Two-five

I'm 25 weeks pregnant now, and it continues to take me by surprise every now and then. I'm luckily still in the "feeling cute" stage and not the "oh, God, I'm a planet" stage, so here's hoping that lasts.

I have finally reached the point where I'm going to have to retire any non-maternity shirts that aren't unusually long. I wore a short-ish (well, short-ish for me) long sleeved shirt over a very long maternity tank yesterday and the spot where the hem of the overshirt hit my belly was comically high. I will probably wear my work uniform shirt for the last time tomorrow for the same reason. I'm still making one pair of post-Nico jeans work, though they are getting less comfy by the week, and my underbelly jeans from last pregnancy are fitting okay now. I remembered tonight that I had a pair of super cute, super comfortable corduroy pants that fit me until the end with Nico, so I'm hoping to add those to my rotation immediately.

I need to go through my big-ass bin of maternity clothes - odds and ends thrown together from numerous sources - and pull out things that I will actually wear. I've been able to wear my regular clothes so long this time that I haven't really bothered to inventory what I have, and I suspect I'm missing out on some cute / comfortable stuff. I've decided to go ahead and sell or give away anything that I do not like or that fits funny, because (1) this is probably my last pregnancy and (2) even if it's not, if I'm not wearing them this time, I won't wear them another time either. I suspect I'll need (want) to buy another long sleeved maternity shirt or two, but I don't feel like that's unreasonable. I'm hoping to be set on pants.

All seems to be going well with the passenger, and his kicks and aerobics routines have reached a point where they are starting to get hilarious. It continues to amaze me how obvious it is that I have bony little arms and legs moving around in there. I either didn't notice as much with Nico or I've forgotten. It's not like, "Oh, that little thump must've been a kick!" Instead it's "Holy cow, was that a knee? Maybe an elbow? Or a melee weapon of some kind?"

I continue to be stupidly, gratefully lucky and I feel fine. My pelvic bones and ligaments are a little more creaky and cranky this time around, but it's nothing terrible. So far I don't have the sciatic / low back irritation I had last time, and I'm hoping I didn't just jinx myself by saying so. The need to eat constantly has faded a little bit. I'm alarmingly out of shape already, but that's probably because I quit going to the gym at 6 weeks.

I'm so happy and so excited to have this little guy, but there are also moments of sheer terror when it hits me fully that there will be two kids. A baby and a toddler! A big brother who still needs me quite a lot and a little brother who depends on my boobs for food, all at once! ACK. But mostly, I'm just happy.

We've reached a bit of an impasse with choosing a name. We mostly - or at least kind of mostly - have agreed on a first name, but we can't decide on a middle. I'm worried we'll end up deciding to change the first because of this, and that we'll have to start over. I also don't feel a huge sense of "it's perfect!" about the first name, but there's nothing else I like better, either. I am trying to remind myself that I didn't agree to Nico's name until two weeks before his due date and even then wasn't sure I was sold, and now I love it and can't imagine him being called anything else. Hopefully the same thing will happen with this one.

And probably my favorite milestone - my belly now pokes out enough that Nico can use it as a pillow / head shelf while watching his Kipper episodes: