The Seversons

In an hour or so Eric will take his exam and be finished with surgery.  I can’t quite express how happy this makes us.  It is step 2 in our 3-step-finally-done process.  Step 1 was me finishing my class a few weeks ago, now Eric has step 2, and step 3 will be when this baby finally shows up and I am no longer pregnant.  Each step along the way helps, but it won’t be over until the whole process is complete.

From here until the baby shows up, we have a list of things to take care of.  Fortunately, though, these things are basically non-essential, just things we’d really like to have done before the baby shows up.  Which means in about four hours or so, it is officially okay for this kid to show up.  He may not have a neat and tidy house to come home to and the hospital bag may not be packed, but there are worse things.  I’m also at term now, which means it’s okay for him to show up from a medical standpoint, too.

Being this far along also means that life sucks.  I know that my third trimester has mostly been not so bad, especially now that the risk for pre-term labor is gone.  (So are all those contractions, I don’t miss them.)  But I’m starting to dislike it more actively now.  My swelling is worse.  The tips of all my fingers on my right hand are permanently numb.  I’m pretty sure my hips have really started separating in the last few days.  At least I’m assuming that’s why my hip pain has gone from only annoying when I’m in bed to annoying all day long no matter what I do.  The heat outside is oppressive.  I could live in a refrigerator.  (Eric has suggested the 4-degree freezers in his lab.  I’m considering it.)  Plus the Nugget has been particularly active the last few days, as if he’s trying to remind me that he’s still here.  Seriously, Kid, it’s not like I’d forgotten.  It’s not like it’s even possible for me to forget.

Last night, Eric–in an astonishing act of night-before-test calm–came with me to the pool instead of studying.  We just sat and talked for an hour or so while I enjoyed feeling not-hot for the first time in weeks.  It would have been a perfect experience except that there came a point when I had to get out of the pool.  Succumbing to gravity again was a painful experience and I swear everything hurt worse than it had before I got in.

Our celebrations for Step 2 include going to dinner tonight (where I will be wearing something besides my sit-around-the-house shorts) and getting massages tomorrow.  Plus we’ll probably manage to watch some Wimbledon next week, which we always enjoy.   It may be hokey, but watching tennis makes me all romantic.  Probably because that first summer we were dating, Eric and I watched both the French and Wimbledon quite a lot.

I had a pedicure last week, which was quite lovely once I mustered the energy to get from the apartment to the car and then inside the salon.  The pedicure itself wasn’t quite enough to motivate me, I also had to stop and get a green tea frappuccino on my way.  If I hit my due date and there is still no action, I’m going to go back and have them go to town on my ankles, which they haven’t been allowed to touch thus far.  They told me another woman has been in on a weekly basis trying this and it hasn’t worked for her so far.  I may just bring in the specific acupressure instructions with me.

We are still hoping against hope that he is a slightly early baby.  I’m pushing for a 4th of July firecracker.  Mostly this is because the thought of this going on until as late as the 22nd of July makes my head explode.

Also, I think the word “comfortable” should be removed from the dictionary.  Obviously such a thing no longer exists.

Things have changed a lot in the days since I finished work.  For example, on my home page I have a little calendar with all of my upcoming events.  Currently, there is one thing listed (a doctor’s appointment) for the next month whereas before I had at least two things a day.

This new freedom should give me the opportunity to get everything in order as we reach the final days of the countdown.  Except that it doesn’t.  My last week of work I started having a lot more contractions, but it was off and on, not every day.  After that I had good days and bad days.  But now it’s reached the point where a trip to the grocery store that is 15 minutes long means at least 10 solid minutes of contractions.  It feels like one big long one that just doesn’t go away.  Since I am still technically pre-term, this is something to keep an eye on, though it’s not any real danger.  Mostly it’s just annoying.

These contractions are always brought on by the same thing: moving.  If I run an errand, for the rest of the day, every time I get on my feet and walk across the room I’ll have a contraction.  It’s lovely.  None of it is true labor and it’s not even painful, just incredibly annoying, but we definitely have an interest in making sure this baby does not show up until July.  (We don’t want him to come too early, plus if he showed up this month it’s very possible Eric would have to miss his surgery exams and take them next month instead, which would suck.)

