Pregnancy update and Life still stays busy

HI!
I am 41 weeks +2 days.  Nothing happening yet- not that I expected it to. Even with Anika, I just always had a feeling my body would go late and I thought it would happen again this time. I was prepared for early, but I just  *knew* this is what my body does.  I know my dates precisely for both babies, so there is no mistakes. 40 is just an average and I'm above average- lol- well we all knew that, but you know what I mean.

I go for bio physical testing next Monday or Tuesday if no baby yet. They just do the stress test and fluid check. My blood pressure and all that is low and what it has been the whole time. This time, my patient profile has my patient history with Anika and we know my mom had her babies "late" too- so it all plays a role in my overall profile, so induction is not on the horizon for me unless the tests show something bad- like low fluid or movement, etc.  Leni's heart rate was good and steady yesterday at my apt.  Weight gain is high and steady. lol

Yesterday after my gym class and then after my shower.

 

IN other news, life stays busy. I am still working. Actually I have been really busy at work so my days FLY by. Just fly!

 

Anika got a new clock a few weeks ago. You can see it on her nightstand- my gram actually made that for her- well its an antique and my Gram painted it up.   The clock lights up green at 5 am which is the time we set it for- the time she can come in our room. She was sneaking into my room at all hours after I went to bed ever since we switched from the crib.  Most times I didn't even know she was there until I woke up in the morning, but we DID know when Andrew was home because 3 is just a crowd. He liked it for a while, but then he was getting kicked and laid on (He said he missed her since he is home so little so was down with it for a while).  Then, it was the fact that with the new baby, it would just be too hard and way too much. So, we talked to her one night about staying in her bed- we asked her why she likes to come in ours and her response: I Just love you guys SOOO much and want to huggle you.  UM, ya. Andrew looked at me and I saw Sucker all over his face. ha. Then, he didn't sleep well again :)

So, we talked to her and told her she needed to stay in her bed until the morning and THEN she could come in for huggles. She did great for several days after that first talk. She did yell from her bed "Can I come in now?" and we had to say not yet. Not until 5.   We chose 5 because on week days we get up at 6 so that gives a good amount of snuggle sleeping.
Well, she had heard our friend telling us about this Time to Wake clock and she asked us about it!  I looked them up and there were a few different options. I  read reviews and contemplated because the one that would best suit our needs and get the most long term use was $39.95 with amazon prime.  It seemed like a lot, but it would allow us to set the green light WITHOUT an alarm going off. We didn't want something waking her up, but if she woke up on her own, she could see the green light. Also,  the pricier one has features to help her learn to tell time- digital and with hands, so we splurged on it. SHE LOVES it! She wakes and says my clock is green.  We have had it for a couple weeks and there have been 2 nights she still asks before its green, but overall its been fantastic. She doesn't always wake up so early, but she does often enough.
This is the one we got. It also stays lit up all night as a night light. Not totally necessary, but its ok.

 

 

 

Anika loves to play tea party. She plays at the sitter, but we didn't have a tea pot until recently.  I picked one up at the 2nd hand store.

She has had tea cups in her room since she was 1 or so. I always had one on her little table. She picked out more this past summer at yard sales. They are real, but she knows they are delicate and she knows that if she is rough with them, they will no longer be there. We have always used glass with her, so its her normal. Its actually a big proponent in Montessori schools- allowing small children to use "REAL" stuff to learn.  She uses her tea cups for her water at night. hA. She will only drink water from her tea cups when she is in her room. The bathroom is right outside her room and she fills up her pot and then pours and pours ...and drinks lots of her "tea"

 

 

 

Ha- the other day, I had a ton of errands to run and Anika was just NOT being her normal independent self. She has been asking to be a baby a lot lately! YUP- she knows what is coming! I bet it will get worse after the baby too.  I had my ergo in the car and told her I wasn't carrying her, but she could ride in the ergo on my back. She said ok.  I couldn't get it on in my car very well and I Just did the best I could.  We walked through walmart so I could get a dust buster/handheld vacuum for all the wood particles that get tracked in the house with woodstove season.  TONS of people were staring at us and one lady asked if she could fix Anika's dress. I guess it was UP to her chest lol.  And she had lost her shoes.  And, this was on all wrong.  I went to use the bathroom and got this pic- this was after a lady tried to help fix Anika in it.  I kept waiting to see us on People of walmart.

