Christmas tree!

This is our very first tree. Last year our place was too small to get even just a little one. We took turns holding the baby when she cried in order to get it decorated. Here's the whole process, time-lapsed. (Fascinating, I know.)










Twinkly!

baby blessing

We had Izzy blessed at church last Sunday. She was even quiet the whole time!





So charming...

Grandma came down for the big event and boy, we were sure glad to see her. She had a few harrowing experiences (including a frozen axle in her car and a spill in the airport) but in the end she found her way to us safe and sound.



I think Izzy was glad to meet her.

Izzy as Hobbes

Izzy's awesome cousins made her this ferocious blanket.
(She is only pretending to be surprised.)

Thanksgiving, woo!

Matt and I made these tur-cookies for our Sunday School class.
It is a whole flock of delicious and festive.

hooray oxy clean!

This is the last picture taken of me in my nice white sweater. Mere moments later, Izzy made such a good poop that it could not be contained. Neither of us were expecting this; she surprised herself so much that she jumped straight up. I had a mustard yellow trail down the front of my shirt to prove this. Good thing we were about to have a family portrait taken! Fortunately a spare shirt was found, and Izzy miraculously missed her own dress. Good times ensued.

alien hand syndrome...

...is the logical reason for why Izzy keeps hitting herself in the face.

Here it is in action:


...and here the darn thing is trying to get her in her sleep:

fat baby

We've been working hard on getting our baby up to a fighting weight, and I'm proud to say that at two weeks old she is over 7 pounds. Now that she's got the eating thing down we'll concentrate more on the sleeping thing. We don't expect her to sleep through the night, but any sleeping she can manage at night would be greatly appreciated.

Also, it is very difficult to type one-handed when you also can't see the keyboard. I apologize for any typos because they make my baby sad.

busy week

So hey, I had my baby!

I went in on Tuesday the 20th (my due date) for a standard non-stress test. The test showed that baby's heartbeat dropped considerably every time she moved or I had a contraction. Under medical advice, we went to the hospital to be induced. They put me on pitocin, and the contractions came hard and close together. I was hooked up to all sorts of devices to monitor me and the baby, and I had to wear an oxygen mask as well. It was a less comfortable way to labor, but it was necessary. Towards the end, baby was having issues with me pushing as well, so it was urgent for me to get her out of there as soon as possible. This meant an episiotomy and a Herculean pushing effort in order to avoid a cesarean. And boom! Out she came, with the cord wrapped around her neck at least four times. The midwife told us it was a miracle that she came out alive. 5 lbs, 15 oz and with an IV for the first day and a half, but alive. And now she's doing great, eating like a champ and filling our garbage cans with excessively moist diapers. Hooray for Izzy!



Isadora Olivia, relaxing after a hard day.

pumpkin times

Matt and I carved pumpkins for our Monday-Night-Be-Awesome-Together activity.



Mine is the winking one, of course.

Also, I am 40 weeks pregnant today! The official due date is tomorrow, so baby should probably get started tonight if she wants to be on time. More on this later when there is actually more to say.

princess things

For Christmas this year I am making each and every one of my nieces a princessy tiara. It takes a lot of ribbon and glue. Here are the first five (for Kristin's wee ones):









No two will be alike, and I just hope that they are more or less the right size for little heads. Chances are good that I can get them all done before I go into labor, so maybe the baby will even get one. For later use, of course. :)

autumn

Fall is here! Matt and I went on a short hike to look at all of the pretty trees.





I tried to catch a leaf in motion, but I had limited success. They were just too fast and unpredictable for me. What I needed was a good ol' fashioned wind storm, but I had to settle for a gentle, soothing breeze. In fact, this photo is actually rigged. Matt dropped that leaf for me after I missed it the first time.

We tried, so hard.


The failure did not ruin the hike.

count down

So here I am at about 36 1/2 weeks:


That was taken about a week ago, so now I'm even closer! I'm officially "ripe," meaning that any day I could do that magic trick where I suddenly make a baby appear. (I use the word "suddenly" loosely, of course.)