So, I am spending my free time doing as little as possible because of my own comfort and my midwife’s recommendation.  (Don’t worry, this isn’t bed rest.  Just staying off my feet more than normal.)  Once July hits we’ll see how things go, but for now I am taking it easy.  In some ways, it’s like going back to the very beginning of my pregnancy, when my morning sickness kept me from doing anything that involved taking more than a few steps.  At least now I can walk around the apartment and do little things here and there.  But really it means I’m going through my Netflix queue at an astounding rate, getting a lot of reading done, finishing all 3 of my little tiger hats, and starting a new little knitting project. (It will be very cute, but it involves lots and lots of stockinette stitch.  This is a very basic knit pattern and it does get rather monotonous.  Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll start getting to the more interesting stuff.)

But with the last few weeks coming so quickly, it’s also very frustrating since there are plenty of things I would really like to get done around the house.  For those I will have to wait until July when Eric is home for the month.  If this baby does come early, we will not only have to worry about him but the dreadful state of our living quarters once all the grandparents show up.

To calm any remaining fears, let me assure you that yesterday we got another ultrasound where everything looked very very good.  He is still a boy, he may be just a bit ahead of schedule, and his head is big.  These were all things we were expecting to hear.  We may scan in a profile shot to post.  We have a couple of those as well as the obligatory shots of his junk.  I know they do this to reassure you that the gender of the baby is what they say it is, but the obsession with fetal genitalia in ultrasounds does weird me out a bit.  (Especially the ones where there’s a little arrow pointing you right to the junk saying “Boy” or “Girl”.)  We will not be posting those pictures for his sake, although he currently doesn’t seem to be very shy about letting the whole world know what he’s got.

So I apologize if I don’t post much or if my posts are incredible dull for the rest of June.  If I had half a brain I would’ve brought my camera with me last week when Marlene and I went to the Botanical Gardens and saw the amazing Henry Moore exhibit.  It was very cool to see such great sculptures nestled into the middle of lovely gardens.  Here is a picture I did not take of one of our favorites:

This is Oval with Points in the middle of the Southeastern bog garden, which happens to be filled with very cool pitcher plants and other carniverous species.  On the Botanical Gardens’ website, I did find a link to a blog following the exhibit from construction on.  (As we expected, Marlene, lots of cranes were involved.)  If you happen to be in the area, I highly recommend taking a look.  It was a nice change, since it seems like the only time you ever see massive sculptures these days is in a courtyard of concrete surrounded by buildings.  It did seem fitting, since one of Moore’s favorite subjects is the mother and child:

No one should be surprised that pregnancy is not the most enjoyable part of getting ready for a baby.  Instead, it is the abundance of cute things that suddenly invade your house.  Cute little baby clothes and accessories, all of which must be displayed and described in your best baby voice.  (Eric has probably heard plenty of me asking him to look at cute little bebeh-hats and bebeh-socks and such.)

We finally got our crib set up complete with bedding, and it’s heavy on the cute factor.  Behold:

Of course, all those bumpers will be removed since they are just another of the many things for your baby that will actually kill your baby.  Why so many of these things exist, I don’t know.  (We are not trying to kill our baby, we ordered the bedding online and never saw it up close so didn’t see how big and fluffy the bumpers were.)  For now they stay, since it’s cute.

Also, just pretend there are no boxes in this picture.  Why would there be boxes?  We moved into our apartment in December so of course it is not possible that there are still boxes.  The room has been rearranged since the taking of this picture so the crib now has its own cozy spot.

And now behold:

This cute little bebeh-hat is being inexpertly modeled by my hand, since there is no little baby head to put it on.  Since I finished my big blanket (maybe, I can’t actually promise that since it is kind of totally messed up, but let’s move on to happier subjects) I needed something new and I found a pattern for a cute baby hat with tiger stripes and little ears.  I made it this weekend and now it just waits for a cute little baby head to wear it.

