17 Weeks

17 weeks today! This week in pregnancy marks that the baby is now about to make fists and put them in their mouth, head to heel the length of an asparagus spear (7.75 inches long), heart is beating strong pumping 100 pints of blood a day, and as I have been feeling now more and more regularly, actively moving around doing flips and jumps and cartwheels. My baby also may start to get hiccups around this time (haven't felt them yet, but I loved that feeling when Joss used to get them while in my belly, haha so so cute and funny). I have first centering on Tuesday, so looking forward to it, and meeting the other moms and dads. Also need to book the gender ultrasound, also exciting!

One thing I never experienced until I've moved to Texas, cartoon-like rain clouds. You can be somewhere where its not raining at all, or lightly sprinkling, and look 15 feet ahead of you and see heavy sheets of rain - MASSIVE amounts of water pouring down. You can live on one side of the city and have no rain all day, while a friend only a mile away gets drenched with total downpours. Its like the cartoon rainclouds or rain out of the Truman Show, and pretty normal to me now, but still cool to witness.

Yesterday on my way to morning prenatal yoga, I drove straight into one of those rainclouds, was pelted for the 5 minutes as I drove through, then it let up the further north I went to the birth center. I'm happy to say that the cloud moved over our house later and hit our garden, so hoping for another harvest of habaneros and jalapeños before the season's up (which reminds me of my dream last night, our garden was FULL of peppers, so many peppers red, orange, and green, so plentiful!)

It was a good yoga class, my body is feeling pretty good these days, minimal lower pain now that I've started up with yoga again, and less nausea but its still there if I don't keep eating snacks all day to keep my blood sugar up. After yoga I came home just to eat lunch then went back to the birth center for the clothing swap. It was the first one I've been to that I didn't plan and organize, and was really nice to not have to stay the whole time, and just show up and leave after finding things that I needed. There were so many cute baby items, but I decided to wait until we find out gender before taking anything home. I hope there is another one before baby is born. I started by doing them monthly, then when I went back to work switched to quarterly. Nicole the new organizer did a great job hosting, hoping she will do them regularly. I picked up a whole bag full of maternity items I needed (aka items that are not things I would wear to a full time job as an accountant - which is what all of my maternity clothes were last time around) and some more cloth diaper prefolds. Also there were a couple bigger kid clothes there and I picked up 2 shirts for Joss. Its nice to see the moms I've already met at yoga, and socialize a bit. Not worry about all the pregnancy TMI conversations that I'm interested in having, because they are pregnant too - like how many pairs of depends should we take home to prepare for after our birth? I said at least one for each day of the week, she took the whole bag. We bonded. Over depends. I love it, haha.

Other than that it was pretty much a nice lazy Saturday with my family, we watched movies, read books, and went out to dinner at Michi Ramen where we saw one of Jocelyn's friends eating there with her family too. I love seeing Jocelyn at this stage where she's interacting with friends, where she recognizes her classmates, knows their names, and they can talk together. Having her in school is so wonderful for her social skills, and I hope that she can keep some of the friendships that she's making now for a lifetime, like I have with some of the friends I made when I was in preschool.

This is the first weekend we've had in a month without a birthday party to go to. Which reminds me that I still need to figure out and plan Jocelyn's birthday party coming up one month from tomorrow (3 years old!), as well as costumes and pumpkins for Halloween, my baby shower, and then menu plan for our family vegan thanksgiving, prepare Christmas and do all the last minute getting ready for baby things needed before February. I love this time of year! But time is speeding along and I feel less prepared this year than I usually am. I like the idea of a party in the park for Joss, as long as the weather holds up. I need to figure it out soon, places in the city book up fast.

My nails are growing so fast, so is my hair. I treated myself to a pedicure last week (so worth it and nice! dark, fall, blood-red/black toes), since its harder and harder to reach my toes on my own with my growing belly, and I probably should get a haircut but I'm too cheap and mostly just wear a pony tail, bun, or braid anyway. I love pregnancy hair.

I also worked more on our registry, and thought about getting a crib this time around until I looked at the prices. Not just the crib, but the crib mattress, the sheets, the mattress cover, the accessories, and all that shit is so damn expensive. Since we will probably most co-sleep again anyway, I ditched the crib idea, and added a side-car co sleeper this time. The middle of the bed co sleeper we got for Joss, we barely used since she was so tall/long and out grew it in about a week. That was the other thing that ran through my mind at the clothing swap, looking at all the cute newborn items, Joss was so big when she was born she never could fit into any of those tiny items. We went straight to 0-3 and 3 month onesies and clothes - plus a lot of the time she didn't wear anything but a cloth diaper anyway. Getting more and more excited to meet the new bean!