24 weeks

Can I just say that I love my job? Not only do I like what I do all day, but my boss is awesome and my benefits rock. I met with the administrator at work last week and learned that I'll be able to take a full 12 weeks of paid maternity leave! I thought I was going to have 6 weeks paid at 60% (short term disability) followed by 6 weeks paid at 100% (using up sick and vacation) - which is already a way better deal than most American women have - but it turns out that my boss agreed to pay me my regular salary once I use up my sick/vacation time, so I don't even need to use my short-term disability. Plus there are 5 paid holidays during the 3-month window after the baby is due, so that's a free week of leave too. I have the best job.

How far along? 24 weeks (6 months already! Months go by quickly when you count them in 4-week intervals.)
Weight gain/loss: On Saturday, +13 on my bathroom scale. Maybe I lost a little bit of that vacation weight.
Feeling: My internal organs are getting squished. It's kind of hard to breathe sometimes. And the baby still has at least 5 or 6 inches and at least 5 pounds to grow.
Maternity clothes? No changes. I'm getting bored with my one pair of jeans and I've been living in yoga pants (not maternity) at home. I'm glad I am not having to face buying maternity shirts yet because maternity clothes are really freaking expensive and surprisingly not basic. Why are there no $8 t-shirts?
Sleep: Would be way better if I could sleep on my stomach.
Food cravings: I ate a lot of peanut butter, chocolate, and Nutella this week. It was not the healthiest of weeks.
Movement? All the time. Not uncomfortable though.
What I miss? We had steak for dinner with friends this week and I was really wishing I could drink red wine.

Best moment this week: Ross and I went out for brunch on Saturday. We shared an English muffin with ham and hollandaise, some kind of awesome savory pastry and sausage concoction, and peanut butter cup pancakes. SO DELICIOUS, and always nice to spend time together.

What I'm looking forward to: I have several packages that should be coming in the mail soon - fabric for Ezra's quilt, capris for me (hooray more pants options!), and some baby clothes and cloth diapers. Getting packages is always fun.
Next Appointment: Today.
Milestones: This week his lungs start to prepare for breathing and if he were born, he'd have about a 50% chance of not dying. But let's hope he stays in there for several more months.

22 & 23 weeks

This weekly posting thing feels like all the time! Time for a little recap.

Hiking with friends in the rain!

This picture is from Nancy Reunion. If you are not familiar with Nancy (and really, blog readers, if there are any of you, you probably are familiar...), the name refers to my ten college modmates. We lived in Mod 9C, which we thought sounded like Nancy, so that's how we collectively refer to ourselves. We spent four lovely days reuniting in Keystone, CO from July 4-8. That picture is from the one hike we did. It was a wildflower hike, but most of the nature we noticed was rain and then that lake behind us.

Then I went to the beach (Garden City, SC) with Ross's whole extended family. It was awesome. Mostly we sat around enjoying the beach, talked to each other, and gorged ourselves on seafood. Exactly the way I want to spend a beach vacation.

Ahh, the beach.

View from our balcony

And here are my most recent pregnancy updates:

Ross & I at the beach

How far along? 22 weeks (updated Sunday, 7/15)
Weight gain/loss: On my bathroom scale, +15... which doesn't surprise me because I ate a LOT of food on vacation, but still seems like maybe too much for this point. Time to get back to my regular meal routine and increase the exercise.
Feeling: Still great.
Maternity clothes? My maternity jeans are fitting slightly less ridiculously and my non-maternity elastic-waist shorts are fitting less well, but I can still wear them.
Sleep: Hasn't been great this week.
Food cravings: None, but I read "Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies?: The Surprising Science of Pregnancy" at the beach this week and it turns out that daily chocolate-eating moms-to-be do have babies with sweeter temperaments at 6 months. So I've vowed to eat a little bit of chocolate every day. I know, what a sacrifice.
Movement? Ross finally felt movement on Saturday night!
What I miss? Sleeping on my stomach. I don't think I'm going to get to do that again until after he's born.

Best moment this week: The whole week was awesome - it was beach week!

What I'm looking forward to: Starting to get the nursery together. I need to buy fabric soon.
Next Appointment: End of July.
Milestones: Baby can hear my voice and heartbeat and can see light through his closed eyelids. He probably weighs about 1 pound now.

New haircut!

