General

In preparation for switching hosting providers, I’m transferring my domain name registration to another service. Supposedly, nothing should change. If you don’t see this, though, you’ll know why! (It’s like those test emails I love, “Let me know if you don’t get this message.”)

Is it killing you yet?!? There’s a clue in this dream I had over the weekend:

I was at a Mommy and Me group even though the baby wasn’t born yet. One Mommy came in with her two-year-old, dressed from head to toe in every color of the rainbow. I couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy, so I said, “Oh, what a cute kid!”. The mom said, “Well, don’t you want to know what it is?”, and I replied, “Sure, why not?” Then she said, “Actually, we don’t know. We haven’t looked yet!”

Remember my warning about having a modest child? The baby was not in the mood to have pictures taken. He or she was folded at the waist, with his/her legs crossed at the ankles above his/her head. Thankfully, they couldn’t get all the pictures they needed to anyway, so they told me to come back in two weeks! So, everyone, including me, can keep right on guessing!

In non-baby news… Jenny’s wedding was lovely, but I’ll let her blog about it when she gets home! The bed and breakfast we stayed in was very comfortable and was in a great location. If it hadn’t been raining Saturday afternoon…well, we probably still would have been lazy and hung out in the parlor knitting and reading! It’s nice to be home, though, and not in the car anymore.

Edit: for all you funny people who predicted twins or triplets…sorry, there is definitely only one baby in there. (Not that twins or triplets wouldn’t have been fun and all, but I’d like to start with one, thanks!)

With any luck, we’ll be finding out whether we’re having a son or a daughter this afternoon…but I won’t be around to blog about it until late Sunday or Monday. We’re leaving straight from the appointment to go to Jenny & Aaron’s wedding. I’m not looking forward to the 6-7 hour car ride, but we’re staying in an old victorian mansion-turned-bed and breakfast which will more than make up for it. Besides, it will give us ample time to reopen the baby name debate…whether we find out or not.

Get your guesses in now! For the record, I can’t tell yet if I’m carrying the baby high or low, the heartbeat has consistently been over 140, I did have morning (well, all-day) sickness (although I never actually got sick, I just felt sick all the time), my dreams have pretty consistently been girl – although I’ve dreamt boy a couple of times too, I’ve had more food aversions than food cravings, and my hair seems to be about the same as it always has been – thick and unruly. Have I missed any old wives’ tale indicators?

Have a great weekend!

I went to a prenatal yoga session at Breathe Yoga yesterday afternoon. I’ve never done any sort of yoga before, but it really was relaxing. I just had to keep reminding myself to breathe…otherwise, I’d forget while I tried to figure out what else I was supposed to be doing. It’s not a miracle cure, but I think if I keep going it will help with some of the new and exciting back problems I’ve started to experience.

According to the instructor, there are some poses where the baby will be really active. I haven’t been able to feel anything that’s definitely the baby since those three nights I blogged about last week. There are things I think might be, but nothing I can really be sure about. (I’m not too worried yet about the lack of distinct motion, since you’re really not supposed to be able to keep track until about 28 weeks.) I certainly didn’t feel the baby during yoga yesterday, but I think it was because I was concentrating so much on keeping my balance and breathing. Maybe next time…

Boy, it just seems like the days and weeks are flying by lately! We had a good long weekend. We did a bit of outdoor work, like getting some annuals planted (not quite done with that), getting the pool open (although it may be a while before it’s ready to swim in), and getting our outdoor swing assembled (don’t ask the pregnant lady to read the directions). I learned a bit about php in preparation for updating this site, and I managed to get in quite a bit of stitching and knitting time, too!

Of course, now it’s Tuesday, but it feels like a Monday, and we’re going out-of-town for the weekend, so it’s going to end up being a short, hectic week. I do hope it’s a very short week, though, because my ultrasound is on Friday and I really just can’t wait!

Ever have one of those days where little things just seem to stack up until you can’t take it anymore? Well, I’ve noticed the height of that stack has a much lower limit for me than it used to. I was actually having a decent day yesterday, until – all in the space of maybe 20 minutes – I managed to splash soy sauce all over my shirt at dinner (ok, that one was definitely my fault, unless you can somehow blame the sushi chef for not wrapping the roll well enough), I was called a “f***ing wh***” by someone who apparently thought he deserved to be able to take up more than his fair share of roadway (I actually did have the right-of-way), and I was treated very rudely by a coffee shop employee (for asking for an extra cup since the drink she made me was leaking all over). That third incident was the last straw, and I ended up bursting into tears in the middle of the coffee shop. (Hey, I did get a free drink out of it…I guess there’s one good thing that happened.)

