For Doodle

"Read me books, Mama.
All these."
She points to the pile.
We snuggle up, her head on my shoulder
her legs curved around my belly,
around her sibling.

We cuddle and read
book after book after book
with breaks for "what's that?"
and
"oh no, is he okay?"
My compassionate little bookworm.

I feel her drifting off to sleep
lulled by my voice
and my presence.
I'm glad I'm here now.
I have things to do,
lists upon lists of urgent projects

but right now, she needs me

and I need her.
We need this.

Soon she'll be a big sister
with big sister feelings
and a big sister portion of my time.
But right now, here,
we cuddle.

I know I'll love another
just as much as her.
I'll love watching her
embrace her new role: big sister.
It's just so hard to imagine.
Hard to think about
my divided attention,
my divided time.

I promise her I'll do my best
and kiss her sweet, sleepy head
as I settle in
and drift off to sleep with my Doodle.

Doodle & breakfast

Miss Doodle is quite the amusing, entertaining, awesome little person. This morning she insisted on having hot chocolate for breakfast. When I refused she started crying and whining, even asking Papa in hopes he'd say something different. After a few offers of waffles, oatmeal or applesauce she wandered into the kitchen to figure out her own breakfast.

She proceeded to grab an ear of corn from a bag of farmer's market produce we hadn't yet put away. She turned and told me, "I eat corn for breakfast." She then walked to the garbage can, where she husked the ear of corn completely. I turned in time to see her take a bite of the raw corn, followed by an "Mmmmm" of satisfaction.

She then brought it to me, saying "you cook corn. It's ok, I only ate one bite."

While I cooked her corn she ate a waffle for breakfast.

The Belly

I seem to have officially crossed some pregnancy threshold: I'm huge. I say this not because I have passed a certain measurement or hit a wall of awkwardness. It's what others are saying. Comments have recently switched from the "aww, you're pregnant. How cute!" variety to the "Holy... wow. You're REALLY pregnant. Due soon?" variety.

Quick Public Service Announcement: As pregnant ladies we aware that we are pregnant. This is not news to us. Comments of the "oh, you look great" variety are always welcome. Comments tending toward "wow, you're huge" or "oh, poor thing... you must be miserable" are never welcome, at least not by me. If I want to bitch about pregnancy-related stuff, I will. But if I barely know you, chances are I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a spoon than receive your unwanted sympathy for how big I am and how uncomfortable I must be. Because really? I'm not that uncomfortable. Honest. Yes, there are actions that are difficult for me, namely putting on shoes or shaving my legs. So if you're offering to give me a pedicure or tie my shoe, your help would be welcome. But for the most part I feel really good, and don't want your damn sympathy thankyouverymuch.

(P.S. I am 34 weeks pregnant. That means I have somewhere between 3 and 8 weeks until this little one is born, probably somewhere around 6 weeks from now. So I'm not sure how making me feel ENORMOUS now will help the next six weeks pass easily and comfortably. Y'know?)

Alright, alright. Enough ranting. Tell me what you think. Here are a couple of photos Doodle and I took on a stroll up at Tony Grove Lake yesterday. Is this belly shock-worthy?

Self-portrait of the cuteness.

View from the front. Photo by Doodle.

Well?

What do you think?

Summer rainstorms are great

...especially with a friend's umbrella.

due date stress, or lack thereof

If nearly everyone around me seems to be nervous on my behalf that I might give birth before my due date, does it make me foolish to not be nervous?

My rationale: I've planned as much as I can for alternate scenarios. I can't anticipate for certain when the baby will be born (somewhere in the 37-42 week window is my best guess. Not exactly something you can block out on the calendar as *the day*). Stressing about something that I can't control seems futile. Might as well just sit back and wait, right?

If the baby is born before I've taught all of the early-semester labs I'm scheduled to teach then we'll work something out. The prof in charge of the class and my fellow TA are both prepared for this.

If the baby is born before my bellydance show, they'll have to rework things without me. My fellow dancers know this.

If the baby is born while J is in Pennsylvania (I'll be 37 weeks), then I'll just have to do what I can. I have support I can call on.

It'll all work out. It may not be the easiest, best planned approach, but it'll work. Seems reasonable to me. Is there something I'm missing?

This post is worthless without photos

Tonight at dance I got the comment "I don't think you'll make it [read: stay pregnant] until the show." Our big bellydance show is October 2nd, 8 days before my supposed due date. It's a reasonable guess that I may not still be pregnant then. *shrug* Ok, fine. Whatever.

This was immediately followed by "are you sure you're not having twins?"

Excuse me while my head explodes. Twins?! Do I look like I could be 33.5 weeks pregnant with TWINS?! No. Certainly not.

At least I don't think so. Time to take another round of bellypics, I suppose.

Drowning in apricots

About 1.5 weeks ago we picked apricots. Lots of apricots. The friends of a friend of ours had a tree full of apricots and didn't want them to go to waste. I inquired about picking, and they happily invited us over to "take as much as we wanted."

We brought home six boxes worth of apricots.

This is where those who have processed and canned fruits ask "what in the world possessed you to take so many? What can any one family do with SIX BOXES of apricots?"

That is a very good question.

We made 31.5 pints worth of apricot goo - like applesauce, but with apricots. Doodle loves it, J likes it, and we could use it to feed a small army if necessary. No scurvy in the long winter months for this family!

We also made two dehydrator-loads worth of apricot-applesauce fruit leather, which will hopefully last our frugivorous child at least partway through the winter. *fingers crossed* Oh, and we gave ~3lbs to a friend to give to another friend to make into Apricot Hefeweisen and jam.

