Now that we are half pregnant, we can find out the sex of the baby. Monday it is! We can hardly wait. The alien movements continue in full force; half the people think it's the baby's foot moving around, half think it's my digestive system. I still haven't met anyone who's ever felt their digestive system while it's working. Regardless, if we get lucky and get a super nice ultrasound tech, maybe they can pop the magic wand up a bit higher there and see what exactly is in that spot that is driving me bonkers.
In other news, we've been trying to find a doula. Not so easy when you tell them you are due Dec. 31. They know perfectly well that you could pop just before Christmas, right on Christmas, right on New Years or sometime after that. Most people are celebrating the holidays with their own family and friends and thus we've been turned down already a couple times. I've just received a call from a doula apparently somewhat local to us who appears to be interested, so I'm crossing my fingers.
The Volvo started making an engine knock noise a few days ago. Sean has been working on what to do with this situation. We know the car has 300k on it, it's 15 years old, and honestly has more than done its fair share of work for us for the price we paid for it. She's a good old car, but she's an old car. We just went through this with the Golf. Do we put some serious money into fixing it up, or do we give up the ghost and get a replacement? I didn't expect to have to deal with the Volvo this way for another year at least but now that we have a wee minion on the way, our thinking is different. How different you may ask? Can you say MINI-VAN? (Cue scary music). After looking around we were greatly relieved to find out that there are a few import options in this family vehicle category, and pleasantly surprised that Volkswagen makes one as well. That pretty much sealed the deal for us so we started shopping around. What I'm not really prepared for is having car payments again. We haven't had car payments for five years. I never wanted to do car payments again in my life. But baby makes you change your mind on things you thought would 'never' happen. I worry that if we put off replacing the Volvo until next spring that I will decide we really won't be able to afford car payments, whereas right now I can figure out a way to make it squeak by if we cut back carefully and get a good deal (0% financing right now shaves a lot off the monthly payments). Still - doesn't look like we will both be retiring at age 50 like I had planned.
Since I'm using this as a bit of a reminder for myself of what happened when - I reached a confirmed 142 pounds for the past couple days in the morning weight.
And in happy crafty news, I finished up a baby blanket, using some granny squares I had started 10 years ago for when our friends were all having kids. It took two days of solid Youtube research to figure out how to do this all again, but the wonders of the interwebs abound and thus I have finished up a lovely stroller/car seat baby blanket.