Only 7 weeks left!

How far along: 33 weeks

Total weight gain/loss: a net loss of 24 lbs

Sleep: some days better than others.

Best moment this week: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, just all around awesome.

Movement: yes, although walking and moving around at work seems to rock Odin to sleep, he's not really active unless I sit down.

Symptoms: Still some early morning nausea, oddly caused by brushing my teeth...(it's getting irritating)

Symptoms I don't have:  I'm skipping this one...I'm tired of answering it.

Food Cravings: oh my gosh yes! Mostly sweets (which I've cut down on majorly) and ice water.

Food Aversions: 3 bites and I'm finished

Gender: boy

Labor Signs: not yet

Belly Button in or out: still an innie

What I miss: not feeling like my hips are going to fall off from soreness when I get up in the mornings.

What I'm looking forward to: Not sure right now...I suppose mostly D giving birth. (my best friend is about a month and a half further along than I am

Weekly Wisdom: I'm not feeling very wise today so all I will say is, love one another, you idiots.

Milestones: Odin is now over 17 inches long and weighs 4 lbs (which is around the size of a pineapple)

Maternity Pictures!

Courtesy of my lovely mother, who stood out in the cold with me and took very beautiful pictures and then later took the time to make sure each of them looked awesome and had the 'right coloring'

Love all the snow/ice in these two pictures! I just love the winter (so long as I don't have to drive) 

Ber was trying to show Loki how to give Victor a kiss. It didn't quite work out very well, Loki was more interested in trying to play in the snow

She did pause her running around to give me a kiss

Loki giving Odin some sibling love

So many updates we're practically giving them away!

Before we get to the pregnancy update today I have good news! I passed the (worrisome) test and am now a Fidelity Employee! Technically I have been since Monday when I started training, but I was waiting until I got through the test and passed before I really let myself get excited. So yay! That's going good for me.

Also, (less world shaking and more house shaking) I got so much folding and putting away for stuff for Loki! I also got to get creative with my own clothing (and a few extras courtesy of Jem, D and the Goodwill) So I had fun pairing things together in order to have business type clothing, which is not easy when all you can wear is a few maternity pants and very few shirts that are appropriate. But As I said, Jem and D helped me find two cute pullovers that I can match with all sorts of things to help give me lots more options (plus they'll work well after Odin's born as well!)

And now for your regularly scheduled updated:

How far along: 32 weeks

Total weight gain/loss: still at a 24 lb loss I believe

Sleep: waking up about once a night, sometimes it's easy to fall back asleep, but not always.

Best moment this week: starting my new job (yes I know that's not really baby related, but still exciting)

Movement: had the first really painful kick today

Symptoms: Someone is not only taking up all the space my bladder normally holds, he's now moving around and taking up lung space and making it harder for me to breathe!

Symptoms I don't have: I'm tired of this question....

Food Cravings: SODA! which I'm trying very hard to stay away from (no more than one can a day, if that)

Food Aversions: anything spicy, the smell is bothering me lately.

Gender: boy

Labor Signs: not yet

Belly Button in or out: still an innie

What I miss: being able to slouch and still breathe.

What I'm looking forward to: cute maternity pictures, also I really enjoy when Odin gets the hiccups

Weekly Wisdom: There is a time and a place for everything, and if you have to think about it, this is probably not the correct time and place.

Milestones: Odin is now around 3 3/4 lbs and 16.7 in long, which is about the size of a large jicama (I had no idea what this was, so I looked it up)

the crisp, white-fleshed, edible tuber of a Central American climbing plant of the pea family ( Pachyrhizus erosus, family Leguminosae ), cultivated since pre-Columbian times and used esp. in Mexican cooking.

Odin is now gaining around half a pound a week, so he's starting to get nice and plump to be ready to come into the world. His fingernails and toenails are formed and he's starting to grow hair (hopefully red!) 

New Job

I had my first day of training today, and I am so excited! It seems like this (hopefully) will be a very good fit for me. I just have to buckle down and study in order to pass the testing at the end of training, which Husband has been helping me with, cause he's awesome. He had his first day of watching Loki all by himself for over 8 hours, and I think he did pretty well.
The only tragedy was the cabinets are now a little more marked up and Loki has lost crayon privileges for a little while. (Thankfully Mom gave me one of those Magic Erasers and it works awesomely to get crayon off white paint.) 

All in all I was very excited, I just hope I can keep this level of gung ho-ness up when the studying gets rough.

October 2012

I have been looking back through my 'drafts' folder her on my blog and found a few posts that I always meant to get up, but never remembered to, or I got distracted, either one is highly possible. So these next few days I'm going to post a few older ones (with the date they were from up above) and kinda look at my past a little bit. Not a whole lot, I mean I think there are only like 3-4 that actually made sense anymore. But here you go!

Ber and I went out to see Mom 

Lack of sleep is giving me raccoon eyes

How far along: 31 weeks

Total weight gain/loss: 24 lbs lost

Sleep: normally only waiting up once a night, and not having too much trouble getting back to sleep thankfully.

Best moment this week: this week has been a little too stressful to have a best moment.

Movement: a lot

Symptoms: I am just so tired! And my hips are sore, no matter how I move.

Symptoms I don't have: everything else

Food Cravings: soda, lots of soda do I want.

Food Aversions: still don't like eggs

Gender: boy

Labor Signs: some braxton hicks, but I don't know if I'd really count that as true labor signs, more of an irritation when I've let myself get to worried about something. (and the whole thing about all information about braxton hicks supposing to be painless, is so much bull...they really need to change that.)

