Pumpkin: Weeks 34 & 35

May 4th - May 17th

How I Look

All I can say is... oof-ta. I'm so ready to have my body back (even in a slightly different condition than when I started). I have had the joy of finding stretch marks this week.. on my hips at least (because somehow that makes it better?). Oddly enough, I still don't look down at my belly and think.. man I'm huge.. but I do keep getting that comment from other people! It's all part of the joys of pregnancy and I just try to keep rolling with it.. knowing that in a few weeks I'll look back and think how I wasn't so big yet after all ;). 

How I Feel
Thankfully, I've felt much better these weeks. A little tired now and then, and sometimes a little sappy. I had a little panic the other day thinking.. 'what if the ultrasound was wrong.. what if Pumpkin is a boy!? We have so many pink clothes!' But, Blake assured me that the ultrasound tech looked at the money shot from every angle possible and from each angle it was pretty clearly 'girl'.

What I Feel
Still plenty of wiggling from our Sweet P, and still lots of BHs but just normal, erratic and semi-constant tightness. Oh, and she gets the hiccups at least once a day and usually when I'm trying to fall asleep at night. I'm experiencing some other less appealing pregnancy issues.. but nothing that needs to be said here ;). My hips seem to hurt if I stay in one position for too long, but I still manage to sleep for 3-5 hours straight before needing to move or visit the bathroom. Some nights I'm awake every hour, and other nights I sleep straight through (which is a little rough on the bladder!). I'm trying to just appreciate every bit of sleep I get!

What We're Doing
Blake would say I'm obsessing.. I might call it some form of nesting. I'm trying to get some of the final touches finished up on our 'necessities' list and mostly that involves deciding what those necessities are. There are plenty of wants left on our registries but some needs too. We have one shower left (a week before I'm due) so I'm holding off on completing the registry until after that, but I think that there are a few items that I'll use gift cards on soon because it will give me peace of mind to know that if she came early, we'd have all we 'needed'. Things like sheets for the co-sleeper and a diaper pail somehow make me feel more prepared. Oh, and an infant car seat ;). I did obsess about that for awhile. I really went back and forth about getting the infant carrier style-car seat. We'd been given a 5-70 lb convertible car seat by Blake's mom, but the infant car seat was out of stock for awhile and then I wondered if we really needed it since we had one that would work and lots of babywearing carriers. Ultimately, with plenty of deliberation, we decided to order it while it was back in stock and 25% off.

We are also getting so darn excited to meet this little wiggle worm! We're planning our last pre-kids weekend getaway (a.k.a. our babymoon) that is a few weeks away, and having lots of discussions about how different life will be very soon. We're so ready to meet our little girl but we're also trying to enjoy the time together while she finishes growing.

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Next baby post: Pumpkin: Weeks 36 & 37 

Previous baby post: Pumpkin: Weeks 32 & 33

Every Hour

There is an old hymn that has become popular again, as so many fortunately do. My favorite version is by Matt Maher, although the Fernando Ortega version is beautiful and uses the original lyrics

The thing I love about this hymn is that, much to my surprise, it wasn't written out of sorrow or pain but out of love and joy (see below for the story). I love the reminder that we need the Lord even when things are going well and we're full of Joy. How quickly we turn to Him in times of trouble and just as quickly forget to turn to Him when things are good (and by we I mean ME).

Original: I Need Thee Every Hour:        And the Matt Maher, Lord I Need You lyrics:


  I need Thee ev'ry hour,                            Lord, I come, I confess
  Most gracious Lord;                                Bowing here I find my rest
  No tender voice like Thine                       Without You I fall apart
  Can peace afford.                                    You're the One that guides my heart 

  Refrain:
  I need Thee, O I need Thee!                   Lord, I need You, oh, I need You
  Ev'ry hour I need Thee;                           Every hour I need You
  O bless me now, my Saviour!                  My one defense, my righteousness
  I come to Thee.                                      Oh God, how I need You

  I need Thee ev'ry hour;                           Where sin runs deep Your grace is more
  Stay Thou nearby;                                  Where grace is found is where You are
  Temptations lose their pow'r                   And where You are, Lord, I am free
  When Thou art nigh.                               Holiness is Christ in me   

  I need Thee ev'ry hour,                           Lord, I need You, oh, I need You
  In joy or pain;                                         Every hour I need You
  Come quickly and abide,                        My one defense, my righteousness
  Or life is vain.                                         Oh God, how I need You

  I need Thee ev'ry hour;                          Teach my song to rise to You
  Teach me Thy will,                                When temptation comes my way
  And Thy rich promises                           And when I cannot stand I'll fall on You
  In me fulfill.                                            Jesus, You're my hope and stay 

