Gifts, Revelations, and Discoveries

What a busy weekend!

my goodies

Saturday was my second baby shower (or celebration?). This one was in Santa Barbara and the result was a huge outpouring of love and care. Needless to say, kiddo will definitely be set for the first year.

I should also add, at the shower, Christian wanted me to share kiddo's sex. So I did. Kiddo is a boy, or at least, that's what the ultrasound tech (and my mother) assure me. Yes, we already have a name picked out. However, for the purposes of this blog I think I'll continue to call him kiddo the majority of the time (until his birth...and even then...his blogger name may always be kiddo...with a lower case k for some reason. :-/).

I even got some sweet hand-me-downs in addition to my gifts (including maternity wear which I'll begin modelling tomorrow) that I'm really excited about. Probably the ones I'm the most excited about are the books (come on guys, I'm an academic at heart - of course I love the books!).

This influx of goodies for kiddo led me to satisfy my nesting instinct (which I also used to order my starter cloth diapering stash using a large gift certificate from a friend).

Now I just have to figure out everything else... *sigh*

As part of my quest for security and exploration of things (or at least understanding) I discovered several things since coming to Santa Barbara county:

1. Kiddo loves Reiki. My mother does Reiki for her patients and was gracious enough to do that for me one night. He was SUPER active the ENTIRE time (about an hour). It was the most active I'd felt him despite it being a normally active period.
2. Kiddo loves my dad's sermons...or my dad's church music. Not sure which. All I know is that he was INCREDIBLY active during the entire sermon and fairly active during the rest of church on Sunday.
3. Even a slight decrease in hydration makes a HUGE difference in my

   

   lovely swelling!

   swelling (temperature certainly doesn't help). My feet have been ginormous since I came to SB county, and the heat here has made it difficult to keep up my hydration. I almost have it down...4 days later (I'll let you know if it continues to reach epic proportions.).
4. I am definitely in the home stretch - and my body is letting me know through aches, pains, and belly tiger striping.

Even though I still have a lot of things yet to figure out, and the stress still gets to me (I do continue to cry randomly) it's these little discoveries that bring me back to the present. I was reminded by many to enjoy this time. This is, after all, my first. Kiddo will always be first. There will never be another. He will change my relational identity from wife, sister, and daughter by adding something new - mother. Once a person becomes a parent, there's no going back. Mother is forever. Second and third children are different - certainly special, but in different ways. The first child is the one who initiates the biggest change (he's kicking his agreement as I type this).

So, I will relish this calm before the storm. I will continue to enjoy his movements and speak softly to him. I will sing lullabies and dream dreams. These are the quiet times I'll store in my heart. And when he's 25, I'll repeat these things in front of his significant other just to embarrass him because, well, why not?