35 Week Special: Ham hands & hot hobbit feet in a pool of saliva

I can't claim to be feeling terrible, even 5 weeks from our due date, but I do have a few ailments I'm sure you're all dying to know about. Let's start with the ham hands. After a bit of a nervous "episode" on Friday, Paul decided I needed to get out of the city so we spent the day up in Santa Barbara. It was much cooler there than by our house, but I couldn't escape the swelling of the hands and feet. After dipping my feet in the cold ocean water they felt a lot better, but my hands didn't. My fingers swell up and the palms of my hands turn odd shades of red and white. Not pretty, and, thanks to Paul, the phenomenon is now known as "ham hands." These ham hands have gone from the 6 rings I normally wear to one $5 oversized faux silver band on my wedding finger. I tried to make my wedding band work, but sayonara! No dice. In addition I have achey finger joints all day long, which is supposedly due to excess fluids hanging around my digits. Along with the arthritic ham hands I have NHFS (Nightly Hot Foot Syndrome). This is annoying as hell, especially for Paul I reckon, because the only thing that cools them down is a foot massage. Even with the inevitable soothing foot massage, I could do without the NHFS, thank you. What could possibly make all this better? An endless supply of saliva! Where is all this excess saliva coming from? I can't stop drooling, especially when I sleep. This afternoon I fell asleep and woke up with a giant pool of drool on my arm, with more dripping from the side of my mouth. I wiped it off, dozed off again, and it was like I never wiped away the first lot. While all this is going on, Mave is tucked away in there getting her beauty rest in preparation for her arrival. Then she can pick up with the drooling where I left off.

33 weeks- 7 weeks to go!

They aren't kidding when they say you grow fast towards the end.

The ginormity of the side view.

Frontal view. Bit caught off guard in this picture.

Sliders

The novelty of maternity pants has worn off. Now, I have never been happy when it came to shopping for pants. I've got a real disability with a waist that is too small for my thighs. Before pregnancy, pants fell into two categories for me: A) too tight in the leg, just right in the waist, or B) just right in the leg, too loose in the waist. Yep. I would spend a lot of time at the mall avoiding pant shopping. I was certain pregnancy would be different since I would be dealing with an anti-waist. How wrong was I?? I don't know that it would matter if my thighs DIDN'T fall into the "more to love" category. These pants would still suck. It seems as though I spend every 3-5 minutes yanking them back up to my boobs, only to have them fall back down again in a matter of seconds. What is with the constant sliding? Women have been wearing pants for years and years now. You'd think someone would learn how to make a pair of maternity pants that don't slide. Actually, I am sure they do. J-Lo had to wear something other than muu muus, right? I'm sure they're $500 a pair and, thus, will never be clinging to these thighs. Oh well. I guess trousers and I were just not made for one another, pregnant or not.

32 Weeks

Once again I find myself a textbook case in the last trimester. I can't stop cleaning and organizing, and all I really want to do is get the house in order and "make room for baby". The Mave's room is finally painted and her crib is up! The closet fittings were pretty useless in her room, so we are going to get new stuff to install in there this weekend. Paul also built the toybox that Aunt Laura sent. :) Between that and the closet being finished shortly I can actually start putting things away in Mave's room. We ordered the rest of her furniture 2 weeks ago, when I was 10 weeks away from our due date. Of course they told us it would take 10 weeks for it to get here. Typical. As long as we have a crib and butt wiping supplies we should be fine if she decides to arrive early, but it would be nice if everything came early so I could have the room completely ready and not have to worry about finishing things when she is already here. Speaking of finishing things, I've also finished designing the birth announcements and have all the envelopes addressed and ready to be stuffed. I figured this was the only way they would actually go out and now all I will have to do is add the correct info on the mock-up and print them out, which may be easier said than done with a newborn. I've just gotten 2 very hard kicks in the abdomen. I'm taking this as a sign that someone down there is sick of hearing my stomach growl and I should go eat breakfast.