Happy Holidays, and making a break for it

Happy Holidays!! I hope you all are having wonderful vacations/ holidays/ what all.

That said, I know that this is a purely brutal time of year for many -- the holidays sometimes seemed designed to really just rub salt into already very painful wounds. And New Years is just another reminder of time passing, and the things that we (still) are missing. So that's not all that awesome either. So maybe I'll revise that initial line to read "I hope that the holidays have sucked less than you feared they would, and that they continue to be as painless as possible." Because I do believe in being realistic and sometimes minimizing trauma is the best that you can hope for.

I'm actually at work this week, although it would be a real stretch to consider what I am doing working. Mostly I am just here, occupying space, and trying not to use any vacation days so that I have more paid time off next year. And writing a blog post, which has happened all too infrequently recently.

We don't celebrate Christmas, so it's been a relatively quiet week for me -- just some cooking, hanging out, going to movies and long naps. Oh, and a blizzard that dumped 20 inches of snow on the neighborhood so I had a snow day yesterday, which was awesome. (I love the first snow and yesterday was lovely -- fluffy snow in the park, blue sky and sun. The dog, the Boy and I all played in the snow for about an hour, which was just perfect. I never get tired of watching my dog leaping through the snow and burying his head in the deep drifts. It cracks me up every. single. time.)

On the pregnancy front, not much new to report except that I'm just about 31 weeks pregnant and I'm starting to be b-i-g BIG. Right now, there is some body part lodged under my right side ribs kind of further back than you might think that a gestating fetus would belong. And the movement has been characterized by huge kicks and pushes and swooshy turns that feel, truly, as if something is going to break out through my right side. It's highly entertaining and very cool, but not the most comfortable thing ever. I keep trying to convince it to move, but it is really happy up there. So I'm basically getting resigned to some discomfort.

On the discomfort front, I don't know what I ate wrong the last few days, but my heartburn has been epically bad, even with pepcid. I'll not regale you with my story of woe from the other night (it involved a panicked run to the bathroom to be sick) but I'm really really hoping that things quiet down. Really really hoping. Really.

But I do love LOVE the moving around. Yeah, it sometimes has a bit of an alien invasion feel (and look) to it, but I love it and already know I'm going to miss it. While I like sharing what's going on with the Boy and having him watch/ feel what's going on, I also like the secret part of it: it's just me and the little one, and that closeness is wonderful and magical and will change forever when le bebe enters the world.

As a holiday present to you all (just go with it), I have posted my first (and perhaps only) photo. I'm wearing leggings, so you can truly see how enormous I am in back and in front, but I guess that's how it goes. The body changes are pretty amazing, actually (except today someone asked me if I was having twins, which was not amazing at all and made me feel like a cow. What Evs.). I feel that about a lot of this pregnancy nowadays -- that it is just a series of small miracles that combine into the truly remarkable.