Part 1: Nursery and mystery gift

I guess I have some catching up to do, blog-wise. Here goes:

1. The nursery furniture is finally finished and for that we owe a HUUUUGE THANKS to Terry, aka Nana. She did all the dirty work -- priming, painting, glazing, staining when it turned out to be a much more ... vivid ... green than we had expected, and polying. On top of all that she intended to sneak back in with a drill and install the new handles, but we foiled her plan by coming home from the beach a day earlier than planned. I helped with the (three!) base coats and applying the glaze, but other than that, she did it all. Terry, thank you SO MUCH!

The awesomeness doesn't come through in the pictures. You should come see it for yourself.

Now all we have to do is organize all these piles of clothes and accessories (the girl has more shoes than I do) in the drawers. I'm hanging as much as I can but the closet is filling up fast. I didn't take a picture of that but I should have. It's a little shocking.
We had picked up the crib a week or two ago but it was just sitting in the box because we weren't inspired to put it together and there was no point anyway because we needed the floor space for painting the dresser and chest of drawers. Finally we got around to it Tuesday night, and can I just say thank goodness for a husband who can interpret instruction manuals with vague directions, not-that-helpful diagrams and extra screws.

We don't have a crib skirt yet, but we do have the matress and three fitted sheets -- $6.99-$9.99 at Target, nice! -- and I couldn't resist a trial run. My conclusion is that the total package is very cute. I love the way everything looks together.

2. When we got home from the beach we were really excited to find this package from abbyslane.com waiting for us! In retrospect I probably shouldn't have opened it until this weekend's shower, but I got ahead of myself. All of this is from my registry -- a BumGenius 3.0 one-size-fits-all cloth diaper, a super-cute Planet Wise wet bag for dirty/wet cloth diapers when we're on the go and a reusable wipe.

The only problem is I don't know who it's from so I don't know who to thank! I have a feeling a note or something was supposed to be included in the package, but it wasn't. If the generous gifter happens to read this blog, please identify yourself!
(Read Part 2 here.)

'An endless essay'

From "Loud and Clear":

"What those books [on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early childhood education] taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations and the older parents at cocktail parties -- what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything.

"One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can only be managed with a stern voice and a time-out. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.

"As a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself."

Thank you, Anna Quindlen.

Counting down

Yesterday was the 32-week doctor's appointment and it was, as usual, uneventful. The most excitement came from the fact that we were going to eat at The Villager as soon as it was over. But boring is good when it comes to doctor's appointments.

Claire's heart rate has been in the upper-130s for the last couple of visits, down from the 150s several months ago, but apparently that's good because it's supposed to slow down as the pregnancy progresses. She's already positioned herself bottom-up, which is also good.

It was way early to be bringing this up, but I asked the doctor about the clinic's policy on inducing labor. He thought I was asking how early they would agree to induce me, and he told me 38 or 39 weeks if there were no red flags with the baby. But what I really wanted to know was how overdue I'd be allowed to get, because I'd much prefer to avoid an induction unless it's medically necessary, and he said I could go up to 42 weeks.

I hope and pray I don't go two weeks overdue (my amazing mom endured going THREE weeks overdue -- twice), but I'm glad it doesn't sound like they're going to rush things. I've heard horror stories of people having to fight not to be induced even just a few days after the due date. Which seems stupid since due dates are usually just an educated guess.

The heat of July could usher in a change of heart -- you never know -- but at least in that case it would be my decision, not something they're forcing.

Here's today's 32-week bump picture:In other news, Babies "R" Us called yesterday and said the crib came in, so we're going to pick it up tomorrow. Which means ... Remington Grill!

Short because I'm hungry

I actually took a bump picture during week 30 but I just got around to posting it. For the sake of chronological accuracy, I added it to this post, if anyone's interested. The belly is getting BIG (compare it with the 28-week picture!) -- but so is the baby! She weighs about four pounds now, and is almost as long (tall?) as she'll be at birth. Which, by the way, will take place two months from today if she's right on time. Craziness.

I recently read two articles loosely related to the "free-range kids" concept that I love. One was in The Wall Street Journal -- Dad gets credit for finding and forwarding it -- and the other was in Newsweek. I'm not in the mood to editorialize right now; suffice it to say I wholeheartedly endorse the general perspective and parenting philosophy they reflect.

Coupons!

Thanks to two batches of Babies "R" Us coupons -- one from Terry, one from the mail -- and a very lucky purchase at a consignment store, we made our first baby purchases this weekend.

At Babies "R" Us, we got the crib for a great price because the cashier accidentally gave us 15 percent off twice! We also bought the crib mattress (15 percent off) and the car seat (15 percent off). (Although in general we don't plan to buy much until after the showers are over, we thought it made sense to go ahead and use these coupons to buy the big-ticket items we're sure about since the coupons expire on Thursday.)

