Wow.

I just realized that I ran all over Jackson today wearing white shorts with bright blue underwear. Seriously, I only have a few brain cells left, I'm trying to conserve them as much as possible!

Susan: Taking stupid to a whole new level since 1975.

Tot Turns 30

So Tot turned 30 this past Sunday. She's growing up fast. However, I have to admit that despite the fact that I've felt pretty good the past few months, I'm about to the point of wanting to be done with this. I've definitely turned the corner into the third trimester.

The sudden exhaustion is back. Yesterday I walked to the bedroom to do something and woke up when Greg got home. Pretty sure I didn't walk down there to take a nap, I was simply attacked by the bed monster.

The back pain that had actually improved dramatically since I left my job is back with a vengeance. Sometimes I feel almost crippled when I first stand up.

When I have an hour to sleep, I'd like to be able to sleep instead of wasting half of it squirming around trying to get comfortable. Comfort doesn't happen. And inevitably when I find a spot that's less uncomfortable, I immediately have to roll out of bed to go pee.

I want to be able to walk 2-3 miles again instead of getting to the end of my street and thinking, "Ok, I'm done. Can I make it back or should I just sit on the curb until a neighbor drives by and takes pity on me?"

I want my thermostat back. I nearly passed out in childbirth class on Tuesday night. Literally. Hot flash hit me out of nowhere and I got so dizzy the nurse teaching the class was very concerned. I ended up having to go sit in the lobby drinking water until I felt like I could stand up on my own again. I just want to know I'll be cold all the time like I used to, instead of jumping from hot flash to freezing ten times an hour.

Having said that, I will admit that it could be worse. I haven't seen much of the emotional roller coaster that can come with the pregnancy hormones. Perhaps they're just saving up for after the birth. Woo. Something to look forward to. And I'm sure the back pain will get worse at Tot continues to grow over the next 9 weeks, but at least I haven't gained 40 pounds. I'm sure that would hurt worse.

I know it'll all be fine. And it'll be worth it. As I've said from the first day the nausea hit me, it's all just part of the package. Remind me of that when I have a screaming infant, haven't slept in 4 days, and my postpartum depression drugs haven't kicked in yet.

Preview

We finally found and purchased a chest of drawers for Tot's room this weekend. That said, I took some preview pictures of a couple of things:

The new chest of drawers. Needed somewhere to stash Tot's growing collection of clothes!

The crib, finally fully assembled! I love the color and style. And since it survived both of Lauren's boys, I know it's safe and sturdy.

And finally, the shower curtain art, which I finally finished. I'm taking volunteers to actually come hang it on the wall. I'm not so good at even, straight, and level! We'll get it up eventually. I suppose Tot won't care if it's even or not.

Conversation of the Day

While getting lectured by Dr. T regarding when to notify the office if I start having contractions:

Me: "You know I won't know a contraction until it walks up and introduces itself, right?"

Dr. T: "And it will..."

That said, I had a good (enough) appointment today. Gained about 3 more pounds, which puts me in double digits total. My glucose test was acceptable enough. The actual word she used was "borderline." Basically they take 4 readings. If two or more come back with a number they consider high, you're screwed. One of mine was rather high (190), one was very borderline (within 1 or 2 points of "screwed") and the other two were low enough, 90 and 135. They did do another finger stick today and it was 141. They want it to be under 140. Dr. T. said she'd let it slide, but to knock off the sweet tea and desserts. I told her we'd already banned sweet tea from the house and I was only drinking it if we went out to eat. She'd like me to limit that as well. She said the magic words, though, "You don't want to have problems with the baby's sugar..."

I felt ok about that until Greg got home and told me that he'd been talking to his boss when I sent him the text about it today and Dr. G said he thought the 140 limit was generous, he would rather see something under 120! He asked Greg if diabetes runs in my family. Why yes, it does. In multiple people. Alrighty then, I'll get it under control. We went out to eat tonight and I had a salad with water. The hardest thing is going to be finding lower sugar snacks. I like dried fruit. And oreos. And cake. But I'll just say no. 'Cause it's for the Tot.