  I need Thee ev'ry hour,                          Lord, I need You, oh, I need You 
  Most Holy One;                                    Every hour I need You
  O make me Thine indeed,                      My one defense, my righteousness
  Thou blessed Son!                                 Oh God, how I need You

  I need Thee, O I need Thee!                  You're my one defense, my righteousness
  Ev'ry hour I need Thee;                          Oh God, how I need You
  O bless me now, my Saviour!                My one defense, my righteousness
  I come to Thee.                                    Oh God, how I need You

Annie Sherwood Hawks tells about the inspiration for this hymn:

'I remember well the circumstances under which I wrote the hymn. It was a bright June day, and I became so filled with the sense of the nearness of my Master that I began to wonder how anyone could live without Him, in either joy or pain. Suddenly, the words I need Thee every hour, flashed into my mind, and very quickly the thought had full possession of me. Seating myself by the open windows, I caught up my pencil and committed the words to paper - almost as they are today.

A few months later Dr. Robert Lowry composed the tune Need, for my hymn and also added the refrain. For myself, the hymn, at its writing, was prophetic rather than expressive of my own experiences, for it was wafted out to the world on the wings of love and joy, instead of under the stress of great personal sorrow, with which it has often been associated.

 At first I did not understand why the hymn so greatly touched the throbbing heart of humanity. Years later, however, under the shadow of a great loss, I came to understand something of the comforting power of the words 1 had been permitted to give out to others in my hours of sweet serenity and peace.'{source}

Pumpkin: Weeks 32 & 33

April 20th - May 3rd

How I Look
I am fully in that beached whale stage and feeling every bit full of blubber. It's funny how differently women carry their babies. I get a lot of comments on how big my belly is or how far it sticks out. My favorite is when people suggest I have a basketball in there. I'm not offended, but I am starting to get a little more plump in areas other than my belly. I suppose if people realized, most of them wouldn't discuss my size but really it's most noticeable on my hips and my jeans do a decent job of hiding it.

How I Feel
Tired and impatient! These weeks have been hard and so many times I said or thought to myself, "I'm ready to be done"... which isn't good because I'm not actually done yet! I don't sleep as well at night between the BH contractions, my loosey-goosey sore hips and sometimes my bladder. I am just not able to fall back asleep as easily, which is the real change, and I have really weird dreams that make me feel less rested and kind of mentally drained when I wake up. Weird dreams that usually have some obsessive component relating to diapers or cleaning or trying to find something. I certainly have good days and bad days, and this last week most were fairly rough, but I'm sure a few good days are around the corner. Today hasn't been too bad actually.

What I Feel
Same old, same old. BH contractions all. the. time. Sometimes to the point of tweaking my back, which is really what makes them hurt instead of just being annoying, and then it's hard to breath during them too. Still within the range of normal but definitely makes me ready to just move on to labor and get all the contracting over with. If only I didn't still have 6-8 weeks left to go! I also still feel our little girl movin' and a groovin' in there. She's stays pretty active lately, despite all the tightness around her. I try to take the time to enjoy her moving around because I have a feeling I'll miss it when she's out (even though of course, even better.. she'll be in my arms)!

What We're Doing
I finally finished decorating Pumpkin's corner and continue to get things organized and washed/put away. I'm still working on the footstool for the glider, but I think I might be working on that still when I'm in labor ;) it's fairly slow going. We're also still working our way through some birthing books and getting so excited for this little one to be here. Still trying to be patient and enjoy our time together before Sweet P joins us though. Which reminds me, we are 99.9% decided on her name, but sorry, it doesn't start with a P. She'll always be our Sweet P, but someday soon she'll have a real name too!

Next baby post: Pumpkin: Weeks 34 & 35

Previous baby post: Pumpkin: Weeks 30 & 31

The Nursery

Clever title, don't you think? I'm out of creativity apparently ;). While I'm still working on the footstool for this little space, I thought I'd post some pictures of the rest of the finished 'nursery'. It is really just the other half of our master bedroom but I'm loving this little baby dedicated sanctuary/corner of our room.

We only use the right door, so the bassinet is in front of the other one and that's probably where the crib will go when we're ready for it, if for some reason we don't end up doing the side-car thing. The bassinet is a family heirloom of sorts.. it is what my mom used for us and my aunt used for my cousins and my cousins used for their kid. We also have a co-sleeper that goes next to our bed, which will be awesome for nigh time breastfeeding, but it's fun to have the bassinet as well.

We don't have the changing pad yet, but eventually it will go on top of the dresser in the corner and those baskets will be filled with prepped cloth diapers. I think we'll add some shelves too, so the animal assortment has a place to live.

This was a fun project, although I probably should have started/finished it before I was 8 months pregnant. I can't say that climbing up and down from the stool repeatedly was the best idea, but it's done now anyway. I won't say how many times I had to move things around, but I will say I was able to use some of the pre-existing holes in the wall!

