ending 30 weeks/beginning 31 weeks and shit-talking filip!

hi. its the end of 30 weeks. a lot has gone down. at first, it wasn't so good, then it proved to be better than i could have wanted, and now everything is normal and good again.

i was supposed to be heading to st. louis this weekend for a baby shower with my family. it was cancelled. i'm ok with it. see, its like this: i was worried about some issues and things that i shouldn't have been worried about because some of them were assumptions and some of them were previous misunderstandings, and that made me more anxious and irritable and stubborn than i should have been. and it turns out that my mom and my sister were in the the same boat as i was, only none of us really knew this about the other. and we all stewed and simmered and eventually it boiled over at the end of last week. it was all really gnarly at first. emotions running high and screaming and really nasty things being said across the board, but in the end, the conversations we've all come to, the things we talked about, the things we're working on and the things we've cleared up are so much more important to me than a baby shower and i'm really glad it all happened the way it did. between my sister, mom and i, these are all things we finally needed to say and things we finally needed to hear. and im so glad we got here before this baby did. i feel so relieved, and so much better and i'm glad that we're all on the same page. it makes me excited and motivated to keep working on it.

ahh. right. its summer out, you know?! that means county fair season! filip claims he has never been up close and personal with goats or sheep. unbelievable!




i've been cranking out more baby projects like crazy lately. my intentions are to post again by the end of the weekend with better photos and more completed projects. i'm seriously so unbelievably excited to be knitting baby socks. its ridiculous. the smallest knitting ever, and the smallest socks ever. its killing me. i really can't take it. really, i can't. all i want to do and all i think about is knitting baby socks. i'm about to knit more baby socks as soon as i'm finished with this post.

ok, its been a week with cable tv. i remember why i didn't care to make the effort to have cable tv in the past. that doesn't mean i want it to go away, but i'm reminded of how fucking irritating and frustrating it is. i love anthony bourdain. im so so so fucking glad i can watch 'no reservations' pretty much anytime i want. its the best. my celebrity crush on anthony bourdain is back in high gear. otherwise, i find myself unable to stop from watching all of these discovery health programs on pregnancy and birth and getting so incredibly pissed off to where i'm literally yelling at the television while i'm home alone. its fucked. i always shut them off after about 15 minutes, its all i can take, but i still cant help putting them on in the first place. its terrible. there was a program on today all about the benefits of epidurals where a handful of women in pre-labor were so excited and counting the seconds until they were able to get their epidurals, where they were all being spoonfed bullshit from these asshole nurses and doctors who didn't even know their names, speaking to them in a manner that you would speak to a 4 year old. these poeple treat women as if they're too dumb to experience labor. and, don't get me wrong, some of them are really fucking dumb, but its all a vicious circle as to why they're so dumb, and why these medical types keep things the way they are to only benefit themselves and not the mothers or babies. its so fucking sad. i could go on this tangent forever. there's another program called 'i didn't know i was pregnant' which basically features disgustingly obese women who went a whole pregnancy unawares, think they are experiencing food poisoning when, in actuality, they are going into labor. its fucking sick. seriously. so sick. i really have to stick to the travel channel, bbc america (ahhh! so many dr. who specials and torchwood!) and occasionally hbo, because i can actually watch flight of the conchords on real tv now. well, and fox soccer. cable should be a la carte.

dang...wouldn't it be awesome to be at the san diego con this weekend? i'd totally have david tennant sign my chest, since i actually have one now. and i'd never wash it. no, i'd get his signature tattooed. yeh.

i went to see my midwife again this week and i'm super excited and feeling really good. its getting so close dudes! we're getting geared up and prepared, starting to tie up loose ends. i'm actually really excited to get all the stuff we need for the 'birth day.' i'm ordering my birth kit soon and shopping for extra towels and sheets and stuff like that has got me all geared up. i'm really excited and anxious to hunker down and get this done! its really funny to me to worry about who is taking care of this little babes birth certificate and social security and stuff like that, you know? its all squared away and all, but so goofy, but seriously, i'm worrying about this sort of stuff for my kid, weird. i was sort of worried about what to do with the placenta afterwards as well, when i talked my midwife about it she recommended donating it to nasar to help train search and rescue dogs! so awesome! i'm really stoked, thats totally the most perfect thing i could think of. i'm not the sort to keep it hanging around in our freezer for the next few years, i don't think filip is going to eat it, and although i'm totally cool with stem cell research, i'm more cool with making sure my babe gets all the cord blood it needs and letting the cord stop pulsating on its own rather than putting my babe at risk by making sure there's enough blood left to sell it for tens of thousands for 'research.' ugh...the whole cord blood issue really upsets me...i'm really really glad to have the options that i do and to be doing this the way i am.

