I finished Dean's sweater some time ago, then knitted up another one as a gift for my niece, who's scheduled to arrive sometime in late December. I took this picture right after I finished the one for my niece, but I wanted to wait to post it until Morgan's baby shower, which is happening right now. Ha ha haaaa. So the little cousins, who'll be about a month and a half apart in age, will have coordinating sweaters; it would be even better if we actually lived near each other and could have the two of them in one room at the same time. Stupid huge country.

Eco-Cotton by Red Heart was my yarn of choice for this Baby Yoda sweater pattern: vanilla and midnight marl for Dean's sweater, and chocolate and rose for Baby Gaga Pietryka's (her first name will only be revealed after she's born, so this is the nickname they've given her until then). There may be coordinating hats and/or booties that get made to go with each of these, but I'm sort of on a sewing kick now, and I tend to stick with either sewing or knitting for a few months until I vacillate back to the other.

I also embellished a little sunhat for Dean this morning. I found this very simple light blue hat at the Dollar Tree when I was looking for a onesie for Kent to decorate, and I thought it would be the perfect hat to adorn with some stripey grosgrain ribbon from my stash. Kent wanted to wear it at first, but he realized it was too small for him, which led to yet another conversation about how Dean is going to be very tiny when he comes out but how someday he'll grow to be big like Kent. It's a fun, mind-bending challenge to explain a baby to a two-year-old. The hat is now sitting in the Dean box, along with the sweater and the other things we've collected for our little babe, and the Dean box waits patiently in the nest/guest room.

Labels: craftiness, Dean, nesting, photography

• posted by erica 10/25/2009 03:04:00 PM
•  1 comments

I love the window into language development that Kent is giving me. Lately, I've been noticing the hilariously cute way he puts words together as he's starting to express more complex thoughts and comparisons. He's using "because" more. He still says "you" when he means "I" or "me," except in a few phrases like "Mommy I'm coming Mommy!" Note the repeated "Mommy." Very sweet. He also repeats "please" at the beginning and end of a request when we ask him to ask for something in a nice way, so he'll say, "Please Daddy I can have some more milk, please." His preposition usage is all over the place and makes me smile every day; yesterday, when he was up in his bed and I was sitting on the floor, he said, "K is high from Mommy!" and then crouched down and said, "K is LOOOWWWWWW from Mommy." When he's walking around with a shirt but no pants (usually after he runs out of the bathroom after using the potty), he remarks that he is "nakey of a bottom." I'm not sure if he means his actual bottom or just his bottom half, but he says it with a smile in a very amused voice, as if he knows exactly how funny he is without pants on. Nakedness in general makes him smile, no matter who's naked. When we were in North Carolina a few weeks ago and he went to help wake up my uncle one morning, he saw that my uncle wasn't wearing a shirt and said with a giggle, "Gruncle Mark is a little bit nakey!"

We're going to try out a free music class at Gymboree this morning, a class that's geared toward kids his age and older. I'm in a position right now where there are so many activities I think he'd be interested in, and so many different kinds of new toys I want to get him, that I really have to prioritize because we can't afford everything. Nor do I want to smother him with toys and keep him running from one activity to the next all week. But I have thought about how much he'd enjoy a tumbling class, or a swimming class... and of course music is fun for any kid, though I feel like music is the one thing I'm capable of teaching him myself, so a music class might get cut from the list.

Nesting for me is having a happy consequence for Kent: my renewed sense of artistic creativity. We're going to try fabric crayons today on a onesie and a bib for Dean — Kent will use the crayons to draw on a piece of regular paper, and then I'll iron the paper onto the fabric to leave the design behind. I'm excited to see how it turns out. The only problem is that I could only find Crayola fabric crayons, which don't work on 100% cotton, so I had to get a synthetic blend for my little babe. Poo. Luckily, the dollar store was happy to help me out.

