coffee

This morning I had a cup of coffee, my first in over 20 weeks.

At about week 7 or so, I started getting morning sickness, and coffee was no longer interesting to me. In addition, I understood that I should cut back my caffeine intake, so I started having a cup of tea. I've been very happy with this cup of tea for months.

During morning sickness, I had several aversions. Some foods made me feel a bit queasy to smell or think about. Others, I just wasn't interested in, and coffee was one of them.

I remember my sister Ruth having a cup of tea in the morning when she was pregnant, saying she didn't drink coffee anymore, and I thought I could never do that. But somehow, I've found I'm much more content giving something up for the good of my baby than I used to think I would be.

For the past month or so, the smell of coffee has been more intriguing. And this morning, I woke up, and decided it was what I wanted. I'm having half-n-half caf, so it's about the same amount as a cup of tea. So, I don't feel bad about it, and I'm glad to be enjoying coffee again.

nesting

They say pregnant women have a extra strong "nesting" instinct, involving serious cleaning and organizing of various parts of their home. It is supposed to be strongest just before you giving birth - perhaps a sign that it is close.

I read this in Vicki Iovine's The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy:

A couple of days before you go into labor, you may feel an irresistible urge to clean your hosue or defrost your refrigerator or put all your CDs in alphabetical order or some other such anal task. I am not talking about the normal panicky cleaning fits some of us fall into when our mother calls and says she is stopping by unexpectedly, or the way you finally get around to putting the broken toilet paper dispenser back on the wall because your brother and his new wife and coming to stay for the weekend. No, I am talking about the kind of feverish cleaning where you use your husband's toothbrush to scour the pipe that goes from the back of your toilet into the wall. I'm talking about taking every switchplate cover in the house and soaking them all in Pine Sol. This is the time when otherwise rational women truly believe that they cannot sleep for one more night in a house where the baseboards have not been freshly painted. This is nature's way of making sure you will be ready for the new baby, and it is called "nesting."

A week after her due date...my Girlfriend Mindy was discovered by her mother tottering at the top of her six-foot ladder, feverishly sponging down the shelves at the top of her closets. To indicate how out of character this was, I have to tell you that Mindy's "baby" is now seven years old, and that those shelves have never seen a sponge since....

My Girlfriend Sondra starting cooking as she neared her delivery date. She calmly and rationally explained that she just wanted to have a few meals frozen so that her husband could microwave them when she was in the hospital and when she first got home. It made sense, until I saw Sondra's car in the grocery store parking lot at 7:00am waiting for it to open. She made so many casseroles that she filled her own freezer and soon spread out to her Girlfriend's across the street.....

I'm not close to my due date, and I don't think I'm close to the irrationality in the above stories, but I had a spurt of organizational projects this last week. I have always enjoyed deep cleaning and re-organizing. I love making things look nice. I can remember as a small child taking great delight in ordering my dad's screws into the correct coffee cans.

I was thinking about that on Friday as I sorted the tool box at school.

This is the third re-organization project I took on last, as the end-of-school-term craziness has quieted down.

I started out asking a question about a field trip, and ended up taking on the task of organizing old field trip information and brochures into beautiful binders.

But in order to do that project, I needed plastic sheet protectors. I couldn't readily find them in the cabinet, and as I was shifting through the supplies, I realized it needed an overhaul. I don't know how many times it's been re-organized by very competent, organized people who piled and labeled until they were blue in the face. But all the slippery office supplies come sliding together, and staff in a hurry don't always put things back where they belong. It needed a serious overhaul, a brand new scheme. The empty mailboxes spoke to me: these trays would be just the thing.

Several hours later, with the help of Jarka, I had it beautiful.

Friday afternoon I came home, emptied the dishwasher, and tried to stuff the darn tupperware into the darn tupperware drawer. Too full. I promptly sat down and re-arranged until it all fit in this beautiful fashion.

Naturally if you could have seen the state of disorder these things were in to begin with, you might better appreciate all these photos. Alas, I don't have a "before" shot. But still, hopefully this captures the essence of my excitement in these projects.

summer reading

I've taken to a flurry of pregnancy reading.

I started out reading online about weekly developments of our baby on various websites. I particularly like:

• http://www.babycenter.com/ which has many articles on all sorts of questions I might have as well as videos of baby development, delivery, etc.
• http://www.birth.com.au/ offers even more detail on the baby's development in their weekly emails.

When Carol came to visit, she brought a few books from Ruth.

• Vicki Iovine's The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy. This is an entertaining read written from the perspective of your girlfriend. It's not a doctor's guide, and it's not full of so many statistics. But it explains all sorts of unusual feelings and behavior of pregnant women, and warns the reader about lesser-known side effects and things to be prepared for. It's got laugh-out-loud passages and lots of good advice.
• The Little Big Book of Pregnancy, which is one of those coffee table books with quotes and short stories and photos to inspire and encourage pregnant women...

Garrett's mother sent us a care package with a book that was my sister-in-law's favorite:

• Tracy Hogg's The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer. This book was written by a British woman in the 90s who was a ...and lactation specialist. She was a bit opinionated, but I liked her philosophy a lot and will probably try to adopt it. She included lots of good guides that I am sure I will reference when our little one is born.

