A Conversation: About Packing

Me: I think our idea to only bring carry on luggage to Europe may be harder than I thought. I’ve been planning my outfits… and I don’t think I’m going to have enough room!

Timmy: I’m only going to bring the clothes I have on. And some underwear.

Me: …you mean you’re not going to pack anything but the clothes you wear on the plane?

Timmy: Yes.

Me: Gross. I’ll be doing your packing…

One Year Ago Today:

Sydney, Australia - 4.29.10

Twenty One.

Our baby is the size of a carrot, 

ten and a half inches long and 21 weeks old. 

The flutters I feel are still very slight and rather infrequent. I was told that I have an “anterior placed placenta” which supposedly means I will feel movement later than women with a “posterior placed placenta”. I have also been told not to sleep on my back anymore, but I’m kind of refusing to commit to 19 more weeks of side sleeping. (I hate sleeping on my side!)

 
Tim had been calling me his “pop-belly wife” and I had been thinking he was saying “pot-belly wife” which is not very flattering. Pop and pot sound very similar. But once the “POP” was clarified, I stopped feeling like he was calling me a pot belly pig and happily accepted his new nickname for me. Because, truly, my belly has (finally) begun to pop. Although I’m not sure you can really tell in these *pictures, I really do have a nice little “pop belly”. 

Speaking of popping, I’ve been craving popcorn. 

* This week’s photo shoot was a fiasco from start to finish, with poor lighting, a sickly looking carrot, and not enough time. This resulted in blurry photos. Black and white photo editing not only hid the blurriness (a little), but it also disguised the sad state of our carrot. 

Easter at Home.

Our Easter weekend was everything it should be. Timmy and I celebrated with my parents and my Granny (mom’s mom), nestled into that place we call Home. We attended church and reveled in the joy of our risen King. We made homemade pizza for lunch and had vegan vanilla cake with vegan chocolate frosting (made without refined sugar of course) for dessert. We had our yearly Easter egg treasure hunt, one for the parents and one for the “kids”, with clues leading us to fun treasures at the end. 

Timmy hid an Easter basket for me, which I happened to find in the first place I looked. He stuffed it full of little treats, a pretty spatula with flowers on it, and a beautiful ring. My kitty, Pinklepurr, made an escape out the front door, and we all spent a long time crawling around in the grass, trying to catch her and bring her back inside the house. Timmy took a nap on the couch in the sunshine, Dad bustled around the house singing, and Mom, Granny, and I sat at the kitchen table making things and chatting about babies.

And meanwhile, as I am laughing and searching and making and eating and talking, I’m thinking. Next year this will all be different. I want to sink into each moment, knowing that these days will become memories.

Likes
Celebrating 22 months with my sweetie.
The fact that, a month from now, we’ll be in Europe.
Our Easter plans to go home to my parents for the weekend.
Our babe’s crib assembled in the nursery.
Pumpkin scones for lunch, thanks to a sweet mom who makes me baked treats.
Precipitation. (Spikey green grass poking through snow IN APRIL makes me laugh!)
Coloring Easter eggs.
Having dinner with Rynn and Caleb, and the fact that this happens weekly.
Small flutters in my belly.
Our newest habit of hitting “snooze” five times before getting up.
Having the opportunity to wear my winter boots and mittens one last time this season.

Pretty new earrings.

Dislikes
Mornings without grapefruit juice. (We need to go shopping.)

Twenty.

Our baby is ten inches long this week, comparable to the size of a banana.
Twenty weeks is the halfway point.

 
So far I’ve gained approximately seven pounds and I technically COULD still fit into my “regular” pants and clothes, although they are much less comfortable. Sometimes I feel tiny flutters, but I still can’t say that I’ve for sure felt the baby moving – something I am looking forward to. I feel fantastic pretty consistently, and my only complaint right now is that I feel very awkward and pudgy, not quite appearing legitimately pregnant.

