Portland, Portland, Portland! That is where we were this past weekend. It was awesome getting to meet all of John's family in one big lump so they are more than just an abstract family tree to me. The purpose behind the trip was to attend John's grandma's memorial service on Saturday afternoon. We woke up early and got ourselves on the road (a 3 hour ride from Seattle) and made it down there just in time for the event. We went to his Aunt Nancy's afterwards and watched a lot of Olympic curling. I can't dismiss the fact that I kindof got into watching men in booties slide rocks on ice.
The next day we had a nice, slow vacation-like start to the day and eventually went to brunch with Nancy's family. I managed to dish myself out a perfect serving of food from the buffet, which is really no easy task. I'll usually find myself at restaurants with a ton of food still on my plate feeling really compelled by mysterious forces to clean my plate or at least stuff as much in as possible leaving me feeling like a holiday turkey bird. We headed over to Skidmore bluffs to Kirsten's picnic after saying our goodbyes to the Boutins and played Scrabble and ate with a bunch of people on a blanket in the sun. It was wonderful. Kirsten made this tuna salad with craisens in it that I couldn't stop eating and also her famous melt-away cookies that are BOMB DOT COM.
We then went to "dinner" with John's parents (I was feeling like I was a machine built for eating at this point) and I opted out of ordering a meal for the sake of keeping at least some room in my belly reserved for a fetus. Portland weather was amazing and after a quick stop at Goodwill we were on the road back to Seattle. The ride home went by really quick as John and I talked pretty much incessantly about anything and everything. To be completely honest, at one point I started looking forward to telling John that I wanted to stop to get a doughnut at the well-known Krispy Kreme right off of the interstate but probably by divine intervention realized that we had already passed it while deep in conversation.
In other news, mom's surgery has been postponed indefinitely due to an infection in her toe and I'm waiting for a call back now to understand how exactly my brother ended up in the ER cubicle next to hers when he passed out while visiting her yesterday. I hope it was just passing out (like how he did at the Bodies exhibit, (haha THAT'S RIGHT- I'M EXPOSING YOU!) and not something more serious. In the meantime, I can't say that I'm disappointed that my mom is not having the surgery. If her body just isn't ready for it right now then we need to listen to that and act accordingly.
Finally, Seattle, please give me the sun back. This overcast business is unacceptable.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Day 144- Crafting Enthusiast
I'm going to go ahead and ruin the surprise for some of you: I've sent out the most awesome cards ever created today. Yes, they were just a little over a month late finally getting into the mailbox, but as I wrote on a few that explicitly stated "Happy New Year!" better late than never. Let's hope that's not the tune we'll be humming in June as my belly turns into a 15 lb baby-bearing freak show.
Now to further spoil the surprise, here is just a sampling of the cards Aja, Ronda and I made because we are CRAFTING ENTHUSIASTS.
Now to further spoil the surprise, here is just a sampling of the cards Aja, Ronda and I made because we are CRAFTING ENTHUSIASTS.
and here is one of John wearing a baby hat for good measure
Monday, February 15, 2010
Day 142- Rotund
I am aware that this is just the beginning of the feeling huge situation, but I feel like someone put an air pump to my belly button and forgot to unlatch. It doesn't even feel like baby, it feels like ROUND. It is the opposite of when you walk around sucking your stomach in, I'll be walking around and thinking, am I trying to be a large-gutted person?
I don't have too much to report. We had the 2nd anatomy screen with the same dim-witted ultrasound tech who said, AGAIN that she couldn't tell us (confirm) the gender. Feeling really glad we went and paid someone else to tell us otherwise we'd potentially find out on birth day. Baby's head was measuring a little bit long, so we have another US scheduled for the end of March which is when I will also take my glucose test. The long-headedness is most likely due to her being low this whole time.
Valentine's day was pretty laid back. I went with Aja for pedicures and then we double dated for dinner at Shultzys. My toes are pink.
I don't have too much to report. We had the 2nd anatomy screen with the same dim-witted ultrasound tech who said, AGAIN that she couldn't tell us (confirm) the gender. Feeling really glad we went and paid someone else to tell us otherwise we'd potentially find out on birth day. Baby's head was measuring a little bit long, so we have another US scheduled for the end of March which is when I will also take my glucose test. The long-headedness is most likely due to her being low this whole time.
