Yes, I know it’s supposed to be Tuesday; I’m a slacker these days. Or maybe these are next week’s and I’m just ahead of the game.

1. I love Jelly Belly jelly beans. John and I got in a fight Tuesday, and after it was over and we had made up, we went up to the mall and got a big pile of jelly beans and Happy Feet and The Pursuit of Happiness. Some people have make-up sex, we have make-up movie night.
2. I don’t care for mangos. I love just about every fruit, but mangos taste like pine trees to me. (John got some mango jelly beans that I’m picking around as we speak, or type, I guess.)
3. My Mom’s birthday is Saturday and I made her a really cute framed picture collage of Dash’s ultrasounds. I’ll have to take a picture; it turned out way better than I thought it would.
4. My boss is no longer in Huntsville. Well, the man who WAS my boss still is, but they’ve restructured our department and now my boss is in Miami. I’m the only one in our group whose boss isn’t on site. I think I might ask if I can work from home once I get to know the guy.
5. John’s going to a baseball game tonite and getting fitted for a tux for a friend of ours’ wedding. I’m making a cake for their shower, and I’m excited about it because I’ve never made one like this. I’m debating on using marshmallow fondant (sorry, Roz) or regular icing. If I use regular icing it’ll be cute but good, but if I use fondant it’ll be adorable but just ok taste-wise. Unless you peel the fondant off, and who likes to do that? I think I may go with icing.
6. I fell and busted my arse last night. Thankfully it wasn’t a hard fall. We have 2 brick stairs out in our garage, and I have to kind of take them sideways now, and when I took the last one, I stepped on my shoe wrong and kind of fell into a lunge. I scraped my knee, and I’m pretty sure I would have bruised it except for the extra padding it has on it these days. Dash is fine, he’s still moving around in there like always.
7. Kicks are great, but now it feels like I have an infant squirming around in my stomach. Not always the best feeling.
8. I get paid tomorrow, woo-hoo!
9. I think I’m going to sneak a margarita into the hospital. And maybe some Maker’s Mark for John.
10. I have my second-to-last hypnobirthing class tomorrow, which I may not need after all, now. We’ve been practicing though, we were in the doctor’s office yesterday and there were some screaming children next to us, and I asked him if he wanted me to hypnotize him, so out he went. At least it comes in handy for more things than childbirth…

Looks like a baby, huh? He definitely has John’s nose, we thought he did in the 4D but it really looks like it in this picture…

So we had an ultrasound today to see how big he’s measuring, and he’s really big. I’m pretty sure I saw a 41 week measurment in there somewhere. The ‘official’ results were weight, head circumference and abdominal circumference at 38-39 weeks, femur length was 33W5D. I’m 32 weeks on the money today. I know the measurments can be off, and if it was just one ultrasound where he was measuring big I wouldn’t worry about it, but this is the third. He was measuring 2 and a half weeks ahead at 20 weeks, 3 and half weeks ahead at 26 weeks, and now, God, 7 weeks ahead at 32 weeks. So I’m pretty sure he’s big.

Of course, they’re starting to talk C-section now, which I’m not entirely opposed to. If the doctor recommends it, I’m not going to fight it, and there’s definitely upsides to a c-section. We’ll just have to see. He’s going to do another ultrasound at 36 weeks, and I think if he’s in the 8-9 pound range they’ll go ahead and schedule one. Then all we can hope for is that he comes early. If he doesn’t though, at least I’ll get another 2 weeks off from work, and I’ve had major abdominal surgery before so I know what the recovery is like. I might have a big ol’ cross on my belly though, my other scar runs up and down.

Also, because we didn’t have enough to think about, my blood pressure is getting high. He just wants to monitor me more, so I have weekly appointments now. I’m pretty sure it’s the white-coat syndrome thing, but the BP monitor at publix is right in the front of the store and I’m embarrassed to park my big pregnant butt there and test it.

Don’t worry about any of this, we’re fine about it and we both have complete confidence in my doctor. I’m sure everything’s fine, and who knows, Dash may be getting ready to make an early appearance on his own. He looks quite comfy in there, and I feel fine, even though I guess I’m carrying close to a full term baby. If nothing else the high BP might put me on bedrest, which honestly at this point wouldn’t break my heart. These stairs at work are kicking my butt and I could use some time off to rest up. Just wanted to let everyone know what was going on….

So, Walmart rocks a little. I’m not a giant fan of Walmart, although they have some great buys, I’m just more of a Target girl, especially when we’re talking about my hometown’s Walmart. Anyone familiar with it will know what I’m talking about.

This wasn’t at the one in my hometown though, this is at the Madison one, a few steps up from ours. Anyway, I saw an empty parking spot and thought there’s no way that’s reserved for anything I can use, but sure enough, it was! So Walmart went up a few notches in my book. It’s 86 degrees here, and my pregnant waddle is no longer cute and I was (and still am) thankful for the opportunity to waddle a little less distance.

Sorry for the image quality, my outrageous phone isn’t the best picture-taker…

Hope everyone had a great weekend, ours was good. We went to a wedding of a friend of ours in Birmingham and the reception was fantastic, at this little place called Park Lane in Mountain Brook, Alabama. A kind of famous local caterer, Kathy G, bought this little restaurant and turned it into an event site, that she of course caters, and it was nothing shy of beautiful.

