Moving

Hi Friends!

If you have this page bookmarked, I’ve moved.  I’m heading over to

http://shakyoctopus.com

See you there!

Hello Friends

I haven’t forgotten about my blog.  I’ve just been kind of busy lately (to say the least) and decided to take a break until the semester started.  Well, the semester starts today, so I’ll be back tomorrow.  Promise 🙂 There’s a lot of new stuff going on, all of which was prompted by the new little girl living in our place.

Waiting

40 weeks and 2 days.  We’re now stuck in a holding pattern.  I’m so ready to just get this part over with.  My FIL is driving me nuts.  He keeps telling us the baby is coming on Christmas.  I soooooooo hope not.  I really don’t want to be in the hospital for Christmas.  I want to be back home with the baby by then.

I’m actually hoping for today.  Not only is there a full moon tomorrow, which can do weird things, but there’s a full lunar eclipse visible from our home tonight.  Maybe there will be some weird kinetic energy to get things moving…

This weekend was fairly busy.  We had a tiler install a new floor in our downstairs bathroom on Thursday and Friday of last week (we’d removed the floor in ’06, but had never replaced it).  When he removed the toilet and sink to do so, we realized that both needed to be replaced badly and that we were very lucky that they hadn’t sprung major leaks yet.  So Saturday, my FIL came over to help John install a new vanity and toilet. 

The new vanity makes our bathroom feel so much bigger.  It’s a really small 3/4 bath and used to have a pedestal sink.  Instead of replacing it with a new pedestal, we bought a vanity similar to this:

Although ours is a different color.  It is nice and shallow and actually gives us some storage space, which we’ve never had in this bathroom before.  I call it a win-win situation.

Our new toilet is a dual flush toilet.  This is a pretty cool idea as it flushes at two different settings, using less water for #1 and more water for #2.  It’s so quiet too.  Hopefully I can get some pictures and post them soon.

Oh yeah, just an FYI, I’m sorry, but I chose to remove all comments on my last blog post.  It’s one thing to comment on opinions, but it’s a completely different thing to attack someone’s religion.  I didn’t ask to hear comments about Catholicism (either current or extraordinarily old scandals), so instead of trying to sort through for those that were actually about the post, I just deleted them all.

But, for those that care, here’s a link that kind of proves that I’m not going crazy: USA Today Article   (I love how the priest compares using Jesus’s name in advertising to Voldemort’s name!)

Christmas Musings

In the midst of all of the baby planning (okay, well the coaxing of her to get the hell out of there), I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on Christmas lately – mostly while walking and walking and walking through the malls (it’s cold here right now!).  I’ve realized that I’m pretty fed up with the way Christmas is treated anymore.

Santa, reindeer, snowmen, the most awesome Christmas tree ever, buying the most (and sometimes most expensive) gifts possible, etc., etc., etc.  Even when I was younger it wasn’t this bad!

I’m really sick of the whole “Happy Holidays” thing and the “X-Mas” thing.  (I told my Jewish friends Happy Hannukah  during Hannukah and now am into the Merry Christmas time).  Two holidays, that’s it.  And X-Mas, honestly, doesn’t really exist.  What’s the X?  It’s the lazy, ignorant people who take the Christ out of Christmas.  For those of you who didn’t know, it’s not supposed to be an X, it’s a combination of the Greek letters Chi and Rho – Χ and Ρ – which are the first two letters in Christ, and is used as a Christian symbol for Christ.  People just started leaving out the Rho, as, I guess, it takes too long to write it.

How has it come to this?  Have we really become this secular?  How did a religious holiday truly lose its meaning?  If you want to take Christ out of Christmas, what do you have left?  From a purely literal standpoint, you no longer have Christmas.   Even Wikipedia says that it is “nominally” a Christian holiday.  How can people that don’t believe celebrate this holiday – this HOLY DAY?

I would challenge those of us out there that truly believe in the real meaning of Christmas to remove the “nominal” from this holiday.  The whole holiday is supposed to be centered around God giving us his only begotten son as a present to the world, a gift that would one day save us.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe we should have a third holiday, one to which “Happy Holidays” applies.  Just don’t pretend that it is the same thing as Christmas, which it isn’t.

