Monthly Archives: January 2010

Making progress already (12w5d)

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Inspiration struck me last night as I pulled into the parking lot to get some bits and pieces for dinner. Home Depot was right there – so why not go in and see what they can do on carpet?

Turns out, they can do a lot. And our Home Depot card can do a lot for us there too. While re-carpeting the house isn’t gonna be cheap, it won’t be as much as we feared. (I really like the idea of re-doing the whole house in one fell swoop instead of leaving the bedrooms with the old carpet.)

So I have a measuring appointment set for next weekend – which gives me less than two weeks to whip the house into shape. I think I can do it, but it’s not gonna be easy. I’m praying that at the stroke of 14 weeks (2nd trimester) I’ll get this huge burst of energy that will make all this craziness much easier to tackle.

The timeframe is looking like mid-late February for carpet installation, so we’re hoping we can find out the sex of the baby, figure out a nursery design, pick paint color(s) and actually get the painting done before the new carpet goes in. Would be MUCH easier that way. (Here’s hoping the little critter cooperates at next week’s appointment!)

Oh, and a note about carpet vs hardwood/tile: Paul’s father has really terrible allergies and asthma. So every house they’ve had has been fully tiled, with little to no carpet at all. We’re glad that works for them, but personally Paul and I hate it. We LOVE carpet, and are both absolutely in love with the idea of laying on the floor, playing with our baby. We have absolutely no desire for hardwood or tile anywhere but the kitchen and bathrooms, regardless of how easy it is to clean. Plus, I shudder to think about a little one learning to walk on tile. The softer the landing pad in that case, the better methinks.

So on Friday we’ll head over to Home Depot and take a good look at the carpet options available to us in our price range. What a way to spend our 10th anniversary, right? (We’re both taking the day off work to spend together.) I assume Mr. I-Wanna-Paint-Our-Whole-Bedroom-Red will have some interesting ideas about color. (Our bedroom, btw is now a lovely shade of goldenrod with hunter green in the lit alcoves, thankyouverymuch.)

Feels good to be making progress – like I’m finally *doing* something.

So much to do! (12w4d)

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Now that the holidays are over, I really feel like I can turn my focus to preparing ourselves and our lives (HA! like that’s actually possible!) for the arrival of our baby. And holy cats, is there a lot to do!

My house is cluttered. I will admit this. I’m not a packrat, but Paul and I like our stuff. Well, this has gotta change. Currently we have a guestroom with two twin beds, a dresser and a bookshelf. We also have an office/storage room that serves as Paul’s workspace, pantry overflow and general storage. It is frequently a disaster area. And then there is our garage. We’ve been meaning to have a garage sale for *years* and just haven’t gotten around to it.

The time is nigh, my friends. The office will become the nursery, so everything stored in there has to go somewhere else. The guestroom will become the guestroom/office, with the focus on being Paul’s workspace. The current guestroom gets used for guests about 5% of the year. So why should it be configured as nothing *but* a guestroom 100% of the time? We’ll be replacing the two twin beds with a twin trundle bed, and adding a desk/workspace for Paul where one of the beds was. The guestroom will still accommodate two people, just in a somewhat cozier fashion.

The garage will be cleaned out. This is gonna be a family effort, since Paul’s parents and grandmother have been using 1/3 of our garage for their storage for a couple of years now. We had to give them an eviction notice… cuz we can’t spare the room anymore! So once their stuff is out (hopefully soon) we’ll begin sorting through the garage with a focus on getting rid of at least half of what’s in there. A garage sale would be best, because cash is good (and cribs aren’t cheap from what I’m reading….) but I don’t know if I want the hassle. Maybe a huge tax-deductible donation to Goodwill or Shadetree would just as good and easier/quicker on us.

Pantry storage will move from the office into the garage, along with just about everything else that was/is stored in the office right now. It’s a really daunting task, but it’s kinda exciting at the same time. I’m sure it will be cathartic to Paul and I to unburden ourselves of a lot of the stuff out there. (We’ve been wanting to do it for a long while, but when it’s 100+ even at midnight several months outta the year, and there’s no place to actually sort the stuff… it gets easy to put off.)

But maybe even before all of that starts: Carpet. We have got to replace the carpet in at least the front half of the house. The contractor cheaped out on everything possible when building our house 10 years ago, and the carpet is really, really showing it. (Also nearly 7 years of an indoor/outdoor dog traipsing around doesn’t help.) Even when freshly shampoo’d, I wouldn’t want to set the baby down on the carpet, even on a blanket.

So we’re looking at replacing the carpet. A good friend of ours (Sibyana) is an insurance adjuster with lots of experience, so she’s going to help us with measuring and whatnot to make sure we’re getting a good deal. Sibyana also swears that we can pull up the existing carpet ourselves and save some money there on installation. (I wonder just how much we’d save vs. the headache and mess of doing it ourselves.) So that’s exciting and terrifying. At first glance, this carpet thing doesn’t look cheap at all.

And once the carpet is in (which we gotta do sooner rather than later so it can air out for a few months, right?) we can talk about painting the nursery. No, I have no idea what color. We haven’t even gotten to the point of talking nursery design/decor. Neither of us sees the point in “what-iffing” ourselves to death before we know the sex. Once we find out what it is we’re having, I’ll go off the deep end, I’m sure. Right now, I’m leaning towards not having a central “character” or anything. No Winnie the Pooh or Noah’s Ark. But who knows, maybe that will change when we find out. (I’m hoping to find out at the next appointment, at which I’ll be almost 14 weeks along.)

