Shower me with LOVE!

I'm taking a page out of Kristina and Brittany's playbook, and announcing my baby shower on the blogging world! Don't worry, somebody else is throwing it for me... I just barely managed to not have to throw my own baby shower. :) Anyway, if you want to come and celebrate my adorable fetus, email your address to jenandbrit~at~gmail~dot~com. The shower is planned for April 24, and I think we're going to try to send out invites by the first week or two of April, so don't dawdle.

Lots of love to Kari and Lanie for being the awesome friends to do this for me.

3rd Trimester

I know I technically blogged my pregnancy update about my 3rd trimester a couple of weeks ago (or was that just last week?), but I feel like it just began in force, and I mean FORCE. Just after making that post, all of a sudden...

I feel gigantic. Even scrubs don't fit anymore, and I thought they would last forever. My winter coat BARELY zips... good thing it's about spring... and everything (especially underwear) is tight and uncomfortable. I've reached the point where I can't bend over to get stuff anymore (or really don't want to, anyway). I tried playing fetch with Chess the other day, and I can't do it, she's too good.... she drops the ball at my feet instead of holding onto it until I get it out of her mouth, and bending over 20 times to pick it up and throw it again is NOT my favorite thing.

My back hurts like mad, pretty much all the time. I walk out of work waddling like I'm 9 1/2 months pregnant and the baby's dropped..... but it's just my lower back making it hard to even walk. My left lower back is especially screwed up- if I'm bending over at the waist (as in, to put on pants or shoes) I physically cannot lift my left leg off the ground. It's so weird.

I have to pee ALL THE TIME. I don't know if my bladder is weaker with #2 or he's just sitting much lower, but I pee about 8 times on one night shift, and I didn't have this problem with Isabelle. I didn't even notice any change, with her. And yes, there have been VERY embarrassing moments when he's straight up kicked my bladder.... luckily only ever at home.

The fun part is: I can now squish my belly and feel little baby parts. It's my favorite thing to do. He pushes a little elbow or knee or something out, and I push back and feel it move across my belly trying to get away from me. I wish I could tell what's what.

In any case, with all the bad parts starting already, this is going to be a VEEERY long 3 months. Yikes.

Obscenity

A completely random, very quick story before I head off to work....

A very long time ago, I pulled up to a stop light on State St, and watched a couple of 12-13 year old girls cross at the light. Suddenly for no reason at all, they started flashing the British "bird" at all the cars. Like they'd just learned what it meant, and thought they were terribly cool for knowing. I wanted to run over them on principle. It was a close call.

Brought to you by a memory sparked by the Boob Nazi's story (my first reaction while reading was "Um, did this peace sign happen to be backwards? Because I've got news for you....."). And for all two of you who don't read her blog already, she's having a giveaway.

26 Weeks (ish)!

I try to do belly pictures every 4 weeks when I have my OB appointments. So this should have been done last Monday at 26 weeks, but due to my crazy (work) life, is only getting done now, at 27. Toooooo baaaad.

It's not even the best picture, but there's no way I'm going through the effort (of putting on pants) to do it again.

Seriously though, work is nuts. We're pretty much storing babies in closets. Not really, but it's close. I've been working 4 shifts (that's 12-hour overnight shifts, keep in mind) every week since the second week of February. And we're still short 3-5 nurses every shift. It's a strange feeling to be home all day today, and awake. At least, a little bit awake... I did manage to take a 3 hour nap and still be grumpy about waking up. Sleep has become a spectacular talent of mine... Anyway, I am so done with working extra shifts, and have only 9 more days before I GO HOME TO NEW JERSEY!!!!!!! I'm pretty dang excited.

Oh, what, you want an actual pregnancy update? Probably not. But for posterity's sake, let's bullet-point it out:

• Obviously, I'm still extremely tired all the time. Partly due to work, but I think at least in part to growing a person still.
• He's gotten very active, and I love it. My belly moves and wiggles in the weirdest ways. Sometimes I swear an alien is trying to bust out of there.
• Sometimes the wiggling right after I eat makes me a little nauseous. It's a strange parody of the rolling your stomach does when it's really sick, so my body thinks it's sick, but it's just the alien.
• I can hear his heartbeat with a stethoscope now, if he's in the right position.
• Still craving nachos, sour cream, and salsa. Not so much with the orange juice anymore. And I'm back on diet coke.
• I feel like I can't breathe when I'm sitting in church. Luckily it's only the church pews that really make me that uncomfortable.
• He's big enough now to dig into my ribs. But luckily still small enough to shove out of the way. Doesn't help the breathing thing, though.
• I'm having a lot of contractions. I don't think I had any with Isabelle, but now that I know my contractions don't hurt (much), I recognize them more easily, so who knows. I didn't even know I was having labor contractions last time until they were 5 minutes apart.

Kids

I wish I could take a child development class or something before this baby comes out. I feel like I just don't understand kids, and their selfish illogical minds, and it makes me very impatient with them. Why do you need the toy that other kid has, and why do you think you can just snatch it from him? And why are you perfectly engrossed in whatever toy you're playing with, until I mention some other toy out loud to try and stop little Johnny from stealing little Susie's doll... and suddenly you RUN OVER because the toy I mentioned is the only toy you really wanted to play with all along and you must get there before little Johnny? And why doesn't this work when I want it to... Like when I invite someone to sit quietly in a chair, it doesn't suddenly occur to all the other 2 year olds that that's what they wanted to do all along. I vaguely remember learning about all this in my BYU Human Development class from years and years ago, but I don't really remember one little bit of what I learned, and it makes toddlers a foreign and frustrating species to me. Just stop being a brat!! What is so hard about that??