Good news—Operation House Painting is finally complete! After doing Pigwidgeon's room on our own, Chris and I decided that the money to hire a painter to do the rest of the house would be money well spent. And so it was—we are very happy with the results! Check out the "Let there be color!" album to see pix. The entire downstairs is a light tan, as is the upstairs hallway and the stairwell. The only exception is the downstairs bathroom (a lovely lavender) and the TV alcove, which is a darker shade of brown as an accent. Upstairs, we chose two shades of blue for our bedroom and two shades of lavender for the den—we installed chair-rail molding in both this past weekend, as you'll see in the pictures. The den is my favorite room in the house—I love the lavender! The darker shade is not far from the color of the bridesmaids' dresses at our wedding, which pleased me greatly, as it's a reminder of a wonderful day for me! Anyway, I'm no photographer so the color in these pictures isn't fantastic, but you can get the general idea. You'll just have to come see the house in person to truly appreciate it!

 

In other news, I had my 28-week appointment last week, and all is still going well. No diabetes, no anemia, nothing out of the ordinary. Just a healthy, growing boy inside me.  Chris and I started our Bradley classes last week, and we're really enjoying them. For those unfamiliar with the Bradley method, it's a form of childbirth education. It's not too far removed from Lamaze, but it places more emphasis on the father's role as coach than Lamaze does...and it aims to help the mother have a natural, drug-free labor and delivery. Which isn't to say I've totally ruled out having an epidural, but I would like to have the baby without one if at all possible (I'm not crazy about drugs when I can avoid them), so hopefully our 10 weeks of Bradley classes will prepare me for that. And my excellent coach will help me along.

 

For those wondering how Miss Luna is doing after her latest bout of illness, the answer is much better! It appears she once again ate a foreign object—this time likely a wad of cloth from a stuffed toy. But, she was able to clear it herself (I'll spare you the gory details) after two weeks of being sick. I don't envy her feeling lousy for two weeks, but it's a heck of a lot better than requiring surgery again. Needless to say, Luna is no longer allowed to have stuffed toys. She just can't be trusted not to dismember and eat them. (Yes, she must have some latent anger issues in there—she becomes Destructo-Pug around toys!)

 

Other than that, Chris is working hard on his thesis, shooting for a May graduation, and I'm working like mad to try to save up some money to take it easy after the baby is born. And sitting here getting ever more plump.  I will have to get Chris to take a picture of my lucky belly soon so I can post a new one—it's really getting quite impressive, if I do say so myself.

 

Hope you all are well!

Well, no fun pictures to accompany this post, but I felt compelled to write anyway. Today, Pigwidgeon and I have officially made it to the third trimester!!! At this point, our little boy should weight about 2 1/2 pounds and has a very good chance of surviving outside the womb, although obviously it's best if he stays put for at least another 10 weeks.

 

And now Chris and I can really start baby-ing things up around here. We were a little superstitious about buying much for our kid up until now. He has a lot of cute little outfits that we couldn't resist picking up now and then, but we haven't bought any of the big things yet because we were superstitious about doing so before he had a good chance of surviving if born early. But now, over the next few months, we shall have fun picking out a stroller, car seat, infant carrier, and eventually a crib. Yahoo!

 

I'm told that from this point on I'll get progressively fatter and clumsier. I'm not sure the latter is actually possible—I tend to walk into walls even when I'm NOT pregnant—but we'll see. I will say that tying my shoes is getting a little tougher each day, and I now can't see my feet when I walk unless I really suck in my gut. And, in the past week, my appetite has exploded! However, as my appetite has grown, my bladder has shrunk. Any bathroom in the vicinity is now my home away from home.

 

Next week our 10-week childbirth class begins, and somehow I think the next three months will pass very, very quickly. Bring it on—I'm so eager to meet our son!

We are back from Florida, and I have to say, we had a fabulous time! This was sort of what our honeymoon should have been—fun, relaxing, great weather, and very little stress (well, once we got to Orlando, that is). So it was a really nice way to spend some quality time together before our lives become chaos upon the arrival of little Pigwidgeon!

 

As is characteristic for our vacations, this one began with a few notes of utter stress. Little Miss Luna chose the week preceding our trip to get sick once again. I took her into the vet Thursday morning, only to find that she apparently has an unidentifiable non-dense mass in her tummy—which likely translates to “ball of fuzz from a stuffed toy she systematically destroyed and ate.” The vet’s recommendation was to watch her closely for a few days to see if she’d pass the object on her own. So, my Mom took pity on us and agreed to do the pug-sitting honors so we could still go on our trip. (Luna was set to stay at a kennel, but we couldn’t leave her there being sick! And she apparently was fine for the first six days of our trip, but has in the past three days started getting sick all over again. So, a pricey vet visit is likely in the cards in the very near future, although I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic about the fact that she “passed” a mysterious walnut-sized ball of what appears to be cloth this morning, and hasn’t been sick in the past 24 hours. I’m hoping these are good signs that she’s on the road to recovery at last.)

 

After lining up a week at Grandma’s house for the sick pug and her faithful sidekick, Bits, we went ahead with our travel plans. And on the day we left, the Storm of the Decade hit, with Sacramento getting hit with its worst rain/winds in about 10 years. Oh, the irony! This was to be our sort of second honeymoon, given that our first one was marred by, among other things, a TON of rain. And there we were, stuck at the Sacramento airport while the region got pounded by a torrential storm. I kid you not—ceiling tiles in the airport were falling on people’s heads when we were there, due to the heavy rains! Our incoming flight had to divert to Fresno for more fuel, in anticipation of many hours of circling Sac, waiting for an okay time to land. We ended up leaving almost three hours late…but we got out, got on a new flight in Dallas (missed our connection, of course), and arrived in Orlando no worse for the wear in the long run.

