trying to figure things out along the way

I've written a dozen entries for this lj in the past couple of weeks, and frankly I was surprised when I looked at the journal today and realized how long it had been since I'd actually posted anything. I guess I just wrote them all in my head.

After I wrote (anything substantial) last, we visited that church that looked promising. It was Life Church in Allentown, and we liked it. A lot. We left Tuck in the nursery, and he had a good time. We decided to return the following week for Father's Day, and laughed about how we (especially I) tend to just go to the very first church we try. (We've never church hunted together before, but I've done that several times.)

We found and moved into an apartment. The complex is brand new, and we're actually the first tenants. This has resulted in some unusual problems (like they haven't finished building the clubhouse yet, so they didn't have a place to deliver our mail), but has some definite benefits too (like we've gotten to know the property manager pretty well, and everything--carpet, appliances, everything--in the apartment is brand new). The smoke alarm did seem a little oversensitive, but that's gotten better. And we didn't have AC for a few days because they forgot to turn it on, but it's just fine now. Overall, good. We're still unpacking boxes, but we're pleased with our decision.

For Father's Day, Tuck and I took Chris out to lunch after church (to a steakhouse!) and then went to see Pixar's Up. Chris and I loved it. Tuck slept through most of it, but was very good after he woke up. Didn't cry at all. So that was great.

The following weekend we went to check out another church. It was nice, but not really our style. Actually, one of the greatest things was that I ran into a coworker there, which means I have someone I know at work now that I can have discussions about religion with. That's one of those topics that people tend to be gun-shy on in the workplace these days, but this opened a door. We've actually already had one good talk about churches in the area a week or so ago. That makes me pleased.

Another note about work: I used MS Access for the first time. DJ will be so proud.

We went back to the first church again for the July 5th service (partly because we really liked it and partly because it seemed unfair to try out a new church on a holiday weekend). It was great again. There was somebody different leading worship. She was good, though we probably liked the other guy better. (The other guy reminded Chris of a young Lionel Ritchie leading worship. It was awesome.) We haven't actually heard the senior pastor speak yet, because he was on a trip while we were there. (He might have actually preached the one weekend we weren't there--not sure if we missed him. In any case, we should hear him soon.)

Other fun things we've done include buying living room furniture at IKEA, trying out other fun places to eat, going to the Quakerstown Farmers Market, and going to the Kutztown Folk Festival. We thought it was funny arriving at the market and immediately happening upon a comic book store, then leaving that only to enter a store that sold swords. Nice. The only things we bought at the market was some fresh bread, blueberries and some meat--but man, those were excellent choices. We've now gotten to eat some tasty Lebanon bologna (light years ahead of any bologna I'd ever had before) and Chris got to make us up some baby back ribs, which we both realy enjoyed. Loving the super fresh foods we can find there.

At the Folk Festival, when I was getting a little overwhelmed by our lunch options, Chris suggested we try the all-you-can-eat family-style sit-down place. They served us schnizt un knepp, bott boi, apple butter, chow-chow, chicken, ham, green beans with ham, shoofly pie . . . I didn't even know what half the stuff was, but it was awesome. We also left that place very, very full.

On the 4th, we stayed in and Tuck went to bed early. We were able to see some fireworks from our deck, but it was actually really cool to realize we're in an area with fireflies--it was like our own personal fireworks show right outside. Neat.

It's been fun checking out the area.

Other quick news on Tucker: he's gotten extremely mobile. He's crawling all over the place and pulling himself up on everything. He occasionally gets himself stuck in things (like table legs) before we rescue him. Yesterday, he took his first header off the couch wherein he hit the ground before either of us could catch him. He looked startled, then cried until I picked him up. After that, he was okay. I think he just didn't expect to land on his face.

Bath time has gotten to be very exciting, as he's discovered the joy of splashing and flopping around. This means I usually end up soaked, too. But it's so fun to watch him have such a good time.

He's also sleeping a lot better now that he has his own room and we're not all crammed into the studio hotel room. We're not accidentally waking him up all the time, and his crib isn't pressed up against the air conditioner. So that's a definite improvement.

And last weekend while we were leaving Life Church and walking through the parking lot, we were commenting on the fact that we don't know anybody there yet. (It's weird for me to go to a church where I don't know anybody.) And suddenly we hear someone call out, "Bye, Tucker!" That's right. He's nine months old, and he already knows more people than we do. Go figure.

Dave and Maia want to visit with their boys, so now we're trying to make sure all the boxes are unpacked and/or put away. That way, our place will at least be presentable for company. It sounds a little nuts to have them all here (especially because it's only a two-bedroom place!) but it'll be fun. We're looking forward to it.

Work has been good. I was there all of two days before I got my first project, and that was quickly followed by three more. The people I'm working with seem very nice. I've been adopted by a group of girls (women?), so I have someone to eat lunch with every day. That's really nice. I like them, and I'm really glad to feel like I know people there--it's the biggest company I've ever worked in, and I think it would be easy to get lost in the crowd. It's comforting.

I think there were other things I meant to write, but I can't remember them now. If I think of them, I'll post again. Until then, I should get some rest or something.

We're visiting a new church. The band starts a song. I turn to Chris, a big grin on my face. He looks a bit worried.

"No, you may not do the actions to this song."
"But . . . no fair! She's doing them!"
"The girl on the stage?"
"Yeah."
"She's doing ASL. That does not give you permission."

*sadface*

So. We've been here a couple of days now, toured a lot of apartments, and eaten a lot of good food. We're leaning toward renting an apartment over a house, just because it looks like we'll be able to get something newer and nicer for an equivalent amount of money, though it will be smaller (and probably farther away) than a house. That's a compromise we're okay with. (It's funny--one property manager asked us what our main requirements were for housing. And I said, "A washer and dryer in the apartment. That's the big thing. We've got other things we'd like, but pretty much anything else we'd compromise on." Oh, how I've changed over the years!)

We've been whittling down our choices over the last couple of days, because we feel like we have several very good options. We've now pretty much decided on a property, but haven't fully decided on a layout yet (they have two that we really like), so we're going to go back tomorrow to take another look and choose. It's about 20-25 minutes from my job, which out here is considered a very long commute. (Seriously? Today, someone told me that there isn't public transportation to that area because it's rural!) That strikes us as hilarious, because I've had 20 minute commutes wherein I lived in the same city I worked in. 20 minutes is about the shortest commute I've ever had since moving to the Seattle area. I figure anything under half an hour is pretty good! I won't be able to take the bus to work, unless Chris drops me at a transit center or something, but having him drive me in or having me take the car is workable. Eventually, we'll probably need a second car, but it's not an immediate concern.

Also, I have been thoroughly unimpressed with the LANTA website for buses. Given that I don't know the area, I'm finding it particularly unhelpful. And It makes me sad that they're not dialed in with Google Maps. I forget sometimes how good Seattle is about interfacing with things like that.

