Week 28 (late)

My mom asked for pictures of our new place.  So, I took pictures of Brisco.

And then I took pictures of the place.

 There are two townhouses, ours is on the left.  Our neighbor has more of a flair for decorating than we do--she's had two wreaths up already.

 View from parking area.  Brisco's up on our patio.  The nice garden area was like that when we moved in, and good thing, since that's not my thing.

Patio area off the kitchen.  It's really nice to have this long leash for Brisco so he can hang out outside.  It was especially important this past week when he had ten(!) teeth removed and he wasn't allowed to go for walks for a week.  He just hung out on his line.

 And speaking of lines, my favorite: clothesline!

 Kitchen (patio is to the left)

 Living room (adjacent to kitchen) and Andy's at-home work station

 Bedroom

 Opposite view of bedroom.  You can see that we have TWO closets!

 Nursery

 Another view of nursery

And, me.

Weeks 26 and 27

I had really good intentions about updating last weekend.  Mice, men, you know.

 These two pictures are from last weekend.  Brisco is bad at letting us take off his Thundershirt.  He's bad at a lot of things.

But what really kept me from updating was an unexpected trip to the hospital.  Spoiler alert: I'm fine and so is the baby.  After some pain and finally deciding it was time to call the doctor, I was told to come in to Maternity at Cooley-Dickinson hospital (where I'll be delivering) and see my OB who was on call.  It turned out to be a bladder infection, which was no fun, but way better than delivering at 26 weeks (which I didn't think I was, anyway).  The baby was moving around a ton so I wasn't really worried about her.  After a bottle of antibiotics and lunch, and everything was fine.

Then, I went into a busy week.  On Monday I had orientation at the Amherst Survival Center, which is across the street from where I work.  I decided that now is the perfect time to start volunteering.  Obviously.  I'd never been there before, but it's a great community center with a lot to offer, including a food pantry and a free store.  After the half-hour tour and being on my feet, I decided that I was probably best-suited at their front desk, so after sitting at my desk at work all day, I go over there on Thursdays and sit at a desk for two hours.
Andy and I also went to an evening course run by two doulas the other night.  Basically it was about informed consent/informed refusal.  It had some good information, and perhaps most importantly, they said, "We know you're going to Google everything, so here are a few good, reliable sites to start on."  Thanks for that!
My first day of actual volunteering was mostly uneventful.  I say hello to people and ask where they're from (to keep a tally).  That's about it.  But it was nice to meet some different people.  Plus they were playing Huey Lewis & the News in the Free Store, so you can hardly beat that.

This was taken this morning, now officially into the third trimester:

Registry

There have been a lot of requests for our registry, so here it is.  We may still register a second place, but here's the complete-ish one we have so far:  click here to buy us things!

I am still keeping an eye on craigslist (and for that matter, the side of the road), so items may disappear. Stay tuned!

25 Weeks and it's Easter!

New territory here, folks.  This is my first actual maternity shirt.  I have something new I can wear to work (at least for a while)!

 Cooking ginger chicken for dinner.

 "Is that for me?"

 A roadside find--a free highchair!  I stopped, and the woman who had left it there was outside and told me it worked just great.  We won't need it for quite a while, but hey, free stuff is great!  We'll give it a good scrubbing outside once it's a bit warmer.

Crib, Pack and Play (from my old nanny family), highchair, general messiness in what's-her-name's room.  I made progress on it shortly after the picture was taken.  Really.

 Nursing pillow, car seat, wipe warmer, 2T clothes in the bin.  I never could say no to free clothes, even if it's early!

 Last night I stumbled upon a recipe for Sriracha caramel corn (recipe here) and while the caramel didn't exactly turn out, it was delicious.

 This is less edible, but no less exciting: clothespins!  For our clothesline!

 I've used the clothesline twice in the last two days and I'm pretty sure it's my favorite thing.  Sorry baby and husband.  It makes me so, so happy!

Brisco found and liked my baby bump.

Have a happy Easter!

24 weeks

I've had two cravings lately: a cinnamon roll, and matzo ball soup.  Today one of those cravings was fulfilled.  I called many restaurants in the area, and once we found one that had MBS, off we went.  Yum.  It didn't exactly put any of our CSA veggies to good use or anything, but it was what I wanted.  Which is nice to get, once in a while.  Or more often.

