Month 1

Boy has time flown by here! Hard to believe my family has all come and gone at this point. I think our next visitors aren't slated until June? I'd say that seems so far but time holds no meaning anymore. This first month has really felt like one long day! I remind myself of what Gretchen Rubin says in The Happiness Project: the days are long but the years are short.

I'm writing this up pretty haphazardly so I'll be brief and let the pictures do most of the talking. Thank you to those who have sent diapers, clothes and other gifts - it's been so helpful. Who knew an amazon wish list could make things so easy!

And for our 1 month  update!

Don't worry it's not on - just showin' support for Dad's work!

It was not all smooth sailing with the photo shoot...

 What Are We Like:
* I looooove to laugh in my sleep. Im not a particularly smiley baby yet, but when those eyelids close, I have the funniest dreams and I chuckle and giggle galore.

(My heart wants to explode every time I get to hear it/see it)

* I'm still doing disposable diapers until I'm a bit bigger and then it's onto cloth diapers hopefully!

* Ive got a ton of energy. Mom doesn't know how I stays awake for as long as I do, but I do. And it's not for lack of trying to go to sleep either.

* Two types of sleep: Sleep sleep (0) & pseudo sleep (1). Pseudo sleep (1) generally occurs between 2am and 8am. I will coo, cry and move, but only for 5-10 seconds, then go back to Sleep sleep (0) for 15-20 minutes so that mom and dad can get some rest. Basically, I'm a very noisy kid!

What We Like:

* Music, although, not necessarily mom singing it.

* "Yard Time" - we let her lay out unswaddled and just dance. She especially likes this when it's sunny outside

* Cat naps. Usually, less than 5 minutes, but sometimes as long as 15! Just long enough to get very little done.

* Sunlight and fresh air. We love our walks and staring out into the patio on bright sunny days.

* Staring at nothing on the wall or ceiling and freaking out Mom and Dad in the middle of the night.

* Food. So much food! We've already had a couple growth spurt days that required hourly feeding. That was... intense. But our socks are already fitting better - it's amazing to actually see milestones of her growing like that. Socks that fell off in minutes before now stay on all day!

What We Don't Like:

* Sleep. This baby... the first 3 1/2 weeks were pretty rough. We had many days where the cumulative amount of sleep had by all (baby included) was ~4hrs. That's right, a mere four hours from midnight to midnight. You may have read newborns sleep on average 16 hrs. We didn't even care if it was 'through the night.' We just wanted sleep and it was oh so elusive. We're finally coming around in this 2nd month to something more normal... but good god was that hard.

* Clothing. We're a diapers and socks only kid. And that's mighty ok in this household!

* Baths. We're getting better here, everyday she's a bit more tolerant of the process. I hope she likes being immersed in water and swimming in the near future

We're Not Sure About

* The swing or bouncy chair. Everyone said these would be lifesavers but she would have none of if until the past 3 or 4 days. Who knows. 

* Our bassinet. It's been quite hard convincing this baby to sleep in her pack n play. She much prefers sleeping with Mom, the couch or most recently, the swing. 

* The cats. She's not aware of them but they love to watch over her. Rosie is particular will standby to help if Elise seems upset or is kicking a good deal. 

* Car Rides. These are hit or miss. There's little else as stressful as driving with a crying baby and being able to do nothing about it.

Ed and I keep saying it, we're very lucky to have such a great baby. The sleeping thing is hard, but she's really not a crier or screamer. She's tolerant of our flubs and she never startles unless she does it to herself (mostly sleep jerks). Even when she occasionally bites a nipple and I yelp and curse, she contentedly continues as if nothing happened. A very sweet baby indeed.

Otherwise, Ed and I are hanging in there. Trying to sleep when we can. Ed is keeping the coffee industry afloat. I was surviving on candy bars (twix and snickers mainly) for 3 weeks to give me energy at 2am. 

Also, we finally recieved a garden plot from the community garden. Great timing considering we started a ton of seedlings when my mom was here. 

I'm working on a list of products we've found valuable this first month, for the next post. I really found opinion pieces like that helpful when I was combing through blogs I like, looking for baby advice.

 Til next time!

Bump Update - Week 39

Whoa guys... one week left? How did that happen? I know, I know, it could be longer, but man, 'one week until my due date' is a crazy thing to write out. 