So, food! A couple of days ago, Chris and I had lunch at Wert's Cafe. I had what was probably the best burger I've ever eaten. The patty was stuffed with mushrooms and onions! But perhaps even more entertaining was our waitress--she loved that we were new in town, hugged us, cooed over Tucker, and declared that we would soon become regulars. Based on how welcomed we felt and how great the food was, I'm inclined to agree. She even gave us her phone number in case we had any questions! And when we were asking if there were any good places to get Mexican food around here, she started talking about a little place run by actual Mexicans that was apparently not in a very good area, then said, "It might not be the kind of place you'd want to stay and eat . . . but they have really good food, so you can get takeout!" That made me laugh.

We went to an Italian place for dinner that we happened upon while looking for something unrelated, and it was very good--definitely somewhere I'll take my parents when they visit.

We also went to Wegmans, mostly because I've never heard anyone speak so reverently about a grocery store as I've heard

knile talk about Wegmans. And we have decided that Wegmans is an awesome grocery store. They have a really impressive variety of things, the prices are good, and they even have all kinds of hot/cold/sushi/sandwiches/soup/whatever things to grab for lunch (which we also did, on a second trip). Thanks, knile! I think we've found our new grocery store.

Today we checked out the Allentown Farmer's Market, which was all kinds of awesome and actually made Redmond's farmer's market look pretty sad by comparison. After wandering around (inside! Among ALL KINDS of food and other items!) we decided on a place to grab lunch (Bada Bingg) . . . and when the woman taking our order realized we were new in town, she started shoving random free items in our bag so we could try different things they were known for. And, of course, she gave us a sandwich card--only 8 more sandwiches before we get a free one! The food there was very good, too, and we'll definitely go back. This is another example of effective marketing--entertain us and provide us with good food, and we'll want to come back.

Tomorrow morning we're going to check out a church that looks promising, then probably get lunch somewhere and go back to the apartment complex we want to live in and turn in a rental application. Monday I start the new job! Here's hoping the job is as much fun as I think it will be, and that I didn't just move my family across the country for no reason. Chris said he'd follow me anywhere, but I think he might hesitate if I say Allentown isn't going to work out after all. :)

Off to bed!

So we're in Pennsylvania now. We spent the weekend and Monday clearing out our house and loading up all of our stuff, then we left. It was a very busy and exhausting weekend, but it was good.

Tuck has gotten very good at crawling, and his timing is particularly inconvenient. Of course, he started getting into everything just when we had boxes all over. But we managed to wrangle him, and somehow still made it out. (Our friend Heather came over one day just for the purposes of playing with him, then took him home with her for a couple of hours--that was a lifesaver to get him out of our hair for a bit.) On Saturday after loading the truck we went to Kelly's birthday party, which was a great opportunity to see a lot of people we hadn't seen in far too long before leaving. On Sunday, Chris was in the worship band in the morning (really tough to be playing for the last time, but I'm glad he had the opportunity to be there), then we went to Mike and Amanda's where they teamed up with Christi and Michael to throw us a going-away party. The party was awesome--so many friends of ours came by to wish us well. Even an old coworker from my first job in this area came, though he didn't know anybody else! We felt so incredibly blessed to have so many people gather to send us off--it meant a lot. We are excited about the new adventure in PA, but it's a bittersweet thing; we are really going to miss our friends in Seattle.

After the party on Sunday, a few other friends came by to finish clearing out our cupboards and pantry, and one friend took one last load of stuff to Goodwill for us. We spent Monday packing up the last of our things, loading the car, preparing the trailer, packing our suitcases, and cleaning up. Some random things we ended up leaving in the house, for lack of something better to do with them after our car was gone. Whatever.

The property manager we've hired dropped by to talk with us about how he was going to price and market our place. We feel pretty good about him.

My brother picked us up and took us to dinner at Malay Satay Hut, meeting Kay and Kai there. It was a tasty last meal in Redmond. He then took us back to our place, loaded up our suitcases (and a few things we still had laying around that we have him, like the last of the sombreros from our wedding), and took us to an airport hotel for the night. We were completely exhausted, and crashed pretty quickly. It was nice to sleep in a real bed, since we'd loaded our bed in the truck on Saturday.

Tuesday morning we woke up, grabbed breakfast at the hotel (it wasn't particularly good), and headed to the airport. When we checked in, we discovered that Chris and I were in an exit row, and Tuck was seated several rows away from us. We asked at the gate to be seated together, and they did--no problem--except that we were in the row right in front of the exit row (so our seats didn't recline) and right next to the bathroom. That ended up being good and bad; it was good to have quick access to the bathroom, but it started to get pretty ripe toward the end of the flight . . . but the constant stream of people kept Tucker quite amused, and he charmed everybody. One woman even held him a bit while she was waiting for the bathroom. It was pretty cute. He took a couple of naps during the flight (which was great), as did we. When we landed in Philly, though, there was some sort of weather issue that landed us in the middle of a traffic jam and left us sitting out on the tarmac for over an hour before getting into our gate. (I guess we were on the wrong side of an active runway?) Tuck was still very good, and even lead the people around us in a rousing chorus of "Bah bah bah." I heard one girl talking on the phone, saying, "Yeah, it's boring, but there's this really cute baby sitting in front of us . . ."

We had a pretty short layover in Philly, so we figured we missed our connection, but when we got off the place we discovered that our connection had been canceled. I guess the plane that was supposed to take us never left the preceding airport because of the weather. So we were rescheduled on another flight a few hours later. We got some dinner, then went to wait at our gate, then ran down to another gate when it got switched (there was a lot of that happening at the airport). Once again, we weren't seated together, but were assigned new seats so we could be together.

Tucker was very good again, but there was one major problem with the second flight. Since there were two seats on each side of the aisle and three of us, they put us in the very back row (where there were five seats across) so we would be next to each other. But this meant that there was nobody for Tuck to make cute faces at--he could only see the backs of people's heads. He actually got very frustrated, which was kind of funny. "Come on! Can't you see I'm being cute back here??" The flight was a grand total of 15 minutes in the air, and we finally got into Allentown. When we went to pick up our rental car, they were short on vehicles, so we got a free upgrade to a brand-new Ford Expedition (with less than 150 miles on it). Man, after my Civic, that thing is a monster. Good thing I'm not afraid to drive large vehicles! All the storage space has been awesome--so helpful with all of our luggage.

We checked into our hotel, and pretty much crashed. Tried to do a few email-related things, but that was about it. Tuck's schedule has been really goofy, but we're trying to make sure he sleeps as much as possible. It's been a very long few days.

Today we went exploring, both checking out the area (and food places!) and looking for a new place to live. But it's late, and I'm tired, and I'll write more about that later. In any case, things are going well! We're having a good time, and are excited to see what happens next.

We were pretty much set on selling, but a house in our neighborhood just sold for way less than we originally paid, totally killing our comps. We've decided instead to rent it and wait out this whole housing mess. Here's hoping we find a good renter fairly quickly!

So. Lots of stuff is going on.

Tucker is basically crawling. He's getting forward momentum, and is very good at turning and controlling his rolling. This means we're finding him in really interesting places. Going forward, we're going to have to spend time babyproofing. So, yes. Very mobile child.

And did I mention on this journal that he said his first word? It was "Mama," and he busted it out the day before Mother's Day. Awesome. He now also occasionally says Dada. But seriously--best Mother's Day gift ever.

