Superwoman! Or maybe just nesting.

My house is looking GOOD these days. Still a little cluttered; still less cute and decorated than I'd like. But clean? Definitely a drastic improvement from how it's been the last few months.

I've made myself a daily to-do list to try and help keep me motivated to keep it up, because honestly, it's hard. I am not someone who enjoys cleaning by nature, so even though I like the results, it's SO much easier to just sit in the recliner and do nothing. But, knowing myself, if I slack off too much, I'll fall right back into my old habits of letting my house look like crap all the time. It feels good, though, ticking off the chores on my list.

I have to admit, I feel a little bit like Superwoman when I think about all the stuff I've gotten done today (and on previous days). It's coming up on 4:00 pm as I write this, and so far I have:
-Made the bed
-Swept the hall and kitchen
-Done the dishes
-Cleaned old food out of the fridge
-Taken out the trash
-Vacuumed the bedroom
-Painted a layer of topcoat on two long dresser drawers

Someone suggested that I'm nesting. I kind of hope they're wrong. I want to believe that I've turned over a new leaf, and if it's nesting, then what happens when Little Boy gets here? Am I going to go back to being a cruddy housewife? I'm afraid I'm setting my expectations for myself a little high right now, and that I'm going to be really disappointed in myself when the dishes aren't done every night before bed, and the kitchen needs mopping, and the laundry piles up, and the bed doesn't get made the entire day.

Also, can I just say to the women of Sept. 2012: STOP HAVING BABIES ALREADY. Do you guys know how impatient I'm getting when you keep posting pics of your beautiful new children and I'm still sitting here, massively pregnant and uncomfortable and WEEKS away from my due date? Ugh. Stop that. Maybe I should go put my shoes on and walk around my neighborhood to try and encourage this baby to engage a little. I'll be 37 weeks on Sunday, "to term", and he can come any time after Monday without me being the least bit upset.

Paint fumes, maternity pictures, and ultrasound drama

Fun mix of subjects, right? But that's just what's going on in my life these days. :)

So...paint fumes. We painted our little guy's dresser over the weekend but it turns out that the paint is flimsy and chips crazy easy. DH and I bought a topcoat last night and I decided to paint on my own. I figured, hey, I'll wear a mask and open the window and it won't be so bad. WRONG. The whole house reeks right now. I've got the bedroom window open with a fan running and towels stuffed under the door to try and contain the stank. I also have my back door open and my spiced pumpkin candle burning. I called DH and told him that he will definitely be finishing the dresser on his own. I feel fine, no lightheaded feelings or headaches or anything, but I probably don't need to be breathing in fumes.

We got our maternity pictures back this weekend. I can't even begin to pretend that they were worth the drama or the crazy expense, but they do look nice. It still astounds me how huge my belly is these days...it just seems impossible that everything could stretch that far!

Just a couple of them that I particularly like. :)

And the ultrasound drama. Ugh. My midwife's office ordered four more weeks of BPPs without telling me why. I was a mess wondering if something was wrong with our little guy and they just hadn't informed me. I finally got a half-decent answer from one of the NPs yesterday. She told me she thinks that the scheduling was actually an error, said that the baby looks TOTALLY fine, and that they're still waiting to hear from my midwife whether or not she's actually wanting to do the BPPs or if she's just wanting a repeat growth scan to check up on him. I adore my midwife, but oh my goodness, you cannot keep a pregnant woman waiting like that.

Four weeks left until our due date. Insanity. Once this dresser is done, we'll be pretty much ready for little guy to get here. I can't wait to meet him!

Rawwwr.

Translation: stay out of my way today.

I am in the worst mood EVER, and I don't even know why. I feel tired and grumpy and extremely irritable. I think it's a combination of many things: hormones, discomfort, and things not going as planned. Let's start with this weekend, shall we?

Our plan was to finish painting Little Boy's dresser this weekend, let it sit for a couple days, and then load it up with all his clothes and whatnot. Hah. We used a paint sprayer and air compressor, and apparently the compressor wasn't quite strong enough because the paint flow was a little flaky. (At least the paint color is gorgeous, though.) After all of it was dry, we discovered that it chips off EXTREMELY easy...what the heck? We primed, sanded, and painted two coats, and yet I can scratch paint off with my finger nail. So all that hard work was pretty useless. I told DH that if we can find some kind of low-VOC varnish to topcoat it with, I can do that myself while he's at work. I'm just grumpy that it needs more work at all...we have put SO many hours into that stupid freaking dresser and I feel like it'll never be done.

