Au Revoir, Good Friends

So, along with my love of quilting textiles, I also love clothes. I love cords, and cotton pants and well cut jeans. I love snugly wooly sweaters and cozy t-shirts. I love cute tank tops and funky tunics. Recently, I had been quite happy to see leggings and skinny jeans with longer shirts and tunics come back, since they have always been good to me (though I think I'll pass on the cut off shorts over top of leggings look this time around). And I feel like I have finally figured out how to dress for my body type and look decent (I know, it took me 30 years to get there). And I had just lost all my baby weight before getting pregnant the first time this winter, and bought some cute new sweaters and jeans that fit well and were not frumpy and did not need to be suitable for breastfeeding on demand.

And then I got pregnant. And now, I need to find a way to fit all my maternity and post partum (ie - bigger and frumpier and very washable) and nursing clothes into my wardrobe. So I had to say au revoir to all my lovely, cute clothes again. Some of them were bought just before I got pregnant with Andrew, and have seen about 6 months of use in the last 6 years. Sigh.

I know its vain, but I greive about my body and my clothes in the last trimester of every pregnancy. And then I greive again shortly after I give birth, and my uterus has shrunk back but the rest of me, well, hasn't. And then when I have lost about half the weight and realize that *certain* bits and pieces are just never going back to their former glory I grieve again. And then I make the best of it, and use it as an excuse to buy new clothes . . .

In any case, it was a sad day yesterday.

Ah well, on inspection, I discovered that most of my nursing shirts have survived two voracious newborns and are starting to fray and pill and stretch. Which I suppose gives me an excuse to buy some new nursing clothes . . . . I knew something good would come of this if I looked hard enough.

Obligatory 30 weeks belly photo

I thought you might all like an update on my baby belly. Well, okay, I thought I would give you one whether you wanted it or not. Everything is still going well. The baby is really active, especially when s/he hears the other kids playing. I am healthy. And thanks to my Birkenstocks,a different prenatal yoga video, and a baby that has not wedged its head in my pelvis, I have had very little back pain so far. Now I just have to figure out how I can wear my Birkies in the snow . . .

Let the Nesting Begin!

Well, now that Andrew is settled in school, decisions about extra activities have been finalized, the doll quilt is finished, and Andrew's 5th birthday party is finished (more on that in another post), I can get to baby prep.

Yes, I can feel the itch starting. I washed the shoe matts yesterday, and scrubbed down the kitchen garbage can, and I re-organized the toys in the basement, and sent Dave to the Salvation Army with a bunch of big stuff we haven't been using but haven't been throwing out, and started sewing storage bags for the car so we have room for a third car seat (and because my husband is complaining about the stuff everywhere), and soon its going to be clearing out closets and re-arranging furniture and hanging shelves . . .

Not to mention sorting and ordering prints from digital photos for the last two and a half years, freezing meals, sewing quilts and gifts, and trying to get our house a little bit happier for this coming winter . . .

And the inevitable breaking up fights and putting boys in time out a hundred times a day and reading Tintin and finding fun crafty things to do and going to the park while we still can . . .

Its going to be a busy fall. But hopefully a good, less draining kind of busy.

Obligatory Belly Photo

So here I am, at 20 weeks pregnant. Half way there!

Yeah, and I have bangs. I don't think I've had bangs since I was in highschool. I"m trying to decide if I like them, or if they're too girly. I think its that the rest of my hair has really heavy layers, so I feel like its too much of a mom cut, or conversely, like what my hair was like in grade 11. Any thoughts?

Thanks, Donna, for getting my camera back to me! Lots of crafty things to post in the next day or so (or just check my Flikr, they're already up there).

Pregnancy Update -- 33 Weeks

So, we are in the home stretch. Less than two months left to go, 7 weeks or so to be precise. According to our latest calculations. Which could be off. So I have something less than 10 weeks to go.

Physically I'm doing quite well. The occasional sore back, since this baby is nestled in my pelvis, unlike Andrew who was nestled securely in my ribs, and some fatigue. That is all part of the pregnancy thing, and so I'm not too concerned. My mobility is severely decreased. I can hardly get in and out of the car, I end up huffing and puffing by the time I reach the top of the stairs, and I have to use two hands to prop myself up when I get off the floor (but I can still sit on the floor, so we're not too bad yet). I need some new shoes, because my only non-tying shoes are heelless and that just doesn't really work with 10cm of snow. I can still tie my shoes, but not well enough that they stay tied up. So I am getting big and awkward. Again, I accept this as part of the pregnancy game. This is my second time around, so my vanity about my physical appearance has already taken a pummelling, and I just do what I can and know it will be over soon and in about a year from now (barring another pregnancy) I will be back to as close to my old self as I'm going to get.

What has always been the real kicker for me in pregnancy is what it does to my mind. Generally I am a really good multi-tasker and can keep track of innumerable bits of information about people and places (in no particular important order, unfortunately). Also, I am generally fairly easy going. Something might bother me for a while, but then I can let it go. Not so with pregnant Jill. Pregnant Jill not only loses her memory and ability to focus on anything outside of the sphere of my immediate household (and even then its tentative some days), but is very easily irritated by things non-pregnant Jill would just laugh off. Um, you might have noticed this in my past few blog entries. Fortunately, Pregnant Jill still has, for the most part, her brain filters in place (these filters have been developed through years of painstaking idiocy and social blunders, and contain several back up firewalls. Sadly they are still, on occasion, insufficient to keep my tongue in check). This means that I do not begin tearing things off the shelf at Toys R Us and shouting "Crass Commercialism! That's all any of this is about! Sheer Crass Commercialism" and get arrested. This means I do not yell at nice church ladies who invite me over for tea just when my son is supposed to be napping and thus interrupt our very hard won sleep schedule for weeks on end. This means I even restrain myself from smacking the grocery store clerk who has not yet figured out (after a 5 hour shift) that the Royal Bank's machines must be down, rather than assuming that her debit machines "have just stopped taking about every 10th person's card. Sorry, I guess you're person 10". Anyway, the point being that I just get a) stupid and b) grumpy at the end of pregnancy. So don't ask me any questions and stay out of my way.

On a brighter note, I will share a silly very pregnant Jill story from this morning. So, I woke up and realized that I had not washed my stretchy black pants that I always wear to church now. So I started rummaging through my very limited wardrobe for something to wear. I had my khaki overalls and my khaki pants clean and an assortment of shirts. Okay, I thought, I'll wear my white t-shirt with my overalls. No, too casual for church. Oh, look! This sweater is in my pile of clean clothes. I put it on to discover that there is a small spot of something off a grimy toddler hand right where my belly button protrudes. Maybe not. I find another sweatshirt that goes well with the pants I have, only to discover that a greasy hand has wiped itself off on the front of my shirt right where other things generally protrude. My other "clean" shirt has coffee on it. I begin to think, "Who put these clothes back in the drawer? Oh yeah, me." Finally I end up going to church in a shirt that is much too short for me with my big zip up hoodie over top of it, zipped up most of the way, and my belly hugger fabric tube pulled down to stop my pants from sliding down and my hair . . . we won't even mention my hair, because it was unwashed and unbrushed and pulled back in a ponytail and wrapped around with a scarf. After I spent 15 min. getting dressed, there was not time for such trifles as hair, especially since Andrew was running around the house in just a diaper saying "I go to church naked." and Dave's freshly dry-cleaned robes were in the back of my car and needed to be at the church before the service started.

Fortunately, one of the good things about being this pregnant is that no one expects that much of you. If you manage to show up and your clothes generally fit, they are pretty impressed. That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it for at least another 7 weeks.