Week 18: Dancing Feet

The big news this week is that baby officially started kicking on Saturday evening. I'd felt two tiny little "binks" earlier in the week but wasn't sure if they were kicks or just gas (as we pregnant ladies are apt to have) so I dismissed them. However, on Saturday night Johann and I went to a show featuring one of our favorite musician friends, Aaron Sprinkle, who was holding the performance at his house with a very small audience. It was wonderful to be there in such an intimate setting and, of course, he sounded amazing as always. A couple of songs in, I started to feel a lot of "bink-bink-binking" and realized that baby's little dancing feet were kicking along while Aaron played. It was so cool! We laughed on the way home that baby is already a big Sprinkle fan. What good taste baby has! :)

Then on Sunday night during the final episode of LOST, baby did more than kick. I suddenly felt it do two roll-kicks inside me. It was SO crazy! It actually startled me; my heart was pounding and everything. And, for as much as all the mothers in my life have told me that moment of first baby movement will be "magical" it was actually surreal. It kind of felt like one of those scenes in scary movies where some poor guy's got something alive inside him and you can see moving around. Ha!

After calming down from being so startled, though, I laughed and hoped it would happen again. And it really dawned on me at that moment that baby is its own person with its own will and agenda. With those two roll-kicks Baby J said: "I'm my own person and I do what I want." Oh, yes, Baby J. You do.

In between kicking incidents, Johann and I made a pilgrimmage to IKEA to garner decorating ideas and launch Project: Redecorate. Mind you, yours truly has very little to do with this project other than voicing the occasional opinion. I am definitely no decorator. But Johann has a fabulous vision for the house, as always, including cool paint and decor for the bathrooms and new furniture for the bedroom. He's determined to get the place looking fab before baby arrives since likely we won't be doing much in the way of DIY after baby comes.

We also started conceptualizing the nursery which was exciting. We had a fun and unique theme picked out already but we still needed ideas for colors and furniture that would all work together. IKEA was helpful although I think we were more inspired by individual items in the various departments than anything we saw in the baby department. (That was a bit of a snore but, admittedly, we are sort of design snobs.) I really love our more developed idea now, though, and I'm so excited to get the furniture and accessorries and start putting it together. Baby's going to have such a cool space!

I'm feeling better and better from being ill and dang it's great. Still not totally back to life energetically but I do seem to be able to go further than I have in many months. Heartburn, which started mid-morning sickness, is still very much a fact of life. Ugh. It's too bad Tums won't touch it; it sucks. Other than some pelvic region soreness (ah, those stretching round ligaments) however I've been feeling remarkably good. It's crazy to think how accustomed to feeling yucky I'd become. It's nice to feel "human" again!

If I can continue to feel more energetic (and the rainy weather abates) I plan to see if I can start walking again. I'm already doing more around the house now and it feels good to get my blood flowing again. I still need that afternoon nap most days but without nausea, life has truly begun anew. Maybe I can finally start playing catch up on all those things I've been putting off so I can get ready for baby. Man, would that be awesome. :)

J.