35 weeks!

Baby girl is currently 35 weeks and 3 days old!  It is getting closer and closer to the day when she will grace us with her appearance.  The real question is, when it comes to timeliness, who will little Aspen take after? Will she arrive in a whirlwind, impatient, rather disorderly, but on time (or early) like her mother? Will she take her time, be calm, perhaps do a spot of tidying before she vacates, preferring to be late than rushed, like her father?  Or will she somehow magically combine the best features of both? I suppose only time will tell.

I have been reading (well, sporadically reading) a child development book for fun, it is called "The Yale Child Study Center Guide To Understanding Your Child." I don't know if I like everything about the book, but there are certainly some mental gems that I have been able to pluck out of it and mull over.  

So far one of the more intriguing concepts that the book has discussed is the challenge that all parents face to mentally reconcile the child they have imagined with the child they have actually acquired.  Jamie and I have both already envisioned aspects of who our little girl is going to be, both from birth and beyond.  I don't think we can help it, or that any burgeoning parent can, it is part of connecting and dreaming and wondering. And there is probably some ego (the book points out, and if I am to be honest I have to accept) to those imaginings.  Traits we like about ourselves or our partners are included in the image.  Or alternatively, traits we don't like are carefully edited or erased from it. It seems to me that the challenging part is to recognize that this colliding of fantasy and reality doesn't happen just at birth when we meet our daughter, but it probably will happen again and again and again as we all grow together as a family. Sometimes it is daunting to think about!

However, as long as we are still able to indulge in fantasy, here is the probable (but not necessarily actual) changes and developments that baby girl is currently  undergoing:

• She is over 5 lbs and may be 5.5 lbs!

• From this point on she will probably gain .5 lbs a week (and I'll probably gain 1 lb a week, I don't really know what happens to that "extra" .5 lbs….this is probably going to be the stage where my face gets really round just like when I was a little kid.)

• She has learned to blink and she keeps her eyes closed when she is asleep and wide open when she is awake.  

• Her tiny fingernails have probably reached the tips of the fingers.

• She has been head down at all of our appointments, but she is definitely still rolling side to side.  The other day she must have been very restless because she flipped from left to right to left again within 15 minutes. This is a very cool, but not necessarily comfortable, sensation.

• Apparently my uterus may actually be up under my ribcage by now…given to how internally squished I feel and where I can feel her moving around I think this is probably true.

• She is big enough that she is probably no longer floating and instead is resting on my uterus.

And lastly, here is her current growth chamber: