The complain-y post...

I want to warn you that I am about to complain a whole lot. If you don't want to read my moans and groans, feel free to just skip this one and I'll probably be much more chipper next week... ETA- I wrote this yesterday and now have a little more perspective- especially after a 2 hour phone call to my parents, who listened to me moan then politely and lovingly told me to shut up and get over myself. I realise just how lucky I am to be pregnant, to be living in such an amazing place and to have the sort of problems people would give an arm to have. I considered not posting this at the risk of sounding ungrateful or whiny, but honestly, I don't like blogs that constantly paint everything as rosy. Living abroad isn't always easy. Being pregnant isn't always easy, and neither is moving house. I suppose really what is required is being gracious about the things that don't go so well and accepting them as par for the course. So forgive my grumpy ramblings!

The hot weather has finally broken. I'm starting with something I am thankful for, in the spirit of fairness. It's a balmy 80F (about 25C) and there is a glorious breeze that makes the world just a much more pleasant place to be. I am SO glad about this, since I really felt trapped in the house last week. Even going out in the car made me feel over-heated and miserable, and we don't have air-conditioning in our bedroom so sleep was terrible for a good few days. The walk to church yesterday was such a pleasant experience, I remembered why we love living here. The rest of the weekend was rough, however.

I was in a terrible mood on Saturday. Really irritable and grumpy and fed up and ready to just throw something or stab someone. Everything husband did drove me CRAZY- sometimes justified, sometimes not. We are safely entrenched in packing hell. There are boxes everywhere. We can't find anything (this morning we realised my husband has 'misplaced' his ID card for work. It opens all the doors, pays for his lunch and is basically the only thing he needs for work. My job for the day will be to find it *Sigh*.) I am getting incredibly frustrated that I can't just get on with it. Husband is adament I shouldn't be lifting anything or climbing anywhere so has taken on the entire move all by himself. All the cleaning, all the moving boxes. It's driving me nuts. The flip side of this is that I am finally starting to feel really enormous, and I am getting seriously tired again (oh third trimester...) so generally trying to get stuff done in the house is becoming challenging. I'm banging into things (and am covered in bruises for it) especially as the space in the house slowly fills up with boxes and deconstructed furniture. We move on Friday and Saturday, so at least we only have a few more days of chaos.

One of my main issues this week has been food. Or rather my husband, food and I. I had noticed that the last 2 weeks-ish I've not put any weight on. This isn't the first time this has happened, and honestly, I've been eating a bit healthier the last few weeks rather than my previous ice-cream and cookie addiction. I wasn't overly surprised that my weight gain had slowed. I think I just have to accept this is part of my pregnancy. Unfortunately I made the mistake of telling my husband, who went into 'fix it' mode. On a day where I was already irritable and annoyed, this was the final straw for me. I didn't want 'fixed', I just wanted to buy an enormous tub of ice-cream from trader joe's and be left alone to eat it. He was going on and on about more protein, and what apps he could use to monitor my dietary intake and I was ready to scream. I do understand that he feels pretty disconnected from the whole pregnancy process, and he just wants to get involved. This feels like something he can do. The flip side of that is that I just feel infantilised by his concern, like I'm not to be trusted to handle things for myself. It all came to a head at night when he told me he'd tracked my diet for the whole day. I was livid. It turned out that actually I had met all my dietary requirements for the day. All of them. It stopped my husband going on about it, so it was a good thing in the end. We'll see how long this particular detente lasts...

We had something of a Pram-fail this weekend that didn't help my mood any. We had decided months ago that we wanted a Britax B-Agile Travel system in Red. The last week or two it has been on sale in Target. We have a Target credit card that gives us 5% off everything, so all in it was a brilliant deal that made it dirt cheap, but we've been putting off buying it because of the house move. Long story short, we tried to buy it on Saturday, but they couldn't tell us when it would be delivered- anytime between Thursday and Tuesday, ie. right over moving weekend. This just made it impossible to buy it this weekend. And on Sunday the special offer ended so it's now $100 more expensive than it was last week. *Sighs again* I was so annoyed. We have now found another offer we can use that means we can go and buy it next weekend (in the middle of the house move...) and still save most of the money, so it's really not a disaster, but it definitely didn't help my mood.