My food cravings have been consistent. Grapefruit juice. Blueberry pancakes. Raspberry smoothies. (It seems like I fall into the “sweet” rather than “salty” side of cravings.) I’m still not eating any refined sugar, and I am very diligent about eating plenty of nuts or beans (for protein) and fresh veggies every day. I've heard that babies develop taste buds based on what their moms eat when pregnant, and I'm going to do my best to make my baby a vegan for life! (Haha.)

 
I did start doing a little bit of daily exercise, and while I plan to increase it, I’m just really proud of myself for “working out” (loosely defined) five nights in a row last week.

Tim loves to talk to baby, and his whispering lips on my belly gives me giggling fits – it tickles so much!

 
Timmy and I have been especially loving each other lately. The other night he commented, “Sometimes I forget that you’re another person.” I knew exactly what he meant, and it's a good thing. 

Nineteen.

At week nineteen, baby Love is the size of a sweet potato and measures six inches from head to bum. Six inches is half of a foot, and I’m almost halfway to the end of this pregnancy. 

 
This morning I pushed Tim out of bed and announced that we would be taking our weekly pregnancy photo before I left for work. When we walked outside, I glanced around and whispered “Babe, there are people across the street watching me.” He laughed and told me “Just don’t make eye contact.” So I did my poses (purposely pretending they weren’t staring with wide eyed wonder), handed off the sweet potato to him, and told him to do something cute. He suddenly looked uncomfortable. I managed to get him to pose once, and then he pushed the potato back into my hands and franticly said in a low voice, “There is a bus full of little children coming up the street and they are ALL LAUGHING AT ME because I am hugging a sweet potato in the backyard of my house!” 

 
It was true. Our neighborhood is full of kids, and there are two bus stops on our street where they all congregate in the mornings. I’m not sure if they were laughing, but they definitely were looking.

As for me, I could hardly control the giggles as I thought about the silliness of the situation. I gave him some of his own advice “just don’t make eye contact” and snapped one more quick shot before I let him escape inside.

I wonder what it feels like to baby when I laugh. My prayer is that she enters this world with a lasting impression of her parent's laughter washing over her thoughts. 

We laugh a lot.

Joy.

There is no room for anything but joy on April Sundays studded with patches of 80 degree sunshine and cool, refreshing spring breezes. The rest of it all gets crowded out to the recesses of our mind. We forget everything but the glory of the sunlight and the whispers of our love. Love is soft on sunny Sundays, murmuring in a sleepy daze and beating in golden time with our perfectly synchronized hearts. So we simply linger on a blanket in the park, dozing beneath the heaviness of the warm air and finding that the world slows down in a beautiful way, on sunny Sundays in April. Time sighs and patiently pauses long enough for two people, blissfully in love, to taste the prolonged sweetness of a perfect afternoon. Here in the sunshine.

A Safari

 
It all started with me showing Mom an Etsy site full of wooden toys for babies. She immediately concluded that, rather than buying some, we could make them ourselves. Dad was consulted (the woodworking expert), and he readily agreed. Tim exclaimed with enthusiasm that yes, he too would love to make our baby a toy!

So we did. 

 

The four of us congregated in Dad’s workshop. We sanded and sawed and sneezed (from the dust). I had originally sketched only a giraffe and a hippo, but soon it was decided that more animals were in order, and an elephant, a lion, and a zebra joined our little wooden safari. 

  

At one point I took a short break and simply watched the activity buzzing around me. Timmy was glowing, because Dad had taught him how to use the router, and he had proved to be a natural. Mom was sawing and sanding, and at one point she grinned and exclaimed loudly over the din, “Our baby is so lucky!” Daddy bustled from person to person, giving little tidbits of advice and meticulously making sure that the smallest details were perfected. It was a cozy, familiar scene. 

 

And just two days after showing Mom that site, a safari of wooden toys were beautifully completed and sitting on my kitchen table. Can you understand a little bit why I have never fully outgrown the idea that my parents can do ANYTHING? 

