It's a girl!

Here's a picture of our little cutie! On the right is the head, arm in the middle, legs on the left.

The tech today said she was pretty sure it's a girl. I guess detecting girl-ness is less obvious than boys for reasons you can probably imagine. But she was confident enough that for one picture she drew and arrow to the relevant parts. We were hoping for something more definitive, but I guess they like to hedge their bets. Anyway, we're going ahead and assuming its a girl.

More ultrasound photos and canning stories (can you believe I'm doing it again??) up later.

Transfat and squash blossoms

Look what greeted me in my garden this morning!

In other news, in a fit of domesticity I made biscuits last night! Just from Bisquick, but still... I was looking at the ingredients and noticed that it has a pretty substantial quantity of trans-fat. Now I ask you, how do they get trans-fat into a powder???

Grow what?

Well, the plants must have just needed that encouragement because the garden is looking much better! A couple of tomatoes were big enough to need staking so Chris and I went and cut down some bamboo from a friend's yard that has an excess. Then we made a trellis with it to support the plants. You can see it below, hiding the Grow Dammit sign! I think we need to move that sign over to give the carrots encouragement next...

Also, the apricot tree at our house has made a gillion lovely apricots that are coming ripe right now! I think this weekend I'll go pick them and try to find the energy to make jam. Or maybe compote. Or maybe just freeze them to make one of those things later...

Rants?

Ok, so I said I was going to blog about a few things so I guess I better. I was really worked up on these subjects over the weekend but have since subsided to my normal mellow attitude about the world in general.

First, natural childbirth. While at Tassajara I had two different people tell me about how childbirth is really this natural thing which should not be treated as a medical disorder. I feel like childbirth is natural like a kidney stone is natural. Both will pass all on their own (hopefully) without medical intervention. But for some reason, with kidney stones you're considered crazy if you try to pass them without morphine, whereas when giving birth some people consider it this noble thing to not use any pain relief at all. I know some people will talk about how pain medicine makes the baby groggy, but frankly I couldn't care less. Also, my mom was put out by this comparison, saying pregnancy is not a disease. But in my mind it has all the earmarks of an STD.

Now, before anyone flips their lid, I'm going to give here my birth plan, based on common sense, reading a few books, talking with friends, and talking with an OB. First, c-section is to be avoided. It is major surgery and just really not a recovery to be dealing with in addition to a newborn baby. The more avoidable type of c-section happens when delivery goes on too long. Delivery goes too long when the patient goes to the hospital too early - which the OB said tends to slow down labor... I'm not clear on whether its the medicine in the hospital or something about hospital processes themselves. Anyway, to that end I'm going to wait to go to the hospital as long as I can stand and/or as long as it seems safe to do so. Then, I'll have an epidural when I can't stand the pain anymore and not beat myself up about it. Ta da. Mostly I'm hoping to avoid one of the common side effects of historical "natural" childbirth: dying in childbirth (mother or baby). If at the end of it all we're all in good health, woo hoo!

Ok, next subject. Hopefully the previous one didn't get anyone too riled up.

Favors for the ungrateful. So, in the past several years it has happened a few times that someone has asked me to do a favor for them and I said ok and as time went on, the favor got bigger and bigger. Ok, these things happen. But then the person tried to convince me what an honor it was to get to do this favor for them, and that's where I go off the deep end. For example, say you have a friend who asks you to help move. And you don't like moving, but everyone needs help moving sometimes, so that's ok. Then they call you right before to tell you, oh by the way, none of their other friends can do it so it will be just you and oh by the way they're moving to Stockton (or insert other location in BFE here) but really its a good thing because they're going to be so busy they won't get to invite anyone to their new house in Stockton any time soon so you're going to be the first to get to see it by a long shot! So you're seething because not only are you stuck doing this monster favor, your friend isn't even groveling to tell you how grateful they are! And unfortunately, it doesn't even appear that the friend is being mean or sneaky, they're actually really excited about the new house in Stockton and can't imagine that you wouldn't be just as thrilled as they are to go see it! A situation along these lines happened to me recently and Chris was trying to convince me I needed to tell the friend that she needed to be more grateful because actually most people think Stockton is the boringest far-away middle of nowhere and she wasn't going to have many friends if she kept dragging them out there (or you know, the similar advice for my actual situation). I couldn't bring myself to do it. I don't know if that was the right thing.

And finally, baby showers. When I thought about writing this before I had lots of reasons but my sister pointed out that the silly games and the present opening aren't a key feature of all baby showers, so I'll just let it go with not liking the idea of a party where you invite people for the purpose of bringing presents. Someone suggested throwing a party and specifically saying that I didn't want the presents, but that's not right either... I do want the presents, I just don't want anyone to feel obligated to buy them.

Ok. Rants fin.