Yes, ridiculous amounts of apricot product. I know. Want to see what the process looked like?

Half of our sink was commandeered for the apricot cleansing.

Then the cooking of the goo. Lots of goo.

My view of the pitting process, 31 weeks pregnant. Added bonus: it was dang hot in our house, so I rarely had my shirt pulled down over my belly. Good for not overheating. Bad for avoiding the occasional squirt of apricot juice in the bellybutton. Blech!

movin' on up

As you might remember, I'm a member of my bellydance company's student performance troupe. I've been dancing with them for... counts fingers... four years now. I love it. Being in the troupe gives me more performance opportunities, along with the challenge of learning new choreographies from different directors, and a fun group of girls to hang out with each week.

I've slowly moved up the ranks from 'rookie in the troupe' to 'still-kinda-new,' and from there to 'one of the veterans' (changed that fast in a year - we had a lot of turnover). This past year I've gone from veteran to Veteran+TroupeMom. Not anything official, of course, but I've certainly become the one who others ask for choreography clarification, the one who gets the "I'll be late for practice!" texts, and one of the few given the opportunity to choreograph a duet for a show... things like that.

I'm the most experienced in the student troupe. So it really shouldn't have come as a surprise when my troupe/company director pulled me aside a few weeks back to talk. (These talks are never just "hey, how's it going?" That can happen with other people around. This was one of THOSE talks.) So we sat, and she told me, "we'd like to invite you to join [name of professional troupe] for next year."

I stop breathing.

Internal dialog: What? WHAT??? REALLY??? Whoa this is awesome but OMG I'm going to have a newborn and we can't afford it and....
She interrupts my thoughtstream with: "...but we know it might be hard to manage with school and a newborn and stuff. So, know that we want you in the troupe. BUT if that would be too much, we'd like you to be a director for [student troupe]."

ok, breathing again.

She tells me I'm the most qualified, and they'd love to have me, but it is a huge time and money commitment, and if I can't do it this year, that's totally fine. They want to give me the opportunity to grow as a dancer, and choreographing for a troupe is a big step up from unofficial TroupeMom.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So that's the scoop. I'm not moving up to the professional troupe next year (which doesn't kill me to say it as much as I thought it might), but I *DO* get to choreograph for and perform with the student troupe. It'll certainly be a challenge, but I'm excited about it.

Little climber

As promised, here are the pics of Doodle climbing at the gym with her friend S.

Climbing.

Being lowered.

Bouldering babe, on her way...

...to the top!

Obligatory self portrait.

Climbin' buddies.

Running around the bouldering area, crashing on crash pads.

Bouldering babe

Video of Doodle bouldering at the climbing gym. I think she's a natural.

Happy 30th!

Guess who's 30 today?

Yep, that's the birthday boy!

A cute kid who has become an amazing and wonderful man.

Silly and nerdy, which I love.

Outdoorsy and adventurous (and hot).

A wonderful Papa who knows how to be a kid still.

And the best partner I could possibly ask for.
Thanks for letting me be a part of your adventures, J.

Happy birthday!
We love you!

Off the deep end

As a continuation of the nuttiness, I steam-cleaned our living room carpet yesterday. Thankfully J was willing to haul all of our crap out of said living room, and then haul it all back once the carpet was dry.

Only now we're reconfiguring our living room (and thus our office as well), so stuff is strewn EVERYWHERE. Ugh. It'll be great when everything has a home and the house is clean and free of clutter. Then our beautifully cleaned carpet will be visible and I will feel successful. In the meantime, though... blech.

Full-on nutty

The crazy preggy nesting hormones have kicked into high gear. I'm no longer content to merely obsess over dishes and vacuuming. The things that I am now fixating on are of the "if I don't clean it THIS MINUTE it won't happen in the next two years" variety. Which means that announcing "Hey J, I think I'm going to mop the kitchen this morning" really means moving all but the major appliances out of the kitchen, sweeping under the shelving, and mopping all of the linoleum in our house. Including behind the toilet (remember when I said that was nutty, and I wasn't THAT BAD, YET? It's happened. It's that bad.).

And when the sponge part on the mop starts falling apart ten minutes into the project, do I stop? Hell no. I am not to be deterred. I merely switch to scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees a la Cinderella. Okay, a 30-week-pregnant-and-totally-not-going-to-the-ball Cinderella, but still. It was crazy enough that J and Doodle stood in the doorway of the kitchen taking pictures of me.

At least I'm a happy nesting pregnant lady, right? RIGHT?!

Next on the list: pickling the box of cucumbers I insisted we buy at the Gardener's Market this weekend, followed by some apricot picking and canning/dehydrating later this week. Plus some reorganizing of tupperwares and canning jars, catching up on blogging, working on thesis chapters and maybe starting Xmas-related crafting (damn you, crafty blogs that have already started the holiday craftsiness tutorials!). Only ten weeks until the due date!!!

30 weeks

We took Doodle and her friend S climbing yesterday. Photos of the awesomeness will be posted soon. But in sorting through all the photos I realized there were a few of me and my belly. Hence the 30 week bellypic update. Here ya go:

Me belaying. Photo by Doodle.

Me belaying and getting a back scratch from J. Photo by Doodle (which is why we are lucky enough to have a picture with both J and I in it - together! - for once).

Belly of Doom shot. Photo by Doodle.

Doodle running around in the bouldering area. Photo by J.