Say Hello To My Little Friend

I invite you to be the first to say hello to our new baby.

We went for our first (and only) ultrasound today, and Baby is doing well. It has all the right parts and no extra miscellaneous pieces. [That's a tiny head and face above].

Baby was doing some dancing in the belly, kicking and waving all over the place. Apparently this is a good thing. As you can see from the handy caption the sonogram lady added above, those are in fact feet. Two of them, which is good.

Our sound lady was really nice, and a little wacky, which is how we like em. She kept showing us the face, then reminding us that, although it looked like a creepy baby skull, Baby did in fact have skin and eyes and hair. When I asked crazy sonogram lady if she could tell what color hair the baby had, she looked at us as if she could tell by comparing our genes. [Above are random Baby parts, including a cool shot of the spin, once again in complete form]

Overall, the sonogram was pretty cool. It's very satisfying to know that the baby has all the right parts, is healthy (as far as can be told through pictures), and is the right size.

The last big question is: girl? Or boy? 3 lines? Or turtle? Did we find out? Or are we waiting to be surprised? All I'm saying right now is

Growing...

So things are growing around here. There's the out-of-control garden we planted (with dozens of pots and our little patch of dirt). We've managed to fill every available spot of dirt with something green and growing. By last count, we have our fig trees, 10+ tomatoes, 10ish pepper plants, sage, basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley, six eggplant, peas, chives, potatoes, nastirsums, and some volunteer squash from the compost heap. We've already made pesto once and I dried some sage last week. Half of the tomatoes have little green ones growing. The hot peppers are ridiculous (one plant has 30+ little, evily hot cayennes growing.

Here I am at 17 w 6days with part of the potted garden.

The Tadpole is growing as well. We've hit the 19th week mark (we'll be 20 weeks on Monday and, since pregnacy typically lasts 40 weeks, we're about halfway there). I now officially can't wear my jeans and I'm busting out of most of my other pants/skirts. Mom got me these cool belly bands that have allowed me to put off shopping for quite a few months. Especially with the changing weather here, it's been very helpful to not have to buy multiple seasons of pregnancy clothes. There aren't a lot of maternity options here in town (Target and JC Penny's being the ONLY options), so it's been great to put off buying. But, I'm now starting to slowly add in new clothes. Sis has been a great help, finding all sorts of online sources for inexpensive maternity clothes. Given that these are fairly disposable items (I won't be wearing them past fall!) and that I do have two seasons to worry about (November is very different from July!), it's nice to not spend a fortune on clothes right now.

A week later, and I look a bit bigger. The biggest tomato here is our cherry tomato.

We've had several visits with the Dr (we're seeing one Dr now, but will get transferred to a clinic attached to our hospital in August (either with a midwife or with a Dr)). The heartbeat is fast and loud. We're looking forward to our ultrasound appointment very soon. We're not planning to find out the baby's gender, so that will be a surprise to all of us come November! We're only scheduled for the 1, unless there are any problems that need monitoring.

So, that's the growing news around these parts. I've got two more weeks of teaching for summer class and the class I'm taking starts this week for 6 weeks. I'm also doing some contract work for a big company that I can't really discuss further in this format. Plus, you don't really care about the details, trust me.

In cat news, the cat is nuts. He has two modes: attack cat and passed out. But, his morning habits have me completely smitten. You might remember us complaining about Miles' tendency to wake us up as early as possible with loud cries and whines regardless of his supply of food. This cat, however, uses the strategy of coming to snuggle in bed and being sweet and loveable to let us know that he's completely out of food. Plus, he eats all of his food, even the crumbs, and isn't remotely picky about food. So, although he doesn't want to sit on my lap while I type or snuggle with me in bed, I'm happy to have him around.

[tap, tap] Is this thing on?

If you haven't noticed, I've been terrible at updating this here blog. Since last August, I have been on quite the roller coaster of school craziness. And now with the impending birth of Baby X, I'm sure things aren't going to slow down.

But I've decided I miss writing on this here blog. Not for you. For me. Writing run-on sentences about inane details of my life is strangely fulfilling. So I'm going to try to be better. And K and I have been cooking some more lately, so I may even post something onto our eating blog, which is super neglected, but, in my opinion, a cool idea waiting to happen. [We made Raspberry Fool this weekend, in tribute to the Rimsky Korsikoffee Shop. It was beautiful and tasty.]

No promises, as who knows what will happen next with life. But I am going to try to do something with this here blog. Maybe even Cole will get a chance to post something.