This is a shelf down in our basement where we keep a lot of the toys. ITS not really a play room- it has all MY STUFF in it- my crafts and wrapping stuff and photo books, scrap books and STUFF, but the other half is Anika's toys. She does go down and play alone and so far she has never gotten into my craft stuff, so its been really nice to have this space. But the bottom shelf needed another shelf in it to put toys on instead of just stacking them.  So very simple- just nailed 3 pieces of wood and voila- one extra shelf for the big bottom shelf- above before and below after.

The bottom shelf of the other shelf is also for her overflow books and puzzles so I got a puzzle organizer. Not all puzzles fit in it so not sure if that was the best purchase! ha.

The other night Andrew was putting Anika to bed and it was VERY quiet for a long time.

I went up and found this. HA.

 

Last weekend was my dad's birthday.  When I had been organizing Anika's shelves, I had gotten caught up looking at old scrap books.

Photos of photos- Above me and my dad in St. Martin when I was a sr. in high school. Note my dad always has something on his head.

A forestry helmet- he must have been out cutting trees. ha

A bandana - he must have been riding his bike? Idk!

 

Then last Sunday, I was antsy so Anika and I went out for a walk up our street. It was a boring walk. Not much to look at around us.  ha.

 

I told Andrew we needed to get out, so we went to town  and went to our local thrift store.

He can browse for hours. Anika had fun trying on shoes.

She picked out a kids necklace set and we said she could get one thing. She carried it around the whole time.

THEN, we saw a rack of dance costumes. And she wanted to try the small one on.

And she said she had to have it, So she went down to return her previously picked item to its place in the kids section.

And she wore that outfit out of the store. lol. We had to stop at the store after and she proudly wore it.

The fell asleep on the way home and Andrew plopped her in our bed while we got ready to head out for my dad's bday dinner.

We woke her up when we had to leave and she said she was wearing it to my dad's dinner. I knew he would get a kick out of it, so we said that's fine. Actually, I pretty much allow her to wear what she wants...if its totally not weather appropriate I just bring weather appropriate clothes for when she comes to her senses.  She has so many nice sweaters I LOVE and she is refusing all sweaters. Im sad about that, but I HATED sweaters as a kid too. AND, my mom and family members made me so many nice ones.

The infant base is all set up in the car- she likes to put her dolly car seat in the base for now. ha.

At dinner. She loves her cousin.

These are dark and blurry, but cute of her and my dad.  She was being little miss riding hood she said. At one point she got a little into her make believe when my dad said he was the big bad wolf and she got down and started running through the restaurant "THE BIG BAD WOLF IS COMING"

haha we had to explain to her that game is NOT for restaurants. She obliged. ha. I do kinda blame my dad. he gets her wound up in the wrong places.

 

 

 

I saw this on FB and I like it. True. very true for me :)

 

Showing all her stuffed animals where Neverland is on the globe- she loves the Peter Pan books. ha.
Talks about them a lot.  Then she told me she was showing them where New Hampshire and New Zealand are. You really cant even SEE NH on this globe. Its like a dot.

My husband the gardener getting the garden ready for next season.  That shit really is a lot of work!!  I could never do it. I have no desire. He says he really enjoys the gardening and yard stuff. Glad he does. no thanks! I wouldn't have had one crop this year if it wasn't for him.

Watching a rugby game with dad.  She asked him which one was him :)

I also thought this was funny in my feed.

My little ham.  A snarky little girl she is.  Definitely gives me a run for my money lately.

 

Cape Cod Bachelorette Pary

Oh, you know- just a while overdue.

And. PS. I am still with child. 41 weeks tomorrow.

 

I hosted a Bachelorette party Labor Day weekend down on Cape Cod.

It is about 4 hours from me. 2ish hours from Boston. All depends on traffic.

 

We found a house on line to rent. It was advertised to sleep 18. We had 17 ladies. Actually, you could rent it as a smaller house or as the whole thing. We rented it as the whole thing. People came in from all over.  There were 2 of us from New Hampshire (the other NH girl lives in Southern NH), 2 came from Chicago, 1 from Virginia, 6 from Austin, TX, one or two from Connecticut, and I think the rest were from Massachusetts.  The house was huge! It had 3 kitchens, 3 living rooms, lots of bedrooms.  The main house had the biggest kitchen and living area and then 2 in-law areas,  but all attached. Plenty of bathrooms for all those ladies.

 

IT was really humid out. I MEAN SUPER humid, so my camera lens was fogged up.

That table on the right is a game...haha I cant remember the name of it.

