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| Did you know that the inside of your bellybutton is really, really soft? I never would have known that but for this pregnancy. My bellybutton hasn't quite popped out, but it's gone completely flat so I can feel the skin. Softer than a baby's bottom. Who knew?
The baby is getting really antsy in there, I can tell. Lots of stretching out, rolling around, poking and prodding me where the sun don't shine, almost like he's trying to break free. Sometimes I'll see a bump protrude from the side of my belly and just hang out there for a few seconds, until I push on it. Lately, he's been a bit more aggressive so it'll actually startle me a little when he does that. Husband will never know what's it like to be punched from the inside. Or feel how soft his naval skin is.
I've had a few really uncommon pregnancy side effects...one of the more common ones that I've started to experience in recent weeks is the bleeding gum thing. It's always in one particular spot, and whenever I put floss to it, however gently, I start bleeding there like a stuck pig. I could probably fill half a thimble with the lost blood. At first, I'd try to stem the flow with some tissue, but it got to be so cumbersome that I now just let it flow as I floss the rest of my teeth. Makes me look like a recently satisfied vampire.
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| I stood in line for 2.75 hours yesterday to receive the hiny vaccine. The first two hours, I stood in the line that wrapped around the government building, in the drizzling rain. The last 45 minutes, I sat in a waiting room overflowing with children, babies, and strollers. I wasn't sure what was worse. The 2 hours in the cold and rain, or the 45 minutes in a stuffy waiting room packed in like sardines with multiple screaming children/babies. The word "hell" actually came to mind as I described to myself the ambience in the waiting room, so I guess the waiting room was worse.
I got to the govt building at 9am, and learned that people had started lining up at 5am. I chided myself for forgetting something I learned during my consignment sale adventures. Moms and children start their days at ungodly hours of morning. So if I want to be the early bird where moms and children are bound to go, 9am just isn't going to cut it.
I've been hounding my sister for weeks now to get the flu shot. She's a teacher and very prone to catching whatever disease anyone in her proximity happens to have. Including slapped-face syndrome...what the? Anyway, not only is she prone to disease, she herself is also very contagious. I hardly ever get sick, but if there is one person who can get me sick, it's her. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she's not very good about covering her mouth when she coughs. Or washing her hands for that matter. When we had our family reunion in LA a couple months ago, she flew all the way from Korea with some nasty bug and proceeded to give it to me, Husband, and my mom that week. To her credit, she did attempt to protect us though by wearing a bandanna for a couple hours.
Yo sis, if you're reading this, go get the flu shot already. Or at least wash your hands religiously.
While I'm on the topic, I hate this swine flu, it's cramping my style. First of all, my maternity tour got cancelled. Isn't that a rite of passage? A tour of the facilities where your baby will be born, and where you will undergo the most excruciating pain of your life? Second of all, my hospital changed its visitor policy so that only one visitor can be in the room at the same time. So if I wanted to hire a doula or midwife to assist me through labor (which I was actually considering), Husband would have to wait in the car (or at home). Lastly, my hospital is also trying to discharge moms and babies 24 hours after the birth in an attempt to get them out of the germ zone faster. If it were up to me, I'd stay at the hospital as long as I possibly can. The thought of being sent home with an infant really frightens me if I think about it. Husband will be there of course, but he's never taken care of an infant before. I'm not sure he's ever even held one. He is a master google researcher though, so at least he knows how to get some answers quick. My mom will be there too, but it's been 21 years since she's had to take care of a newborn. Is taking care of a baby like riding a bike? I don't know. Plus, parenting philosophies were pretty different back then. Should be interesting...
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| One thing I love to do is browse through thrift/antique stores, and I get such a thrill out of finding something to take home with me. It combines my love for a good bargain, and my interest in making old/junky things functional/beautiful again. And also my appreciation of living a "greener" lifestyle and reducing waste in general. I stopped doing the second-hand goods circuit after I got married because I just didn't know where there were any good stores in this area, and husband generally likes things new and more importantly, verifiably "clean." To him, second-hand stores are a wasteland of germs, dust, and other people's trash. I say he just lacks imagination. :) Maybe I should direct him to the website designspongeonline.com--it has a "Before and After" section that is just loaded with examples of people who've bought "junk" and lovingly massaged it back to life, often with stunning results.
