Quote of the Now

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do
Rumi

Thursday, September 06, 2007

September Zips in

Where did August go? All of a sudden I'm looking at my calendar and it says September! Oh - and what's that? Classes start on Monday??!! The class I teach starts Monday... *gulp* Good thing there is an entire weekend in between to have fun!

Friday night is a girls campout in Waterloo. There will be smores. The other girls will be enjoying something alcoholic, but not me. S'more smores for me please. Next weekend I'm helping out at a garage sale for the Grand River All Breed animal rescue. That's the group I volunteer with now. This past weekend I helped transport 5 rescued dogs, 3 of which were coming into our foster care. One of the three found a forever home immediately (next day), which was great! The other two shouldn't be long behind. They're gorgeous lab crosses. I was so tempted to bring Cooper home - he's a handsome boxer-lab cross. Darla could use a canine companion... if only we had a large fenced yard. Yes, this is the danger of working with rescued animals. (Notice we have 3 cats...) It's probably just as well we don't have a fenced yard.

Well, that's about it for weekend fun. Unless you count housecleaning as fun (you weirdo). Robin's busy prepping to paint the front entrance. With the help of a friend who is a carpenter (okay, he did all the work, but it's because he wanted to!) we put a bench into the front closet and have changed it from a closet to a nook, which nicely opens up the entrance. Once the walls are painted (yellow) we can put in all the freakin' baseboards above the tiled floor in the kitchen and front entrance ... and then the renovations we started almost a year ago will be done! (On to the living room flooring...) I'll put up pictures of the finished product. It's going to look great.

Robin's dad arrives Wednesday for a visit. So I suppose I should clear out the spare closet - I mean, bedroom. You'd never know it was a bedroom right now - except for the bed - under the stuff. And once it's cleared I *suppose* I should endeavor to keep it clear... because it will be baby's room. Well, at least I need to leave space to put baby stuff. Baby will be sleeping in our room. And that's still many moons away.

The pregnancy is going well. I'm in month 3 now. My 24/7 nausea has pretty much gone - which is great! And I never once puked!! Still napping though, which is also great - except that it interrupts work, but I've always gotten tired around midday and needed to take a break. All in all I'd say this is a relatively easy pregnancy so far. I really can't complain. If all continues to go well I'll get to be one of those moms who can tell her child - you were great! I had such an easy time being pregnant with you that I was ready to have a whole clan. (Which is ***NOT*** the plan - two please. Hyperbole is important in storytelling.) And then, if all continues to go well I can rave about how baby slept through the night, and potty-trained in a week and was never fussy. LOL Hey, a woman can dream!

I went for my first midwife appointment a few weeks ago and was blessed to hear the baby's heartbeat. It was incredible. Unfortunately Robin wasn't there and he won't be able to make the next appointment (on the 17th) either. But there will be plenty of opportunities for him to listen. We (midwife and I) didn't really expect to be able to hear baby's heartbeat so early because of how far from the surface everything is at that point. Of course, that was then. Now baby is starting to show and giving me a belly to prove my pregnancy! I had to buy some new pants a size up to fit. I'm not ready for maternity pants yet!

And since people have been asking, here is a photo to show my little baby bump. It's not much, but it's something and I definitely notice it.
One of the things I've really noticed being pregnant is the physiological changes to my basic life activities. I've always been a powerwalker - but now I'm walking in second gear instead of fourth and I have to gear down to first to get up hills. It sucks! My breathing has also changed. I've trained to breath deeply, especially at night. Now I lay awake frustrated by my own shallow breaths and I just can't get them to go much deeper. It was bad enough having to listen to Robin's shallow breathing...

And here is my big fear... twins. I can't wait for my ultrasound in 6 or 7 weeks to tell me I don't have twins! And that it's a girl :P (Robin says boy, but I write the blogs!) Twins run in my maternal line and skipped the birth of my generation. I used to think twins would be great. Then I had a reality check!

In other news. Just today I received notification that my research has *finally* been approved by the human research ethics committee - after a long and bitter battle... But that's all water under the bridge (until a colleague asks me about the process and I give my bitter reply) now that I can start my research. Needless to say, I won't be graduating with others from my cohort next June. Of course, it was unlikely that was ever going to happen. Instead I'll be on maternity leave. I'm taking two terms of leave (8 months total, 2 months free to get as much work done as possible before baby is due) and a maternity bursary from the university. I'll be back to school next fall 2008 to wrap up this PhD and plan to graduate spring 2009.

We'd like to give a shout-out to Robin's aunt who apparently reads this. [Hi] Sorry I hadn't updated the blog in a while. I did post stuff on Facebook, but that's no excuse. I'll try to be better about keeping everyone updated about the pregnancy.

That about wraps up what's new in our household. I hope everyone had a great summer!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

you do update more regularly than me.... grrrr! You're looking good!

Anonymous said...

Hi Mandy and Robin!!!
Not sure which aunt you were referring to, but I read your blog as well, here in Kelowna. Just think, if it is twins maybe you'll have one of each! Ciao, Joyce.

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