How far along? 23 weeks (updated 7/22)
Weight gain/loss: Haven't checked.
Feeling: Starting to feel like my abdomen is getting a little crowded.
Maternity clothes? Still perfectly happy in my non-maternity t-shirts and maternity pants.
Sleep: Better since I've been home.
Food cravings: After having a sample of Noosa yogurt at the Dillon Farmers' Market, I had to buy some at Target. Good stuff.
Movement? All the time.
What I miss? Sleeping on my stomach is still the main thing.

Best moment this week: I cut all my hair off!

What I'm looking forward to: I've been looking for outfits to bring baby Ezra home in, which is fun. So cute.
Next Appointment: End of July.
Milestones: Taste buds are developing.

21 week update

How far along? 21 weeks
Weight gain/loss: I don't know - I've been on vacation since last Tuesday, so I haven't weighed myself, but I've probably gained more weight from all the delicious food.
Feeling: Still great.
Maternity clothes? Still just pants. I bought a regular dress and top at the outlet mall this week and they look cute.
Sleep: Usually waking up once in the middle of the night and once at about 6 a.m. to pee.
Food cravings: None.
Movement? Baby's still moving around a lot, but nobody else can feel it yet. He was doing flips in there when I went hiking last week.
What I miss? Beer. Especially on vacation.

Best moment this week: Reunion with my college friends!

What I'm looking forward to: This week, we're at the beach with Ross's family.
Next Appointment: End of July.
Milestones: This week, baby starts being measured from head to feet and should be about 10.5" long.

We're having a baby! (20 week update)

If the only way you knew me was through my blog, you wouldn't know the most exciting thing that's been going on in my life for the past few months: I'm pregnant! Baby is due November 18. Today makes 20 weeks (5 months).

I've been keeping a journal for myself, but a blogger I enjoy (Melissa at Growing Up Geeky) does weekly updates on her pregnancy, and it's fun to see how things change over time, so I've decided to start doing updates. I'm sure I have some friends who would not mind that at all. So here's what's up with me and my pregnancy this week.

Yesterday we had a gender reveal party!

How far along? 20 weeks - halfway done already.
Weight gain/loss: +10 on my bathroom scale - I go to the doctor tomorrow and will see what I weigh there.
Feeling: Still great! I love the second trimester so far. Yesterday we went to the Renaissance Festival and walking around for 6 hours wore me out though.
Maternity clothes? Pants, yes. Although the full-panel ones don't really fit well. My belly's not very big, but it's enough that regular pants don't work.
Sleep: I'm waking up several times a night to go to the bathroom. It's annoying, but not hard to fall back asleep. 7 hours or so seems to be enough sleep.
Food cravings: None really.
Movement? I feel movement pretty regularly. If I eat a lot of bread, it's a party in my uterus.
What I miss? Not having to pee every 20 minutes. And beer.

Best moment this week: Our gender reveal party yesterday was lots of fun!

Candy coming out of the pinata...

We're having a boy! 

What I'm looking forward to: This coming week, my college friends are having a reunion. So excited to see them!
Next Appointment: Tomorrow.
Milestones: This week, baby is about 6.5" long from head to bottom.

For a usually healthy body

I have neglected my gratefulness-blogging. Oops. Unfortunately, I have something to talk about now.

Last weekend while I was skiing on some black diamond moguls at Loveland (I have to tell you it was a black run to save some of my dignity), my left ski got stuck in a mogul and my right ski tripped over it and kept turning so that it got stuck tip-down about four feet directly below my also stuck, normal position, left ski. This, as you might imagine, twisted my left knee in a manner that was rather prolonged and painful. To make a long story short, I got a nerve-wracking toboggan ride down said black diamond mogul run thanks to the ski patrol, went to the doctor last Tuesday, and learned that I sprained my MCL (that's the ligament on the inside of the knee).

So, for the last 9 days I have not been able to bend my left knee more than about 30 degrees before it's too painful to move anymore. I can't walk normally, run, do tae kwon do, kneel to get things out of low shelves, curl up in bed, or put my pants on right leg first. This is one of a handful of sports injuries I can remember having (mostly hand injuries) and definitely the worst injury I've ever had.

So here's what I'm grateful for: a healthy body. (Also, I'm grateful that a sprained MCL is the worst injury I've ever had.)

