Bellies, Floors, Scary Holes, and Rice Cookers

I'm feeling a bit white-trashy today. My clothes aren't quite fitting anymore. My belly is practically hanging out the bottom of my maternity shirt, and my maternity pants that I'm wearing no longer cover any portion of my belly (they're the kind that fit on the underside of the belly). I look like something you'd see on a hot summer day at Indiana Beach or something. I don't have many other pairs of pants that fit that I can wear to work right now. I have maybe two or three pair that fit, and I never seem to have them clean when I need them. Luckily, it's as if God heard me (or, God forbid, He saw me today) or something because a lady at work brought me some maternity clothes that are nice and humongous. That'll help. I've gotta hem some pants, but at least I know I'll be able to breathe from here on out. Thank God. Thank that lady at work, too. It's crazy how lucky I've been this whole time. Every need seems to be taken care of at right when I needed it. How sweet is that? This can't be just coincidence.
BTW, my belly has its own gravitational pull. So, be careful if you come over. You could end up stuck to my shirt just like everything else.

We got our floors sanded this weekend. We're still putting on coats of urethane, but we're at least done with the major work. That marks the end of all major work before the baby comes (besides cleaning the house, setting up the room, and preparing things). So, we're really relieved. Willis is the most relieved, I'm sure. He's the one that's been doing the massive grunt work. Poor guy. He's gotta have some gargantuan muscles by now. He said this morning that his hands were tingling. It kind-of freaked me out at first, but then I remembered that he busted his butt all weekend pulling up staples on the floors. There were some SEVERE, stubborn staples, and I heard him grunting a lot when he was ripping those out. It sounded pretty harsh. I imagine that's why his hands are tingly. My hands are tingly thinking about it.

I'll have some photos later this week—once we get all the urethane down and I take some photos.

I submitted our basement hole story to Ask This Old House today. It'd be cool if they came to our house to solve the mystery and fix it for us. I fully don't expect to hear back or anything, but I thought, "What the hell?"

Every single person I've talked to about it (and I've talked to a lot of people now) has NEVER heard of ANYTHING like that happening to ANYONE in their whole lives. That's pretty messed up.

I bought a rice cooker last night. It felt totally frivolous. It turns out, though, that you can cook more things in a rice cooker than just rice or veggies. Oh, yes. I'm excited to learn these fun things. I've read that you can even make bread in them. How crazy is that!? We've been eating a ton of rice lately, though. It just made sense to me.
I finally baked Frank some cookies this weekend. Those were overdue . . . I can't believe how stinking awesome nice our neighbors are. We totally win.

In other news, I really hope I don't get sick this winter. That'd be rough. It's already hard enough to breathe right now.

It seems like all my friends are having babies! Babies everywhere! It won't be long now for me. I can't believe how fast this has gone.

Halloweeny

Oh, wow. Lots to update about.

Firstly, our neighbor Frank mowed and trimmed our yard while we were at work on Tuesday. I think he may have even picked up dog poo, too. At first, Willi and I thought, "Oh, man . . . he must be tired of looking at our yard (we've not been keeping up on it that well this year due to me not being able to help much and due to us being so ridiculous busy with getting ready for this kid)," but now that I've thought about it for a couple days, I'm pretty sure the guy was just being nice. I should seriously bake him some cookies or something . . . but when!? He's such a nice neighbor.

Secondly, Halloween came and went! Trick-or-treating was Sunday night in my neighborhood. I totally thought it started at 6 p.m., but it apparently started at 4 p.m. So, I was late getting out there with my candy. I felt bad about that. We still had a bajillion kids come, though.

Randy and Kelly came over with their little rats. Melissa was Elmo. She was sooooo stinkin' cute. I wish I'd busted out the camera. Marian had on a cute little pumpkin outfit. Her butt had a jack-o-lantern face. It was neat to meet her. She's a good little baby.

Willi made beef and noodles that day for us all to eat for dinner, and it was awesome. He's as good as somebody's grandma with that stuff. He's gettin' to be a pro with that crock pot. I'm loving it. It's so tasty, and it makes my life so easy. Randy and Kelly brought desserts, and we scarfed.

During trick-or-treating, we did have a random kid ask to use our bathroom while her mother waited for her at our steps. We let her, of course, but . . . it was still a little strange. I escorted her through the house, of course, but not in the actual bathroom.

Here's what I dressed as for Halloween (this is probably the worst photo of me pregnant that there is so far). People at work peer pressure me into dressing up for Halloween every year, and this year, I took the apathetic route. Nobody yelled at me.


I kept having to change up the face because I kept knocking the mouth off on my desk. I kept giving it facial expressions to match my mood. You're lucky you're not seeing the mean face here.

Also, I helped to make this girl's costume possible. Check it out.


I did the measurements and cut out all those letters. I didn't actually put it together, though.


Here's the back with the nutrition facts and whatnot. I'm pretty proud of myself on this one especially since I was doing those letters and things based on proportions and math. I'm terrible with math.

Last night on Halloween, we discovered this scary action in our basement. We're pretty creeped out by it, and we've got NO idea what to do about it since we've never heard of anything like this ever happening before. Check it out:


This is our basement floor next to the water heater. Yeah. That's a hole.


Closer look at the hole.


Shot of the floor of the hole. Our cat could seriously fit down here and take a comfortable little stroll. How scary is that!? This is below our basement floor!


Here's a shot from inside the hole. I have no idea what direction this is facing . . . but it might be towards where our furnace sits.


Here's another shot inside the hole. It's pretty creepy down there. Since it was Halloween, I half expected to pull my camera out, look at the LCD screen, and see some creepy beast living down there or something. It was dark in that hole when I took those pictures. Scary, scary stuff, man.

