tiger_spot

I have developed some stretch marks, as tends to happen during this process, although they didn't show up until quite late. I'm not sure how obvious they're going to be long-term; they're sort of intermittent now (sometimes they're distinct purple marks, sometimes they're just shiny patches). But I was a little bummed out about it -- stretch marks, bah, stretch marks are boring. So chinders suggested I think of them as battle scars.

Yes. That's a much better idea.

"Mama, what are those?"
"Well, honey, those are from when I went down to the underworld to get you. I had to steal you back from the storks."

I am envisioning this as a fairly Aztec sort of underworld, with stylization and blood sacrifice. The storks can have sinister medical accoutrements, and possibly plague doctor masks.

I'm not sure I need to write this story, but perhaps someone should suggest it to Ursula Vernon.

Monday evening, andres_s_p_b finished moving the shelves with comic books out of the nursery. This freed up the space for chinders and brooksmoses to assemble the crib on Tuesday evening (with weasel help[1] from Galen until he got leashed to a door handle to keep him out the way). While they were doing that, andres_s_p_b mopped the bathroom ceiling (it gets these little brown spots around the skylight), then declared himself Spatulord and went around with a putty knife spackling all the little holes left from moving bookshelves[2], and all the littler holes that we never bothered filling in from the previous owner's artwork. Afterwards chinders moved all the boxes of miscellaneous baby stuff into the room so they are not making a giant pile by the door or in the garage. Huzzah!

It looks very much like a nursery now, so that's cool. There is still a fine layer of Andres-cruft on many of the surfaces, so I will not take pictures at this time, but once that's gone and the actual baby stuff has been put away I should probably get a shot or two for posterity. "The cleanest this room will ever be again."

We should pull the tags off a few newborn outfits and maybe a bigger one, and wash them so they're ready. Are you supposed to wash sheets and things before a baby touches them, too, or are they considered safe since they've been wrapped in plastic and not handled as much as clothes probably have? I am not sure how much of this prewashing thing is paranoia; I don't generally bother with my own clothes. It is also time to clean the car and install the car seat. (For some reason, people[3] keep looking at me funny about this one, but the car seat is here, it has to be installed correctly before they let you take the baby home from the hospital in it, and my car predates the LATCH system, so I want to make sure it works before we have an extremely tight time limit on getting it sorted out, just in case we need to get some kind of adapter for the seatbelt or replace anything.)

I have also been occasionally playing Youtube videos of crying babies at the dog. This is one of the things that books and articles about preparing pets for incoming infants recommend that makes me go "Really?" but I figured I'd see how he reacted. This is how he reacts:

1. Look up, cock ears forward, focus intently in direction of sound.
2. "Am I supposed to... do something about that?"
3. Get up, trot purposefully toward sound.
4. Observe that sound is coming from one of those glowing rectangle things.
5. Sigh, lie down again.
6. Eye human reproachfully.

So I don't know that this is a particularly useful way of teaching him to be unbothered by crying, but it is kind of funny to watch. It's one of those perils of a smart dog: he knows darned well that recorded noises are Not His Problem, but whether this will translate to the live version is anyone's guess.

For reference, we are at T minus approximately two and a half weeks here (or longer; could be longer; or shorter, possibly, although I think that's less likely). Tomorrow is my last day of work, so soon I will be bored during the day and entirely in favor of people coming by for tea. The tea shelf is overflowing since I brought home my work stash, so assistance in finishing off the nearly-empty kinds would be actively useful.



[1] "Weasel help": the opposite of help, despite the best intentions of the weasel help provider; coined by ferret owners but useful in many other situations as well.

[2] Earthquake country. The tall bookshelves are all securely screwed to the walls. (We do still need to get around to doing something for these desk hutches; they're going to be a bit complicated.)

[3] chinders

A couple of weeks ago I suddenly started getting horrible stabby pains in the back of my left hip. My OB recommended a chiropractor who specializes in pregnant people. He vibrated some muscles, tapped some bones with a little tiny jackhammer, and sent me off with exercises (and some things to pay attention to when walking that had never occurred to me, like the camber of the sidewalk -- apparently if you spend more time walking very slightly tilted to one side than to the other, that can cause some pressure issues around the pelvis). Over the course of the next week, the pain shifted from stabby to achy, and kind of spread down the side of the leg some. This was mostly an improvement. I felt enough better to go to yoga on Sunday and give the dog a short walk on Monday night, although it had to be pretty short because I was still hurting.

I had a follow-up with the chiropractor on Wednesday, where he said "Huh. The way you describe it now, it sounds just like a running injury," vibrated some muscles, tapped on the same bones, tapped the matching bones on the other side, tapped some bones up in the middle for good measure, and waggled my knees back and forth. The rest of the day the front of my hip hurt like crazy (although the back and side were fine). That faded a bit yesterday, and today my leg feels pretty much like a leg. It's still sore, but it feels like the kind of sore that gentle exercise, a bit of stretching, and taking it fairly easy for a few more days should make better. I took the dog out for a normal-length walk this morning and only got a bit sore towards the end of it.

I don't know if it's all the chiropractic, or if Sputnik decided to move and quit squashing the nerve, or what, but I am much happier now.

Remember my unhappiness with the YMCA?

After I sent the letter, I got a nice response from the director thanking me for taking the time to write out my concerns and letting me know that it had been forwarded to the director of risk management.

When I mentioned it to my obstetrician, she thought I was being silly and should take it less personally. "Sure, it would be fine for you to make that decision; you're informed about your health. But lots of people don't follow their doctor's instructions." (That made me grumpy.)

Today I got an e-mail from the director of risk management, informing me that the policy has been changed and now they'll just use the regular waiver that they use for everything else.

::victory dance::

So I guess I'm going to prenatal yoga next Sunday!

It's very unpredictable being me lately.

Thursday I was struck down by a rather horrible stomachache getting off the train in the evening and pretty much had to lie down until bedtime. Andres made me some cheese toast, and I thought perhaps I would sit and be sociable afterwards while he and Cathy had their dinners, but I could smell their dinners and then I had to go lie down more.

Friday evening we went climbing. The gym played really good workout music all evening ("Eye of the Tiger" mix, lots of electric guitars; most everyone in the gym was kinda dancing a bit on their way from here to there; I determined that it's rather difficult to air guitar and tie a knot at the same time...) and I climbed all the things and was generally hyperactive and cheerful.

It's not usually quite that pronounced, but the randomly varying energy is hard to plan around.