Do these stripes make me look chubby? Good!
When we first started taking these weekly photos, it was so hard to fight the urge to suck in my belly, which is what I’ve done all my life whenever I knew someone was taking a photo of me. OK, maybe not ALL my life (as seen below), but at least since I was old enough to be aware of wanting to look a certain way in photos.
It’s weird — in a good way — when the whole point of taking a photo is to show your belly getting larger. It means the baby is growing big and strong, and I can have less anxiety in between doctor appointments!
Speaking of that… I am always calm and reassured for about a week after hearing the baby’s heartbeat or seeing it on an ultrasound, and then my worrying kicks in again. This week, I didn’t feel any jabs or flips for a few days and got really anxious. Then I’m pretty sure I felt the baby move while watching the Apple Cup on Friday (probably doing a celebratory dance, since mommy’s Huskies embarrassed daddy’s Cougars so badly), and I was relieved once again.
Visible belly growth in our weekly photos and those tiny little jabs are the only things keeping me sane right now. Only TWO MORE WEEKS until our 20-week ultrasound, when we’ll get to see every inch of our kiddo and find out if he/she is a he or she!
Speaking of THAT… I crushed Aaron’s dreams around 13 weeks when I finally decided I couldn’t get on board with the boy name he loved so much. I was almost there, but when I really pictured calling our baby that name, it just didn’t feel right. So, we went back to the drawing board for boy names and came up with a list of three names that we liked well enough, but nothing that we LOVED like we love our girl name.
Friday night, I went hunting for boy names again, and gave Aaron my laptop to continue looking while I got some dinner. Suddenly, he came into the kitchen and said a name… and I LOVED it. And he LOVES it. So now we have a boy name!!!
This makes me even more excited to find out the baby’s sex since he/she will actually have a name the moment we find out, either way.
We didn’t make any baby-related purchases this week, but we did put some work into our Amazon baby registry so our parents can refer to it for Christmas gifts, if they like. I don’t really want anything for myself this year, so I’m happy to just get baby stuff!
Before I jump into Christmas, I guess I should talk about Thanksgiving! The three-day work week leading up to Thanksgiving was quite busy and stressful, as my company has Black Friday sales to rival the best of ‘em and I had lots of clothes and jewelry to write about. I’m just glad to not be on the sales-floor side of retail anymore. Thanks, OfficeMax and J.Crew, for providing enough horrifying Black Friday work experiences to last a lifetime.
Anyway, I got through the work week and was so happy to have four whole days off! I didn’t work out at all Monday through Wednesday, so I tried to at least get a healthy start on Thanksgiving by walking on the treadmill.
My Instagram feed was full of photos from everyone’s turkey-trot adventures, so I did my version. It was more of a gobble wobble, but I covered 5K in 45 minutes, plus a little extra distance thanks to a 5-minute cool-down. I also snapped a pic of my belly from above, as this is the most it has ever stuck out BEFORE eating Thanksgiving dinner. 🙂
We spent the afternoon/evening at Aaron’s mom and stepdad’s house and enjoyed all the traditional, delicious fixins’. I was determined to go off the rails this year in terms of eating, but the cruel irony of pregnancy is that my stomach holds less food because a little baby friend is squishing it. So, I ate a completely normal amount of food for dinner and only had a tiny bit of room left for seconds and dessert. I’ll get ‘em next year!
Black Friday was a super-lazy day spent watching the aforementioned Apple Cup at Aaron’s best friend Adam’s house. Adam and his wife, Kim — who have a one-year-old son, Josh — are expecting identical twins (!!) just a few weeks after our kiddo, and already have two boy names and two girl names picked out — hence why we revisited the boy-name issue on Friday night. We got plenty of parenting tips from them, and also stalked their baby gear and nursery setup for inspiration.
By the way, I fully expect Kim and I to be in labor at the same time in side-by-side hospital rooms, since twins tend to come a few weeks early. We have the same doctor, so she can just jump back and forth as needed. IT COULD HAPPEN!
I got back on the workout train on Saturday and did 30 minutes of treadmill walking + a 5-minute cool-down for 2.25 miles total, plus 20 minutes of weights. My arms were burnnnnning, but after holding Josh and realizing how much strength is needed to carry a baby around, I know it’s totally worth it.
We had dinner out with my dad and brother Saturday night, where I undid the exercise with delicious fish ‘n chips and pizza. And a skillet cookie. With ice cream.
And on Sunday, I did the same 30 + 5 walking workout, skipped the weights, and then ate more pizza (plus brownies!) while watching the Seahawks game at my mom’s house. We won! And I won, because pizza and brownies were involved.
I swear I eat vegetables sometimes. Mostly in the form of green smoothies.
But only when brownies are looming in the background and whispering to me, “Soon.”
Dev on Running 