My due date is the 20th of October. I am now accepting guesses as to when the chickadee will actually hatch. Leave your guess in the comments and if you're the closest I'll mail you a dollar. If nobody guesses then by default I win. I am already practicing my labor face.

apples

This is the apple tree in our backyard. It is completely weighed down with about a brazillion little green apples which aren't quite ripe yet. I've been eating one or two a day regardless.

baby room photos

Matt and I bought a new camera, which I am quite excited about. I don't know very much about photography and neither does Matt, but at least we now have a nice camera to document some important events that are up and coming. It would be tragic for our first child's life to be undocumented due to our laziness. Indeed.

So, there's not a baby to take pictures of yet, but there are other things. Here is the baby's room:



Matt and I totally made those yellow curtains. Booyah!

When baby looks up from her crib, this is what she'll see:


Or maybe this:


Actually, there are quite a few fish to choose from.


Yup, she'll just be sitting in her happy little world...

...which resembles prison for her own safety.

crafty like a fox

This week has been one of making things, which I am excited about. Unfortunately, many of the things I am making will probably end up being Christmas presents for folks who may or may not read this blog, so I can't really go into detail or post pictures. Suffice it to say that I am pleased and think that what I am doing is awesome. When I finish with the goodgies presents, perhaps I can post those pictures and trust to the discretion of their parents. This is mostly directed at you, Kristin...

On a related note, Matt bought me a laminator last night! Boy, am I excited and also kind of a nerd.

why did I not know about this?!

I recently discovered Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Holy amazing-ness, I am a fan! It's been on the internet for over a year, so I am kind of slow. But just in case there are others out there like me, here is the first part of Act I:



The whole thing is less than an hour long, and you can watch it, get lyrics, etc. here, although I'm pretty sure that Hulu doesn't work in Canada. But that's what Youtube is for, right?

Second amazing discovery: the egg cuber. It is irrational how much I want one of these. Square eggs are the future, my friends.

flashback to August

So, one cool thing Matt and I did last month was spend a week in Washington D.C. Our plane skirted a lightning storm on the way there, which was much better than flying through it. Snappy-flashy lightning! Woo!

Last time we were in the area it was February and I was just starting to feel the effects of morning sickness. Also it was freezing the entire time. This time around I was nausea-free but considerably larger. We didn't take in as many sights because Matt was pretty busy with work and the humidity made walking around less pleasant. However, I did insist on seeing the National Zoo since our hotel was fairly close by. This is pretty much how the zoo went:


(click picture to enlarge, because it is better that way)

Yup. On the plus side, I did get to see a pygmy hippo and baby really liked the small mammals house.

On an unrelated note, today I discovered I have three followers. I did not even know this thing! So, hello you folks!

over a month

It's been that long since I wrote anything because I have been out and about doing exciting things. And when I am doing exciting things I usually don't have a computer. But soon, very soon, I'll go into more detail. Right now, though, I am battling a cold and cleaning the house. High fives all around!

this is for you, mom

Ta-da!



I would say that I'm approximately two-thirds of the way done. Here is a close up so you can see the texture:



And for those of you who have requested it, here is a picture of me in all my glory:


28 weeks, 2 days

It's about that time in my pregnancy where they check me for gestational diabetes, so I went in on Monday to drink the glucosey drink and have my blood drawn. Unfortunately, it made me very nauseated and I ended up throwing up all over the waiting room. :( On the bright side, though, today I went in again and got to eat jelly beans instead. Also the staff thanked me for providing them with an excuse to get their carpets cleaned.

blanket

I've begun work on the blanket and figured out how to use linking, hence two posts in a row with clickable spots. I've been making good progress, except for those times when I've gotten cocky ("Pshaw, this isn't so hard!") and then had to spend several hours undoing my work to fix mistakes. I would have to say that that's my least favorite part about knitting so far.

the internet is amazing

So look at this awesome thing I found:

awesome thing!

