Well I do right at this moment, anyway. Junior has discovered that he can stretch all four limbs in different directions at once. The result is a decidedly square looking tummy.

Thankfully he doesn’t do it all the time; here is a pick of me in all my round glory:

Any time I spent small and petite in early pregnancy I am making up for now. People can’t stop commenting on how big my mid section is. That part isn’t so fun.

Pregnancy is such a visible affair and it brings out tactlessness in so many people. I’m feeling more and more defined by my bump these days. Not from my close friends and family, they still recognize that I’m Alex first and then pregnant, hmm I dunno, maybe third or fourth. But to strangers and acquaintances it seems I am just a pregnant belly with some limbs attached.

I think this has been the most frustrating thing about my pregnancy so far. Just this morning I was singled out four times in a ‘congratulations on your promotion and where to from here’ meeting as having to make big decisions about work, career and work-life balance. There were several other people in the room with children and time consuming social pursuits but they weren’t pregnant, so they weren’t Mr. Managers on the fly case study. It took a lot of restraint not to say to tell the man that I’m not asking for any favors so to leave my personal life to me and just judge me on my work please!

Later that morning when I was stopping in at my nearest woolies for some cake to offer my colleagues ( It’s my birthday today ) I was stopped in the isles by a stranger who whipped out a home pregnancy test from her bag, showed it to me, and asked me if I thought she was pregnant! No seriously folks, I’m not making this up, this actually happened! I was totally amazed. And she had a toddler in her trolley! Surely she would know how to read these things as well I? The test had a rather feint second line, so I mumbled something about yeah, it could be, but do another test in a couple of days time and then bolted for the check-out line.

In other alarming news, I got hacked. Well, my blog did, but it doesn’t seem like they were very good at it. Read Hunny’s post about it here. It would seem that this is what has been wrong with my RSS feed, and I apologize if anyone was subjected to Viagra advertising through my site, though it doesn’t seem like the hack attempt managed to do anything.

Well, that’s me for today. I spent most of my birthday working or at lectures or doing some more work from home. Poor me. I plan to do something more worthy of my last twenty-something birthday on the weekend. Like sleep in or something, because partying isn’t much fun when you keep bumping your stomach into people and you can’t have a drink.

My blog is having RSS feed troubles. That means if you were getting updates via RSS they may not be working 100%, and if you read via Google Reader each single quote is replaced by ????. Sorry about that folks.

Seems my current wordpress theme doesn’t support the new version of wordpress I (well, actually Hunny, because he’s much better than me at that stuff) upgraded to, so I’m picking out a new one, and then Hunny will do some overhauling to make it right again.

We apoligise for any disruption in service during this time

After my rant last week about our lawless roads, I put my brain to trying to come up with a solution. This is what I came up with:

We need the demerit system. And it needs to integrate with the insurance companies. When an offender looses all the points on his license and it gets suspended, so is his motor accident insurance. Insurance companies could also look up your profile when deciding on your insurance rate.

It’s not an infallible solution. I don’t think it would make any minibus taxi think twice about driving in the yellow lane. Likewise for the other road users who drive around without licenses or insurance. But it should help curb some of the offenders.

Then of course you’d need to find some way of preventing the traffics cops from taking bribes to remove demerits or just not give them in the first place. Video camera’s in their cars perhaps?

I shouldn’t complain, I’ve had a great pregnancy so far, but there are a couple things that I wasn’t expecting pregnancy to bring, things that no-one warned me about. The things no-one tells you about pregnancy until you are already pregnant.

Pregnancy rhinitis. A lucky few pregnant ladies will have such bad sinus problems that breathing through their noses becomes an impossibility without the kind of nasal spray that fries your poor sensitive nasal membranes. But the sprays do work, and thankfully are something you are allowed to take during pregnancy, unlike most other medication.

Hemorrhoids. Not that I’ve had the misfortune to experience this one myself yet, but my reliable pregnancy spam emails tell me that this is something that affects many pregnant women. But don’t worry, they should go away after birth. Like that’s a consolation.

Muscles that try to detach themselves from their attachment points. My poor tummy muscles are barely holding on as it is. I’m not sure how they will cope with an additional 2 kg’s of Junior. Apparently detachment does happen to some women. Hopefully I’ll manage to bypass that one.

Personal Space Invasion. Total strangers think that they are entitled to touch your stomach uninvited, just because it’s protruding and round. These same people who wouldn’t dare touch a non-pregnant woman’s stomach. They also wouldn’t dream of making public comments about your size and weight gain, skin condition or diet if you weren’t pregnant, but this kind of information is now considered part of the public domain.

