36 weeks / 9 months

All dressed up and nowhere to go. Except maybe the hospital.

People have been asking if I'm starting to become uncomfortable. Why, do I look like it?

My definition of that word has changed over the past few months. I feel like a kangaroo. When I grip my belly on both sides it's not as rounded as it once was. It's kind of bony - there are elbows and knees and a little bum. I can literally feel his body between my hands. Though I'm quite conscious of the space he's taking up right now, I'm not sure HE knows how big he is. He moves around in there like I'm the size of a gymnasium. He's recently started to "flutter kick" like he's in a spinning class, and other times it feels like I have a little chipmunk in there poking and scratching at the side of my uterus digging for seeds and nuts. I used to wonder why pregnant women pressed down on their bellies so often. Now I know it's to keep the little suckers out of your rib cavity.

His other habit is to sit on my sciatic nerve, which is rather startling. It's a sudden sharp cramp in the groin that makes me double over a few times a day. I've also taken to waddling a bit. Not because I'm big and fat (though I do feel kind of cow-ish at times), but because I'm so front-loaded that my balance is off and it's impossible to keep up a normal gait.

I just have to share one thing Jono said when I first bought sweatpants. This was awhile ago but I forgot to mention it. "How does my butt look in these?" I asked him. "Good," he replied. "It's more.... Latina."

Okay, so maybe it's not all in the front. They say that comes off quickly if you breastfeed. Sign me up.

Search and Destroy

Old houses are full of super-fun surprises. I won't bore you with the details.

My parents, my brother Tyler and Jono's dad and step-mom Jan helped us with some "demo" projects the first two weekends, and Jono's mom and Jeff came this week to help paint. (Sorry I didn't get any shots of you working Jan and Dad. People will just have to believe me when I say you helped :)

So far we've finished a lot of wallpaper-peeling, plastering, sanding and the like. The tasks ahead of us involve more painting and refinishing floors. Then more cleaning. And then we'll move in. We're shooting for October 25.

I need to stay away from paint fumes and I'm not supposed to be on ladders or on my hands and knees. This makes me practically useless for most home improvement projects. Poor Jono. We're very thankful for the help we've been getting from our parents. I guess certain "dependencies" never end no matter how old your kids get.

I'm trying to be useful by obsessively wiping down the counters, walking the dog, and making food for the troops. And feeling housewife-y while I'm doing it. Oh well.

He's a Bruiser

This is my first time at this so I don't know what's normal, but our boy seems to be rather active. His favorite thing is to punch the mattress when I'm lying on my side in bed. Whenever I talk about it Jono gets this proud little smirk on his face, and I know what he's thinking: "Just like his dad." Jono is fidgety. Actually we both fidget, so I guess the situation isn't surprising.

My doctor commented on it too. During my check-ups she feels around to see where he is, and I guess she can tell he's squirmy. "I think you're going to have an active little one here," she said. A few check-ups ago he kicked the sonogram machine when she put it on my belly. I think the machine is loud for him, but instead of waiting patiently for her to remove it he got annoyed and gave it two direct hits. Cutie :)

I can feel it now when he gets hiccups. They feel like mild, regular muscle twitches, and I can tell right where his head is when he gets them because of the location of the twitch. (He is often in the head-down position with his legs flailing up around my upper right side.) He usually has them for a few minutes, and it makes me want to pinch his cheeks or squish his leg rolls just picturing him in there hiccuping by himself.

Speaking of pinching, there are times when he sticks his knee or elbow out so far that I can actually grasp part of it between my thumb and index finger. Jono can be across the room and clearly see this or that little body part sticking out under my skin. I give him gentle squeezes, partly because I can't resist, but also because the doctor told me they like the physical contact. Jono used to say, “Don’t hurt him!” when I did things like that, but now that I have a physician’s permission I like to pat and prod him a bit when he’s moving around.

I think my body is just now starting to release the hormones that cause my hip joints to loosen up a bit in preparation for birth. Last week I was bragging to Jono about how spry I was still feeling. One should never brag while pregnant. I think the next day my left hip was wonky. I felt like an old lady when I got up in the morning, limping around for a few minutes like an injured bird until I was limbered up. I also have a hard time standing up straight right away after I've been laying down because my abdominals are so tight.

The hip thing went away after a few days, but I can't wait to find out what lovely side effect will show up next.