Tuck continues to eat anything we feed him with enthusiasm. He's good with rice cereal, carrots, sweet potatoes, yams, peas, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, a wide variety of herbs and spices . . . and had his first food reaction last week. Eggplant. He got a rash on his face both times I fed him eggplant. He still liked it, and was perfectly happy to eat it, and had no other symptoms . . . but I figured with a rash, that was repeated with a second test, I'd hold off on that one for a bit to make sure he's not allergic or anything. The funny thing was that it didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. He just had splotchy patches around his mouth, but they didn't appear to itch and he didn't have any noticeable GI issues. I guess if he's going to have a reaction, this is a great way to do it. Next, we're going to try turkey--yay meat!

I got a job offer for the PA job. It was a solid offer--good pay, good benefits, good title. So I accepted. And we need to move across the country. In two weeks. Right now we're trying to get ready for the move, packing and trying to purge as much as possible so we don't have to move it across the country with us. (If you're local and want stuff--let me know!) We're sad to be going and leaving our friends and church, but we're very excited about this opportunity and the new adventure we're starting. The job sounds awesome, and we're looking forward to doing this.

My east coast friends are also very excited, which is good for me to hear--it's encouraging to hear unadulterated enthusiasm from people who are happy I'm coming back after hearing so many people here pretending to be happy for us when they're just sad we're going.

Our parents are also pretty sad. My folks are used to me moving across the country--but not with their grandchild. I tell them they'll just have to come visit often.

Anyway, yes. Two weeks until we fly out. I start the new job on the 15th, but we're going a little earlier in the hopes that we can find a place to live before I start working. Until then, the company is putting us up in a hotel. In the meantime, we're purging, packing, and cleaning. We're still debating selling vs. renting our house--anybody want to buy it? That would be great. I'd totally sell if I had a buyer.

So. That's what I'm up to. Now, back to work!

Now I remember the other thing I was going to say about my time in PA. On my way home, I had a layover in DC. While hanging out waiting for my plane there, a random guy named Andre tried really hard to buy me a drink. A random guy. In an airport. It was totally surreal.

In any case, I believe this confirms that the new glasses I just got are super-cute.

"In love and war, it's kill or be killed."

"Be the wizard."

It's been a month. I've been meaning to update. So here goes!

Tucker is getting very good at rolling around. He still hasn't quite figured out crawling yet, but I really think it'll be any day now. It wouldn't even surprise me if he starts crawling after he wakes up from his nap.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Emerald City ComiCon. We had planned to go on Saturday, but got caught in really terrible traffic. We called the people we were meeting there, and one was still waiting in line to get in (after being there for an hour) and one was being a responsible parent and staying home with his sick child. So we decided to ditch the Con for the day, and go to the Arboretum instead (something we've been meaning to do for years). We walked around with Tuck in the moby, and had a really nice time. Then we came home, put Tuck down for a nap, and proceeded to watch The Godfather (which I, somehow, had never seen before). It was a great Saturday.

On Sunday we went to the Con (successfully!) and went to a couple of very interesting panels. We went to the How to Create Webcomics panel (with Scott Kurtz, Kris Straub, and two other guys I didn't know but one of whom has a wife that's a writer for HIMYM) (NOTE TO

agelade : if you go to the Bmore Con, go say hi to Scott and tell him you were a bridesmaid in Sketchboy's wedding). Tucker didn't cry, but he did get chatty during that panel, and the girl sitting in front of me kept turning around and giving me dirty looks, so I took him out into the hallway to play for most of the panel.

The next panel was with a bunch of BSG actors, which was pretty neat. We had great seats (because we'd already been in the room for the other panel), and it ended up being standing room only. Tuck was every bit as noisy during that panel, but nobody could tell because so many people were packed in and it was a pretty loud group. So that was great. But the BEST part happened after the panel was over.

The panel was on a different floor than the rest of the con, and we had the stroller, so we had to take the elevator to get back to the main floor. A group of people were waiting for the elevator. When the doors for one opened, Michael Hogan came into the area with his handler and stepped inside. Everybody else kind of stood back, but Chris said, "Hey, can we get in?" They said sure, so we hopped in the elevator and took up enough room with the stroller to prevent anyone else from entering. (Tucker wasn't even in the stroller, I was holding him.)

Michael Hogan immediately started cooing over Tuck, which was cute, and before we knew it, I'd handed the baby to him and Chris asked if he could take a picture. He said sure, so we have a picture of Col. Tigh nuzzling my baby, which is all kinds of awesome. (Even better if you're familiar with his character on BSG.) That alone was worth the price of admission.

At the Con, I also got to tell Jewel Staite how much I loved her in Flash Forward, which she was in when she was about twelve. (Yes, that's what I associate her with, more than Firefly or Stargate Atlantis. I think I saw every episode when I was also about twelve.)

We also had a good chat with Scott and Angela Kurtz, and have pictures of Scott playing with Tucker, too.

Lastly, Chris pointed out Jeph Jacques to me, who draws Questionable Content ("You read that comic, don't you?"). So I told him how much I enjoy his work. That was neat.

It was a fun day.

The next week we were in Albany, OR for my uncle's funeral. Since we were already all the way south, we decided to go to Tillamook for a few days and spend some time with my parents. I think that trip was a really good idea. It was nice to have a change of scenery, and we got to see a lot of people (mostly family) that we hadn't seen in a while. And, of course, show off Tucker's cuteness.

Last week I flew to PA for an interview for a job that looks great. I think it went well, and it's both a job I'm interested in and a job they seem eager to fill. So we'll see how that goes. I have a couple of other things in the works, too. (The job that I mentioned in the last post as one I really wanted is a no-go. But there are other things that look good.)

Chris did well being a single parent for three days (full day to fly there, day of interviewing, full day to fly back), and Tuck survived. It was tough on me being away from him for so long, but the trip was good. We'll see what happens. (I'm pretty sure I had something else to say about my time in PA, but I can't remember what it was now. Oh well.)

So anyway, still here, still moving along. Waiting to see what's next.

It's been really nice to see the sun now and then. That makes everything a little better.

"You cut yourself with a noodle. You make that old phrase 'forty lashes with a wet noodle' actually sound like of terrifying."

Tucker turned six months old yesterday. Six months! Half a year! I can hardly believe it. He had a check-up with his pediatrician, and he's doing marvelously. 16 pounds (25th percentile), 26 inches long (50th percentile), 44 point something cm head circumference (75th percentile). He's over two feet tall! My little boy! Everything looks great (other than his cough, which sounds pretty terrible but is actually MUCH better than it has been), and we've been told to start giving him finger food. He doesn't have teeth yet, but he needs to learn to use his fingers and thumb for pinching. (He does have a pretty good grip, which he proved when he grabbed onto the doctor's stethoscope and wouldn't let go.) He got five more vaccines (combined so there was one oral and two shots), and he should be done with those for a while. There were a few tears, but overall he did really well. I couldn't be prouder.

I'm also not going to breastfeed him anymore. I was originally shooting for three months, and am happy I made it to six (even if not exclusively). But yesterday was the last time. It was bittersweet for me. He doesn't seem to mind. I think that's how a lot of things are going to be in his life. In the meantime, I can now get back on the medications I've been off since August of '07 in preparation for baby. I've got a doctor's appointment this afternoon to get a checkup for myself.

