Park, Libe, Almost 75%

On Sunday, we went to the library of the future. This is a newly built library that we find so fascinating that we are willing to drive all the way to the other side of the city to go to it. The book returns are machines set into the wall like ATMs and you put your books (one at a time) on a little conveyor belt where they are swallowed up and automatically scanned back into the system. Most of the other libraries that we go to have already switched over to a self check out system, but at this library, you take your whole stack of books, set it on a platform and it reads them all at the same time, puts them on your card, and demagnetizes them for the security system. All that, and almost all of the books there have only recently been ordered, so they are shiny and new. There's nothing like shiny, happy, brand new library books, all wrapped up in clean plastic, with no scuffs or tears or folds.

Anyway, it is pretty far, so there was some further motivation. It's right next to a new park that we haven't been to yet. I don't have pictures of the book return machine, but I do have pics from the park.







As for gestation watch, I'm coming up on 30 weeks here. The past few days I've been feeling extremely tired, extremely cumbersome and uncomfortable, and just so ready to be done with it all. I can remember at the beginning of the year saying to myself, "Just get through four more months and then you'll be there or almost there. Just January, February, March, and April." And I would repeat "January, February, March, April," to myself. Well, February is almost gone now, and I can start saying, "March and April, March and April." I wish I could live more in the moment, in the now, but I want so much to be there, instead of here. I'd so much rather be dealing with the logistics of how do we go about our lives with a baby in tow than gosh, I'd really love to go out and do something fun with the girls, but am I even going to be able to last that long?

On a happier note, this baby sure is getting big. I can feel him/her rolling around in there and kicking like a little tornado. The kicking and movement is often visible from the outside. Sometimes I can put my hand on what is clearly a little foot.

And now my Braxton-Hicks contractions are starting to become more numerous, or at least more noticeable. They are at the point where they are not quite painful, but kind of, sort of. Often along with the BH contraction comes a feeling of not quite being able to catch my breath. Like my uterus is getting in the way of my diaphragm and making it hard to pull in all the air I need or let it all the way out.

Last night I started on a crocheted baby blanket. I have to ignore the way my fingertips become numb after a little while, but that's okay. I'm liking the crocheting as opposed to knitting because it's going very fast and I'm using a simple half double crochet stitch, nothing fancy. So I don't have to think about it too hard. Just my speed right now.

Possible New Incarnations of Spish

Since my last post, we added one name to the boy side and one name to the girl side, which brings the total for that list up to one. Just for fun, here are the possible first letters we have to work with. N,S,P,A,M,L

With L, it's easy, we make SPLISH. With a P, we could switch it around to SHIPPS. Meh. S and N don't do much. SPISHS? SPINSH? S+P=SHIN? A will give us SPISHA, ASPISH, or my personal fave, HIP-ASS. And the one that makes me laugh every time, M could make us SHIMPS.

Possiblities

I'm starting to feel a bit frantic about naming this baby. I found a piece of paper with lists of possibilities that we had written out a couple of months ago and discovered that I didn't like a single name on that list (except one), boy or girl. Things opened up considerably when I decided that M and L were allowed, from Pat's middle name. After all, who's making up the rules here? And I know I said that I would let go of our letter requirements if the right name came up, but for whatever reason, I'm becoming more and more adamant that we stick to the rule of using only letters from our names (first and middle, now). Pat still gives lots of suggestions that don't follow those rules, so I guess it doesn't matter as much to him. But then it comes down to the lowest common denominator, because we both have the right to say no to any name suggestion, no matter what, and if I'm saying no to all the names with a stray O or U or Q or Z in there, well... I guess that means we're sticking with that particular rule.

As for SPISH, I'm much more willing to let the acronym go. If we can't find anything good (and the possibilities are certainly not great), then a cool acronym was something our family could use at one time, but no longer can. Families change, that's not a big deal.

After some discussion, Pat and I came up with a new list (which contains only one name from the old list) for final considerations for boy names. There are four names on it. We already know the middle name for sure, and each of these four names goes well with it. We discovered that the first name (for a boy) should have two or more syllables, because just one doesn't sound as good with the middle name. Oh, hey. I may as well tell you the middle name, there isn't anything that is going to change our minds on that. If this baby is a boy, the middle name will be Patrick. I'm not ready to share the other four names yet.

As for the girl side of the list? Nothing. We have nothing. And no set middle name, so that needs to be thought up as well.

At times I have been very laid back about not having a name yet, feeling that we'll know the name when the baby comes and we meet him/her in person. It happened that way with Irina and it only took a couple of hours. But, for whatever reason, as the time approaches, I know I would feel better with a good list of possibilities. At least four for each sex would be perfect.

Any more suggestions? Here are the letters: s,t,e,p,h,a,n,i,r,c,k,m,l.

Just to be clear...

I thought I should point out that when I say, "I'm enormous," that's not code for, "I'm fat and ugly."

When I say, "I'm enormous," I just mean, "I'm enormous." My belly is big. I don't normally look down and see something quite that large. It's an unusual state of being and when I say, "I'm enormous," I'm just pointing that out. Sure, it's an exaggeration, but I feel like when you have another human being growing inside of your body, and it's difficult to get up off the couch, and almost impossible to get up out of a bed, and you waddle whenever you walk, when you're the same size at 28 weeks with your 4th baby as you were at 39 weeks with your first, exaggeration is totally called for.

This is not to say that I don't have body image issues when I am non-pregnant (though I am of the opinion that even then, those issues are pretty mild), just not now.

I'm pregnant, I'm large, I'm enormous, I'm nourishing a growing human life, I'm a goddess, I'm glowing, I'm cumbersome, I'm awkward, I'm electric, I am an amazing conduit for everyday miracles, but I am neither fat nor ugly.