Valentine's day was pretty laid back. I went with Aja for pedicures and then we double dated for dinner at Shultzys. My toes are pink.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
going in for another
i'm a little surprised that tai hasn't posted anything since my last one, but i guess that's how these things go ... you blow something off for two months and then you get around to doing it and start checking back twice a day and wondering why everyone else's feedback loop isn't instantaneous. or maybe that's just me.
so we're going in tomorrow at 1 for the official redo on the ultrasound (it amazes to think that if we played by the book it would be this late in the game before we found out she's a girl).
now i've had like 0 appointments on my schedule for the past little while, and i was emailing people about interviews at the end of last week and they were like "ok well when can we talk to you next week" 'well, pretty much whenever you want'. so they come back "you're scheduled on wednesday at 1"
this morning i'm looking at that and looking at tai's calendar ... oh shit, ok i have to change that. so i call them back and it takes like 4 hours to fix and i said "you know, i'm gonna be tied up between 11 and 3, so ..." and they're like "ok, we moved it to 3".
meanwhile, this afternoon we're all caught up in the drama with the swat team taking down the bank robber next door, and suddenly the phone rings and they wanna confirm tai's OTHER appointment which i believe is the midwife, and that's tomorrow at 2:45 after she's done with the ultrasound. ohhhhhh jeez.
^^oh, right, i was working on a blog entry. unfortunately tai's new laptop decided to reboot itself a few hours ago which was awesome. i actually can't write much more about this, but suffice it to say i will have to take a phone screen in the middle of the second medical appointment, which is slightly odd because i think the last non-ultrasound appointment also coincided with my interview day downtown. yeesh.
so we're going in tomorrow at 1 for the official redo on the ultrasound (it amazes to think that if we played by the book it would be this late in the game before we found out she's a girl).
now i've had like 0 appointments on my schedule for the past little while, and i was emailing people about interviews at the end of last week and they were like "ok well when can we talk to you next week" 'well, pretty much whenever you want'. so they come back "you're scheduled on wednesday at 1"
this morning i'm looking at that and looking at tai's calendar ... oh shit, ok i have to change that. so i call them back and it takes like 4 hours to fix and i said "you know, i'm gonna be tied up between 11 and 3, so ..." and they're like "ok, we moved it to 3".
meanwhile, this afternoon we're all caught up in the drama with the swat team taking down the bank robber next door, and suddenly the phone rings and they wanna confirm tai's OTHER appointment which i believe is the midwife, and that's tomorrow at 2:45 after she's done with the ultrasound. ohhhhhh jeez.
^^oh, right, i was working on a blog entry. unfortunately tai's new laptop decided to reboot itself a few hours ago which was awesome. i actually can't write much more about this, but suffice it to say i will have to take a phone screen in the middle of the second medical appointment, which is slightly odd because i think the last non-ultrasound appointment also coincided with my interview day downtown. yeesh.
Monday, February 1, 2010
oops
I had a post I was working on after the 2nd ultrasound and I realized I didn't finish it and it would be a little untimely. Sigh .... oh well
We've obviously had a lot of time now to think about the name of our baby girl. I took a day and wrote a web service to generate random names incorporating combinations of Daniels and Clyde and hyphen and had it be slightly adaptive but it still made a bunch of horrible suggestions that made a lot of people doubt the seriousness of the endeavor. Still it was viewed by about 150 different people and to my knowledge only one person tried to hack it, so it was pretty good, and it gave me a look into my subconscious as far as name preferences. When we were watching her suck amniotic fluid the name Adelia was stuck in my head although it sounded slightly off and I thought maybe Adele or something like that. I dunno. The name generator picked a lot of gemstones like Sapphire, Emerald *** oh my god, the computer just asked me if I wanted to reboot and of course I was typing and hitting space bar 1.5 times per second and it interpreted that as a "yes" -- I seriously want to train this laptop to become a sentient being and give it a cyborg body just so I can fight it to the death ***
ok so yeah, names like Sapphire, Emerald, Ivory (not a gemstone, but ...), Amethyst ... things like that got big points. The name Marseilles Siobhan randomly came up and I kindof liked it -- Tai thinks you can't use the name Marseilles if you've never been there *shrug* ... I like how it's got a French thing and an Irish thing going on simultaneously which sounds about right. Anyways, I dunno. I always pictured going with a -ia name and we thought about Magnolia and Aria and I'm very tempted to run with Aria. In a lot of ways I think she is starting to be Aria in my head. The one mitigating factor is that my favorite book series (i shouldn't say "my favorite" -- scientific polls have established it as the best book series) ASOIAF has a character named Arya whose nickname around the castle is "Arya Horseface", and there's a very good chance that ASOIAF could become an HBO sensation in the next 3 years on par with Lost (people forget this, but lord of the rings was somewhat obscure to the mainstream up until 7 or 8 years ago ... anyone who named their son Legolas or Smeagol in the 80s or early 90s probably set them up for an uneventful first several years followed by a "whoa why the hell did you name me that?!" period after the movie came out) -- ok so what am I saying. I like the name Aria but it's a gamble. Then there's the middle-name-candidate "Esme" oi ... i just googled it and people are talking about Twilight. Well that could be annoying, who knows.