Anyway, a couple months ago, I finally found a thrift store and I've been getting a high off going there ever since. First of all, I've been able to stock baby's library at insanely low prices. Instead of paying 5.99+ for a new board book, I've been able to purchase armloads of them for an average of two or three quarters each. And not just any books--I'm talking classics!
Second, I've been trolling the furniture aisles just for kicks, and yesterday, I scored an interesting piece of furniture that I plan to use to store baby's toys. I spent the afternoon yesterday sanding the heck out of it, removing the rusty hinges and drawer knobs, and picking off the cobwebs. It'll probably sit there for weeks while I mull over how I want to paint it, and which knobs I want to place on the drawers, but it makes me happy to have another project where I can work with my hands. When Husband walked in the door yesterday and saw the work in progress, he exclaimed, "Honey, someone left some trash down here!" followed by, "How much did you pay for this?" Ha, he'll eat his words when he sees the final product, and discovers how functional it is. I'll be sure to post my own before and after pictures when it's done.
Lastly, I picked up an old copy of "The Pilgrim's Progress" at a used booksale a few weeks ago for a buck. I wanted to read it so I was happy to find it for so cheap, but I also liked the look of it...had a vintage feel. I know nothing about appraising the value of old things, particularly books, but I opened it up today for the first time and saw an inscription inside that someone had written....according to the inscription, the book was a gift to a friend, in 1905!! And it smelled like it was from 1905 too...really dusty. I love it. :)
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| This past weekend, Husband and I went to Shenandoah National Park to catch the fall foliage before it peaked. We've done this every October, but we always went too late and ended up seeing mostly dead trees with a few faded brown, yellow leaves hanging on for dear life. This year, we timed it much better and saw spectacular valleys gleaming with fire. As we were driving along the mountain roads, Husband said, "Wouldn't it be awesome if right this second, a couple of bear cubs started rolling down the hill right beside us, wrestling one another?" Well, that didn't happen. But later on that day as we were driving along, two bear cubs and their mama (or maybe it was an older sibling b/c the "mama" wasn't all that big) suddenly emerged from the woods and lumbered across the street right in front of our car! I managed to pull out the camera and snap a couple pictures as they were directly in front of us, and again as they scrambled into the woods on the other side of the road. And the only reason we happened to be at that spot on the road at that exact time was because we had driven into some dense fog and decided to turn around and head south out of the park. Anyway, that night, we thanked God for blessing us, even in the little things...the way it didn't rain like the forecast said it would, the way the sun actually shined all morning, the way we saw bears after Husband expressed his desire to see some bears...how amazing that God even cares about the silly, inconsequential desires of our hearts.
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| Feeling the baby move is definitely one of the trippiest things about pregnancy. It's so surreal, i have to actually walk my mind through this exercise to remind myself what's really going on: "There is a real live human being inside there, an actual person, with a face, and arms and legs that he can stretch and use to poke and punch and roll around." Yes, I actually say that to myself sometimes to connect these strange sensations with reality. And then I sit there, kind of in awe at the whole thing.
I'm pretty sure I love this little human being inside me, but I still feel awkward at the thought of relating with him face to face. I can barely bring myself to even talk to him in utero. I say "Good Morning" occasionally when I start to feel him moving around in the am, and when his kicks get a little too aggressive, sometimes I'll react with "Agh, what are you doing in there??" but that's about the extent of it. I guess I'm just not good at making small talk in general. Husband isn't much better though. Whenever the mood strikes him, he always ends up saying the same thing. After invoking our son's name, he says, "I am your father." Sometimes that's followed by, "You better be nice to your mother," or something semi-threatening like that. And that's about it. Our poor baby. Hopefully by the time he is born, we'll have come up with a few more topics of conversation. Maybe it's just hard for us to hold one-way conversations, but isn't that how it goes for the first couple years?
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