24 weeks = 6 months

What’s fun:

• Knowing that our baby is a he and including him in conversation.

• Feeling and seeing our baby move every day. Sometimes when I’m reading a book, the book will jerk up in my hands. Will our baby love reading or hate it?

• Educating myself on what to expect with a newborn and with parenting. There’s so much I don’t know! And so much more I don’t know that I won’t know until the baby is actually here.

• Imagining our son learning how to walk in our looonnngg hallway. Apparently, so many of my colleagues’ children learned to walk here too.

• Collecting great items for the nursery from all kinds of places, and especially from generous friends, colleagues and family members who no longer need the items.

• Wearing new clothes. All of them are hand-me-downs. Some are cute, some are purely functional because one must be clothed. (However, I only fit into 3 skirts, so I’m going to need more bottoms once the cooler weather comes… thrift store trip!)

What’s challenging:

• Matt has already grounded our son for kicking him when he went to put his hand on my belly. Careful little boy: you’ve got several more months and don’t think your dad won’t retroactively punish you…

• Painting my toe nails. “Get a pedicure!” you suggest, but I tell you that it would take less than 20 seconds for me to accidentally kick the woman in the face, knocking out her two front teeth, from being all too ticklish.

• Bending over in general, or sitting slouched. Oh, my ribs!

• Sleeping on my side. I hate it so much. It makes my left shoulder, arm and hip so sore! And yes, I have lots of pillows, including a body pillow.

• Waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, then being awake because A) he’s moving and I’m distracted from the excitement of it all, or B) I’m hungry. Like really hungry.

• Trying not to eat more than I should. I am often hungry, but the good news is that there’s plenty of delicious fruit in season. The bad news is that I LOVE CEREAL. We currently have two ‘family size’ boxes each of raisin bran and cheerios. I won’t tell you how long they last.

• Knowing that Thanksgiving is a lot closer than I realize, especially once my job starts and weeks fly by with everything teaching and dorm related. I need to practice balance in my life and not let being dorm supervisor eat up my personal life. 

Last week I dreamed that I had the baby (I think I just picked it up at the hospital, just like in real life) and when it was time to make the announcement, I couldn't remember the name we currently have picked out!! It just went POOF out of my memory. So, I ended up naming him William Henry. My sister and brother-in-law were just a little bit perplexed, but they didn't hold it against me.