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.