In job news, I didn't get an offer for the NJ position. They liked me a lot, but didn't think that job would be quite right for me. I talked with the HR guy and he went over some of their impressions of me. I thought the things he said were extremely accurate, which makes me believe that if they didn't think that job would be a perfect fit, they're probably right. However, they do want to keep me in mind for other things, because they did like me. So we'll see if anything else happens.

I also had an interview quite a while ago for a local job that I thought sounded pretty good. I've now heard that they've decided not to fill the job at all yet (it sounds like my interview was a bit premature). In any case, they also like me, and will keep me in mind when they are ready to hire. I don't know when that will be, but I'm hoping hoping hoping that by the time they make a decision I'll already have some other fabulously-well-paying awesome job. Mostly because I'm really tired of waiting.

Other things are in the works. One job in particular that I really want. I think if I can get them to bring me in for an in-person interview, I can get an offer . . . mainly because I really want the job, and I think it would be an excellent fit, and I know they're eager to hire. So far, my problem appears to be that either I'm not crazy about the job (and/or it's not quite right for me), or the company isn't really ready to bring someone on. So we'll see.

I love staying home with Tuck, but I know I would feel a lot more secure if I were producing a decent income. And I think my peace of mind would be good for all of us.

So, I should update you guys on what's been going on.

At the end of February, I had an interview in North Carolina. Chris and I decided that he and Tuck would come, too, and since we were already all the way over there we'd take a couple of extra days to visit his brother's family in Atlanta.

We flew over there on Thursday, Feb. 19th (with a layover in Atlanta). Tucker was awesome on his first flight ever. He spent most of his time being cute and playing with the guy sitting next to me. At the end of the flight, the guy said to me, "I know you said he was a good baby, but MAN he's a good baby!" Never really fussed at all. After that flight, I felt confident in taking Tuck on future airplane rides.

Friday morning Chris dropped me off at the company I was interviewing with. I spent the morning there, touring the plant and meeting with a number of people. I thought the company looked like a great place to work, but was left unsure of whether this was the ideal job for me. (It sounds like they probably picked up on my uncertainty, and have now decided to go forward with another candidate. I must remember, in future interviews, to show appropriate enthusiasm for the job I am being considered for.)

After several hours of interviews, they sent me on my way. Chris and I decided that, since we were in the South, we should get some tasty barbecue. We found a place (thanks, GPS!) to stop for lunch before heading on to Atlanta.

I realized when I was staring at the menu on the wall in the restaurant that I do not have enough experience with southern BBQ. My options were "chopped" or "sliced," a sandwich, plate, or tray. I leaned over to Chris and whispered, "Chopped or sliced what?" He informed me that it was barbecue pork. It didn't actually say that anywhere on the menu.

I got a tray (mainly because I wanted the hush puppies--SO good) and a bun to make a sandwich with the pork. Chris suggested I put coleslaw in the sandwich too, which seemed weird to me, but raised a tasty sandwich to a whole new level of wonderful.

I think we'd gain a lot of weight if we moved to the South.

We drove to Atlanta from there, and had to stop a couple of times (to feed ourselves and feed Tucker), so we got in kinda late. The boys had stayed up to see us, and were thrilled when we finally arrived. They all crowded around Tucker, and he was in seventh heaven--four little boys who were fabulously interested in him! And two of them looked the same!!

The next day we talked with Maia a little before she went to work (she works 3pm-3am weekends), then Chris, Dave and I took all five boys out to run errands. That was certainly interesting! At one point, I took Tuck away from the group to go sit down, and the twins followed me. They kept asking, "Is Baby tucker okay? What's wrong? What's the problem?"

I told them that I thought he was just a little overwhelmed, and they said, "Oh, yeah. We can overwhelm grownups, we can definitely overwhelm a baby."

Maia ended up managing to get off work early that night (after the boys were already in bed), so Dave, Maia, Chris and I had a nice chance to chat that evening. It was really great to spend time with them.

We went to church with them Sunday morning, went to see a movie that afternoon, then spent some time hanging out and painting paper mache sculptures before the boys went to bed. I also showed Maia my moby wrap, which she thought was awesome. I think she might have already gotten herself one as I'm writing this.

On Monday morning we drove back to North Carolina to check out the area a bit before catching our plane home on Tuesday. We all managed to pick up colds on our trip (Tuck's very first one!) which made the ride home a little harder, but he was still exceptionally good. Just had a very runny nose. The man who was sitting next to me never made eye contact or said anything to me until there was only about an hour left in the air. At that point, he addressed Tuck, saying that he'd sat next to plenty of adults that were louder and spilled more things on him during the flight than Tucker had. I think when we boarded the plane, he was probably dreading sitting next to a baby . . . then was impressed by how good he was. I'm so glad Tucker was on his best behavior. It made everybody's life SO much easier.

(I was also asked in the airport about my moby wrap by another mom. I told her all the reasons I thought it was awesome and where she could find more information, and Chris told me I'm becoming some sort of moby wrap evangelist.)

So that was that trip. The weekend immediately after, my parents came to visit, and on Monday I flew to NJ for an interview there. I went by myself on that trip, as it was a pretty quick one. Though it was enormously difficult to be 3000 miles away from my baby, I was amazed at how much simpler it was to fly solo.

Having not watched the preceding season, I watched The Bachelor finale on Monday night. It really ticked me off.

Tuesday I had interviews with person after person after person from 9am until 4pm, after which I was taken back to the airport and put on a 7pm flight home. I could have stayed another night if I'd wanted to, but I was anxious to get back to Chris and Tucker. They met me in baggage claim, and I cuddled Tucker happily even though it was WAY past his bedtime. He seemed happy to see me too, though also sleepy.

So since I've been back, I've been getting things done that I haven't had time to do, and am still actively job hunting. I haven't heard from NJ yet, but have spoken with several other people about other jobs, so we'll see if any of those pan out. Still no idea what's to come! We might even *gasp* stay local! In the meantime, we're just trying to enjoy the ride.

At the end of November, I posted a video about Advent Conspiracy. On the last day of Advent, Christmas Eve, my church did something they called "Cardboard Testimonies." The church then did a series on living dangerously (I mentioned that at the beginning of January). To wrap that up, we had what was essentially a big party on Sunday. They also played a video that they made from the cardboard testimonies. Watch it. Tell me what you think.

Cardboard Testimonies from Overlake Christian Church on Vimeo.

When I was very pregnant, Chris and I went to go see The Dark Knight. He'd actually already seen it, but I insisted he go again with me because I really wanted to see it, too. I had about a two-hour bladder at that point, so we chose our seats carefully. We ended up in the back row of the front section of a two-section theater. (The back section was stadium seating; the front section was more like regular theater seating.) The back row was useful because it had open areas in the row for wheelchairs, which meant we could sit in the center of the row and still be right on an aisle so I could run out to pee two hours into the movie. It seemed an ideal spot to enjoy the show.

Shortly before the show started (we'd gotten there very early to ensure good seats), an older couple entered the theater with a service dog. Looking at them, it wasn't clear what the service dog was doing or whom he was there for--the man or the woman? Neither of them appeared to have any obvious disabilities. I figured either one of them had an invisible need or they were training the dog--no biggie. They sat down in the back row across the aisle from us. The woman sat in the seat on the aisle and the dog sat next to her. The man sat in the seat on her other side.

