Thankfulness and Painting

God is taking such good care of me. Two things in the last two days.

1) A couple mornings ago, I woke up at about 5:30 to let the dog out. (I almost always do this, and then we go right back to sleep.) My allergies have been so terrible, though--exacerbated by pregnancy hormones, of course--that I've been coughing a lot, especially when I'm horizontal. When I got back in bed after taking Sune out, I just kept coughing and coughing, to that horrible point where I felt my gag reflex kick in from so much irritation and I felt like I'd puke. Just the morning before, I'd gotten up at 7:00 because I couldn't quit coughing. That's not super early, but it is for me in the summer! I lay there and prayed, "Lord, please let me get back to sleep, please let me quit coughing." Literally moments after that, I was dead asleep again. I don't even remember drifting off, just BAM and I was gone for a few more hours of lovely, lovely sleep.

P.S. Since then, my midwife has cleared me to take Robitussin, huzzah! It helped SO much last night, it was awesome. I can also take Claritin, which helps with the sinus stuff.

2) Yesterday, Matt and I spent the afternoon painting Caius' room! (More on that in a minute.) I did fine for the first part of it: no pain, no tiredness. We went at it for about an hour and a half, then took a break. After the break, though, I guess my back had settled or something, so while I felt fine during the painting (finished up in about 45 more minutes), my back HURT the whole rest of the night. There's a place almost at the base of my spine just to the left that gets tweaked sometimes, and that was what acted up last night. I've been getting up for a potty break at about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning lately, and when I did that this morning, that same spot still hurt so badly that I could barely make it to the bathroom by limping! As I lay back down in bed, I prayed, "God, please heal my back so I'm not miserable all day tomorrow, I have so many things to do and it hurts so badly!" When I got up at about 6:00 to let the dog outside, my back totally didn't hurt at all! I even took Sune on a little walk this morning when I got up for good, and I feel fine!

The Lord is taking such good care of us with this pregnancy. There are unpleasant parts, yes, and there have been some painful parts (mostly my hips and back, and a couple of really bad "morning" sickness incidents at the beginning), but overall, this has been kind of a piece of cake, especially compared to the pregnancies of some friends I know of. I feel so blesed.

This is the color of Caius' room. Everyone's monitor will show it a little differently, but it's a very light blue with just a little grey in it and maybe a teeeeeeeny hint of green. Of course it dried a little darker and a little different on the walls than we expected, but I still like it.

I did the edges around the baseboards, ceiling, sockets, window, and closet.

Me: "Try and not totally get my butt in the picture." Matt: *Takes a picture of my butt*

Having sooooooo much fun.

Matt did the big areas with the roller.

I'm sure Caius is totally going to appreciate all the work we put in to this.

Happily listening to a Pandora station with Queen, The Eagles, Elton John....

Sune was very helpful.

She has blue on her right ear, in her tail, and on her left side. She can't stand to be more than 3 feet away from me. Ever. And there wasn't a way we could keep her out without listening to her cry the whole time. Eh, it's just paint.

We got decent enough paint that we could do only one coat, YAY! We did need a few touch-up areas, though, once it had dried and we could see what needed more coverage. I think we got it done pretty quickly, though! I haaaaaaaate putting on and taking off painter's tape, so I just went around carefully with a 2" brush and I think that actually saved a ton of time even though I had to go a little more slowly and carefully right up against the edges.

I'd have some "after" pictures, but it looks just like the above pictures but with more blue on the walls and with piles of baby stuff back in there. In the next few days, we will get non-baby stuff put elsewhere (attic, office, Goodwill) and finally get the crib and changing table put together. Maybe at that point, I'll take more pictures.

Oh, my last midwife appointment, on Monday, went fine. We got a packet of info about hospital tours, birth classes, choosing a pediatrician (already?!), and things like that. I think we will do the hospital tour and birth class both in July while I'm out of school and we have the time. Rather than do an hour a week for six weeks for the class, we'll just take one day of several hours and get it all done at once. For the first time, my belly was measured from pubic bone to the top of my uterus, which is called the fundus. (Fundus, fundus, fundus!) I'm measuring right about on track. I've gained about 13 pounds total, and I should be around 15, so that's close enough. The baby's heartbeat is strong and somewhere around 145-153BPM, which is great. Everything is going just swimmingly!

I am so blessed.