SO TIRED

Oh my hell, I am so tired I could pass out right here in my chair in front of the computer.

With all my bloating, tiredness, and now numb fingers, I've been worried that I might have preeclampsia, but after reading my handy-dandy Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy book I think I really just have some carpal tunnel syndrome, brought on by the swelling in my wrists and hands. My fingers are so swollen that I can't get my wedding band off anymore, which is bad because I'm sure that's going to be a problem pretty soon!!

I'm also pretty cranky because I can no longer garden. Leaning over to get my fingers in the dirt hurts my knees and my belly gets in the way, then when I grab a weed to pull it up I get a pinching sensation from my wrist all down my hand. Gardening is one of my relaxing activities and it's also a great work out for me, so the fact that I can't do it anymore is really disappointing, especially considering there is a giant fern frond sticking out of the top of one of my azaleas that's driving me crazy!

Tonight Mr. Spouse and I are celebrating our one year and nine month wedding anniversary. It was actually yesterday but we had our birthing class until late so we're celebrating tonight instead. We're going to Il Terrazzo Carmine! I'm so excited! Then afterwards we're going to the Zig Zag to see my favorite bartender and challenge him to make me a tasty non-alcoholic and non-carbonated grown up beverage! I haven't seen him since October and I miss him. I bet he suspects why we haven't been in though.

Cloth diapers

My husband and I signed up for a diaper service but I'm still looking into all the newgfangled cloth diapers on the market for ease of travel and honestly, because I keep finding super cute fabric at the fabric store. I don't get all the cloth diaper lingo and all the different types of convenient waste management options for babies these days.

This isn't my mother's diapering world anymore! I feel like I need a book for a guideline!

So I have a bunch of super cute flannel for making diapers. Then I saw some super cute polyurethane coated fabric for covers, but why would any mother want that crap next to her child's skin? And whatever happened to those good old fashioned diapers with the pins? I totally see why so many parents resort to disposables! There are just too many options out there for cloth diapers!!

Crap. I think I need to buy a home serger so I can do those cute skinny serged edges on everything.

My pregnant friend sent this to me this morning. It's good to make light of the situation!!

Five things you never thought you'd say
• "Let me just finish this can of frosting."
• "Would you mind tying my shoes?"
• "Does my stomach look too small to you?"
• "Can you please massage my perineum again?"
• "Help, I can't get out of bed."

Uncomfortable but in good spirits

Overall I think this pregnancy has been going very well. I'm certainly not comfortable these days, but things could be a lot worse, especially considering I got rear-ended last week. My pregnant friend and I were on our way to lunch and this woman in a BMW SUV rear ended us. I think she probably wet her pants when she saw not one but TWO third trimester ladies get out of the car. That poor lady was a wreck, just like my adored yella Jetta.

Fortunately my friend and I are just stiff and our babies seem to be just fine, but the lady who hit us had just sent her son to Iraq the day before. She phoned the night of the accident to check up on me and confessed that she probably shouldn't have been driving that day. It kind of hurts me to think about how she must be feeling because since I'm having a boy, I might one day be in the same situation as her. I support our boys in uniform and all, but I think this war is a pointless waste of lives, and I just wanted to give that poor lady a hug when she told me. I hope he'll be okay.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the accident, but my hips and knees are in bad shape these days! My softening ligaments are making everything I do a nuisance. It hurts to sit in front of the computer too long. It hurts to lay on my side too long. It hurts to walk. It hurts to weed the garden. It hurts to get out of the lounger in the yard!

Forget acid reflux and gas pain, my joints hurt way worse than my other ailments right now!

Mr. Spouse and I started doing perineal massage the other night and that's fairly uncomfortable. The other night when I woke up in the middle of the night with a seized up back he massaged it with my handy dandy um..."massager" for twenty minutes. Thank God I haven't had that pain again!!

I think I might take some more self portraits tomorrow, we'll see how the light looks. I'm tired of taking boring snapshots!

A full night's rest!!!

Last night I slept a full seven hours, uninterrupted! It's been weeks and weeks since I've been able to do that! And I'm even getting over a cold! I can hardly believe it, it's like a dream come true!

I blame our new purchase:


I had been reading about how humidifiers help with sleep but for some reason I put off getting one for too dang long. I've had a cold for the last five days, and I'd wake up in the morning blowing my nose so hard it would bleed. We finally went to Target and got this cute little guy and it made such a huge difference!