Graduation and Tassajara

Well, the last of our company left this morning, and I have to say it was an exciting 10 days. Last weekend we did graduation activities, complete with hooding and commencement (Oprah was our speaker). It was seriously hot on the field and we were running around like crazy people to make it to all the events, but I think everyone had a fun time! Click on the photo above to see the rest of the photos from graduation.

As a treat for myself and a mother's day present for my mom we went to Tassajara Hot Springs (and Zen Buddhist retreat) for the Monday through Wednesday after graduation. It's hard to explain why I love that place so much. It's a couple of hours from here and you have to drive for an hour on a nearly impassable dirt road - I didn't feel like taking our accord over the pass so we paid for passage on The Stage - which is just a Suburban driven by a guy who goes over that road every day. Once you get down in there there's a bathhouse with hot tubs from natural hot springs. I couldn't go in these this time because of the baby. Well, I did, but only for a minute or two - not long enough to raise my body temperature or anything. We stayed in a lovely cabin that had a porch overlooking a creek that made peaceful noises. Your fees cover three meals a day of the most wonderful, amazing, delicious, fresh, vegetarian food. They hand make all their own bread and don't have a freezer on the premises, because what would they use it for? (My mom would argue, for ice. She was seriously missing ice by the time we got out of there.) There's only one phone, no cell reception, and little access to electricity. We used kerosene lanterns in our cabin and they light the paths in the evenings. (Which seemed a little dangerous given all the fires around. In fact, on the drive out we could actually see flames from the Indian fire.) Our activities when we got there? We arrive around lunch and bathed. Ate lunch, slept, woke up for dinner, slept, woke up for breakfast, slept, and finally woke up for another lunch. Then finally were rested enough to not need daytime naps anymore. Seriously. I slept a lot. It helps that the beds were so comfy. Even though it was very hot out the rooms were always cool and the screens kept away the bugs. Anyway, I had a great time. My mom took some photos so I thought I'd post them, although it's hard to get a sense of the peacefulness from just some photos.

I was sad to see my mom leave this morning because even though I have made myself a family here in California, there's nothing quite like blood relations. Enjoy the photos! Hopefully, a post to follow soon of insane ranting on the subjects of "natural" child birth, favors for the ungrateful, and, if I think I can do it without offending anyone (not likely), why I do not want a baby shower.

17 weeks

I had a doctor appointment yesterday and both Grandmas went with me since they were in town for graduation. When the nurse showed up with her little audio ultrasound machine we looked pitiful and asked if she could just wheel that little machine in and give us a picture. Fortunately she was obliging and gave us a good long view of the baby. It looks like Dot is getting a little crowded in there! Unfortunately she claimed to not be able to tell the gender of the baby so we'll have to wait another week or more to find out. My sister said a boy looks pretty much like you would expect, but a girl looks like three lines, and I could have sworn I saw three lines! We'll see.

The doc also looked at my chart and made the comment "Well! You've gained some weight, haven't you!" Honestly even to me it seems excessive. She merely remarked that I needed to eat more salads and less sugary foods (like juice). I think it's really the cheese and bread/crackers that gets me. Often it seems to be the only food my tum will tolerate.

The time on this post is not a mistake. It seems that especially on weekend mornings I often find myself awake with the cats at 5am and then go back to sleep for a couple more hours later. Just another joy of being pregnant. Also recently my legs have been really sore... it's a little like when you've held still for a really long time (like on a trans-atlantic fight or something?) and you wake up all sore. Yeah, I feel like that at night. So far I'm still sleeping enough though, so that's good. It's just that I sleep at different hours from the normal people.

Professional knitter

I thought I'd write once more in the relative calm before the storm. Chris and I are both participating in graduation this weekend and pretty much all our family from both sides is coming into town. And many of them are staying with us. It's going to be fun and exciting but total chaos. And hot. I hope 90 deg on Friday is as bad as it gets... that's what the forecast says so far.

This morning I went to the bathroom where a cat (our guess: Marie) had left us a vomitous present. Chris was in the middle of getting ready for work so I offered to clean it up. One touch though and I was SURE I was going to barf too. I ran out of the bathroom yelling "Chris! You're going to have to get it after all" all the while kind of gagging and trying really hard not to lose it. Chris ran in and took one look at me and started yelling "It's ok! I'll do it! Just please PLEASE sit down! You look terrible!" What a way to start the morning!! The rest of the day went better.

Annie asked, regarding my last entry, why don't I become a professional knitter? I'm not sure if she was kidding or not, but I have kind of a funny story to go with that. I read a blog entry recently where a woman who beads and takes her jewelry to craft fairs constantly hears "oh! it's so expensive!" She was pointing out that people just really have no idea what quality materials cost, then there's the time that it took to make the craft, in addition to some value added by the fact that its a skilled person making the materials into a pretty thing you want to buy. I think knitting would be even worse, because the materials can be relatively cheap, but the product can take an incredibly long time to make, and people are very used to seeing machine knit clothes which basically cost what the materials cost. Anyway, the story I have is that I had a friend over and was proudly showing her the ski sweater I knit. Her comment was "Wow! It's so beautiful and professional! I bet someone would pay $75 for that." I cringed so hard... she thought she was paying me this brilliant complement (in fact she later told me that she had rounded up from what she thought people would pay) but actually I believe the sweater to be worth much more. The materials alone cost me $45 and they were from a bargain basement yarn store. Furthermore, sweaters like that one made on a machine sell for $150 at a bare minimum. And why would you pay more just because it was made by hand? Over the course of months? I think this is why you never see knitting for sale at craft shows. Except for the occasional knitted hat - those knit up fast. Just a thing I was thinking about.

