Merry Christmas!

I'm down to less than 100 days till my due date, 98 days to be exact, and this is the last week of my second trimester. The third trimester starts on either 12/31, 1/2 or 1/5, depending on who you ask, mostly the doctors just go by weeks and not trimesters, which just seems to confuse everyone else. For those of you who prefer months, I'm at the end of my sixth month.

Christmas was great, B's mom stayed with us for the long weekend and we all traipsed over to my parents for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I got to spend a lot of time with my little niece and nephew, who are always a blast, and are a never ending fount of energy. We also got in a couple coats of paint on the nursery, so we now have trim, lights and duct work still to go.

Dax is getting more and more active these days. If you have good timing you can sometimes actually see my belly move when he's kicking or squirming around. It's awesome and a little creepy at the same time.

People keep asking me about whether or not we've decided on a name. The short answer is no we haven't. But also we don't plan to tell anyone what we do decide until he's born anyway. I've just heard too many stories about people that tell the name before the baby is born and get all sorts of bad feedback, I just don't want to deal with it. I'd rather that there be a cute little baby attached to the name so that people will be too polite to say anything disparaging if they don't like the name we choose. So we're waiting and you will all find out what his name is as soon as Dax is born.

Having said that, deciding on a name is hard. It seems like such a huge decision (though Freakonomics tells us it's not that big a deal after all), little Dax is going to live with that name for the rest of his life. There are so many factors to weigh; do the first, middle and last name sound good together? are there any terrible nicknames that he could be teased about in elementary school? will people be able to pronounce it or spell it? is it too common? does it remind either B or I of something or someone we don't particularly like? does someone else in the family already have that name? is there some famous actor or character that people will automatically associate the name with? have we thought of all the possibilities?

And it just goes on and on... I hope that at some point in the next couple months there will be a name that clicks for both of us and that will be that.

103 Days to go

Now that I've weeded out all the less fervent Dax followers and only the real die hards are left, I will attempt to resume more regular updates. Sorry all!

So how is pregnant life you ask? It's just fine, the things I miss most are:

1. Sleeping on my stomach or back
2. Eating deli meats
3. Booze
4. Eating sushi

Pretty much in that order. Things others do that annoy me:

1. Talking to me like I'm a cute puppy or something, and generally saying things like "Aww, it's the baby momma!" - mostly because I just don't know how to react to this treatment and I tend to just try and look away so they don't see the annoyance written all over my face. It's fine if it's someone I haven't seen in a while but there are a couple people that seem to do it every day at work.
   
2. Making allowances for me - Not letting me move anything heavy, insisting that I sit down or attempting to stuff me with food. This really only annoys me half the time, the other half of the time I appreciate it. I know everyone means well but sometimes I just want to tell them that I'm not an invalid.

Other pregnant women complain about people constantly asking how they feel, or touching their belly without permission. I've mostly not had a problem with this, it doesn't bother me when people ask how I am, and most everyone I know has been very good about not touching me, though I can tell it's getting harder and harder for them the bigger I get. At this point it makes me want to laugh out loud when I see someone visibly torn between the desire to touch a pregnant belly and the realization that it's probably not appropriate. I see their hands reach out and then hesitate and they don't know what to do because their hands are already out there, so they end up just sort of touching the air about an inch from my belly with both hands. It really is quite humorous.

The nursery is coming right along. The walls are all up and the floor is nicely refinished. B and his mom have spent most of this last week working on it. They put on two coats of stain and three coats of polyurethane. I wasn't allowed to be around the fumes so I couldn't help but I'm hoping to be of more help with the painting since my doctor has cleared it. The primer coat went up on Monday while I was at work and the first coat of color is scheduled to go on tomorrow again while I'm at work, so maybe I won't be as much help with the painting as I'd hoped. We're planning on going with a very light green for the walls and a very dark green for the trim, hopefully it will be sort of an earthy feel to the room which will go nicely with the forest animal crib sheets and wall decals I've picked out. I'm picking up the wall paint from Home Depot tonight.

Things still left to do:

1. Putting up lights and ceiling fan
   
2. Painting, cutting, and installing all the trim
3. Sorting out the return vent and where that will go
4. Making and installing 3 doors for the storage and attic fan access
5. Putting up all the outlet and light switch plates

Then there is of course getting all the baby furniture and setting it all up. Quite a lot still to do before April, not to mention all the stuff we are planning for the basement. Once I get all the construction pictures downloaded onto my computer I'll have to upload them so you can see all the stuff we've managed to do since Turkey day.

Popping

Things are moving along, which in many cases means surges of growth. There are lots of things that you can't control about your body while pregnant. Many of these are often surprising. One of those things is when you "pop", or at least that's what they call it on the pregnancy forums.

Apparently for many women there comes a point in your pregnancy where one day you look just overweight and the next you look pregnant. Your belly just suddenly seems to have popped out. This apparently happened to me yesterday. I came home from work and B said something like "Wow, you look pregnant!" when his mom arrived later she said the same thing almost as soon as she made it through the door.

