5 weeks and counting

I am 5 weeks away from the big date, and more importantly only 3 weeks away from getting some time off from work, which one can never complain about. :) Of course I have a list of 10,000 things to do at home before the baby comes, so I'll actually have to balance what I want to accomplish with actually needing to rest -- my back is killing me so badly I get home at 6 pm and if I'm not lying in bed by around 7:30 pm (although I don't fall asleep until a couple of hours later) my back doesn't have enough time to recover by morning. And even then by 10 am I already am in back pain mode all over again. I'm going to the chiropractor weekly now which definitely helps, but it's still quite a challenge to manage stuff at home (especially Gabi) with this backpain. Jose of course now claims that he does 100% of the work at home - even though he's not even close to that. But thankfully he definitely is helping a lot more. I can basically only do drop off duties and pick up duties at day care before I run out of steam. At least on the 10,000 things I'd like to do, I can probably do a lot of reading which I definitely look forward to, empty my Tivo, and maybe some walking to help with the energy level and gain weight (yikes, I don't even want to go into details about the weight gain, let's just see where I net out after the birth).

I am going to the doctor today, hopefully I'll finalize a date for the C-section. This picture is from the baby shower that my girlfriends from work threw for me at Essencha Tea House, it was a really great time, especially since it was totally baby-less, except of course for all the baby gifts. :)

We were at a party last Saturday (had a friend of Jose's visiting which forced us to go out two nights in a row, a total record for me these days, particularly to go past midnight on both days!). Jose kept telling me to please not dance (not that I had that much energy to do so anyway), he says he's perfectly prepared to deal with a SCHEDULED C-section, but would totally freak out with an unexpected early delivery. I guess I feel the same way too!

Still wondering how Gabi will manage the transition. I have a whole other blog entry I need to do (work is too busy!) about how we tried to train her to sleep on a toddler bed for 2 weeks (so that she could leave the crib to Sebastian) before entirely giving up and going back to the crib. I had two completely sleepless weeks and here I was saying, I thought I was supposed to be resting these last few weeks! Thankfully now that she's back to the crib everyone is sleeping much better, including Borges. I'm not quite sure at which point Gabi will decide it's a good idea to sleep in the bed instead of the crib, but I figure she'll let us know for sure.

My sister has moved to New Haven, CT (she's started working at Yale this week and she totally loves it!) but I am very sad not to have her 2 hours driving distance from me, and even Gabi whenever she gets upset she starts screaming that she wants her "Titi Ge" and her cousin "Jakey". It breaks my heart to see that, but I hope we get to see them soon. At least I know Gabi will be super happy when Geraldine comes to visit after Sebastian arrives.

Other than that, I'm really enjoying having new friends from Puerto Rico who have recently moved to Cincinnati for work. It's been great to have them force us to be out and about even when I don't feel like it. Gabi was especially happy about this because it meant she got to go to Graeter's for ice cream THREE times last weekend! Granted it was also very warm last weekend, but we're back to regular winter cold. Hopefully next week it actually starts creeping up because I am entirely DONE with winter, I want Sebastian to arrive in warm weather, I have dreams of being able to take long walks in the stroller, walking to Graeter's for a little bit of ice cream and back home. :)