Valentine's Day!

Tim and I celebrated our 13th(!) Valentine's Day together yesterday. Valentine's is not my favorite holiday. Even though I have had a sweetie for 13 years, I will never forget the first 19 years of my life when I was single. Obviously, I didn't care about being single for the first 10 or 11 of those Valentine's, but the teenage years were maudlin, full of eating candy by myself, listening to the Cure and, I'm sure, writing awful poetry. My last Valentine's Day spent as a single gal was my freshman year of college (I know, don't hate me, I realize how lucky I am to have met the love of my life at 19). My gang of friends and I decided to get dressed up and go out to eat, to alleviate the misery of being single by banding together and making fun of all the sappy happy couples. We first tried to go to Spaghetti Warehouse, but it was way too crowded, so we wound up at Chuy's, which is hardly a romantic destination. Then we headed back to my friend Rhonda's house who, by virtue of being the only one of us not living in a dorm, had become the keeper of the party house. We all lay on the floor, feeling miserable for ourselves and listening to Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. I remember us all singing "Ice Cream" together. I am sure that there was some sort of substance being passed around to try and lift the mood, but it probably failed.
So it was quite humorous that last night I started my Valentine's Evening out at Spaghetti Warehouse acting in a Murder Mystery. It was even more packed than that evening when I was 18, we could barely get through the entryway to where we needed to be. We had a really great audience and now that we're down to only a couple more shows, the show was really tight and went great. Plus I walked out $150 richer! (They scalp folks on the Valentine's show, but luckily I get a cut of the higher price: triple my normal check.)
After the show, I walked in the front door to find the dining table set up with china, complete with chargers, flowers, and candlelight. It looked so lovely, I was really surprised! Tim made a delicious dinner of filet mignon, garlic mashed potatoes, white asparagus and followed up with dessert of Chocolate dipped strawberries, which my daughter assisted in the creation of. After dinner, we sat down to watch Sarah McLachlan's Austin City Limits appearance, which aired last night and which Anna and I attended back in December. Sure enough, you could see us for a few milliseconds a couple of times. It didn't hit me until this morning how similar this Valentine's was to that one so many years ago, complete with Spaghetti Warehouse and Sarah McLachlan. Of course, there was no loneliness this year and no "substances" either!
I think Valentine's is a Hallmark holiday created just to make people feel miserable and guilt guys into spending way too much money on flowers, cheap stuffed animals and chocolates. Luckily, my chef of a husband is still willing to make me a delicious meal every year. We avoid fighting the crowds and get to spend a quiet evening at home. I have to say, yesterday was extra fun because we spent so much of it with our sweet little daughter, and I bet next year will be even more fun because we'll have two!

It's a Small World After all

We took the hospital tour this morning and saw not one, not two, but THREE people we know who are due to give birth soon. First in the parking lot on the way in we ran into my friend Nikki and her husband Richard. Then once inside we all sat down and started talking and my friend Rebecca and her husband Jonah come in. THEN a few minutes later an ex-coworker of mine, Lisa, who also went to our old church, walk in! It was a very funny and nice coincidence to run into so many friends! We're having the week of run-ins. Thursday morning at the regular ob's visit we ran into Tara and Jeff and then today at IKEA, we ran into Tim's Mom's friend Rebekah and her son Joshua. It was very nice timing because we were able to watch Joshua and chat with him while his mom went to the bathroom. I just hope no one I know decides to attend the murder mystery tonight at Spaghetti Warehouse!

The lady giving the hospital tour unfortunately didn't seem to know the answers to a lot of things. We did get to see the new Labor and Delivery rooms which are gorgeous, but found out the Post-partum rooms are same ones that were there when Stella was born, and actually will not be redone. That was disappointing, especially since you only spend a few hours in the L&D rooms and the rest of your stay is in the Post-Partum room. We did find out there are now 29 L&D rooms, as opposed to the 12 there were when we had Stella, so hopefully they'll be no hanging out in the waiting room during labor like there was with her! But it was a huge tour, so this continues to be a popular time of year to procreate. We also found out that they now do the bath, eyedrops, and Vitamin K in the nursery rather than in the room. I was disappointed to find that out because I really liked the fact that when Stella was born she never left our room after being born. Of course, as Tim pointed out, the lady doing the tour seemed utterly clueless, so I'm holding out a little hope that perhaps she was wrong about that part!