And all that is just physical prep for the house! Then there’s classes we really should attend. But that’s another show.

This is a huge list. It’s stuff we’ve wanted to do for a long, LONG time. But now we have a really good reason to do it all, and a deadline. I’m a little worried (OK, a lot worried) that I’ll end up on bedrest or something horrible at 8 months and won’t be able to do anything else. So I feel like I need to set an artificial deadline of like 3-4 months to get all this done. Which means we’re gonna set a whole new definition of Spring Cleaning at the Gorman house this year!

Dancefloor (12w2d)

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It amazes me reading about what’s going on with the critter right now. Mostly because it’s moving around now. And with this week’s ultrasound confirming this fact…. I was amazed watching our baby do somersaults, flip from side to side, kick and wave – and I couldn’t feel any of it.

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Some of the pregnancy forums I’m lurking on have women in their first pregnancies saying they’re already feeling the baby move. All the books say I won’t feel anything until at least 16 weeks, and probably not until 20 or 22 weeks because I’m so big already. That’s kinda depressing. I’m sure folks will say that I’ll get sick of being kicked and prodded fairly quickly; but I don’t think I will. I’m trying to really *live* every moment of this pregnancy, because I figure I’ll get told not to have another kid after this. So I wanna get all I can out of this experience.

Just kinda feels weird to know I’m our baby’s personal little dancefloor and I can’t even feel it yet. I’m still taking time every day though to just lay my hands on my belly and connect with the little critter. I’m certain that one of these days I’ll be focusing my thoughts on my little one and I’ll feel a little prod back. Just wish that day would get here sooner.

Allergies Update (12w2d)

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So after more than 24 hours home, long showers and nose rinsing (not with the neti pot though, cuz if both sides aren’t open that thing doesn’t work worth a damn) I’m feeling somewhat better.

I took it really easy today, and blew my nose a lot. At times I could breathe like normal, but it felt like the air was going directly to my brain. Weird.

So yeah. As long as this is 1000% gone by next weekend for Paul’s and my 10th anniversary, I’m OK with this.

Allergic to San Diego? (12w1d)

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So apparently I’m now allergic to San Diego. I flew to SD on Wednesday afternoon to spend New Year’s Eve with Lisa & Mike instead of by myself at home. (Not that Kishou wouldn’t have been good company.) But within 30 minutes of getting off the plane, I noticed that my ever-present minor congestion was getting worse. By dinner I was completely stuffed up. By bedtime I was a sneezing, watery-eyed, runny nosed mess. If if wasn’t happening to me, it would have been fascinating.

(I ended up having a low-blood sugar issue twice on Wednesday night. I couldn’t make myself eat enough at dinner, and my blood sugar dropped before bed. I had a snack with protein and carbs, figuring I’d be OK. Two hours later I woke up feeling weird and found that my blood sugar was even lower than it was before my bedtime snack. Fortunately I found juice boxes, which fixed me right up. Although I was reduced to not using the straw because I couldn’t breathe and drink at the same time!)

A 3:30am e-mail to Dr. Schwartz (god, I love that man!) was replied to by the next time I woke up to pee. He offered prescription nasal sprays, but no oral meds. WAH! I can’t handle nasal sprays when I’m not pregnant – I’m pretty sure they would be insta-puke inducing these days.

Lisa and Mike put up with my kleenex-box toting & sneezing, and we managed to have a lovely NYE with Lisa’s sister, Donna. We ate pizza, played cards & Wii and hugged at midnight. It was a great way to ring in the new year. Would have been better if Paul was with me, but I know better than to wish for the impossible.

This morning I woke up with a very sore throat in addition to all the other symptoms. Several cups of decaf coffee at breakfast didn’t do much to soothe it. And eating pancakes while not being able to breathe was just WORK. I was winded after each bite, but I kept plugging away because I didn’t want another low blood sugar issue.

We had plans to meet my brother Oin and his girlfriend Cynthia downtown for lunch and the Auto Show before my evening flight home. But after breakfast, I was so tired and feeling so awful – I just wanted to go home. I managed to get my flight changed to a much earlier one and headed to the airport. I was bummed that I wouldn’t be able to see Oin & Cynthia, but I was just miserable.

Cabin pressurization was not my friend on the way home. My ears and face were throbbing with my heartbeat. But within a hour of getting off the plane into the dry, chilly Las Vegas air I was starting to feel better. Tom and Jeanne (Paul’s parents) picked me up from the airport and dropped me at home. I declined their generous offer of dinner to just rest here at home tonight. I have every confidence that after a shower and use of Paul’s new Neti Pot (that’s a complicated procedure there…) I’ll be OK tomorrow. Regardless, I think my own bed with a warm Paul next to me will be the best medicine I could ask for tonight.

So I guess I can chalk this up to yet another pregnancy weirdness. I hope it doesn’t last though, I wanna be able to go to San Diego again while I’m pregnant. And I certainly hope I don’t find any more sudden allergies! (I have such sympathy for my allergy-suffering friends now!!)