By the way, some of you *cough*JoLee*cough* may find yourselves the proud owner of an identical tiger-striped hat for your own little baby boy heads.  I have plenty of yarn left in orange and black and they don’t take very long.  Those of you with baby girls *cough*Susan*cough* are of course also welcome to a little tiger hat as long as you find it acceptably girly for your offspring.  I figure, at least it is useful for a little Halloween hat if you are not much into cute baby tigers.

This weekend it looks like it will be both hot and not raining constantly, so conditions should be good to finally make a venture out to the pool.

My belly is now enormous enough that all the so-called maternity clothes do not actually cover it.  In fact, I no longer judge how big I am by how big I look, but by how many shirts I can no longer wear.  When I finally found one that does cover it I bought it in every color.  I have also resorted to men’s t-shirts when I don’t have to be at work or impressing anyone.  I have never been a fashion-oriented person and I have no problem whatsoever spending my days wearing giant men’s shirts.

We just found out that we have to change Eric’s rotation schedule.  AGAIN.  So now he will no longer be on the low-hours, weekends-off relaxing rotation the month the baby is born.  Instead he’ll be on a relatively long-hours, very busy rotation.  Fabulous, right?  It’s particularly frustrating since we spent a lot of time and thought fixing things around so it would work out just so.  But this happened out of the blue and has nothing to do with us getting the schedule wrong.  While frustrating, it’s not the end of the world.  I figure after these two months it’ll feel like a break no matter what it is.

In my mind, I’ve created the nightmare scenario.  This way, anything that actually happens won’t feel so bad.  The nightmare scenario is that on the last day of Eric’s surgery rotation, the minute he walks out of his exam, I have to page him that I’m going into labor.  The labor to follow will be so long and exhausting, he’ll sleep straight through the actual birth.  And all of this will happen right before the weekend so he’ll still have to go straight in to work on Monday.

One of my things to work on over the last baby-less month is to scope out potential cities for residencies.  Since I need a project and this is there needing to be done at some point, I figure it’ll be a good opportunity to jump right on it.  Our hope is that as soon as we’ve matched we can already know just where we want to live and get everything set up quickly.  And this is where all of you come in.  I know there are some of you out there that have lived in some of the cities I am trying to scope out and I would love the feedback on different neighborhoods and areas and cost of housing.  Among the cities I’m checking out that we don’t know well are Boston, DC (Silver Spring-ish), Palo Alto, Ann Arbor, and Baltimore.  If you have experience in any of those areas we would be very grateful for any tips you could offer.  Feel free to leave a comment, drop an email, or even (gasp) make a phone call.

At some point in the last few weeks, Eric started calling the baby by a nickname I found unacceptable.  I have not yet come on the record with the baby’s actual name, which has been chosen for quite some time, and it is relevant to the story.  When he comes, the little boy will be named Graham.  And when Eric recently called him “Grammy-boy” I had to put an immediate stop to that.  Nicknames carry great importance in my family.  Graham already has more than his fair share despite the fact that he is still in utero.  “Nugget” was his first name, before we knew if he was a he, to help us avoid using “it”.  I talked Eric into choosing the name Graham by revealing my secret pet nickname: Pico.  (We are science nerds.  A picogram is one trillionth of a gram.  He will be tiny, ergo Pico.  Nano will work, too.)  Clearly these nicknames weren’t enough so I had to add another one before Eric got too locked into it.  My quick and inspired choice: Grammar.  So now we have not just a science nerd pun nickname, but a language nerd pun nickname.  Happily, it has stuck and replaced the former, completely unacceptable nickname.  Eric is still somewhat new to the family.  He is still learning.  (I’m wondering if my mother will call Graham “Babycakes” just like she calls my nephew or if he will get his own special grandchild nickname.  I tend to call my nephew Babycakes more than I use his actual name.  It’s catchy.  The other question: will he still be Babycakes when he’s 25?  Yes.  Yes, he will.)