 

And, not to taunt all you folks who suffered through lousy weather for the past week or so…but Florida was beautiful! Sunny and warm—in fact, rather hot some days. The weather was wonderful, and I will say that the first week in January is THE time to go to Disney World—there really weren’t any crowds, and we didn’t wait longer than about 10 minutes for any ride. (Granted, we couldn’t go on any of the big ones because pregnant women aren’t allowed…but still, none of the popular smaller rides were crowded either. It was heavenly!)

 

We spent four days at Disney World—one each at the Magic Kingdom (Florida’s equivalent to Disneyland), Disney’s Animal Kingdom (a neat zoo-like animal refuge place), Epcot, and Disney/MGM Studios. Surprisingly, Disney/MGM was our favorite…probably because it was the smallest and the least crowded of the four parks. But they had some neat interactive exhibits, too, and some cool stunt shows and things.

 

But we needed some non-theme-park time too, so we spent one day at Kennedy Space Center and one day in St. Augustine. Those were two of the highlights of the whole trip for both of us. St. Augustine is charming and well-preserved…I had a real desire to see the oldest permanent settlement in the U.S., so we made a day of it. Very cute, neat little town. And Kennedy Space Center was really interesting. I went because Chris wanted to go (I’m not really all that knowledgeable about the space program), but it ended up being probably my favorite day of the trip. We took a special tour that allows you to go out to the launch pad…at least, as close as allowed, which is 1 ½ miles away. The shuttle is up on the pad for a February launch, so it was neat to see that even though all you can see are the rockets and the fuel tank. (The shuttle itself is shrouded by something at the moment—some sort of protective covering, I think.)

 

Because it IS one of our vacations, and thus chaos is likely to ensue, we of course ran into some excitement at Kennedy Space Center. That place is huge, and you are transported around by bus. So, we stopped for lunch at the Saturn V building, which is basically a museum on the property that has some exhibits, a theater, a café, and a few other things. We decided to eat lunch, look at the exhibits, and then catch the bus back to the main visitors’ complex. A fine idea, yes? Well, yes indeed...IF the Saturn V building doesn’t suddenly have a fire! Don’t get me wrong—this wasn’t a huge fire. But, it was enough that KSC had to evacuate the building, sending 200 people out into the hot sun to wait for buses back to the visitors’ complex. But then the fire department refused to allow buses through, so we were all left standing in the hot sun for well over an hour, with no access to the bathrooms in the building. Normally not a big deal, but for a pregnant woman who visited virtually EVERY public bathroom in the state of Florida, this was not the greatest thing ever. Needless to say, by the time we caught a bus back to the visitors’ complex, I was practically gargling pee and rather hot and exhausted from standing in the sun. But, a trip to the bathroom fixed the main part of the problem, so all was well!

 

On Saturday morning we drove to Tampa and spent the day at Busch Gardens, where I ogled the wonderful-looking roller coasters that I couldn’t go on! But the park is part amusement park and part zoo, so we were able to enjoy the zoo part, even though the coasters were off limits. We probably wouldn’t have even gone to Tampa, save for the fact that we had to fly out of there. My Mom had given us enough American Airlines miles for two round-trip tickets to Florida, but of course there were all sorts of blackouts and good stuff if we wanted to use the miles, so we had to get creative. Thus flying into Orlando and back out of Tampa, and at slightly unusual flight times for us. But it worked—and I’m kind of glad we actually got to see Tampa, since we wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.

 

Sunday was our last day, and we went to the MOSI (Museum of Science and Industry), which is a sort of hands-on interactive science museum in Tampa. It was uncrowded and quite pleasant—a nice way to end our trip. Well, I suppose REALLY the trip ended with a delayed flight from Tampa to Dallas-Ft. Worth, and then another delayed flight from DFW to Sacramento. And then standing at the luggage carousel for half an hour in Sacramento, given that our bags were just about the last two to come off the plane. By the time we got home and into bed, I had been awake for about 23 hours and was rather sleepy! But it was worth it to have one last travel hurrah before the baby comes....

 

Speaking of the baby, little Pigwidgeon tolerated the trip very well. Most of it was very uneventful in terms of pregnancy, save for two minor issues. First, Widge's favorite new activity seems to be to wake mama up at 5:00 or 5:30 every morning for a round of soccer with her internal organs. As soon as mama gives up on sleeping and gets up for the day, he ends his soccer practice and goes back to sleep for several more hours. And second, my bladder is his new favorite trampoline. Seriously, I’m quite sure that I now produce at least 50% of the world’s urine supply. I’m lucky to make it an hour between bathroom stops. (Yes, I even had to resort to a Port-a-Potty at one point—those of you who know me well know that this was quite a sacrifice for me, as I’m very picky about public bathrooms! But when you've gotta go, you've gotta go. My bladder waits for no one these days!)

 

On that lovely note, I shall end this post. See the new photo gallery for some of the most exciting shots from our trip. (Okay, so none of them are really terribly exciting, but I have to make them sound fun, right?!) Hope you all are well!