As for us, we plan on teaching Charlie what Christmas is really about.  Yes, we plan on giving her Santa and presents, but rest assuredly, she’ll grow up knowing that Christmas is all about this:

Borrowed from http://www.lostartoriginals.com/Liturgical%20Windows.html

And for those of you out there wondering, we are a practicing Roman Catholic family, as this may apply to this post.

39 Weeks and 5 Days

Well, it’s almost here.  Our estimated due date.  It seriously feels like just yesterday that we found out.  Except that that was on April 7th and it was warm, whereas now it is December 16th and we’re in the middle of an Arctic Blast.

I had a serious meltdown when I left the OB’s office yesterday.  She told me that next week when I go in, due to the holidays, we have to get an induction on the hospital schedule for Dec 30th so that I deliver by 42 weeks.  I left the doctor’s and was in tears.  I absolutely do NOT want an induction unless we’ve exhausted all other options.  But, she wouldn’t even listen to me.

I really dislike the doctor I saw yesterday.  She seriously has one of those I am a doctor therefore I am god complexes.   I think if I had had any other doctor or midwife in the practice yesterday it would have been better.  The doctor I saw yesterday doesn’t like natural births and I’ve been told that she really pushes her patients when they’re in labor.  Which is what she was trying to do to me yesterday.  When I told her that I didn’t want a cervical check she got really pissy with me and told me I was being unreasonable.

Fortunately, I know the next time she’s on call in the maternity ward and I’m aiming to not be there that day.  If I have to, I know John’s got my back.  Plus, we hired an awesome doula who can run some interference plays for us.

So, if you have any vibes or good luck wishes out there in reader land, I can use them for two things:

1) letting me go into labor naturally before an induction becomes imminent

AND

2)I had a second, on-campus, full day interview last week.  It is seriously everything I could want in a job, so I’m hoping to hear something good.

December 1st – 37 Weeks and 4 days

OMG!  I can’t believe it’s December.  It seems like just yesterday that we got the BFP, but now we’re at the ANY-DAY point.  Holy Crap!  Where did the time go?

We don’t have much more to do around the house for the baby.  Just finishing up some cleaning and organizing.  I still have to order her crib mattress, but we plan on keeping her in a bassinette for a little while, so it’s not too bad.  For some reason I keep procrastinating and avoiding ordering it.

I also need to pack my bag for the hospital.  I’m hoping to get this finished tonight, once I get back from teaching.  Once I do, I’ll put up a list of what I actually put in the bag.  I’ve used several different blogs for inspiration, so we’ll see what I come up with.

I’m pretty sure that we’ve decided to hire a doula.  I’ve spoken with her over the phone and she seemed wonderful.  John and I are meeting with her in person on Monday.  Hopefully the baby stays in until after that meeting!

We’ve also given our birth plan to the OBs office to be scanned into our file.  Thankfully, they have NO PROBLEM with ANYTHING on our list.  This was a source of worry for me, but I’m so happy that it went down so smoothly.  It makes me feel much better in our choice of doctors/midwives.

It’s almost the end of the semester.  I only have three more lectures to give for the class I’m teaching.  Thank goodness.  It’s getting harder and harder to stand and lecture for 2.5 hours, and I’m not the type to sit and lecture.  I just can’t do it.  Let me tell you, the lectern is at the perfect height for leaning when contractions start up 🙂

17 Days

until EDD!!!

It’s Been a Month

Holy crap!  I can’t believe it’s been a whole month since I’ve written a blog post.

Things have been a little nuts around here.  Let’s see if I can do a short little recap.

We’ve been getting things finished around the house.  I wish I’d get that burst of nesting that everyone keeps talking about, but nothing yet. 

John did two weeks of travel in a row, but no more travel for him until after the baby gets here.  Yay!  I don’t usually get nervous when he travels, but I was then.

We were treated to a beautiful baby shower out her in Philly by my MIL.  We received a ton of beautiful and useful items for the LO.  We’re still trying to figure out where to put everything.