I had my last pedicure appointment. I'm not much for getting my nails done unless it's a very special occasion, but I sure have enjoyed these sessions. It's been lovely having Joy at the Whole Body Salon chat with me while helping me reach these forgotten toes. If you plan on visiting me, you should absolutely stop in at Whole Foods to enjoy a little time at this salon. 

The pretty flowers get me every time!

The cats got their 'spa day' as well. Baths, treatments, kitty caps... the works! They tolerated it pretty well though they wanted nothing to do with us for a few hours afterwards. I can't blame them. But they're so soft and clean now!

Not sparkling with joy on the inside, but they are on the outside!

It's been a lovely week of final preparation all in all. The last minute shopping is done, the house is as clean as it's gonna get for visitors, and all the baby stuff is cleaned and ready. I've been talking to this munchkin, telling him/her that we are ready and that anytime now would be perfect. :) I'm doing my 'pain coping' exercises with a bowl of ice and practicing my affirmations. I'm generally feeling pretty good... just cumbersome and heavy. And a bit like a punching bag. Midwife says all looks good and all my numbers are on track. So... any day now!

We also took advantage of our dwindling time to have dinner at the food trucks again. So amazing. Pulled pork sandwich, chicken and mushrooms sandwich, and fantastic tater tots... and maybe some delicious cupcakes. A blueberry cheesecake and a churro cupcake! To share of course... ;)  It's nice seeing all the families here, I like imagining meeting Ed here after work with the baby. Give the Ergo carrier some good use!

I've been spending time sitting on the patio now that it's a little warmer and the garden is blooming like crazy. I figure 10-20 minutes of sun is good for my vitamin D as well. If I'm not up to walking, the least I can do is sit out in the fresh air. Few things in life make me as happy as sitting and looking at healthy plants.

And! The Pentatonix concert was amaaaazing. 

It was actually a perfect concert for a full term pregnant lady. Started on time, ended early, and the crowd was all theater/choral people and some middle aged folks. In other words, a very chill crowd. The lighting? Incredible. There's only so much you can do with a show made of 4 people singing with minimal dancing. But the set and the lighting, were amazing. They opened with their Daft Punk medley and it was just... it's hard to describe how inspiring it is when you see performers live and they sound just as good, if not better, than their produced pieces. Baby was dancing away the whoooole show - which was a little uncomfortable, but super great for me being able to sleep the rest of the night. Baby was exhausted I guess! 

Also hearing Avi do his overtone singing in person was really awesome (you gotta listen for the whistle tones):

They also did "Let's Get It On" which they had done on the Sing Off, but this time they added a little audience participation by bringing up a female fan. She was jumping out of her skin she was so excited. 

The audience member is seated on the far left of the stage.

The event staff was lovely too. The VIP room was a great break area away from the concert but when they found out I was 10 days away from my due date they offered to get me handicapped seating! We tried to make our way down to the area but it was pretty cram packed with people already situated. Thankfully, a very nice couple offered me their seat so I got to enjoy the concert up close while off my feet. I didn't get to see much, but honestly, all I wanted was to be in the room and enjoy the singing. Feel the bass in my bones you know? It was amazing. Ed keeps out doing himself with these gifts!

Well, bump time! One of the few left! 

Feelin' pretty big these days!

How far along? 39 Weeks

How Big Is Baby? 20in-ish and as heavy as a mini watermelon!

Sleep: Same, same, same. Which is hopefully a good thing. Hope it's a sign of things to come in a week or so.

Best moment this week: Of course, the Pentatonix concert. There are few things as much fun as seeing a brilliant performance, singing along with a friendly audience, and getting to dance around to thumping bass. We haven't been out to as many concerts these days unfortunately, and I know that number will be even fewer for awhile, so I really, really enjoyed this evening out.

Movement: A lot more uncomfortable for me these days because there's just no room in there. Every move feels like the last inch my skin can stretch, but we're still dancing and partying in there.

Food cravings/aversions: I want a beer people. No. I want a case of beer. A delicious case of deliciousness. 

Symptoms: Little bit of ankle swelling going on here. Thank god it didn't happen until just now at the end, how miserable it would be to have this for months like some of the women I've seen along the way. Otherwise, just normal stuff - fatigue and what not.

It's not horrible, but my right foot is definitely a bit more swollen than the left!

Gender: I've been getting a lot of guesses for a boy based on how I'm carrying.   

Belly Button in or out? Still have a little hood, but mostly it's just flat. We're not innie or outie, we're just stretched to within an inch of our life!