 

With grandparents like that, “our” baby is very lucky indeed. 

Photo Friday: Perspective

Let’s always remember the Sunday morning we woke up and decided to drive to go on an adventure to Chicago. I’ll remember how we barely managed to leave the house on time but somehow arrived early to church. You can remember how you saw me getting ready and suddenly exclaimed, “Babe! Your hair is getting long again! I love you with long hair!” We can both remember the sweet kiss I gave you after you said that.

 

Let’s always remember driving briskly toward IKEA, flying through misty Spring showers. I’ll remember how halfway there I suddenly was ravenously hungry and needed food as soon as possible. You can remember how we accidently drove half an hour out of our way to find a Chipotle* for lunch. We can both remember how we stuffed ourselves so full of delicious food that we immediately took a long nap in the front seats of our car. 

 

Let’s always remember the afternoon we spent wandering around IKEA, picking out a crib for our little baby. I’ll remember the way you held my hand and humored my indecision between two cribs that were nearly identical. You can remember how we hid in a corner on a big comfy couch, took a long snuggle break and talked and dreamed about our future. We can both remember how happy we were that both the crib and the shelf we ended up choosing fit perfectly in our trunk. 

 

Let’s always remember that adventures are what we make them to be, and happiness is with us when the two of us are together. I can remember how you wore your grey sweater, just because you know how hot I think you are in it. You can remember how I was especially sweet (wasn’t I?) and we didn’t fight a single time the entire day. And we both can remember the rainy day we bought our baby's crib and made a new IKEA adventure memory.

Eighteen.

Baby Love is the size of a bell pepper this week,
and has grown to 5.5 inches long.

 

Last night Timmy and I opened our bedroom window wide and welcomed the first real thunderstorm of the year. We watched the lightning and fell asleep listening to the rumbling of thunder. It was sweet to know that our baby was there with us and hearing it too. Hopefully she will someday share our love of gentle Spring rain.

Every now and then I feel a faint flutter and wonder if that is our little baby moving, or just my hungry stomach. I feel more pregnant now, even though I don’t really look it. It’s just a feeling of knowing and growing. I notice so many small things, and every day I feel a new change.

This weekend the nursery is being painted, and we’ll finally be able to start preparing our baby’s little nest. It’s a small room at the top corner of our house, with two huge windows facing the sunrise. It’s going to be beautiful. 

 
We three are happy as can be. You would have to say happy a hundred times before you could express how truly happy we are right now, at eighteen weeks.

(Timmy in Europe, pre-Becki, summer 2006)

Now that I am feeling better,
I really want to start incorporating some exercise
into my daily routine. The reason for this is twofold. 
 
One, just because I really need more exercise. Most of my movement these past months solely involved walking from my car to my desk to my car to the couch. Thaaaat’s about it. I won’t claim to have ever been much of an exerciser, but things are getting pretty bleak, even for a sedentary girl like me. 
 
Two, because Tim and I are planning a Babymoon in May, and I don’t want my poor body to go into shock when I suddenly find myself walking all over Europe. (Walking is the thing to do in Europe, you know.) We’re going to Europe, and it’s kind of a funny story. We bought tickets to Sweden to attend a wedding, but now the wedding has been cancelled/postponed. So we’re going to fly to Sweden, spend a day there, and then fly somewhere else. Like... Greece!! Our flight also includes an 10 hour layover in Switzerland, so we'll be crossing three more countries off our list of places to see in the world. 

Excited? YES! 

(When we first started discussing the idea of a Babymoon, we thought we could maybe fly to Niagara Falls for a long weekend. I'm not sure how that turned into a ten day vacation to Europe, but I really love the progression!) 

But anyway, this post was supposed to be
about exercising. 

So, I’ve been thinking about wanting to start exercising 
for the past week, 

but have yet to make a move…