Less Than A Month

Wow. 27 days until the due date. Crazy! It feels like I have been pregnant forever and that it will never end, but I also can't believe the end is so near. Life as we know it is almost over! We both are very excited but have our freak out moments. What have we gotten ourselves into??? The baby book says I'm now considered full term, I can't believe it!

I'm not quite sure where to start with this post, so I will start with pictures like I usually do. This picture was actually taken a week or two ago, I can't remember exactly when.

Here are the pictures from today, at 36 weeks 1 day with 27 days to go:

I feel absolutely enormous. Jeff took a picture of me today in my maternity swim suit and it was so bad that I can't bear to post it! I can really see it in my chin and neck, ick. Oh well, only a few more weeks then hopefully the nursing and more activity will help take it all away!

So here is a belly button update. It is still in there! It is getting pretty shallow though, as you can see below. But still in there! Maybe just maybe it will stay in there.

This stage of pregnancy is interesting. I actually feel like I have MORE energy in some ways than I did for the past several months. I have been working hard getting everything ready for the baby and cleaning up the house. Work is still pretty busy and I haven't been exercising as much as I should because I'm so tired once I get home from work that all I want to do is lay around. I'm trying to go light activity though, like swimming, slow walks and riding the bike at the gym. I think I have more energy because I gave up trying to control what and how much I eat, so now I just eat whatever I want whenever I want! I think so far I have gained around 40 pounds, not horrible but I don't think there is a 40 pound baby in there! I have started having some pretty strong Braxton Hicks contractions, and at dinner Friday night they actually hurt! Hopefully my body will start working on labor before it even starts :-) I have a doctor appointment tomorrow afternoon so we will see if I have gotten anywhere yet. I'm now going to the doctor once a week! It's getting REALLY hot out here now though, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to survive the next month. Hopefully monsoon season will start early and cool things down a bit. And it isn't even as hot as it can be, only around 100 for a high, not the 115 we had the first summer I was here! If it gets that hot before I have the baby, I'm just going to hide out in the house :-)

I think we are pretty ready for the baby now. We are done with all our baby classes at the hospital. We pretty much have everything I ** think ** we need for the baby, either already washed and in the nursery or on order. I have my hospital bags packed and ready to go, we just have to throw in random stuff, mainly for Jeff, when it is time to go. Next on the list: have the car seat installed at the fire station, sign up with the pediatrician, find a day care place for when I go back to work (I'm taking off 3 months so I'm not too worried about this yet), put together the swing... I think that is about it!

Here are some random pics from the nursery. Some more of our nursery set arrived, given to us by Wanda (Jeff's mom) at the shower. Below is the cute clothes hamper, we also have a window valence that is adorable but not up yet (I guess that needs to go on the list as well).

Here are the hospital bags, packed and ready to go!

I have the changing table stocked and ready to go.

So I realized today that in baby clothes, "newborn" and "0-3 months" are different sizes. Go figure! I had them all mixed together. So today I had to go through the drawer of clean organized clothes and re-organized them into these new categories. As you can see from the picture below, I'm pretty well stocked and ready to go. On the left are the "newborn" clothes, in the middle are my swaddlers, sleep blankets, socks and hats, and on the right are my "0-3 months" clothes. Guess this shows how clueless I am about babies!

I'm also set as far as blankets go, as you can see in the picture below. Crib sheets on the left and blankets on the right, with a whole bag of more, nicer blankets in the closet waiting for cooler weather or the need to use them.

Here is a cute onesie for the grandma's:

Well I think that is about it or now. I'm going to try to post more often now that we are in the home stretch. And just to note, once the little one is finally here, we will be posting pics on this website as soon as we can for everyone back home, the hospital has free wireless internet!