Ringing in the New Year!

I just realized that FLIB-ur-teejib-it (n.) turned three years old on Dec 27th. My only excuse is that I've been a tad busy. And tired. And overwhelmed.

Highlights of this year:

• May: Going to Rome/Southern UK (pictures are still not up!)
  
• July: Getting knocked up
• Aug: Finding out I was knocked up
  
• Sept: Finally finishing my Evil School

This whole baby thing has really taken over my life. So far, we've managed to mostly re-organize the house, purge I would say about one-sixth of what was originally there and clean out most of the baby's room.

There's still some large furniture in the baby's room that needs to be moved out, and we were prevented mainly from the four large snowfalls we had within a span of two weeks! This is the most snow I've seen ever fall on Lotusland! Nonetheless, it doesn't mean we haven't made great headway in the the baby-front. I've been doing a lot of reading on what the baby needs before I go out and buy things like strollers, car-seats, clothing, baby's development, etc.

We did buy a little bit of stuff: a swaddling blanket, two organic cotton onesies and an organic cotton sleep sack. The biggest purchase so far was the Natural Rubber crib mattress. A regular crib mattress costs anywhere from $80-100. This one was significantly more, but we feel it's worth it. Why a Natural Rubber mattress? I'll be answering that question in a later post, but here's something to get you started.

What to look forward to in 2009:

• Well, I'm still pregnant, so you'll be hearing a lot about that. A cloth diapering session and prenatal classes are on the calendar
• I'm giving birth to a baby! Enough said. Being a mother should be interesting....
  
• We're slowly greening our house. I was going to start up a separate green blog, but then I got knocked up, and quickly realised that maintaining yet another blog won't be feasible.
• And other things as they come along...

I am determined to post at least once a week in 2009, even it is only "My baby won't sleep and mummy is sleep-deprived.". But you'll definitely see a bit of a shift with FLIB-ur-teejib-it (n.) next year as I go through my own life changes.

Repeat after me...

SNOW BELONGS ON MOUNTAINS AND ONLY MOUNTAINS!

So within a week's time, we got about 30cm of snow dumped on us. This is the most snow that I've ever seen fall in Lotusland. Ever.

For those of you who are enamored with snow, you cannot say that love snow only when it's convenient for you. If snow becomes an inconvenience, you still must love it, and can never change your mind about not loving it later on. Or else you become a hypocrite.

I hate snow. Refer to first sentence of this post.

This picture was taken today. The big piles of snow is our front yard, and the trees beyond that is our neighbour's yards. Hubby and my mom spend a fair number of hours this past week just shovelling and shovelling and shovelling and shovelling...

Never mind the stoopid people on the road who are scared, can't drive in the snow, get their cars stuck because they have bald summer tires on or their cars just isn't powerful enough, whatever. People become very selfish when it comes to winter driving around these parts. It's every person, or vehicle, for himself. A passerby told Hubby today that there were actually people down the street from us who were getting into a big fight. While he didn't have full details, we could probably guess that people were getting very frustrated by the snow and not being able to go or get around anyone else.

It will be one of the few Christmases when it's actually a White Christmas, but honestly, white Christmases are so over-rated. Forecast says it should be raining later this weekend. I can't wait for that.

It's a BOY!!!.... Maybe....

Okay, I really don't know the sex of the baby, even though we wanted to find out. Alas, we went to the detailed ultrasound a few weeks too early, and the policy of the ultrasound clinic was that they didn't tell, period, until 20 weeks. I was 17.5 weeks at that point. We were a tad disappointed, but had since gotten over it.

Really, the only real reason I wanted to know was so I could focus on choosing one name instead of two. I'm not a fan of choosing a name that you can change from male to female (eg from William to Willamina). I also want a name that was clearly male or clearly female, and not something androgynous, like Jamie. Not that Jamie, William or Willamina are bad names, but they just not my cup of tea. (We have other criteria too, but I won't get into that right now).

So who has been telling me it's a boy? Well, pretty much everyone. This Chinese Birth Chart, also predicts that it's a boy. I'd conceived in July, so you can guess how old I am.

Here are some other predictions, all by people I know. It's a boy because:

• I'm carrying high (whatever that means, when you pat the top of my belly, that's not baby, that all my organs and guts being pushed aside because the baby is taking up all the space in the rest of my belly. In fact, the baby is sitting fairly low)
• I'm carrying low
  
• If you look at me from behind, I don't look pregnant
• It kicks a lot (I'm not certain if this kid kicks more than average, this is my first time I'm pregnant, and I think it kicks loads!)
• I have tons of acne, and in places where I normally never had any. This is my personal favourite prediction. My mother looked at me one day, and declared me to have an ugly face (in Chinese), then proceeded to tell me it was because of my acne. With her years of motherly sage advice, she told me I have acne because I have male hormones running through my body, and If I had a girl, my skin would be clear. (My mother has had only myself and my sister, so of course she would know!) One of my staff also said similar to me. A friend of mine who had a baby this year, had lots of acne, and she ended up with a girl.
  

I do have some mixed feelings if it is a boy. Growing up, it was just me and my sister. I really don't know what boys do or are interested in: I can't relate. A part of me was hoping to give my kid a copy of Anne of Green Gables: after all, all Canadian girls must read it, it's practically a rite of passage. Boys generally tend to be more of a handful, and generally noisier and less gentle than girls. On the other hand, I hate, hate, hate! with a passion the colour pink, and would simply die if my kid would insist on wearing pink all the time. And boys tend to play the cooler sports and play cars, and not with Barbies.

We'll see in 16.5 more weeks what pops out....

A quick update on moi

Today I'm 22 weeks (about 5.5 months for those who can't convert quickly). I'm doing well overall. The kid's been kicking up a storm this past week. Hubby finally felt the kid kick the first time last night. Not once, not twice, but several times. The kid has been keeping me from sleeping well, I'm so not used to all that movement in my belly, especially at night when I'm trying to sleep. That I can still sleep on my back helps though.

I'm definitely getting bigger. Both my SI joint hurt now because the weight of the baby against my pelvis, and my feet feel like they're taking a beating. Last weekend, I tried picking up a semi-heavy box, and boy, did my SI joint scream back at me. I guess my hips aren't as wide as I first thought, ha.

In the next few weeks, I will be going in for my glucose test, which diagnoses for Gestational Diabetes. This is one of the things that I'm really worried about. While I feel that I'm a fairly healthy person, I eat pretty well, I exercise about 5 times a week and I try to get as much sleep as possible, I've already started cutting back my sugar intake, which includes pop and juice. I know I can cut back on more, but it's already so frustrating eating already. I've always been a picky eater, but now my food choices are more limited, I feel. Everything's beginning to taste bland, and find that there are times when I don't feel like eating simply because my food choices are getting bland and repetitive. I know that GD isn't selective, and you can do everything right and still get it. And with some (yet again) lifestyle changes, it's possible to keep it under control. It's really something that I'd rather not think about or have to deal with, so hence, this is making me a tad more miserable being pregnant.

We're almost finished cleaning out the baby's room, although you couldn't tell if you saw it, there is a ton of furniture in the room still. My goal is to have this room completely empty before Christmas, save for the baby stuff that's coming in, of course. This weekend, we'll be purchasing a new desk and I'll be moving my office space in with Hubby's. This will be an interesting arrangement, because if there's one thing I've found, Hubby and I don't share office space well.