Today marks the beginning of my 25th week and I am beyond grateful that everything is going okay with my pregnancy. A fellow "Bellybean" on the boards I frequent lost her baby over the weekend and it has brought some of my fears back into very sharp focus. I am incredibly saddened that such a nice and caring woman had to suffer such a terrible loss. She and her husband had to jump through hoops for years to get to this point, only to suffer the loss of their baby girl at 19 weeks. Once again I think of all the ignorant, hate-full people who can get knocked up no problem, and crank out kid after unwanted kid or the news stories about some mom killing her baby and I wonder why there is this injustice. Why the folks who really want them have to struggle so...
Every time I feel Aden or Hunter move, I am reassured that they are still okay and pray that they decide to hang out for the long term. I consider myself very lucky and blessed right now.
Our appointment last Wednesday went pretty well. We had a growth measuring ultrasound so we got some more stats on the sea monkeys. Dr. Death was actually the doctor who read my ultrasound report and he told me that we were doing really well so that meant a lot to me! I didn't think anything but bad news could come out of that man's mouth...

Aden

Hunter
Aden and Hunter were measuring perfectly at 24 weeks even and were 1lb 5oz and 1lb 3oz respectively. My cervix was still long and closed, and my blood pressure and everything else were good as well. I gained 5 lbs since my previous visit at 22 weeks. (I guess the weight gain FINALLY decided to catch up with me and I'm probably going to watch my diet a bit more closely going forward.) But unlike other women I know, my doctor didn't yell or berate me for gaining too much between visits. All he asked me about was whether or not I was feeling depressed or extraordinally fatigued. I told him that I'd been up since 4 AM so yeah I was beat that day but I wasn't depressed in general, just really crabby. He smiled, told me that crabby was good and sent me on my way after telling me that I'll be having my Gestational Diabetes screening at my next visit.
After all the stories I've heard about it, I can honestly say that I'm not looking forward to it... but whatever it takes to get to a healthy 38 weeks.
Mark and I have our first "Multiples Birthing" class this Wednesday and in light of this operation "Baby Ready the Apartment" began in earnest this weekend. Remember this?
Well, that is no longer. What we have in it's place is this beauteous arrangement:
We still have to put up the shelving over these to hold some stuff but I'm beyond thrilled with their capacity. Everything except for my cross-stitch stuff and quilting fabrics fit in these so Mark and I are extremely pleased.
Here's how the rest of the bedroom turned out:

My sewing table and Mark's side of the bed. Yes, that's a dog bed and pillow for Maia on the floor. The magazines in the crates on the floor will go on the shelves once they are installed. Unseen in this picture is my blocking board which is now living under Mark's side of the bed...

My desk. The storage bins on the left of it contain cross stitch stuff, fabric and supplies for quilting and scraps of good yarn (who can throw out a 1/4 ball of Koigu?)...

My yarn stash. All of my yarn — sans Grandma P's acrylic which is living in the front hall closet since I couldn't bear to throw it out — is living in Ziploc bags in these drawers. In addition, the top drawer on the left is dedicated to my beading and jewelry making stuff. The top drawer on the right contains all my lace yarn and about ten WIPs. Speaking of WIPs... That humongous Lands End tote and the grey containers house all my other WIPs (yes, I have that many!). The drawered storage units on top house all my notions and circular needles. There are KnitPicks' Options needles and Denise interchangeable needles sitting on top of these, along with my most used reference books and my spinning supplies. Half of the bookshelf is taken up by reference books: stitch dictionaries, techniques, etc...

These pieces are all from the "Malm" line...

A shot of the front of the room from the back.(There's a new end table next to the glider.) I'm trying to give you some idea of how large the room is...

The new TV media unit and my other bookshelf of craft books...

Our bed without Mark or Maia in it! This is my side of the bed, as evidenced by the step stool and Moby...

My brand new glider. (I plan on knitting a throw for it... the blue thing is a temporary measure to protect the wall in case we rock too far back.) The bookshelves shown on the left here will be moved out into the hallway to make room for the cribs or we might move the glider / nursing area there and put the cribs at the very front of the room where the glider is currently...
The last remaining bit of clutter that will be tackled within the next week.There's tons of paper to be shredded and filed which are currently in the bins on the left. This might be another location for the nursing area or the changing table once the bookshelf on the left is moved out. We have to see what the dimensions of the pieces we're buying will be...
Ikea and Tar-jay freaking rock... as does Mark. He put together all this furniture pretty much single-handedly. I helped by sorting screws and some minor holding of pieces but he put together both dressers, the media unit, the glider and the new end table pretty much on his own. The bulk of my work involved reorganizing and figuring out what we should chuck. Broken VCR? Gone. Non-functional CD player? Trashed.
All in all it was an extremely productive — and exhausting — weekend.
In knitting news, I am 8 rows away from finishing the second sleeve on the Harvey Kimono. I'm thinking that I will do the blocking after it's joined so I will be working on the neck edging and joining tomorrow. My guess is that it will be done by Wednesday.
And speaking of Wednesday, don't forget that the book drawing will be held then, so if you want to enter, drop me an email by tomorrow night.