Time once again for a Baby Update ;-)

Just had an appointment with one of my nurse/midwives. I'm beginning week 18, and all is looking fine -- my blood tests from last month show that my blood is carrying excellent levels of oxygen, iron, and white blood cells. My blood pressure this morning was 112/64, and my uterus is now about an inch below my belly button. Gumdrop's heartbeat was around 160 today, about 20 beats/second lower than last month, but that's supposed to be normal. And according to their scale, I now weigh 163, up 9 pounds from my last appointment six weeks ago. According to my scale at home, I weigh 158, up 6 pounds from six weeks ago, but whatever. Still well within the healthy weight gain range.

And, for those of you salivating over finding out Gumdrop's gender... you have to wait another month yet to find out. I have an ultrasound scheduled for May 24.

Oh yeah, I'm not exactly showing yet. I don't look pregnant, I just look fat. Or, as Cowboy puts it, squishable.

Totally amazing cakes! And they say they're entirely edible too!

(Thanks to El Padre for finding this in the first place!)

I had my first tummy-feeling experience this morning. By someone other than Cowboy, I mean ;-) But it was a sanctioned tummy-feeling, done by one of my co-workers that I actually like who wanted to find out if I'm really not showing as much as it looks like I'm not showing.

On my twenty-five minute drive to work, I pass nine traditional barns. By traditional I mean wooden. They look like this, except with field stones for the first floor instead of cement blocks.
There are a bunch of barns with siding instead of wood and metal machine sheds too, but it's the wooden barns I like to watch for. Of the nine, only two of them are in disrepair. Seven of them are well-maintained, with fairly fresh paint, repairs to the stonework, etc. I see so many derelict old barns around that it's heartening to know some people still care for these massive pieces of history.

I'm entering week fifteen now, for those of you that are counting. According to BabyCenter.com, Gumdrop is now around 4 inches long, head to butt, and weighs about 2 1/2 ounces. According to me, Gumdrop is now moving up into my abdomen and out of my pelvis -- I'm only peeing one or two extra times a day now (instead of three or four), and my tummy is expanding. As Cowboy puts it, I'm losing my tummy crease. Still wearing my same jeans though; they're only mid-rise but they rest on my hip bones and not around my middle anyway.

And I just made my first purchases for Gumdrop last night. Actually, for Gumdrop and his/her siblings to come. I decided long ago that I'd like to make a scrapbook baby book, instead of buying the premade ones where you just fill in blanks. Well, I got to looking at scrapbooking stuff at work a couple nights ago and discovered that a bunch of stuff was on clearance, including some cute non-gender-specific baby things like little stickers and bits of background paper, etc. Then I realized that making a scrapbook baby book for this baby isn't going to be a problem because I've got lots of free time right now (hahaha) -- but what about Gumdrop's siblings? I bet I won't have time to make scrapbooks for them.

So I decided to buy four scrapbooks and make them all up now, with blanks to fill in later and places for applicable pictures, etc.

But even the scrapbooks that were on clearance were at least $10 each. And that would be $40 just for the books! And those were books that only had 10 pages. Not shiny.

Then I realized if I was going to make the baby book myself, why couldn't I make the scrapbook myself? So I got four 3-ring binders with 1" spines for $2 each and 100 clear top-loading sleeve-pages for about $8. I got 100 pretty pastel baby-like background pages for $12.50. Which means I basically got four 25-page scrapbooks for $28.50. And you might point out that that's only saving myself $11.50, but the other ones just had plain white pages -- you had to add your own nifty pages anyway.

Now, I might not make them 25 pages, but if I want to I can. :-D Went ahead and bought myself a new calligraphy pen and some clear photo corners too. This could be a very fun project!

"Rocky" (1976)

I just finished rewatching the original Rocky for the first time in like, what, six years? Can it really have been that long? How weird.

It's practically an indie film, you know? It was made in less than a month, cost only a little over one million dollars (Star Wars, released a year later, got a budget of 8 mil and people think of it as low-budget?), uses real locations in and around Philadelphia, and Stallone not only starred in and wrote it himself, he choreographed the fight scenes too! His kid brother is one of the street singers, and his dad is the guy that rings the bell that opens the final fight.

And the whole movie has that sort of gritty indie film feel to it too. Sure, II, III, and IV are glitzy big-budget fun. But the original is more of a character study than a movie about boxing. People look at me funny when I say it's a sweet, quiet movie. They're like, "How can a Rocky movie be quiet? It's about two guys punching each other." But it is. The punching is a side issue. The real point is this nice guy who's been a nobody all his life, who never had a prime, and who suddenly gets a chance to live the dream. He just happens to be a boxer -- it could be about baseball or golf or sprinting or horse racing or championship chess, and it'd still be about this decent guy trying to deal with being offered a glimpse of life beyond the street.

Of course, I grew up with the Rocky movies -- when I was a kid I even tried to imitate his walk (maybe this is still why I swing my non-existent shoulders when I walk). And I think even as a kid, one of the things that drew me to the character was the way he treats Adrian. He's very sweet to her, very patient and even gallant. And since I've always been shy (though not quite so painfully shy as Adrian) I think I appreciated that a lot. A big tough cool guy who takes time to talk to the shy little girl standing in the corner and doesn't just ignore her like everyone else. What's not to love?

So, gonna go watch Rocky II now while I'm at it. Feeling all nostalgic and fuzzy :-)