eighteen

i'm taking a much needed break in packing to blog, and apparently to hang out with my roommates cat, jersey. we finally got everything figured out and it turns out we're moving on thursday. in two days. i'm still pretty excited even though i've hardly haven't packed anything at all. today i'm stressing out, hoping i can get all my shit together. this will be the last move forever, until we move out of chicago, thankfully. dang. my brother was here over the weekend and we got into a conversation about all the places we've lived and this move will mark the 12th apartment i've lived in over the past 8.5 years. that is too many places. as much as i hate moving, i always get into situations where i can't stay in one place too long.

otherwise, i'm still getting really big at a retarded fast rate. and it's moving around now! pretty crazy! i thought it may have been wiggling around a little on friday, but wasn't too sure. last night filip and i we're hanging around watching some documentary on roman polanski and it was definitely on the move. totally knockin around in there. i don't know if i'm comfortable with roman polanski making my kid wiggle already.

i'm feeling guilty sitting here. i need to pack more.

seventeen

woah. lots happening! as of this week i can no longer button my one pair of blue jeans that i've been fitting into lately. i knew this day would come but i've been dreading it and acting like it wouldn't. i've put off washing them for the past month or so for fear that they'd shrink up a bit in the wash and i wouldn't be able to button them. i guess i can wash them now, since it doesn't matter either way.
so, by this week my little monkey is anywhere between 4.5 and 5.5 inches. and it can hear much better than before. lots of loud music! i've never ever been interested in large outdoor music festivals or anything but this week i've been totally into the thought of going to pitchfork so this little dude can hear everything, even though i'll be pretty big and probably irritable by that point. either way, i'm super excited to start going to pritzker again for music and picnics and things, and elvis costello at ravinia might be hilariously awesome. technically, this baby's first show was the mountain goats, which is pretty rad and exciting.
no movement yet, though. this is about the time i should start feeling stuff happening but nothing so far. i'm kind of anxious and nervous for it.
its so funny how my internetting and daily interests have turned baby focused. i mean, naturally yeh, but its still really funny and something i could have never predicted for myself. a while back, long before i was anywhere near this situation, i was walking jonah and totti and had some lady ohhhing and ahhhing over them and somewhere in conversation she had mentioned these children's books about a cat who is convinced he is a chihuahua. i never thought much about it at all until recently and now i couldn't think of anything better to read to our booger. grandma's already started its collection of skippyjon jones. so awesome. i'm also super super excited about i'd like the goo-gen-heim being back in print! so cute and perfect and awesome! this is also on the growing list of kids books, even though i'll probably end up doing most of the activities myself, heh.
i also came across matte stephens and his etsy shop the other day and have absolutely fallen in love with all of his art.
i want a ton of his prints and little buddies for the babys room. totally decorating in that sort of style. so excited!
so my brother is coming to visit this weekend with his girlfriend tina. and i'm very excited. my mom and sister have been up to visit since we all found out the news, but when they were here it was like regular still. my brother will be the first to see me with this huge growth. its pretty weird. his girlfriend is plays derby for the arch rival roller girls who are playing a match saturday in chicago, so it will be babys first derby match! i've really been nerding out over the whole 'babys first' shit lately. heh. but yeh, i'm really excited to have them here. my brother hasn't visited in nearly 2 years. so yeh, excitement and probably hot dougs and kumas, im sure.
otherwise, i'm doing ok. some wavering feelings and slightly irrational freak-outs that i attribute to this pregnancy stuff, but its ok. even those aren't as psychotic as some people are on a regular un-pregnant basis, i believe, so yeh, i'm good. we're still in this the same as we were from the beginning, and i feel good about it. what i don't feel good about right now is cleaning out the fridge. ewwwweyuck.

