Thursday, July 31, 2008

41 weeks

So, I'm still pregnant, and my mom's leaving tomorrow, which is a bummer. Unless I go into labor tonight, and make my mom miss her flight back to Utah, Grandma Iris will have to wait until we go out to Utah to meet Little Girl. Anyway, here's another picture of me and my belly. I do look a little bigger, and a bit lower, so maybe I will actually give birth sometime in the relatively near future.



It's been a great visit with my mom--we've done a lot of finishing little projects around the house. Right now my mom is finishing up reupholstering our glider rocker. The old fabric was teal and scratchy, and we've put on some rather nicer suede-ish stuff. Anyway, here's a picture of her working:



Derrick keeps referring to her as "Cinderella." Next time she visits we'll have to make sure it's more fun and less work :)

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

One more week...

So, at worst I'll be induced next Monday. It's exciting to know she'll be out soon, and good to have a date, but I'm a little disappointed my Mom will likely not be here (unless by some miracle she comes in the next couple of days). Doing a little research on teh interwebs I came across this article that presents a graph of "Gestational Age at Birth" that's very interesting. Turns out, if you look at the distribution of gestational age (which is an estimate anyway) at birth, you're probability of having your baby on or before the due date is only about 40%. So, for a first time mother especially, you've got a 60% chance of having the baby after the due date. Good to know--unfortunate that my mom is leaving in a couple of days. She had about a 2/3 chance of being here for the baby--too bad we're apparently going to fall into the 1/3 of longer gestational periods.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Due today!

But not here yet. Oh well. Here's a picture of what I look like now:

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Thank heavens...

for in-laws and mothers who call and remind you that it's your anniversary. Derrick and I both forgot. It's been four years since we got married--amazing, no? Between the baby and all the other stuff that's going on, and the fact that, for the first time, we're not spending our anniversary in Santa Fe, NM, we both forgot! I obviously need contextual cues to remember special dates.

In other news, I had another baby shower this evening, which was a lot of fun--good food, good friends, and good weather. Oh yeah, and a great excuse to make Vietnamese spring rolls. I wish more of the veggies and herbs I used were from my garden, but since the cilantro and Thai basil didn't grow, and I didn't even attempt lettuce this year, I had to buy most of my veggies. I did use radishes and mint from my garden, so at least some of the food was locally grown (by me!).

I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of the women who came. I received a lot of much-needed stuff, much of it consumables like diapers and wipes that I know will be extremely helpful in the coming months. All of the women there are mothers and all shared their experience and much advice that I will, I hope, remember and be able to use when I encounter the inevitable difficult situations. If nothing else, I know who to talk to when I have problems!

But even more than that, I saw something happen that touched me deeply and made me really appreciate the relief society. There's a woman in my ward who is a very caring, compassionate, and social woman, and whose mother is in the process of dying. She's struggling with letting her mother go--understandably--even though her mother is in pretty bad shape at this point. At the end of the evening the conversation between several of the women (one of whom is the current RS president, and one who is her predecessor) turned to this woman in the ward and her struggles (most of which she'll never admit too). Very shortly two of them decided they needed to visit this sister, pretty much just to give her some emotional support. I donated the left over spring rolls (which I know the sister being visited loves), though I didn't go along, much as I wished to.

To me, that kind of simple service is really what a gospel centered life, and a gospel centered community is about. I am so impressed with the women who surround me and act as examples of kindness and giving. I'm glad that the bonds of common faith and our community bind us together as sisters and give us the opportunity to come to know and love one another.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Preggos

I ran into Melissa Tate today at church. We got pregnant about the same time--in fact, I think she was about the first person I told other than Derrick. I was having morning sickness and didn't quite know what to do about it, so I went up and just casually asked what she did to deal with morning sickness, at which point she showed me what she was doing for hers. She then revealed she was due on the 17th of July (how far away that seemed!), while I'm due on the 23rd. The strategies that worked for me turned out to be slightly different than hers (I couldn't even stand animal crackers because they were so sickeningly sweet in those first few months) but just having someone to talk to and ask questions of as my body changed was amazingly helpful. Anyway, she's being induced tomorrow, so she thought to get a picture of all of us who are pregnant and due about the same time while we're all still pregnant. So, here it is:


From left to right: Melissa Tate, Heather Hansen, Neesha McKay, Tamri Allen, and me.

There are a few people who are or were in the ward who aren't pictured--one woman (Julie Ann Krogel) moved to Illinois, and we didn't catch either Mary Aagard or Lynnette Hubbard for the photo. Even so, it's a nice picture of a group of women who all look like they're trying to smuggle various types of melons under their dresses.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

I'm a chigger magnet

In my 30 years of life, I have managed to successfully avoid chigger bites. In fact, I've been so successful at avoiding chiggers that I assumed they didn't live this far north, since I didn't get them in Pennsylvania or here in Indiana.

Until this summer.

First, the weekend before last Derrick and I took a trip to Indy and on the way back our car broke down 13 miles from our exit and 4 miles south of town. The car problems were pretty easily fixed--our alternator needed to be replaced (a $200 fix) and we'd just added towing to our car insurance, so we didn't even have to pay for that. But we did have to wait for an hour in knee-high grasses for the tow truck to come, and both Derrick and I were thoroughly bug-bitten by the end of the evening. Within a day or so both of us looked a bit like the guy in figure 2.

So, I was just about healed from that incident when I decided to be nice and weed in a friend's garden (I'm sharing garden space with three other families from church and Derrick and I spend a lot more time out in the garden, probably because we don't have to worry about kids yet. As you might imagine, or garden space has many fewer weeds than our co-gardeners and every so often I feel like being helpful). Truly, no good deed goes unpunished. My entire right side from the crease of my knee to the bottom of my bra is covered in red welts. On my left side the welts only extend up to what used to be my waist, but I think the welts are higher density to compensate for their smaller areal extent. Blech. Really, I wouldn't mind it so much if they just sucked up their meal of liquified skin cells and just dropped off--I have trillions of cells and skin cells are replaced pretty continuously, so I'm certain I wouldn't miss them. If they just didn't itch so much!

Death to chiggers!

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Fruity

We harvested the first fruits of our summer's labor on Thursday. Here they are:



Yep, six radishes. We harvested the rest today--and from the amount of splitting probably could have just harvested everything Thursday.

Here are a few other shots of the garden:






Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Pride and Joy

She grew! Not that I'm surprised--I'm quite aware that she's bigger, and my tummy is bigger, but the baby is now measuring about 5 lb, 4 oz, which puts her in the 16th percentile instead of 10th. Yeah! Of course, I had a different technician today, and I kind of wonder how much of an impact that had on the measurements...

Anyway, here are the final pictures we'll have of her before we get to see her in real light:


Keep growing, little one!