Outgrowing Cuteness (in a good way)

My cute baby bump phase has passed. It was nice while it lasted. But now... now I just feel like a big big really big pregnant lady. Hah. And I still have six weeks to continue getting bigger. I'm trying to make myself feel better by looking back at my old bump pictures when I thought I was just huge and realizing that I was...not. So perhaps in a few weeks, I'll look back at my "34 weeks" bump and laugh at myself for thinking I was just so massive. We'll see. When I went in for my ultrasound at 19 weeks (when we found out we were having a boy), I was convinced that I looked mega pregnant. Here's my 19 week picture:

So huge, right? Haha. 

Here's 34 weeks (as in, now): 

I think I can see why no one knew I was pregnant at 19 weeks. Everybody knows now. 

In other news: 

• Tatum has an injured paw and isn't allowed to run and play. Poor, baby girl. :(
• Sabre is still Sabre. We're trying to schedule his neutering for... right away, in hopes that he'll be a bit more groggy and lethargic (surgery does that, right?), so he'll stop trying to play with Tatum by tackling her to the ground, probably injuring her paw even more. (It's also something we need to do...not just something we decided on a whim. hah.) 
• My dear husband smashed one of his fingers in a machine at work and now he's waiting for the nail to "pop off." I'm hoping I won't be present when said nail chooses to do so. 
• I have my first stretch marks and they itch. I'm not so fond of the itching. 
• We found a sweet puppy (about 6 months old or so) in our neighborhood on Saturday with no tags. She stayed with us for a couple hours and played with our crazy dogs before we found her owners. I discovered that three dogs is absolutely crazy. Hah. They sure had fun though!
• I'm out of cereal. It's been rough. ;)

Growing Up: It Just Happens.

I had a dental cleaning this morning. I typically enjoy getting my teeth cleaned. It's painless and the end result is clean teeth, so what could there possibly be to complain about? That's why, five minutes into my cleaning, when I started to feel clammy and nauseous and lost the ability to support my head, it came as a bit of a shock. I got my teeth cleaned back at the beginning of my first trimester when I was sick all day long and managed to survive the cleaning just fine! My poor hygienist had to call for some help to make sure I didn't completely pass out. The dentist came in, had someone give me some oxygen, and made me switch positions, hoping that it would get my blood circulating properly again. After a couple minutes, I could feel myself going back to normal. The dentist said he could tell I was doing better since there was some color back in my face. When I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror, it was still pretty pale... which means I must have looked about as white as a sheet during my "episode." I felt just terrible that I put them through such an ordeal. Especially since I had no idea what caused it! I called my OB's office and spoke with my nurse who informed me that during pregnancy, dizziness/nausea/etc. (essentially a drop in blood pressure) is a fairly common occurrence if there's too much weight on my vena cava. Guess I should avoid such things. This whole "third trimester" thing is bringing on some lovely new symptoms. Hah.

I couldn't finish my whole breakfast this morning (leftover biscuits with sausage gravy) so I threw away what was left of it (which wasn't a lot), when Sabre stuck his face in the trash can and ate the gravy covered biscuit. Little brat. Now he's going to be even more convinced that the trash can is where all delicious things end up. On the other end of the scale, when we do the "leave it" command with Tatum (usually putting a treat in front of her or on her paw), she won't touch it. Even once we've told her she can eat the treat! She waits for us to pick it back up and give it to her. If we try to have both Sabre and Tatum "leave it" at the same time, Sabre usually eats the treat in front of him and the one in front of Tatum since she waits patiently for REAL permission. Such different personalities. Tatum also loves the baby smell that clings to me everyday after babysitting. She spends a good three minutes or so incessantly sniffing my left shoulder where I typically hold the two month old baby girl I now watch. It's going to be interesting to see what these doggies do when Baby gets here. :)

I couldn't focus my nesting into cooking and cleaning anymore--I had to get the nursery set up. The room we're going to be using (unless, of course, we move) was filled to the max with all sorts of random stuff (more like a storage room) and lots of empty boxes. And, of course, all the baby stuff in random bags/boxes/piles scattered throughout the room. It was time to rearrange and make everything look pretty. :) While we still have a few more things to do eventually, it's pretty ready for Baby. And then, if we do move, we'll just have to start all over again. Hah. Except now we have a basic idea of how we want to set things up. We got a rocker glider finally! Instead of spending over $500 on a nice one, we persistently checked craigslist and found a nice used one for $65. Yay! The cushions are pink, so we bought some material and are having it recovered. Thankfully my grandmother has a friend that does upholstery for a very reasonable price--the price we were quoted locally was over $350! We could order brand new cushions from the retailer for that price! Crazy! I was also told to check out a local consignment shop filled with all sorts of kid clothes, baby gear, and even some maternity stuff. I got a $50 diaper bag for $12! Travis helped pick it out, which means it looks absolutely nothing like a diaper bag (but it really is) and, therefore, he won't feel silly carrying it. :) We also got a play mat for $16--those things are ridiculously overpriced brand new! I'm a big fan of consignment shopping!