The dog started licking the back of the neck of the man sitting in front of him. The man was clearly uncomfortable, and the group he was with ended up moving to another part of the theater.

The movie got started, and the dog whined. He never actually barked, but he did make noises and squirmed. Nobody said anything--this is Seattle, after all. Dogs are beloved members of society here. We have entire parks devoted to them. Plus, a service dog? No one would think of breathing a complaint for a service dog.

Then I smelled something. Something gross.

Now, I have a tremendously sensitive sense of smell. It's better than most people's. I acknowledge that. Also, since I was pregnant, it was even MORE sensitive. So I'd gotten used to being assaulted by various unpleasant odors. But it was very unfortunate that I was sitting a few feet from a dog that had decided the theater would be an appropriate place to poop on the floor.

Was the dog scared? Confused? Simply untrained? I have no idea. But the man got up, walked around to where the dog was sitting, and knelt down to clean it up. There was no scolding involved. Then the man sat back down. I have no idea what he did with the poop, but he didn't go to a garbage can.

Well, that was icky. At least it was over, right?

Wrong.

The dog proceeded to crap on the floor at least six times during the movie. Each time, the man got up, went to the dog, cleaned it up (in the darkened theater!) then sat back down. The woman (who was actually next to the dog) didn't even respond. She appeared to be too engrossed in the movie.

And I never saw the man go by a trash can to dispose of the excrement.

The smell was horrible. And, again, I was a couple of feet away. It was enormously distracting, but there wasn't much I could do without leaving the theater, and dangit, I wanted to see the movie! It was bad enough that I had to be gone for a minute or two during my pee break.

(In retrospect, I should have insisted Chris go complain to the management. He'd seen the movie before, after all. But I was so surprised and frustrated that the idea didn't occur to me at the time.)

I don't think anyone else complained, either. At least, not during the movie itself. No one wanted to miss anything!

And if people complained, did (or would) the management do anything? It's hard to say. With the power that the ADA has here, I think it's likely they would apologize to angry patrons but not address the issue with the dog owners at all. Saying something negative about a service dog may be like asking for a lawsuit. But this is simply my conjecture--I have no idea if anything was said or done. I'm just guessing here, based on the political attitudes of being on the Left Coast. I could be completely wrong.

And I don't know what the issue with the dog was. Why was the dog having so many issues? Was he sick? Still in training? What? And what service was he providing--any at all? I don't know. There may be an excellent explanation.

I just know I was disgusted. And as much as I enjoyed the movie, I was very glad to get out of there.

"Was there any blood or anything?"
"I don't know, I didn't have my glasses on."
"So you couldn't see color?"
"Before I put my glasses on, I live in the 1940's."

One favorite quote from New Years Eve: Tuck was busy charming a group of girls. They were passing him around, and he was smiling and flirting and just generally being adorable. While she was holding him, one girl said,"My uterus just skipped a beat." Her husband exclaimed, "I don't want to hear that!"

Chris's parents were in town last weekend (I think I mentioned that) because they had flown into SeaTac from Atlanta and were on their way home. They hung out here for the weekend. On Saturday, they suggested we go out while they watched Tuck, since our anniversary was in the middle of the week. That would give us the ability to have a date night, really the only time we'd been out since he was born, except for Chris's work Christmas party. We decided to take them up on it.

Since this was the first chance we'd had to get away, we spent the first part of it running errands. We laughed about spending our big night out at Home Depot, getting replacement toilet parts.

After our errands, we went to see Slumdog Millionaire. This is the first movie we'd seen since The Dark Knight (which was a great movie, even if we did have to deal with a repeatedly pooping dog in the theater. I guess I never wrote an entry on that, but it was pretty gross). We'd heard it was good, but I was unprepared for just how much I'd enjoy it. I can't really say the movie was happy, or pleasant, or uplifting . . . but it was a great story that was extremely well executed, and I think I left the theater being better than I was when I entered. It also made me want to protect my little boy from the difficulties of the world out there, and reminded me that no matter how hard life may be for me, at least I can appreciate that I'm not raising a child in an Indian slum.

Following the movie, we went out to dinner at Frankie's, a place with great reviews, and ate a tasty pizza. When we got home, Phil and Elsie told us that Tucker had been very, very good while we were gone. I'm glad--it makes it a little easier for me to leave him with someone else when I know he probably won't fuss much. As long as I get back to him before too long. I am still a mom, after all.

Our actual anniversary was yesterday. We celebrated by going to Overlake's new First Wednesday service, and getting baptized there.

I was baptized when I was eight. The event that Chris considers his baptism--his public confession of faith, and the day he became ~~an officer~~ a senior soldier--didn't involve water, because the Salvation Army does not baptize by immersion. Chris referred to it as being "baptized by fire." Overlake requires baptism by immersion for membership, so Chris has not been able to become a member of the church.

This is something he's given a great deal of thought to. I think one of the main things that's prevented him from being immersed is the apparent implication that what he had done previously was insufficient. This seemed an unfair claim, one that inappropriately diminished a very important event in his life. He and I talked about it, and he also talked with Mike, our lead pastor, about it. Ultimately, Mike agreed with Chris that this baptism had nothing to do with being saved. Mike believes that Chris has been obedient to God, and that there is no issue with Chris's relationship with God. He said that baptism is a requirement for membership at Overlake, so if Chris would like to be a member, he'd need to get baptized. He also said that if Chris chose not to get baptized, that would affect Mike's relationship with Chris. He said that Chris had to make his own decision.

I think talking to Mike made Chris feel a lot better about the whole thing. He wasn't living in disobedience--he had simply done things differently than the Overlake crowd. Ultimately, he decided he wanted to be baptized as a way to commit himself to this community and recommit himself to God. As a way to show my support for him and also show my commitment to this community, I joined him and got baptized as well. It was an awesome experience for me, to be able to join the man I love in this act of worship, and I can't think of a better way to have spent our third anniversary.

When we got home, I opened a bottle of sparkling cider we'd saved from our wedding. We toasted to three wonderful years behind us, and many many more years ahead.

Well, 2008 certainly ended differently than I expected it to.

First of all, Seattle got positively dumped on with snow. On December 15th and 16th Chris was home sick, then made it to work on the 17th. Oh the 18th, we started getting lots and lots of snow, and he couldn't get to work. He worked from home Thursday and Friday, as we watched eight inches of snow fall and contemplated the fact that the road outside of our neighborhood was closed (probably to prevent people from sliding down the hill and ending up in a lake).

We also got news that a dear aunt of mine had died very suddenly. From what I understand, she had not been doing well and went in for exploratory surgery. During the surgery they discovered that she had ovarian cancer, and that it had spread throughout her body . . . and she didn't make it through the night. I still haven't really wrapped my mind around the idea that she's gone.

