A few Baby Things

I am in the process of putting in my two weeks notice at work. I have one week to go. I quit for a few different reasons. First, being on my feet for 4-6 hours at a time has gotten harder. It's not great exercise, and it renders me useless for the rest of the day, preventing me from getting real exercise.

Just now, I was having trouble spelling exercise. I've noticed that in the past half year. I switch around the C and the S, or I think there's a Z in there somewhere. It gets to the point that when I back-click on my misspelled word, the correct one isn't even an option! Embarrassing, I know. I just asked Tim how to spell it and remarked "Tim, this is so weird. The word has become foreign to me!" He replied with, "Uh oh! Exercise has become foreign to you. That is not a good sign!"

I also quit work because there were a lot of things I had planned to do during this pregnancy, and I never got much of a start on them.

Like, for example, finding a used, inexpensive crib and other baby supplies. (A friend at Bible study told us that in all their wedding planning, his wife never let him use the word "cheap." "Inexpensive" sounded much more classy and didn't imply poor quality as well.) So I'm doing my best to find inexpensive, not cheap baby supplies. We will be down here for a year longer, and then we've got to try to move everything back home. And besides, every mom is different, and I think I may be the type who doesn't use many of those baby products that the magazines say you just have to have.

I'm interrupting this train of thought to talk about the baby himself because he's been kicking like crazy the whole time I've been writing. The first feel-able kick happened on my way to Kansas last month. Two weeks followed where I tried to get people to feel the subtle nudges that only I could feel before. As soon as we began to fly to Peru, it got to the point where one could simply watch the kicks. I'll have to be very huge and ready for him to be born before I could get tired of all the kicking. I'm sure it can hurt at that point, but right now it's so much fun to watch, and it makes me feel like there's actually a person inside me.

When we found out we were pregnant, it didn't feel real. When we first heard the heartbeat, it was confirming, and pretty cool, but even the ultrasound didn't make the baby as real to me as feeling him move around. Sometimes it's like he's doing somersaults. Sometimes it's a little nudge on one side. I've had nudges on several sides at once like jumping jacks, and a limb that sticks out and just pushes outward for a moment. I've even had a clear, head-sized lump on the side of my belly for a while. Yesterday at Bible study, it was like he was trying an Uma Thurman-style escape on the upper right side of my stomach.

So in the next few weeks, I will enter the last trimester of this whole pregnancy, and I will do it with more time on my hands. I hope to enjoy this stage, and to document it (for the next time I'm in the first trimester, hanging my head over the toilet, and needing some reminding) and to put into good use that nesting instinct that's kicked in!