So we’ve made it over 2/3 of the way through May.  The end is in sight.  Next week is Eric’s last with his current surgical team, then there’s a week of anesthesia and then he switches to a Surgical Oncology team for the last three weeks.  I have my last day of work on June 5th.  We are getting there.

Actually, last week after I got back from Utah, we were able to see each other for 7 days straight.  It helped to make up for the week before when we didn’t see each other for so long.  Since then it’s been off and on, some days we do others we don’t.  It always ends up that he gets off early on the days when I’m working late.

Last night, Eric had trauma call after his normal shift.  (It’s his second trauma call this month, much better than the last one which started at 6 a.m. and ended around 11 a.m. THE NEXT DAY.  Also, Eric would probably like to add at this point: do not mess around with guns or knives, wear your seatbelt, do not go climbing tall trees or up on your roof or else you will end up as a patient for someone else’s trauma call and it will not be pleasant for either of you.)  It also happened to be one of my nights I commute for work so I usually don’t get back till 11 or so.  He would be done by midnight at the latest, so I stayed up waiting for him and we actually had a chance to see each other and talk even though we were both tired.

BUT.  After tomorrow, except for a brief session with a student, I will have four days off in a row.  I will be able to spend them in my own house.  And Eric may actually have two days off in a row.  Not only will we be able to see each other, but we will be able to get stuff done.  Like get the car seat.  I have been booked so solid lately that despite the fact that my actual teaching gig is in the evenings, between meeting my private students and working the phones, I am literally going all day long.  I have realized that it is not possible for me to be working this hard, be 7 months pregnant, and have a clean house at the same time.  One of them must go.  The job is here to stay.  The pregnancy is here for about 8 more weeks.  So the house has suffered.  Even if I was having nesting instincts, I would not be able to do anything about them.  Especially because the exhaustion from all the work has me barely able to move when I do get an hour here or there to relax.

But with a little break ahead and the end drawing near (of work and the pregnancy) things are at least looking up in some respects.  Outside of the chaos, I was disturbed this month when I had my sister take a couple of pictures since I hadn’t taken any since March and the belly is much bigger now.  I was horrified when I saw the pictures and saw that I look like a mammoth.  It was the first time I’ve ever wanted to stand up and say, “No, I can’t possibly look like that.”  I have stared at the pictures for a while trying to figure out why I look huge when I know I am not that huge.

Now when I say huge, I don’t mean the belly.  Obviously that is huge.  I don’t dispute it.  I just feel like I look quite chunky.  Especially in the larger version.  (I have mercifully decided to keep it small here, for your sakes.  Those of you on facebook can see not only the frightening larger version, but the other head-on photo where I don’t look pregnant, just fat.  Awesome.  At least my nephew looks cute in that one.)  My final diagnosis is that the problem with this picture is not just a trick of the light or the upward angle.  It’s a combination of pregnancy arm flab plus some new swelling in my face.  I hadn’t noticed the swelling before last week, but lately when I check in the mirror, there is definitely more than before.  Still, it seems pretty extreme in this particular picture.  To prove my point, I show another picture taken just a couple weeks before:

Not only do I not have the face swelling, I don’t even look pregnant.  (I think it’s a trick of the angle since I’m bent forward a little bit.)  The giant face also happened to arrive at the same time as the carpal tunnel, which is more evidence to the swelling theory.  It also seems to come and go (like the carpal tunnel) since I definitely noticed it in the mirror a couple days ago, but today it’s gone.  (I would show photographic evidence but I still don’t know how to use our new camera and Eric is, of course, asleep.)

I’m not sure if my obsessing over pictures to see how fat I look is a sign that I have remained sane despite how crazy life is now, or whether it means that I really really really need a break.

So the mystery seems to be solved and I’ve decided to agree with all the people telling me I look great.  I know everyone says that to pregnant women, but I think in my case they really mean it.  And this weekend, me and my sore shoulders, feet and hips will be relaxing in the pool.  If I’m lucky, maybe Eric will be there, too.