Quote of the Day

From last night's childbirth class, "The best thing you can do for the baby at this point is sleep."

Can I get an amen?

Unfortunately, that's easier said than done these days. I don't sleep well most nights. Tot is a bit of a night owl, as soon as I get still she gets riled up. The need to pee every 90 minutes or less doesn't help. The inability to sleep in my two favorite positions - on my back or stomach - has made life difficult. The inability to roll over without three tries and the use of a crane doesn't help much either. And yes, I know it's only going to get worse. I have ten and half weeks to go.

That said, I'd like to have a moment of appreciation for the fact that if I don't have to go into an office every day. Yesterday I got really tired in the afternoon and took a nice nap, mostly so I could survive through class. But when I don't sleep at night, it's wonderful to be able to sleep a couple of hours in the morning or afternoon while my little boxer-girl is quiet.

I'll be trekking back to the doc this afternoon. I don't expect any real news, other than maybe getting my glucose results. I'll be flying solo today since Greg's office has him running all over creation for meetings all week. Guess I should find a book to take.

Busy Busy Busy

This is going to be a bit of busy week.

Tonight is our first childbirth class. I hope we get to meet the stork.
Wednesday is my doc appointment. Maybe I'll get my glucose results.
Thursday night Greg's bowling team starts up again. I don't bowl, but I like to go watch. They're funny!
Friday I have a breakfast date with a friend and lunch date with my hubby.
Saturday we're hopefully going to do some shopping for a chest of drawers or dresser for Tot.
Sunday I want to visit a different church in Clinton

And speaking of busy schedules, I realized yesterday that the calendar I keep in my purse with all my stuff on it runs out at the end of September. It was an academic year calendar I bought when I was working at UMC and it worked well at the time, but now I'm stuck with three months left in the year and no desire to go buy an entire 2009 calendar. Make that three very busy months, as I'll be having more doc appointments and, well, A BABY. Hmmm. Do I get another academic calendar or suck it up and buy a full 2009 and start transferring information? I need to do something, as one of my cousins called with a preliminary baby shower date this morning, and of course it's in October! I almost told her I couldn't schedule it for October because my calendar ran out in Septmeber, therefore October doesn't exist.

Addyson's Big Day

BFF Addyson was baptized at church this morning. That's Greg, me, Rob, and Jennifer with her after the service. She was soooo good. She was rather vocal about her appreciation of the service (in her happy voice, she didn't cry at all) and the minister even let her splash around in the water after he soaked her while the other minister was continuing with the reading. That's my girl. I so wish I had that on a video I could post!

And I forgot to mention it with all the hoopla, but Jen, I loved your dress!

Weekend

BFF Addyson is getting baptized at church on Sunday. I got notice today that my mom is coming for the event, since she still hasn't managed to meet the little sweetie.

Oh geeze. I have to make room for her to sleep! Much of the junk we hauled out of what used to be the office got piled up in the guest room. Eh, she's used to my house being a bit of a mess, but I should at least clean off the bed! And clean the guest bathroom. And maybe run the dishwasher. At least the pup got his bath yesterday, so something is already clean!

I'm excited that she's coming to visit, though. She hasn't been over since we had our last sonogram in June, so it'll be fun to show her the progress we've made in acquiring baby gear and stuff for the nursery. Maybe she can figure out how to put the stoller back together...

Crib Parts - Lessons in Customer Service

My irritation level just skyrocketed.

Remember how we broke a plastic piece off our crib and I spent two weeks trying to order new parts? I tried contacting the company that made the crib, Child Craft, multiple times. The phone number didn't work, no response to email, no response to the online order? I finally gave up and located another company called Products America that offered the part and ordered it from them. The customer service lady there was awesome, very nice, offered to print off assembly instructions for me, and shipped my part the next day. I had it in my hands two days later, crib is assembled and everybody in the Hall household is happy.

