33 weeks - Movin' On Up

Last week of work. Last week of work.

Part of me thinks I will be bored out of my mind at home so much, but the other part of me can't bend over anymore!! Sometimes he will just be in a position where it's physically impossible for me to reach the floor, and I get all out of breath and turn bright red like a lobster and my energy just depletes. I guess I should be proud of me for hanging in there as long as possible.

We are moving in June! I have wanted to move out of this apartment for a while. It's beautiful here, but we're under new management that is charging us for things they aren't providing... like security. They are miserable to work with and have really been disrespectful to us so I am ready.

We live about 22 miles from work (and we work within 5 minutes of each other! we get lunch together all the time) and it would really be great to live closer. First of all, we work in the nice part of town, but live in the part of town where the environment changes block to block. Go to the right, you're in the ghetto. Go to the left, it's sort of nice! Second of all, we would spend just as much in excess rent money that we are spending in gas... and I'm not even going to go into car maintenance! So, I have been looking at apartments online and in the next few weeks we are going to actually go see them in person and pick where we will move to.

Moving is always hectic even if its just 20 miles away, and the baby will only be 2 months old.. but I'm kind of excited. I'm tired of worrying if my car will get stolen or broken into (Both of our cars were vandalized last year), I'm tired of the little dog that yaps until 10PM, I'm tired of not having a heated pool! It's 80 degrees here people, I weigh like ten thousand pounds and I'd like to be submerged in water right NOW thank you. I'm paying for it, so where's my pool? It's $30 a month to go to the civic center to use THEIR pool. Take that out of my rent please.

That's our news for the week. Just trying to relax and get through this last week, then the cleaning/nesting begins. I enter the "OK you COULD have a baby" phase in less than 3 weeks and that always kind of triggers a spark in first time moms to get the room finished! And clean the house to spotlessness!

Hopefully he hangs out in there until April and gives us plenty of time to finish our running around. I'm sure he will. Just so long as he's here before MAY...

Belly Pic

By request :)

Almost 33 weeks. I even managed to match today. I live in gauchos.

32 weeks / 8 months

Well, tomorrow.. but we have a packed day and I thought I'd crank this one out tonight (we are going to go out for mexican tonight, and then tomorrow we have the scottsdale arabian horse show, a volkswagen show, and childbirth classes... yeah).

I feel eight months pregnant. He is huge, I am huge, we are all huge and I am never in the mood for a photo shoot. I feel like an elephant.

Progress of the baby's "nursery"!


This was last night. We got the new changing table together and got everything off the old one. The clothes that WERE in the closet are clean in bags on the floor.. we did a LOT last night after our midwife appointment (all seems fine). This was about midway through last night...



And this is how it was this morning. Serious progress was made in the drawers (See Linus?) and everything that wasn't the baby's was put into storage (basically all my fabric, I am making a couple more things for him before getting rid of that sewing desk and putting my machine away). After an hour or two...


We actually managed to close the closet for once. Jim took some bags to goodwill of our old crap. Still not there, but its progress. Do you like it without the rug....


Or with the rug? I got it at IKEA for ten bucks.. I thought it matched the light blue/dark blue but I can't tell if I like it or not. You can see our car seat (Everything that goes IN the house is blue, everything that goes OUT of the house is green! So we know where it belongs LOL) in the corner. I got that from Sears for Christmas 2006 with a gift card we got along with the stroller. The cats used it as a bed (since I never did end up babysitting LOL) and we just now got around to washing the cover. Its going in a car soon, theres no room for it in this tiny room.


The top drawer... prefolds in upper left, bum genius and fuzzi bunz pocket diapers in the middle, and wipes in lower right. This is way less than a quarter... and I'm not QUITE done either.




Simon modeling the BabyHawk that Kristen and Rick got us at the shower.. it did come! It's so much softer than I thought it would be, I thought it would be all stiff and pokey but it isnt. Simon loved it for the first few days before we washed it. He lived in it.

I start my maternity leave at the end of the month. I like my job but I'm looking forward to it.. we have been so busy and even though we are running around so much we aren't getting it all done. Besides, I am huge and bending over is becoming extremely uncomfortable. If he isn't smashed into my bladder, he's busting a move in my ribs. Even sleeping is hard.

Speaking of which, I'm going to try to get a nap in before dinner...

31 Weeks

I now have 7-11 weeks left. That's amazing.

We have heard more than one false story rotating about why the baby shower was slimmed down to only my family and friends. We can't tell how these stories originated (not that it even matters) but we both want to have the truth exposed to air, even though it is a private matter.. we want to move on. Jim is sitting with me as I post this.

A week before the shower, one of Jim's recurring issues resurfaced. It isn't of a violent nature, please don't worry, but it was enough to make me re-evaluate the marriage (this issue, in fact, is one of the most common reasons for marital problems). I kept being pressured to make a decision and kept having preterm labor symptoms... I knew a trip home would be the best for me, and didn't want to cancel the shower, but we decided that it would be best to slim down the guest list so that the trip would be as stress-free as possible. As I'm sure most of you noticed, Jim was not there either, though we had made plans for him to be. I am so sorry to anybody reading this if we inconvenienced you... we were looking forward to seeing EVERYBODY that we invited but we had to make a fast decision based on the wellbeing of the baby. Again, we are so sorry...

