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:
