Preggy Tales: 5.25 Months - 21 Weeks

Where to begin? I have not felt very blogalicious this week. I think that the excitement of finding out we were having a girl sucked the blogging life out of me. Either that or it's because the power cord to my Macbook decided it is no longer going to work. I need stimulation. It was easy blogging while I was on the couch watching TV, talking to B, and fighting off the dogs. Now I'm in the back computer room, barely in earshot of the TV, where all that is going on it the ceiling fan. I'm getting restless just thinking about it. Not only that but I have, yet again, fallen into summer laziness. I only work at summer school from 7:30-11:15am Monday-Thursday. You'd think that I would be at the beach everyday at noon. Wrong. I told myself that I was going to go today after I ate lunch. What really happened was I ate lunch and then passed out on the couch for almost two hours. Loser! Now I'm in the boring, lifeless computer room trying to force out this week's blog while looking out of the window to bright blue skies and puffy, cottony clouds. Why am I not outside!?

Baby "T"

Is officially finished with half of her stay in Hotel Mommy. We're now on the downhill slide to birth, life, diapers, crying, and exhaustion. On the up side we are also halfway to being able to put something into those adorable girl clothes that I have bought and that a few friends have given us!
She is now the size of a carrot, which doesn't seem like much of a difference from last week's banana, but who am I to judge.
Baby Center claims that she weighs about 12 oz. now and is about the length of a carrot (10.5 inches). That must be why I can feel her moving around a lot more. I can't imagine putting something the length of a carrot inside of myself, moving it around, and NOT being able to feel it. Her movements are much more noticeable now and they aren't always in the same place like when I first started to feel them. Like right now for instance I feel her whacking away right underneath my belly button but earlier today I felt her more down by my left hip region. She's taking over in there! I hope she never figures out how to swim up to my ribs as I have heard that is quite uncomfortable.
Back to what I said before, Baby Center tells me more about myself during pregnancy than it does about baby development at this point. The only other changes in Baby "T" this week is:

she now has eyelashes (hopefully long, lush ones) and eyelids.
her Ladytown has begun to form down there.

Adventures in Baby Naming - She does NOT have a name yet. Please stop asking and probing like we're hiding the name in Fort Knox. There is no name to hide at this point, seriously. Yes, we have names that are on the potential list, but we are not sharing them. Why? Because this naming business is hard and it's something that we need to do on our own without outside influences and opinions. Sadly, it doesn't matter if you like her name or not. What's also pretty hard is taking name suggestions from people. At first it was really helpful. Made it easier to think outside of the box, but at this point I'm stuck on three names and he's stuck on 3-4 names and that's it. One of those on the current list is going to be our daughter's name and outside suggestions just hit the brick wall in my mind. I guess I must be hitting my breaking point because the same thing goes for crib sets and bedding. Last week when we finished Our Registry I was left astonished that the bedding choices were horrible and I set off on a three-day internet binge in search of the perfect bedding. I had suggestions rolling in from girlfriends on where to look and things they liked, but I have now hit another brick wall. I think I found the end of the internet as far as baby bedding goes and anything you send me or websites you suggest, I have been there, done that. What's good is that from the suggestions and from my own searching I have found 3-5 contenders for bedding. The problem is B is out of town yet again which means that we'll have to wait to make new decisions until he gets back either Wednesday or Sunday (I know, stupid time gap but that's what you get when you're working with the military, gotta love 'em). I still find myself poking around the internet looking for bedding and then I snap out of it. Preparing for a baby is an addiction. When does this nesting stuff kick in? I could easily spend a few hours cleaning the house... if I felt like it.

11 weeks and super skinny


21 weeks - Can you hear me cringing as I post yet another mirror self-portrait?

My Baby Body
I'm starting to have one! People who know I'm pregnant see it much easier than people who don't. I went into Motherhood Maternity for some clothes (sadly, I retired some more of my pre-pregnancy clothes to the bin this weekend). When I walked in the sales girl asked if I was shopping for myself or someone else. When I told her I was shopping for me she asked the quintessential question, "How far along are you?"
When I replied with,"5 months." The look on her face and the ego boost I got was priceless.

"Where's the baby!?" she responded. That's when I told her that I run, work out, and such. She commended me, which felt nice because I usually get the opposite. "You should take it easy" and all of that. Whatever, it felt great to hear and I really love the maternity clothes. So comfy and cute so far. She suggested that I try the long shirts with leggings or skinny jeans when I told her that I don't understand why everything is so long. That stuff looks weird on me right now because I don't have much of a belly to pop the shirt out and up. Leggings and skinny jeans scare me, but I may have to try them out anyway.

I do think that I have found the answer to my dry, scaly belly! It's an oil spray from Palmers. The best part? It doesn't smell like cocoa butter!! Ugh, I HATE the smell of cocoa butter. It's like chocolate gone horribly wrong. Vomit. For anyone else in my dry, scaly, itchy situation you must go get this! It's oily at first, obviously, but it dries up pretty quickly and you're left feeling smooth and hydrated. One friend suggested I rub olive oil on my stomach. The smell of olive oil isn't all that pleasant so I decided to try this first. Hopefully it continues to work.
The other things that may happen to me at this point are:

Increased acne - I don't have "acne" but I do have those stupid, non whitehead forming pimple mounds forming on the gentile parts of my face and chest. Mainly I'm talking about on my cheeks under my eyes. You can't do much when they're there except for wait them out and pack coverup on top of them.
Varicose Veins/spider veins - Praying these don't rear their ugly heads. My legs are my favorite part of my body and I'd really like to keep it that way.

My Body ImageBack in 2006 right after I turned 25 I joined Weight Watchers. My starting weight was 149.6 lbs. Over the next six months I ended up losing almost 20 lbs. which got me down to 130-132 lbs. I felt great, but still did not have a very good sense of my body image. I always got those comments like, "You work out enough, how come you're not eating that piece of cake?" or "Man, you always bring rabbit food for lunch". It sucked. I worked hard to lose and keep off those 15-20 lbs. Now I feel like I can safely say that I now understand that I did have a thin, healthy body before I got pregnant. I don't think I would have ever looked at myself that way if I wasn't. Looking back at pictures now, even including the 11 week picture that I posted above, I can honestly say, "Wow! I was as thin as I was striving to be." Thank you baby for showing me the light and allowing me to understand that I had gotten exactly what I worked for and just could never see it.

That's about it for this week. I'd like to end with a gallery walk of outfits. I don't have anyone to put them on yet, but that doesn't mean that I can't get you guys as excited about the little person that's going to be drooling, spitting up, and rubbing her sweet baby smell all over them :)

Thanks girls for spoiling my little lady :)