I hate feeling like I have no control over my emotions, and I really hate publicly losing control. I feel like such a blithering idiot, especially because it’s not really that obvious yet that I’m pregnant, so I’m sure people are looking at me like I’m a crazy lady who needs her head examined. I feel like I should make up a t-shirt that says “I’m not crazy, I’m just pregnant!” so people might understand that I’m basically just a ticking, emotional time bomb.

Of course, then you get to the real root of all of this, which is, why exactly do people feel that they have the right to be rude or hurtful to others, especially to someone who hasn’t wronged them in any way?

Since it’s happened every night (at 2:30 in the morning!!) for the past three nights, I think it’s safe to say I’ve finally felt the baby moving. It’s a very odd sensation. It feels like the baby is squirming around in there, trying to find a comfy position to sleep in…which is usually what I’m trying to do at that hour of the morning! I still haven’t noticed any movement during the day, although I’m sure it’s there. I’m at 17 1/2 weeks, which is right in the middle of the range of time you’re supposed to start feeling movement.

I had an appointment this morning to check the heartbeat. It was fast – somewhere between 150 and 160 bpm if I counted right. Supposedly, if it’s consistently faster than 140 (which it has been so far) that means it’s a girl. This is probably not much more than a slightly newer old wives’ tale, but it’s fun to guess anyway. Only another couple of weeks before we (hopefully) find out at our ultrasound! (I keep telling everyone that I might have a modest child in there – this is mostly so I won’t be disappointed if we can’t find out.) Yes, yes, I know, the ultrasound is really to check that everything is developing normally, and that a healthy baby is all that matters (although, what mother wouldn’t love her baby even if it were unhealthy?) but as long as we can find out the gender, we’re going to. (Can you tell I’ve gotten some flak about my decision to find out before the baby’s born?)

Warning: sappy post ahead!
Five years ago today, I was wearing a white dress, carrying purple and pink flowers, and saying “I do” in front of a couple hundred people. (Today, I’m wearing a blue maternity t-shirt, carrying kleenex, and saying “ah-choo!” in front of as few people as I can.)

A lot has happened in five years. Let’s see, we’ve vacationed in Ireland and Italy, visited Disney, bought a house, bought our first new car, adopted two dogs, and are now expecting our first child. Add to that finishing up my masters’ degree, lots of family visits, working on the house, and trying to have at least a small social life, and it’s been a whirlwind. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but five years has gone by in the blink of an eye.

The best part of the past five years? Being married to my best friend. Things are going to change a lot soon, as our little family grows. I’m sure the next five years are going to go by even faster…but I bet they’ll be just as wonderful.

I’m counting my blessings today, and realizing that it would take me longer to count them than to just enjoy them. Happy Anniversary, Denis!

I’m on day three of a cold that has just totally wiped me out. Sore throat, stuffy nose, headache, the works. Fortunately, I seem to be much better today, which gives me some hope that I’ll actually be able to do something useful this weekend…

Here’s the stack of DVD’s I’ve watched in the past three days (note that this doesn’t count the hours of Star Trek (several flavors), Queer Eye and Simpsons that were on the TiVo): Ever After, Shrek, Cinderella (the Roger’s & Hammerstein’s version), and Princess Bride. Notice a trend? And I probably would have picked Willow next. What do all these movies have in common? Mainly that they’re movies Denis would rather not be forced to watch! Although, I think he’d probably make an exception for Princess Bride.

Oh, and during one of those Star Trek episodes I saw a commercial for the Skybox Vending Machine which I thought was hilarious. Actually, it looks pretty good in black with the Mets panels…if only it was a little less expensive, honey, I’d get it for you…

I did actually do some knitting, and a bit of cross-stitch, too. Mostly, though, I’ve slept – which is something I’ve been advised to do as much of as possible before the baby comes!

Seeing as my current hosting provider contract is just about up, I went web host shopping and found a new home. It’s not that I was tremendously unhappy with my old host, but there were things that I wanted that I didn’t have – like shell access. Plus, BlueHost is marginally cheaper and has more space and bandwidth. I’m currently looking at 1 GB of blank space, just waiting to be filled. (It’s sort of sad that I feel like a kid in a candy store, isn’t it?) The transfer probably won’t take place for another month or so, because as long as I have the overlap in hosting services, I’m going to put the time to good use and do some upgrades I’ve been meaning to do for a while…Movable Type has a new version out, and I think it might be time to “freshen up” my design a bit.

Oh, and sorry for the extra-long weekend of no blogging. Traveling for the weekend is always hectic, and it seems to take a lot more out of me now. The wedding was absolutely beautiful, and we got to catch up with some college friends we haven’t seen in years. It was definitely a wonderful weekend, and – because we were guests at the wedding and had no responsibilities at all – a very relaxing one, too. The only bad thing was Sunday night, which involved waking up every two hours – including once for the worst nightmare I’ve had in a long time. Guess the baby’s just getting me used to not getting very much sleep!