I remember when Travis and I moved into our townhouse about 5 years ago this month. It seemed so big and like we would never fill up the rooms.  Somehow, we have managed to fill the rooms.  Every closet is full and we’ve got a surprising number of full bookshelves. 

So we’ve  been cleaning things out so that:

1) Genghis actually has a room to call his own and we can get to his crib

2) My family, who is coming to visit next weekend, has a place to sleep. 

3) I figure all this de-cluttering and cleaning will be much more challenging after the little guy makes an arrival, so better to do it now. 

Travis put together a bunch of new storage shelves in the basement and we’ve been sorting and moving stuff downstairs.  He’s also adding shelves to one or our upstairs closets and assembling a new dresser.  That’s my handy guy.

Interesting discoveries from the cleaning/sorting:

1. 2 masks – 1 sun, 1 moon

2. Gifts that we had purchased with specific people in mind, then forgot about

3. Random science toys that we’ve gotten over the years (and clearly understand the principles behind…) . Geeks in love.

4. My grandmother’s enormous pink, green, and yellow plaid taffeta throw pillows (in a closet, since they’re too big for all of our furniture. They’d work if we lived in a castle)

5. A pair of jeans that I painted flowers and other stuff on in middle school.  Why do I still have these?  I don’t know, but I can’t throw them away (or wear them).

6.  A shocking number of candles. You’d think we were pyromaniacs or goths with the number of candles we found in our closets.  Some of them I recognize from college, except that they’re partially burned and faded now.

7.  Books, books, and more books.  These are surprisingly difficult to part with, since each one is associated with memories of school, vacations, hasn’t been read yet, or just was fun to read. We’ll see how I do with this… 

We got a mystery gift in the mail. A very cute onesie from willheron.com that says “i’m new to earth”.  Unfortuanately, there’s no card or other clue as to who sent it.  Travis hasn’t secretly been shopping for baby clothes online, so I figure it’s from one of our friends.  Does anybody lay claim to the gift?  Let us know!

So I haven’t had any of the exciting/unusual cravings that other pregnant women seem to get.  No pickles and ice cream or anything like that.  One of my friends really craved creamed spinach and ate it twice a day. For months. 

The only thing that I seem to crave is meat of all kinds and sparkling water. Beef, chicken, fish, bacon, Italian sausage – it all sounds good. As far as the sparkling water, I think it might have something to do with my time in Germany and
Italy earlier in pregnancy, where sparkling water is everywhere.  The sparkling water I can get here isn’t quite as good as in
Germany, but it satisfies the cravings. 

Time is flying by.  I can’t believe I’m in the 3^rd trimester.  I’m 30 weeks tomorrow and starting to outgrow some of my maternity clothes (which I didn’t realize was possible).  At my
OB appointment last week, I found out I’d gained 5 pounds in 5 weeks.  At least some of it seems to have gone to TinyD, who continues to try to boot his way out through my liver and has gotten significantly stronger.  At the last appointment, I also got a bunch of blood drawn.  I still don’t have syphilis, I’m not anemia, and despite drinking 50 g of some really gross sugar solution, my blood sugar was still normal, so no gestational diabetes.  (Thank goodness, I don’t think I can cut out sweets at this point – talk about grumpy).  New arrivals at the house include a rocker/glider (fancy rocking chair, very very comfortable) from Travis’s dad and infant car seat from my roomie/best friend from college, Adonia, and her hubby.

Travis likes asparagus.  So do I, particularly now that I like all food even more than I did before.  He’s pretty excited about asparagus season, now that he can get asparagus that is

1. smaller than your average telephone pole 

2. costs less than your average telephone pole.

How do I know his level of excitement?  He started singing ‘The Age of Asparagus’, his version of the song ‘Age of Aquarius’ from the musical ‘Hair’, complete with made up lyrics about the vegetable.  We now have some in the fridge (where all vegetables go to die) waiting to be cooked and eaten. 