I'm also sick of waiting for my midwife's office to get back to me and let me know what the crud is going on with my ultrasounds. I was told that if little boy got up to the 11th percentile, we'd be in the clear. At my last growth scan, they told me that he was at the 15th percentile and that there was "no medical reason" to continue the ultrasounds. I got a call on Friday saying that they were sorry I had missed my appointment, so I asked what appointment and the scheduler said, "Oh, you had an ultrasound on the 21st that you didn't show up for." ...I did? No one ever told me I had another ultrasound. In fact, they told me the exact opposite. So I'm still waiting to find out WHY I'm being scheduled for more ultrasounds, because at this point all I know is that they want me to have at least one BPP a week for the next four weeks. Did I mention that I'm due in 4 weeks? Again...rawr.

I am not having a good day.

I wish I had any clue how to do a custom blog layout.

Because I would pimp dis blog out, yo.

Ahem. Sorry.

But seriously, I would totally redesign my blog. I love love LOVE the colors that I have right now, but sometimes you just want to change things up. I am horribly inept at even using premade blog templates...any time my blog has ever looked nice, it's because my sweet friend Breanna set it up for me. I always manage to do something wrong, and end up with the old design awkwardly spliced with the new.

What makes a blog visually appealing to you? Is it about simplicity or lots of razzle dazzle? I know I'm missing a lot of stuff like archive links, a decent profile photo or "about me" section, etc etc etc. I'm not creative in real life, either, so I guess it just sort of spills over into my mediocre blogging life.

And just for the sake of being TOTALLY random since I have no good way to wrap up this post, here's an old picture of me as a blonde. (It was fun, but way too much work.)

...But what if I'm bad at this?

Part of me can't wrap my mind around the fact that this large, wiggly lump in my stomach is actually our child. That's a real person in there, a little life we struggled to create. We prayed for him, begged for him, took countless pee tests waiting for some news of his pending arrival, and yet...somehow, he still feels like a figment of my imagination sometimes. Like, there is NO WAY I'm going to go to the hospital and push out a real, live baby and that baby will be ours forever.

And then the part of me that accepts that he is, indeed, a real, live baby that will be ours forever can't believe that the idiots at the hospital will be dumb enough to actually let us take him. Are they insane? Do they realize that we have no idea what to do with a baby? DH has never changed a diaper in his life. I've never taken care of a baby for more than a few hours, myself, and I'm the "experienced" one.

I'm so scared of the change that this little guy is bringing into our lives. We're going to cease to be just Nikki and Nikki's DH. Suddenly, one day next month, we're going to become R---'s mom and dad. The closer I get to that day, the more I realize that I'm going to have to totally get to know this little stranger. How can he be a stranger when he's grown in my body for 9 months? How is it that he's going to come out of me, and yet I'll still have to learn everything about him? It just seems impossibly ridiculous that this is the way having a baby works.

I know all the hesitations and fears I'm having are totally normal. And honestly, I'd side-eye any first time mom who went into childbirth without trepidation. You'd have to be a crazy person to not be a little frightened by the prospect of a tiny life depending on you 24/7 for love, food, shelter, and comfort. But I still feel like I'm being "that" pregnant lady. The one who worries, "What if my kid doesn't like me?" He'll grow to like you. He's a baby. "What if I can't figure out what he needs?" You will. You'll learn to read his cries and his cues and if all else fails, call your doctor. "What if he grows up too fast?" He will. Just remember that through all the nights of sleeplessness, the thousand diapers a day, the anxiety and stress of newborn care. This too shall pass, and you'll wish you could have it back, so don't rush through a single minute of it.

I hope that somehow, this little guy knows how much I love him already. I promise, little dude, I will try SO hard to be the best mom I can be. Be patient with me. You're kind of a new experience.

Clearly, I have no willpower.

When fall comes around (or even just moderately cooler summer weather), I cannot resist the urge to bake. Anything with pumpkin in it makes me ridiculously happy. My Pumpkin Spice candle from Yankee Candle company has already clocked a good 8 hours of burn time in the last couple weeks just because it lets me feel like I'm baking something delicious, without the temptation to consume the calories.

So today, while DH sanded the primer on the dresser drawers for baby boy's room, I baked. I couldn't help myself. I know I'm up 30lbs this pregnancy. I know I need to be careful about my sugar intake. I know carbs aren't all that good for me. But sometimes, I just don't care. And baking is one of those times. I wanted to bake bread, but I wanted pumpkin...so I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip bread. It smelled like autumnal heaven in my house while it baked, and was equally delicious once it came out of the loaf pans and was cool enough to eat.

I got the recipe here. I will definitely be making the bread again at some point, but I'll probably half the amount of nutmeg that the recipe calls for. It's good, but I haven't used much nutmeg before so the flavor for me is almost a little overwhelming.