An English library in Prague had a used book sale recently, and I picked up a whole bunch of other books:

• The New Mother's Guide to Breastfeeding: I just finished this last night. It rather smacks of propaganda from the American Academy of Pediatrics, but specific instructions were helpful, and I'm glad I got it.
• Babywise: I haven't started it yet, but it appears to be about training your child to sleep through the night.
• Babywise, Book Two: Parenting Your Pretoddler, Five to Fifteen Months
• Burton White's The New First Three Years of Life

And finally, my sister Elizabeth just lent me:

• What to Expect the First Year

24

Here I am at 24 weeks, on June 11. In a little more than 2 weeks from now I will be entering the third trimester.

baby girl

We think our little squirmier is a girl. I am conscientiously saying "we think" because I understand these things are never 100% until delivery. And I don't want to forget that, since I know already it would be a bit of a shock and an emotional shift if we found out we were wrong.

The ultrasound technician said she thinks we're having a girl. From my untrained eye, I agreed. I also understand from Kristie that the heartbeat can suggest if a baby is a boy or girl: girls have higher heartbeats. I asked my doctor about this, and she said she had done a study: babies' heartbeats range from 110 to 160. (They beat extra fast in order to get all the oxygen they need.) A heartbeat of 150 has a 90% chance of being a girl; a heartbeat of 160 has a 95% chance of being a girl. Our little one has a heartbeat of 150. So, we think she's a she!

We have a name picked out for our girl. We are keeping this a secret. The reasons for this are obvious to me: 1) we'd like something to announce when she arrives 2) we don't care for any input on our decision 3) we don't need any criticism about what we've decided; people won't say anything bad about the name of a born baby, but they will give their opinion about your hypothetical name. Two things baffle me: 1) adults who don't understand these reasons and are so irritated about us being "all secretive about it." 2) kids who think that if they beg us we will cave and tell the name.

Being pregnant is an interesting experience. Mostly, I'm excited and I'm loving it. I love reading about it and learning about my baby. I love talking about it and I love hearing other women's stories. I love just thinking about it, and I can amuse myself for countless minutes just looking at my belly and feeling her kicks. But every once in a while I'm hit with the startling fact that I'm pregnant, and I'm overwhelmed: it's not stopping; I keep growing; there is a little person inside of me; my life will never be the same; something that I've wanted to happen to me & wondered if it would happen to me nearly my whole life is happening to me.

Being pregnant and starting a family is way more intense than being engaged and getting married. I was told this before, but now I know why it is true. When I was engaged, I knew the man I was going to marry. I knew the date we'd be married, and we went through it together completely. My identity did change a bit, and I had to work out being a wife and how that affected being a girl friend and a daughter. Of course there were things I didn't know, but mostly I felt in control of the situation.

When pregnant, there are about a zillion more unknowns. I'm going through this with Garrett, but in many ways, he can't experience it as I do: for one, he doesn't experience the hormonal emotions (ok, sort of he does, but not for himself)...for two, he doesn't have the physical reminder constantly before him. We don't know this person is who is joining our family. (This is largely why I wanted to know if we're having a boy or girl: there are already plenty of unknowns.) I know she is from us, but I don't know who she'll take after, or what little personality is developing in there. I don't know if she'll be difficult or easy, timid or outgoing. There are so many more things to worry about. She may not be healthy, she may come before she is due. I don't know what kind of life God has in store for her, if it will be long or short and if He'll draw her to Him at a young age or old.

When I was in my first trimester, I worried a lot about losing her. Even though I barely knew her, I was attached. I thought that worry would be gone when we passed into the second trimester. I was dead wrong: instead I had only grown more in love with her and knew that losing her would hurt even more. I realized that the fears will never end--they'll just grow as she grows. I had to give them up or go crazy. I think a mother must have to keep letting go of her fears, day after day.

baby

For most things, I can sate my curiosity by opening a book or doing a google search. And I've learned a lot about a baby's growth in the womb, and expectations for how my body may handle it, and why weird things are happening to me. I've learned about how much weight I'll gain, and why I pee all the time, and what other women's experiences have been.

But nothing can sate my curiosity for how painful labor will be for me, or what it will feel like when I get to hold my daughter in my arms and lay my eyes on her for the first time. I just have to wait to find out how tired I'll be in the third trimester, and how far out my belly can grow, and when her birthday will be. And I'm so darn curious.

our wedding, part 8: contradancing

Here's a short video of contradancing photos.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

There are so many lovely photos that bring back such fun memories and make me think of people I love. So, several are there for a 1/2 second glance.

Here are a few more:

The contradancing was absolutely the best. I never would have thought to have it at my wedding; I generally don't care for wedding dancing. But Craig encouraged it, and made it sound fun. It's the kind of dancing that anyone can do - you don't have to know how; you just have to be happy and enjoy the music. A caller tells us what to do, and quickly we learn the basic terms that tell us how to move. Nearly everyone at the wedding danced, and it was the best way to celebrate with everyone all at once. We didn't want to leave at all. It was such fun being with dear friends and family who we rarely get to see. And just being a bride, and in the lovely gown was so wonderful, I never wanted to the evening to end.