Impatient

Yesterday Irina came into the bedroom where I was and said, all exasperated, "Mommy, is you baby coming now?"

Irina is probably the most excited about this coming sibling. She has watched birth videos on youtube with me and loved that, asking to watch more as soon as the one we are watching is finished. She asks all the time about when the baby is going to come. She says she has a baby is her belly too.

Saren loves to feel the baby kick. Harper is excited too, but I think she's a little bit freaked out about the whole birth aspect.

28 Weeks

I'm enormous.

Money Sucks

Unless you always have enough of it. If it doesn't cause you stress, then I'd say it was neutral.

Our tax refund was deposited yesterday so I used it today and yesterday for a few things. Firstly to get caught up on our stupid bills. But for how long, my friends, for how long? It sucked to watch a large amount of money come into our lives and then disappear so quickly.

I also bought a car seat for the baby, even though it feels weird to do so three months before one will be needed. But I figured I better do it now so we don't end up in April without one and without the money to get it. Also bought a bouncy seat. Pat said, "What's that?" and I said, "This is for putting the baby in so that I can take a shower. Also it has owls on it." And I got a few blankies, some hats, some breast pads, some Lansinoh (I just had a flashback to when I was first nursing Irina and we both got thrush and I had gashes on my breats, *shudder*), pacifiers (even though my past two kids refused them completely), and... that's it. I still need some little socks and a small dresser, but I think that's all. Oh, man. I just remembered I was going to get one of these wrap slings, but now I don't know if I should. Oh well. I've got others. Maybe I could make something similar.

And we've got just enough left over to carry us through another couple of months, provided we don't spend any extra money on... anything. Which sucks because I know we need to take care of some major plumbing issues in the house, and the van needs some maintenance as well if we want it to continue to run well (or, you know, as well as it does). When those couple of months are up, we need to have more money coming in each month, or... well, there is no "or" about it. It has to happen. And I would already have a job to that end (well, always assuming I could get one nowadays), except that I am pregnant and soon I will have a nursing baby.

I'm so tired of always feeling on the edge of a precipice.

Hey, what happened? This entry turned out more depressing than I had intended. It was supposed to be about how we got our tax refund, yay.

I'm going to go make a new fake baby name poll now. (Winners of previous: Gracie and Summer B.) Guess the new category!

Hodgepodge

I haven't blogged in a while so here's a random entry.

Yesterday we went out and I bought a bunch of baby clothes. I had said in a previous post that I wasn't going to go overboard, but looking at the piles I've ended up with, I feel like, yeah that's probably too much. Then again, I know a lot of it isn't tiny enough to fit right away, so maybe it's not enough? Pfft. Baby clothes. Here they all are, stacked up in neat categorized piles on my bed.



Also while we were out yesterday, at Savers, I ran across this little puppet theater. I think it was a pretty good find for $6. All last night and part of today Harper and Irina were playing with it. First they made puppet shows, then they made a ticket booth, then they made a restaurant. Whenever Harper and Irina play restaurant lately, there's always an irate customer.



Here is a video of Irina playing with a mini whoopie cushion which, for some reason, makes Pat and I laugh hysterically every time we see it. Please ignore mess.



I was going to post another Irina video as well, but that one took more than two hours to upload, so um... I'm done now. More later.

Wii Fit thinks I am fat.

Yesterday we went to the toy store. The big annoying one with the giraffe. Not that I have anything against giraffes, that goes without saying. I wish we had an awesome small independent toy store to go to, but this is Las Vegas. Enough said? I don't know. Have you been here? Or wait, do you live here? I know you do. And you. And you used to. Actually, I would bet that there are a few independent toy stores hidden away in some casinos, but if so, they're all frou-frou and too expensive for the likes of us.

Where was I? Yesterday we went to the toy store. It was Irina's birthday and she had $20 to spend, so I thought it a decent idea. She picked out a Melissa and Doug wooden carry-able doll house*. Well, okay, I steered her towards it, but she really does like it. I also bought some baby clothes because some of their stuff was buy one, get one free, so I figured I may as well. The clothes are heavy on the green/yellow/orange spectrum and I think they're very cute. (I also think they are boy-intended despite the "gender neutral" colors, because everybody knows what sex their child is going to be, right? Of course they do.) But you know what? Despite being size newborn, I know perfectly well that they aren't going to fit right away. I have small babies. It always amazes me to find out that my baby is too small for these teensy teensy itty bitty clothes, but it always ends up that way.

We also bought a Wii Fit. I had told myself that the next time we were at a store and they had it in stock and we had the money, I would get it. Originally I had intended to buy it with a gift card from Target from my dad, but of course, of course, what was intended for the Wii Fit instead got spent on things like milk and bread and toilet paper and such when we were out of cash. Anyway, I finished doing the taxes and know the amount and date that our refund will be deposited, so I went ahead and bought this stuff. Most of the refund is going toward catching up on bills, but some of it can be splurged [/justification].

So, we've been playing Wii Fit a lot today and the girls are really enjoying it. I made myself a profile and the Wii Fit thinks I'm really fat. It was sort of comical to see my Mii suddenly put on a whole bunch of extra pounds and look at herself all surprised. You have to make a goal so I said I wanted to lose 5 pounds in the next 6 months. It's going to be really disappointed in me when I continue to gain weight over the next 3 months, but it will probably be really confused when I suddenly lose a whole bunch of weight in May. My real goal is to lose at least 7 pounds in one day. Specific day to be determined.

The hula hooping is fun.

*Damn. I just went to look for a picture of the dollhouse so I could show you and I saw a larger version on Amazon for only $4 more than I paid and with free shipping. Sigh. This is why I should always shop online and never leave the house.

Four!

Happy Birthday, my sweet little bean.