Full Term

Baby girl and I are full term today! And she celebrated by keeping me up until nearly 3 a.m. with increasingly painful and regular Braxton Hicks contractions. Sometime around 2 a.m. I downloaded an app with a big button I could hit every time one started because I was too tired and delirious to keep track. Also around 2 a.m. it occurred to me that I could actually go into labor before my scheduled c-section date, that it could in fact be happening right then and I needed to pack things and call one of the two very kind co-workers who offered to be our middle-of-the-night baby contact and there was some leave-related paperwork I still had on my desk at work and was our camera charged? and wasn't it nice I'd done my hair for my baby shower on Saturday night so I could just brush it out slap on some under eye concealer to be post c-section camera ready? Maybe it would be nice to have the baby now!

And then, about 2:45 a.m., they stopped. They stopped and I was instantly relieved and unconscious and left my poor contraction timer app clicking away until 7 a.m. when I woke up and found out I'd had what appeared to be the longest contraction ever.

 

So that was last night's excitement. Saturday night's excitement was our couple's baby shower! Hosted by two very good friends and co-workers, one of whom just had her second baby and another of whom is due with her first in February (and another three co-workers just had or are about to have babies; we could pretty much start an infant daycare center). I'd never had a couple's shower and it was so fun to do something different and less girly and baby-focused for #3. And since all my friends in Fort Worth are my co-workers (I'm so so blessed with the people who have started at the SEC just before and after me; I genuinely love all of them and their spouses, how rare is that?!) and many of them were men, it allowed me to have a guest list of more than 4 people. And as an added bonus, everyone seemed super excited about a grown-up party sans-kids.

We had margaritas (virgin/sad and regular/delicious), a Mexican fajita and nacho buffet, and many sweets.

 

We opened presents- teeny tiny baby clothes and soft blankets and a little lamb that promises to soothe baby 3 to sleep.

 

My parents treated grandbaby 3.0 to the two most fabulous holiday hats EVER. I cannot wait to meet her and hold her and put a turkey hat on her head. They also sent this portable highchair that I think is going to be awesome to have for the lake house, all the time we spend outside by the pool, and all the times baby sister is going to be dragged around time for various big sibling related events.

 

In other weekend adventures. I got a haircut on Friday. As always, I pretended like I'd do something different and then just got about 2 inches cut off all around. But my new stylist did curl it, which is fancy and not something I'm remotely capable of recreating, so the only people who got to enjoy it are my family and the fine people in the customer service line of Target.

 

And on Saturday I brought Claire to the "ladies salon" for a haircut of her own. We've always just brought Claire to Great Clips with JP- like Landon, she loves haircuts and the whole thing takes about 5 stress-free minutes, so we never bothered with a pricier kids place, but lately I've felt like GC hasn't been doing a great job. Her bangs were always too long and it seemed like maybe she could have some sort of style besides a mop top. I was saying this to my stylist on Friday and she said "oh, just bring her by on Saturday, I'll trim her up for free!" So I did, and it was adorable.

 

When we walked in Claire reverently whispered, "is this a big girl place?" And then she sat calmly during her trim and told her newly adopted stylist ALL about her baby sister who is going to come very soon. Her bangs look adorable now, her hair is a little bit layered and the curls come out better, and she had a story to very excitedly share with her school class on Monday. It was a 10 minute visit of win.

Less fun, but very satisfying for me and my obsessive need to clean and organize everything in our house, was finally getting JP back up on our roof to scrub our 40 sky lights so they sparkle. They looked beautiful for about 4 hours and then we had a massive storm that dumped a bunch of leaves on them. They're still vastly improved, but it seemed a little mean of mother nature to smack us down so quickly from our window cleaning high.

 

That's about it. I continue to feel generally fine, but am pretty over the belly. It's in my way. I can barely put on socks. I'm tired of my maternity clothes and I miss being able to find my hipbones when I put my hands on my waist. It's the little things. I was walking around Old Navy o Saturday, a place filled with clothes that are perfectly serviceable but rarely sigh-inducing, and I found myself filled with envy that I couldn't just pick something up and try it on. Then the Victoria's Secret holiday collection catalog came in the mail and I was too depressed to open it to pull out the coupon. I'm ready to just be me inside my body again. But mostly, after doing a final round of laundry and folding and organizing tiny diapers of clothes in the nursery, I'm just really want to meet our baby girl, to introduce her to her overjoyed big siblings, and to get on with the holidays and the joyous chaos of being a family of five. Two weeks to go!