The service was Saturday the 20th in Tillamook. Chris and I talked a lot about whether we should (and could) go. We had already been planning on driving down Tuesday or Wednesday, but the roads were terrible. His parents were in Atlanta for Christmas, so we were going to be spending the holiday with my parents. We suggested they drive up here instead, since they had a vehicle much more able to handle the snow, and they didn't want to--they'd already planned quite a lot of things in town, and were hosting both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinner at their house. We asked my brother if he wanted to get together with us (he lives around here) in case we couldn't make it down to Mom and Dad's, and he was uninterested. So we faced the very real possibility of Tucker's first Christmas being with just the two of us, since no other family was accessible.

Ultimately, we decided to drive down on Saturday for the service. We left at 6:45am so we could take our time (it's generally a 4 1/2 hour drive) before the service at 2pm. Leaving our house, we had to drive around the Road Closed sign to make it to the highway.

There were no other cars on the road. That was good, because it meant we didn't have to avoid other cars making crazy mistakes, but it also made me wonder what the heck we were trying to do.

Very long story short(ish), we eventually made it to Tillamook at 5:30pm. Nearly 11 hours, and we missed the service. We chained up going over the summit, and had one chain break (and cause what looks like a lot of damage to the car--we'll find out just how much later) and the other one fall off. We detoured about 20 miles round trip to a Les Schwab to get new chains, and discovered that the ones we had were the wrong size. (I don't know why the wrong sized chains were in the trunk. But it's unfortunate that we didn't know that beforehand.) We eventually made it to my parents' house, exhausted. Luckily, Tuck was awesome during the drive. He loves car rides, and only got a teeny bit fussy once when he was hungry. If he had been screaming, that drive would have been completely miserable.

In retrospect, it looks like that was the only day we would have been able to travel at all. Tillamook was absolutely fine--not even snow on the roads--but all the roads leaving town were closed. So we stayed put for the week. We had a really nice Christmas Eve with Dad's family (those that were able to make it) and Christmas Day with an interesting selection of Mom's family and random others. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, even though Chris and I had to wing it for presents for each other, with really only one place to shop in town since we hadn't bought our gifts before leaving home. Still, I really really liked what I got from him, and I think he likes what I got for him, too.

That Saturday (the 27th), Mom and Dad hosted an open house for people to come meet Tucker. There was a really good turnout there, including a lot of people I haven't seen in ages like my 8th grade grammar teacher, my junior high math teacher, and my high school French teacher. Tucker spent his time charming people or napping, and generally being angelic. We had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the roads into town were still closed, so none of my friends my age were able to make it, but that's how it goes.

We drove home on Sunday, and met up with

irish_eb and

tuatha_danu (plus Brady) for lunch on the drive, since they couldn't make it for the open house. They met Tuck, and pretty much agreed that he's the most awesome baby ever.

When we got home, there was almost no snow still around. Chris was disappointed to never see how deep it got, but I didn't mind. Snow makes me nervous now that I'm no longer a kid and am financially responsible for problems it causes. On Monday and Tuesday I kept working on my job hunt, and decided to throw my search open wider. I'd been mainly focusing on local stuff, hoping to avoid relocating, but frankly there are a lot more options out there if we're up for moving. So I started looking elsewhere. Especially Atlanta, since Chris's brother and his family live there. We'd love to be closer to them.

On Wednesday I had an interview with a local (very big name in the med device industry) company for a contract position. I was trying to decide what I thought about that job when Chris called me to let me know he got laid off. Along with the two other newest artists in his company. Everyone else got pay cuts. On New Year's Eve.

So. He's got two more weeks until his last day (if he wants to work them), presumably so he can finish up any projects he's working on. The company has also told them they can use that time for anything they need--going to interviews, working on their portfolios, using company resources, whatever. I guess they feel bad. But yeah . . . on New Years Eve we discovered neither of us have a job. And we just bought a house and had a baby. So.

We're trying to figure out what to do now. We've talked about a lot of options. The main things keeping us here were our families, our church, and his job. But Chris's dad just got laid off, too (did I mention that?) so they're considering moving to Alberta, Chris no longer has a job after the 15th, and my parents frankly would visit us wherever we ended up. They're used to me randomly moving across the country. So that leaves our church as a reason to stay.

We love our friends, and that of course is part of it, but really, we'll keep up with them anyway. Yay for Facebook and the like. I'm not really concerned about that. Really, it's the church. We are passionate about Overlake. We love the community, we love the atmosphere, we love the mission. We think the church is doing amazing things right now, and we want to be a part of it. We feel blessed to go to a megachurch and be able to call both the lead pastor and the worship leader personal friends. We realize that if we move, we won't be able to find another church like Overlake. We will probably be able to find another church we love, another one we can feel passionate about--but it would be really hard to leave. So that's a big consideration.

We went to a party on New Years Eve, and one friend of ours toasted to "Screw you 2008! You destroyed our 401Ks!" It's been an interesting year. We had our baby, the most wonderful little boy I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. We bought a house, one that we might end up selling if we move. (Luckily, we're not upside-down in our mortgage--the housing prices in this area haven't fallen as much as stopped their meteoric rise.) Our IRAs and 401k have taken a beating. We've both been laid off. We have no idea what's going to happen next. But we're in this together.

Our church just started a series called 2009: The Year of Living Dangerously. It's all about trusting God completely when times are uncertain. Timely, no?

One of the songs we sang today had the lyrics "Move me where You want to . . . here I am, Lord, move me." Chris's parents were with us at church on their way home from Atlanta, and my father-in-law turned to me during that part and said, "Do you mean that?"

"Yep. He's in control. I'm just along for the ride."
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That was a great weekend.

On Friday we were invited to an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party with the worship team. The invitation specifically said it was adults-only, and we didn't have time to find a sitter, so we weren't planning on going. Then, on a whim, Chris decided to ask Jesse (who'd invited us) if that meant we couldn't bring the baby. (We thought maybe it wouldn't apply to us because he's not mobile yet, he's pretty chill, and the worship team knows him from our retreat to Winthrop.) Jesse said, "Tucker's on the VIP list. Bring him." So we did.

We had a great time, and Tuck did great. He only cried when he got hungry, and settled right down after I fed him. He was totally fine with being passed around to people who really wanted to hold him. I think he enjoyed himself. Especially the karaoke. Wacky fun.

We put Tuck to bed around 12:30am (after we got home and gave him his last feeding) and he was still sleeping at 9am. We had to wake him up because Chris was going to go out and take him with him. 8 1/2 hours, and we had to wake him up. Awesome.

There was a Michael W. Smith concert at the church Saturday afternoon, and we'd talked about going. We really wanted to go last year, mostly because Melinda Doolittle (the person who should have won American Idol Season 6) was touring with him, but we were invited to something like 7 different things that day. They were both back this year, but we decided we didn't want to spend the money on tickets. Also, Chris's work Christmas party was that evening.

Then, to our surprise, while we were at the party Friday night Jesse gave us tickets to the Saturday afternoon concert. The people they were supposed to go to couldn't attend, so he offered them to us. Chris asked if he wanted to babysit, and he said, "Bring him to the concert!" So we did.

Tucker loves music, and was totally calm through the whole thing. He only fussed a bit during the applause--I think the loud clapping hurts his ears or something. When I stood up during the intermission, the people sitting in front of us turned around and were very surprised to see him. "We didn't even realize there was a baby behind us!" He was being very good. Also, adorable.

