Careful What You Wish For

(week 21)



I've felt subtle squirming sensations since about 12 weeks, but nothing too noticeable and I couldn't quite be certain it was baby moving and not just digestion. About three weeks ago it started to be pretty obvious the feelings were something new. It catches me by surprise usually about a half hour after eating.

Blaine has been pretty jealous of this and can't wait to feel it himself. He lays his hand on my belly and leans in close to talk to him and make him stir. No luck until just a few days ago when he felt the little kicks for the first time.

Blaine's absolutely ecstatic, but I'm starting to regret rushing these milestones. It's like that moment somehow transformed the bean into the lord of the dance and now the little guy is preforming a tap dance routine on my bladder every 40mins or so.

Something tells me these little numbers just get more frequent and uncomfortable from here.

*WARNING* Curves Ahead

... I'm not kidding, don't read all the way through this if you're uncomfortable with too much skin.

So, I have to tell you, I haven't been entirely honest with you. I actually have had dozens of vivid dreams that I remember well enough to post about. The problem is that my dreams have been wildly violent. I was just worried that they would be too disturbing. The truth is, that's one of the big reasons I really thought we had a boy on the way. My theory is that these dreams are the result of my subconscious getting dosed with a bit of testosterone. If it wasn't a boy, then I just didn't have any good explanation for all the action, so I'm rather relieved about the way things have turned out.

I celebrated yesterday by going out and making my first baby purchase. Brought home a little Star Wars onesie for Blaine along with a pecan pie for dessert. I think it all made him pretty happy!

In the midst of prepping for our adventure out to LA, I got distracted in the studio again. Spent all night trying to work out how to do the rim lighting technique I use to love so much. I think I've almost got it, but it's REALLY hard to do for self portraits. I hope I get some brave mommas in the future who'll let me take pictures of them instead so I can really nail this one down.




Okay, without being able to tweak the lighting and frame the composition... I end up with this. It totally looks like Alfred Hitchcock & makes me giggle!










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Half Way

Always a noteworthy and bittersweet moment. I've never could decide about the glass being half full or half empty, since it's obviously both and that's the beauty of it.

Today is that day. We are halfway to becoming parents which means 5 months left to sleep in, read books, go out to movies, go out dancing and what.. what else do we need to do before we miss it because we can't?

It's hard to imagine I've still got 5 months left and it just gets harder from here.

It's scary to think we only have 5 months left to get everything ready.

It's too close and too far all at the same time.

Luckily on the day of this torturous cross roads, a wonderful distraction has presented itself in order to keep me from pondering the good and the bad for too long.

We had our ultrasound this morning and confirmed that intuition has won out... it's a boy! It's so exciting to know and really start to imagine what this new little person is going to be like.



Last night I dreamed of drawing this announcement on my board at work, so that's the first thing I did when I got in this morning! Kept me grinning ear to ear all day long! Pictures and such coming soon.

Wishbone #2

(week 19)


I'm not sure how many of you are up to speed on your maternity literature, but there is often a tendency to equate fetal progress with the produce department. We've been through seeds, blueberries, raisins, beans, grapes, lemons, oranges, tomatoes and have now reached the honorable mango stage. Only this time they add all sorts of unpleasant details and describe it more accurately as a fuzzy mango covered in thick layer of greasy butter. YUM!

Despite the less than appetizing fruit reference, we are starting to get pretty excited. The fear and surreal disbelief are melting away and being replaced with full blown giddiness. Now that I can feel the little one squirming and stretching in there, it all seems much more real and possible.

Next week is the ultrasound which should tell us if we're expecting a boy or a girl, as long a baby isn't shy that is. So, the fun begins with the guessing game. I don't think either of us have a very strong preference, but it's like the super bowl and it just isn't any fun unless you pick sides and root for one team or the other, so right now, we both are guessing boy... but we'll see!

We pulled a wishbone last week and I won this time, fair and square! It will be a battle now between intuition which says boy and superstition which should grant me a girl, either way we can't wait :)

Button Countdown

... not long now before my belly button turns inside out.

I'm really not looking forward to that day.

Does it hurt?

Halloween and such

(Week 18)

Weeks have gone by and I'm happy to say I have no real news to share. I've reached cruising altitude and all is well, feeling perfectly normal actually, aside from wondering how I'm going to manage to keep putting on my shoes and having an unusual urge to rearrange my furniture and reorganize all my closets.

October has been busy and just flew by in a wink. We fostered a few batches of puppies for a local rescue organization. It was wonderful to help out and good practice as well, but proved to be a bit too much for me right now given the long hour's Blaine's been putting in. So, we took a 'break' to focus on home improvements instead. We got some much needed shelving delivered and finally unpacked the entire camera collection for display (it's quite overwhelming in it's entirety). This freed up valuable storage space and led to a two week cycle of rearranging, unpacking & reorganizing... and repeat. It feels wonderful to make some headway and start to really get unpacked and settled, but it's a bit disheartening to see how quickly all the space we make just seems to get filled back up with stuff immediately - sometime is feels like we are digging a hole in the sand at the water's edge. I really just want a dumpster at this point.

At the same time, we got new doors and windows delivered. Our friend Bob helped us replace all three sliding doors in our sunroom and rewired the electric to boot. It's just the beginning of our home improvements but it's already made a HUGE difference in how warm the house is.

Halloween is always very popular among our friends and we often end up at many different parties for days on end with several costume changes along the way. This year we scaled back our participation quite a bit and opted opted to keep things simple and cheap and just do face paint for our one main costume Saturday night. It was still a lot of fun.

Next came preparations for a birthday party we threw for a friend this Friday. It gave us a reason to clean everything up which feels wonderful, but MAN was it a lot of work. Now the holidays are just around the corner.

So for baby news... feeling great, getting big and still having high intensity action dreams. I'm not eating as well as I could be, not exercising as much as I should and I've pretty much overdosed on maternity literature... bring on Month 5!