This canvas print was more work than I anticipated, but I am happy with how it turned out. Cutting out the stencil for the words was the most tedious part! It's hard to tell here, but the white letters are wooden and raised. I looked at lots of subway art to buy for this space, but none of them really said what I wanted to say to our daughter like this verse does.

A little action shot.

This print is special to us because we bought it in Israel while we were there and about 7 weeks along. We loved idea behind it and when we saw the Noah's Ark print we thought it would be great in a nursery eventually. It is the Bible story of Noah's Ark from Genesis written out in Hebrew!

 Isn't it crazy! I can't imagine reading it, even if I could read Hebrew.

The Glider. There is a nice long story about this glider, which you can read about here. Long story short, I couldn't find what I wanted for the price I wanted so we created our own thanks to the help of my brother. I'm still working on the footstool, which will help hide the black ring you can see here. It is a great fit and comfy. If you put the pillow up higher it easily supports your head and some dozing could happen.

Now all we need is a little sweet baby girl to start using all this stuff! (okay, we need a few more little things too.. but at least we have the essentials!)

The Glider

And now for the story of The Glider.

I have a somewhat obsessive nature when it comes to planning. I really wanted the following in a nursery chair: upholstered, swivels, glides, reclines and has a slipcover. You can buy something that comes with any four of the five qualities, but not all five.. and the slipcover part was the most expensive, but also seemed important to me. I have commitment issues when it comes to upholstery and had a hard time spending so much money on something that I had to commit to a patterned fabric on that couldn't be washed.

Pottery Barn came the closest with upholstered, slip-covered, swivel rockers, but they also came with a hefty price tag that was more than we've spent on any of our other furniture combined. That didn't make sense for such a specific item. The next best option was an upholstered, reclining swivel glider from Target that was within the acceptable cost parameters, but I didn't absolutely love the pattern on the fabric for long term (it was a little trendy, and I like to stick to classic looks for items like this) and I couldn't decide between brown and gray (brown would go in our living room, which I imagine is where the chair would eventually end up; but gray would go in our bedroom, which is where the chair would start out).

SO. The solution? Make our own. This is the Jennylund chair from IKEA which is affordable and has a slipcover. However, it didn't recline or swivel or glide... I did some Googling and found that several people had successfully turned this exact chair into a swivel rocker, so I recruited my brother to see if he thought he could make it work with these swivel glider parts (we used the heavy duty one, my brother said it looked more durable and like I said, he likes to go big or go home).

My brother gave the go-ahead and I ordered the parts and picked up the chair. Now, my bother is famous for over-engineering things, but he also puts out a quality, sturdy product whenever he attempts something and the glider was no different. I wasn't there when he worked his magic so I don't have pictures of the play-by-play but I took some pictures of the bottom for anyone interested in attempting this too.

Sprung

I don't really know when it happened, and I feel like I missed the entire season, but all of a sudden I look around and realize that spring has sprung.

I'm not sure I'll ever get used to the weather here. I think it feels like I missed spring because we only had maybe five days of rain and maybe a handful of gray/cloudy days outside of that. Where I come from, spring (and most of winter) is months and months of rain and overcast days. Not here.

Essentially, around here it almost always looks like summer, but only feels like summer during the summer months. The rest of the year it is about the same from the inside looking out: bright and brown. Spring and early summer are the rare exceptions when things start to bloom and turn green and you could possibly describe certain areas as 'pretty'. After spring it gets so hot that things turn brown and stay that way again until next spring :).

As I looked around our yard last weekend I realized that the tulips had bloomed and died, the trees had bloomed and were now growing leaves instead of petals and the weeds are already establishing their nasty roots. All of a sudden it's still daylight out by the time we're done with dinner and the sun is up before me. When did this happen? Where did spring go? There were no weeks of crummy weather to remind me to curl up with a hot drink and look out the window at the spring flowers. I'll have to set a reminder on my phone for next year, since the weather didn't seem to clue me in. I suppose I'm also a little preoccupied lately too ;).

I'm really looking forward to summer for several reasons (not working, enjoying the outdoors and, oh ya, having a baby!) but I didn't want to take spring for granted. I'm trying to stop and smell the roses (or rather watch the roses grow and hopefully bud) a little more with life in general and hopefully this will help me appreciate what is left of spring. It's so easy to look forward to the next stage of life without stopping to appreciate the stage you're about to leave.

We started planting the garden last weekend! Soon everything will be growing like a weed... or rather growing lots of weeds.. but for now it's so fun to see the little starts, lattice and cages all set up with lots of open space in between. We primarily planted those vegetables that we are starting from seed, since we still have a few weeks before we're safe from the danger of frost and hopefully those little seeds will take their full time to germinate so they don't get frostbite between now and then. We're also taking measures against the rabbits this year!