I'm also feeling fall-y, wanting to bake some pumpkin bread with the pumpkin I cooked a couple of Sundays ago, and we need some decorations in our house besides the little gourds that I placed on top of some Halloween fabric on our dining room table. I've been thinking that it would be fun to try crayon shavings on wax paper to make stained "glass," and I realized last night that we could just use fall colors, then cut out leaf shapes from the wax paper after I iron it. I'll post pictures if any of these activities turn out well.

It's becoming more and more essential for me to figure out ways for Kent to help with things around the house, because I've noticed that he pushes his boundaries much harder if I'm occupied, and I in turn react with not-nice words and voice if I feel like he's interrupting something I'm trying to accomplish. It's a little bit him and a little bit me, exacerbated by pregnancy hormones. Even just letting him help for a minute makes a huge difference. Last night, he was restless and bored before dinner, so I asked him to count out three ears of corn from a bag and put them into the pot. Well, he thought he was hot stuff. He splashed water everywhere, but it so did not matter. He even told Jack when he got home that he had put the corn in the pot, like the old Shake 'n' Bake commercial where the little girl says, "It's Shake 'n' Bake, and I helped!!" I've tried getting him to help me sort the laundry, like asking him to find all the socks, but he usually ends up tossing stuff all over the floor or waving things around like flags. That's okay.

Dean is accumulating quite a little pile of clothes already, thanks to my mom, who loves to shop for tiny things. I think we actually have enough newborn-sized stuff now, and after a couple of months, it'll be warm enough here that Dean can wear the short-sleeved stuff Kent lived in for the beginning of his life. I might knit a couple more pairs of booties, a hat, etc., but I'm feeling less urgent about that stuff now that we have a stack in our "nest room" (formerly the guest room). We'll still need to get a couple of other things, like an extra base for the infant carseat; we didn't need one when Kent was a baby because Jack's car had no A/C and I wasn't going to put Kent in there, but now we actually have two comfortable cars. Radical concept.

I will now amaze myself and take a shower before 10 a.m. so that we can get our music on. Look at me go.

Labels: belly, craftiness, Kent, language, nesting

• posted by erica 10/15/2009 09:51:00 AM
•  3 comments

This is how I can really tell that the first trimester is gone. I'm getting the nesting instinct big-time, and I actually have the energy to follow it through. I've had the kind of afternoon that makes me feel like I need to tie my hair back in a kerchief. Laundry machines, dishwasher, and Roomba have all been involved. There's even a pot of lentil soup on the oven, all simmered and ready for our dinner tonight after we get back from a meeting at church.

My weekend to-do list is already buzzing in my head. I'm officially in maternity clothes all the time now (at almost 4 months), because maternity pants/shorts are the only bottoms that fit, and I need shirts that are long enough to hang down over those pants/shorts. A major reorganization of my closet and dresser needs to happen this weekend so that I have easier access to all the clothes I can actually wear right now, instead of being taunted by my favorite things that I can't wear.

Last weekend, I started to tackle the guest room and its closet, since the room will become a hybrid guest room/nursery when the baby is here. Kent's room will remain Kent's room, and we'll have the baby in a co-sleeper in our room at first but will keep his/her crib and changing table in the guest room. Potential guests, don't worry — we won't make you sleep in the same room with the baby if you come. The crib will only be used for the occasional nap, and we're open to the possibility of co-sleeping with this baby for longer than we did with Kent (5 months) if things seem to be working out that way. Anyway, there are other furniture changes happening in that room as well, and craft stuff that needs to go somewhere else, so I'll be spending some quality time with my belongings in that room.

We put all of my school file boxes in the attic last week, a strange thing that should have happened months ago but that I wasn't quite ready to tackle. See, I had all of those boxes where I could get to them easily, in case I had a sudden need while writing my dissertation to find an old article or class paper that I realized was relevant. To say, "No, I'm done with those things for the next several years, possibly forever, and don't need them nearby anymore," was a little weird, but I said it and now that's done, at least.