I am really hoping that this coming weekend will be the end of our baby room preparations. The dresser and drawers are all primed and sanded...all we have left to do is paint the thing. We have a spray gun and are going to borrow an air compressor so hopefully, the painting will go by really quickly. I'm so impatient to just get it in the room and get all his teensy little clothing into it. We've got all his laundry done and folded and sorted by size, and now we're just...waiting. I still need to pack my hospital bag, but that feels a little too "real" and I just can't bring myself to do it.

35 weeks down...35 days to go. Here's my bump picture; I haven't posted one in a few weeks.

One happy momma!

This pregnancy has been full of fun little ups and downs, but I am so excited that it looks like things are going to be more "up" from here on out!

For the last three weeks, I've been going for weekly biophysical profiles for our little guy. (BPPs are ultrasounds that look at things like movement, breathing practice, etc.) He was measuring in the 8th percentile, and they were worried that he may be experiencing some form of growth restriction. They gave him until the 14th (yesterday) to get up to the 11th percentile, or else I'd be switched from my midwife to a high-risk OB and probably be induced between 37-39 weeks.

I was a little anxious going into the ultrasound, which I'm guessing isn't all that surprising. I could tell my belly felt a tiny bit bigger, but was it enough? Was he going to hit the 11th percentile? As someone who is desperately wanting as natural of a birth as possible, the idea of induction was terrifying to me. I had the best ultrasound tech named Monica, who really helped put me at ease. (My mom also got to go with me...her first time seeing Wee Laddie since he was about 7 weeks along! Quite the change since then, haha.) Monica took all the measurements, and reassured me that things like fluid levels and all that jazz looked good. Our final percentile? 15th!!!! We are now out of the "worry zone" and back up into normal numbers. Still small, but totally healthy. I am beyond thrilled!

The best part of the ultrasound was toward the end when we noticed his eyes moving a little. (Which, to be honest, looks a little weird!) We were all laughing at how funny it looked when I realized he seemed like he was responding a little more to my voice. So I started talking to him. His eyes immediately looked up towards my voice and he started blinking and really seemed like he was paying attention. Even the tech thought it was really cool! Little guy knows his momma already. :)

In other baby-related news, DH and I have my maternity photo shoot this weekend. My mom got me an awesome maxi dress from Old Navy that actually fits. I'm only about 5'1", so normally anything that's meant to be long is comically oversized on me, but this actually hits at the perfect length. I can't wait! DH and I have never had professional pictures done, so I'm looking forward to having some frame-worthy shots to put up in our house. Also on the agenda this weekend is painting baby boy's dresser so that we can finally get all his clothing and stuff put away in his room. I am so ready for that part...it feels like we're rapidly running out of time, and I want to just be DONE with the nursery.

Hope my slew of dedicated readers are all doing well. All five of you. ;)

Ugly dumplings and baby stuff.

I never really cooked or baked growing up, but once I got married and DH and I moved to France, I really started to love experimenting in the kitchen. (Not a big fan of the cleaning afterwards, but you take the bad with the good.)

Now, DH is not an adventurous eater. I normally tease him about being picky, but he really has expanded his tastes drastically since we got married three years ago. (I like to think my nagging had something to do with that.) He's still a meat and taters kind of guy, but he'll eat onions, some veggies (if they're cooked right), non soy-sauce based Asian food, and a handful of other stuff. Along with his willingness to try more foods comes the opportunity for me to COOK more foods. On tonight's menu? Brown rice and stir fried veggies, with homemade beef dumplings.

I do not make pretty dumplings. Don't judge me.

I honestly have no idea how these are going to turn out, and they may really be awful, but they at least look semi-nice, right? I made the peanut butter cookies on the bottom when DH got turned down for a promotion a couple weeks ago. I am firmly of the opinion that sadness deserves delicious dessert.

On another note, our crib should be here by the end of the week! So excited! It wasn't supposed to be back in stock until August 31st but ended up being restocked early. I'm ready to have our little guy's room done and ready for him. I'm feeling incredibly unprepared, especially with the knowledge that he could be here in as little as four weeks. (I think I just threw up a little when I typed that last sentence.)

Our next biophysical profile is tomorrow, and the growth scan is next Tuesday. DH is coming to the growth scan with me, for which I am very thankful. If we get bad news, I'm going to want him with me to keep me from bawling the rest of the day. We just need our little boy to have grown from the 8th percentile up to the 11th, and then we'll be home free. But if he's not up to where they want, I'll be labelled high-risk, have to go in twice a week for non-stress tests and BPPs, and I'll be induced somewhere between 37 and 39 weeks. Considering that I am all crunchy granola and wanted to go totally natural, that is way, way disappointing. But mostly, I just want our kiddo to be ok.

How are things in your world? Everyone good? Anyone reading this? I think I hear crickets chirping...