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.