Moving to Hope Street

This past weekend Jono, me and Mona moved to Hope Street to live with Joel, Jessie and Louie (their dog).

The move was surprisingly un-stressful. Three weeks ago Jono's dad and step-mom came to help us pack. Two weeks ago my parents came to help us fill the U-Haul and unload everything into a storage unit. This left us with a (mostly) empty house, but it still took us most of Saturday and Sunday to get every last little thing out of it. Towards the end we weren't even packing things into boxes any more -- we just tossed them into grocery sacks and laundry baskets, or threw things like brooms, driftwood and my rock collection into the back seat.

Now we're settled, and have arranged our little upstairs apartment. I made the nook up there into a pantry for our canned goods. My shoes are lined up along the wall in two sections: dress shoes and regular shoes (read: OCD). Our clothes are hung on a portable thingy next to the stairs. We're using those terracotta plant saucers as coasters so we don't put rings on Joel and Jessie's little table.

We've been watching the Olympics downstairs with Jessie every night. Jessie is knitting these fantastic booties for our little man, and I'm knitting a scarf because it's the only thing I know how to knit. It's all very cozy.

I feel like I'm on vacation somewhere. Mona does too. She was mopey on Sunday as we were getting the last of our things out of the house, but when she realized she was going with us she got over it. Now she gets to play with Louie every day and her morning walks are in a different neighborhood with new smells, so she's generally happy with the situation.

Throughout all of this, God's timing has been amazing. A couple of weeks ago we found a house we like on Orville Street near Boston Square in Grand Rapids. It's a short-sale, meaning it's in pre-foreclosure. Mainly we were impressed with the fact that it isn't trashed like all of the others we've been looking at in our price range. We made an offer with help from Jono's mom and her husband Jeff, who has a realtor's license. On Friday, the day before we moved out, we heard that our offer had been accepted. No counter-offer; just YES, IT'S YOURS.

Rundown of what could've been a bad situation, but then it turned good...

• We find out I'm pregnant and decide one of us needs to quit our job or work part-time. We realize quickly that our current mortgage payment is more than we are comfortable with under the new circumstances. We put our house up for sale in the worst housing market ever.
  
  
• We know it's likely we won't make very much on our house in this market, so after we sell we'll need to live very cheaply for a few months until we have the a down payment for our next place. Joel and Jessie live three blocks away and agree to let us live with them for awhile once we sell.
  
  
• We sell our house in a month and a half for a good price, when many homes in our city don't sell for nine months to one year (or more).
  
  
• Meanwhile we're looking at foreclosed homes in the city, but most of them are in terrible shape. We are anxious about having to completely re-do a house while I'm trying to get the baby to sleep, etc. Two weeks before we move out, we finally find a good house we can afford in a different area of the city. It needs very little work. We're shocked. We make an offer. We are told it could take three weeks for the bank to respond.
  
  
• One week before we expected a reply and one day before we move out of 135 Lowell, we hear they have verbally accepted our offer. We'll be able to move in 30 days after closing, which will be in two to three weeks. So we'll settle in on Hope Street for a month or two -- just enough time to save for a down payment.
  

There's more too, but I'll stop there. The point is, we are really thankful.

On the pregnancy front, I've had the song Another One Bites the Dust (QUEEN) in my head lately as each day I must put away another article of my clothing into a box destined for the basement. I am realizing I'm low on sweatpants and various items made of long, stretchy material. I am starting to feel the extra weight I'm carrying. One area where I thought I was safe was footwear, but even my shoes don't fit right any more. I tried to put on my favorite pair of sandals yesterday -- the kind with a toe loop -- and was confused when my toe was constricted by the loop. I innocently thought, "Now how were these packed? There must've been something heavy on top of them and it warped them." In the next moment I realized there was nothing wrong with the sandals. My feet are swelling. Yay.

Another new adventure I've been having lately are Braxton-Hicks contractions. What happens with these is the walls of the uterus contract for 10 to 20 seconds and you feel like you're walking around with a boulder in your stomach. They are not labor-inducing and are very normal -- I guess it's the uterus getting ready for the real thing.

Also, I've been packing for a camping trip and I'm realizing I'll need to wear my one pair of sweatpants or walk around in a sarong to stay comfortable. One thing I thought I'd never say: "Must have more sweatpants."