What A Difference Two Weeks Makes

In the past two weeks, Harry has:

• mastered crawling (though on hands, one knee and the other foot)
  
• mastered getting himself seated
  
• mastered pulling up on stuff
  
• begun cruising
• (as a result of those four items, he now requires rocking to sleep at least 75% of the time or he wails and wails until we go in and find him sitting up in his crib crying, holding his arms out to be picked back up)
• (also as a result of those four items, he now requires singing in order to have his diaper changed or he either crawls off or cries if you try to prevent the crawling through some form of baby-wrangling)
• mastered walking while holding on to hands (purposeful, quick walking as opposed to thudding, haphazard steps, which he started a while back). He is also able to sit back down and to let go with one hand to bend over and pick up a toy (or piece of lint or old food).
  
• been to his second foreign country -- he has now been to more non-U.S. countries than his aunt and uncle combined
• pulled his first all-nighter (well, up from 11:30 on -- he did sleep 3.5 hours to start the night)
• begun nursing strike number 2 (which I am now fairly confident is stemming from the return of my monthly cycle. Each strike has begun in the week and a half leading up to a (one-day) period, with the last one ending the day the period began/occurred. If that's the case again, I can live with it. My supply seems to nosedive during that week+ (or I stop responding to the pump) and it takes ages to get a letdown then, so I think he's impatient. At least the biting is less bad this time. Mainly he just gives up. Though he gave me the worst bite yet last week, bad enough that I ached for days afterward.)
• been on his first boat ride
• gone swimming in a lake
• learned how to throw tennis balls for the dog
• taken his first bath in the big tub
• begun waving

I am exhausted. (The fact that the aforementioned all-nighter was two nights ago, and last night we drove all night on our way back from vacation so as to avoid ten hours in the car with him awake is partly to blame for that.)

This unwilling-to-go-down-easily-or-have-a-diaper-change thing ends at some point, right?

Progress on the Room That Shall Not Be Named

Though it wouldn't have been obvious to anyone who knew us, we knew that at some point we were going to have to turn our small room full of junk into a room that someone could live in.

Well, that point came this weekend, as the furniture was delivered on Saturday. Once the furniture was in, P was really gung-ho to get the rest of the room together, as best we could (as was I). We had already painted the room and hung the valance, but we assembled the glider and the mobile and put the bedding on the crib and hung a couple of things on the walls. We still need shelving, and something with which to hang the comforter from the bedding set on the wall, and we don't have the changing pad on the dresser since we don't have a cover for it yet, and the ottoman isn't in there because it makes the tiny room look even more crowded than it does already, but we now have a room someone could live in.

From the door:

Also from the door, but looking right:

From the window, looking at the door:

Standing in front of the dresser:

As you can see, the room is really small (7x11) and therefore really crowded. And the closet, which is also the access to the attic (though it also, rather usefully, has a built-in dresser), is still filled with junk, which is why the door is closed in every picture. But it's a room. And someone could live in it. In fact, we put a stuffed animal in the crib just to give the illusion that someone does live in it (the bear will not actually live in the crib -- it's our fake small person for now).

It really seems rather extraordinary. Since Saturday, P and I have both frequently found ourselves standing in the doorway, looking in, realizing how close we really are. I can't believe we only have two months to go.

Preparation

We took our "prepared childbirth" class this weekend. I'm not sure how much I actually learned, but it was good to have reinforcement for things, and I think a lot of it was new for P. I have been giving him specific responsibilities (like research baby monitors or finish redoing the f'ing patio), which means he hasn't really focused at all on anything else. Things like, say, how it is that the baby will get out of me. I think he found the whole thing frightening. Also, he was the first partner to be willing to try wearing the empathy belly and concluded that he could probably handle the extra weight but wasn't so sure about the difficulty breathing or the bladder pressure. Those two things taken together seem to have given him a newfound empathy. I've gotten more backrubs than usual over the past few days, which is nice.

My biggest fear about the class was the other people, but they were all pretty much fine. The place offering it this particular weekend is in a ritzier suburb, so the attendees were largely well-educated married couples in their 30s. My biggest fear was giggling pregnant teens or really stupid questions, and the demographic pretty much precluded both. We were by far the least far along people in the class, mainly due to scheduling -- the majority were due the first week in August. We'll be on vacation for two weeks later this month, then our shower is the following weekend, then my dad's wedding. The next weekend after this that they offer the class and we are free is three weeks before the EDD, which seems like cutting it close. That said, three couples in our class had less than three weeks to go, so maybe I'm just being overly cautious.


Related to preparing for childbirth, we are in the process of acquiring a new vehicle. This makes me nervous. We both drive 1997 compact cars. Mine is largely fine, but Ps is starting to fall apart, so we're looking to upgrade. I paid cash for my car when I bought it (used), and P paid his off years ago, so taking on an expensive car loan makes me super nervous, but I know we need to do it. Eek.

Finally, I added a belly shot from this week (this morning, in fact). As you can see, I've sort of exploded lately. Double eek.

V Day

A much longer post is forthcoming, but for now I just thought I'd note that on Sunday we hit 24 weeks, aka viability day. I harbor no illusions of this being some amazing safety zone, but there's something to be said for the notion that were I to go into PTL at this point, someone might try to do something. Hooray?

To celebrate, I updated the belly shots page with images from 22 weeks 1 day and today, 24 weeks 2 days. Apologies if they appear sideways -- I'll try to fix them later. And I'll try to do them every 2 weeks from hereonout.

I also have my 24 week appointment today in about an hour. I'm not expecting anything momentous -- I assume it will be the usual PIAC, step on the scale, BP check, fundus measurement, heartbeat check. I think my sugar drink test is next month. Fun.