You just click on the squares and see what kind of music you can make. I don't understand how it works, but since it's programmed to be harmonic you can't really make a truly ugly song.

book tally

A while back I said that I was going to keep track of how many books I read this year. The year is halfway over, and I've read a total of 83 books and 27,199 pages. That makes an average of almost 14 books a month, at 330 pages each. Not too shabby. We'll see how the rest of the year pans out. Now that I'm not working at a library, I suspect the count will go down.

what now?

So...last Friday was my last day at work, meaning that I am no longer an official librarian. That's what I get for moving and not wanting to drive to work. :( But, this is also a really good thing for me. The 4-5 hour days of mostly standing were kind of killer and took away my drive to get anything productive done at home. Now I have the time and the desire to actually cook planned meals for our little family (tonight we will have quesadillas with chicken and green pepper) and do that which generally needs to be done (laundry, sweeping, dusting, etc.) on a more regular basis. So far so good.

Also, since I have a bit of time on my hands, I'm getting back to my creative side. I think I would like to do some writing, learn to play this guitar I have sitting around, and make something beautiful for the baby out of five skeins of this:



If I can pull it off, I will be impressed with myself.

let there be light

Sorry that it's been so long, but we've been doing a bit of moving and I've been out of the internet.

I suppose I never realized how dark and cave-like our basement apartment was until I spent the night in our new place. The morning sun came in through our huge bedroom window, making it so much easier to wake up and get out of bed. I've never been much of an early riser, but natural light definitely helps. Having a bed the size of Texas doesn't hurt either.

In other news, baby kicks all the time now. She's generally a bit of a night owl with a penchant for breakfast time. I've never been punched from the inside before, so it still feels somewhat unusual. I think that Matt is curious about what I am experiencing, but also hopes never to have something living inside of him. Understandable, I suppose.

living space

Matt and I are moving at the end of the month. Not too far, but to a much nicer place. Since we live in a pretty cramped and somewhat decrepit basement apartment, that could mean anything. But it actually is a pretty sweet deal. It's the top floor of a duplex in a nice little neighborhood with rather nice landlords. There are two bedrooms (which I would say is twice as many as we have now, but really zero times two is still zero), big windows, and a huge backyard. We'll have a little garden plot and an apple tree (hot dog!), and a deck leading to them. Best of all, though, is that we will have a washer and dryer inside the house. It's a dream come true, being able to do laundry whenever I want, and for free. Those are words I never thought I would say...

Also, in anticipation of the increased space and my increasing girth, we bought a king size mattress. We do not have a frame yet, but if we had $15,000 to throw down on one I would totally go for this:



(Which you can buy here if you do happen to have the cash. And if you do, what are you doing here?)

coolest thing ever

Okay, so pretty much the coolest thing ever was watching my baby on the ultrasound and having the technician point out all the little parts.

This is the baby's profile, which was a little bit difficult to get. It's hard to get a child so young to cooperate in photos...you know how it is.



Here we have a picture of the little feet. Baby was kicking around an awful lot, which was awesome to watch.



And this might be my favorite picture:



Can you see both of the little legs just frozen mid-wiggle? I can!

And also, baby is a girl. Woo!

somewhat overdue post

Matt and I celebrated our first anniversary on the tenth of May, but I didn't do a very good job of posting anything about it. But this will be a something about it, so that is good.

Matt was out of town on business for most of the week before our anniversary, so I had time to myself to plot something. Since I was going to be at work when he got home from his flight, I decided that I needed a way to show him that I had missed him. What I came up with was balloons. Lots and lots of balloons.



Matt may or may not have almost drowned in the balloons. They covered the floor pretty thoroughly, so later that day when we went to the store to get cake (cake!) I just put my feet in the balloons and slipped on my shoes without looking. Matt was the one who noticed that I had not done a very good job of that.



Anyway, here is a picture of us on the actual big day. It was a pleasant one.



And here is another picture, because those of you who know me expect it.