It is May.  The best thing I can say is that at least it’s already May 5th, so we’re about 1/6th of the way through the month.  While I have Memorial Day weekend off, that’s about it.  I am working like a maniac and Eric is, too.  Tomorrow he has to be at work at 5:45 a.m.  I go to bed around 1-ish.  This weekend I said that the best shot we have of seeing each other is for him to wake up at 3 each morning while I stay awake until 5.  Sadly, it’s not very feasible.

On Friday I leave town for a few days.  I expect that on Monday evening when I get back, Eric and I will both be in the same room at the same time and both be awake for the first time in a week.  It’s not that we never see each other, it’s just that one of us is usually out cold in bed.  Normally weekends would be our salvation, and the time when he’s less likely to be at work, but this month I will either be out of town or at work on the weekends.  Awesome.

In June, I will finish with work for a good 4 months or so.  And in July Eric will start a rotation with light hours.  This is temporary.  But it’s both sad and exhausting in the mean time.

This weekend, our last one together before he started the dreaded Surgery rotation, was quite lovely, though.  (Despite the fact that I had to work.)  We picked up our crib and Eric put it together.  The nursery is still more of a room-full-of-stuff than a nursery, but we’re getting there.  I also put my foot down and in one of my very few pregnant demands, insisted that we go to lunch at Pappasito’s.  It’s a family favorite in Texas, and I found out there was one here.  The crazy thing is that I’ve known this for years and this was the first time I went.  What is wrong with me?  The good chips that are thin and salty, yummy fajitas with that sauce I love that will probably give me a heart attack, and chocolate bread pudding for dessert.  Ah, TexMex.  How I miss you.  A 30 minute drive is certainly worth it.

As for my pregnancy, I’m still back to feeling more bad than good.  I realized this week that I’ve been in a bad habit of feeling triumphant about things that haven’t happened.  Normal-looking ankles, no back pain, no stretch marks: in my head I take these as a sign of a personal triumph.  This is incredibly stupid.  There’s still 10 weeks left and I’ve learned that these things can come on suddenly.  Now it just means that when they do happen, it won’t just suck that they’ve happened, it’ll be like I’ve somehow failed.  So I’m trying to break this mind set.

This was brought on in part because since my bad weeks have started, I’m back to all the same annoying things as before, but in the last few days I have a lovely new problem: carpal tunnel.  I wasn’t expecting it.  The swelling in my hands has been pretty minor, and has stayed the same for the last few months.  But now my wrists have swollen a little and it is not fun.  It requires incredibly fashionable wrist splints to keep it at bay.  Sleeping in them is disconcerting, hopefully I’ll get used to it.  It’s definitely better than sleeping with numb fingers.

It’s also because my last couple visits to the doctor, I’ve seen a few women who are ready to burst and they look like hell.  And I cannot look at them and think, “Well, they just didn’t try hard enough not to get that huge and have monster hobbit feet.”  I just can’t.  Because surely they would have prevented it if they could.  So I’m just trying to get by.  And I’m annoyed that I have to buy more maternity clothes because my shirts are all getting too short to cover my belly.

The highlight of the last week?  My first sets of baby clothes.  My Mom sent a box that she’d been collecting (I’m sure there’s already a second stack now that she’s sent the first) and shortly after I got a couple things myself.  Turns out there’s a kids consignment store right next to our house where I had to make myself stop looking.  The clothes were all in good shape and nothing was more than three dollars.  I also got what I expect to be our coming-home outfit.  I got it in both of the smallest sizes just in case he comes early.  I didn’t want anything too fussy, just something that looked snug and cozy.  (By the way, if you’re curious about our baby clothes preferences, we like the typical baby stuff: onesies and rompers and gowns.  We’ll save the jeans and button down shirts until he’s older.)

For the next few weeks, we will work, we will continue to accumulate our various baby items, and hopefully I will stay at least reasonably mobile.  And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to quit typing and put my oh-so-styling wrist splints back on.

