Leaving on a Jet Plane

We are going to Baltimore for my cousin Anna's wedding tonight-- a red-eye flight out of Seattle calls our names! We have never been to Baltimore before, and we should be able to spend some significant time exploring the sights and sounds with the Holemans.

So, wish us well on our cross-country trip... I, for one, will be trying my best to sleep on the long flights so I am in great shape to enjoy the sweltering heat of the East Coast. We bid you adieu, rain and wind!

Here is a candid shot of me yesterday at the Chamber Membership Luncheon, chit-chatting with my good friend Shanden. I post it because I really don't have many good pregnant photos... perhaps after this weekend, there will be more.

In other news, as you might have heard, Tony recently graduated from an exhausting, 9-month program called "Leadership Skagit." Now he is a certified leader. I am proud of him for having stuck it out through a program that was difficult (though I think it was designed to be so) and not always rewarding in the traditional sense. He learned a lot, I'm sure, about how frustrating teams can be. He also, along with his team, accomplished a bunch-- there is now a lovely park on Guemes Island for all to enjoy (as well as an annoying song to the tune of Gilligan's Island that will be stuck in our heads for a decade). Congratulations, Tony!

Stubborn Child

My pelvis is large, spacious... and apparently, the greatest place for my baby to hide out! I guess all the ligament-loosening that has been happening to me over the past few weeks has made my baby want to seek refuge where the docs cannot see it! We finally (after I got up off the exam table and danced about for a few minutes) got to see a partial profile of the child:

The ultrasound tech said that the chin isn't well shown, and the forehead isn't as sloped as the photo shows... just a really, really bad angle.

Comparison

I came across this candid photo today, looking through the photos on my work computer for a shot or two of a retiring colleague, and lo, I was lovely! Look at that shape! Those curves! Those thin arms and that thin waist! Will I ever see you again, beautiful self?

Hello, baby!

I felt my baby move for the first time on Saturday! In truth, I think it had been moving for awhile and I just didn't register the feeling... most people report a "fluttering" in the belly as first movement, but I can't say I noticed that. Instead, on Saturday, I sat down, stretched out my legs, and poked into my rock-hard uterus with all my might (hey, this kid's gonna keep me up nights for quite awhile pretty soon, I figure I can keep it awake now). Sure enough, a few moments later, I felt the lil' bugger kick me! A real kick, too, none of this "butterfly wings" nonsense. Now, I feel it everyday, just a little bit more often and stronger. And I don't have to poke the kidlet into activity to get him or her to move, either. It is a pretty awesome feeling. I just have to give it a few more weeks before Tony can feel it, too!

We have our 19-week ultrasound today, and I'll be sure to post photos later, so check back!

The B-B-Belly

Behold the magic:Livin' large at 18.5 weeks...

17.5 Week Update

We saw the baby doctor yesterday, my baby daddy and I... and all is well, of course. I haven't felt the baby move, yet, so I am forced to wait four weeks between confirmations that the little one is alive and well. Here are the stats:

• My weight gain is right on track, literally smack on the dotted line they use to represent "normal" progress. Which is to say, I am three pounds heavier than the last visit.
• The baby's heartbeat is 140, nice and strong.
• My fundal height (the size of my uterus as measured on my belly) is perfectly normal. In another couple of weeks, it should be even with my belly button, and then it will grow 1 centimeter in height each week! Amazing expanding belly!

We have our "big" ultrasound scheduled for June 24th in the afternoon at a local radiology shop. I am already dreading drinking 32 ounces of water 1 hour beforehand... makes me sweat just thinking that my bladder will have to hold up to such pressure!

Watch My Corn Pop up in Rows...

Hooray, we finally got our vegetable garden in! In one respect, at least, it's good that we have had such a cool spring-- our lateness on getting the garden planted will not adversely affect the veggies.

It all started a few months ago when Tony ground up a couple of giant cedar stumps. We then got some cement landscaping brick, and Tony laid it all out according to my master plan. This morning we went and got two truckloads of garden soil, some peat moss, and our seeds and starts to put it all together. We finished off with some Buster-proofing: a nice garden fence.

We'll have sweet corn, zucchini (what garden is complete without too much zucchini?), cucumbers, turnips, pumpkins, watermelon, jalapenos, and basil. The watermelon is an experiment, I am really not sure it gets quite warm enough here, but we'll see. I picked up t the jalapeno plant because I thought it was a bell pepper plant, but no worries, my guacamole will be nice and hot this summer! I also have a nice tomato plant, an "Amelia" tomato given to me by a coworker, in a bucket. I have about half a row left, so I am open to suggestions for completing the garden.

The rest of the garden, the flower part, is doing well, also. It has been quite rainy the past week, so my peonies are mostly bud, but here is one pale pink bloom:

I am now 17 weeks pregnant! That's over 4 months! That's 3 weeks to the halfway point! Thats, thats... that's almost too much to think about!!! We have another appointment at the women's clinic this week, and we will schedule the big ultrasound then. We are still adamant about not finding out the baby's sex, but we will soon have more detailed photos of our little kidlet in utero. I am feeling well, though I go back and forth between days during which I want to eat everything in sight and days during which nothing really sounds good. Today and yesterday were "nothing sounds good" days. I have mostly just eaten a lot of kiwi fruit. I need to go shopping now, though, so perhaps something will strike my fancy! Still not eating chocolate, or even much cheese... pregnancy is so weird!