We weren't able to stay for the entire concert because we had to leave for the work Christmas party, but what we saw was awesome. Also, one of the backup singers looked really familiar--I turned to Chris and said, "I think he was on American Idol too." When I got home I confirmed that it was George Huff--he placed 5th in Season 3. I heard he had a solo after we left, which is very cool. We had a great time, and pretty sweet seats--probably in the $70-80 apiece range.

Jacob and Natasha came over to babysit that night, the first time we'd left the baby for an evening. I did pretty well with it. The party was at a bowling and billiards hall, and we were the first to arrive on the billiards side. (We didn't look on the bowling side, so I don't know if there were people over there when we arrived.) We played a few games before Tim and September showed up, then they joined us. More people came, the staff put out food for us, and we played a total of six games. Five of those six games ended when someone accidentally sunk the 8-ball. Basically, we all suck. But we had a good time.

We bowled, too, and I got a 97. I was hoping to break 100, but was still pleased with myself. We had a gift exchange and chatted with Chris's coworkers before heading home. (Whenever someone found out it was the first time we'd left the baby, they turned to me and asked how I was doing. I just replied, "I'm pretending to not notice that it's snowing outside." But the snow didn't stick to the road, and we got home just fine.) I'm glad we left him with Jacob and Natasha. They said he was good, and I was pretty comfortable. But it was still weird to not have him with me for the evening.

Chris was singing for the services on Sunday, so I dropped him off at the church at 7:30am, then came home to feed Tuck and shower before heading back for the 11am. (Tucker slept from 11pm until I had to wake him up so we could drop Chris off. I love that he's sleeping through the night!) We went to the service, and afterward walked through the Experience AIDS Project, which was powerful. I'm really glad we saw it.

We met up with friends for lunch, then napped at home, then Chris went back for the 6pm service. We had pho for dinner with more friends, then watched the Survivor season finale before heading to bed. I was pleased with who won Survivor.

All in all, a great weekend. Life is good.

Tuck has had a couple of notable firsts lately.

He hung out at the house with a friend of mine while I met with a recruiter. (I was only gone about an hour and he slept the whole time, she tells me.) I didn't cry when I left, probably because I was in a hurry. In any case, this leaves me more confident that when I go back to work I won't be a blubbering mess every time I leave him.

He was in his very first car accident. The day after Thanksgiving Chris and I needed to return some library books, and rather than go all the way to an actual library branch we decided to drop them off at a "connection" library closer to our house. (In our county, you can drop the book off at any affiliated library.) The connection was in a mall, and while I was in the parking lot another driver hit me. She immediately got out of her car and started blaming me. We moved our cars over to parking spaces, and I asked her for her information. She wouldn't give it to me, insisting she was not at fault. I called the cops. The woman on the phone said it wasn't a reportable collision, because it was on private property, so we should just exchange information and let our insurance companies deal with it. I told her the other party was not interested in exchanging information, and she offered to send a policeman down to "help" us trade info. I gladly accepted.

When the policeman arrived, he asked why we hadn't exchanged information. I pointed out that the other woman was unwilling to do so, and he turned to her and explained that if she wouldn't exchange information that was considered a hit and run, which is illegal. She immediately became very willing to comply. She tried to dismiss him, but he said that since he was there he was going to make sure we did everything right.

He asked me what happened. She tried to interrupt me as I was explaining, but he told her that he was listening to me first. After I finished, he turned to her and said a couple of things that I found very entertaining:

Tucker Perrin was born eight weeks ago, September 26th, at 12:04pm. I had an induction scheduled for that morning, but when we checked into the hospital at 7am I was already in active labor. Tuck was born five hours later, no induction required. I guess he decided he was coming into this world on his own terms. He'll turn two months old tomorrow.

From what I can gather, my labor was fairly easy and definitely quick. I'll spare you all the gory details unless people really want to hear them. Suffice it to say that overall, things went really well. And every day since, I have had the pleasure of staring at my beautiful baby boy. (I feel that I can say with complete objectivity that he is the cutest baby in the history of ever.)

I think I'm doing pretty good figuring out this motherhood thing. I could not have imagined how incredibly comfortable I was with him right off the bat--I have never felt this comfortable around (or holding!) small children before. But right from the start, I knew he was mine. And holding him in my arms couldn't feel more natural.

The day he was born, when we were in the hospital, there were a lot of people around (our parents and a couple others). I remember at one point someone else was holding him, and I said something . . . and he turned his head toward me. He knew my voice. That was really cool.

He's a pretty mellow kid, which makes our job as parents so much easier. He doesn't cry much, and even when he does he's generally easy to soothe. When I take away his bottle momentarily to burp him during a feeding, he often cries as if there will never be another bottle again ever and the world is ending. But when he gets his bottle back, he calms right down. It's actually pretty funny.

He also loves car rides. Goes right to sleep. It's really easy to take him places because of this.

Last week, I was separated from him for the first time (meaning, farther away than simply the next room over). I left him with Chris so I could go get takeout, since we were both exhausted and no one felt like cooking. It was really hard to leave him, but I was so glad to leave him with his dad, where I knew he would be safe. I was gone a grand total of 21 minutes, and was amazed at how empty the car felt. I was also surprised at how much more quickly I was able to get in and out of the restaurant. I know I'll have to be leaving him again . . . like when he goes to college . . . so I'll have to work myself up gradually. Who knew I would be a mommy that would never want my baby to be out of my sight? I keep telling myself that's only because he's an infant, and I won't turn into one of those moms.

The past couple of days, he's been a lot more interactive. He's learned to smile, and now we can make faces at each other. It amazes his dad how he imitates me, and we have a lot of fun just sticking our tongues out at each other.

"Hey, Mama, you know what would be fun? How about, instead of sleeping, you and I make funny faces at each other?"
"Wow, Tuck, that would be fun. But you know what would be even more fun at 4am? Sleep."

It's official . . . I am a mommy.

Details to follow when I have more time and/or hands to type.

Welcome to the outside world, Tucker!

"Hi, it's me. I'm still pregnant."

No baby yet. My doctor is very pleased with how well he's doing; he's done excellently on every test we've had, and I've been feeling mostly fine (though tired and sore). She did tell me on Friday, "You look like you're about done being pregnant," and upon my agreement, did something to help nudge along labor. I haven't gone into active labor yet (I've been in "latent labor" for a couple of weeks), but it's really any day now. So I keep hearing. (I've also been told I am an excellent candidate for induction--my body appears ready to go--so if I'm still pregnant by my due date she'll induce me. But she really doesn't think I'll still be pregnant by then.) Right now we're more or less treating this as a normal pregnancy, waiting for me to go into labor naturally, but with twice-weekly checkups (and any time anything seems weird). We're going to try for a vaginal birth, but she's already told me she'll have a low threshold for when to switch to a c-section based on the problems I've already had. I'm okay with that.

She even let me go to a wedding yesterday. (Congratulations, Christi and Michael!) She gave me the thumbs-up mostly because it was local (Shoreline, roughly 30 minutes from our house and only 23 minutes from the hospital) and I've been doing really well. (She strongly suggested I skip the wedding in Montana on Labor Day Weekend, which ended up being just as well because I spent most of the preceding week in the hospital.) The wedding was really nice, and I'm glad we got to go. Especially since we saw a lot of friends who were eagerly awaiting an update on the baby. (Plus we got to see DJ, because apparently we only see him at weddings now that we're busy with the house and preparing for baby, and he's busy working on his MBA while also working at Microsoft full time.)

