Into the third!

Oh man, second trimester, am I right? ::wistfully looks backwards in time::

I'm one whole week into the third trimester now - so you know, basically a pro - and I already can tell this is going to be... interesting? Not as awesome? Challenging?

Yesterday, at 1 day shy of 28 weeks. Stretching out and ruining non-maternity clothes because it is still inexplicably in the 50s and raining here EVERY DAMN DAY. WHY SPRING WHY WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO ANGER YOU SO. 

A few weeks ago - right around when we moved into our new place - I started getting these paralyzing, shooting pains through my right butt cheek. At first, I thought I had pulled my glute from all the squatting I'd been doing while packing (since bending over from the waist has become increasingly uncomfortable / impossible) but realized that there was no actual strained muscle to rub that would offer relief. After some research I concluded it was most likely my piriformis muscle, which is a wee muscle waaay under the glute that is next to (or intertwined with) the sciatic nerve. Which often gets strained or compressed due to the shifting pelvic alignment of pregnancy. Well! There you go. Luckily that only lasted about a week and a half, because there's not a whole lot you can do to treat or relieve that particular pain.

This was only 25 weeks, but at a day-long conference in downtown DC. My options for Preggo Business Wear are, uh, limited, to put it mildly. That tight white tank was not doing me any favors in the size olympics. 

Unfortunately, that transitioned into more traditional sciatic pain, and I now have a near-constant tight pain in my right lower back any time I'm sitting. Which is.. kind of a lot, considering I sit at a desk all day. I did get myself one of those exercise ball doohickeys though, and I spend about half my day bouncing around on that, which seems to help a little.

27 weeks. I took the picture on the right, then had a strong sense of deja vu.. and yup, I'd taken a virtually identical photo almost exactly a year prior. Total samesies, right? 

Other than my own literal growing pains, though, things continue to go pretty swimmingly. I'm more often just in a state of shock & dumbfounded-ness at my ever-increasing girth, and at the *violence* with which baby girl is moving around in there. "Active" seems to be an understatement for her. If I wasn't so sure there was only one of her in there, I'd assume she had recruited some friends for daily mosh pit sessions.

26 weeks. But the real excitement in this photo is I FINALLY GOT MYSELF A FULL LENGTH MIRROR!! 

I definitely miss the awesome renewed energy from the second trimester, though. That cut off dramatically, like a faucet being turned off, just days before officially hitting third tri. I now want to do nothing but lie on my couch with glazed eyes. Dragging myself to work every day seems challenging and unfair. I'm pretty useless every night once I get home, especially if I manage to also make dinner before collapsing prone onto the sofa.

And I still have THREE MONTHS to go! This seems both insane (HOW MUCH BIGGER CAN MY BELLY PHYSICALLY GET) and alarming (ONLY THREE MONTHS? I WILL HAVE AN ENTIRE HUMAN CHILD IN 3 MONTHS?!?!?!) and I flip smoothly between these two reactions about 14 thousand times a day.

The first thing I (finally) bought for baby girl's nursery! It's a print of a paper cut by Sarah Trumbauer, and I loooooove it. If / when we ever pick a name for this kid, I want to get one of her custom versions with  her name included on it, too.

On the one hand, it's awfully good there are still three months to go because WOWZA are we not ready for her yet. We officially moved into the new house 4 weeks ago, and it's been a slow process getting everything set up & unpacked. We have a lot more house than we did before, so trying to figure out what to put where, how to distribute our now-seemingly-meager furniture supply between rooms, and ordering more furniture to fill the most egregious gaps, is slow going.

The cats testing out our new-to-us chaise longue, toted back last weekend from my parents' house in NJ

In a ridiculously well timed twist of fate, my parents ended up selling their house over a year before they initially intended to and are closing this weekend - meaning they had to downsize dramatically at exactly the same time we found ourselves with a new house with excessive storage space. And with a lawn and property that requires maintenance and care, but no tools with which to do so.

...So we went to NJ and loaded up a 15 foot UHaul with virtually the entire contents of their shed and storage room. BOOM. We now have a lawn mower! And a snow blower! And a circular saw, and a jigsaw, and like 12 other kinds of saws, and a power washer, and a power painter, and shovels and rakes and belt sanders and every other tool my dad bought over 40 years for house projects. It's kind of awesome.

Oh, and also the PIANO.

::heart eye emojis for days::

I need to find the box of piano books (oh. hmm. and figure out a storage solution for piano books!) and get playing for baby girl.

BUT, all of this means there has still been almost no focus on preparing for the whole BABY part of things. I did finally register, because my mom was getting increasingly alarmed at my inability to set a date for a baby shower, but I couldn't send out invites to a shower until I had a registry, and I had no time to research enough baby items for a registry soooo nothing happened for many weeks. BUT it is now done, invites have been sent, date is set, and I now get presents every day in the mail and it is VERY VERY FUN. Newsflash, guys: baby things are FREAKING ADORABLE! So many cute tiny articles of clothing are showing up on our doorstep!

And, uh, it all goes, still in the box, into the empty room that will be her nursery. Eventually. Once we buy furniture and stuff.

We're also holding the shower at our house - in exactly 4 weeks - so we're using that as incentive to get our asses in gear in terms of finalizing the house layout and acquiring the bare minimum of furniture (and, say, getting backsplash tile installed in our kitchen after having half of the old stuff ripped out during counter installation) before then.

Testing out the size of the new, larger dining room table we need for our new, larger, AWESOME communal living/dining space at the new house. 

Luckily, I am a great help around the house right now and have boundless energy! ...oh wait. Haaa.