On the plus side, it turns out that my OB practice has a hands-off policy on interventions through week 41, so Griffin has at least a week and a half to make a break for it before we start doing fetal Non Stress Tests and talking induction. I’ve heard that some practices require inductions by week 40 (!?!?!) so I’m glad I won’t have to deal with that pressure for a little while, if at all.

Today I had some intriguing backaches and stomach cramps, but nothing that stuck around for more than a few hours. Given how awful I’m feeling right now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’d like to be a little more rested than this before labor starts, and it sure would be nice to be able to breathe.

This is the Area 51 Baby Hat, pattern by Sugar Lane on Etsy. (She has some other very cute patterns as well.) I used some of my thick and thin merino handspun (with some bits of black and white Cascade 220 for the eyeballs), and I think it was a great choice. It’s very soft and cushy. This is a bigger hat than the others I’ve made, so I have hopes that it’ll still fit the little one in the fall.

The cats were, once again, singularly ungrateful for the opportunity to model my creation. (Miranda was having none of it, and I didn’t even try with Shastes.)

Ada:

Perl:

Thumper:

Afterwards, we headed to Wake Forest for my family birthday gathering. We had a yummy dinner and I got lots of cool loot, including some Guinness for, um, medicinal purposes after the baby’s here. Robin had also done some more Griffin shopping and we were presented with some very cute onesies and with Captain Calamari, who fits in great with the pirate theme.

(Jag has since noted that squids have 10 arms and not 8, so he’s really an octopus. We may rename him “Admiral Ackbar”.)

On the knitting front, I finished the last wool diaper cover I was working on and washed and lanolized all three of the wool wraps/soakers I’ve made so far. We’ll see how those work out in terms of leakproofness and fit once Griffin arrives to use them.

My next project is this “Area 51″ alien eyeball hat.

I’m making mine in a thick and thin merino single-ply I spun up this summer as an attempt at a faux Malabrigo. It’s not machine washable, but it should be nice and soft on Griffin’s little head and it’s a hat, so he’s unlikely to poop or barf on it and make me wash it frequently. I hope.

It was a really nice day today, so me and Jag stopped at West Point on the Eno on the way to the grocery store and took a little walk to try and shake the baby loose.

Tomorrow we’ll be at 38 weeks, 2 weeks out from the “official” due date. I’m trying to be as patient as I can. I’m very uncomfortable and I’m really dragging due to insomnia and generally crappy sleep, but I’m not miserable, in pain, or suffering from any pregnancy-related health conditions. So it’s time to just suck it up and deal, use the time to make cute baby stuff, and wait for the little one to pick his day to arrive.

I took a half day from work and headed over to Jag’s office in the afternoon, where his wonderful coworker Debbie had made this simply amazing cake to celebrate the February birthdays in the office, as well as the impending arrival of little Griffin. Check out all that basketweave, and the slightly raised patterning on the “blanket” that makes it look like a quilted coverlet. And the duckies! And the shoes!

We have been blown away by the generosity of all of our family, friends and coworkers in helping us prepare to welcome the Grifflet. This kid is going to be the best-dressed, best-equipped baby in the Triangle. Thanks again to everyone for all their well-wishes and gifts! We are just so grateful for everyone’s kindness, and I feel really lucky to have had such a well-supported and trouble-free pregnancy (despite my “advanced maternal age”, which just got even more “advanced”. Ha!).

Me and Jag had a great birthday dinner at Watts Grocery. Even our shared dessert was happy and chipper! (At least, the ice cream was.)

Here’s how the room is looking, viewed from the door. We had a great time putting up the jungle animal wall decals this past week, and we’re expecting the pirate decals to arrive this week. The room definitely is a little sparse right now, but there’s plenty of wall space for adding a dresser, bookshelves, etc later on. We also want to add a glider before the baby arrives.

Here’s the other corner of the room. We decided that the cool giant bird kite that Greg gave me as a gift some years back would be great in here as a decoration. (Mom, your afghan’s not on hanging the crib any more because it’s packed in the overnight bag to keep the Grifflet warm on the ride home.) That storage unit currently holds all of the baby clothes, diapers and diaper covers, extra blankets, swaddling wraps, etc. We figure we’ll end up buying a dresser eventually, and Griffin can use the cloth bins to hold his toys and things later on.

We found these crib sheets with jungle animals on clearance at Target, and they fit in great.

And lastly, here’s me at 9 months pregnant. 36 weeks, 6 days. I am HUUUUUGE. I have never weighed this much in my entire life. You don’t really realize how big you are until you see a side-on picture of yourself. Yikes.

