Baby Sale

I saw this ad on another blog I read. Who knew you could just buy them?

I Can't Complain . . . But I Will Anyway

I really cannot complain about my pregnancy symptoms. I have had practically no nausea — a few smells make my stomach flip over, but I haven't spent a minute writhing in agony and I haven't thrown up at all. My boobs are bigger, but they don't hurt. All of my cravings have been for fairly reasonable things (hotdogs, anchovies, chicken salad, plums). My face is still an acne-swollen mess, but I can cover it up with foundation when I have to teach and I don't care too much about it when I'm home.

This is the upside of having my mother's body. I will never be tall and I will never be thin, but I can pull off this pregnancy thing no problem. Let's hope that the similarities hold out til the end and I have a short, unmedicated labor.

I know I'm having a much easier time than many women, so I feel bad complaining about my one prominent symptom, but what else are blogs for?

I am SO GODDAMN TIRED. I went to bed at 11 last night, slept until 10 (with two bathroom breaks), and by 2 p.m., I was ready for a nap. This was after I took a shower, ran errands for one hour, made lunch, and sat on the couch folding laundry. This is the extent of my ability to exert myself at the moment.

On Thursdays, I teach two two-hour seminars, one from 10-12 and the other from 2-4. About halfway through the second seminar, I was writing on the chalkboard when I felt my knees begin to wobble and my voice give out. I sat down and got through the rest of class, but the exhaustion just hit me like a cartoon anvil. I took the bus home instead of walking because I could barely put one foot in front of the other. It took me a full day to recover.

Luckily, I only have to go into work on Mondays and Thursdays. The rest of the week, I can sit on my couch and read or write. Theoretically, I could go to the gym in the morning, but in reality, I only end up going about once a week because it takes so much out of me.

I hear that some women get a second wind in the second trimester. I'm looking forward to that, though it is still a full month away.

Carnegie Stage 18

Tired of comparing your embryo to fruit? Check out these amazing photographs of embryos from the University of Michigan. Snapdragon is currently 45 days post-ovulation, putting him/her in stage 18.

Delicious

Tonight, I had a mushroom-anchovy-olive-eggplant-onion-and-pepper pizza for dinner. And it was delicious.

A Quilt for Snapdragon

I started this quilt in the fall and finished it in January. I don't have a sewing machine, so it goes pretty slow. In retrospect, a white background is not such a great idea for a baby quilt — maybe I'll use it as a crib liner or something. Not that I care much if it gets dirty — it's all cotton (washable) and I can repair it if it gets damaged.

I am a novice quilter. Really, I just like to buy pretty fabric and it sometimes (rarely) makes its way into a project.

My least favorite part of quilting is the planning. I'm terrible at the math/measuring/cutting part and can never get the geometric shapes to line up the way they should. In short, I am not a precision quilter.

That's why the Cathedral Windows pattern is perfect for me. The quilt grows under your fingers and you can stop whenever you feel like it. It's also pretty forgiving of my inability to get blocks to line up exactly. Even though I use the same template to cut out all the pieces, they never seem to be exactly the same size. This pattern allows me to fudge it a bit. One final perk: I can use all the scraps I've been saving for years.

If you are interested in making your own Cathedral Window Quilt, follow this excellent tutorial via Hyena in Petticoats. It has good step-by-step pictures for all you visual learners out there.

You can choose your own colors — I made up this pattern and it worked pretty well. I'm a little disappointed that the orange and yellow sort of run together, but I like the blues, purples, and reds. Next time, I think I'll try single-color inserts — that way, you get an interesting visual effect where you can't tell if it's the inserts or the background that you're supposed to focus on.

What to Expect When You're Expected

FB and I have been reading What to Expect When You're Expected: A Fetus' Guide to the First Three Trimesters. It's very funny — doubly so if you have suffered through the condescension of the original What to Expect. It uses the same format and font.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who didn't lose her sense of humor when she got pregnant.

Exhausted

One of the nice things about my grad student schedule is that I can stay home on days when I don't have class. Mondays and Thursdays are my big days: class and meetings from 10 til 4. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it's all I can handle right now.

Yesterday, I walked to campus, attended my meetings, and walked back. I got home around 5:30 and collapsed on the couch. By 9:30, I was so tired I was practically delirious, so I went to bed and slept until 10 this morning.

I have never been this tired in my life, not even after soccer hell week in high school.