I think part of the problem was the hormonal/emotional/subconscious response to hitting the 3rd trimester. I have had this overwhelming urge to just get things ready for Kick arriving. I was panicking about not having any of the stuff we need (we have some clothes but no socks. She will have cold feet. This felt like a disaster at 11pm on Saturday night). On the one hand, I know I don't have to have anything sorted for another 12 weeks. Even if she's born early she won't be coming home with us right away, so there's no point in getting worked up about it. And yet... Husband and I had a long talk about it on our Saturday evening walk round our local park. It definitely helped to discuss it, even if there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Creating more chaos in the apartment is not helping, but by next weekend we'll be in a new house with a nursery in it. Then the week after I can go and get most of the stuff we need. I can't wait for that week, but I'll just have to be patient. Good skill to work on I suppose.

After managing to get some good sleep this weekend, last night was a disaster. Husband spent yesterday taking down curtain rails and shelves and things we'd put up in the apartment ourselves and using spackle (Polyfilla) to repair the holes. This included my wonderful, wonderful blackout curtains. The room was light from 6am and I was AWAKE. So was the cat, who just wanted cuddles, and tried to sleep on my bump, which honestly was not that comfortable. I finally got comfy and then realised I was lying in a massive wet patch. Turns out I'd been leaking breastmilk onto my sheets. The day before I'd woken up with the sheet sticking to me, which was pretty confusing, but it was early and I didn't think too much of it. Now I know why. So today will involve a shopping trip for bras to wear to bed and breast pads, which I honestly didn't think I'd need for a very long time. No idea what leaking so much breastmilk at this stage means, or if it means anything at all. Probably not, really, but it's nice to know that I definitely make the stuff, even if the only beneficiary right now is our mattress protector.

So there you have it. A list of reasons why this weekend was kind of crappy. There were some highlights, in spite of it all. Football season has started back up, so Saturday was college games and Sunday the NFL, all of which makes me happy (we'll gloss over the fact the Dodgers got swept by the Reds...) there was an AMAZING meatball sub from my favourite place to get lunch, Bay Cities Deli in Santa Monica, which just happens to be next door to the fabric shop. There was also the fact Kick spent a large chunk of the weekend living up to her name. She actually kicks less and rolls aound more these days, which is something of a relief as those kicks were starting to get really quite significant in force. Unfortunately she also discovered all that lovely space I've been hiding from her under my ribs, but she doesn't seem too interested in it yet, just the occassional foray so perhaps it won't be so bad. Anybody else have a weekend they wish they could do over? Or had such a good one they want to tell me all about it? All stories gratefully received, especially when I have a day of packing to look forward to...

Moving house, hot weather and playing games...

So (if you read) my last post mentioned that we were going to be moving house. And I was really excited about it. This is still 100% true, it's just that we are now doing it significantly sooner than we had thought. We have always quite liked our landlord. We've never met her in person, but her son-in-law reluctantly deals with things for her and he's funny and not overly bothered about anything and tends to say 'yes' to whatever we want to do and ask her later, which has worked in our (cat-based) favour. So we didn't worry at all about giving her 30 days notice that we were moving out (as required by our lease.) This is where the chaos kicks in- turns out she thought this wasn't long enough, and was really unhappy about it. In my general experience, unhappy landlords = less security deposit back, and we had paid an additional pet deposit that we suspected would be held on to for less good reason than the main deposit.