Stella was awesome despite the fact that the tour took over an hour and I brought nothing for her to play with or snack on. The one we had when I was expecting Stella only took 15 or 20 minutes, I think, so I hadn't prepared. But the lady today really enjoyed talking. I think someone should have told her that an hour is a very long time for a bunch of really pregnant ladies to have to stand!

Growing Girl

Yesterday I put a pair of jeans on Stella that in September, when her MeMe and I bought them, had to be rolled up. Yesterday they barely reached the tops of her feet, they were almost too short. So we decided to measure her again before bed last night. She's grown another 1/2 inch to 39.5 inches tall! Girl is growing like a weed!

The End of an Era

So I decided today it is time to face facts: Stella has given up her nap. She has taken two naps in the last ten days and I think both times Tim had to pull out some wicked voodoo magic to get her to fall asleep. I'm still able to get her to stay in her room for nap time, so at least I get some peace, but she's a pretty wonky child without her nap. She definitely still needs that nap, and I've read that kids really still need a nap until kindergarten, but you can't make a kid sleep. Even though she says she's tired, she says she's going to nap, and I leave her nearly passed out, 20 minutes later I hear, "Time to get up Mommy." Today she was kind enough to do that just as I was drifting off for my own nap. I was really looking forward to her napping to help me catch up on sleep after the new kid is born, but oh well. I'm sure this time will be easier anyway, I'm much more used to sleep deprivation now:)

Today at school was Stella's class Valentine's party. I brought Valentines for everyone in the class, as requested, but didn't attach a sweet treat because I didn't want to do that to parents. Well guess what? Everyone else attached a cookie or candy to their Valentine. Luckily, I was able to confiscate most of them without Stella even noticing. When did Tim and I become the hippy parents?

I got my diaper bag!

I got my diaper bag today and I just LOVE it, even more in person! I can't wait to have the baby so I can use it:)

I got Tim to take some pictures of me with the bag, but I just look awful in them, way tired and sallow or something. So you'll just have to see the bag itself. Trust me, it's really gorgeous!

My Girl Wears Panties all the Time, Panties all the time, panties all the time

Yes, that' s an Eddie Murphy song quote. After nearly a week of dry pull-ups, Stella wore panties to bed last night and was dry once again! I felt sorry for Tim, though, as she woke him up twice to go to the bathroom. Hopefully she will soon go to the bathroom on her own, but in any case, I didn't expect her to go dry at night yet and I'm really excited she is!

On the downside, she's only taken like two naps in the last week and a half. Today she couldn't stop coughing and so I gave her some honey, but I guess it woke her up because now she's playing. Poor thing was so tired on the way home from school that she nearly passed out in the car. We'll see how pleasant the rest of the afternoon will be! I know she's not ready to give up her naps, hopefully it's just a phase.

Dancin' Time!

Stella's old enough for summer dance classes at Ballet Austin! Of course, the first day of the class has to overlap with her preschool summer camp, but I've asked if the Ballet school will let her attend a different day just that one week. I think it's going to be so cute to see her dancing in a little pink leotard, pink tights and pink ballet shoes, I know she's going to love it!

Victory in the Cool Stuff Department

So Tim and I have been looking for a chandelier to hang in the corner of the baby's room over the rocker. It's to create a reading light that the baby can't try to get into once she's crawling (in several months of course). We've found nothing we were crazy about, and certainly nothing we could agree on until this:
So cute! I was reading Ohdeedoh and a woman had a really cute chandelier in her nursery that she said she got from Urban Outfitters, I went to check it out and found this one I loved even more! I called the UO on the drag and they have lots of them in stock, so I'm going to try and get over there soon to pick one up. I cannot believe how obsessed I've become with finding the perfect things for the baby's room! I guess it isn't everyday that you get to create a whole room from scratch. (Well, almost from scratch, we did already have the crib and bookshelves.)

