Half way there

One of the pregnancy apps I subscribe to just sent me an email with the subject “Half Way There,” and immediately that funky, electric intro to Livin’ On a Prayer, by Bon Jovi started crescendoing in my mind. “Whooah! We’re half way there!”

If life were like an episode of Glee, I would be in heaven. Oh how I wish I could bust out in song, complete with back-up singers and a house band, any ole time I wanted. In fact, I usually have some tune bouncing around in my head that describes my mood or feelings in any given moment.

Every now and then, when I come across some amazing song, I claim it as my own. It becomes my theme song, and I obsessively listen to it over and over again. It may pep me up for the day on my drive to work, or maybe it reminds me of the deeper, underlying emotions I’m carrying around and processing. However the song speaks to me at that moment, it becomes my anthem—my theme song—for a season of time. That is, until I’m totally over it because I listened to it one (hundred) too many times.

When I was in middle school, one of my theme songs was Hold On, by Wilson Phillips. In high school, I upgraded to the “sophisticated” musicality of Sublime’s What I Got and Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty, which was my senior class song. I could listen to those tunes over and over again, and they still bring up some pretty special memories from my days of tight-rolled jeans and the later stylings of baby doll dresses and metallic nail polish. My musical taste has diversified and deepened in the past decade, and new theme songs have emerged in my young adult life like Pendulum Swinger by the Indigo Girls that I rocked out to, complete with dance moves, for about six solid years months after that album was released.

I even staked claim on a lifetime theme song in 8th grade with the Van Morrison classic hit Brown Eyed Girl. I used to sign all my letters, cards, and passed notes to BFF’s in school as “Your brown eyed girl, Lane”. Ok, maybe I still do that on occasion. Anyway…I digress. Music is something that feeds my souls, connects me to a deeper level of self, and brings me back to life.

It’s about time to adopt a new theme song, and however cliche it may be, Livin’ on a Prayer seems like the perfect tune. In honor of my new rockin’ theme, I decided to make a “Halfway There” craft. I don’t claim to be a Martha Stewart-type crafting wizkid, but like a good song, I enjoy a good craft project every now and then. (Let’s ignore the closet full of halfway finished crafts that are still cluttering up the baby’s future nursery.)

I saw an idea on Pinterest of making a maternity calendar t-shirt, numbered 1-40. Each week, you scratch off the number of the coinciding week, snapping a photo as you chart your growth to 40 weeks. The pin took me to a site to buy the shirt for $45, but I decided to save those big bucks for something else, and rummaged through my craft stash for the needed supplies. One maternity t-shirt and two iron-on pages later, and I was good to go!

So now my theme song has a theme shirt. How are you charting your growing belly? What tunes are you rocking out or chilling out to these days? I’ve already started mentally working on a delivery room playlist. Top of the list: Push It, by Salt -N-Pepa.