Shimster stuff

I am now 24 weeks along, and my belly is HUGE. I think I say this each week but it continues to grow with each passing minute. I can already tell that I'm not going to be very comfortable the last 5-10 weeks of my pregnancy! Here is a picture of my belly as of last night. (No stretch marks ... yet. But I'm sure those are coming).

I don't really have a ton of baby updates. I have another Doctor's appointment next week but honestly those are always just quick checkups to make sure things are measuring correctly and my blood pressure is okay. I never have much to report after my appointments but I guess that is a good thing! I'm feeling kicks and lots of movement from Shim and at this point have his/her routine pretty much figured out. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I really really love to feel each movement that Shim makes. Sometimes I even shake my belly a little bit if I haven't felt him in a while. I just like to know that he's okay in there! Ben doesn't really appreciate it when I do that to our child - he says the baby will get me back tenfold after it is born for all these months of me pestering him/her! And Ben is probably right.

I did decide on all of Shim's room decor and Mom ordered all the furniture last weekend! (Thanks Mom -- Shim will love it, I know!) I think I am most excited about the Glider that we picked out -- it is soooo comfortable. Hopefully it will make those late-night feedings a little easier to bear. I bought all the bedding and really like what we ended up choosing. The room will be yellow and the wall with the crib on it will be (large) black and white stripes. Sortof a french theme, I guess. Becky did a little rendering of the room and here is what she came up with! (Gives you a little bit of a visual since I won't have any of this done until the LAST minute)
The house is still progressing along. Neither Ben or I have had a chance to see it since we had our pre-drywall walk through with our builder late last week but I intend to go by to check on it today. I'm guessing that by now all the brick will be complete and the house will be dried in. As of last Friday, the builder felt that he was on target for an early April closing date so that was good news. I have heard that things slow down quite a bit once the house is dried in. Here is a picture of Ben and I at the house from a few weeks ago.

Oh! One more thing, and this is totally off-topic, but did anyone besides me notice Barry's terrible makeup last night during his State of the Union Address? He was ORANGE! I think they got a liiiiiiiitttttle carried away with the foundation. Totally not his fault, but I just felt the need to point out that he looked like a pumpkin!

People are Crazy

I don't talk much about work on this little blog, because, well because I just don't. I have plenty of interesting stories that I could tell and Lord knows I'm living an episode of The Office every time I walk through the doors but I happen to like my job and the people I work with so I just try to refrain from writing about it/them.

In case you don't know, I work for a small family-owned business. We are a distributor for a major oil company and we distribute gasoline/fuel as well as oil to various businesses in the Atlanta area. A large portion of our customer base happens to be gas stations -- we don't own the stations but we do have supply contracts with them. Therefore, when a customer calls in to Major Oil Company to complain about an experience they had at one of the stations, those complaints get funneled down to the distributor level for response. One of my jobs happens to be responding to those complaints as they come in. Some complaints are valid, but most are not.

For instance, today I had the pleasure of responding to a complaint from a lady who had bought a pair of shoes from one of the stations we supply. I'm totally serious. This one was mild compared to some of the things that I see. I'm not sure who has the job at Major Oil Company of sifting through these complaints, but I can pretty much guarantee you that person spends much of their day in laughter!

As I said earlier, some people do have valid complaints and in those few cases I do my best to resolve the matter with the station in question. However, most of the time the general scenario is this: someone gets upset with the station attendant for something random, the attendant and the customer have words, the customer usually insults the attendant (and shockingly admits to it in their complaint) and then contacts Major Oil Company to say that the cashier didn't treat them right. I'm not even kidding -- one customer even admitted to telling an attendant to "go back to India" and then got upset that his response was "you go back to f**king India". This lady was upset that the cashier would "use the F word when speaking to a woman". How am I even supposed to respond to that?

I really just don't understand people sometimes. I think we all get upset by situations and voice our opinions/concerns to someone serving in a customer service capacity, that is totally normal. But what I don't understand is why people think that spewing insults is going to help them resolve their problem. I'll admit that I have customer service 'confrontations' quite often. (Not at gas stations necessarily ... but it usually is a retailer of some sort). The thing is, I usually win my battles with these people. I think that is for two reasons 1) I am reasonable with the person 2) I am never rude to them. Why is this such a hard concept for others to understand?

Thanks for reading my little rant. Shim and belly updates are forthcoming. Maybe even a sneak preview some of the nursery decor....

Progress!

Ben stopped by the house today to talk to our builder about a few minor changes we wanted to make and when he drove by he saw this!

We were so excited to see this because last time we were there (last week) there was nothing but a slab! He didn't get to walk through the house because people were there working, so we plan to go later this week to do a full walk-thru. My parents were really happy to see this too - it means we will really be moving out of Lilburn fairly soon!

Everyone tells me that things slow down after the home is framed and roofed, but at least they are nearly dried in and can't use weather as a crutch anymore! They originally told us it would be ready at the end of March, so I'm hoping we are still on track for that same timeframe. Maybe this means Shim will actually have a nursery before he/she is born!

Kicks and Backaches!

big ole' belly
Originally uploaded by katie_longmire

*** I apologize for my terrible spelling error. Can I just blame pregnancy brain?

As of Sunday, I am 21 weeks along now and I have started to feel Shim's little kicks more and more. I started feeling little, tiny flutters a few weeks ago but now we've moved along to more discernible kicks. Sometimes in the bladder and those aren't so comfortable, but the ones in my stomach almost tickle. I tried to let Ben feel it one night when Shim was really active, but I still don't think you can feel anything from the outside yet.

Along with the kicks has come a new little friend. Backaches. I'm not sure if they are caused by the baby's position or just the extra weight I'm carrying, but they are persistent and painful! I called my cousin yesterday afternoon (she's my doctor that I don't pay) to describe my symptoms and see if I was overreacting or if I needed to call my doctor. She has 3 children and one on the way so besides having medical expertise, she is also pretty familiar with pregnancies. She suggested that I call my doc, and see what they say. So I did and they gave me some sound medical advice:

SUCK IT UP - APPLY HEAT AND TAKE TYLENOL.

At least I did learn that Tylenol PM was safe to take, so I guess that is a good thing. I know I shouldn't complain. I have had a healthy and easy pregnancy up to this point and I am grateful. BUT. IT. HURTS!

The house is still progressing. I guess it is basically on schedule, and we are really hoping that it stays that way! We have a few weeks leeway, but not much at all. Mom and I went furniture shopping the other day and I have a pretty good idea now of what I'm looking for. If it actually gets completed before the baby is born, I'll definitley post pictures. I'm excited now that I have an idea in my head of how we'll decorate -- which wasn't easy since we don't know the sex.