The other thing I've been searching for, without success, was a diaper bag. I've looked at stores and found one at OhBaby, a high-end store in Westlake that I liked pretty well, and thought I might go back and get it with the 30% off coupon they gave me to use next week, but I still wasn't sure it was perfect. I really wanted something a lot like my purse, which is yellow and has a birds and flowers pattern. It's sort of mid-century modern, actually. I wasn't finding anything that came even close to that description, and then I remembered Etsy. I figured if anyone had it, Etsy would, and I was right. My bag was 3rd on the list of results:


It came from here and was a bargain at only $35. Tim even said he'd be happy to carry it, it was so cool. I can't wait to get it! This is my first experience using Etsy, but if it goes well, I'm sure I'll be back in the future!

In Stella news, she has woken up two nights in a row with a dry pull-up. This has meant Tim having to drag himself out of bed in the middle of the night and hang out while she goes potty (for some reason she needs us to be around, even though she doesn't want us involved at all), but it's still pretty cool. She asked last Friday to start wearing panties to bed and I told her she couldn't yet because I didn't have an extra set of clean sheets, but that she could wear pull-ups. So we bought some pull-ups and she's been having a lot of success obviously. We'll see if it leads to all panties, all the time which would be super-exciting! We certainly didn't expect her to reach that milestone anytime soon, but we aren't going to complain.

In sync

Tim and have an extra babysitting night tonight and there are no plays open (except Dancing at Lughnasa and Tim has forbidden that one), so we're going to go see a Best Picture Nominee. Out of the 5, my top two choices would be Milk (even though I shouldn't forgive Gus Van Sandt for Paranoid Park, one of the worst movies I've ever seen. But he did make Drugstore Cowboy, my favorite movie of all time and the movie that turned me onto arthouse and independent cinema.) and Frost/Nixon. Tim piped back with Slumdog Millionaire, which I'm sure is fantastic, but I don't really want to see right now. So Tim eventually comes back with, "man, I was just thinking about what a boring person I am that my first choice is Frost/Nixon." And I came back with, "that's my first choice too! i guess we're both boring!" Ah, I'm so glad I found my fellow history geek. I can't wait!

Bragging on my Hubby

I just have to brag a bit on my super-talented husband. His piece, Hungry Love, which he wrote for the Weekend Fling last fall - with me breathing down his neck trying to chain him to his computer;) - was selected for the Austin Scriptwork's Out Of Ink Festival! I'm so excited for him! Aimee Gonzales (SDFF 5 and 5 'Til for Frontera Fest), and Sarah Saltwick (SDFF 5) also had their pieces selected. My one complaint? The performances are the last weekend in March and the first weekend in April. So Babybean better be either right on time or a little late because I want to go! I'm going to go opening night, of course, can't take any chances there!

New Curtains and new Chair in our bedroom

We're loving our new curtains in our bedroom. During the day, open, they frame the view beautifully and at night, closed, they remind us of a luxe hotel room. Plus, we sleep so much better without bright lights in our eyes or the sun beaming in. Now we want to change everything else to match the curtains!

If you saw "Mrs. Witherspoon", put on by Different Stages at the City, you may recognize the chair. Yes, we have a showbiz chair! Karen and Jennie, the director and the lead actress, offered us an amazing deal on the chair because they wanted it to have a good home after the show closed and they thought it would match our decor. They were right! We'd like to go in a Hollywood Regency/high-end hotel room angle now that we have the curtains and the chair. Our inspiration pieces are the chair, the champagne/gold curtains, and the fabulous vintage turquoise lamps (also from Karen and Jennie), but everything else except the furniture can go. Any suggestions? We don't have time to be painting right now, of course, but we hate the walls as they are. Especially since we did touch-ups with paint we found in the garage that turned out to be enamel rather than flat so our walls look ridiculous. One of our more unfortunate home improvement disasters. But we are STUMPED as to what colors to go with! So any design advice - Ashley, sweetie, my kindred amateur designer, I'm looking at you:) - would be much appreciated!

I was SO domestic this morning, you all would have died. Stella and I baked cookies! We cut out little heartshapes from sugar-cookie dough and then decorated them with homemade icing and decorations left over from when my mom and Stella made Gingerbread cookies before Christmas. Stella was very meticulous in her decorating and would not stop until every cookie had icing and sprinkles on it.