I finished out my registry (at least the stuff we just had to have right away and a few things we didn’t… ) so that was fun. Me and seriously 100 other 8 month pregnant women shopping around Babies R Us. I don’t know what it was about Saturday but pregnant ladies where there in full force. I got the high chair, baby bouncer, bath tub and some other goodies, plus the expensive breast pump that I was almost giddy to get. I was going to get the cheapo one, but I didn’t want to give up on it because the breast pump wasn’t great, so I decided last minute to fork out the big bucks for the expensive one. Sad when a breast pump gets you this excited…

Just for the sake of adding pictures… here’s what I loaded up on…

And finally, the piece d’resistance…

We had our second class last night, and my faith is growing a bit. She had us do this excercise where you follow her hand and put yourself into a state of relaxation (which worked well, as soon as she started raising her hand I was thinking “Please just let me close my eyes” and then she talks to you for a while and then she lifts up your hand and you’re supposed to let it go limp (I had a hard time with that) and then she drops it into your lap, and each time she does you’re supposed to go deeper into relaxation. This script and the rainbow relaxation CD are the bread and butter of the whole thing. So it’s important John can do this to me, and more important that I let him.

And that’s where I had the trouble. First, it’s hard to see my macho husband trying to hypnotize me. God love him for trying, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate him for being supportive. He wants this to work for both of us, for me so that I can actually enjoy giving birth and for him so that he’s not terrified of it. John’s truly never seen me in pain, he’s seen me cry though and he doesn’t like it very much. I don’t think either of us thinks he’ll handle it well.

And, while I trust him implicitly, its hard to keep my mind from wandering all over the place. When he was holding my hand, he wasn’t holding it over my lap but rather off to the side, and all I could think of was when he drops my hand, I’m going to fall out of the chair. And then I started LAUGHING. God. Pretty sure that’s not conducive to hypnosis. And I’m sure it didn’t do much for his ego, either. I was able to get a grip on it, and we were able to go on, but I think the damage was done. He didn’t focus on it much, thankfully, or I think neither of us would have ever gotten over it, like that scene in dirty dancing where he strokes her arm and she can’t help but laugh hysterically. That’s exactly what we looked like.

We watched another birth, equally as impressive as the last ones, this one was a larger lady giving birth to an 8 lb 11 oz baby, which made me feel better because that’s probably the situation I’m going to be in. Good to know it works for big babies too.

Well, it’s not quite as granola as I thought it would be. It still has its moments, but all in all it sounds like it’s going to help us.

There’s another couple in there with us, Dominique and Jorge, and they’re 19 weeks along. (Thank God I’m not there, that seems like ages ago…). All we really did last night was talk about what we could expect from the class, we learned all of our new words, like surge instead of contraction, and then we watched two birthing videos. They’re so amazing, it’s almost like they’re fake. I know they aren’t but it’s hard to kind of deprogram yourself from thinking that this whole experience is going to be so painful. Then you see these women just breathing through it, not even scrunching up their faces. It’s just bizarre.

I listened to my “birthing affirmations” on the way to work. Now THIS was a little fru-fru. Some of them are things I think anyway, like “your body and your baby know how to do this” and “each surge brings you closer to your baby” (my favorite), but then they throw in “your baby is moving safely and happily, surrounded by pink tissue…” ew. I don’t think “tissue” is a very calming word. So I think we’re going to skip a few of them. There’s a relaxing part to the CD, too, but you’re not supposed to listen to it in the car… so I think I’m going to give that one a shot tonite. If it all goes to hell, I won’t be able to say I didn’t give it a shot…

The glucose test went fine. Apparently I don’t have GD. The informational sheet said my results would be ready at 1:30 on the day following the test (which was Friday for me) and when I called at 2:30 after not hearing anything I realized that the office closed at noon on Friday, so Monday morning I called to see if they had my results and she said she could pull my chart but they would have called me by then if I had failed, even though they close at noon on Friday. I still haven’t heard anything, so I’m assuming I passed. Yay!

Our babymoon to Red Sox spring training and to visit my Aunt was really fun, it was a nice 81 degrees Saturday and then cooled down to 71 by the game on Monday, which was more enjoyable for sitting out in the sun. We went to the beach and to the county fair and over to my cousin’s house for dinner, and actually enjoyed the 12 hour car drive. John and I do well in a car together, we laugh a lot and the time really does go by, of course he was driving most of the way so it might have been worse for him…

So first, me on the beach at 28 weeks…

John before he got on a ride…

His expression is because the ride is about to do THIS…

Manny and David Ortiz, a couple of John’s favorite guys…

And finally, my sweet family.

From left to right around the table, my Aunt Treena, my cousin Allison (Donna’s daughter), my cousin Dawn and her husband David, their son Jordan and me.
Around the back is my cousin Danielle (Dawn and David’s daughter), my Uncle Lonnie, and my cousin Donna. The two youngest are missing, there’s no way they would have sat down for this, and Donna’s husband Leroy is out of the picture as well. John was taking the picture, so he’s there in spirit…