"It's the Fin-al Count-down!"

I hope you know the tune to which you're supposed to read the words in the title. It makes me happy just thinking about how funny it is :)

I have chosen that title because I have officially entered the THIRD TRIMESTER! As I told my mom-in-law the other night, when I hit the second trimester, I felt great and thought, "Awesome, maybe the 2nd trimester will be as fun and easy as all my books say it is." Lo and behold: it was! So, the last couple of days I've been feeling super tired, heartburn-ish, and my back is starting to hurt again. Now I'm thinking, "Oh crud! maybe the 3d trimester will be as lame as all my books say it is!" Even if it is lame, that's OK! I'm so proud of Spud for getting this far; this week, he's got a 74% survival rate if we have a pre-term labor! I think that is really cool. I can tell that he's run out of excess room in there, so I'm expecting exponential growth. I've gained about 9 pounds so far... I think we've got a ways to go! Expect good pictures soon. Even though I don't look very big (which lots of people point out...) I definitely feel big! I know I'll get bigger, and this is nothing, and blah, blah, blah. But from ballerina body to this? That's a big change!

These days, I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my prenatal yoga dvd from the Seattle Holistic Center. I've heard great things, and cannot wait to get started with it. I've been doing yoga stuff from a couple of books I have for a few weeks, but doing it while reading is sort of hard. You don't get the nice flow from pose to pose, and I've always been AWFUL at pacing myself and my breathing correctly. I'm too speedy. Meanwhile, I'm still enjoying its effects along with the benefits of my pilates breathing and exercises, PT stuff, and even some barre exercises from ballet that I've been doing. I somehow lost the ability to do a freestanding grand plie in second position (a good skill for an active birth... imagine a wide, turned-out squat), so I'm working to get that back. It better not take long! I had no problems doing it almost everyday for 20 years!

Finally, I have to mention the nice thing Brendan did this morning. So, last night, I left Rib a message while he was playing his soccer game that I desperately needed him to pick up some tortilla chips for me on his way home. He called when he finished, and by that point, my need for him to hurry home so I could go to bed was stronger than my need for chips. (It's hard for me to really fall into a deep sleep if he's not here... unless it's daytime). This is holy week, and I have long enjoyed going to morning and evening prayers. But, this time around, I've only made it once for the morning. I'm just SO tired, and Spud wakes up every few hours to kick and remind me that he loves me and is doing his job of growing. Anyway, Rib did get up and go this morning (yesterday, he got up, was ready to go, and then let time get away from him as he played chess on the iPhone- haha!). When he came home, he came and woke me with tortilla chips and some fuschia gerber minis (flowers from our wedding). So nice! he's trying to be extra special, I think, because we had a talk last night about how we only have 3 months of pure couple time left (for probably around 20-something years). I felt special. Of course, he then had to rush away to get the bus leaving me to happy/preggers/no-reason cry myself back to sleep for another hour. COME HOME SOON! Well, after work :)