Opinions, opinions and more opinions. Although I was warned about this one, I’m still amazed at how many people think it’s suddenly okay to pass judgment on my personal decisions of how I intend to give birth and what I intend to do about work afterwards. No-one has given me their opinion on the feeding topic yet, but I’m sure that’s coming. Frankly, I think it’s none of your business what I do with my breasts.

We’re 29.5 weeks now and the end is in sight. Albeit obscured sight, I have so much on my plate between now and October. New work, studies and ante-natal classes.

Oh, and for the record, I don’t believe you need to succumb to the pregnancy brain theory. With maybe a list or two, you can stay ahead of the game and maintain your mental cognizance. You see, I don’t think this is a real condition at all. There is nothing wrong with our brains, it’s just that pregnant women have a whole stack of extra things to think about and remember. Gynae appointments, ante-natal classes, maternity leave to sort out, keeping your wardrobe ahead of your every expanding waistline, a nursery to stock and decorate? No wonder we forget a few things. Not to mention bonding about the new life growing inside us, and once big enough for you to feel it’s movements, it’s ability to physically distract you from your work. We don’t get dumb we just have so much more on our minds than we did before. So write things down and you’ll be fine.

We had our 4D scan on Wednesday, and I was hit with the startling realization that there is an actual kid in my belly. I know we’ve had 5 or 6 scans already, but the 4D one gave him flesh, and you can see it’s that soft squishy baby flesh. The stuff that looks like it’ll bruise if you touch it.

Here’s our little shy guy, hiding behind his arm and the umbilical cord.

I’m still struggling with stitching together the incessant wriggling under my skin with the concept of a real live kid that is mine (well, ours) to keep and look after, day in day out, whether I feel like it or not. I suppose that realization will only properly set in when the hospital sends him home with us.

I can picture me with a toddler or a young child, but I haven’t once been able to see myself with a baby. Like changing his nappy and stuff. I’m not worried about that yet though. I’m pretty sure the maternal instincts will kick in when Junior is born.

8 weeks and 5 days to go, and I’m pretty sure those are going to fly, given all the activities I have planned to pack in for a large part of that time. For 3.5 weeks at the end of August / beginning of September I have occupied my self for 4 of the 5 week nights. Mondays and Wednesdays are ante-natal classes, Tuesdays Hunny and I are involved in student ministry at the Midrand Graduate Institute, and Thursdays I have evening classes for the diploma I’m doing for work, wrapping up with an exam on the 5th of September and an assignment hand in on the 10th. At least after that there will be nothing much left to do until our C-Day on 1 October. Except of course work, which I’m planning on going on with until the 24th of September. So far I still feel fit and healthy, long may that last.

On another note, I’ve taking the long way around to get home this week, to avoid the intersection where 3 out of 10 drivers behave like law-ignoring A*holes. Usually I can handle it, I just do my best to prevent the road abusers from cutting in front of me and leave it at that. But the sterling (what sarcasm?) mood I have been in since my laptop started giving me a hard time on Monday has made me a prime candidate for a road rage charge. So I cleverly decided not to put myself in that situation. I also eventually decided to fix my own laptop, rather than have helpdesk spin me another line about what could be wrong with it, spend another half a day trying to fix it, and give it back to me only to have the problem recur. I’m no technical genius, but my gut feeling solution ended up fixing the problem. Alex 1 – Helpdesk 0.

But back to the traffic thing, why do people do that? Did they grow up with no respect for the laws of the land? This is South Africa; that could well be the case seeing as for quite a while 90% of the population was subjected to oppression via the law. Do they look at us folks sitting patiently in the queue, wondering why we don’t just run up the left lane and cut in to turn right at the top like they are doing? Bute we are 14 years into our democracy now and it just seems to be getting worse.

Or is it a superiority complex? Do these people think they are that much better or smarter or more in a hurry than the rest of us? I hate it, it makes me feel like a fool for obeying the rules of the road. Not to mention frustrated and some times red-angry.

Take a deep breath and let it out slowly … count to ten … okay now carry on.

Hunny got a new camera, an Olympus E-520, he is very chuffed with it. He has taken a ton of pictures; the good ones are available on his new photo blog.

This is one of my favourites. Hunny doesn’t like how busy the background is, but I think it captures the two boys‘ personalities well. Pickle all big and brave, and Dartmoor checking out the suspicious activity from behind his mate. I love my funny horse.

Ps. How dry and dusty is this winter? Can’t wait for spring.