Month: July 2004

OK, I think I had my first official pregnancy craving today. I mean, I’ve felt like I wanted certain foods more than others, but I’ve never had a random thing pop into my head and take over my thoughts until I got my hands on it. So, what was this mysterious craving? Pillow mints – a.k.a. after-dinner mints.

Yes, I had to go to Wegmans and buy a bag of candy earlier this evening. The lady at the checkout must have thought I was crazy. Heck, I even think I might have been a little crazy – I can’t even remember the last time I ate these things, but all of a sudden I absolutely needed to have them. I think I might have snapped at Denis because he was taking too long to get ready to go out, and I really, truly needed these mints right then.

Please tell me this was just a passing moment of insanity, and I really won’t be asking him to go buy pickles and ice cream at 2 in the morning any time soon…? (Actually, we do have both in the house at the moment, and the thought of eating them at the same time is quite disgusting. Separately is a whole other matter, though…)

I don’t know where the past week went. (For that matter, I’m not sure where July went.) I’m just sleepy. Really, truly, awfully sleepy. Apparently, that’s normal for the third trimester, which is about where I am now – depending on which book you read, it starts anywhere from week 24 to week 29, and I’ll be 27 weeks on Friday. Only problem is, I can’t find the time to take a nap – and even if I could, I don’t nap well. I wake up feeling cranky and headachy, and just generally worse than I felt before I took the nap. (I should really work on that so that I can nap when the baby does…)

I’m sitting here at work, watching the baby have hiccoughs. It’s very odd to see your belly moving all by itself. She really doesn’t like it when I put my laptop on my belly – she kicks at it until I move it. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m growing the princess from the princess and the pea story in there – if I lay down at night and there’s a wrinkle in my pajamas or the sheets underneath my belly, she kicks that spot until I smooth everything out. I mean, it’s not as though there isn’t an awful lot of padding there. Should I be worried about how well she’ll deal with sleeping in her own pajamas on her own sheets in a few months? Hmm, maybe I should really work on my napping abilities…

Since we replaced the sidewalk, we now have a large gaping hole in our foundation plantings – we had them tear out the old, extremely overgrown juniper bushes in that section. (The plan is to get rid of the rest of them next year.) I’ve been trying to learn how to be a landscape designer for the past week – it’s not easy! It’s really hard to visualize circles on a piece of paper as a three-dimensional, colorful, living, breathing garden. I think I might finally have a workable plan that won’t cost a fortune, though…we’re going to break ground this weekend.

(Really, there isn’t anything more exciting going on in my life right now besides home improvements. Sorry.)

Someone stole our driveway this morning! They were kind enough to come back later, though, and put down a layer of gravel. Immediately after that, the sky opened up. We’re talking ark-building-inspiring rain here.

We now have a large lake on top of a gravel driveway.

I don’t imagine they’ll be paving it anytime soon.

Is it possible to OD on garlic? We were both too tired to cook last night, and tired of eating leftovers, so we broke out a soup mix someone gave us for Christmas…I swear, there must have been the equivalent of 6 heads of garlic in there in the form of dried flakes. Despite having brushed my teeth several times and eaten many non-garlicky things since then, I still feel like I’m oozing garlic.

At least I won’t have to worry about vampires for a while. ;)

We ordered the crib and dresser yesterday. I’m slightly worried, because the crib could take anywhere from 10-16 weeks to come in, and the baby’s due to arrive in about 14 1/2 weeks. We have a cradle for the first several weeks anyway, but still…I’d feel a little better if the room was completely set up before the baby comes home. Oh, well. We fell in love (or at least I did, and Denis didn’t argue) with the shape, size and color of the crib, and I think it will be worth the wait in the end.

…I’m off to go brush my teeth again before work. It’s probably just my pregnancy-enhanced sense of smell, but still…

No, not about the baby – she’s still a girl, according to the ultrasound technician. I asked if she (the technician) were me, if she would go out and buy pink dresses and purple paint, and she said yes. So, I guess we’d better go pick up some lavender paint chips!

Anyway, what I’ve been corrected about is that the walkway got done all in one day! It looks fantastic (if you ignore the fact that there’s no landscaping around it anymore and we need to plant some new grass). I just realized that I didn’t take any before pictures, although I do have some that show the walk when we moved in five years ago. I’ll have to take some after pictures, scan in the old pictures and post them one of these days. (Although maybe I’ll wait until we’ve planted that grass!)

The landscaping guy we hired to do our front walk and our fence is coming today to start the front walk. I’m sure it’s going to be longer than a one-day job, so our front entranceway (which we use multiple times a day to take the dogs out) is going to be somewhat out of commission (or at least muddy) over the weekend. Should be fun!

The fence, much to the dogs’ disappointment, won’t be going in until sometime in mid-to-late August. We’re also getting the driveway dug up and redone in August. So…for the next 6 weeks or so, something around here is going to be under construction at any given moment.

And then there’s the baby’s room, which we’d really better start soon if we’re going to move out the existing furniture, strip the wallpaper, paint, put up a chair rail (and crown moulding?), install a closet organizer, replace the mini-blinds, and move in new furniture all in the next 15 weeks! (Well, I suppose if the Trading Spaces people can do all that in a weekend, it might not really take that long…)

Big ultrasound #3 is this afternoon (psst, baby, I really don’t mind if you don’t let them get all the pictures again, it’s fun to get to see you every few weeks). I’m going to ask them to double check that the little girl is still a little girl. I would feel silly bringing a little boy home to a flowery lavender room, especially when there are such cute little boy bedding sets out there.

Update, 10:47 AM: It’s going to be a loooong day. Molly has decided that her mission is to bark as loudly as possible until the noisy digging machine and scary work crew go away…

For such tiny little people, babies sure need a lot of stuff! We started registering last night…I say started, because despite the fact that I “prepared”, the number of choices we had to make was overwhelming! We’re going to go back and work on it over the weekend. Hopefully no one will find the registry before then, because there are things that we’ll probably change.

We did manage to pick out a bedding set, though. (The colors aren’t all that accurate in those pictures.) The room is essentially going to be sage green, lilac, and white, with a little pink and yellow, too. I really like this one, because most of the girly-pink sets are really, really pink. Blindingly so. Of course, we’re hoping that the ultrasound technician was right, because it’s definitely going to be a feminine room!

Tomorrow I will be 24 weeks pregnant – 6 months. Technically, you’re pregnant for 10 months, or 40 weeks. I guess the third trimester starts around 25-28 weeks, depending on who you talk to. Confused yet? Just don’t think about it too much. Anyway, the baby has been pretty active for the past two weeks – she just had to get big enough so I could feel all the little somersaults going on in there. It’s the neatest feeling, and it totally distracts me from whatever I’m doing at the time. According to various sources, the baby should be around 12 inches long and 1 1/2 pounds. Boy, does she have a lot of growing left to do in the next 16 weeks!

Oh, and I’ve been knitting, and I’ve finished some things. I really need to update the craft pages soon…