34

Yesterday was my 34-week appointment. I walked out of the doctor's office with appointments scheduled right up until my due date. Which is quite nice and all, but my babies are late (10 days, both of them... and I had to be induced, both times)... so really I simply ignore the happy "Only 6 more weeks!" comments. In my mind, it's 8 more weeks, and I'm sticking to it.

Baby is great, the doctor says: head down, bum to the left, knees centered and feet tucked right up under my ribs (to which I nodded vigorously. I feel those feet regularly!) I saw sweet little hair on this baby's head on the ultrasound today. Can I tell you how much I love knowing that?

When I told the kids about the hair, Ella (7) immediately asked, "What color was it?" I explained that we couldn't tell that on the ultrasound. And then Isaac (5) piped up: "But was it boy hair or girl hair?" I'm quite sure in his little mind he was thinking we could figure out this mystery once and for all: if the baby's hair was long, it's a girl, of course; short, it's a boy. ~smile~

Mama is um, feeling particularly huge. [I'm trying very hard not to think about the fact that I weigh more than Mark at this stage of pregnancy. But there you go, ladies. Now you can all feel sorry for me about that little tidbit.] And I'm very tired. I think I'm especially exhausted because I'm carrying around my sweet 10-month old Adelia much of the day. She's become such a mama's girl of late. I told Mark recently: "It's as if she knows that this one-on-one time in my arms is limited. She's getting it while she can."

I'm also feeling really nostalgic about my time with Adelia-as-my-baby slipping away. The other night she was snuggled up against me while I fed her her nighttime bottle and it hit me: This won't be happening when the baby comes. [At least, not as much.] I'll have another baby here that will need these arms, and Adelia will get them that much less. ~teary, here~ I know that before too long she'll naturally be more independent, anyway... but I'd hate to feel I'm forcing her into it before she's completely ready. Thankfully God has this all figured out and His timing is perfect.

Now if He could just help us come up with a girl name. We had our girl and boy names all chosen- for the majority of this pregnancy, but then about a week and a half ago, I started seriously second-guessing our girls' name. So the baby name books came back out and now we're back to square one. [I like old-fashioned (think 1800's) girl names, if anyone would like to list suggestions in the comments.]

A *huge* congratulations, by the way...
...to Andrea (Great story. Go read it.)
...to Carolynn
...to Kimmie (who is about ready to hop on a plane to Ethiopia to pick up her precious baby girl!)

Note: I was going to wait to post this until I could get a good belly photo on here, but I'm going to post it and get to that later. I'll let you know if I end up updating this with a picture.