My nesting is being foisted on others, too. Jack has a short but difficult list to accomplish during the eight days that Kent and I will be gone to North Carolina: he's going to paint the guest bathroom (fairly straightforward) and clear off the computer desk (a horrific task that I don't even want to be around for). I know how he works, and I know he'll want to spread out everything from the desk so that he can go through it and put it in piles, then let it sit there for a few days and look at it while he decides what to do with everything. That will best be accomplished when there is no two-year-old around to run through the piles and move things around, and no nagging wife around who's constantly hassling him to get rid of everything. Patti will still sit on the piles of paper — we can always count on her to sit on stuff on the floor — but she won't be quite the detriment to task-completion that Kent or I would be. He'll also be catching up on studying for his exam in November, and hopefully enjoying a bit of down time. I hope for his sake that he takes advantage of a temporary lack of responsibility with nighttime parenting and actually gets some sleep, though he usually ends up staying up at least an hour later when I'm gone. At least I can be relatively sure that he won't eat only popcorn for dinner, the way I used to worry when we were younger.

I have a good husband. A really excellent husband. He takes such good care of me, and it makes me want to take even better care of him. I joke about him, but it's important to remember that he's also the love of my life and that I think he's the best partner I could ever have.

Labels: husband things, nesting

• posted by erica 9/02/2009 04:52:00 PM
•  1 comments

After getting some inspiration from wearyourbaby.com, I starting playing around with various large pieces of fabric in our house to create a makeshift sling carrier for the baby. I'll likely get a big piece of fabric that I can wrap around myself (or Jack) in various ways as Kent gets bigger, since he'll only last in the Bjorn until he's 22 pounds or so, but I wanted to see what it was like to make a sling out of something lying around. Celia was my test subject when I was home by myself, and she fit very well when I made a sling from one of my sarongs. When Jack got home, I tried out another piece of fabric on him, and Patti became the new Kent proxy. Our cats are such good sports. You can just see the excitement on her face, can't you?

Labels: felines, Kent, nesting

• posted by erica 6/29/2007 09:45:00 PM
•  2 comments

It's a little weird to say this, but I think we're basically ready for the baby. There are still things to be done and purchased, of course, but there's nothing major hanging over my head, now that we've gotten a mattress and a glider. Maybe my nesting instinct is just on hiatus for a few days and I'll be back in panic mode by the weekend.

I've actually been sitting in the baby's room reading, getting used to the chair, enjoying the space itself, and also training Celia not to jump into the crib. I've tried to pet her and reassure her when she's just walking around the baby's room exploring, because I want her to feel like she can be comfortable around the baby when he comes — we just can't let her get in the crib. She's very interested in it now that there's a mattress, but a couple of shakes of the can of pennies (which Amy suggested years ago and which has been a MARVELOUS cat deterrent) seem to do the trick of getting her to jump right back out again. I'm hoping I can get her trained before the baby comes so that I don't have to startle him with the can of pennies, because I'm thinking that might not go over well. Bottom line, though: no cats in the crib. Period.

I woke up Saturday morning feeling quite a bit different in the chest region, and I'm pretty sure the baby had dropped in the night. It can happen as much as a month before the onset of labor, so it's certainly feasible. I feel so much less pressure on my lungs (I can sit up straight again!), and he feels lower in my abdomen. It's really nice, actually. I could be misreading the sensation, having never gone through this before, but it's still a good feeling! Since I get tired and back-achey kind of easily now, it's nice to be able to breathe like a semi-normal person, at least.

That's it for now. I don't think about much besides him anymore.

