But so be it. There's only so much I can take before my head explodes.
Anyhow, here's a more detailed version of the tweets so that you all know how I'm
My center of gravity has shifted during the past week, and my ligaments have loosened significantly. The end result is that (a) I start to waddle after being on my feet for more than a half hour, (b) driving long distances has become profoundly hard on my lower and middle back, and (c) I have significantly less upper body strength and leverage to accomplish basic gardening tasks, now that I have more energy to do them. But I still don't have quite enough energy for things.
I'm feeling the baby regularly now. Joke I circulated on Facebook and Twitter earlier this week was that it had gone from being a flutter to feeling like Bunky was riding laps around my abdomen on a motorcycle--in the span of three days. Last night, while Dean and I were trading some good-natured jabs over baby names (in which he announced that the kid would be named "SpaceMonkey" whether I liked it or not), suddenly I got three literal jabs in several sections of my belly that could have been described as a left, a right and a kick. "Bunky does not approve," I said.
This week is week 19, meaning I'm almost halfway done. Ultrasound on Tuesday may reveal whether it's a boy or a girl. And it may not. My mom and several of my colleagues at work are convinced it's a girl; most of my friends and wider family think it's a boy. I'm ambivalent, though deep down I have always wanted a daughter and part of me wants to know simply to get over the disappointment if it is in fact a boy, so that I can get on with being happy with it.
I started several baby registries this week but after sampling several of them, I'm sticking with Target/Amazon simply because the prices are significantly better. I wound up getting a subscription to Consumer Reports online, because I suspect the next year or so is going to be filled with "What's the best _____?" questions. I've also been keeping an eye on Craigslist for used items that will be harder to get from baby showers, and one of the first things on the list was a bassinet. Found one down in Spotslyvania for 50 bucks and was delighted to find it in near-perfect condition; the bassinet itself detaches from the frame and as such can be used as a portable bed so that we can do the family Thanksgiving we want to do, even with a two-week-old (assuming Bunky shows up on time). It's very important for me that Bunky have some time with my grandmother's sister, the only remaining member of that generation in my family; I have a beautiful picture of Kieran resting on my grandmother's lap at three weeks of age from Christmas 1992 and I hope we can do something similar with Aunt Hannah.
Speaking of that side of the family, I'm growing closer with those cousins again. Aunt Hannah had two children, Meade and Hannah, and cousin Hannah has offered to host the family/RVA baby shower. Her daughter Meredith, my second cousin, is spearheading the whole thing, which just cracks me up given some of her youthful foibles. On the other side of that family, Meade's daughter Ginny admitted to me shortly after she and I got back in touch that she had a bit of a hero worship thing for me when I was a teenager and she was an impressionable 9-year-old. Now it's turned around and I have a bit of a hero worship thing for her as she juggles being a matriarch in her own right, hosting family dinners, running marathons and raising her three adorable kids. I really want to ask her to be Bunky's godmother because I think it will help bring our families that much closer, and discovering how much I love my second cousins has been a joy. It's not terribly weird that I'm closer to my second cousins than I am to my first cousins; we vacationed in Hatteras together regularly as youth. But as I was notorious for doing prior to 2003 or so, I vanished off the face of the earth to them around 1990, so I missed a lot of significant parts of Ginny's life. Really glad to be a part of it again.
Anyhow, sounds like I've got at least three baby showers in the works and a good leg up on secondhand gear at this point. Now if I could just catch up on work and sleep.
Oh and one last thing: new favorite site: http://babyfit.com .
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