This is probably all that will happen as far as posting this week because things are pretty crazy.  We are still trying to figure out our new schedule, where Eric’s gone all day and I’m gone all evening.  Plus this week I’ve been volunteering at the Atlanta Film Festival which takes up much of my day.  I’ve pretty much given up on this week, but hopefully over the weekend I can get things back to normal around here.  At least this morning I have a nice bit of uninterrupted solitude to get things started.  And this weekend Eric and I will be together, in the same room, able to speak face to face.  Plus we will be taking our tour of the maternity wing at the hospital.

The good news is that I’ve had another good week.  (Two!  In a row!)  While I have been pretty tired and worn, it’s mostly my usual class-starting-up-again fatigue.  (My voice, for example, is still getting used to all the talking.)  There have not been so many of the pregnancy-related random pains.  Except for the fact that the baby likes to stick an arm or elbow or foot or something right beneath my ribs sometimes, which makes it hard to find any comfortable position.

I recently heard about someone giving birth 16 weeks early, which made me realize that if I had the baby right now, he would only be 12 weeks early, which is kind of frightening because it means we’re getting very close.  And we are not ready.  The crib is in its box… at the store.  It was 2 inches too big for the car.  We are going to try again soon with a friend’s pickup.  And once it’s there, we can hopefully get the room looking something like a bedroom.  Not that it will ever be anything fit for a catalog.  But there will be a crib.  With sheets and blankets.  As a quick side note, I still haven’t finished knitting that baby blanket I started something like 3 or 4 months ago.  It is not all my fault.  I keep losing cable needles, one minute they are somewhere near Eric, the next they have vanished.  And then there are periods where I’m just too busy to sit and knit.  But I am almost done.  I am on the 6th panel and there are only 7.  If I really sat down and worked at it I could easily finish by the end of the month.  But I’d say it’ll more likely be 3 or 4 weeks as I try to fit it in with everything else.

Still, despite how crazy everything’s been, it’s been nice to get out and interact with the world at large.  Especially since lots of people have been telling me how great I look for being 6 months along.  I am not sure I believe them, but it’s still nice to hear.

The stay-cation has ended and we’re all back to work.  We’re just about to start my third trimester and in a few weeks Eric will be starting two months of crazy hours on his surgery rotation, so things promise to be pretty nuts around here for a while.  We’re already working on the adjustment, since I am now teaching four nights a week, which means we don’t see much of each other and we’re operating on totally different schedules.  I am now one of those wives who must leave a note on the refrigerator with instructions on heating up the lasagna.

Despite the schedule difficulties, I am happy to be teaching again.  I haven’t been teaching regularly since very early in my pregnancy, and it’s easy to get lost in the days when you don’t have a schedule to root you down.  And I enjoy myself.

The weird thing happening lately is that I’m actually feeling okay.  The pain in my shoulder that’s been killing me for a month has finally gone away.  I can almost sleep through the night most of the time.  My belly seems to have settled a little so that I can actually sit in a comfortable position.  The exhaustion no longer hits me at 3 p.m. but when it’s actually night time.  I figure I had one good week my first trimester (the very first one before the morning sickness hit) so maybe I get one good week my second one.  I am not counting on it to last.  I have learned that everything is fleeting in pregnancy.  The pain is temporary, but so is any comfort.  Mostly, I’m just happy that I haven’t had crazy back pain yet and that my ankles are still intact.  My wedding ring, which has always been on the tight side, has been too tight for comfort for a while now, so it’s been on a chain around my neck.  But that minor bit of swelling in my hands hasn’t gotten any worse or spread to anything else.  Yet.

I was kind of worried about teaching while pregnant, since it usually leaves me pretty exhausted even when I’m in good shape.  It especially takes a toll on my feet.  Previously, I’ve dealt with this by wearing my good sneakers to class, but those have shoelaces and that is a problem since I cannot actually bend to tie them.  Even if I could, I’ve been constantly overheated, sweating like crazy while my class has their jackets on, and the socks and shoes only make it worse.  Last year when it turned to sandal weather, I decided to buy a pair of comfy good-for-my-feet sandals to wear to class.  I got a pair that were only-moderately-ugly (good-for-your-feet shoes are always ugly) and wore them for about a week and then stopped.  Back then, the rooms were always too cold and having open toes just made me freeze even more.  Happily, now that I have the opposite problem, I can now get some good use out of my only-somewhat-ugly but very comfy sandals.  I used them yesterday and they were perfect.