sixteen and a half

so we've successfully created a gift registry at target. that was quite an event. it is funny as hell getting filip into a place like target and then trying to figure out what we're gonna need for this babymanbaby was even funnier. scary, but funny. target online definitely offers more of the modbaby sort of stuff that you can't get in store making the initial trip kind of a let down and annoying. i'd like to set up a registry at grow maybe, but probably just because i want that tiny orange rocking chair that has been in the front window forever. and speaking of rocking chairs, i am a pregnant lady now and i need one. its not like i can set up a registry just for myself but if i could, this is the rocking chair that would be at the top of my list, obviously.
i haven't managed to junk one yet, but now it is a major neccessity. every pregnant lady has to have a rocking chair. and also speaking of midcentury baby furniture, i found this googling and almost peed my pants laughing, from this article via wired a few years ago. pretty hilarious. all that work refinishing my lcw and i could turn it into that high chair...heh. that doesnt really look too comfortable. look at that kids legs.
this week i've been procrastinating a bit, but at least this week i feel good about it. next week, though, im sure i'll feel really down on myself for it or absolutely nothing. so far, i really have nothing to complain about, but i'm going to anyway. recently these bizarre mood swings where i get really down on myself are really obnoxious. i've always had a tendency to be hard on myself or get kinda down from time to time, but who doesn't? this is not like normal, this is like, at least once a week, curl into a ball and cry until it hurts. then im ok. there are so many other productive things i could do with that cry time. its pretty annoying and it makes me feel like a huge sap. im gonna have a talkin-to with this kid about it, it is unacceptable.
so, for those who do not know already we have decided not to have any ultrasounds and not to find out what gender this dude is going to be. i mean, i'm halfway through it already and its not going to make a difference anyhow. except that i really want a boy. what we have decided is that filip gets to decide the girls name and i get to decide the boys name. and we both trust each other well enough to agree to that, even if there are any last minute changes or whatever. and so, the names are already pretty certain, and i think most people know them so i'll just leave it at that. although, i've really been thinking about the name atticus lately...

did i mention that our new place has raspberry bushes and grape vines in the backyard? so exciting! im getting so anxious to move! its retarded cute, im sitting at new wave right now and that mushaboom song by fiest is on and im totally nerding out over it and the near future for us.

its sixty degrees and im in a really great mood right now. i have an appointment set to cut my hair. i've been catching up with old friends that im excited to re-connect with. i'm totally enthralled with doctor who now and have developed a total crush on the doctor and i'm almost finished knitting my first baby sweater. right now, i feel like im at the peak of good moods during this so far.

sixteen weeks

oh god, this is really happening. i'm encouraged to blog again, so i suppose i'll give a quick run-down of the past 6 months and then maybe keep going from there, and then maybe it'll all kind of make some sense. well, it probably won't make any sense, but at least then you'll know. you know? i'll also say right now that in this process i don't plan on excluding certain details for saving feelings sake, so sorry in advance if i offend or piss off or hurt someone's feelings, but this is how it is.

