38 WEEKS

Personal facts and observations about week 38

1. It’s a small travesty when I drop something on the floor because it is impossible to pick it up without looking super awkward. Yeah I’ll say it- I’ve picked up my phone with my toes before when it’s fallen on the floor of the car.
2. Your skin becomes more sensitive to raging sun. The other day I took a 20 minute walk, and even with SPF 55 on my face, I felt like I got a sunburn on my cheeks. Granted, the temperature last week and this past weekend was deadly hot.
3. After all this time,
   I still have trouble remembering to take prenatal vitamins + two iron supplements, and now several evening primrose supplements, every day.
4. There is so much pain in my pelvic area. She is getting lowww. My least favorite parts of the day is when I am getting out of bed in the middle of the night or in the morning and have to take that first step because of the shooting pain. Also, leg cramps in the middle of the night! My friend Martha recently recommended coconut water for this though, and it seems to be helping.
5. The comments and questions about when I am due now come at me non-stop. I don’t mind it, but I DID mind it when this one man said, in response to me telling him I’m 3 weeks away from my due date, “Oh, I would have said you were due yesterday! HA-HA-HA”.  Har. Har.
6. I still need to get a nursing tank.
7. I am squished in between the two emotions of not wanting to be pregnant anymore, but still not feeling quite ready yet to have my life taken over by a baby. 
8. I feel like a hippo walking around on its hind legs.
9. I am finding that the keys to not looking as wretched as you feel is a shower, lots of lotion or body oil, bright lipstick, and good posture.
10. Sometimes I fall asleep at night imagining what it will be like to hold her in my arms.

BOLERO

 The most recent Radiolab podcast tells two stories of an artist and a composer – stories which both revolve around the piece, “Bolero” by Maurice Ravel. I loved this episode even more because of how much I love this painting. It’s obsessive, colorful, and orderly, and I would put a giant print of this in our living room. The painting is by Anne Adams, who quit her job as a biologist to become a full-time artist when her son was in a bad car accident. At one point, she became obsessed with Ravel’s famous composition, “Bolero”, and decided to paint a visual representation of the piece. The podcast then goes to explain how both Adams and Ravel experienced a degenerative disease that may have made its first appearance in the piece, “Bolero”.  Check out the episode here.

DINNER WITH FRIENDS AND SWEET BABY GIRLS

 

 We had our first official dinner on our new dining table with a couple of our dear friends who came over to hang out and pray. K. grilled up some shrimp kebobs and brats, and we had some naan, tomato & cucumber salad, tzatziki sauce for a simple and greek-themed meal. For dessert: cooked peaches drizzled with honey and topped with toasted almonds and vanilla ice cream!

 Also, can I share some photos of how fun it is to have a sweet and funny little 9 month-old around the house?? SImone is constantly making me laugh and watching her boldly go after Rusty and squeal with delight was probably the highlight of my week. She makes me so glad we are having a little baby girl...!

 

 

INSTAGRAM PEEKS

bits and pieces of life lately...

SUFJAN STEVENS, STAR SPANGLED BANNER

I'm really enjoying Sufjan Stevens' cover and interpretation of the Star Spangled Banner. It makes me hear the lyrics of the song in a way I never have before. Go Sufjan, go.  

Happy Fourth, everyone!

A PEDICURE TO SAVE THE DAY

Listen, when a lady can’t reach her toes, one of the best things that can happen to her is that one of her girlfriends gets her a pedicure (thanks Care!). Realtalk is that my toenails needed to be cut, my feet are swollen, and the chipped remains of the last polish were looking pathetic at best. Believe me, pedicures take on a whole new meaning when you know you can’t do one yourself. First of all, soaking my feet in water is like my new favorite thing to do. Secondly, you are so filled with gratitude that someone else is taking care of your feet, and you kind of feel bad, but not really. Also, I have never loved a massage chair more. That’s one of the upsides of pregnancy. You appreciate things like massage chairs and someone else painting your toenails like you never have before.

STRIPEY TEA CUPS

As a lover of stripes (who isn't?) I think these striped teacups by Ferse Verse are darling.

37 WEEKS

Sometimes I feel totally normal. Other times I feel like when one gets to be 9 months pregnant, they should be quarantined in some community with other 9 month pregnant women, left to be as cranky and nervous and excited as needed, whilst waddling/limping around with gigantic bellies. I know that being pregnant is extremely natural and all of that, but recently I’ve started to feel more and more like a freak. I mean, come on, a girl spends 28 years of her life NOT being pregnant, and then all of a sudden her body morphs into something almost unrecognizable in a span of nine months, and even if she KNOWS it’s normal, it doesn’t always feel that way.