Belly Button in or out: still an innie, but a lot more shallow.

What I miss: sleeping on my stomach, or laying on the floor reading on my stomach

What I'm looking forward to: taking some maternity photos soon.

Weekly Wisdom: worrying does nothing to help you, nor does dwelling on what has already happened, or what is going to happen. (I actually feel rather wise for that...now if only I would listen to it)

Milestones: Odin is about 16 inches long and around 3 1/3 lbs, which is around the size of a coconut

and he's about to hit a big growth spurt. Odin is now able to turn his head from side to side and is becoming even more active.

Motivation

If you have been following me for a while, you have seen me post about things like FlyLady, my lists, and just trying in general to be organized. Well, Husband and I had a good serious sit down talk on Sunday night after a day which wore both of us out. (You always have the best talks when you're worn out, because you're too tired to try and sugar coat anything, so it all ends up being a little blunt, but very honest.) We were able to figure out things that we both needed to work on in order to keep not only the home flowing smoothly, but also our marriage.

So back to my lists do I go! Husband is helping to make sure I keep on track (and also helping me to finish parts of them) but on Monday D let me know about this great website called ChoreWars. It came out in July 2007 and the Dungeon Master can set up Adventures for the party (normally you force your house members to make characters so they can play along and earn xp) These adventures tend to be along the lines of "loading the dishwasher' or 'folding and putting away laundry' so not your typical DnD type adventures, but it's so much fun getting experience for doing chores and from there you are able to level up your character, and if you get treasure drops from your adventures you can stack it and then turn it in for family rewards (if you decide to do it that way)
There is just so much you could do to help not only encourage kids (and husband's) to do their chores, but to help them get some enjoyment out of it. It's fun for me even. Creating the adventures is fun, and Husband loves coming up with the names of the monsters you could chance upon while completing your adventure.

All in all, it was a great find, and I hope that we can keep up with it, and hopefully keep the house up as well.

By the way, if you look to the right, you can see my Character for ChoreWars. I started as a 1st level Shaman, and as you level up (depending on the chores you complete and what skills are used) you can change classes and earn new skill points automatically.

Sonogram pictures

Since Ber wanted to get the new pictures from my sonogram on Monday I figured I should probably get them out so everyone else can see them as well.
So here we go!

This weeks post is brought to you by the number *EDIT*

*Edit* I missed my update last week, which would be the 29 weeks mark, so I have updated the information that is incorrect due to that.

How far along: 30 weeks

Total weight gain/loss: total loss is 24 lbs

Sleep: stiff and sore, but I'm only having to get up once a night or so. However, it takes me forever to fall back asleep so that kinda sucks.

Best moment this week: had another sono on Monday just to make sure everything was progressing okay (I was measuring much larger than I should be) But Odin is doing very well, measuring almost exactly a week ahead, with much more weight on him than expected at this time.

Movement: good lord yes

Symptoms: just general soreness I suppose, some shortness of breath if I'm moving around too fast, and I am having trouble focusing (as usual)

Symptoms I don't have: I'm still grateful I'm not having nausea any longer.

Food Cravings: Not today

Food Aversions: still hate the smell of cooking eggs.

Gender: boy

Labor Signs: not yet

Belly Button in or out: still an innie

What I miss: sleeping/laying on my stomach reading.

What I'm looking forward to: Loki realizing what keeps kicking her in the side when she sits with me.

Weekly Wisdom: worrying really won't help, it just gets you worried and you don't sleep as well (now watch me not take my own advice because I don't know how to stop worrying)

Milestones:  according to the website about the 30 week mark Odin should be measuring around 15.7 in long and 3 lbs. (which is about the size of a large cabbage)

But according to the sonogram I had on monday, Odin is actually about 3.6 lbs right now, so a little bigger than expected. But, I honestly expected Odin to be bigger than Loki, so here's hoping that he doesn't decide to come to quick and prevent me from getting an epidural like Loki did.

so much has changed

Just a little over a year ago Sweetheart moved in with Husband and I. At first everything was awesome, we all adjusted well to having three adults living in a house together with one child.
But things didn't stay going well, it took around 5 months before things really started to fall apart, and I will admit that some of it was my fault, mostly because I realized that I wasn't poly enough for the relationship to actually work the way we all three wanted it to.

That being said there was trouble all around but mostly between Sweetheart and my relationship. (now while I say this, Husband and my relationship never wavered, Sweetheart came in knowing that if everything went wrong Husband was not going to choose to leave me to go with her, and I do think that knowing that going in actually ended up hurting Sweetheart a lot, she had said it made her feel like she would always be second best, which we tried very hard not to make her feel like. We always wanted her to know that she was important to the relationship and how much the both of us loved her.)

Now for this all I can really talk about it what I personally dealt with, I know what Husband has told me, and what Sweetheart said before she left, but the whole 'staying friends' thing really did not work for us at all. Which is kind of sad, but considering what I've seen since, it was probably for the best if we don't try to be friends for a while anyways, everyone needs time to get over the hurt and the emotions that come from a relationship.

Now for today, I'm only talking about the few things that I can think of that we got right. (and with all the bitter feelings left over I can only really thing of two things. Which really says how much hurt and bitter feelings will cloud the mind.)

*We all learned to communicate with each other - this is not only vitally important for a normal relationship, but a must have for a poly type relationship. Lord knows if you can't talk to each other you have no idea how bad everything is going to hit the fan.

*Weekly meetings - now this really ties in with communication, because it helped us to sit down once a week, go over the schedule for work and everything and also bring up anything that we felt we all three needed to talk about together.