Someone had given us a car seat that we'd originally planned to use, but later we decided not to since it's already five years old, which is kind of pushing it, safety-wise. It might be fine for Claire, but we definitely wouldn't use it for future kids. Matt did his research and just Friday decided on this one: The next day we were driving by a local kids' consignment store, Doodlebugs, and saw the matching stroller sitting out front! We stopped and looked and it seemed to be in great shape. Best of all, it was about 40 percent less than it would have been new. It's considered a "full size" stroller, and we'd planned to get a slightly smaller one, but SpringFest with Lauren G. and her two kids last weekend already had me reconsidering.

Lauren's stroller has two separate handles, which makes it hard to steer if one hand is otherwise occupied, and it doesn't have a cup holder so she had to prop her drink in the under-the-seat basket. I'm definitely not buying a stroller based on its cup holder situation, but having one would be very handy since I believe in getting refills to-go. This stroller has a bar, not separate handles, and places for a drink and keys.

This just happens to be the same stroller/car seat combo that Carrie and Jacob have for Riley (but in green), and they gave it rave reviews. Yesterday Carrie went to Doodlebugs with Matt and me to make sure everything worked, and after getting the thumbs-up from her we bought it. We even got another 10 percent off for a stain that I think will come out (and if it doesn't, I'm sure it's just the first of many). Score!

We also ordered our glider this weekend, unfortunately not because of a coupon, but because its expected delivery date is six or eight weeks out, which is already cutting it close to the baby's due date (10 weeks from tomorrow). We thought about splurging on a really nice glider but decided not to. I'm sure it will get some good use, but we already have dozens of other places to sit and hold a baby -- it's not going to be the exclusive nursing spot or anything like that.

No more monthly appointments

I feel like this blog's been a little neglected lately. Other than the fact of my rapidly expanding stomach, there's nothing much new to report. I've been feeling rather hugely pregnant for weeks now, but when I look back at pictures even from just two weeks ago, I realize I feel bigger than I look. The baby is now gaining weight at a rate of something like half a pound a week, so soon I will both feel AND look huge.
We had the 30-week appointment today, the last monthly appointment. From now until 36 weeks we'll go every two weeks, and from 36 weeks until the baby's born it will be every week. The doctor measured Claire at 30 centimeters long, which is right on target.

We had signed up for a childbirth class on May 16 but now I have a client coming into town that weekend, so we asked about rescheduling the class. The April one's already over and the June one is for something like June 28 -- a week and a half before our due date. The receptionist told us all of the information is available online, so armed with that website plus the packet of "curriculum" for the class (including yet another copy of "What to Expect the First Year" -- it's an epidemic!) I think we're going to skip the class altogether.

I'm so, so, so happy to report that I'm having consistently good runs again. My theory, actually, is that the pollen, not the pregnancy, was to blame. I've never been bothered by pollen, but one day last week I ran right after a good rain and had the best run in forever. That got me thinking pollen might be the culprit. The pollen's starting to build up again, so maybe this is partly mental, but I haven't had a bad run since then.

Also, this may have nothing to do with being pregnant, but I recently had the worst case of poison ivy I've ever had (it's finally clearing up after about two weeks). It started with two bumps on my ankle, which I scratched because I thought they were bug bites; it spread all the way up my body and over onto Matt's. It was terrible. Every day I found a new patch. Poison ivy, like pollen, has never affected me, so maybe the pregnancy somehow really is to blame.

28 weeks

Happy seven-months-in-utero to Claire! It's amazing to me that, thanks to medical technology, she would have an excellent chance of surviving with no long-term ill effects if she were born now. Obviously a birth at 28 weeks is far from ideal, but it's nice to know that if it happened, it would probably be OK.

Judging from Claire's constant activity, I'd say she's having the time of her life in my stomach and isn't in any rush to exit. In another couple of months I'm sure she'll be a lot less comfortable (I know I will be). Pregnancy is treating me great, but I'm getting really excited about meeting the baby. I can't wait to hold her and start to learn her personality and see who she looks like.

I do have a minor complaint, which is that running has gotten more difficult in the past two weeks. I'm not sure if it's directly related to the pregnancy or if it's simply because I'm carrying around an extra 10 pounds, but I huff and puff all the way through my runs lately. I haven't had a really effortless run for a couple of weeks. When I get home and whine about it Matt says this is what running feels like for most people, so maybe I've just been spoiled for the past 20 years.

No matter how hard it is, I'm determined to run till the end -- no matter how pathetically slow I am around week 38 -- because it's absolutely essential to my sanity, and to me there's no substitute.