I didn't need to wake up to drink more water once all night, which translated to not having to get up to pee once all night! Maybe this third trimester won't be so bad after all!

Oh boy. I overdid it!

This morning I had my big prenatal diabetes test, so I didn't eat anything between midnight last night and my appointment today at 11:30. My midwife took a whole bunch of blood and we had a nice chat, then I stopped by the vitamin store where my friend works to get some echinacea, fish oil tablets, and vitamin C, then went over to my favorite little bakery for a snack.

I ordered a lemon cookie, a snickerdoodle, two chocolate checkerboard shortbread cookies, two regular shortbread cookies, a cardamom twist, two strawberry danish, and an apple danish. Oh, and a double short americano that I had with one of the strawberry danish.

On my way home I figured I would take my cute vintage toaster to the repairman, but I got distracted by Lucca Statuary on the way. See, I've been obsessed with these planters that I saw all over the place when we were in Italy a couple weeks ago and since the local garden store didn't have them I figured the "European Garden Ornament" store would certainly have them! Not only did they have them, but they were 40% off, so I got a pair that I plan on filling with cute little succulents. Now I just have to tear out our railing so there's room for them.

Sigh...

Of course after that I had to stop by the local garden center and get dirt so I could finish my project, and I ended up with a huge bag of compost and two small bags of rocks...and I couldn't get the compost in the trunk without emptying it of the cement urns and pedestals I just bought...

So I had to go home and empty the trunk, meaning I had to lug 100 pounds of cement up the stairs (in six trips!) which took a long time with lots of breaks, then after that it was nice and sunny and I got distracted weeding the rock garden for an hour. That would translate to one hour of climbing around a rock strewn slope scraping my knuckles on rocks...then I went back to the garden center to pick up my compost and realized that all I had eaten so far today was a danish and a cuppa coffee.

Upon arriving at home I let the dog out and got distracted again on my way to the car to get the sand and gravel for the urns, and instead spent two hours pulling more weeds on the side of the house by the rose bushes. Fortunately it seems right now is a good time to pull Jupiter's Beard, one of five enemies in my garden, the others being buttercups, horsetails, dandelions, and morning glory. Jupiter's Beard has big bulbous roots that cling tenaciously to the dirt and break off instead of relinquishing their ungodly grip on the earth, but it seems that right now the dirt is soft enough and the roots firm enough that it's possible to get a good portion of the damned roots out!

I've spent a lot of time in the garden since we got home from Europe, but unfortunately it's all been spent cutting stuff back and weeding, instead of planting the new arrivals that I can't seem to keep myself from buying. However, with each new purchase I'm finding I need to do some major piece of landscaping to make the garden make sense! Now I need to find someone to rearrange part of our rockery, and then we need to reconfigure the sprinkler system, adding a mechanism that can tell when it's rained recently so we don't water the yard in the rain.

Each new project is a whole new can of worms.

But I got away from myself. I spent three hours at war with nature, took six trips up our stairs with heavy concrete, and climbed all over a rock wall in the sunshine, all on an empty stomach and officially 29 weeks pregnant today. Much of this was done with the trunk of the car wide open for all the passers-by to admire, with my purse in plain view on the passenger seat. This is HIGHLY unlike me. I am super paranoid about my purse and hyper aware of its location at all times!

When I finally decided to call it quits today, I came inside and ate ALL the pastries I bought today, save one strawberry danish and one apple danish.

I really should finish the nursery before I go relandscaping the yard, for crying out loud. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, I'm sure I'm quite a sight to all the neighbors, the pregnant lady climbing her rock wall tearing out weeds and throwing them all over the sidewalk!

To top it all off, tonight at 8 we're meeting some of Mr. Spouse's friends for dinner. My bedtime is 9:30 on days when I've eaten and rested properly, so I have no idea what kind of company I'll be tonight. At this stage of my pregnancy I am no longer sleeping through the night, and last night was certainly no exception.

food cravings

I am 28 weeks and one day in! I wish I could give birth right now. I'm tired of the water retention and constant gas.

In my monthly photos I noticed that I really have put on 35 pounds, and there it is...thighs, boobs, back. ARG! Time for some exercise!! So the other day Mr. Spouse and I joined a gym. They have a nice saline pool, a prenatal yoga class and they're open 24 hours so that should be great. I'll probably take advantage of their stationary bikes or stair steppers too.

Oh, and here's a picture from last week, this was at 27 weeks! We were in on eof my favorite towns in Piemonte, Italy. Canelli!