It's kind of exciting but also a little weird. I wonder if once I get a little bigger people will start to talk to my belly instead of my face. I realize I suddenly will start to be pigeonholed into the "pregnant lady" group by strangers and new acquaintances. This is not a bad thing, it doesn't make me upset in anyway, just intrigued. Before I was pregnant I of course would do the same thing, I imagine most people do. You see a pregnant woman and you immediately associate whatever preconceived notions about pregnant women you have with them, this of course changes once you get to the know the person. But it's weird to think that being pregnant will for the next 6 months be part of the first impression I make on people. People I don't know may begin to judge me if I do anything that they might not consider appropriate for a pregnant woman, if I lift anything heavy, eat anything raw or drink something that looks like beer or wine. When I get bigger people might give up their seat on the metro or go out of their way to open a door for me and depending on how I'm feeling that day I could be very grateful or just feel awkward. Either way I'll just have keep reminding myself that it won't last forever and will just be one more new experience along the way.

Avoiding the Rainbows and Puppies Bandwagon

This is surprisingly difficult. As many of you know, I'm not normally the cutsie patootie type. I like puppies and kittens as much as the next person but don't go much for pink and frills and have remained fairly true to my tom-boy younger self in my old age (at least I think I have).

However, when pregnant you are bombarded from outside with pastels and "aww, look you've got a cute little bump now!" and you are plagued from the inside by changing hormones which I'm pretty sure make you more susceptible to the outside pressures of cute adorable things. Self control over food as well as cute onesies and knitting patterns just goes out the window. The Target baby aisle is a mine field for pregnant women hopped up on pre-natal hormones. It's only a short step from buying a onesie that says "Mommy's favorite little pooper" to talking constantly about sheet patterns and nursery themes to strangers you meet on the street.

My defense has been to avoid baby specific shopping trips, which isn't so hard since I don't shop much anyway. Knitting cute things instead of buying them costs less, takes much more time to complete and also keeps you from snacking during football games. Also, allowing B to turn me away from the pastel paints at Home Depot and ridiculously patterned strollers at Target helps as well.

I spend some time on pregnant lady forums like thebump.com and I see these women putting up pictures of their cute $200 bedding sets they've just bought for their crib, or their $1,000 nursery furniture that they've already purchased 4 months into their pregnancy and most of me is disgusted by the amount of money they're spending on things their child isn't even going to remember in 5 years. However, there is a little part of me that pictures those things in our not yet started nursery and takes a mental note of the brand name, this part of me is new and a little frightening.

For those of you curious about my knitting projects:

Number 1 (Completed): Infant Squid hat (picture and pattern from: http://www.poormojo.org/cgi-bin/gennie.pl?Squid+232+bi) I used light blue instead of white (no we don't know the sex yet) and multi-hued purple for the blue part.

Number 2 (in progress): 9 month old cable knit sweater (pattern and picture from: http://www.berroco.com/exclusives/baby_poonan/baby_poonan.html) I'm using a really pretty grayish brown yarn instead of the traditional color pictured.
Number 3 (not yet started): Duckie socks (picture and pattern from: http://knitty.com/ISSUEss10/PATTduck.php)

And we have movement

They tell you that you could start feeling movement between 16 and 22 or so weeks for your first baby (I'm 17 weeks today). Generally, second time and later moms start feeling it earlier just because they know what they're feeling and can better distinguish it from gas, which is surprisingly difficult.

Many of you that might be reading this blog have not had the dubious experience of being pregnant and therefore might be ignorant of the ridiculous increase in gas and other unpleasant things going on in your abdomen seemingly throughout pregnancy. I'm told this gets worse, so not looking forward to it. As a consequence of this increased activity as well as the uncertainty of exactly how it's supposed to feel, most first time moms are very uncertain as to whether or not they've just felt their baby do a somersault or perhaps that giant chipotle burrito working on future unpleasantness.

I'd had a couple of these sensations last week and had decided that I was pretty sure it was the burrito. However, Sunday morning I was lying in bed, halfheartedly attempting to convince myself to put two feet on the floor when I had the distinct impression that Dax had just completed a 1.5 front somersault tuck position. I was more surprised than excited but the excitement comes later for me I guess.

That afternoon Dax decided it might be fun to poke me a little during the Redskins game, perhaps as shocked as the rest of us at the sheer number of interceptions and fumbles in that game. So far that's all I've felt but I understand that's pretty typical, I probably won't be able to feel more regular movement for another week or two, but I can't help looking forward to the next one.

First the Title

Many of you have asked that I start keeping a blog about my pregnancy, so here it is. I don't promise constant updating nor do I promise riveting content, but feel free to bug me if you want more and I'm being the lazy butt that I am.

Now, about the title. It's quite nerdy. In an attempt to avoid at least some of "the baby", "him/her", "it" and the even cheesier "little one", "peanut" or "sweet pea" that so many expecting parents find themselves resorting to in daily conversation, we've decided to nickname the kid-in-utero, Dax. This seemed to be completely gender neutral and sufficiently nerdy for the two of us. Also, B just had to get a Star Trek reference in there. Not many of you know this but our first wedding had a quote from Star Trek in it.

Anyway, for those of you not in the nerdy know. Dax is the name of a symbiotic alien that lives inside the stomach of another humaniod alien who was a main character in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. That's about were the similarity ends.