Whenever I imagined what it would like to be pregnant, I didn’t fully understand or realize how hard the belly actually gets. When women would say that they have trouble bending over or shaving their legs or seeing their toes, it was puzzling to me, and now I see it’s because I had been imagining a pregnant belly to be like a fat person’s belly – just more fat and skin. But that’s not it at all!  It’s more like – especially these days – I’ve strapped on a very large bowling ball or a rock to my stomach. Can you imagine that? Picking up my phone that dropped on the floor is no easy feat if you have a large and heavy bowling ball occupying the space between your boobs and pelvis. You can’t bend! It’s awkward to even lean over the bathroom sink to rinse after brushing my teeth. Washing the dishes is much harder because I am that much further away from the sink. And turning from one side to the other side while sleeping is a production; it requires extra effort and hands to help balance the turn. I shall never take for granted the feeling of living life without something so hard and large be a part of the front of my body. Amen.

It’s been extremely hot and humid these days in Richmond, but I am blessed to live in a time and place where air conditioning is plentiful, so it's not terrible. Plus, it’s all the more excuse to eat more watermelon and ice cream. It’s frustrating not to be able to do as much, and it drives me crazy that my back starts hurting because I carried a bag of comforters upstairs, but such is the pregnant life. Unpacking is slow, but that's okay. I have 3-4 more weeks until baby comes and that is a good amount of time to unpack/organize/clean/nest, right? Right.

HELLO HOUSE: SNEEK PEEKS

 

 print/dining/kitchenview/rustyview/bedroom/itsnicetoseetrees/hellotoes

We’ve moved! I went to work on Thursday, while K. stayed at home and worked on the logistics of the movers moving our things from the apartment to the house. (P.S. Even though it was pricey, we do not regret hiring movers – totally worth it!) The big brunt of the move is over, but it is amazing to us how there are still a hundred things left to do! K. has been like superman, getting so many things done, most of them without my help, but we will still be busy this weekend trying to cross things off of our to-do lists.

I was really looking forward to being moved in, but I was still surprised by how GOOD it felt to get home to the new place and have all our things there, ready to be lived and used in this new context. I think it wasn’t until I saw all our stuff in the house that the reality that we had bought and moved into a house really sunk in. Being in a home that we bought and worked for definitely feels different than just moving into an apartment that I know we will abandon in a year. I already love this house – not because of the house itself, but because of what it symbolizes for us. The house itself is just a building, but it is also a dwelling place where so many of our days and plans and prayers have gone into and will continue to go into, in order to make a home for a family.

THE KNIT KID

Check out the talent that goes into making these beautiful handmade/handknit pieces of clothing by Sabrina Weigt of The Knit Kid on Etsy. I'm kind of love with the texture and colors, even though I'm not usually a knit kind of girl. The colors and style give these knitted pieces a totally updated look, don't you think?

36 WEEKS = 9 MONTHS?

That’s a lot of weeks!

36 weeks is usually 9 months, which is why I get people asking me how far along I am, and when I say 36 weeks, they say, ‘Oh 9 months!’ which is when everything thinks the baby comes out, but then I have to say, ‘No, I have actually have a whole month left, because pregnancy actually goes up to 40 weeks’, which is 10 months! And then there is confusion.

I finally looked into it and figured out that there is a reason why doctors calculate it by weeks instead of months. Thinking in months is not accurate because we don’t have consistent months, like we do weeks. I was instructed to start counting from October 17, 2011, the last day of my last period, and I am 36 weeks in from that date on. To figure out the date, one would think you do 36 divided by 4 weeks, which would be 9 months, BUT that isn't entirely accurate because some months have more than just 4 weeks! Which is why, simply speaking, yes, I am in my 9th month of being pregnant, but technically speaking, I am 36 divided by 4.3 weeks, which is 8.37 months.  Simply dividing by 4 would imply that there are only 28 days in each month, which is not the case because months have 30 or 31 days.  It’s kind of like how there are 52 weeks in the year, but if you divide that only by 4 weeks, you get 13 months, instead of 12. You see?

So there’s that little FYI if you wanted to know, but REGARDLESS, the important thing is, is that I have four more weeks to go. Full term is 40 weeks. And as much as I am ready to not be pregnant anymore, I hope she stays in the oven until full term. Apparently, that is best for baby because every moment she spends in there is valuable for all the strength, nutrients, and growing that can be done. I’m not sure, however, if baby knows that it’s good for her. I’m getting the impression that she wants OUT based on how much she is banging around in there. I feel like the inside of my uterus is bruised from how much she pushes and flails around, because sometimes it really hurts! It feels like she is working as hard as she can to push at all the walls to try to burst free.

-At 9 months -

Pros: A sense of accomplishment for getting this far.

Cons: I get irrationally irritated from random unexpected things; soreness and moving in slow motion

Craving: Not anything in particular, but still eating a lot of watermelon.