My favorite thing about my job now that I’m pregnant is all the walking through college campuses.  I will turn 30 this year, and yet I can still pass for a college student, just like I could when I first took my job 7 years ago.  I get very real pleasure knowing that as I walk by, I stick out like a sore thumb.  I do not look like a teacher of any kind, instead I look like a sophomore who got knocked up but is trying to finish out the year.  This amuses me greatly.

Since everything is getting closer (yesterday was 3 months away from our due date) we’re making an effort to start getting actually ready this month.  We’ve received a handful of much-appreciated gifts (thank you cards will be out soon) and we’ve started to gradually accumulate all the other stuff.  Craigslist is my new best friend.  My favorite new acquisition is the rocking chair we picked up for $20 which we vastly prefer to most of the chairs we looked at in the store that cost more than ten times as much.  The crib has arrived and we’ll be picking it up this weekend.  Hopefully the nursery will start to look like an actual nursery and not just a room full of boxes in the next few weeks.

On our little staycation, we did in fact take pictures with our lovely new camera.  We are trying to get into the picture habit.  You can see Eric’s blossoming photography skills over at our album.  (His jellies are particularly lovely.)  I contributed the one picture of Eric.  I apologize that I am missing from the posted photos.  Eric did take plenty of pictures of my fingers edging closer to the water during the ten minutes it took me to summon enough courage to actually touch the stingrays, but somehow they lack the drama (and the occasional shrieking) of the actual experience.

Being at the aquarium reminded me that Eric and I have officially been together for 3 years now and that we made a trip there early in our relationship, back when he was tan and I was teeny.  And since this is my blog, I choose not to post an unflattering picture of me, massive and pregnant, with little makeup, when instead I can post this:

Ah yes, back when I was 26 and the number of pounds I weighed was a number so obscenely small it is hard for me to fathom in my current baby-laden state.  I am technically at the aquarium in this picture, so I find it completely within my rights to post this.  (I was also, apparently, braver, since there are several pictures of me looking not at all freaked out as I touched various forms of marine life.  And much blonder than I am now.  And let’s not get started about how I wasn’t even working out or eating healthy food or anything.)

By all accounts, I do look pretty good for being 27 weeks.  But now I’m thinking I should end this post and do a few bicep curls for old time’s sake.  So here are some very cute otters:

One of my favorite activities is planning a vacation, and it’s one that I’m going to miss out on for quite a while.  Shortly after our last trip to Cancun we started looking ahead to Eric’s spring break.  It was a week he’d have completely off at the end of April, right before he started his two months of Surgery.  We looked at locations close enough to drive to, with a beach, which is one of Eric’s major vacationing requirements.  We settled, finally, on heading down to Destin, Florida and spending a few days there.

I should have anticipated the first potential problem with our plan.  I have this thing called work where I have to go and work so I can make money.  We made our decision, we booked our hotel, and yet the question of how this would fit into my work schedule didn’t occur to me.  To be fair, this is in large part because my classes are not assigned to me until shortly before they begin so I didn’t know yet what my schedule would be.  Still, I should have anticipated that I’d have to take off 3 to 4 days, which is a lot for me.

To get around this we were planning on shifting the timing so I could miss only 1 or 2 days.  All it took was a change in our reservation and there was plenty of time to do it.  And, of course, a little catching up with my superiors to make sure that the dates in question were acceptable.  I was planning to do this over the past week, but hadn’t yet got around to it.

Turns out, none of it mattered because there has been some kind of mixup and instead of getting the 3rd year spring break, which happens at the end of April, Eric was bunched in with the 4th year spring break, which happens… now.  (Why this works this way I don’t know.  Emory’s undergrad spring break was a few weeks ago.)  This could have been fixed with some effort, but it would not be the ideal situation.  There were already scheduling problems with the later break, and there were plenty of reasons to just do it now.  It would have been great except that we just found out on Friday morning, right before Eric had to take his neurology exam.

