35 Weeks | I Have Pachyderm Feet

The view here from 35 weeks of pregnancy is one of anticipation mixed with equal parts back aches, bladder pressure, wretched heartburn, and feet and legs that are slowly resembling an elephant’s. My other go-to comparison for my legs and feet are tree trunks with root flares. I longingly look outside at the things that need to be done and enjoyed but have pretty much abandoned doing much outside at the moment and likely for the rest of the summer. It’s pretty depressing to read any of my outdoor blogs and see people hiking or exploring and knowing that I just can’t do that at the moment. I miss it a lot, which is a big reason I haven’t been writing here a lot lately. The Texas heat just isn’t so nice to nearly full-term pregnant women.

So, theorhetically, I have about five weeks until the baby is due. Of course he could come anytime in the next few weeks or torture me a little bit and wait an extra week or so after his ‘due date’. I totally get why people get induced, not that I’m going to or want to, but I get it. That said, he needs to stay in for at least four more weeks since we have a lot left to do to get ready for his arrival. What are we still doing around here? Just about everything. The baby’s room is kinda complete, his closet is not. Chris basically lost a month this summer having to go to do field work so we’re behind on finishing up the closet renovations. I’m unable to help him on a lot of it so it is pretty much a solo job for him, which is why I feel bad that I’m having to taper back my outdoor work at the moment—it was where I could help out as much as I could. Chris is currently trying to figure out the best way to match the texturing on the new walls in the closets and the guest room to the texture that was already on the walls that were previously there. It’s turning out to be more frustrating than he was aiming for. As a result of all of this work means I have dust all over my house and everything is still chaotic. I just have to keep envisioning the end product and how nice it will look when it is done.

In the midst of the work this weekend we took some early morning time on Sunday to head to Mercer Arboretum for some maternity portraits. I had Chris process one of them so I could post it here but will wait until things settle down with renovations before I bug him about looking at the rest. It was lovely walking out there but my feet and I were done after about an hour as the heat and humidity began rising.

I guess one of the major things that we did accomplish this weekend was getting the decals up on the baby’s room. A few months ago Chris kept talking about wanting to paint a mural, which sounded great initially but I quickly told him that it was going to take too much time when we had other major projects to do, especially with his field work schedule. I’m so glad we chose to just order decals off of Etsy instead!

It was a little tricky to start but once we got a routine the decals went up fairly easily.

I’m really loving how it turned out and I think Chris is too. We were already talking about the day we come in and find Teddy peeling off the decals in an act of toddler rebellion! Hopefully that doesn’t happen, but you never know!

What else needs to happen in the next five weeks or less?
-Finish painting cradle and get it upstairs. Hopefully the mattress and sheets we ordered for it come soon.
-The obvious: finish closets, paint closets, paint guest room, get guest room back in order.
-Clean house top to bottom!
-Finish organizing baby’s room.
-Pack hospital bag for me and the baby.
-Get everything that is left on our registry…the biggest one we’ll need first will be diapers.
-Buy a car for me! Can’t tote baby around in a two door truck.

I’m sure there are many other tiny things that need to be done but I won’t bore you with the minutiae….like replanting squash seeds that the borers got to.