Andy put his head on my belly last night and our little girl kicked him in the face.  He basically dared her to, so good for her!  She's active a lot.  A couple of times I've felt her simultaneously in two spots at once, like she's stretching out and doing a kick-punch.

I'm starting to get more tired, still, I believe, from waking up a lot at night.  I've felt a little "off" the last few days, but considering how easy the first two trimesters have been, I'd be ok (not thrilled) with this being my new normal.

We met with a doula on Sunday, and we want to hire her.  (I haven't emailed her yet to make it official, though I really should!)

I've been working more on the registry, too, but we got a pretty large pile of stuff from my old nanny family, and they assured us that they'd only done a quick walkthrough and would definitely have more for us.  VERY nice of them.  I promise I'll post the registry here once it's complete.

23 weeks and change

We took the picture on the right day, and I'm even coincidentally wearing green on what happened to be St. Patrick's day, but then both of us alternated between feeling sick, so I'm not getting around to posting until now.

 It seems like we're both on the mend.  Andy had a cough and at one point a fever, while I seem to be just fighting it off, though that is enough to wipe me out.  It might be compounded by the fact that I'm not sleeping all that well.  I wake up a lot on my back (which is a position I'm not supposed to be in anymore).  I'm not sure if I wake up because it's uncomfortable and my body "knows" it's not supposed to do that, or what, but I wake up a lot these days (nights).

This past weekend, it was still in the thirties, but the snow was gone and the sun was shining.  We took the opportunity to get outside--Brisco got a grooming from me, and Andy started working on cleaning up our yard.  The last tenants left a lot of junk here, and though the landlord is supposed to deal with the bigger items once the snow's gone, there was plenty for Andy to do in the meantime.  Look how cute Brisco is!

 It snowed again the night before last.  The sun is back out, but for the first day of spring, we're not off to a great start.  That's ok.  Bonus Brisco picture.

Andy's done some good work getting Fraasslette's room decluttered.  The crib is partially assembled and we've started hanging things on our walls.  It makes such a nice difference to have things up to personalize a space, despite how I generally feel about "art."

Hey!  The radio just told me that today is Fred Rogers' birthday.  I sometimes read his quotes when I need a pick-me-up.  I also picked up his book The World According to Mr. Rogers at a bookstore for about $5.  Not sure why it was such a steal, but it's on our little girl's bookshelf along with some Dr. Seuss (thanks Mom!) and some other books from my childhood:  Zed and the Monsters, The Grouch in the Tower and Other Sillies, In the Night Kitchen and of course, The Complete Curious George Collection.  Others too, I'm sure.  :)

I started assembling our registry, and I'll post that once it's complete.  I guess if you were really sneaky you could guess that it's on Babies R Us, but I'm not sure I'm fully committed to what I've selected on there as of right now.  Buy us things at your own risk.  Or send food.  Always a safe bet.  :-)

21 and six-sevenths weeks :)

Andy leaves for Microfossils in Houston tomorrow until Thursday, so I had to have pictures taken and post them today before my photographer (and his computer) leave.  Nearly 22 weeks, and it's finally starting to show.

I bought myself a belly band at Target today, because my pants are not fitting so comfortably these days.  Hence the dress again.  We also stopped by Jon and Serena's today and met baby Calvin.  Everyone there seems to be doing well.

We're making more progress on the apartment.  The washer and dryer were delivered on Wednesday(!!!) and we put the privacy film up on the bathroom windows.  Take that, wild animals that were watching us through the windows!

It was nice enough to have some of the windows open today for a while, which was really nice.  Brisco seemed to like having the front door open (with the screen door shut) so he could look and smell outside.  He got really anxious as we were getting ready to run errands today, but he didn't leave anything behind for us that we found when we got back.  He's doing so much better in this place than the old one, for whatever reason.

Speaking of the old place, today was our official "move-out" date there, though we've been gone for two weeks.  It's OFFICIALLY done.  Now we just wait for our security deposit back.

Have some pictures of Andy and Brisco!  He's practicing holding something like a baby.

Andy finally felt a kick from our girl the other evening.  It's nice that he can finally understand what I've been talking about.  Other than giving myself a backache sleeping on the couch the other day (I won't be doing that again), things are good.  :-D