did i ever tell you that madness, one step beyond, was the first album i bought on my very own as a pre-teen. ive been listening to tons of madness again, and if this kid is a girl, i hope she totally develops the same crush on suggs that i had.

i've been working on this post for a couple days now, in between stuff, and i'm getting tired of it, i'm almost done.

just got back from getting a nice coffee and a cupcake from new wave (insert huge disapproving gasp here) and on my walk home, at the corner of sacramento and fullerton, a normal jogging girl lightly pinched my elbow and says "you have the best tattoo. im a chair freak too!" and then jogged off. so awesome. i think thats the first time it has been recognized by a totally random person. boy, if i had a dollar for every time i've heard (mostly in a ghetto voice) "what dat is gurl? a spiderwebs?"

heh. back to baby socks, now! almost done with my first pair, i'll post photos of them tomorrow, along with pickle & vodka updates and spaghetti & meatballs! the fire game is on our cable tv and i gotta text filip highlights throughout since he's working, poor dude.

week 29

wow. jen is pregnant too! 12 weeks! i'm not really the baby crazy type, even with myself being pregnant and all, but i'm really very happy and excited about this. our buddies being buddies. another buddy who seems to agree with a lot of the same sorta stuff regarding pregnancy and being pregnant. its good. this is good. good work! i'm feelin good.

this weekend was all jammed up with activities for us. i really really wanted to go to the lake house with kyle and carolynn and all the company, but i have to be sober and i would have been really bratty and bummed out, and probably would have started a fight with filip and it would not have been fun. and i want it to be fun, so next summer, we'll get a babysitter and get back to lakehouse funtimes like before. so, in the meantime we went to the greyhound racetrack in kenosha. i've never been to dog races, as there isn't any dog racing in illinois or missouri, and it seems as though it is becoming more and more rare these days, which is good considering the conditions for the dogs. if only things could be different. i wanted to bring about 50 greyhounds home with us. so, right, its much like horse racing, betting and all. as much as i hate the cruel things that happen to the dogs, i love totally love it, along with horse racing. something about it, some kind of lure, old-timey-ness, tradition and such. something about what the tracks are now and the otb's and everything, being totally sad and depressing, but holding fast to some traditions or addictions or something. i dunno. i really love it all. anyway. we had fun. we want to come back before the end of the year with a whole ton of people and make a super awesome fun day of it. let me know if this maybe sounds fun for you, i'd like you to come.





later that evening we decided to attend the Fire game out in bridgeview. lots of driving on saturday, but fun and worth it. stopped in between for delicious dinner snack at Superdawg! i ate beef, which, you may know has not been agreeing with me during this pregnancy. it did not agree with me, and i figured as much but decided i would tolerate it for a Whoopercheesie. the fire game ended up being a pretty boring game, but still fun to be there. tons of people, almost sold out!


oh! and speaking of...not that i really know a whole lot or that i think i'm some big supporter or anything, you know? i mean, i'll always take interest in what my boyfriend/close friends are into, what interests them interests me usually, obviously, so i make an effort and usually get into new stuff that way. and in the case with filip and his soccer obsession, i follow along and can hold a simple conversation and include my two cents and also pick hot players to have unrealistic goofy ass crushes on. my most recent crush being Bakary Soumare. pretty funny and even funnier when he sat across from us at Small Bar last thursday. ahhhhhh! dang! no way! hahaha!