Except apparently Child Craft decided to fill my order and ship my parts on Monday. That wouldn't have irritated me quite so much if they'd communicated with me at all. I have no idea how much they've charged me, as I had requested the part as a miscellaneous item and didn't even know if they stocked them. I received no response to the email or the order. The parts are non refundable. AND come to find out the reason I've gotten no response is because they've been closed for the past two months after being bought out by another company.

I realize I have no actual legal complaint. I placed the order, I gave them a debit card number, they shipped the part. Eventually. My issue here is the customer service. Seriously, if you have an baby and you break a critical part off of you crib are you going to let your kid sleep in an unsafe crib for two months while you wait for a part or are you going to go ahead and make other arrangements? Did it not occur to the company that maybe they should contact the people who have ordered stuff, tell them what was going on and confirm their orders? Better yet, would it have killed them to put a notice on their website that they were temporarily closed and not taking orders for parts?

So with that I'm guessing we're out another $30. I told Greg that it probably wasn't a bad idea to keep some spare parts around, since there's a better than average chance of me breaking it again. But if any of you have a Child Craft drop side crib and break an assembly guide off, let me know. I have extras.

First Sighting of the Year

August 12, 2009
Big Lots, Clinton, MS

Rule of Multiple Windshields

Those of you who live in Mississippi are probably already aware of this one, but for those of you who don't know:

Chips and cracks in your vehicle's windshield will occur either right before your inspection sticker is due, or after you've gone seven months without a chip and start to feel smug about it. When this happens, the more you complain about it the more likely it is that your second vehicle's windshield will be attacked by a rock and also acquire damage within 24 hours of getting the first one fixed.

And no, I don't want to talk about it.

Catching Up

Things have gotten so boring that I feel like all I ever do here is catch up on the random things that have been going on. Dang I'm boring.

To answer a few lingering questions:
No, I have not received results from my 3 hour glucose test. And no, I'm not about to call and ask for trouble. If they want to torture me any more they can make the effort to call me. Besides, I see Dr. T again next week. I can get them then.

Yes, we finally got the crib put together! Took about 30 seconds after we got the replacement parts put on. I also managed to reassemble the convertible car seat I took apart to clean. The infant seat didn't need to be soaked, it's in darn good shape already. The stroller... Well, I took the cover off to soak it (OxyClean is my friend!) and now I can't seem to get it reattached. It's really clean though. Even the red kool aid stain came out. Which will be awesome, if I can get the stupid thing put back together. Sigh. I will work on that more tomorrow.

Today was my last regular day to keep BFF Addyson. I'll miss seeing her so much, she really is a very good baby. For me. =) But, the reality is that I'm getting to the point where it's hard to pick her up out of her crib and, well, we're both just getting bigger.

Otherwise I have to say that I'm incredibly grateful that I've felt pretty darn good for the past six weeks or so. I realize it may not last a whole lot longer, I'm already starting to feel the tiredness coming back, but after those first few months of misery I'm thankful for every good day I get!

Whine

I can't even call this an update from Tot's doc appointment, since it's mostly going to be me whining about how terribly I've been mistreated.

We went to our regular appointment yesterday and all was well with Tot. We will now be visiting Dr. T every 2 weeks. Unfortunately, my glucose test was not well, it was 15 points high. This morning I found myself back at the Colonnades for the 3 hour glucose test. Don't let the name mislead you, it took 5 hours.

Let me just stop here and point out something important. For me, the worst part about going to the doc is having to pee in a cup. I'm not one of those people who can pee on demand. Every time I have to go to the clinic I prepare by sucking down as much liquid as possible an hour before my appointment so that I walk in the door doing the potty dance.

Imagine my joy when I walked into the lab at 7 this morning and the first thing they told me was that I needed to pee in a cup, and would be doing so every time they drew blood today. Um, nobody mentioned that. I hadn't had any food or drink since dinner last night, 12 hours before! If I had known I would have made an effort to skip my 4am potty stop, but I nobody had said a word about the cup yesterday. Nothing.

