The start of the last trimester

In addition to having a number of visitors to the house over this last weekend, it also marked the start of our 3rd trimester. But before I rattle off the things about pregnancy, weekend adventures! (They are more interesting anyway).

Saturday afternoon we were visited by Tj and his two brothers, Micah and Shilow. All three are originally from northern Texas, and Tj currently lives in OK. Shilow just recently got out of the navy and was stationed up here in Bremerton. For a brief background(in case your wondering how do Amanda and Richard know boys from TX and OK), we met Tj on WoW. Yes, it’s true… good ‘ole World of Warcraft bringing complete strangers together for years. When I first started playing again, the fall of the flu, is when I met Tj. We’ve been playing WoW together ever since. When he made plans to help move his brother back to TX, he asked if he could come visit us. Bremerton and Port Angeles are about 2 hours apart, so why not. We said sure!

When they got here we decided to head out to Salt Creek. It was fun, a little cold I thought. However they were like a bunch of 10 year olds playing on a school field trip. Tj and Micah threw kept at each other while Richard and Shilow jumped rocks. We found an ok sized tide pool where Tj and Shilow entertained themselves(and me) with poking at things in it. Turns out Richard and Micah were doing the same thing at another smaller tide pool, but I couldn’t see them from where I was sitting.

On our way back into town we stopped off at the lower Elwha damn. It’s set for deconstruction this year, so chances to see it are becoming few. It provided some good photos. The four boys ran down the side of the falls for photos.

After that we stopped off downtown for a quick look around including buzzing out to Ediz Hook quickly, and the requested stop at the Twilight store. From there we went straight to dinner at Old Mill Cafe just outside of Sequim. Tj, Shilow and Micah all had a bite of baby octopus that was included with our calamari. Tj asked for a “more manly” steak, because he didn’t feel 5 oz wasn’t manly enough. He was shot down by the waitress on that request. After that we headed for a brief stop at Richard’s office. They were all curious about what he does, and since our dinner location was so close we swung by.

They left pretty early Sunday morning and in packing up their car accidentally grabbed Richard’s backpack as well. We were fine with them returning it later that day until I remembered that my purse was inside. So we made an expected trip to Port Townsend where we met up with Tj to get it back.The 3 of us got ice cream and walked the sidewalks of downtown before going our separate ways.

Lorrie and Dave joined us for dinner that night. We haven’t seen them in awhile and it was good to catch up.

In baby news: We have finished putting up drywall in his bedroom. Next step is painting and putting up trim. Kami and Alicia will be here President’s day weekend to do decorative painting, etc. Richard and Mike removed the half-assed closet that was in there altogether, it makes a huge difference in the overall feel of the room. They also installed two recessed lights in addition to the normal center room light. Richard is pretty sure he would like to put them on a dimmer switch but hasn’t done so yet.

Each day, or so it seems, Quince gets more active or kicks harder or whatever. I can say that it causes me to get less sleep since one of his “awake” times is about 10 or 11pm and then again after I use the bathroom about 5 or 6am. Honestly, I’m not much of a fan of this whole stronger kicking business. It causes discomfort for me, the level depends on the location of the kicks. At least right now up high and towards the front is ok, but sometimes he starts rolling on my bladder or kicking towards my pelvis which I don’t like at all. I push back at him which sometimes works to get him to relocate and other times it doesn’t. I try to keep in mind that him being active each day is a good sign, a feet that is sometimes hard to do when he’s keeping me awake at 5am with wiggles.

Overall I would say I’m not in love with the pregnancy feeling. I think it is a very neat process but that’s where it stops. I’ve been lucky to not have much morning sickness, when I did it was at the start of my 2nd trimester. However there are a lot of little discomforts that no one tells you about. Extra dry, itchy skin; having to readjust how you sit, walk, sleep and move in general which changes with each week the farther you are along; tiredness, which is sometimes just plain exhaustion, even when you haven’t done anything; minor headaches; heartburn(!) just to name a few. Once and awhile I feel a touch guilty because I know people, or read about, those who are completely in love with baby movement and I’m just not that way. I look forward to the day when Quince goes from being a parasite to a barnacle. I don’t want him to arrive early but I’d like these next couple months not be filled with nights of no sleep or extreme discomfort. Is it that so much for a girl to ask for?