Me: “Awh dang. Well… hm. I guess I can… partition my milk in peace?”

Daniel: “Hahaha!”

Me: “Thrilling, right? I didn’t get as much today as I usually do.”

Daniel: “Awh. We can have oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow.”

Regardless whether it helps or not, I just love that he knew to offer.

Dr’s appointment yesterday didn’t offer a lot of great news – my blood pressure is elevated (140/90, up from 140/76 two weeks ago) so they want me to come back in Monday for another blood pressure check just to make sure it’s not continuing to go up.

I don’t seem to be spilling any protein in my urine or having any hand/face swelling or dizziness, so I don’t think I have preeclampsia, but they want to err on the safe side. Right now, I’m hoping for two things:

1. Blood pressure either stays the same or goes down. I really, really don’t want it to go up. This also contributes quite a bit (I think, anyway) to the foot swelling so any improvement here would be welcome.
2. I continue to not have protein in my urine. The midwife mentioned something about maybe doing a 24-hour sample collect, where you have to keep all your urine for 24 hours in a jug and then bring it in so they can test it. DO NOT WANT.

I keep joking with Daniel that he’s going to start feeding me only salads and gruel to try to keep my BP down. Somehow I get the impression that he is considering it.

They also wheeled in a terrifically ancient-looking ultrasound machine to verify Baby’s position, because at this point, they really should be head-down to prepare for labor. Just to be difficult, Baby was transverse. Argh.

Daniel gave him a pep talk to try to get him to turn, and I’ve been hanging out in Cat Cow to try to give him a bit more room. I have basically no torso so I don’t blame him for stretching out sideways across my tummy, but HEY. BABY. There is this thing called “birth” we have to go through, and best to not make it more difficult than necessary for the both of us. Head: down. Now.

Breastfeeding Class

This went well. I was surprised to discover that I knew several of the points the instructor made just from reading so many parenting blogs over the years. Internet win! We got a book to refer to and lots of handouts, and we practiced some nursing positions with plastic baby dolls.

I made the class giggle during introductions because we were supposed to mention a concern or fear we had regarding breastfeeding and I said I was afraid my boobs would suffocate my baby. And then I turned bright pink, because HELLO, the only person in this room I know is my husband and now I have basically just said hi! My name is Meggan and I have ridiculously large boobs, nice to meet you.

Sleep

I actually haven’t been doing too poorly in the sleep department, but apparently poor Daniel is being woken up by my outrageously loud breathing and/or snoring. Whoops. My nose gets kind of snuffly in the evenings so by the time I go to bed I can’t breathe through my nose very well and I guess I make a lot of noise? Occasionally I’ll wake up to him elbowing me but that’s about all I remember.

Lucky

I just wanted to mention how much I lucked out with Daniel as my husband. He will volunteer to squish my feet if they are painful, he does all our laundry and dishes, handles a lot of the grocery shopping, makes me dinner, and is great about cleaning the apartment.

He is excited about preparing for Baby and wasn’t a bum about going to classes or participating once we were there. This past weekend he told me he’s looking forward to carrying Baby around in a sling, and if I hadn’t already been sitting I would have keeled over from the cuteness.

OMG SO ADORABLE.

He turns 25 on Sunday and I am so pleased that I’ve gotten to share the last 9-ish years with him. Love you, Danbob!

I am pretty sure this means he wins at life.

Little-known fact about me: I ADORE SCAVENGER HUNTS. My mom used to make them for me when was little, and I love the fun of figuring out the riddles in the clues and running back and forth to find the next clue.

Daniel got started writing out the clues, and in about ten minutes he had me throw a random shirt over my head to block out my view so he could hide the clues. I was reading a book in the living room at the time. Amazingly, I didn’t hear him open any of the doors he hid clues behind. (Apparently I get really engrossed in my books.)

Photos of the clues and their answers ahead…

Begin!

With a helpful skull and crossbones motif.

We have two gnomes, one in the terrarium and one that lives in our basket that holds the mail. I picked the mail basket one first and Daniel told me I was looking in the wrong spot, so off to the terrarium it was.

I don’t think I remembered to share a photo of this during Christmas – it’s my very own terrarium! It lives in the bedroom on my dresser.

The gnome helps me out.

Behold the mighty beast!

I knew this one straight away! I am hugely into Michael Connelly novels at the moment and pick them up whenever I find them at thrift stores – they’re amazing detective novels and Daniel knew I’d get the clue’s meaning.

My mystery novels! I also have a huge Agatha Christie section, but that’s on another shelf.

This one was one of the harder ones… I had to think back to our Dexter season 1 marathons last year and I remembered that there was the Ice Truck Killer, but I didn’t immediately put “mobile one of these” together with “ice truck” to get “ice in freezer.”

The ice!

Time to bundle up? That means one thing: the closet!

Our winter coats were hiding the last clue.

This one took me the longest. I kept thinking, expand? Sponge? I couldn’t figure out what we had that was obviously made in New York. I finally thought of Daniel’s backpack, which is made by Manhattan something-or-other, and then suddenly “expands like a mofo” made sense! That backpack can fit EVERYTHING in it! Things like M&Ms!

Dessert was delicious, and I SO HOPE I get to do another scavenger hunt again soon. They are so much fun!

Our friends’ save-the-date that came in the mail today:

Impromptu crafts, especially ones that involve Harry Potter:

(This is one of several. I don’t want to share them all just yet!)

Our lovely visit with Daniel’s mom and sister this past weekend, wherein we ate a lot of wonderful food, celebrated Gretchen’s 30th birthday, had dinner for Kerri’s birthday, and generally had a very good time. Daniel’s mom brought our Christmas present with her, which was a hand-painted basket (she’s a basketmaker) painted with coffee! Rad!

Now, back to cleaning the apartment. I don’t usually think of myself as a very messy person, but YOW does the living room get filled with junk when I am not looking. Sweatshirts everywhere, half-finished craft projects all over, and piles of things waiting to be sorted…