28? 29?

Last time, I had every week memorized. This time, I look at my calendar, because I’ve offloaded keeping track of the weeks onto the scheduling tool designed to keep track of weeks. Most of my belly pics are on snapchat, and I usually remember to save them.

We’ve both been growing! The Predator has also become sentient, kicking back when I poke at it. It first became aware of me about a month ago while I was on a plane for hours and kicked the same spot repeatedly. Now we have afternoon poke-the-other-one sessions, which is all fun and games until this alien starts stretching. It likes to dance at night, and it is amazingly strong. What I find amazing is that now I can look at pictures of friend’s babies born way too soon and see the development stage of this alien/predator, and then I can marvel at the four-year-old that the smallest one has become.

I went back to Atlanta to do some things at the old house and was surprised at how much I wanted to fix things up at that house and get them ready and how little interest I have in unpacking or getting things ready at the new house. Mostly, I want to replace the carpet in the new house, and that’s about it. I washed the box of infant clothes, but haven’t folded it or anything- I just wanted the maternity clothes that were also in the box.

I’m still not sure about joining the campus-employed-affiliated women’s group. I went to another meeting (the first one, I was asked exactly zero questions about myself- they were all about my husband or child(ren)), and I put my “going to talk about me” plan into action, answering questions about my husband’s employment (beyond he’s a professor in the business… thing) with answers about my own employment, and then asking about theirs. In my small sample size of “the people I sat near”, it turns out the spouses of professors are under-employed and have mostly taken jobs outside of their professions just to do something. I also learned that the county schools are severely underfunded and still use corporal punishment. So, you know, yay.

Speaking of school, I dropped my class this semester. After finally seeing the syllabus, I realized that a) I’d done nearly all of the material in undergrad, b) it was going to be way more work than I’d anticipated, c) it wasn’t going to be a well-run class and the stress it was going to cause wasn’t worth it. I’m still getting updates from the forum (though I’ve definitely dropped the class), and yikes- those post titles stress me out, about typos in tests, typos in assignments, assignments needing revisions, projects and quizzes being released late, grades being release in waves, weeks after I figured they’d be finished… I believe I made the correct decision.

 

 

23

Ok! Into the land of viability and also Mississippi, a land of fewer reproductive rights/options.

Moving:

We’ve (mostly) moved! Woooo! We’ve made three moving trips from the house, which, in total, equal 2 trailers, 2 pickups, 5 cars worth of stuff, and there’s still furniture and miscellaneous shit at the GA house. And it still needs some cleaning. And empty-box-picking-up. We did get one of our containers delivered, to be picked up too soon. The calculation of needing to get things put away in order to unload more of the container didn’t really cross our minds when scheduling the dates. Fortunately (for us, not for them), the container company we used is having some equipment issues and pickup is delayed 2 days. Since dropoff was delayed 1 day, it’s a net gain of about 24 hours, but that 24 hours are weekend hours.

New House:

Putting things away is also interesting. I’m wondering how many arguments are started around thoughts of where to put the pan/pot lids. I have also cursed at all the kitchen appliances except the garbage disposal. Builder’s stock appliances are fine examples of design, development and implementation/testing happening in disconnected spheres.

Our challenges have mostly been around ways in which this house is newer: we don’t have a handy cat door to a room, so we got one of the pieces of furniture that holds a litter box. Fine. Great. It’s tall enough inside that our litter-box-hood-averse Crax is using it. Uma can totally stick her head in there to get snacks, so it’s currently, inefficiently surrounded by boxes that Uma’s just walking though and pushes the whole cabinet far enough away from those obstacles to get her head in. Short of another flap on that thing, we’re kind of stumped.

We’ve had an adventure with customer service at Sear’s, trying to get a washer & dryer purchased, delivered, and installed. Some parts are really excellent (online chat, Twitter responsiveness, central delivery coordinator, delivery updates via text/website), and some highlight the disconnect between stores and the central services (actual delivery scheduling, warehouse procedures, the ordering website.) In the end, it’s all worked out, just a bit more stressful than we would have liked.

Facehugger:

Is loving Kindergarten. She’s been bumped up to reading class with first grade and, her teacher admits, could switch to the first grade curriculum, but developmentally, she’s very much a Kindergartener. She wears a uniform to school, too, which is terribly cute and also makes getting dressed really easy. We’re working on helping around the house and trying to get our family organized and into a pattern that helps her out: chaos and clutter really aren’t working with homework.