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year.  John smoked a turkey out on the grill (which was funny because it snowed, hailed, and rained!).  I made way too much food inside.  Keep in mind there were only supposed to be 6 of us (and my BIL got sick, so we ended up with only 5).  We had mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, corn pudding, regular corn, honey glazed carrots, stuffed shells, sausage stuffing, pineapple stuffing, cranberry-pomegranate sauce, and escarole soup (prepared by my FIL).  I also made 4 pies: pecan pie, cranberry cheesecake pie, caramel-pecan apple pie, and peach-blackberry pie.  Yep, we’re still eating leftovers.  Yummmmm.

We’ve seen two movies in the past two weeks.  Harry Potter 7 Part 1 and Tangled in Disney 3D.  Both were very good and worth the monetary expenditure.

Yesterday I had several hours of contractions, but nothing regular and they tapered off by late evening.  They started off while we were walking around the mall, which in and of itself was pretty funny.  I was walking very slowly and kept clenching John’s hand.  People gave us a lot of odd looks.  Unfortunately, they aren’t an indication of the baby coming anytime soon, and since I’m not into being masochistic, I’ve asked for no cervical checks unless I go over 40 weeks, so I don’t know if I’m dialated at all.  I’m 37 weeks, so we’re just waiting for the baby to decide to come out.

So yeah, no real news, but I’m hoping things around here are starting to taper off to the point where I can get back to blogging every other day or so.  I miss it.

PS – I had a phone interview for an assistant professorship.  Keep your fingers crossed for me as the job is awesome.

Halloween Pumpkins

A few weekends ago John and I went to Linvilla Orchards in Media to get pumpkins for our house for Halloween.  I had an alterior motive though because what I really wanted was apple fritters that I didn’t have to make myself.  Yummy!  I love going down to Linvilla because you don’t have to go out into the fields to get your pumpkins, which can be fun but sometimes isn’t the best idea, and there are always tons and tons to pick from. 

John near some of the pumpkins

It was such a beautiful day when we went down there.  High 60s  with beautiful blue skies.  A perfect fall day.

Any type of pumpkin you want, they have it

These are the pumpkins that we bought

Daddy, Mommy, and Baby pumpkins

We haven’t decorated or cut the pumpkins yet, but I’m sure we’ll do that before Sunday.  In the meantime, they’ve been hanging out on our front steps, next to my begonias, which are doing really well in the cooler, wetter weather.

You can see the pumpkins on the steps, as well as Toby waiting for John to get home from work.

32 Weeks

Well, 32 weeks and 3 days to be exact.  Just finished 8 months.  Only ~8 more weeks to go.

What’s been going on:

Charlie kicks, punches, and rolls constantly.  She’s my little jumping bean!  I love watching my belly move, although John says it often looks like there’s an alien in there.  Which then prompts him to sing “Hello my baby” after the alien scene in Spaceballs.

Spaceballs

Often, the only thing that can make Charlie calm down is Toby laying on my abdomen.  I think it’s the heat of his body that calms her down.

We have 3 more Bradley classes left.  They haven’t been too bad and we have learned quite a bit.  I think I’m more prepared for labor than I was when we started.  Although, if I’m being honest, I’m still nervous of the actual event.  But, I think that’s normal.

The nursery is just about finished.  It should be finished by Friday of this week if I can get my act together.

This week, for the first time this pregnancy, I’ve lost 0.2 pounds in the past two weeks.  How awesome is that!  I am right on track to have gained just about 30 pounds. Hopefully it won’t be too bad to take it off.

For the first time in a long time I’m really looking forward to Christmas.  I can’t wait to get the house all decorated.  I think there’s an underlying motivation for that though.

This is the reason I usually don’t like decorating for Chritmas.  We live with our very own tree elf, aka the cat demon of destruction named Sophie.

A Hippie Baby

John thinks I’m going to make the baby into a hippie because of the hat and booties I made for her this weekend.

I’ve had this yarn for a while and finally had the perfect excuse to use it.