Week 35 - Getting There

Some days I feel like a rock star and I have this amazing ability to get things done that have been on the to do list for ages and other days I hardly have the energy to get out of bed to eat! We are winding down and I am sure that my body is preparing for this laborious journey up ahead. As I glanced at the poll on the top right of the webpage I noticed that there are 29 days until the "due date". Wow, where has the time gone? Robert is getting super antsy (surprise surprise) and keeps asking me "when is that baby going to come out?" but this morning as he was leaving for work at 6 am and complaining about being tired I rolled over and told him we don't know tired yet. He laughed as he thought the same thing as the words came out of his mouth. EVERYONE is telling us how sleep deprived we will be, so we are expecting it. Over dinner the other night my brother Jer told me that the first four months are really hard (he has a beautiful 9 month old girl), he remembers them being extremely difficult, but cannot recall why :) Must be some form of amnesia otherwise people would probably only have one child, like birth right? If you could remember the details exactly you might not sign up for it again. I have a nightly schedule of which I get up to drink water or use the restroom and I am curious if that will be at all related to Baby Gerrans' schedule. Depending on what time I go to bed each night, which seems to be later and later, I usually get up at 1:40, 3:20, and 5:45 (I note the time each occasion). It is almost like clockwork. When I am down I am sleeping pretty well unless my hands fall asleep. They seem to be more swollen than my feet these days and I am still having a lot of pain in my joints.

I am not ready to pop yet but starting Wednesday I will technically be 36 weeks which means if I go into labor they won't stop it. Everyone seems to have arrived late in my family and it looks that way for Robert's too, but part of me thinks that Baby Gerrans will get his Daddy's obnoxiously early gene. Have you ever invited him over and he arrived 15-20 min before you wanted him there? :) If that is the case I want to be as ready as possible. The hospital bags are all packed and we will be putting them in the car next week (after my cleaning spell is over). I have packed our freezer with enough frozen dinners to feed an army. I am stocking the pantry with tons of things from the bulk aisles and next week plan to get some canning on! If anyone wants to join this pregnant lady for a can-fest I am going to be making jam and processing tomatoes first, then we'll see how I feel after that. Though I am ready on that end our furniture is still not here! Argh!! It shipped from LA last week and makes a stop in San Leandro where they take their time processing it before bringing it to our home. This is probably why I am really not ready for pregnancy to be over. We do have a beautiful cradle that has been passed down through Robert's family for many generations, but I neglected to measure it so the mattress I ordered is too small and the mattress company has a really organic way of getting back to its customers about returns. Worse comes to worse I'll co-sleep until we get all this mess figured out. Maybe these are my hiccups? meaning that labor will go smoothly and I am just stressed about silly stuff instead; I like that idea ;)

I noted above that I am having a cleaning spell. Not a scrub kind of clean spell, but rather a cleaning out spell. I decided to indulge in one non-pregnancy/baby book before baby arrives and chose Zero Waste Home by a local Marin woman. She and her family throw out one quart of trash a year! Wow, when I saw that I had to read it. While I won't be at their status anytime soon, it definitely has inspired me to let go of so many things I really don't need and to stop buying things in unnecessary packaging. I have been going through each room getting rid of stuff I am holding on to for that "someday" when I "might" need it. I donated nine bags of clothes this week, four boxes of housewares, and 67 books! It feels amazing to lighten my load. We use our third bathroom as storage and someday soon I would like to turn that space into a new kitchen so the goal is to either get rid or store those items somewhere else. This is not necessarily nesting as from what I have heard nesting is this burst of energy that you get to clean something two to three days before you go into labor, our egg lady cleaned all of her blinds with a toothbrush two days before she had her eldest daughter. However this is a great distraction from the fact that the nursery is not done and it will be wonderful to have purged before baby arrives. One less thing to worry about. I highly recommend this book not only for those of you who could use a little purging, but for all who could use a little simplicity in their lives. It is great food for thought!

