Bye Bye Partymester

Sorry about the delay in belly posting, we've been traveling and working on weekends and whatnot! We've made up for it by using Mission Pictures' new awesome Canon SLR (we use it for video) to get a super high rez belly.

Part of the whatnot is that we are now waving a sad goodbye to what my brother calls the "partymester". When I first heard this moniker, I thought it quaint, but now it brings a tear to my eye as it recedes into the distance. It's not officially over, but just like the '60s were really over by the summer of '69, the second trimester is ending early for us. Cati has started making sounds walking around the house that I've only heard people at the end of a marathon make. Groans, short breaths, and she even puts her hand on her hip the way runners do at the end of a grueling mile. It was amazing how quick the transition was. One week she was waking up early, peppering my poor groggy brain with chipper questions about whether the dragon print curtains she got would fit a jungle theme, and the next she was stopping in mid-meal, so tired she looked like she was going to cry. Poor Cati, she's a little bewildered. We often have this conversation:

"Sigh...why am I so tired?"
"Because you're making a baby!"

or

"I don't understand why I'm so weepy..."
"Because you're making a baby!"

or

"F#$%^#$!"
"Thank you for carrying our baby!"

We were hanging out with our friends Kate and Chris and their sweet little boy Arlo and we were talking about how nice it was having all these friends who'd just had babies because we were getting all these hand-me-downs and great advice and how it seemed almost too easy, that I felt a little guilty. They both immediately burst into the kind of laugh the evil guy in a James Bond movie has when Bond has just fallen into his trap.

"Don't worry, it won't be easy for long!"

New favorite snack

My new favorite snack is potato chips with thick slices of cheese on top. After a first
snack of cake and milk, and a taro bubble tea, and finishing up everyone's food at the Chinese place for lunch, this little salty repast hits the spot. Wash it down during happy hour with Ray's not-yet-so-famous New Fangled and we're all set for dinner!
(New Fangled is bitters, tonic water, lime, and a cherry in a highball glass - tastes deliciously like liquor, but it's decidedly not.)

We've been enjoying a wonderful visit to Portland to see Carolyn and Ray and their perfectly beautiful new house. Lots of walking, baby showering, and rain showering. Oh, and did I mention lots of eating?!?... Yum!


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Baby Art

Our first piece of baby art is up on our wall. (Sorry it's sideways here...)

It's a Noah's Ark that a friend of Mom & Peter's made - Jason Snape is his name I believe. The most fun for me has been picking the matting and frame. I went to a frame shop here in town http://www.underglassframing.com/ with this print and my PhD diploma - long since overdue for proper framing. The owner, who helped me, immediately commented on how lovely the diploma's font was, which endeared him to me. A true letters nerd like me!

We looked at orange and purple mats, but nothing was fitting perfectly until I suggested we look for a more whimsical frame and we found this one, which sort of picks up on the clouds. I *love* this piece and feel like it'll grow with the baby and be a fun and lovely addition to our house for ever. Also, the covering is high quality plastic, not glass, so if it were ever to fall, it wouldn't break. Baby-proofing in an earthquake zone is a different experience!

Sigh

Hoo ha! Look at that belly! The little bugger is kicking all the time now, very present in our lives already. Cati keeps talking about how big her belly is, and I keep trying to remind her that it's not really "her" belly right now. I mean, sure, when she looks down there, I imagine it looks big, but it's just stretching around this little critter that's growing bigger and bigger.

Pregnancy so far has been a pretty blissful state, but there are some things that have been less fun so far (just speaking for myself, I'm sure Cati's less enamored of having to pee every 12 seconds, etc). For one, being in this kind of weird waiting state is a little hard on both of us, I think. There are so many decisions, actions, thoughts, that are clouded over with the knowledge that everything in our universe is going to change in a way that's impossible to plan. Not just the practical side--sleep deprivation, worry for baby health, constricted social calendar, family goodness--but also the emotional side. I think our friend Kelly said that it's like jumping off a cliff and falling and falling into love with no end. Cati and I both love each other very much, but I think we're also increasingly cognizant that there's another realm of love that we haven't seen yet. Just feeling that little kick gives you a glimpse of it. Of course, that's a good and wonderful thing in many ways, but how weird is it to wait for this feeling that there's no way to replicate? I think as children our whole lives are built around a new thing around every corner warping our minds and changing our vision for good. As adults, you start getting used to and relying on predictable rhythms. This sense that your life is about to be engulfed, even if it's by wonder and joy, is intimidating at times. Every time Cati or I say "We should" or "We'll need to", it's immediately modified in my brain by "That we is going to be three." How will we know what WE need to do, or how WE should feel or act?

And yet, of course, softening the fear and occasional annoyance is the knowledge that falling and falling, if you never hit bottom, is usually called something else. Flight.

New Belly and Beats

Today, a young-ish woman who we met at a Home Birth Story Night who is still figuring out her insurance situation came over to our house to borrow our doppler/babyheartlistener thingy, and Cati showed her how to use it. After many warnings about how she shouldn't worry if she doesn't hear anything, it's still early (she's 10 weeks), blah blah, they found the heartbeat in about 2 minutes. It was really wonderful to be there with her when she heard the heartbeat for the first time, reminded me what a relief and joy it was for us the first time. Then, at an Oscar party, we met a guy who'd had a homebirth for both of his children, who are 8 and 13 years old, and found out he had our same midwife! I'm really loving how this is bringing us into a sort of community with people we would've never met otherwise.

Speaking of homebirth, we told Dr. Kahn we were planning on it for the first time. He was, of course, somewhat discouraging, but didn't put undo pressure on us. He just said, you know, that Kaiser has a nice facility and he always encourages folks to go to the hospital JUST IN CASE. It was all really reasonable, and we really like Dr. Kahn, but afterwards it struck me...having birth isn't a disease. It's a normal activity that has some risks. Like walking outside. Or getting on a plane. Or riding a bicycle. I wonder if I should now only ride my bicycle around the hospital "just in case" anything goes wrong? It's amazing how you have to remind yourself that birth is actually not something that needs to be cured. Of course, there is a very slight chance something could go wrong that the extra 10 minutes we might need to get the several blocks to the hospital might complicate, but our midwife has done nearly 100o births, we feel confident in her expertise. As well as Cati's. And that's what hospitals and ambulances and doctors are for, IN CASE anything goes wrong, we have no hesitance about that.

Anyway, if we knew Kahn would be at the birth, we might feel differently. But for all the nice things he's saying, we have no idea who will be there when she actually gives birth. Could be someone who hates natural birth, or is just sleepy or whatever. Maria is with us now, and she will be with us then and after. That means alot.

Hi Leila!

This post is dedicated to Leila, our littlest fan, and my littlest cousin. It was her birthday this last week, and she got to spend it in Nepal (where she lives with her parents), with her grandparents (a.k.a. Uncle Gene & Aunt June). Wow! Sounds like fun! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LEILA!!! We wish we'd gotten to wear fancy dresses and come to your party. Love, Cati & Arne