What I miss: Being able to move without as much thought. I told Ed, it's like making a 10 point turn just to get out of bed in the middle of the night. Same for sitting down, getting up off the floor, etc. It all takes way more maneuvering at this stage of the game.

What I am looking forward to: Mom! She should be here in oh, 24 hrs or so. And I am soooo ready! :)

Funny moment of the week: I joined Ed and his coworkers for lunch this week at the company cafe. At the end of the meal I stood up and noticed there was a small puddle on my chair. Ed and I both looked at each other like... oh. my. god. is this IT? But I didn't feel anything?! And we just came from the midwife and she didn't say it would happen NOW! Ack! But then I went to the bathroom and only the outside of my pants were wet. Boy did that get my heart rate up. So thank you person who sat there before me for leaving the chair wet, you scared the bejesus out of this pregnant lady and her husband.

Labor Signs: Some braxton hicks maybe? It's hard to tell. Nothing awful. But I wish more would come around... For whatever reason I feel like I'd be more ready if I had more practice sensations.

Weekly Wisdom: People generally mean well. I've been fortunate this pregnancy to be able to take a step back and not freak out on people who are just trying to be kind or friendly while not really knowing what to say. I don't blame other ladies for getting upset over some cliche pregnancy comments (are you sure there's only one in there, you're enormous!/the names you've picked are dumb or boring!/aren't you afraid of *insert some horrible pregnancy complication*)... but just try to wiggle your toes and take a deep breath and think happy thoughts! Doesn't help to get pissed, even if it feels totally justified. It'll just get you all worked up and have way less an impact on the other person than you are hoping for - and like I said, just trust that they are coming from a place of love and concern (whether it's true or not).

Milestones: Possibly the last week?! Crazy. This was the fastest pregnancy ever. :)

Annnnnnd of course, let's all celebrate my niece's 5 month mark! Such a lovebug.

"I want you to move to California for yourself"

Well that was a nice little break wasn't it? :) Things have been weird, but I want to start writing again so, here I am.

They all look so happy pre-squirrel attacks

So on a lighter note, we've been quite the outdoorsy set lately! Really sprucing up our back patio and this past weekend we had our Wilderness Survival Class. I wanted this to be a picture heavy post but as I'm coming to realize more and more, iPhones are the WORST. They seem really cool and awesome. Until they cost a million dollars and you can't do something as simple as rotate a picture on your computer because Apple and PC's refuse to get alone. Of course. So I'll just post the handful of pictures my iPhone has deemed acceptable. Son of a.... (EDIT - Using Ed's Mac, I'm attempting to post what seem to be rightly oriented pictures... Success! So I'll also update my post on my 10k with a couple other pictures if you are interested!)

My happy place

Anyways. The patio (and upstairs study) gardening has been more amazing than we could've imagined. The potato box is exploding in general. We had to pull up one plant that wasn't performing very well and up came the CUTEST baby potato you have ever seen. It was about the size of my thumb nail. I have picture but I couldn't rotate it... grrr... The rosemary and basil are fighting to hang on, and I'm not sure why they are struggling so much. The other herbs are going gangbusters. Ed also finished making me a beautiful new table so I can sit and have coffee or read during the day by all the lovely plants. We moved our indoor tomato plants out next to it as well and I looooove the smell of tomatos. With my lovely colored lights it reminds me of Mom's, which is a very good feeling indeed.

Our adorable baby potato!

We've been waging a war against the squirrels here. I'm partly to blame because I refuse to give up my wonderful bird feeders, thereby disposing of the cats day-long entertainment. But that means that all the little seeds that drop down from the feeders scatter everywhere and attract everything onto the patio and also into all the plants on the patio. Several of the herbs have met a grisly end, uprooted by these chubby grey squirrels who are truly very UN-afraid of us. If I had any reservations about getting a BB gun before, those reservations were gone with the last murdered parsley plant. We're trying a less violent option of chicken wire first so think happy thoughts for it or these squirrels are going to have a lot more than poor defenseless plants to contend with... In fact, we have been training Rosie pretty intensely lately... Hmmmm.....