Stella wanted to go to the park really badly today, but I'm laying low because I really gave my abdominal muscles too much of a work out this weekend with all my walking and cleaning and shopping and they have been SCREAMING out in pain since last night. So in order to keep her happy, I suggested making cookies. Luckily, she is her mother's daughter and the promise of sweets quickly placated her. There are advantages to being pregnant and having to "take it easy":) For example, just look at all the blogging I'm doing! I told Tim I felt bad being so lazy and he said, "you're not being lazy! You need to relax." I told him, I guess he's right, I'm doing the important business of baking a baby!

32 Weeks and Baby Room pics

So I'm 32 weeks today! Only about 8 weeks, more or less, to go. I had Tim take a belly shot outside since the weather was so amazing today. It's not one of my best, but you can at least see how huge my mid-section is getting. Tim says I really need to work on my potbelly;) Also, check out how low I'm hanging. For comparison, here I am with Stella at 32 weeks:


Everything's pretty much still pulled in. I'm sure the difference is due to the fact that my uterus is already all pre-stretched out this time around.

We got the curtains up in the nursery, so I snapped a few pics:
That big hole in the corner is where the awesome rocker we plan to get will eventually go.

There will be two shelves between Tim's cool handpainted tree and the changing table for diaper stuff, medicine, etc. I might put construction paper in the front of the drawers so you get color and not clothes. The baby's name letters will be above the crib, of course.

I am totally in love with the room. Is it bad that I want to live there:)

We were very industrious yesterday. We went to IKEA, registered at Babies 'R Us, and went to 3 different Targets to get curtains for our room. We found these curtains at Target that were on MAJOR clearance ($10 a panel!), so we scoured all the Targets to get enough. We had to pay $13.98 for 3 of them, but even at that price, it was a steal. So we don't have to spend the new baby's college tuition on curtains for our room. I couldn't believe Tim and I agreed on something AND it was on sale. Hallelujah! We had a great time doing all this stuff just the two of us. Tim said it was like stepping back in time when we could do everything at a leisurely pace and didn't have to worry about racing through stores while simultaneously trying to keep a toddler happy. We were pooped though. We are definitely out of practice as shoppers. Going to that many stores left us exhausted!

The Baby Train

We finally found wooden letters we like for the baby's name to hang on the wall and while I was painting them this afternoon it struck me how many times I am going to see those letters in the years to come. And how often that little word is going to come out of my mouth. You don't really realize how much you use someone's name until you've had a child, and how many variations you make on it. I must use the name "Stella" 100 times a day. Okay, I might be exaggerating a little, but not much. I'm now super-excited about the baby's name and can't wait for her to arrive so I can share it with the world! I think even Stella is impatient about not knowing her sister's name. She insisted again the other day that we name her Lisa. Or Carolyn, which is the name of Stella's Cabbage Patch Kid. I guess at least she's no longer wanting to name her "Lisa Garbage Beer":)
One of the downsides about not telling the world your kid's name is that after we get the letters all assembled and hung on the wall, we'll immediately have to take them down and hide them. But it's worth it to have a little secret from the world that will last until little BabyBean makes her grand entrance!

We got the fan installed today by some awesome electricians (check out Tim's post for details), and so now I am ready to get cracking on that room! We put down the rug we got at IKEA and it looks fantastic. I'm so happy with how well it ties the room together. Once we get the curtains up, hopefully this weekend, I'll take another picture to show our progress! Tomorrow Stella's being shipped off to the grandparents and we have grand plans for a trip to IKEA and hopefully some time registering at Babies 'R Us, just so we can start keeping track of what we need!

We went to the doctor yesterday, (there's another hour of my life I'll never get back. And now she wants to see me every 2 weeks. Yay!), and she said I can bring my own hospital gown. Ever since I saw Tori Spelling in this incredibly cute hospital gown on Tori and Dean in Hollywood, I decided that I was going to blow a little cash and B.Y.O.G. (bring your own gown). There are SO many pictures taken after the baby is born, and while you don't really care at the time, I will go ahead and say that in retrospect, I don't like looking at pictures of myself looking that awful. When I went to the hospital a couple of weeks ago, the gowns were just disgusting, really faded and ready for the scrap heap. So I'm going to invest in my own. I'm also going to invest in some cute nursing gowns, because when you get home there are also lots of pictures taken and you don't want to look like a slob. Or at least I don't. I'm vain, fine I admit it! I cannot believe these things are actually hospital gowns, they're adorable! They're also very expensive, so I may go for the not quite as chic ones here. Hey, the baby can use her big sister's clothes, but Mama needs her own;)