She then set up lots of appointments to have the apartment viewed at the WORST possible times- once she gave us (and her poor son-in-law who was doing the viewing) 15 minutes notice- I had to RUN back from the village in 90 degree heat- there was literally sweat dripping off my nose. The next time she arranged it for 9am on a Sunday. We are NOT morning people. Especially holiday-weekend morning people. Thankfully, both the people who viewed the place on Sunday wanted it, so she was happy again. But she wanted us out sooner. Turns out her main objection to our original move-out plans wasn't so much the lack of notice but rather the fact she was missing the start of term for UCLA. She likes to rent to graduate students and they need somewhere to live before uni starts. This is absolutely not unreasonable, and if she'd just told us that, could have saved a LOT of hassle. Long story short, she emailed us and asked us how quickly we could be out. So next Friday we collect the keys to our new place and the next Monday we hand over the keys to the current one- all cleaned and fancy looking ready for the carpet fitters to come and make it better than it is now. 

It's all fine really, but poor husband has been seriously stressed out trying to deal with it all- phone calls with University housing asking to change dates, weird email chains with landlords etc. It's been rough, but by a week on Monday, it'll all be worth it. I hope. We've still not actually seen the new place...

In other news, it is really effing hot. The temperature has been hovering around the 90 degree mark for the last week, (that's about 32 degrees in British weather) and today it is apparently 98 degrees (37C) and I am too damn hot. I am mostly crediting this as a pregnancy thing, as generally I love hot weather. It doesn't bother me at all. I like being outside in it, and feeling the sun slightly blister my skin. This is not our first September in Southern California. I relished the heat last year. This year I am sweaty and damp and not sleeping and unhappy. Our air-conditioning, which we have only used a handful of times before now, is running constantly. There is more than one fan running all day in our bedroom- one of them is just pointed directly at me ALL NIGHT. It is a constant battle to stay at a temperature where I can function, and I've effectively just stopped going out during the day. I really want to go shopping and go to the fabric shop and maybe even go and get a coffee and I haven't done any of these things since it's too damn hot outside and it'll make me feel ill. The good news is it's only supposed to last til Monday, then the temp will go back down to the mid-80s, (about 29C) which is infinitely more pleasant 

Since most of this blog post has been me complaining about things (sorry) I'll move on to something all the more hilarious. Last night was our first ante-natal class. We walked into the hospital (which is LUSH, by the way, One of the nicest buildings I've been in since we got here) and headed to Conference Room 3, where a bunch of preggos were sitting with tired looking men in a semi-circle round the room, and an older lady with white hair was sitting at the front. This all looked exactly as I expected it to in my mind's eye. I looked the same amount of pregnant as everyone else in the room, which was a relief as I was worried I was too organised and had booked it too early (although one lady is due before the last class- hope it doesn't come early...) It was straight after dinner, which meant I had to leave the room approximately every 15 minutes to pee, which no one minded thankfully, but I was left wondering where all these other ladies got their staggering bladder capacity, as I seemed to be the only one. 

When I was out at the bathroom (for the second time) she started the introductions. She started with the partners, apparently. This meant my husband was up first. I have no idea what he said (this really bothers me, but I cannot figure out why since how much can he embarrass me saying his name and Kick's due date, really?) but I came in half-way through and he was looking at the instructor blankly as she asked him about 'the games he played'. Eventually he kind of said he didn't talk to the baby directly through my stomach, and she said 'she'll know your voice anyway' and I was thoroughly confused but we moved on. It turned out she was asking the partners what games they played with the baby. The baby that is still in my stomach. All of them answered in a slightly confused manner that they didn't play any games with the baby with varying degrees of humour . Personal favourites included "well, peek-a-boo, obviously" and "Does it count as a game that every time my wife tells me to feel her stomach because the baby is kicking, it stops? Because we play THAT game every night" 

We reached the end of the semi-circle, pausing to explain that the last couple were not a couple at all, but rather two student nurses sitting in on the session (explains why the girl was in skinny jeans and not, y'know, pregnant.) Then the instructor just moved on. No reference to what 'games' the should be playing, or why or anything. Just moved on. Then it was my turn to start for the lay-dees, as the Southern instructor said, and I said my favourite thing about being pregnant was that people always let you skip the queue for the toilets. Everyone else proceeded to tell stories about how much they love feeling their babies kick, and I felt like a total tool. Never mind, at least I'm being true to myself...