Here s/he is!

There s/he is. Perfectly healthy!

Soundwaves

The big ultrasound is scheduled for this morning. We don't intend to discover whether we're having a daughter or a son until the moment the little one is delivered into our arms.

I think the only part of carrying this child that has given me nightmares or trouble is the ultrasound preparation. Before I was pregnant, I could easily go to the bathroom two or three times an hour. Now imagine a uterus pushed up against a bladder. Now imagine drinking one litre of water and being told you're not permitted to pee for at least two hours. Now imagine getting on a bus being driven down a bumpy, pot-holey, in-construction road. Now imagine sitting in the waiting room, legs crossed, feet bopping up and down, silently cursing the two receptionists are completely ignorant of your plight while they log into Facebook and speak loudly about who drank too much last night and "Oh my gawd! He did not!!"

Only 80 minutes left!

AN INFANT PONDERS THE TABULA RASA.
BY KENT WOODYARD
- - - -
Gaze upon my beauty and tremble, oh fallen humanity! Look down on my naked form writhing in this sink you call a bathtub and ponder my immeasurable capacity for good or evil. I am all that you are not, all that you once were, and all that you most fear. I am the beatific, unspoiled future of the human race, and you are rightly terrified in my presence. I realize you don't often encounter a pure potentiality that has yet to be actualized by education and sensory stimuli, and your offerings of many-colored rattles, things to suck on, and scented wipes for my unmentionable areas are received with gratitude. However, your attempts to equip me with empirical familiarity with the objects of this world are not appreciated and I ask that you cease and desist posthaste!
You think I don't see what you're doing? You desire for me to learn. You fill my virgin mind with tales of an intrepid tank engine and a pair of vaguely ethnic child-explorers with the hopes that my observations will lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded will lead to further abstract concepts.
I won't stand for it!
Even as we speak, you are clumsily chiseling away at the blank tablet of my mind. You listen to Glenn Beck while squiring me about town on a million frivolous errands. You watch that insufferable tease, Nancy Grace, during my evening meals. You and your bearded companion season your arguments with untenable systems of ethics and jurisprudence. And I, lacking the motor skills necessary for independent locomotion or remote control operation, am forced to lie on my binky while all manner of falsehoods and Dr. Phil-isms irreparably mar my latent intellect. Truly, it is one of the great injustices of the universe that unblemished human minds are left in the care of community college educated Gilmore Girls fans.
Do me a favor: keep your Middle American values and collection of Thomas Kinkade knockoffs to yourself. Please, spare me your Reaganite political leanings and affinity for Melissa Etheridge. I desire to experience stimuli pure and unbiased. I have my preexisting familiarity with space and time. What need have I for numbers, colors, letters, or late 1980s fem-rock?
Thanks but no thanks, tits.
I have no interest in that a posteriori knowledge you're peddling, and neither Baby Einstein nor the curiously effeminate residents of Sesame Street will convince me otherwise. I am now as I always desire to be: a kinetic force of limitless potential.
Now if we're quite finished, it appears the force of my indignation has caused me to soil myself. Please direct your full attention to my hindquarters.

(McSweeney's)

19 weeks

*photo by Jana Frandsen of Wink Photography

Nineteen weeks and I am still feeling fine.

We had our first Centering Pregnancy class and it went well. My fundal height is measuring at 22 rather than 18, but the midwife is not concerned as this is common and tends to even out towards the end (I hope!). The mister heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time during our one-on-one time with the midwife, and it just squeezed my heart watching him listening to the little one inside me.

Over the long weekend, I was lucky enough to have a Girls' Weekend in Toronto. We ate too much and laughed too much. I even managed to stay up until after midnight most nights.

Happy Mother's Day!

Please no Madisons or Jaxons

I have been scouring the obituaries, scanning the oldtimey names.

Choosing a name is difficult. One day I love it, the next day, I can't imagine calling it out every day until the day I die.

We decided long ago that we did not want to know if we were having a son or a daughter. Our detailed ultrasound is booked for the end of this month, and although I am tempted, I can't imagine the feeling of surprise when the little one finally joins us on the outside.

We have pretty much decided on a girl's name but are finding that making a decision on a boy's name is much more difficult.

A Few Treasures For The Kid

1. Where You Came From, by Sara O'Leary and illustrated by Julie Morstad

2. Knitted bird mobile to be made by grandma

3. ABC cards by Julie Morstad

4. Ikea Gulliver crib

5. Vinyl decals for over the crib, by Elephannie at Etsy

6. Charley Harper memory game

7. Fabrics for a quilt to be made by mama, purchased from Whipstitch Fabrics at Etsy

8. Garage sale find! $0.50 last summer

A few weeks ago, we went to Portland for the weekend. I, of course, was on the hunt for old photobooths, and as luck would have it, Holocene not only has an old photobooth but was also hosting a gig (Yeti Fest) that night as well that we wanted to check out, namely Wooden Shjips.

I certainly felt like a bad mum. At that point, I was 12 weeks pregnant. Whether it was bloat or the beginning of the belly (which is definitely there now at a two days shy of 16 weeks), I waddled through that crowd, leading by the belly.

Unfortunately, after having to catch a plane at 7am, we were too tired to stay until the very end and left before Shjips took the stage. I did get my photobooth photo, however.

Tootsies

I bought both of these pairs of shoes today in the hopes I'll be able to wear them in the coming months...swollen feet be damned!

Creme Brule

I recently decided that it was time for a new scent. I am so happy with my choice! Perfume oil seller Sweet Anthem's Emily Creme Brule was just what I needed. I highly recommend her products!

I am really looking forward to the upcoming exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Dreaming of Muumuus

When I first found out that I was pregnant, I had visions of myself wearing psychedelically coloured muumuus throughout the summer when I will be the biggest. Finding them, however, is a completely different story. Perhaps I need to change my keyword search to "tent dress."

*image from Life, 1961