I do actually think about how happy I am to have a healthy body when I am not injured or sick, but being injured certainly makes me think more about it. Limping is exhausting, and in the last few days, I have desperately been wanting to curl my leg up under myself. At this stage in my life, I actually am perhaps more invested in sports than I ever have been before (which is not saying that much, but I ski, run semi-regularly, and do tae kwon do) and it is really frustrating not to be able to do any of those things - and to know I probably won't be able to for a few more weeks.

I am also grateful for friends' and coworkers' niceness. Bonni and Jess changed the tires on my car last Sunday so I could drive an automatic transmission. Last week, my boss did a knee exam on me (he's a doctor) and was careful to let me sit rather than stand as much as possible. Lots of coworkers have asked how my knee is feeling. It's nice to feel cared about. I am also so grateful to know that my knee will heal in a few weeks and I will once again be able to move normally.

Thinking about Santa

Because it's Christmastime, Ross and I have been talking about Santa Claus and what we would like to do with the kids we will hopefully have at some point. Ross is very opposed to the idea of teaching our kids to believe in Santa because he doesn't like the idea of lying to one's children. I don't care so much about that (realizing that parents and caretakers deceive children in small ways all the time) but I am uncomfortable with the creepiness of Santa "watching" behavior (the Elf on the Shelf, for instance, just creeps me out). Rather than saying Santa was watching, my mom would just tell us that if we didn't behave at Christmastime, she would take our presents back to the store. It's the same threat without the perverseness of an invisible, omnipresent judge. (I wouldn't want my kids to develop that concept of God, so why would I encourage that concept of Santa?)

Most of the buzz about not observing any Santa Claus tradition seems to be from conservative Christians who disagree with secular observations of Christmas, but that doesn't factor in for us. I love a lot of secular aspects of Christmas (lights, trees, decorating, gift giving, that it's observed in December...) and have no problem incorporating them into what is still a religious holiday.

I grew up with Santa bringing candy and small gifts to fill my stocking. All the presents under the tree were from their actual giver (usually parents). As a kid I sometimes wondered why Santa brought other kids things like bikes and dolls but they got almost nothing from their parents. I never really wanted Santa to bring that stuff since my parents fulfilled a lot of my wishes (and received the exclamations of thanks on Christmas morning!), and we received a moderate amount of gifts. I realize that it's tradition for some families to give tons of gifts from Santa, but to me it seems really over the top.

I remember the conversation I had with my mom when I realized that Santa (and the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy) was not real. She explained that Santa was not an actual being, but a spirit of anonymous giving and a way to make the world a little more magical. I was initially unsatisfied with that answer, but came to love it pretty quickly. (I also was still perfectly happy to receive a stocking full of candy and little gifts!)

I wonder, though, how to go about not teaching belief in Santa in a culture where small children will certainly see depictions of Santa and be asked about their interactions with Santa. How do you keep a child from feeling disappointed about their parents rather than Santa filling their stocking, or even worse, from developing a belief in Santa anyway and thinking that us rather than Santa filling their stockings is a reflection of their inherent badness (since Santa allegedly doesn't visit bad children)? I'm glad I won't have to figure out how to negotiate this for a while.

Readers, what do you think? Did anyone grow up never believing in Santa? What did your parents teach you, and did you still do stockings from parents? How did you feel about it? Parents, if you aren't doing Santa for your kids, how do you address the cultural pervasiveness of Santa? What do you teach your kids?

Grateful for: IKEA

Okay, so I don't love Ikea in the same way I love my mom or Thanksgiving. But hey, if I'm going to write a bunch of blog entries about things I'm grateful for, I'm going to run out of family members eventually.

Yesterday Ross and I filled up a wall of our bedroom with the Antonius clothes storage system from Ikea. (Or more accurately, I filled the wall since I put the whole thing together.) I've had one set of drawers from that system for several years and I really like it. We've been needing to buy at least one more dresser, and this frees up a dresser or two for upstairs (so I can reign in the fabricsplosion up there).

I was SO EXCITED when I found out an Ikea was opening in Denver. I'd previously only been to one in Michigan, and I think the experience is a lot of fun. I love seeing Scandinavian design, although its clean lines, liberal use of plastic, and compartmentalization are a little too modern for what I actually want in my home. It is visually pleasing, but not cozy.

Walking through the showroom every so often is fun - you get to see lots of creative ways to arrange furniture and utilize space that often goes unused, which is always nice - plus they have some products you can't get elsewhere very easily... like lingonberry juice! And everything has silly Swedish names! Oh, Ikea. So much fun. I am so happy there is one in my city now.