so yeh, i'm feeling pretty good about things lately. i think, maybe, i'm getting into that 3rd trimester stage of being super energized and excited and feeling optimistic about things and myself, etc. the last segment of my second trimester was really tough. (quick side note: i just accidentally mis-spelled 'trimester' by adding a 'd' to the end of it, totally bringing back horribly amazing memories of me and carolynn tracking this down four years ago.) The realm of depression and terrible feelings i went through was really surprising. "shocking" my dad would say in a totally sarcastic dry manner. i didn't and still don't know what to expect with this. everyday is totally different than the one before, how i feel emotionally and physically, my mood and temperament, everything really. and i feel like, especially recently, things are noticeably changing and getting bigger everyday. i'm really glad that the really sad and depressing stuff seems to be out of the way. so while i was in the thick of 'really not being in the mood' i got this blog link that Nikko had forwarded to our baby crazed and pregnant circle of friends. and since i was in a horribly depressed mood, i never thanked her, so thank you for the link, Nikko. at the time, i scanned quickly over a few posts and instantly felt so awful about myself and my situation and my pregnancy. i wanted to stab my eyes out because of it. i was snotty about it and had a terrible attitude. i was like, where do these perfect people and their perfect situation come from? how can they make a pregnancy look that good and all American Apparel chic, literally? pregnancy does not look that good, and i certainly don't look that good. i was totally against it and fed up and so irritated. i vowed to never read it ever again. probably 2 weeks later my mood turned around, thankfully. so thankfully. i dunno how or why i let go of certain things, i dunno what chemicals switched around in my head but i'm so happy to be past that. don't get me wrong, its not as if i'm perfect all the time now, but i'm definitely not melting down, crying and fighting with filip everyday anymore. so i've spent the past week thoroughly reading, re-reading and sobbing with happiness over their stories and experience growing a baby. i certainly know that people have a way of showcasing their lives online in such a way that doesn't show things you'll never know about said person with never knowing them in real life. (i mean, remember my psychotic ex-boyfriend? who i was never married to, to say the least?!) so yeh, i get it. and stylish detail orientated totally savvy internet people have a great ways of showcasing things and that's good for them. and now that i'm in a much better mood i can appreciate that, take it for what it is, and enjoy how amazing his writing is and how beautiful their family is and then some, and how thankful i am that there are other like-minded people that are willing to share so much with the internet. its a great blog, for pregnant people and baby crazed sorts, and regular people too. i think you should read it. i like it a lot.

now that i'm in the 3rd trimester my meetings with my midwife have kicked up to every 2 weeks. pretty intense! i knew it was going to be happening, but it seems like it shouldn't be happening yet. but then it seems like i've been pregnant forever now. last thursday i had to have my glucose tested for gestational diabetes, etc. that was hilarious, i got incredibly geared up and hyper as hell on glucose juice! everything is really going good though. absolutely no problems at all through any of this, thankfully, i mean, other than regular, and in my case i think kinda of mild, pregnancy stuff. i remember during the first few weeks being absolutely terrified of everything. not necessarily scared of being pregnant, but totally terrified that the baby was going to die, that i was going to die, i would end up with some wacky disease or someone was going to beat me up with the intention of killing the baby i was making. my head was all over the place worried and really spazzed out with every possibility like that. now, i'm not really scared of anything. i feel totally confident that everything is and will continue to go really well, and if a problem does arise, i feel really good about being in the hands of my midwife and doula. lately i've been remembering bits of dreams about actually birthing the baby and being in labor. i'm getting to the point where i just want to do it. i'm so freakin anxious. i want to be in labor. i want to feel the pain of it and accept it and get through it and meet this baby already. i want to see what we made. its funny, almost like this baby already has a personality. yesterday me and filip were taking turns pressing on this one particular spot on my belly and it would kick back at us, really! from time to time i can actually see a foot or a knee drag across my stomach. it moves non-stop. all the time and pretty fiercely! filip wakes up through the night a ton and tells me that every time he is awake in the early mornings its doing summersaults in there. it was keeping me awake for a while there when it first started but i guess i'm getting used to it now. sometimes if filips hanging around with his had resting on my stomach, it'll bounce around for a while and calm down, and as soon as his hand moves away it goes bonkers again, like it wants him to come back. really weird, how you know so much already, baby? i'm pretty sure my dude flipped over on friday, too. this buddy is now head down, the beginning of the end. the majority of movement is in a different spot in my belly now and everything seems a little more comfortable since then. maybe its all in my head but either way, i needed a little relief. my mid-section is really short and not accommodating at all.

i think i'm going to spend the rest of today on projects and birth tasks. i've got too much stuff rolling around in my head that needs to become lists and things to remember to ask and research. i don't feel like there's a ton of preparing we need to do, and honestly, if it happened today i'd feel just fine and ready for it, but since there is some time left, i'll get a few more things organized. at least i can just about scratch 'getting cable' off the list. that has been an on going battle with direct tv for too long now, and although its not installed just yet, everything seems to be ready for the installers tomorrow. its been more of a pain in the ass trying to get the cable hooked up than figuring out this baby stuff. what the hell?

i keep listening to the make-up song "every baby cries the same." i always thought it was pretty awesome and hilarious, and now more than ever. the background vocals have been playing on repeat in my head for the past few days. i'm like "every babeh, black babehs, skinny babehs, fat babehs, rich babehs, poor babehs, country babehs, city babehs, lonely babehs, every babeh." best ever.