Secret Knitting

At last I can post pictures of my secret knitting!
Here are the proud owners sporting their new apparel. First I made a shawl for Shannon - Chris's spy work reported that she really loved the color celadon, and I happened to have some lovely wool/silk blend in just that shade. So I made a shawl for her!

Next I knew Chris had been wanting a new warm hat, so I found a pattern on the internet that was mostly what I liked, ditched the goofy pirate pattern and used a more classic Norwegian design. He seemed to like it!

One of the best things about this design was that you knit a soft lining right into it so your forehead isn't right up against the itchy wool. The end product seemed really professional and nice to me, so I was very pleased with it. Here's the gratuitous shot of the nice stranding on the inside and the liner before it was sewn to the rest of the hat.


Overall the weekend was great. I avoided onions and so was mostly okay in the stomach. We went to the art and wine festival yesterday and had friends over for fajita dinner, which was delicious! We also played a new Lord of the Rings game that turned out to be a ton of fun even if the instruction manual was as long as the book series. Today I got caught up on a bunch of errandy stuff - like haircut and buying maternity pants. I also went back to the art and wine festival and bought a necklace that I have been admiring for literally years. I saw it at the festival a couple of years back and every once in awhile think "oh, if I had that necklace it would look great with this outfit!" It was seriously pricey, but I got it anyway. Now I think it's time for bed so I'm not too messed up for work tomorrow.

Indiana, Garden, and No More Onions

First off, here's some long overdue photos from last weekend when a whole gang of us from California flew out for Greg's wedding... click the photo for the whole album.
I really look pregnant in that photo but I think it was a combination of the shirt and its extra frontal fabric as well as the huge quantities of fried food we ate last weekend. On the whole the trip was extremely fun. There was 6-9 of us all traveling around in planes and cars together and that just makes the trip seem like less hassle. Because you might be waiting around but at least you know all the people around you and like them all. On Sunday evening I finally ran out of steam and couldn't keep up with the rest anymore - I missed dinner out and ordered room service instead. When I got home I had to sleep 14 hours to recuperate from all the activity, but I think I'm recovered now.

In gardening news I was pleased to discover that I've finally managed to grow (or at least start growing) everything I set out to. So I'm no longer a dirt farmer! Which feels good given all the news I've been hearing recently about food shortages. Course in California we're also now officially in drought so I feel like I need to fix up our irrigation system. You can see the hoses in the photos below but they tend to water about as much concrete as soil. I think a little caulk will take care of that. Anyway, photos of the garden. First, the tomatoes and peppers - tomatoes on the left, peppers on the right. The peppers grow so slowly! I've been dousing them with Miracle Grow though and that seems to help.

Next is some baby cucumbers. I planted seeds for these at first that never germinated, and then I tried germinating seeds indoors in a baggie with a wet paper towel wrapped around them. They sprouted in a hurry and even ran roots through the paper towel - but I just tore the paper towel up into sections, cutting as few roots as possible, and planted it towel and all. I only lost one seed that way, so that's a big improvement over the "stick it in the ground and pray" method.

And last but not least, I noticed today that at long last I have carrots coming up!!! Hooray! Only one species though, so I'm not sure what that means. Maybe that it was the fastest to germinate? Maybe it's the happiest because it's right underneath the irrigation hose? I'm not sure. The change I made on this round (after planting 100s of seeds to no effect) was to soak the seeds in water for 2 days, then plant them. Seems to have worked!


And finally, a tiny bit of pregnancy whining thrown in here at the end. It has appeared that after quite a few meals I have been getting the most awful GI problems. I won't elaborate - you can use your imagination. But its so bad that I pretty much have to just curl up in bed with a trash can beside me and not eat anything until it passes. It seems to mostly happen at night, so usually I just sleep it off, but yesterday it happened after lunch and I was miserable and therefore inspired to think hard about what might be messing with me and use the internet to corroborate my suspicions. Anyway, my best guess is onions. And possibly broccoli. So I'm going to go without these for awhile to see if I can get to feeling better more consistently. I had a break from it while in Indiana - we pretty much only ate junk food there. I had a lot of grilled cheese and french fries. Not healthy, but my belly was much happier.

I'm looking forward to this weekend - the Sunnyvale Art and Wine Festival followed by the fArt and Whine Festival at our house. Hehe....