Feeling good, feeling great, feeling grand! Feeling more and more like I’m lugging around a bowling ball with every minute that passes, but loving it. The little monster moves around constantly, and I think I am going to miss having the karate kid inside of me when D-Day arrives and liberates it from my pelvis. Everyone keeps telling me, just wait, just wait, just wait – you’re going to be SO over being pregnant, you’re going to be SO ready to get that thing out of you, you’re going to feel like the 3rd trimester lasts FOREVER – but I’m definitely not there yet. I like that all I have to do is remember to eat and occasionally breathe and my body takes care of the rest for the oyster on its own. I love that when I push on its little appendages it pushes me back and bounces around – probably annoyed as hell I’m bugging it, but I’d like to imagine it’s responding affectionately. I like that it has hiccups on the regular, and I shout to it to do the ol’ Polish trick to get rid of them. I love that if I’m feeling lonely because Papa Gates drank himself into a stupor during the Packer game, I’m quickly reminded that I’m not alone with a few quick jabs to the ribs and lungs. We’ve got a ways to go, and you can all say “I told you so” if I spiral downwards into a pregnancy loathing full-on walrus state – but for now, I’m a happy camper kicking it with my squirmy melon. Oh, except the Braxton Hicks bad boys that have apparently come to stay. Those I could do without.

Totally not being poster children for Ma and Pa mentally prepared to be parents. Forgoing childbirth and breastfeeding classes in lieu of enjoying every spare minute left as freebirds with no real responsibilities, especially on the weekends. Definitely doing more Netflix-ing Narcos than reading our pregnancy books. But if the kid ever has questions about the Columbian coke cartel we will be more than prepared. We do spend a lot of time talking about baby names though! That counts right? Oh and I’ve been doing the occasional squat, which I read is good for pushing bowling balls out. And eating dates! I read something about dates and labor. Well I think it was dates, and I bought 6 pounds of them – so that’s what I’m going with regardless. So yea, you could basically say we are totes ready.

Nana and Papa made the long drive yonder to help us put in the hardwood floors in the sea creature’s aquarium. It truly is getting difficult to do anything of any sorts in the world that exists below my waist, but we cracked that sucker out in a quick afternoon of sweat and classic rock.

Before:

During:

After:

Clothes are washed and hung, diapers and wipes are stock piled, and the room is ready for baby. Like I said before, can’t say we are mentally prepared in the slightest, but the kid has stuff! We even have a coming home from the hospital outfit packed and ready to go!

Beyond thrilled with how the nursery turned out. The diaper changing station and the bookshelf were spotted on the curb and rescued into our loving home with a fresh coat of paint. For those of you that love the idea of DIY but are semi to extremely lazy – Target makes a primer and paint all-in-one spray paint in an array of delightful colors, and that’s what I used for both of those. The crib was a Kohl’s cash steal, the dresser was a piece of family furniture refinished for us by G-Mama Gates, the teepee was an amazing gift, and the rest of the decor is a mishmash of Rosie hodge-podge including some dollar store finds, rummage scores, and free Shutterfly nonsense. Really the only thing that cost us money was the flooring, and we conveniently found ourselves on the winning end of a $1 pulltab worth $250 a few weeks before it was time to purchase. Divine intervention?

Speaking of my frugal ways, my newest hobby is extremely annoying and time consuming – grocery shopping rebate apps. Being totally food and cooking obsessed, I spend quite a bit of time and money in a litany of grocery stores. I’ve always been a sale nazi, and have compared weekly sale prices at my 5 most frequented grocery stores and then carefully mapped out our weekly grocery shopping trips based on my extreme cheapness. WELL, someone told me about shopping rebate apps and after doing thorough research (reading approximately 3 sentences of a blog post about them) I immediately downloaded 3 different apps and I instantly could feel myself becoming extremely obnoxious about this. Gates learned very quickly that him telling me that he helpfully bought us cat litter because he noticed we were low will be met with a death stare and a stern, clipped few sentences that he should have asked me about coupons first. In typical Rosie form, I in no way explained the apps to him in a logical manner, but would giddily inform him when we got $0.25 back here and there, or when I purchased a bag of coffee beans and a banana for -$1.00, so he really didn’t have any idea what sort of madness I was capable of until he witnessed firsthand my first real giant shopping trip to get supplies for a packer party, our baby celebration party, and a tailgate at Lambeau that were all events occurring within a week of each other. Shopping planning took approximately 2 hours. 6 manufacturer coupons were used. I promised him multiple times that the shopping would take 40 minutes, tops. Lies. Always with the lies. 

Shopping trip took more than 40 minutes. Total bill (including a 24 pack, two 12 packs, and three 6 packs of beer) was $142. Total actual, physical, cash back to my PayPal was $55. So $87 to feed people pulled pork nachos at a Packer party, a few dozen people chili at our baby party, 6 people hot dogs and sides at a tailgate, and get more than a few people boozed up… I’m calling this my best cheapskate work yet. I have committed myself to not using any more than the 3 apps I have because I can easily see how I could slide right down the slippery cliff into extreme couponing and/or Apocalypse style hoarding because, OMG WHAT A GREAT DEAL!, but there are plenty of apps out there that can seriously save you some $. For anyone who is interested – my chosen holy trinity are Ibotta, Checkout51, and Bevrage. Godspeed, fellow penny pinchers. Oh and ask me for a referral code if you want to go insane like me, we both get $.

We took some maternity photos at our neighborhood farmer’s market and had a blast.  It rained a little, it shined a little, we laughed a whole bunch, and we did our best to show off the bump. It’s taking its sweet time looking gigantic to anyone but me but I think the photos turned out amazing.

I also realized that we took our engagement photos in the same location almost 2 years to the day before we took our bump photos! The mural from our engagement photos is now gone. Time flies, things change, and now we have a melon between us!

My weekly medical appointments and ultrasounds have been nothing exciting lately – HURRAY! The little one is measuring in pretty tiny but it is passing the weekly tests with flying colors! It is doing all the right things it is supposed to do in order to be developed enough to kick it in the big bad world, so with each passing appointment I get less and less anxious about an early delivery… at this point it could probably handle its own! And between 32 and 33 weeks it flipped itself out of a breech position! You go kiddo! If I keep my ducks in a row with my pulse and BP, my doc said they might even let me get pretty close to my official due date… I would love, love, LOVE to not have to be induced. It is a long shot, but I’ve started to get a teeny bit optimistic about that as a possibility. Fingers crossed! And legs – you can come soon little tadpole, but not quite yet!

Slowly but surely getting there!

 

PS-

Lol.