And on the seventh day, she applied wall decals

Saturday marked baby shower number two of three. This was a small family affair where we all went to "tea" at some place my aunt picked out. It was remarkably pleasant and I think everyone had a good time. But this weekend marked the first signs of my waning stamina. We went to a tour of the hospital that morning, I went to tea in the afternoon and I got a pedicure that evening. Those three activities do not sound high stress by any means, but by the time we got home from dinner, I was absolutely wiped. I went to bed at 10pm and slept straight through until 6am. This morning I rallied and wanted to go to Lowe's and Target after breakfast but after those two errands I had to sit around the house again in the recliner. I helped Rich mow the lawn for about an hour around noon and then jumped in the pool to clean it out a bit but after that I was worthless for anything except staring at the walls.

Unfortunately, I kept wanting to do things so I tried to find low drag activities. I did some laundry and cleaned up/deciphered our car seat and stroller. I added some wall decals to the baby's portion of our bedroom. And then I had to lie down before I collapsed. So yeah, this is getting old.

I had given myself an unofficial goal to try to blog every day this month because I knew I wasn't going to be up for NaBloPoMo in November with a newborn. But it's been harder than I thought it would be. So I'm just going to try for writing as much as I can without wearing myself out. Perhaps I should have just created a National Napping Month (NaNapMo) to force myself to take a break each day.

Living Out Loud volume 9: Your theme music

When you imagine that montage of some part of your life, what music is playing? Is there a particular ring tone others assign to you in their phones? When you're playing a sport, going for a long run, about to take on the world, what song is on repeat in your skull and cranked to volume 11? When they carry your coffin what song will be playing? This month's Living Out Loud project is all about your personal theme music. And don't tell me you don't have one. Everyone has one, it just may not play very loud. But there has to be something that plays in your head at key moments in your life.

I've been reading a lot of "birth plans" lately in preparation for our little guy's big arrival and a lot of them talk about what music you might want to have playing while you're in labor. And while I don't think our son needs to burst forth into this world to Queen's Don't Stop Me Now, it does give me a lot to think about on how powerful music can be.

So tell us what music we should be humming when we see you walking down the street. Tell us what makes this song (or songs if it's a particularly long street) so special. And strut your stuff.

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each question above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• It's by no means required, but feel free to include a link to the song or music video if possible. It's always helpful for context in case we weren't raised on the same music you were.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org.

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, October 4th (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

Go forth and sing it loud and proud!

Brian & Eileen's Wedding Music Video. from LOCKDOWN projects on Vimeo.

Sunday morning

I haven't been sleeping well. I'm only about 30 pounds heavier, but almost all that weight is in one spot so I literally have to wake up to roll over. If I'm going to go to all that trouble, I may as well just roll out of bed, go pee and get back into bed on my other side. All that hubbub at 3am tends to wake up the baby so he becomes a wiggle monster for a good 20 minutes. Sometimes I can sleep through it and sometimes I decide to just surf the web on the iPhone for an hour or so in the middle of the night. Pregnant and can't sleep? There's an app for that.

All my restlessness tends to make me cranky in the mornings. I'm stiff and groggy and not sure where I am or what day it is. I've been known to literally wake up on the wrong side of the bed. But other times, like Sunday morning when I woke up to this, everything seems just fine.