In addition to all the wonderfulness that surrounds me week to week while I am pregnant Baby Gerrans gave mom and dad a big laugh this week! So one thing that Robert and I are sure to disagree about when it comes to parenting is the TV. We argue about it now and Baby Gerrans isn't even here yet. Robert loves the TV, he'd have one in every room and swears he couldn't live without it. I on the other hand would find great joy in throwing it into the street and watching it get run over by a semi truck :), sorry honey that is harsh but its how I feel. From that you can probably tell that I would like to be the type of person who does not allow their children to watch it and he would like to sit with Baby Gerrans and watch the darn thing from the start. EVERY parenting book that I have read has said that a baby should not be exposed to television for at least the first two years....even in the background!! I am not making this up and everytime I find it written down I make sure to share, some even suggest the first five years! Their brains aren't ready for it and can't handle it, so you better believe that this momma-to-be has got her boxing gloves on for this fight. The other night as we are getting ready for bed and having one of our discussions, Robert with his I want to be able to relax argument and my you can find another way to relax when baby is around (relaxing apparently has not left our vocabulary although many parents are probably reading this and laughing because we think we will be able to relax!). I am laying in bed basting the belly and he comes over to the exposed belly gets real close and says "baby kick once for no TV and kick twice if you want to watch TV" what do you think baby did???? Gave a ginormous kick!! ONE GINORMOUS KICK!! The kind that makes my belly really move. It startled Robert as he had never really seen it stir like that!! He was a little baffled and asked it I made it do that but I assured him I couldn't and tried to replicate it. So there you go dad, baby and mom agree no TV :) I was of course happy as a clam at high tide and Robert though a little defeated thought it was pretty cool. I think he said "oh its a girl." This has to be one of the best moments ;)

This is not so wonderful but I want to put this in writing so that I remember it, I do not want to be a cynical or negative mom. We celebrated Mother's Day with grandparents-to-be and mommy-to-be at the very beautiful Filoli mansion in Woodacre and we had a wonderful time awing over flowers and old things. While waiting in one of the lines for the restroom we met a baby that was 5 weeks old. An adorable little girl. Moms, especially new moms, always want to talk about babies, birth, etc. so naturally I struck up a conversation with her, her mother, and my mother. Not too long into the conversation I wanted to run. She didn't have anything nice to say and acted like everything was such a burden. Yes its hard, nothing in life prepares you for this, but if you focus on the negative that is all you get. As we all finally made a break for it, she yelled to us "get the epidural and take the meds they're great". Wildly inappropriate to say to a pregnant lady even if you do believe it. I desperately hope that I will not feel this sort of negativity about being tired, worn out, dirty, hungry, etc. I want this little baby more than anything so there is no room for complaints!

Other than that mother's day was great. I mentioned last week that Robert took me into the city to buy me something special for my first mother's day. While we wandered around Union Square and I admired that gorgeous stove I couldn't find anything that I really needed. I could have gotten some of our wedding china, but it sort of felt wrong to buy something that I would need to store until we can find a hutch. As we ate a delicious lunch it came to me, what I really wanted for Mother's Day was for him to build me some garden boxes for veggies in our yard. I have had a veggie garden, but the gophers had just discovered it (I have killed six this week alone!) and no matter how much I amended it the soil was awful. He obliged to build them, but noted that of course I had to be high maintenance in my own way, I can't simply buy something expensive he has to give me his sweat too! Well on his day off he put them together for me and filled them with organic compost. You can see the picture he snapped below of the finished product. I planted a tomato I grew from seed and........ gherkins! That way I can take a stab at making my own cornichons (apparently I still think I will have time for canning this fall, denial?). I have since planted two more tomato varieties,  a sweet pepper and many seeds from the baby shower favors that Carolyn put together, the lettuce and basil are already coming up! I am so excited about my boxes and they are a much better Mother's Day gift than a mortar and pestle, a dinner plate, or that stove :).

Cheers!!

Me and my new garden boxes. Wow I look large!

Here is a baby sweater that I crocheted and finally finished this week. I used the same yarn that I had chosen for a hat that I made for Mandi's baby because I loved it so much and added some vintage buttons my mom had laying around. This was so hard and took me so long (I started it in February) so now I understand why those adorable items I see in boutiques are so darn expensive!! Of course my computer won't turn it the right way. It is made to fit a 6-10 month old baby so it should be perfect for Baby Gerrans come this winter. I can add flowers to it if we have a Marilyn as it does feel a little boyish.