Has anybody ever heard of there being -like- a crawlspace underneath a basement before!? What is this!?

In other news, I definitely passed my glucose screening test with flying colors. I needed less than a 130 to pass, and I scored a 117. So, I win. Everything else is pretty much normal. (I had a doc appointment this morning.) My iron is a twinge low, but I can handle that, I'm sure. I have stretch marks in places I never dreamed would see stretch marks. For example, my calves now have stretch marks. How messed up is that? My belly doesn't have any, though, surprisingly. I'm sure it will before I'm done.

Oof . . . I think that's all I have for now. Dilly out.

Berky Baby Shower

My friend Ariel had her baby today! His name is Titus! Happy Birthday, Titus!
Also, Happy 50th Birthday, Scott (the father-in-law)!

In other news, here are some photos from the baby shower that our work threw for us. Thank you, Maggie, for taking pictures!

Lovely decor.


Pretty cake.


Look at all the food! Here's me pretending to cut the cake.


Again with the pretending.


Here's the detail on that cake.


Good times were had by all.


Willis had a specific job, and he did it very well (he wrote down what we got and who we got it from so I could do Thank Yous).


Our kid got some awesome Berkheimer shirts. We're pretty excited about those. If we have a boy, and if he wears the one with the collar, I swear he'll probably be Willi's minime.


Baby butt cream.


Cream for other stuff. Heh.


Willi and I watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, and people know this about us.


We enjoyed ourselves as usual.

We're lucky people.

Dilly out.

29 Weeks

Here we are at 29 weeks, 5 days. I totally don't think this looks real. I still kind-of freak out when I walk past anything reflective that shows my belly. Here's another view of that. I totally can't reach the faucets on the sinks in the bathroom at work. This is becoming a bit of a problem. I haven't heard anything about the glucose screening test, and the lady that took my blood said, "No news is good news." So, I'm going to go ahead and take that as good news. If I don't hear anything by November 1st, then I'm pretty sure I'm totally golden. I think I might be golden now, but it still could be too soon to tell, I suppose. I'm being optimistic. My waist is -like- 42.5 inches now. I think that's over a foot now that my waist line has grown since this whole thing got started. Isn't that unreal!? Kent's coming back to help us with the garage this weekend. Bless his heart. Poor guy.  We gave Randy a ride to work this morning. That was a change of pace, and it was nice to chat with him and see where he works. We'll probably catch up with them on Sunday evening when they take Melissa trick-or-treating. I can't wait to see what she looks like! (Note to self: fix the doorbell.) Have I mentioned that I've been drinking over a gallon of fluids everyday? I'm ridiculously thirsty all the time. Plus, if I don't drink that much, I wake up with cankles. It's awesome. If I drink enough to keep from being thirsty, that usually takes care of it. What's handy: I don't crave any sodas or anything sweet. I don't even want juice or anything. I just drink gatorade, water, and milk. That's it. If I go out to eat, I might have iced tea now and then. Maybe. Oh, and I'm really, really hot. I froze Willis out at lunch, I think. I made him sit outside and eat with me. He said it was cold out. I didn't really notice. I felt kind-of bad about that. Now, I will never get upset with him when I'm cold and he's not. I totally get it now. Being cold is definitely better than being hot. Hands down. I'm -like- menopausal over here. We stayed up too late watching the Colts last night. I'd probably be peelin' my face off the keyboard today if it weren't for the massive bumper I've got preventing that right now. Well . . . there's that, and there's also the fact that I have to pee every five minutes. That generally keeps me pretty aware—even at night when I'm sleeping. Dilly out!

Rippin' up Carpet on the Stairs

Time for pictures!


This is Willi ripping up the carpet on the stairs a couple weekends ago.


This is his progress.


Here it is, all ripped up. It's rather filthy under all that carpet, which is pretty scary. This is why we want it all gone.


Here is the pie I baked for the lady at work that's going to be giving us a glider chair.


This is the pie that I made for us.


It was sooooo tasty. (Don't mind the One-A-Day vitamins and the robin's egg blue countertops, please.)

Yay pictures!

Our Cat is Evil

This morning at about four (maybe a little prior), I awoke to the sound of a car alarm going off in front of our house. I sat up, looked out the window, and saw that it, indeed, was our car. Not only was it honking and flashing away, but the trunk was open. The inside lights were all on, too. It was a sight.

I turned to Willi, who was somehow still sleeping, and I said, "Willis! That's our car out there!"

He sat up and took a moment to get oriented, and then he says, "THE CAT!"

It didn't really make sense to me, so I said (in hopes of further waking him), "We have to do something about this."

He hopped up, grabbed the cat off of his pants that were on the dresser, launched him across the room, dug into his pants pocket, and pulled out a set of car keys. Moments later, he shut off the alarm (he somehow found the panic button in the dark). Then, he couldn't see again to figure out how to shut the trunk (it has an automatic shutting device, which is pretty sweet). So, I took the keys from him, turned on my nightstand light, shut the trunk from our bedroom, and locked the doors. All the while, our catty-cornered neighbor (who must have already been up and outside this morning) was standing near our vehicle looking perplexed. I felt bad for him. He was only trying to help. We didn't even open the window to holler out and offer an explanation. Why would we? Here's what the explanation would be:

"Would you believe that all that raucous was caused by a stupid cat!? Sorry to disrupt your morning!"

Good grief.

27 Weeks

It's time for a belly update!


Here I am at 27 weeks—the beginning of the third trimester.

That's really all I have for you today.
Dilly out.