Rockin' FronteraFest

Last night, 5 'Til, the FronteraFest piece I directed, went up and rocked the casbah. I am so proud of the actors and Anna, my one-woman techie/designer band, as well as Aimee, the writer of course. The audience laughed their asses off and were left wanting more. But don't take my word for it, check out Julie's review over at the Austinist. She said: "A few short plays were winners. Aimee Gonzalez's hilarious Five 'Til, produced by Loaded Gun Theory, was clever, extremely well-acted and directed, and too much fun to watch. With a clever premise and some unexpected twists, this piece made us wish Gonzalez had a Long Fringe version for us to see."

Indeed. But I am sure we'll be producing more of Aimee's work in the future, she is a natural fit with LGT and it's pretty much impossible for us to go on with just one (very busy) resident playwright.

My haircut

So this is not the best picture I've ever taken of myself, but it shows the haircut, sort of. Wow, I look like a crazy person with two different sized eyes. Really, it looks better in person, I promise.

I decided chopping my hair as short as possible while still giving me hair around my face in case of pregnancy face bloat was the best option. My hair has been funKY this pregnancy. It's normally so thick that when you combine that with the fact that during pregnancy none of your hair falls out, I have felt like mushroom head. And I've been totally paranoid about cutting my hair short because I had it short when I was pregnant with Stella and so there was nothing to hide behind when I got "pregnancy fat face". Of course, I also got "everywhere else pregnancy fat" last time, so perhaps fat face will not attack me this pregnancy. But I've been living with that fear of going too short this pregnancy until I realized that when I was pregnant with Stella I had a hairstylist who would cut my hair way too short, even if that wasn't what I asked for. My hairstylist now, Tamara, doesn't do that. She does this amazing thing where she cuts my hair like I want it. What a concept, huh? So I'm happy this time! It was quite astounding how she just kept thinning and thinning my hair to make it seem more in line with the amount of hair a normal person sports. Tim thinks it actually makes me look thinner, so hopefully it will be my secret weapon against pregnancy fat face, should it attack!

Taking Care of Business!

The crib skirt. Ignore the sheet, that's left over from Stella's decor, I need to get a sheet that matches BabyBean's decor.

I velcroed the cribskirt onto the crib yesterday AND sewed the curtains. Yay! Unfortunately we don't have a curtain rod yet (we want something like this from IKEA, but when we were there last weekend Tim thought he'd seen one in Stella's closet and so we didn't buy one. It turned out just to be the clips). It's just like what we have in Stella's room. This morning I vaccuumed and mopped the kitchen/dining room, which was in desperate need. I realized my house was in desperate need of cleaning yesterday, but I really wanted to get the sewing projects done. Wednesday I was having a lot of Braxton-Hicks AGAIN (I guess it will be a weekly phenomenon), so I took it really easy, I read for all of Stella's nap. I love reading, but I cannot tell you how hard it is for me to just sit around when there are there are 322 things that need to get done. Some of them staring me in the face. I think that these contractions are just annoyances though. I mean, there is no baby emerging from between my legs, so they must be annoyances, right;) Anyway, I am still being a good patient and taking it easy. Like right now? I really want to be vaccuuming, dusting, or something but I am taking a break in-between chores. Aren't you proud of me? (BTW, no one has actually told me to take it easy, that's just me being cautious.)

Speaking of annoyances, the nurse from my dr's office called Monday and said they wanted to see me Tuesday morning to follow up on the hospital visit. I went and saw a Physician's Assistant and they did absolutely nothing! They didn't even check my cervix, which the nurse on the phone had said they probably wanted to do. They did check the baby's heartbeat, which is good, and asked my weight, did the pee on a stick thing to check proteins, but that was it. It was a total waste of my time. Sigh. That's another reason why I'm so behind.