I got there mid day Saturday.  I left home around 8 AM and I picked  Ally up at the airport in Boston on the way. Ally used to have a blog and that's how I mostly know her, although she studied abroad with the bride (my old college roommate!) several years ago.  It was nice to have someone to ride with the other half of the trip. Most of the girls got there Friday. I didn't want to drive down Friday after work and plus Andrew often gets home late on Fridays.  The bride was already down on the Cape with her family the week prior.  She is from Massachusetts. I met her at college in Boston. She moved to Austin a couple years after I got married. Then, she moved to Chicago a couple years ago. Anika and I went and visited her last fall. She spent the past 2 years working from her city apt. in Chi. and doing a graduate program at Northwestern.  She is actually back in Austin, TX now. HA. Girl gets around!

We met a couple other girls at the house mid day Saturday and got settled in. Then we went and grabbed lunch and met all the other girls at a local beach. The weather wasn't really ideal beach weather.

We sat at the beach for a bit and then went back to the house and got ready to head out.

 

I reserved this bus. The Funk Bus!  It picked us up at the house around 6:15 I think.

The house was in Eastham and the furthest tip of Cape Cod is Provincetown.  Ptown is about 30 minutes from Eastham. The bride wanted to spend Saturday night in P-town- where there is lots going on for night life. I had called a lot of cab companies on the Cape first. I also asked if anyone else would want to be designated drivers with me,  but no one wanted to. This seemed like the best deal. It was $45 per person for the whole trip, tip included.  The driver was really fun and the whole company was a pleasure to work with. The driver gave me his number after he dropped us off at dinner and told me to text him when we were ready to get picked up. That ended up being 1 AM.

I don't  have permission to post people so I'm leaving a lot of pics out for that reason.

We got dropped off at Sage Lounge right in Ptown. I had wanted to have dinner here. They have a great tapas and drink menu, but after I analyzed the menu for weeks and picked out all the food ahead of time, I realized we had some diet restrictions, so I panicked and changed restaurants to a place with a bigger variety of food. I really want to go back and eat food at Sage.  Besides the lack of vegan and GF food, I loved how they wanted me to pre pick the food and that way I could tell all the guests a set cost ahead of time, so everyone could plan to pay $X.00 for their food. I had even worked out tax and tip ahead of time. Then, the lounge would have cocktail waitresses for people to each have their own tab for drinks.

I didn't know this ahead of time, but there ended up being 2 other preggos at the party and 2 trying and one person who just doesn't drink.
I still wanted to check this place out so we had cocktails at Sage before dinner down the street.  They still gave us the private room for drinks though which was super nice. Sage was also a pleasure to work with when I was organizing the event. A friend who lives in Cape Cod told me about Sage and it came highly recommended.

Ha, boy have I grown since then :)

They had some delicious mocktails and I had one.

Then we went down the street to Napi's for dinner. I think our reservation was 8?  I cant remember now. ha.

Everyone seemed to enjoy their meals at Napi's. The menu was very unique and had lots of different things to offer! 

After dinner we went to a gay club.  It was really loud and crazy.

At one point Ally and I decided we wanted to go outside, so we went from the pool area we were at outside, THROUGH the LOUD, dark club to get outside. As I tried to shimmy my pregnant belly through grinding men, I turned around to find Ally WRAPPED tightly in her pashmina (around her shoulders)  with her fingers IN HER EARS!  LOL.  If we didn't look like the biggest losers, I don't know who did:

Preggo lady trying to pass through club clad dancers and Ally with her pashmina and plugging her ears from loud music.
We sat out on a bench and talked and watched people until the girls were ready to move on to the next club/bar.

They did karaoke.

Then I texted our driver and told us we were ready :) 
We got home around 2 and I figured I should have munchies in the kitchen with all the drunkies instead of going to bed.

 

The next morning, we made a big brunch.

I made Belgian waffles, homemade whip cream, berries and NH maple syrup.

The other girls made lots of yummy food too.

Then I went and took a LONG, LONG shower in the outdoor shower. I want!

It took many of the girls a while to get up and moving and many left Sunday.

For the girls still there, we went back to Ptown to walk around during the day. It was supposed to be a beach day when I planned the weekend, but it just wasn't beach day weather.

This was in the public bathroom. I mean this sign was on every stall and signs that said NO Changing in the bathrooms and if you were caught changing clothes you would be kicked out. There was an actual lady working in the bathroom yelling at people to hurry and even yelled at a girl who draped her sweatshirt over the door and blamed her for changing! ha. it was insane.