So they drew blood the first time and pointed me to the restroom. I told them it wasn't going to happen and I didn't lie. I told them a glass of water would be useful, but I couldn't have anything until after I drank down another bottle of the nasty glucose drink, which I couldn't have until I produced a sample. I finally won the standoff an hour later when they gave me the glucose drink and gave up on liquid gold from round one.

After I sucked down the nasty orange flavored drink (yesterday's lemon/lime wasn't quite so blech) they sent me back to the waiting room for an hour, then called me back for another blood draw and handed me another cup. I was really starting to hate these people. I would like to point out that knocking on the restroom door repeatedly and asking, "Are you ok?" or "Can you go this time?" isn't really helpful. You got your sample lady, but you would have gotten it faster without the pressure!

This is the point where the ladies in the lab get kudos. They did not send me back to the waiting room, but rather put me in an exam room in the back with a recliner, blankie, and gave me water. Bless them. They really weren't evil. Oh no wait, an hour later they came back and handed me another cup, then shoved another needle in my arm. And again an hour after that... My arms look like I've been shooting heroin. One arm got hit twice, the other one three times. They hurt.

The irony is that during that last hour I downed 3 cups of water to make sure there was no delay when they handed me the cup. They only had one restroom at the place where they drew blood and I had caused a line to form every time I went in there. I wasn't wasting any time on this last one. So I finally took care of business in a timely fashion and left. Then I got stuck in traffic on the way home and realized that I seriously had to pee...

If I don't pass this test, I have to go back for the freaking 5 hour glucose test, which will probably take more like 10 hours. I would rather jump in front of a fast moving train. I don't think I can take that many sticks in one day. The nice lady who drew my blood the last time told me to drink water, lots and lots of water, and I shouldn't have a problem. You betcha, lady. I will be drinking water like a fish.

Opinions - I Need Some

I had this all worked out in my head perfectly, until I actually went to put it together...

While looking for inspiration on what to do with Tot's room I contemplated (and then purchased) this shower curtain. I loved all the color and had the brilliant idea that I could cut out some of the squares and make fabric wall hangings. This weekend I got my custom frames made and cut out the squares. I decided to do doubles instead of 4 singles so I would have an easier time actually hanging them on the wall in a grouping. That's when I realized I had made a minor miscalculation. I'll get to that in a minute. Now I have several options and need some options. Keep in mind none of these are "finished," I just draped or tacked up the fabric to the frames to get an idea of how they'd look. Here's group option #1:

This was not my original plan, but when I went to put my original planned grouping together I realized that the flower squares aren't, well, square. One side is half an inch longer than the other. If I had realized this before I had my frames made I could have just had them made a little smaller and it would have probably compensated for it, but I didn't. So, this leaves a stripe of color at the top and bottom of the second frame for option #2:


Because I had to cut into so many other squares to leave enough fabric on the sides to mount them, I only have two more squares left that are useable, and they match up to one of the "correct" size panels exactly. I don't remember which one at the moment, but theoretically I could make two identical panels using those.

Since working on this project today I discovered two more potential options. Thanks to a failed attempt at some shelving I have some materials that would work to make two singles, sorta like this option #3:
I could use the other set of matching flowers to make the two tall panels identical and use two of the four other flower squares to make singles (would have to be one from each of the remaining panels, to leave room for mounting). Hanging the groupings would be something of a pain, since the framing boards in my house aren't even close to square, but I could figure something out.

The final option is that I could mount the shorter panel on a shorter frame, but the size difference would be kinda obvious. I don't know how I would use this to make it work, but it would look something like option #4:

Alright people who are more artistic than I, what are my best choices here?

And yes, that's my partially assembled crib in the background. I ordered the necessary replacement part today to finish putting it together. Hopefully by next week I can get that done and breathe a big sign of relief.