this week marks 16 weeks of my first pregnancy. it is really happening. it seems like, from television and movies and books, that some people have affirmations that they tell themselves or other self-motivating habits or quirks. i don't think i have ever had anything like that to say to myself, but on a frequently repeating basis i have found myself telling myself "oh god, this is really happening." alot, actually. all throughout my adult existence, and probably alot in my teenage and pre-teen years, but i'll save everyone and only backtrack about 6 months.
roughly 6 months ago i started seeing my boss. not like, i saw him everyday at work sort of thing. it was like, uh, a real life relationship developing and after work secret doing-it meetings, only i wasn't going to get a promotion or anything of that sort. neither of us intended anything, nor did either of us see it coming at all, and i really didn't know what was going to happen. most of me wanted to act like it wasn't happening and i kept telling myself it was going to stop happening. i don't know, because of the situation i was totally in denial of everything i wanted and everything i was guilty of. so let me tell you about the situation. oh god. my then-boss, filip, co-owns a business (still does) where i was employed, where his co-owner is, um, his wife. ok, yeh, i am an idiot but they've been seperated for 2-ish years. and yeh, i'm an idiot because she was my boss too, and a pretty good friend prior to all this. hence all of the denial and guilt i was feeling. ack. but, in my defense, let me also say that his wife, prior to filip and i getting together, had repeatedly, uh, sort of, offered up filip for me or any other friend as someone we should date. wha? and also, it didn't appear, even in the slightest bit, that there were absolutely any signs that there were any feelings, say romantically or anything of that sort, left between the two of them. she had dated a good handful of dudes since they had split, and was quite known for dragging filip's name through the mud on a regular basis and regularly proclaiming that the best thing that had happened was them splitting up. so, i dunno, that lead to a lot of confusion. so right, about a month or so after filip and i had been seeing each other, the awkwardness got increasingly horrible. i couldn't take it so i did what i had to. during a casual hang-out, just the two of us, i told her. the reaction was horrendous, and still is, i think, but what do i know? there was silence, then that look of her brutally murdering me with her eyes, then she immediately stormed out. side note: she already knew, and i prefaced the confession with those words. i know this, because everyone else in the neighborhood had pretty much put 1 + 1 together and a few nights prior she had followed filip back to my house and had apparently made a huge scene of it. the two of us, literally, have not spoken in real life, with real words, since then. for days after i did the right thing and told her, i received an un-excusable amount of rotten text messages, but no real talking. so, did i do the wrong thing here? i deserved to have my name dragged all through the mud of logan square, and still do, right? needless to say, i do not work for the either of them. i was fired, quit, let-go, extinguished, laid off, what-have-you, on christmas eve. not that i wanted to continue working there or anything, but its just funny. i heard through the grapevine while i was at home in st. louis for christmas. a friend who is a friend of a girl that worked there texted me a brief version of the news. so i called a different fellow employee and she informed me that they had been informed that i was no longer with the business. really, no one had the balls to let me know first, as if i didn't expect or wouldn't find out within a matter of minutes of such a broadcast. shit spreads like wildfire, you know? ok wait, so really, i guess im just blogging on how awesome and honest and upstanding i am myself. ha. i rule. ok, back to whatever. long story short, the whole goddamn neighborhood was involved, shit was being talked about myself in directions i never thought possible and it was down-right hilarious, and still kind of is, what sort of shit keeps getting back to me. really.
ok, so now its after christmas break. everyones back in chicago, we all (me + filip) missed each other and everything is great and lovey dovey and crap. keep in mind that, even though i haven't heard from my other ex-boss, filip did, and still does on a daily basis. and although i don't know at what lengths, nor do i care to know those lengths, i do know that at that point in time, there was still an awful lot of brutal tension and horrid things being said and texted to him on a really regular basis. (sidenote: it is still going on, i believe.) anyway, at some point during a lazy day of goofing off and eating delicious food and laying in bed too long, filip and i had a brief conversation about kids and having a baby. i mean, this subject had been brought up before, we'd drunkenly goof off about our future kid or argue about names or whatever, but this brief conversation was serious. you know? and god knows what i've been serious about in the past, you know? let us not even get started there, because that would take forever and it would be hilariously embarrassing. so obviously, the mature and serious thing to do after that very serious conversation would totally be to stop taking birth control. duh.
who'da thunk it would have all cultivated that quickly. i must have conceived within minutes of that conversation. seriously. immaculately. but i wouldn't know for quite sometime. at some point around late january it seemed like my period may have been late so i took a pregnancy test that came up negative. so i kept boozing and being retardedly irresponsible, like normal, like an idiot. after a while, it really seeemed like something goofy was happening, but i then decided for whatever reason, to act like it wasn't. i put off getting another pregnancy test for weeks. i felt pretty normal so i just acted normal. until filip made me take another test because it really had gone on long enough. that one said i was pregnant. and so it started. but it didn't, i swear.
my first trimester, if i really had one, was non-existant and pretty much like nothing was really happening. i was hardly convinced i was pregnant. sure, i finally grew a chest, but maybe i was really just a super super late bloomer. no nausea, no barfing, no real mood swings, no food aversions, no cravings, no swelling or bloating or any freakin changes at all. seriously. i didn't really think it was happening. then slowly, over the past 2 months-ish, i've seriously started believing that this is really happening. so yeh, i totally believe what laura said, that someone finally gave me break on something, you know? since this whole relationship ordeal has been retarded and stressful enough i got off pretty easy with the first trimester. totes. karma.
just last friday we heard its heartbeat for the first time. oh god, this is really happening. i didn't think it would affect me like it did, but something totally changed in that second. i have 2 heartbeats. i am growing a baby. i cried.
so, hospitals and doctors scare the junk out of me and make me incredibly nervous. my first instinct about having a kid was absolute fear of a doctor. i dont think im scared to be pregnant, or to even birth this thing, but a horrifyingly cold, rude, bullying doctor telling me that im too small to deliver a baby scared me to pieces. not to mention the myriad of other un-trustful opinions and decisions i could be pressured into. and also not to mention that my health insurance is altogether a piece of shit that wouldnt cover maternity, and that because of my piece of shit insurance i had racked up a retarded amount of bills from northwestern that have gone unpaid (since i dont have a job) so much that they refuse to schedule me any sort of appointments. heh.
so obviously, all of these factors with a ton of added research led me to my midwife. i'm thrilled and excited and really comfortably happy. totally not scared at all. we're planning a home birth. or apartment birth, you know. oh right, yeh, haha, me and filip are moving in together in two weeks. heh. so currently i'm on a hunt for a doula in training who can help me out either free of charge or at a really super reduced rate, since i'm out of work. and i'm working the government, got my medicaid, signing up for wic and link. things are falling into line, but thats doesn't mean that it will be any less dramatic or there wont be a million more instances in this situation where i repeat to myself "oh god, this is really happening."
so at the beginning of sixteen weeks things are totally changing and are seriously pregnant now. i'm seriously showing, and it seems like more and more everyday. and there's no getting around it, no more excuses. pants don't fit, shirts dont reach my waistband anymore. next time i'm heckled at lula for eating 2 breakfasts, i'm going to tell them why, because otherwise i would just be a real weirdo.
from here, i'll just keep you updated. i'll post some pictures or some rad links about midwifery or regular stuff, you know? and since i dont have a job, i may be posting a lot. so if no one is reading this, thats fine, at least im already feeling a little more normal.