Week 36 + Nurses Week!

Woohoo!

Nurses Week is awesome -- at my work we get t-shirts, some celebratory treats and there's an artisan fair I'm going to do my damnedest to attend in the midst of a 12-hour shift. It's fun to feel appreciated and celebrated, of course, so Nurses Week rocks. I've been a nurse for more than  year now! Whoa! I blogged through the whole journey of pre-requisites for the pre-requisites to starting nursing school to clinicals to graduation and taking my boards and finally applying for this dream job I've actually been working for a year. All worth it. Times a million.


Baby-to-be is the size of a head of romaine lettuce. Not sure where there's room for something so big inside of me, but I know somebody is moving around in there so I'll trust that it's this little one. 36 weeks! We'll be meeting the lettuce in less than a month.

While I worked all this weekend B practiced setting up the stroller, the pack-n-play (which might be lettuce's bed for the first several weeks), the changing table and the car seat.

Our baby showers were amazing so let me boast about them a bit...

Country Shower at B's mom's house... lots of family, delicious food (including my now-beloved chicken salad sandwiches -- no one told me they are delicious until now!), warm-sunshiny weather and soon-to-be-grandparents beaming about baby-to-be!

City Shower at Irish Bistro (scene of the crime: where we got married almost four years ago!)... a ton of friends, a ton of our friends' kids, merry conversations with beers in hand, Chicago sports on in the back, delicious wedding-cake-replica (both showers featured Dinkel's cake!) and so much excitement over baby-to-be. Friends made an awesome alphabet book for the lettuce that shows off how weird and fantastic all the people we know are. Sweet!

We got a stupendous amount of baby gear which means we are mostly prepared (but totally mentally unprepared) for baby-to-be. We are most excited about tiny hats (hats are the best), having a spectacular car seat (the one we picked just got even better ratings from Consumer Reports) and our dream stroller (which B considered taking on a walk yesterday without a baby in it just for practice). We also have a good stock of must-need items like clothes, blankets, breastfeeding stuff, and more. We are so lucky and blessed to have such awesome people in our lives including BFFs Julie and Cindy who coordinated, bought coloring supplies, sent invites, ordered cookies, made decisions about cakes and made it so this prego lady could sit back and enjoy it all. For what many call "the last time anyone will pay attention to you instead of your kiddo" we had the best time ever. Twice!

Phew!

Week 36 and I'm feeling good. Lettuce moves around and I keep moving as much as I can. I come home from working 12-hour shifts completely exhausted, but that seems very appropriate. My legs are still marching me about 5 miles a day (per Fitbit) and doing some stretching throughout the day is a requirement. I'm always both hungry and full, so I eat tiny meals all day long which suits me just fine.

This week I'm attempting to pack our "go bag" for the hospital, decide what we still want to get on our baby-prep list and celebrate my partner in crime as he turns 37!