Anyways, working on the name thing, working on figuring out what our 5 year plan is ... I do feel a bit dispirited on that front but ... it really is a situation where only one thing has to go right and then you can figuratively "coast" for a bit. So I guess it's not surprising that while waiting for one thing to go right, there would be a period where no things go right (in case there's any ambiguity, I'm talking about job search / deciding where to live -- the "nothing going right" only refers to that, not relationship or pregnancy or picking a name). I also think it's important for me and Tai to remember that what we have *right now* is something that probably 90-95% of people in the world would be happy to trade for, as far as an environment for our child, access to food, clothing, high speed internet, learning materials, etc ... there is a lot of desire in both of us to move forward, improve our surroundings, make room for a crib, set regular hours for work, activities, etc, and that is because there is so much potential that is not being realized yet, but the fact that we're only at 40% or whatever isn't necessarily cause to despair, and I just need to remember this every time I'm writing a mindnumbing email to some person on Craigslist knowing that they will probably only print off the first page of my resume and spend 20 minutes arguing with me over --- ahh but i digress
I just took 45 minutes off from writing this to rub lotion on Tai's belly and watch biggest loser on the internet and while I was doing that little Aria was kicking my hand something fierce. So much for her being the size of a blueberry!
We've obviously had a lot of time now to think about the name of our baby girl. I took a day and wrote a web service to generate random names incorporating combinations of Daniels and Clyde and hyphen and had it be slightly adaptive but it still made a bunch of horrible suggestions that made a lot of people doubt the seriousness of the endeavor. Still it was viewed by about 150 different people and to my knowledge only one person tried to hack it, so it was pretty good, and it gave me a look into my subconscious as far as name preferences. When we were watching her suck amniotic fluid the name Adelia was stuck in my head although it sounded slightly off and I thought maybe Adele or something like that. I dunno. The name generator picked a lot of gemstones like Sapphire, Emerald *** oh my god, the computer just asked me if I wanted to reboot and of course I was typing and hitting space bar 1.5 times per second and it interpreted that as a "yes" -- I seriously want to train this laptop to become a sentient being and give it a cyborg body just so I can fight it to the death ***
ok so yeah, names like Sapphire, Emerald, Ivory (not a gemstone, but ...), Amethyst ... things like that got big points. The name Marseilles Siobhan randomly came up and I kindof liked it -- Tai thinks you can't use the name Marseilles if you've never been there *shrug* ... I like how it's got a French thing and an Irish thing going on simultaneously which sounds about right. Anyways, I dunno. I always pictured going with a -ia name and we thought about Magnolia and Aria and I'm very tempted to run with Aria. In a lot of ways I think she is starting to be Aria in my head. The one mitigating factor is that my favorite book series (i shouldn't say "my favorite" -- scientific polls have established it as the best book series) ASOIAF has a character named Arya whose nickname around the castle is "Arya Horseface", and there's a very good chance that ASOIAF could become an HBO sensation in the next 3 years on par with Lost (people forget this, but lord of the rings was somewhat obscure to the mainstream up until 7 or 8 years ago ... anyone who named their son Legolas or Smeagol in the 80s or early 90s probably set them up for an uneventful first several years followed by a "whoa why the hell did you name me that?!" period after the movie came out) -- ok so what am I saying. I like the name Aria but it's a gamble. Then there's the middle-name-candidate "Esme" oi ... i just googled it and people are talking about Twilight. Well that could be annoying, who knows.
Anyways, working on the name thing, working on figuring out what our 5 year plan is ... I do feel a bit dispirited on that front but ... it really is a situation where only one thing has to go right and then you can figuratively "coast" for a bit. So I guess it's not surprising that while waiting for one thing to go right, there would be a period where no things go right (in case there's any ambiguity, I'm talking about job search / deciding where to live -- the "nothing going right" only refers to that, not relationship or pregnancy or picking a name). I also think it's important for me and Tai to remember that what we have *right now* is something that probably 90-95% of people in the world would be happy to trade for, as far as an environment for our child, access to food, clothing, high speed internet, learning materials, etc ... there is a lot of desire in both of us to move forward, improve our surroundings, make room for a crib, set regular hours for work, activities, etc, and that is because there is so much potential that is not being realized yet, but the fact that we're only at 40% or whatever isn't necessarily cause to despair, and I just need to remember this every time I'm writing a mindnumbing email to some person on Craigslist knowing that they will probably only print off the first page of my resume and spend 20 minutes arguing with me over --- ahh but i digress
I just took 45 minutes off from writing this to rub lotion on Tai's belly and watch biggest loser on the internet and while I was doing that little Aria was kicking my hand something fierce. So much for her being the size of a blueberry!
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