Man, this post was b-o-r-i-n-g. Sorry 'bout that. If I have time after I dye my hair this afternoon, I'll post a pic of my new 'do. I got my hair seriously chopped Wednesday and it looks awesome, if I do say so myself!

Sleep Deprivation and what passes for Adventure these days

I am so tired. Stella's been getting up earlier and earlier, Punky's returned which means constant waking up in the middle of the night to throw a cat across the room and off your head, and I got to have a fun emergency room visit Wednesday night. Wednesday night I kept having contractions, and if you have 6 or more in an hour you're supposed to call the on-call nurse. Unfortunately, I had 6 in about 50 minutes. So I called and she told me to take Tylenol, drink lots of water, and lay down for another hour and to call her back if they didn't get better. I continued to have them every 10 minutes for the next hour, so I called her back and she sent me to the hospital. It was really scary and I started to get freaked out. We waited for Tim's mom to come over to stay with Stella (thank GOD for having in-town relatives), tried to go on 35 only to find it was closed, made a detour to Mopac and finally arrived at Labor and Delivery. It was a slow night, there must have been 10 nurses just sitting around. I guess a very cold night in January is not as popular as March for having babies.
They got me in a room and in one of the horrible hospital gowns (these were even worse than normal, they were faded and gross. I am more convinced than ever that I need to buy one of the pretty ones that Tori Spelling wore on her show for when the baby's born.) They then spent forever quizzing me first on health and informational questions (I turned in my pre-certification for the hospital on Friday but it isn't in the system yet), and then of course the ER admissions person came in to make sure my insurance was in order. While hospitals can be scary, I personally found it really reassuring to be in a place where they could take care of me no matter what was going on. If something was wrong, even, as Tim pointed out, if I slipped in the bathroom, there were experts there to take care of me. That's SO comforting when you don't know what's going on with you and your baby! Eventually the doctor came in and checked me out. Everything was still closed and where it should be, which was excellent news, and they also did a test to see whether I had a protein that showed whether I would have preterm labor in the next two weeks. The doctor then wanted to start me on an IV to make sure I was hydrated and hopefully stop the contractions.
Ah, the IV. I wasn't really excited about it, but I think doctors know what they are doing and I follow their recommendations. I was REALLY not excited about it once two nurses tried 4 times total to get it started and failed. I tried to be stoic, especially since I couldn't help but think of poor Marsha and her many times of being stuck by nurses who couldn't get an IV started. But to be honest, it hurt really, really, bad. Like it brought tears to my eyes and felt like Chlorox was coursing through my veins. Finally they checked with the doctor and he said that he didn't want to be the one that made me go through more pain, so I could drink two giant glasses of water. Which I did. Then they said that the protein test for preterm labor came back negative, yay, and I was just having a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions. So they sent me home, but told me I had totally done the right thing and in the future if I have 6 or more contractions an hour they still want to see me. I just hope that I don't visit the hospital multiple times over the next 10 or so weeks! I got to bed about 1:30, but had to get up every 30 minutes to pee and throw the cat off my head. Yay!
Tim and I both freaked out a little since we are the furthest possible from being ready for the baby. Okay, that's not true. We have a place for her to sleep, a carseat, and clothes in the attic. But I definitely feel inspired to get her room totally in order now!

She's Baaaaack

My parents called last night. Punky's back. Seriously, after over 2 weeks of gallivanting around Terranova West (my parent's neighborhood), they heard meowing yesterday and initially thought it was their cat, Phoebe. Then they realized it was coming from the back porch. They opened the back door and in sauntered Punky! We should have known Punky would just be gone long enough to make us feel sad and guilty and then pop back up. Oh, Punky! They've been out of town more than they've been in town the last couple of weeks so it's possible she'd tried to return home before. They said she's scratch-free and doesn't look to have lost any weight. Their neighbors leave out cat food, so she probably got her nourishment there.
They're bringing her back today. So it's back to waking up with a cat sleeping on my head and nightly pills. I can't wait!

Knocking off stuff on the to-do list

Thursday the nesting instinct kicked in. Hard. So I spent all of Stella's nap getting stuff cleaned out of the nursery closet. I finished Friday and yesterday when Tim was able to move the really heavy stuff. This is the result, I just wish I'd taken a before picture. You'll have to trust me when I say that it was stuffed to the gills. Yes, unfortunately the previous owners painted the closed blue too. And it's just going to stay that way.
Today we got a ceiling fan. It's sort of funky, but it looks really cool in person. Tim is putting it up right now.

