nacho Libre.

 

Yesss!!

 

Now, I am not a Jack Black fan--matter of fact, I can't stand him except in Nacho Libre, which is doubly ironic because I love that movie. It is one of the funniest I've ever seen, and in it Jack Black is perfectly brilliant. Absolutely spot-on.

 

So, without further ado, allow me to introduce to you Nacho Libre, a leetle Mexican orphan, and the very well-dressed {obviously wealthy and highly successful} luchador who accompanied them:

 

Lainie's little dress was also a gift from Mike's parents, from this same LA trip. Little did they know they were outfitting 2/3 of our family for a Halloween party!

 

Lainie was super excited to see her friend Julia. For some reason she found the popcorn in Julia's cup much tastier then the popcorn in her cup, so poor Julia {aka Marathon Baby} found most of her snacks were consumed by Mexican Orphan.

 

Somebody asked if we put makeup on Lainie's face to make her look dirty...nope, she just falls down and bruises her face a lot.

{Don't you love Olive the dog's face here?! "Please can I have some of your food? Please please please?"}

 

Four of the five pregnant women who came that night: me, Joanna as Paula Deen, Kristina as Facebook, and Krissy as a marathon runner.

 

Shhhh...don't tell, but it was my first time ever dressing up for Halloween, and it was actually fun!

{ Hard }

I don't want to admit it, but this season is hard and I just really want it to be over.

I'm always tired. If I nap when Lainie does, the amount of "stuff" I accomplish in a day {already not much} becomes infinitesimally small...and besides being tired, I feel like I'm drowning in little projects that either a} take sooooo long to do if attempted when Lainie's awake, or b} require Mike's help. I'm stuck between getting more sleep and getting less done--which is ironic because I'd probably have more energy--or being productive while Lainie naps, yet exhausted and/or comatose by midafternoon.

I know that in a few weeks I won't even remember most of the things that are driving me to tears on a daily basis now. Yet feeling like I am treading water with a growing unfinished project list is.driving.me.insane. I know it's the pregnancy hormones, I know if I weren't on the brink of the third trimester and parenting a toddler full-time I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed. Honestly I could get most of this done in one or two days without those two limitations. Instead it's 9:45pm and I am blogging because I DID take a nap today, and now I'm hysterical because it's too late to break out the paint and fix all those dings in the wall from when we moved in. And you know, that must happen before Jellybean is born. Preferably before I wake up tomorrow morning and face yet another day with dinged up walls.

Is there any way we can possibly be really moved in, really settled, before this baby is born? Is that baseline I crave actually attainable? The one where all the windows that actually need window coverings have them, and all the safety latches are installed, and the furniture is where we want it, and all my jewelry isn't piled in a heap on top of our dresser? Is Lainie ever going to sleep through the night again? Pardon a little mommy rant: She has gone from sleeping 12-13 hours every night before we moved, to waking up about three times per night...every night...she's only slept through the night twice in almost two months. I did not at all expect this for my last few months before having a newborn...and it is so, so frustrating. I don't know how to help her. I don't know why she wakes so often--we've lived here for almost two months, so I don't think it's the transition/newness/change anymore. *deep, deep sigh*

I would like to close {well actually I wouldn't, I have a lot more to say on this subject but I have publicly whined more than enough for one night} by saying that this isn't all hormonal pregnant lady craziness, some of my urgency IS warranted. I recently discovered that the gorgeous blinds we got for our bedroom, which we both just love, are totally see-through when it's dark outside and lights are on inside. Like, if the neighbors happen to be in their backyard at night and a light is on in our bedroom, they can see EVERYTHING. Because there isn't a fence or anything between us and the neighbors on that end of the house. Now that makes me slightly freaked out. {Actually it makes me WAY more than slightly freaked out, but I am trying to remain calm and not hyperventilate right now as I think about it.} So I went and bought a curtain rod pronto, even though we were going to wait because curtain rods aren't cheap and our old bedroom curtains are not long or wide enough for the big bay window in our bedroom. Nonetheless I got this rod and I am determined to hang up our too-short-too-narrow curtains and cover that window, but this requires a certain amount of physical maneuvering that is difficult at this point in the pregnancy, and the use of power tools that I haven't used before, and have I mentioned that this is the kind of project that would be foolish to undertake while Lainie is underfoot? So I guess I'm going to bed AGAIN with naked windows. Someday...

For your viewing pleasure...because I took a picture earlier today while Lainie and I were making the bed and it was pretty outside...here is our bedroom window with those nefarious blinds.

It looks innocent enough, but there is quite a busy street behind that fence, and only about ten feet separates this end of our house from our neighbors' house. Really not the sort of environment for naked windows. I know that Mike will have time to put up the curtain rod very soon, and about three seconds after that I won't even remember how long I lived in this tortured state, but right now I'm here. Trying to work up the courage to go to bed. Goodnight.