For you young’uns out there, ‘Hair’ was a popular musical and movie in the 70’s (or maybe the 60’s?)  Neither of us have ever seen the musical or movie, but heard the song growing up thanks to parents and popular culture.  From what I hear, it was about hippies and there was some dancing around on stage without clothes, which might explain the popularity. 

TinyD/Genghis/GG is very active. He likes to kick, punch, and wiggle (favorite targets are liver and sigmoid colon).  At times, you can see an entire limb move across my belly, which Travis thought looked like one of the sandworms from the book/movie ‘Dune’, otherwise known as a Shai-Hulud.  Hmm… Shai-Hulud… I bet no one else on the playground would have that name. 

So we now own a crib!  GG will have a place to sleep when he arrives sometime in June.   Mom and Dad were here this weekend for Easter and Mom’s birthday.  They were good sports and went shopping with us on Saturday, which included a trip back in the car where they shared the backseat with the crib boxes.  Travis and Dad started to put the crib together on Sunday, but noted that it came without instructions.  Since the boxes are labeled ‘Do not assemble without completely and thoroughly reading the instructions or you might irreversibly harm your baby and/or destroy the universe’ (or something like that), they stopped. Fortunately, the good people at Natart faxed Travis assembly instructions, and he put the crib together last night. 

What’s your guess about TinyD’s arrival? Enter your guess at:
It’s like entering the March madness pool at the office. Except you don’t have to know anything about basketball. Or colleges. Or brackets.

We thought about making everyone guess using the metric system, but figured we’d get too many guesses for a 7 kg baby (ouch).

Remember to enter a name guess on this site (see the entry below ‘Name Game for TinyD’

So I have stranger dreams now that I’m pregnant.  Often the baby has some role to play, but two of the recent ones were sans Genghis Geronimo. 

I dreamed that I got called to be a bone marrow donor. A few years ago I registered to be a potential bone marrow donor through ‘Type for Life’.  They gathered 1 tube of blood and contact info, and I didn’t hear much back.  They send me mail once a year to make sure I haven’t moved. In my dream, they called me to donate and I couldn’t do it because I was pregnant and couldn’t lay on my belly for the time needed to collect the marrow from my hip. 

In non-dream life, the next day I got home from work and checked our answering machine and there was a message from Type for Life saying I was a potential match and could I give them a call.  I talked with them and am excluded from donation due to pregnancy.  Kinda wacky though. 

The next night, I dreamed I was one of the characters on Lost, so I guess I should stay off overseas airplane flights….

I started making a list of things we need to buy the baby.  It’s long. I also started looking in the rooms, closets, and cabinets in our home to figure out where all this baby stuff is going to go.  This led to waking up at 5 am for a brief fit of cleaning frenzy, where I cleaned out a couple of cabinets and closets, generating some bags for the Salvation army and some bags of things to be put out with the trash.

As far as big things the baby needs, we’re making some progress.  We’ve had our first trip to Babies R Us, which was interesting, to say the least.  The whole visit had a kind of Twilight Zone/X-files feel to it.  So much baby stuff and so many pregnant women.  Most of the women trailed by a guy holding the ‘Baby Bargains’ book, trying to figure out which of the 50 car seats is the right one to buy.  Sometimes, there would be a mini-traffic jam at a particular item, like the rocker/gliders, with each person sitting in them and referring to the book for recommendations. 

So far, we’ve ordered an ‘Arms Reach CoSleeper’online  and purchased a crib from Great Beginnings, an enormous baby superstore in
Gaithersburg.  It’s a great store and if you ever need baby or kid furniture, is worth a look.  They have all kinds of tiny tables and chairs, cute kids clocks, in addition to nice furniture and an impressive supply of boppy pillows, cribs and all the normal baby stuff.  We also got a crib mattress (not sure why this isn’t included with the crib) and are getting a rocker glider.  We also now have more cute baby clothes thanks to my parents, Aunt Anne and Uncle Sam, and Scott and Carlie.  Tiny D will now be a stylin’ dude in his onesies and socks.   We’re now registered at Target and Babies R Us.