One thing I’m finding as I’m making things for Griffin is that there’s a severe lack of knitting and sewing patterns for boys’ clothes. If we were having a girl, there would be more adorable patterns for skirts, dresses, pantaloons, tunics, pinafores, leggings, etc etc than I could possibly make in a lifetime. There is diddly squat out there for boys. I may just have to concentrate on stuff like sewn/knitted toys and play costumes for him as he gets older.

At this risk of this becoming Heather’s Diaper Cover Blog, I’m almost done with another knitted wool soaker. I really like this pattern, so I’ll see if I can finish another before the intended recipient makes his appearance. This is the Frantic Mama wool soaker pattern.

I should also not be allowed to browse Etsy without a chaperone. I could not resist buying these two diaper covers. The skulls…the retro woodland animals…so cute!!!

Speaking of heads, the baby measured in the expected size range for 35 weeks, except for HIS HEAD, which is measuring BIG. This is NOT what I wanted to hear. :-/ The doctor told us that it’s tough to get an accurate head measurement at this point with my pelvis in the way, and if his head was at an angle when the tech took the measurement, it could easily have been off. I hope he’s right.

The ultrasound equipment at the OB’s office is pretty basic, so we didn’t even get any nice pictures. (Not that we could really get any good images of his face at this point anyway, with it pointing towards my spine. )

On the other hand, everything else is fine (Griffin’s heart rate, my blood pressure and iron, etc). I’ll be going in for weekly appointments now, so hopefully things will continue to progress as they should.

On a more amusing note, here’s a great Free Range Kids blog post about my least favorite pregnancy book.

No pictures yet, but I spent most of the day making a crib skirt, packing the hospital bag, and doing some more nursery cleanup. As of today there are no more crafting supplies/Rubbermaid storage towers/etc in the baby’s room. The closet still has some boxes of fabric and fiber, but we literally have nowhere else to put them at this point, and there’s room now to hang the Grifflet’s clothes, at least. I need to buy some peel and stick velcro to finish up the crib skirt, since that’s how I want to attach it to the crib frame, but it’s otherwise ready to go. I have plans for a little matching window valence too, but that should go pretty quick.

I did finish up a quick hat to match the sweater that I knitted for little Griffin (note that the pompom on top was Jag’s idea!).

And the second wool soaker wrap is done, too, except for the Applix closures.

I’m currently mulling over what to knit next. I have a ton of baby sweater patterns downloaded and printed, and I’d like to knit another type of soaker to see if we end up liking it better.

On a semi-related note, I keep running into references to “push presents” lately (see the Wikipedia article for details if you’re not familiar with the term, I wasn’t). Does this seem…just sorta creepy and tacky to anyone else? Seriously, women are really signing up for “push present” REGISTRIES???

Having a kid is really expensive, and it seems pretty stupid to blow a chunk of change on some kind of thanks-for-enduring-the-pregnancy bribe at a time when money is flying out the window. Do people really need some kind of material reward for every frigging thing they do these days? Biology isn’t “fair”; being female, there’s nothing I can do about being the one to endure the various inconveniences of being pregnant, and I fail to see how that translates into “I deserve a pair of overpriced diamond earrings”. If Jag wants to make me happy after the baby’s born, he can take me out for a sushi dinner or get me a 4-pack of Guinness draft cans. And change a couple extra diapers.

We spent some time cleaning out the nursery closet today, and I came across this banner that I bought at a Ren Faire at least 10 years ago. How perfect is this for the Grifflet’s room???? We’re trying to avoid inundating him with heraldic beasts because he’ll probably get pretty sick of that as he gets older, but I can’t resist hanging this up.

I started knitting another wool soaker with an oddball of Plymouth Boku that I had lying around, with the waistband in a coordinating solid wool. This kid will have the prettiest diaper covers ever!

Me and Jag have been watching Season One of “The Tudors” on DVD lately. It’s entertaining, it’s gorgeously filmed, the actors are great, but the writers seem to get about 10% of the history correct on a good day. I usually spend half the episodes looking up stuff on Wikipedia that turns out to be completely wrong. No, Henry Fitzroy didn’t die at age 5, no, Henry VIII’s sister Margaret didn’t marry the king of Portugal and murder him in his bed, etc etc etc. If nothing else, we’re learning a whole lot about Tudor history just from figuring how exactly how far from the truth the series is (which is usually by several miles).