28 weeks

i'm starting to lose track of all this. i'm pretty sure this is my 28th week. i bet if i posted more often i wouldn't be so confused.
so much has happened between now and my previous post! all good things! no major meltdowns, except that one, but that was nothing really, especially in comparison to previous meltdowns.
the last i posted i had just returned from st. louis for Aero's birthday party. so about a week or so later Adam, Angie & Aero came to visit us! so exciting! I was retarded excited that they came up. regretfully, that one meltdown happened that first night they were here, but thankfully angie totally knows what im going through and it was minor, anyway, but still, im so sick of these mood swings. So right, we hung out a ton, putzed around, went to the aquarium, cruised out to oak park to check out frank lloyd wright buildings, ate tasty food, you know. i don't know if i've previously mentioned this but Aero is an amazing kid. such a trooper! he had a good time and is probably the least fussy one year old i've ever met. Jonah was a little jealous, i think, super barky whenever me and Aero were hanging out. Totti was a little overwhelmed with all the extra commotion. all in all, it was awesome. I'm so super glad they came up! I super love being around all of them. Its really awesome to see how their family clicks and works out with everyone being generally really happy and loving and normal. Its pretty amazing to see that you can still do regular awesome things with a little one, and that you can totally travel and do stuff with a kid instead of being hindered by it. it seemingly takes a little more time and a little more thought but still, its comforting to see them bring Aero along every which way and for every adventure.



After their departure back to st. louis, Filip had plenty of time off last week for general screwing around and dumb adventures. and i've been on the up and in good moods lately so it's been fun. One evening, like normal we had dinner at Tank and decided to head over to the beach off of Foster afterwards to stroll around. Pretty funny how everyone hanging out had mj blaring from some shitty radio, but otherwise it was fucking disgusting to a gnarly degree. i sort of couldn't believe the incredible amount of garbage everywhere and the people swimming around it in the lake. so romantic.

A few days later, per an article via npr we decided to drive down to 63rd and Western to check out a line of bullets shot by the first tommy gun to be used in a crime. The building was a jerk store at the time but has since morphed into a currency exchange, and sadly, we did could not find the bullet holes. however, we did get incredibly creeped out by a drunk, psychotic black ghetto midget that was hanging around that corner and we quickly left. The highlight of that trip really just ended up being the junker of a van we spotted down western with a goofy painting of kittens taped to the side of it. pretty awesome.


4th of july was ok for us, i think, not that we celebrated or anything. we had a delicious breakfast meal at flying saucer, pretty much napped all day, then popped in at matt & jen's bar-b-que a little early. we headed out in time to catch the Fire game at the globe. pretty funny, with me being in a relatively good mood, filip proceeded to drink enough and after the game we decided to stop back over at matt & jen's to see if there were more fireworks and madness to witness. by that time, most of the impressive displays were over and there were just a ton loud things blowing off, including a row of black cats that seemed to have lasted at least ten minutes long. filip drank more, started talking communism to jens croatian neighbor and then, all of a sudden in his totally typical filip manner, he was whining and wanted to go. so we decided to leave, quite abruptly like we do when filip switches like this, hardly saying good bye to anyone, and then as soon as we get outside filip wanted to fight someone. totally wanted to pick a fight with anyone. until we got into the car blasting dance music and he passed out. pretty good. classic.
sunday we chilled out mostly. did normal breakfast then coffee shop then grocery sort of stuff. made delicious sausages for dinner. saw the new woody allen movie, which was super good, we both concluded. and then monday we were off to the dunes. filip is nuts over the dunes. pretty hilarious. huge beach umbrellas and all. it wasn't bad on a weekday. i think i'd be thoroughly annoyed and irritated to be there on the weekend, but it seems like, at least for the rest of this pregnancy, visiting the dunes is going to be a weekly event. we need more snacks next time...



so yeh, generally things are going really good. this guy, or girl, is moving around sooooooo much these days. i never expected it to move so much. its really weird. i can feel it getting stronger everyday. totally creepy. filip and i were in the car this afternoon and i was freaking out because it was moving so much. filip was finally able to glance over at some point when i was hollerin about it and we both literally saw something move across my big fat belly all alien like. totally weird. i've been suffering some heartburn and really terrible back pains, but im doing ok. got some fennel seed and raspberry leaf teas to help with that sort of stuff. hopefully all these visits to the dunes will help out my back. otherwise, it seems like since ive been crazy reading and watching ina may gaskin stuff lately that, as goony as it sounds (maybe only to myself, but still) it has totally given me a better outlook and has made a lot of this a ton easier. its way easier to manage now. i dunno, weird but im feeling pretty good about all of it. i just want it to be finished, pretty much now, and i wanna get on with the rest of it.
i've finished a ton more baby projects lately, i intend to get around to blogging them at some point this week as well as the progress of our home made pickles and i'll be starting my raspberry vodka this week as our raspberry bushes are totally ripening like crazy! and i think we're actually going to paint the baby room this week. lots happening, lots keeping me busy, totally good. yes, really good.