34.5 weeks

Week 34 is going smoothly.  The Germano household (ok, just me) is excited about October starting.  This is my favorite month.  I love apples, and cider, and pumpkins, and leaves, and the chillier weather, and the smell of cinnamon baking.  And Halloween!  This is the first year I won't be doing anything for Halloween, but I'm fairly sure that by that point sitting on the couch and watching bad scary movies will be sufficient for me.

My coworker suggested that I dress up as a pregnant hooker (half of the costume is complete!).  Which would be in hilariously tacky taste, but it's just not tempting enough to get me out of the house while carting around a basketball.

The diabetic diet is going ... ok.  It's shocking how many things are high-carb.  (Fruit!  Fruit is high-carb!)  And it'll be a miracle if I don't faceplant into a tray of frosted brownies by next week.  But overall not too bad.  I guess I can live with it since there's an expiration date on my cuisine-related misery.  And there's a LOT of motivation when the potential alternative is having to try to force a 36-pound baby out of the lady parts.  But I told Mike he can pick up divorce papers if he doesn't bring me an entire cannoli cheesecake in the recovery room.  I tried to also coerce him into sneaking in a bottle of wine, but he seems to think that the hospital staff will frown upon that.

I've been baking a lot this week.  I made homemade applesauce.  Which was AMAZING, and easy, and I can't ever look at store applesauce ever again.  I thought about canning it but I don't have the equipment yet.  Someday.  And I had nightmares about something going wrong with the canning process and giving people jars of botulism for Christmas.

And pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting!  Oh my god, I caved and ate half of one and then nearly finished the rest.  The recipe yielded nearly four dozen, though.  I had cupcakes everywhere.  Even after giving them away to friends and coworkers, I was still left with a dozen at home.

My spiderwebs leave something to be desired, but shut up, I worked on them for hours.  It wasn't until the last two that I came up with a way to make them look neater.  By then it was too late and my cupcakes were destined for a sloppy Halloween theme.

In baby-related news, I still haven't made the connection that there will be a screaming infant here in less than six weeks.  I recognize that there's SOMETHING going on with my body, but it feels more like I have mono and a tumor.  I just can't mentally grasp the connection between pregnancy and an actual child.

That should be a kick in the face from reality.

Kevin likes to help cook.  Plus a really lovely overhead shot of my tumor.

And, finally, we have chosen a middle name.  She will be Gloria Evelynn Germano.  Runners-up included "Danger," "Earl," and "David Bowie."