Outlook on the coming of baby: I hope she stays put until close to her due date.

Feelings about husband: I’m grateful that he has been taking good care of me!

PACKING: ELDERBERRY COCKTAIL AND SUMMER SOUNDTRACK

Whenever we go to Ikea, it always seems like we never have enough time. There is tons to see and oh so many things to discover and then deliberate over to decide whether to buy it or not, even though it is not what you came to Ikea for in the first place. Almost everything is fair game, in that it looks like it should be taken home and used for some extremely functional piece of your home.  In other words, justifying Ikea pieces is way too easy. So it is mayhaps a good thing that we were rushed because we could only stick to what was on our list.  But also, we didn’t want to make any decisions based on hunger-driven-delusions, so we tried their meatballs for the first time (pretty good) and I happily discovered their elderberry drink in a juice box. I very much like elderberry in drink form, so I found and purchased an elderberry concentrate that they had in their grocery section with which to make an elderberry+pellegrino concoction which will henceforth be my packing-and-moving-week’s cocktail.

You know what else is good for aid in packing? Well, a whole week off of work would make me feel like a rockstar, but that isn’t happening. What I can easily make happen is tunes to make your booty move a little quicker between the boxes and put some pep in your step when you get sick of packing. I love making summer ‘mix tapes’ – music that highlights/describes the feeling of how great summer can be. You know, songs that you want to play while driving away from your metaphorical last day of school, towards the beach, with the top and windows down, sunshine screaming and music blasting every which way. And then songs that you play for perfect summer nights, with warm winds and good friends on a front porch, sipping on something cold.  In honor of those things, I compiled a short list for 2012's first few weeks of summer, mostly inspired by NPR's All Songs Considered podcast:

1. Bright Whites - Kishi Bashi
2. Threads - Now, Now
3. I Love It - Icona Pop
4. Fire's Highway - Japandroids
5. Shades of Love - Sumeo
6. Call Me Maybe - Carly Rae Jepson
7. Say I Wanna Know - Nick Waterhouse
8. Adventures in Your Own Backyard - Patrick Watson
9. Spiritualized - Hey Jane
10. Nothing like You and I - The Perishers

THE LU'S ARE MOVING IN

After months of planning and waiting, we finally closed on our house today! 

We are ever so excited. 

 Now, if we can somehow get through this next week of packing and moving, I will be a very happy girl!

AN ODE TO MY EVERYDAY KNIGHT

You know how you hear crazy stories about hormonal ladies during their pregnancy going berzerko, eating everything in sight, sobbing in the middle of the grocery store, being mean to their husbands etc? Well I’ve been half-expecting that crazy lady to emerge within these past few pregnancy months, but she has stayed out of sight and it’s been a relatively stable time, thank the Lord. And I’m not just saying this because I’m self-deluded, K. agrees. However, just this past week (hello last month of pregnancy) I’ve started noticing that I turn into a cranky lady real fast. It’s like the distance between calm/steady and completely irritated has gotten considerably shorter, and sometimes, especially when the day has been long, and my body feels extra heavy, I am shooting headfirst into crankypants land. Which means things like- finding myself getting super irritated by panhandlers on street corners, and thinking overly mean thoughts about drivers who don’t turn on their signal while they drive. Yesterday, the woman at the drive-through forgot to give us honey mustard and I felt irrationally upset about it. Yeeeah. It also translates into me getting cranky about having to repeat myself yet again trying to explain to K. why I want shelving in the living room, and having crankyface when we spend too long deciding on ceiling fans. I guess it doesn’t help that we are in high gear preparing for this move into the house and for those of you who’ve bought and moved into a house before, YOU KNOW. Sometimes it’s really fun and sometimes it’s plain out stressful. I know K. gets stressed about it all too, but we sail on, and I’d like to think that we help each other get through the stressful times, and the fun times are a party because we are in it together. Regardless, it’s better because we’re together. And here’s a shout out to my husband - someone who easily forgives, tries to understand (especially when I demand it), carries the heavy things, facilitates naps where he holds me tight, still tells me I’m beautiful, budgets and plans, and brings me watermelon. He is my knight in shining armor right now as far as I’m concerned. And yes sometimes even ladies get frustrated and cranky at their knights, but oh they love their handsome knights and want them around always.

MONTE

When I was driving home today I heard a song on the radio (97.3 WRIR- Richmond's Independent Radio) that sounded almost exactly like a song that I wrote a couple of years ago. Except Zee Avi was singing it.  It was both very nice and slightly depressing at the same time.  Zee Avi, that girl is making things happen for herself. And rightly so because her voice is oh-so-soothing, in a very non-obnoxious way.



P.S. Monte is also the name of my sister's bf + sister's old-gentlemanish dog!