The shower was wonderful and the trip gave us both some space to figure out what we wanted to do. Being pregnant is stressful as it is, and making such a large decision quickly wasn't healthy for anybody. In the end, we have decided to reconcile, see a marriage counselor, and grow closer as a couple and as parents. The process we're going through is extremely important to both of us as individuals and as partners and we are extremely busy with trying to make things work. It's very time consuming for both of us.

Thank you for letting me (us) get that out in the open. We are both working hard together and are trying to move on in a more positive direction. My stray contractions HAVE stopped, my previous TMI issue has been resolved, everything has come back clear and we are starting to assemble the things we will need for the birth. It won't be long now.

The "nursery" (and I mean that literally!) is coming along VERY SLOWLY. Things have swapped positions several times... here is yet another "before!" picture for you all to laugh at... go ahead, it's pretty crazy I know!

This is 2-3 days post baby shower! The loveseat is obviously gone (!!!) and has been replaced by a glider and ottoman so I can sit and rock and nurse the baby. The woody changing table will soon be replaced with a white one and the baskets will have to find a new home elsewhere! The clothes have been packed into a hamper (the round thing at the bottom) and some of the diapers have been placed in the diaper pail for washing. I'm getting my own washing machine on Monday or Tuesday and will start washing everything then. I've started painting letters to hang on the wall, and hopefully I find some nice little white frames to put the ultrasound pictures in, I will tint them blue to match the letters. :) At some point I will break down and sell the sewing desk for even more room. Slowly but surely, it's evolving. We have been de-cluttering like mad and have sold a lot of the things we didn't use that were just taking up space, and have donated more than $550 of stuff to goodwill.

The baby's layette is complete to 6 months and we have quite a bit over that as well. I am nesting really hard and have wanted to do nothing more than organize, re-organize, sanitize, move furniture, clean carpets, buy baby things, and be close to Jim. I think both of us can sense that something amazing is about to change and there is a lot of energy in the house. Some days it seems like it will be forever, and some days it seems like it will be tomorrow. Next week we begin the eighth month, if you can believe it :)

Baby Shower Pictures!

Notice now that you only have to type babymetz.com to get to the blog. We chopped down the website and made the domain come straight to the blog. Fun, right!?


Look how pretty everything was with the balloon clusters and the little favor bags!

Luci!!!

My gorgeous cousins and I.

The infamous Play Do Cake. I had to find someone to do our cake 1500 miles away. I found someone on craigslist. The cakery here that I go to makes AMAZING fondant cakes at affordable prices but for some reason nobody in St. Louis will touch fondant. The woman said she would get it from a specialty shop and promised it would be delicious. We went to pick up the cake and saw all this playdough she had sitting around... we even joked that we hoped none had found its way into the cake.

Brown and blue, like everything else LOL
...I got to taste the cake first. The smell of playdough hit me and... yes... it even tasted like playdough. I warned everybody though so I dont think anyone ate any.. but bummer! The fondant the woman here makes by hand is like a sheet of marshmallow... soft, not overly sweet but incredibly addicting.

Heather was SHOCKED. LOL

The aftermath.

Grandma had a good time LOL

A few from my mom's camera (I didn't get to take many pictures, I was too busy being fawned over!)

This gorgeous hand crocheted blanket came from a friend of mom's :)


A book and clothes from Julie. I think the three of us girls went through four of those baskets of rolls LOL they are so good.


Good times at one of the tables.

I got to see my sweet Rennie :)

Ear.

For my mom LOL

30 weeks, meet Klaus.

Sorry I have not been updating regularly. Things have been hectic and much more dramatic than I was comfortable with so I felt the need to withdraw and concentrate on my baby and my marriage. Things are trying to settle down, so I hope soon I can come on with new belly pictures, baby shower pictures, and updates. I wanted to fly by and post the 30w ultrasound pictures (since he wouldn't get his feet out of his face at 27w).

Looks like Jim's lips to me. He was sucking on them the whole time.

How chubby his arms are! Don't worry, he has a hand.. these ultrasounds are all sorts of distorted and it just has to do with the level of depth.

My placenta is anterior and he uses it for a pillow. For most of the ultrasound his face was smashed into it, and we didn't get any good shots until the very last part. I thought this was a cool shot of his ear, though.. we haven't figured out whose ear that is exactly. Look at those CHEEKS! This amount of chub on a baby is typically seen around 34 weeks. Homebirth babies, in my experience, average 1-2 lb more than hospital babies, so if he is 9 pounds at birth I won't be surprised at all. The sonographer kept exclaiming that she had never seen such a fat 30 week baby... I have to agree with her.
I'm 90% sure that thats Jim's chin and lips. He has that funky indent up underneath there too.

Snoozing, maybe that nose is mine after all.

This was the best one.. he had his arm (sliced in half here) up around his face and was using his hand as a pillow.. I do that all the time.

The official name is Klaus. The middle name won't be decided on until he is born. We both wanted a heavily German name to go with our German last name(s), German cars, German toys, etc. and I have always adored the name Klaus, even as a youngster. Of course Jim didn't tell me there was already a Klaus in the family until I was six months pregnant, and it was too late to decide on anything else!

Enjoy.