Fortunately, because of my love of vacation planning, I could deal with it in a pinch.  Having our break this week meant we wouldn’t have to worry about my work schedule (my classes start on Saturday) and that Eric would have time to work on some lingering projects that have deadlines this week.  All in all, the timing was actually not too bad.  So then the question became what to do with ourselves.  Because Eric’s work will occupy him well into Wednesday and I have to be in class Saturday morning, we don’t exactly have the time to drive to the coast.  We don’t really have time to drive much of anywhere.  And given my pregnant and often exhausted state, this wasn’t the time to go rough it in a tent or go hiking on the A.T.  (I was actually all into the idea of going camping a few weeks ago until I realized that if I can’t  sleep through the night in my fabulously comfortable bed, a sleeping bag on the ground would not cut it.)

So instead plans have been made to take our mini-vacay right here in the ATL.  We are going to be tourists.  We will stay at a nice but reasonably priced hotel downtown.  We will go to the Aquarium and maybe I can convince Eric to hit Cyclorama.  We will ditch the car and instead ride the city rail system to all our various destinations.  We will go to restaurants.  We will order room service and get Chinese food delivered.  We will probably take a few naps and read a few books.  And we will enjoy ourselves.

And, above all, we will take pictures.  This is important since we need to develop this habit and we are terrible at it.  We have a wonderful new camera that gets very little use and it’s possible that if we don’t get on top of this there will be no documentation of the fact that we have a kid.

Technically we are already on break, even though we won’t start our official “trip” until Wednesday.  Eric is celebrating by still being asleep, even though he went to bed before 11 p.m.  Were he here he would tell you how beat he is from having to be up for work every morning blah blah blah, but the honest truth is that he gets more sleep than I do.  It is completely normal for him to go to bed a couple hours before I do, and I’ll be getting up around the time he leaves in the morning (which is about 10 minutes after he gets out of bed).  Last night while he was completely out I read an entire book before finally hitting the hay and yet, he’s still sleeping while I’ve been up for nearly two hours.  There really is no justice in the world when you’re pregnant.

So all is prepped.  The old reservations have been cancelled, new ones have been made, and now we just have a couple days until we get going.  Of course, there is the new weirdness that comes from having us both home for most of the day.  This will take some adjusting.  I am not used to having to feed anyone except for myself, and I’m guessing steamed broccoli or scrambled eggs or a peanut butter sandwich will not be high on his list of choices for lunch whereas I, in my constant midday scavenging, will regularly have one or all of them before dinner.  And Eric has already started the inevitable computer-fiddling that he always seems to do when he has down time and which requires me to occasionally get out of my chair so he can do something.  Yes, it is egregious.  But somehow I think we’ll manage.

In criminal law, there is an absolute defense called “duress.”  It is uncommon, but can potentially be effective.  I saw it used in a murder trial once.  (I believed it.  And they got a hung jury.  For the second time.  So yeah, it can definitely work.)  While the pictures below are not exactly crimes, they are not anything I can endorse wholeheartedly.  Instead they are to be used as evidence that I indulge my husband too easily.

I saw the shirt online and thought it was one of those things that was funny but that I would never do.  However, Eric was so besotted with it that it was purchased and shipped and arrived swiftly on our doorstep.  For those who may have left their glasses elsewhere, yes it does say “geek inside.”  Which has a 95% chance of being true.  Other things I feel obligated to say about this picture: this is the I-am-totally-humoring-you smile; I am wearing no makeup; and no I do not have strange lumps in my belly, it’s just a big t-shirt.

Since we haven’t actually taken one so far, I agreed to do the how-gigantic-am-I-now picture.  I keep going back and forth between thinking I totally don’t look that pregnant to No I really look huge.  Either way, I am big enough that I get a “congratulations” about 50% of the time from cashiers.

I cannot promise any future pictures.  Then again, there is Eric.  Hopefully the fact that I spoil him does not mean I will spoil our children.