Sequel:

Kicking, growing, etc… Still little kicks, which is fine. We had the 20-week anatomy scan and that showed us a fine-looking Predator. I had my first visit in Oxford and, apart from the appointment being mostly 3 hours of waiting, it was fine. The doc is super laid-back, she’s been the first not to cringe at the size of my first kid. I was very reassured by her statement of “Hey, should make things easy!” vs. wincing + instant questions about gestational diabetes, c-section, other things. Those were covered, but not as part of this question. I also learned that since the hospital is across the street, docs go over to deliver the babies of their patients during the weekdays, which causes most of the appointment delays. Noting this, I made my next appointment for the morning. A new hospital is under construction, so I should be one of the first to experience the new maternity space (by about a month or so). Hopefully, they’ve figured out how to organize the pan & pot lids.

I was a bit amazed by the response I got on Facebook from a picture of me with eclipse glasses on the bump (during the eclipse). I’d posted about it about 2 months before and Twitter understood, so it was surprising and that I got more than one semi-indignant private message about not telling [someone] right away. Truth be told, I just didn’t want to. With enough other stress in my life, I didn’t want to deal with someone else’s thoughts, advice, anxieties, or other feelings being projected on to me, or to have some expectation of reporting anything to someone other than myself or my spouse. Most people who figured it out earlier are also people who aren’t going to be bombarding me with status questions or trying to live vicariously through me. I also don’t want to deal with other people obsessing over a particular date, so I’m going with a December time frame.

 

18, already

And still so far to go. I started re-reading the posts I made when Lena was growing, and I was amazed that I had time to write so much! And so many thoughts!

I felt those little flutters very early again this time (13 weeks), confirmed to be something correct via doppler the next day at an appointment.  At 18 weeks this time, I don’t feel anything very definitive as even maybe-kicks. It all feels very still. I can feel a hard bump that changes location, so I know something’s there.  But I’m still a bit disappointed in the lack of even maybe-kicks.

Morning sickness (the sickness part) didn’t last as long, which was weird. It pretty much disappeared (except the tiredness) around week 9. I want to exercise and run now, until I get outside in the heat and I go “lol, no.” I’ve done a few 5ks and 10ks, and I’d like to do another 5k, but the timing is bad because of this move.

House selling/buying is stressful. I have these feelings of nobody wanting the house, even if we listed it for free. And that someone’s going to way lowball the price, and Jeremy will accept anything that comes toward us, but they’re just going to gut or tear down the house and use the tiny house for their gas-powered lawnmower. Or tear it down, too. We’re not listing it for much more than the 8-cat house sold for (which was nearly 800 sq ft smaller), so if it goes for less than that house, I’ll be very disappointed. WABE is running articles on how pretty much all houses are getting into bidding wars because people want to be in good school districts (check), close in (check, we’re itp), and houses are selling super fast (lol.) So I feel like those articles are lies or we have an unsellable house that people like because it’s so conveniently located to everything (like easy interstate access!), but is terrible because it’s close enough to hear that it’s conveniently located near the interstate.

So we won’t get it sold before we need to close on our other house, so we have to get some gap/bridge financing, which is yet another round of paperwork. Hooray. And more banks and credit checking and so many documents, so we can own two houses at the same time.

And all of the uncertainty is definitely fueling even worse dreams of everyone in the family dying on the same day. It’s usually me bleeding to death during an unwarranted c-section to deliver a stillborn baby, and then Jeremy in a car wreck  on the way to get home because someone’s broken into the house and killed whoever was watching Lena and then kidnapped Lena. It’s awesome. Sleeping so well.

Anyway, next on the list: making appointments in the new town before school starts, so that Lena has the immunization paperwork in order. Wheeeeeeee. And making my appointments at one of the two obgyn practices. I’m going to try the one that’s not all older white dudes first.

Week 4

Everything has a smell. Everything.

Also, I have a lot of disbelief that this is actually happening again. Three cheap-o tests (the finest you can buy for cents per test) weren’t convincing enough, so I hunted down the second in the 2-pack of digital tests that I bought to be sure that I was pregnant last time. Turns out, 6+ year old, previously unused, stored in a cool dark place digital tests still work, and also confirmed what the other tests had suggested. As if everything having a smell didn’t tip me off.

So I guess we’re in for this ride again.

Exercise

I feel that being a student and being an artist are both an exercise in self doubt. When a student, though, the doubt ends: someone pronounces you worthy or not.

Dreams

Waking up Lena, after a night of my poor sleep, where I had dreams of volcanoes and plane crashes:
Me: Good morning!
Lena: Good morning. My brain was full of sharks.

Snorts

I got up one chilly morning this week, in a hurry, and heard Lena sniffling to herself in bed. I went in and asked, "What’s wrong, honey?" She squirmed around in bed, nose stuffed up, trying to breathe heavily in through just her nose, looked at me with tears nearly filling her eyes, "My snorts aren’t coming out!"
She was cold and couldn’t breathe through her nose. Poor snorts. Warmed her up and fixed those snorts!