Awesome path up to the training area... left everyone pretty winded

Now about the Wilderness Training! We had to drive up into the Santa Cruz Mountains, always terrifying for me in any car because the roads are so tiny and the drops are straight down and extremely far. I highly recommend anyone who wants to visit California that they must make a trip into the woods. It's stunning. The trees go on for ages. Everything is just so much bigger than on the East coast. Too bad I'm too terrified to drive the truck up those tiny roads or I'd visit more often! The training took place on a boy scout reservation high up this windy, woodsy trail following Boulder Creek. Our teacher Jack, who was the real deal, was my sister's age and had spent many a night out in the wild. He said he lived outdoors for a year, and was very familiar with spending the night in a debris hut. What is a debris hut you might ask? It's exactly what you think it is. And we got to make them during our shelter training. (You can see Ed enjoying our group's shelter at the bottom of this post)

We also learned how to make spoons and bowls out of pieces of wood, and then how to boil water using rocks. One of the sillier, but still fun and useful parts of class was learning how to stalk prey in the woods (they do offer a traps class but they had to separate it from their usual stuff because people kept trapping and injuring house pets - yikes) But my favorite part was making fire with the Bow Drill technique! Muahahaha! Let's be up front and honest here. Ed did all the hard work.We tandem whittled a spindle and a fireboard and a handhold, and notched a bow. Ed did the manual labor after that in terms of burning holes and creating the dust coal and I made a beautiful tinder ball (blame iphone for the lack of pictures) that nurtured that coal until it burst into flames! I learned two things from this experience. One, Ed and I will not die during the Zombie Apocalypse or Hunger Games situations of the future. Two, people do not know nearly enough about survival or basic respect for nature. It was really good to get out there and learn things that as Jack and his co-teacher Mark put it, are skills that our ancestors have used and passed on for thousands upon thousands of years. 

This was the insanely hard part, using the bow to make the spindle rotate until wood dust collected and then smoked itself into a tiny coal

My beautiful tinder bundle :)

Finally! After a lot of sweat and a little blood, no tears, we got a coal!

Nurturing the coal in the tinder like a crazy person

FIRE!

And Ed decided he could live here happily ever after :)

"Looks like you're not happy, 'less I open a vein!"

Back on the East coast, I felt a bit like Seymour when it came to growing plants. Never did get to the point of feeding them blood... But here on the West coast Ed and I seem to be having a lot more success! I've taken another step towards turning into my Omi, spending my day moving plants around to follow the sun, running pots up and down stairs and re-configuring things to water. It feels great to get things growing. I've been told you could plant a 2x4 in the ground out here and it'd bloom, but still, I'd like to think we're at least partially to blame for all the greenery around us. Ed has masterminded a grow station for us to use on the not so sunny days:

The top picture is the grow station (which looks a little different now, we added a second light on the bottom and traded out some of those plants for new seedlings), the middle is our herb wall on the back porch, and the bottom picture has our main chives plant and the healthier of the sweet peas. Outside we have a cat-mint plant, rosemary and two more pea plants. Ed's working on growing cabbage and we may even get really ambitious and try a potato planter. Building and setting that up will be a small adventure! (Something like this in theory: http://www.re-nest.com/re-nest/gardening/how-to-grow-100-pounds-of-potatoes-in-4-square-feet-081760) I cannot express how nice it is to have green things around. Fresh veggies and fruit laid out on the counter, fresh herbs growing within eyesight, and the smell of the peppermint when I water it? It's just such a calming, clean feeling. I suppose at some point I'll have to fill everyone in on Ed and I's fantasy future (but if you want a general idea it'd be something like Beekman Boys minus the commercialism and the stylishness). But that's for another entry!

Aside from growing, it's been quiet. I've been doing an excessive amount of research for the wedding. Can anyone explain to me why weddings are so ridiculously expensive and pressure-filled with 'should-haves'?? Anyone? How do people not have nervous breakdowns about this stuff!? I have nightmares about there being food, but no seats. Or seats, but no food or music. Or food and music and seats and flowers but 5 five guests. I mean... how does everyone include everything? Maybe I'll make the next post about wedding ideas and where things stand with that (disclaimer - I won't post often about the wedding because I find it much more fun and relaxing and interesting to talk about everything else I'm into :) )

Follow-up on the weight loss: 
Exercising is still coming along. I still want to die after working out, but I'm at least doing it. The diet part... Well. That's not coming along as great.... I've decided to start trying one vegetarian meal a week for dinner, any suggestions readers? I've added oatmeal back into my mornings and I feel like that should Oh! I almost forgot, in regards to exercise, I've been using the Wii to track my progress and trying some new video games and well, um, how come no one told me how freaking AMAZING Just Dance 3 is?!?! That is on my x-mas wish list for sure! Any game that has the choreography to Robin Sparkles "Let's Go To the Mall" from How I Met Your Mother is a WIN in my book.