We also got curtains for our bedroom at Penney's. They were having a huge sale, and although I never expected to spend as much as we did for curtains in my life, they are very nice, very high quality blackout type and we got them for 50% off. We have huuuuuge windows in our room, so it took a lot to cover them! We ordered tracks from Walmart, so when those get in in a couple of weeks, my father will no longer be able to call us exhibitionists for not having our bedroom windows covered. And the baby should be able to sleep in there for the first few months of her life.

Stella has decided to work on her defiance skills this weekend, so it's been a pretty difficult one. No naps, lots of time-outs, lots of "no" and lots of guilt for letting a 2-year-old get us so worked up. But I will include a picture of her in happier times:

She's playing with her tools that we bought her with some of her Christmas money on the tool bench that some friends gave us because their kiddo was done with it. She LOVES it! I just don't understand why you would want to gender-stereotype your kid. That day we started out in the morning playing with her dollhouse, then switched to the toolbench, then she had me help her diaper and dress her Cabbage Patch kid, Carolyn. So much fun!

I leave you with one more picture. Ladies who are pregnant for the first time, this is what that nasty glucose solution they make you drink to test for gestational diabetes tastes like:

So foul. Tim thought it would be funny to record the moment for posterity. That stuff was so awful, it burned my throat and even my stomach. Then I was totally wired afterwards before the sugar crash. My doctor's office was running late (as usual) and I came extremely close to missing the hour window between finishing the drink and having your blood drawn. I sprinted upstairs and they whisked me back immediately in front of a waiting room full of people. There was NO way I was drinking that crap again!

3rd Trimester. Eek!

So today marks my 28th week of pregnancy, which means I have officially entered the 3rd trimester. Which means, gulp, I have approximately 3 months left! I cannot believe how big my belly has gotten this go-around.

28 weeks pregnant with Stella

Actually, looking at the pictures, it's hard to tell if I'm that much bigger, but it sure feels like I am! Luckily, I am definitely much smaller in the weight department. Even with the holidays, I'm still right on track with weight gain. Yay!

But I have so much left to do! It seems like my to-do list gets longer and longer every day. I need to clean out the office closet, sew curtains and a crib skirt, finish the baby's scrapbook, finish Stella's baby book and get her more recent stuff scrapped (especially now that my sister Christine gave me all the scrapbooking tools I need plus gift certificates for more for Christmas!), and oodles more that I am forgetting. Because I have pregnancy brain. I have walked into rooms 3 or 4 times today and forgotten why I walked in there. Luckily, I am a list-maker by nature, so I write everything down in my planner everyday. And I mean everything. Because if I don't write it down, it will not get done! (Which is why the rose bushes my mother-in-law gave me never get watered. And I know she will disown me if those die!)

I got majorly behind on baby-related chores over the holidays and I have chocked January full of activities: I'm directing LGT's FronteraFest piece and I am in a Murder Mystery at Spaghetti Warehouse that runs until 2 weeks before the baby's born. This on top of my usual commitments like the B. Iden Payne meetings and seeing shows for that, book club, etc. Sometimes I think I'm insane. I'm a little paranoid that BabyBean is going to be early. I have soooo many Braxton-Hicks contractions, which I don't remember having at all with Stella. Christmas night I totally freaked out that I was going to go into premature labor because I seemed to have one long contraction that lasted a couple of hours. I had to insist on just lying down on the couch. I think that I overdid it and needed to rest. No more scares like that, luckily, but I'm definitely trying to pace myself more with housework and ask for Tim's help more. I feel pretty much fine, so maybe my body just has to tell me to slow down!

Stella is still super-excited about getting a sister. Today she said that she'd read her baby sister "Knuffle Bunny", a new book she got from her Aunt Caroline and Uncle Daniel for Christmas and her current favorite. I asked her if she was excited to meet her baby sister and she said yes, with a big grin! We're super-excited too, now I just have to get some stuff on that 'ole to-do list knocked out!