Week 31

I feel like I'm getting huge even though some family and friends try and remind me that I still have a long way to go. On my way up the elevator to my doctor's appointment this week, a girl asked how much longer I had... a couple weeks? I said a little over 2 months till my due date. Oh... she said... well you look great! Um, yea it's hard to take that response seriously when your guess was off by that much, but thanks for the attempt to follow it up softly. I think Blake was proud of himself for making such an impression, he decided to get a reaction out of the nurse too. When she put the Doppler wand on my belly he did his best to kick it multiple times in a few short seconds. Most of the nurses tell me that he's a strong baby when they're done with the Doppler. This time I asked what they meant by that... does he have a strong heartbeat? This time she laughed at me and said, he's strong because he kicked the monitor. Apparently I misunderstood, but yes I'd have to agree he has a strong kick (or punch, I'm not sure what limb is closest to the bottom of the belly).

I'm doing my best to keep hydrated these days because swelling is supposed to be better if you drink a lot of water. Well, despite my best efforts, my hands and feet are feeling super swollen these days. I wake up and my hands just ache as I try and push myself off the bed. My joints are feeling so tight that I couldn't even pop my knuckles if I tried. I decided it would probably be a good idea to take off my toe rings this week since my little sausage toes are getting much too fat for them right now. I'll spare you the creepy pictures of what my toes looked like after having those rings on since high school.

As I've said before, sleep is something I've never had much of a problem with. I fall asleep relatively quickly and can sleep through most anything (including our smoke alarm apparently) but Mr. Blake is determined to change me. He has found a position he is quite comfortable in when I'm in the upright position (I think his head is down and his butt is under my right rib) but when I get on my side to go to sleep, he is no longer able to stay in that position. So he kicks around until either I flip to the other side or have to sit up to sleep. Even his daddy's hand doesn't seem to calm him down like it has in the past. It took a while for Chris to feel the crazy movements because as soon as he'd put his hand on my belly, the kicking would totally stop. I thought I could use this to my advantage, but not anymore. =) He is just a little wiggle worm in there most of the time now. He's definitely getting bigger because instead of my 1 trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I'm up to 3 some nights.

In nursery news, we've gotten a couple more decorations ready to go. I am just about finished with the puff quilt that I started with my friend Kara over a year ago! The sewing machine had some issues along the way, but it served its purpose. Now I just have some hand sewing left but here is what it looks like. It turned out almost exactly like I had imagined it, but it was WAY more work that expected. This is the one and only time I plan on making one of these, but hopefully we'll be able to keep it around for a while. It actually matches some of the nursery decorations decently well which is nice.

The other thing we got that will go above Blake's crib are letters that have our jungle theme. I'm not crafty enough to get these to look as good, so we had them made. Plus, with the rate at which I finish projects, he'd be 2 by the time I finished them. I made the picture dark so you could see the decorations on the letters.

Now to the belly picture. Sadly, my visit to the scale at the doctor wasn't nearly as fun this time. Since I was super dehydrated from feeling horrible the last time I was there, I knew this time would be a bigger gain than normal. But ugh, I was hoping the number wouldn't jump up to a total of 21 lbs gained. I told Chris that Blake must weigh about 8 lbs by now. Surely he's the one putting on all this weight. =) He reminded me that for my sake (and the fact that we have over 2 months left) it'd better be me that is gaining weight.