33wks (6ds)... barely

Guys it was Thanksgiving. You have to cut me some slack. I know I say this all the time, but this week really has been non stop. Aren't the holidays always? You will probably be lucky if I post at all around Christmas. Anyways, I started Week 33 on Thanksgiving day. The day before I'd cooked and cleaned and bemoaned the poor abused state of my back. And Thanksgiving day had Jason and our two little furbabies traveling down to Sunrise with my Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins for Thanksgiving dinner 1 (T1, from now on) and my Sweet Potato Casserole for Thanksgiving dinner 2 (T2). After dropping off the girls at Jason's house and unloading our luggage we zipped over to my Mom's house where 16 of us gathered around to say what we were thankful for and eat Turkey shaped cakepops from my sister (okay, so there was actual turkey and other yummy things there as well, but cakepops, c'mon). After enjoying T1 and socializing a bit - not to mention coercing Bebe to finally move for her future Great Grandma's and her Aunt Lilly - Jason and I bid adieu and headed back over to his parents' for T2 where 12 of us gathered around to nosh on turkey and my sweet potatoes and other amazing dishes. Jason's aunt even made me an AMAZING Chocolate Truffle Pie (that I swear tastes JUST like eating a Lindt truffle) for my birthday (which isn't until the 5th of December, but we celebrated then!). All in all? It was a super successful Turkey day and Bebe and I were satiated and content!

The next morning Jason and I got up early and headed over to my mom's to get ready for my family's 3rd annual Thanksgiving Weekend Key West Vacation! My mom, Stepdad, sisters, brother-in-law, sister's boyfriend, Jason and I (that's 10 of us) all head down to Key West to relax and enjoy. If by relaxing you mean bar crawling across Key West, which I do. Well, they bar crawled, I snacked. Cheese fries, ice cream, key lime pie, and lots of water. LOTS of water. Before we left we joked that they'd get me a wheel chair for all the walking and somehow get to the front of the line. I nixed the wheel chair idea. I'm pregnant, not an invalid. However I DID end up getting to the front of every line I went into. Bathroom line, that is. Something about an 8 months pregnant lady with a hand on her back and a pained look on her face spurns the charity of half drunk bar patrons so that even the bartenders and waitresses let me go before them. But I survived, mostly! And made every day 7am to 7pm, which is when my energy evaporated and Jason would take me home so I could curl up in bed in exhaustion and moderate pain. Of course, two days of non stop walking and I didn't swell up once. Stop at a local restaurant/bar in Islamorada and our incompatent waiter leaves us sitting in the sweltering sun for an hour and only refilled our drinks once (when I flagged him down) before we got our food and I couldn't even get my feet in my sandals they were so badly swollen. It was awful and took a whole 24 hours before I finally felt normal again.

After the keys Jason went back to O-Town but I stayed with my mom in Sunrise for a few days. We set up Christmas on Monday. And by "we" set up Christmas I mean "my mom" set up Christmas while I occasionally wandered around and poked at things. Then I met up with one of my good friends from Middle School and her adorable daughter! We spent about 4 hours catching up and she gave me some amazing pregnancy advice (and a dvd!). It was so so so great catching up with long lost friends and it almost felt like it hadn't been nearly a decade since we'd hung out. On Tuesday I went with my mom and stepdad to get my mom a (as my sisters put it) "ballin'" new car and then decorated the Christmas tree when my sisters arrived (along with hot cocoa and snippets of the VS fashion show). This morning mom and I made our way up to Orlando where we immediately started organizing Bebe's nursery and figuring out where to put blankets and toys and things! I still have so much to wash, but I can do that on my own. Tomorrow we're going shopping for more essentials too! Clearly you all can see why I have neglected this until the last possible hour, yes? I knew you'd understand.

So how has this week treated me? So glad you asked. Bebe is definitely definitely DEFINITELY head down. The constant pressure on my bladder? Check. The flutters of little fists against my hip area? Check. The sudden sharp stabbing pain in my lower pelvis? God check, check, triple check. As I type this she is flailing around and making it so uncomfortable to sit up straight. Of course the pain in my lower back makes it uncomfortable to slouch. And the Acid Reflux makes it uncomfortable to lay down. Win, win, win! Last night I made the mistake of eating garlic rolls. Let me tell you. They taste so so much better when they're in your stomach as opposed to your esophagus. But even despite all of the discomfort and Bebe's single minded determination to make me as uncomfortable as possible, I still am loving being pregnant. I love feeling her move (even when it hurts) and I love knowing that she is active and well and full of personality even as a fetus. When she's out of me I know I'm going to miss this.

Appropriately for this week spent in the Keys, Bebe is about 4.25 lbs. which makes her the size of a pineapple! She's also about 17.25 inches long as well, which makes it slightly more reasonable as to why she is kicking and punching everything she can reach. I would too if I was 17.25" and stuck in my stomach. The waxy vernix coating is thickening and she's now lost almost all of her lanugo (that fine, downy hair) as she's putting on baby fat to round herself out. Her bones are also hardening more, although the plates in her skull won't fuse together so that they can overlap in order to pass through the birth canal (this is why babies sometimes have a conehead appearance after they're born). Fun fact: your skull doesn't actually fully fuse until early adulthood so that they can grow along with your brain through infancy and childhood. And, whew, I cannot believe I actually finished this!