One thing that we thought was especially neat at the wedding was something that Chris and I had never seen before--during the ceremony, both sets of parents stood up and took vows to support and love the couple, and to welcome the new member into their family. We thought that was a really neat idea, making the parents more active participants than just saying "we give this woman to be wed" which is reminiscent of a patriarchal society selling off daughters to be married (although I'm not opposed to that part of the wedding, and we did it at ours). Instead, it was involving everybody in the success of the new marriage, asking for the love and support of the people who raised these two people, and I thought it was a great idea. I don't know if it's a traditional part of a Nazarene or Filipino wedding (the wedding had aspects of both), but either way, I liked it a lot.

One more amusing anecdote for you before I go:

I am competitive by nature. If you don't already know this about me, it's important to the story. It's not like I'll do anything to win, but I don't see the point in playing games without at least making an effort to win. Chris thinks this means I don't have as much fun as other people. I think that is silly--it's fun to win. I don't mind losing, but if I'm not at least trying to do well, I think playing is largely a waste of time. Most (all?) of my biggest accomplishments have some aspect of me being challenged (often, me challenging myself) to do something. This includes graduating from high school with a perfect 4.0, graduating from Hopkins in Biomedical Engineering, and dropping an enormous amount of weight over the last four years. But anyway.

When I was about six months along, Chris and I went to an a cappella workshop a friend of ours was putting on. It was basically a big group of people, many of whom had never done a cappella before (and some who had never even sung before), learning a song and recording it over the course of a couple of hours. We had a good time.

Before we started learning the song, we did a bunch of warmups to get everyone ready to go. One of the warmups involved inhaling deeply then letting the breath out while counting, trying to make it last as long as possible. Jonathan, our friend who was running the show, made the comment that this could be like a little competition to see who could go the longest.

And what did we all learn? At six months pregnant, I still had better breath control than any of them.

As of yesterday, I'm 37 weeks pregnant. This is technically full-term; though they calculate out the due date as being at 40 weeks, there is actually a five-week window considered "normal."

This has been kind of a rough pregnancy for me. For the first five months, I essentially couldn't eat. Or, rather, I couldn't keep anything down. For five solid months, I threw up everything I ate. I dropped a substantial amount of weight ("You know why bulimia is popular? Because it's EFFECTIVE."), and started to alarm my doctor. She said at one point during the fifth month, "You don't need to gain a lot of weight, but you need to stop losing it." The odd thing was that I wasn't nauseous through that whole period--I simply couldn't keep anything down. I didn't know why.

Then one day, I started being able to eat successfully. A meal here and there, then I could consistently keep things down. I realized at that point what an incredible difference this made in my mood--I was feeling much better, and became considerably less snarky. (This was probably especially good for work things, though hopefully they could have dismissed my snarkiness as being hormonally-related.)

I still didn't gain much, and had dropped a few sizes during my early pregnancy. This meant I could put off buying new clothes for a really long time, as I could simply wear pre-pregnancy clothes. Also, I didn't look noticeably pregnant for a very long time. I was in

irish_eb's wedding when I was about six months along, and had bought a maternity bridesmaid dress months before because I didn't know what I'd look like. I had to get the dress taken in quite a bit, and ultimately it was completely unnecessary to get a maternity dress at all--I didn't even have a bump to speak of. Go figure.

People asked me up through my eighth month where this baby was supposed to be. I just shrugged. I knew he was in there somewhere, even if he wasn't making me look particularly pregnant.

At some point I broke down and bought maternity clothes, mostly because as I continued to upgrade my pants to larger sizes (because I never get rid of anything, I had plenty of room to grow in clothes I already owned) they got really uncomfortable--when I found one to fit my waist it was falling off of everything else. And I discovered--presto!--the key to looking pregnant is wearing obvious maternity clothes. Somehow, it really pleased me to finally look pregnant. Maybe I felt like people would start taking me seriously . . . or maybe I just felt like I was missing out on something before. I dunno. But I was amused. (Go figure that the time comes when I am most pleased with how my body looks is when I'm very, very pregnant.)

So after having a few ultrasounds, we were told that our little boy was a little small. We figured this was likely due to me not having been able to eat, but even so I increased my protein intake and tweaked my vitamins (adding extra folic acid, iron, and aspirin to my prenatal multivitamin). I also had a number of tests done to see if there was any obvious reason why he wasn't growing. There wasn't, really.

Our doctor told us she might induce me at 37 weeks if he didn't grow more.

Then, two weeks ago (on Monday the 25th), I woke up around 3am feeling very sick. Pretty much everything that could go wrong with my GI tract was, which in turn irritated my uterus and kicked off contractions. After calling the doctor, Chris took me into the hospital for a quick test to make sure everything was okay. I was pretty out of it, and apparently severely dehydrated. I actually fell asleep during the ultrasound they did on me; Chris was rather amused to watch the sonographer hitting my stomach with the ultrasound wand while I slept on. (If he'd understood why she was pounding on my stomach, it would have been significantly less amusing.) The baby did not do well on the test to check him out. (A BPP, for those of you familiar with such tests--he got a 4/8.) We found out much later that they were within a "hair's breath" of c-sectioning me right then. However, they pumped me full of fluids, and both of us bounced back remarkably well. In fact, we were both doing really well by that evening (8/8 on the BPP), but they couldn't figure out what had gone so wrong that morning. They didn't want to let me go until they could be reasonably certain that I wouldn't take another turn for the worse. I was checked in to the hospital and not released until the following Thursday. While there, I had fairly constant NST monitoring, four more ultrasounds, and amniocentesis, and a lot of blood work. I also had a couple steroid injections to mature the baby's lungs in case they wanted to deliver him early. When they sent me home, it was only after setting up nearly daily appointments for me to come back for checkups. They were, and are, keeping a very close eye on both of us.

He continues to pass each test with flying colors. I actually have had two days off--no doctor visits!--and the current plan is to reevaluate on Tuesday whether to induce me. (I am told I'm an excellent candidate for induction, so that's good.) Until then, we're playing the wait-and-see game. I'm keeping a close watch on my blood pressure and monitoring his kick counts, and at this point, all appears to be well. This whole process over the last two weeks did make me drop another three pounds, though, so I'm curious to see how he's growing. (I'm still nowhere near my pre-pregnancy weight . . . still at a considerable net loss. Go figure that pregnancy is what inches me ever-closer to my goal weight.)

I've mostly been on modified bedrest (with one day of complete bedrest) since leaving the hospital--being ordered to take it easy. My parents were in town last weekend (they'd already been planning to come up and fix some things around our place) and Chris has been busy decorating the nursery (it looks awesome) while I've been sleeping a lot. We are now the proud owners of a carseat, so when I actually do have the baby, they'll let us take him home. We've been preparing as best we can, since we weren't expecting this whole process to start five weeks early.

So, I'm still pregnant. I probably will be for at least a couple more days. Beyond that . . . who knows? We're just excited to finally get to meet him, whenever he comes. We just want him to be healthy and safe.

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