Happy Lunar New Year!

Today is the lunar new year 4712, also known as Chinese New Year or Tet to the Vietnamese community. I also learned yesterday that Koreans also celebrated the lunar new year. This year is the year of the horse based on the Chinese zodiac. I've been collecting a few horse paraphernalia lately as keepsakes since the baby will be born into this zodiac symbol.

This cute little horse was a gift from my sister who brought it back from Japan!

Speaking of baby...here he is at 33 weeks. Seven more weeks left to go. Seems like I've been pregnant forever. A couple of friends have told me how much they loved being pregnant and while I can understand that, I can't say that I am one of those people. I mean, I love the end result but I don't love the whole waddling thing or not being able to fit into any of my former clothes and let's not talk about how hard it is to get comfortable at night.

This week for the first time in a while, I suddenly missed running. Hopefully, I will still feel this way when it comes time for me to start training again. This Sunday is the Super Bowl and the Surf City Marathon. I've been participating in the Surf City Half Marathon for the past several years and this will be the first year that I won't be running it. It's not a big deal since I always do terrible at this race anyways but traditionally this is the race that starts out my running calendar for the year.

I'm at the home stretch of this pregnancy now and am very excited about meeting the baby. I still have some work to do to get the nursery in order and I hope to do a post once I am mostly done with it but I'm loving every moment because I'm currently in full-on nesting mode. Stockpiling, obsessive cleaning, organizing...you name it and I'm there. This just kicked in last week so I'm taking advantage of it to get as much done as possible since I'm not the most organized or prepared person.

I'm a good ways into my third trimester and everything is still going well. For the most part, I am still sleeping pretty good thanks in part to me being the heaviest sleeper you will ever meet. I'm still eating pretty normally except my portions have gone down in size due to the decreasing real estate in my stomach these days.

I can't even tell you how many bottles of Dole pineapple juice and Kefir yogurt smoothies I've gone through since I got pregnant but its a lot. I guess I am comfortable calling these my constant cravings but for the most part my "cravings" have changed from trimester to trimester.

CRAVINGS:
First Trimester: cheese, noodle soup, beef

Second Trimester: carb (rice and noodle), smoothies, street tacos

Third Trimester: salad, fruit

In terms of aches and pains, I've felt them from time to time but they haven't been too bad with the exception of my tailbone which has been sore for a couple of weeks now but the doctor says that is normal. This is normal?!? My feet and hands tingles some time when I get out of bed which is a weird feeling. And when I say weird, I am really saying that I don't like it. I am definitely getting near that point where I wish that the next few weeks will blow by quickly. I still need to pack my hospital bag. I guess I should do that soon.