After a full day of insatiable hunger yesterday, today I've hardly felt the slightest pang of hunger. Strange. But my heartburn is in full gear and my back is nice and achy. I've started getting calf cramps in the middle of the night (thankfully not every night), and my overwhelming exhaustion seems to have returned. I'm also building up nice thigh muscles from standing up and sitting down while holding a baby. It's like doing squats on and off for a couple hours a day. As much as I can't wait to meet my little boy, I'm not sure I want these last seven weeks to fly by. I think it's a combination of wanting to move before he arrives (if it ever works out) and an underlying (and by underlying I mean very much at the forefront) fear of labor. Hah! Plus, even though I feel all sorts of kicks and jabs and flips and turns inside of me all day long, I'm not sure it's going to be real until he's born. It's like I was playing "house" just a few days ago and now I'm grown up and not playing anymore, and I don't know where the time went. That's not to say I'm not excited! I really truly am. I just don't know when all this "growing up" happened.

And look at that, I'm finally hungry.

Saturdays are nice.

My last three posts all included the word "sometimes" in the title. I think that's indicative that I'm overusing that word.

I can't say this with utter certainty, but I think there really is some kind of "mom gene" that kicks into gear when you're about to become a mom. You see, until a couple months ago, I didn't really cook. I tried. Every now and then I'd feel inspired to make some lovely sounding meal, only to taste it and feel utterly disappointed at my cooking skills. Most of the time I'd just throw the leftovers out--that's how much I didn't like it! But lately, my mom gene has kicked in and I can now cook quite yummy meals. It's strange, really. I made Chicken Pot Pie (with my own homemade crust, I might add) that turned out very yummy. I made some Homestyle Potatoes to go on the side of our grilled chicken that were awesome! I also made Chicken and Wild Rice Soup AND Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole (they tasted completely different, but both wonderful!). And I've made a vanilla pound cake, a vanilla yogurt cake, and have the ingredients for some no-bake chocolate bars. :) I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty proud of myself. Hah! :)

The dogs have improved immensely in their training. We still have a bit of work to do, but overall, I'm glad we didn't spend the ridiculous amount of money to have them trained. We're doing quite well on our own--for free! Last night my sisters arrived for the weekend. Now Sabre loves Brittany something fierce and keeping him from jumping on her seemed like it might be the ultimate test of our training abilities. However, it's exactly the situation we need so we can get him to stop jumping on his favorite people. And wonderfully enough for us, he jumped towards her but not on her--a vast improvement from times past! Both Sabre and Tatum are doing much better at waiting for my command to go outside when we open the door. It's still not foolproof when someone knocks on the door, but we're just taking it one step at a time. Sabre does seem to understand that when he brings bricks into the house from the backyard (the best toys in the world, apparently) and I say, "Sabre, that's an outside toy," that he needs to take it back outside. Hah! He, of course, brings it back in a few minutes later, and then we go on repeat, but the fact that he takes it out at all amuses me to no end. :)

My chiropractor taught Travis how to do a basic back adjustment (similar to cracking someone's back but much more beneficial), so now I can get a basic adjustment for free! And I think Travis rather enjoys that he can actually do something that helps long(er) term. :) A back massage helps in the moment, but doesn't last. He's asked me to do it to him, but between my ever protruding belly and complete and total lack of upper body strength, I'm not sure there's much chance it's gonna happen.

I apparently decided that as soon as I entered into my third trimester of pregnancy, I would start working more. It's a bit backwards, perhaps, but it'll probably be good for me. Better than sitting home all day long, trying to find things to do to fill up my time. Instead, I now tutor Monday through Thursday in the mornings, and starting next week, I will resume babysitting in the afternoons throughout the week. On the upside though, I will be contributing a bit more to our monthly income than I was (hah!) and that's always helpful. Oh yes!! Now that it's April, I can officially say that in the month of March, we cut $100 off our grocery bill AND, compared to February, we knocked off $120 from our "eating out" spending! That's $220 saved just by planning meals, eating leftovers, and resisting the temptation to eat out all the time! I think I've found a new way of life. ;) Plus this whole meal planning allows me to embrace my pregnancy nesting by cooking and cleaning. Because after you cook, you then have to clean. (Which is probably one of the top reasons I avoided cooking in the first place. But the nesting, guys! It's real!)

Last night I went to my last movie before having a baby. And that's my final decision. We watched The Winter Soldier (Is it sad that I only seem to go to movies based on comic books? Comic books, I might add, that I've never read...) and while it was a good movie, I have never been so uncomfortable in a movie theater in my life. It's as if my back has changed shape or something, so I can't lean back and get support in the right places so I end up slouching more, which then hurts my butt and shoulders. I could kind of lean back and be semi-comfortable but to do that, my feet couldn't be completely on the floor, so in the end, that wasn't very comfortable either. It's a good thing I enjoyed the movie, because otherwise, I would have been out the door halfway through.

Everyone is sleeping still, except the dogs who are being dangerously quiet in the backyard. A quiet dog (unless sleeping) is never a good sign. Sabre always hides behind the couch and is suddenly as quiet as possible. When we go check to see what he's doing, 9 times out of 10, he's found something he's not supposed to have and is in the process of chewing/tearing it up. Luckily it's usually a clean paper napkin we were going to use (he loves ripping up paper products)... or at Christmas it was frequently a favorite ornament from the tree (though he rarely fully destroyed those). In other dog news, both Sabre and Tatum are now microchipped (Tatum took it like a champ, Sabre cried like a baby) and Sabre's days as an intact male are coming to an end soon, now that he's pretty much done growing (give or take a couple months, perhaps). (That last sentence probably needs to be restructured, but I'm not going to do it.)

Oh and if you haven't tried Blue Bell's new ice cream flavor "I Heart Chocolate," you are seriously depriving yourself of true deliciousness in this world. Go buy some. Now.