Later we got some wine and snacks and went down the Beach Comber in Wellfleet.
I wanted to spend the day at this beach and eat dinner at the beach bar here, but the beach bar was full for the night, so we just ate our snacks and wine on the beach for a while.

That building is the beach bar that we didn't get to eat at. ha.
I used to go to this beach every year for an annual event called Let it Go.

We went back to the house and made dinner. We had LOTS of food to use there anyway.

Then we played that game...cards against humanity. I had never played before.

 

I think I fell asleep on the couch playing! haha.
The next day, Monday, we all went home :)

I think we all left by 10 AM and we seemed to miss the holiday traffic for the most part.

 

I love going to the Cape. Until next time.

Comparisons

 

I was just looking at my old blog for photos of me 40 weeks pregnant with Anika to compare to me now. My friend N wants to see if I am lower now.

Below is from Anika's birth - MCW posted for me that day after she was born.
HA. It brought back fond memories, but I did laugh at the fact that I texted her only 1.5 hours before the baby was born! I don't know how I did that in transition with no pain meds.  I don't remember that AT ALL!
Since that blog is totally private now, I just took a scree shot.

 

 

Below is me 40 weeks with Anika and me this morning- 40 weeks, 1 day with Leni.

 

 

 

 I am 12ish pounds away from my delivery weight with Anika, but who knows what I gained in the last 2 weeks with her. MY memory tells me I gained a lot in those last 2 weeks, but I just don't recall.

This was me 40 weeks, 3 days at my Papa's 75th Birthday dinner I think.

 

Then below - same outfit- haha was me at a wedding at 41 weeks, 6 days.

 

I documented my shoes because Andrew said I wouldn't be able to wear them so I had to prove him wrong :)

 

At the wedding 41, 6 days.

 

 

Whoa. my face. I hope it doesn't blow up like that again. IM sure it actually looks like that now though if a photo is taken at the right (wrong) angle :)

 

I dropped Anika off at the sitter today. Went to boot camp and came to work. Just another day of normalcy until this kid shows up.

I am really hoping for this Sunday - My dad's birthday and Andrew will be home.  Conceived on Valentines day and born on my dad's birthday would be special :)
I just realized I have a bunch of Draft posts in my blogger.  One is from LABOR DAY WEEKEND- the Cape bach party I hosted. ha. I should really finish that up and post.  IM such a blogger slacker. I hate it.

One More Day

 

I am just ONE day away from my due date.  I really cant believe it. It doesn't feel it AT ALL!! I don't know where the time went.  I don't FEEEL full term.  I don't feel like its time yet.  It is so strange. I didn't feel this way with Anika. I was so anxious for her to come...and then I waited and waited.  We are ready in the sense that everything is set up and prepared for a baby. I am prepared for birth and all that. I have been prepared with "THINGS"  for weeks- that's just my personality. But, I just don't internally (or externally I guess) feel like any big thing is about to happen to my body! ha.

I have gained about 40 pounds and that's sad, especially how hard I work out.  And, I don't lose my pregnancy weight easily either, even with full time nursing.  I will be a flabby fat mess. I know this.  That part sucks, but I am so so grateful with how I feel DURING pregnancy. I am sleeping through the night still (unless Andrew, Piri or Anika wake me up).  I am active and busy and on the go. I am me still though and through. Nothing has changed in that aspect.  I just look different.

I haven't even tied up loose ends at work yet.

Where my finger is pointing is where there is a body part almost ALL the time. A hard body part sticks out there about 70% of the time. I like it. I will miss it. ha.

-

Andrew took Anika shoe shopping the other day. In search for some shoes for a wedding she is in. 
We are looking for white or cream color shoes. We have found black and gold and bought them just in case, but still looking for cream or white.

They didn't find the right shoes, but he did get her these slippers.

I think its funny because she wont even keep shoes or socks on when its 20 degrees. I cant wait to see how little these get used :)

 

 

 

This was this morning. Anika came in around 6 and brought her dolly and she said she wanted to read a book to her dolly and to Leni :)  She can be the sweetest at times.

She also wanted to text my friend this morning bright and early. I asked what she wanted to tell her and she said: I want to tell her I am a good girl...and...I wan to nibble her.

LOL. 

 

So, who wants to take bets on this baby showing up. I am going for November 10th- Sunday.
My dad's birthday and its a weekend so Andrew will be home.   My mom's bet is the 14th- exactly 9 months from Valentines Day (conception :))    WE WILL SEE!!!!!!!!!