Labels: belly, felines, nesting

• posted by erica 6/04/2007 10:35:00 PM
•  4 comments

What a productive day! Oh my goodness, I feel so good about being able to check things off our to-do list. First of all, kudos go to Jack for snaking the drain in our bathroom sink this morning, which he had needed to do for a couple of months. The drain was barely trickling last night, so he bit the bullet after breakfast and got to it. He also replaced our burnt-out stovetop light with a CFL, so now I can see food again when I'm cooking. Yay, Jack! We then cleaned out the freezer, because it needed cleaning and because we needed more space for things I wanted to make ahead and freeze, like casseroles. We won't have a whole bunch of stuff saved up, because our freezer isn't that big, but it'll still be nice to have a few premade things we can just toss in the oven at first when we're desperate for a meal and have a baby needing things. =) I made some macaroni casserole, with and without ground beef, and a big recipe of spinach and artichoke dip that we can eat with pitas or use as pizza sauce or whatever. I froze it in baggies so that it's already portioned out, and I plan to do the same thing with roasted eggplant dip whenever I get around to it. Next weekend, we tackle the task of cleaning the fridge, which I'm not looking forward to but which needs doing, of course.

After lunch and showers, we proceeded to drive in clockwise fashion all around the city, hitting various thrift stores in search of a glider or rocker and getting a few other things accomplished as well. We visited my old peeps at BRU where we bought a mattress, a mattress pad, a crib sheet, and the plastic thingy to go under the car seat so my car's upholstery will survive the kid (ground-in crackers notwithstanding). One of my former co-workers had been a student in my music appreciation class this past semester, which was funny but not nearly as weird as I had thought it would be, and so when everyone saw me, they were joking about how she told them I was "serious" and wasn't as easy as she thought I'd be. To be fair, I had warned her that students complained about my class being too difficult the previous semester. =) It felt kind of good to have her say that, because I knew she didn't think I was unreasonable, just that she was slightly annoyed at actually having to do work in an elective class. This was also the first time any of them had seen me pregnant, so that was fun, and they were all shocked that I'm at 36 weeks already. Apparently, I look small to everyone else, just not myself.

After hitting many thrift stores and being disappointed in the furniture selection (I'm not sure what we were expecting to find, but it was worth a look anyway), we went to a furniture consignment shop and found a glider! It's in great shape except that it's missing a bolt, so once Jack figures out the size, it'll be easy to fix that. It was a good deal, much less than we would have spent on a low-quality new one, and it has a nice high back for tall people to rest their heads on. The upholstery isn't my favorite, but it is primarily blue, at least, and it sort of reminds me of the upholstery on my mom and stepdad's old chairs that they got when they first got married. If we decide to reupholster it later, that's always an option, but it's not a huge priority right now. We were just so excited to find a glider for a good price so that we can sit with the baby in his room!

Now we're home and are waiting patiently for our baked potatoes to finish baking. I need to throw together the rest of dinner in a minute, but sitting on the couch feels good right now. I think we're going to eat and watch a movie and not do anything else for the rest of the evening.

Labels: belly, Kent, kitchen adventures, nesting, school

• posted by erica 6/02/2007 07:10:00 PM
•  0 comments

So I said I'd blog about our visitors from this past weekend, and it took my looking at Jack's blog to remember that I hadn't done it yet. Whoops.

On Friday, I picked up Lauren and Steve at the BR airport, then we swung by Jack's office to show them around since it was on the way home. We had some yummy broccoli pasta stuff, salad, and bread for dinner and previously-made minty brownies for dessert. We also attempted to watch a movie that we had recorded (The Insider), but the audio was so screwy that we had it turned all the way up and still couldn't hear the dialogue. Bummer. We'll have to track down a DVD of it at some point and watch the rest, because it looked really interesting once we started watching it.

On Saturday morning, we slept in (well, the people who aren't pregnant slept in) and then headed to the downtown farmer's market to wander around. Lauren wanted to get some veggies for baby shower food (and, as I promised her, she found some awesome ripe tomatoes), and we also found some good bread, hummus, and other goodies. I love our farmer's market — it's low-key and is mostly a bunch of people selling stuff out of the backs of their trucks, and I love the free samples! After we marketed for a while, we took them to Louie's Cafe for lunch, a classic greasy-spoon diner on campus with an eccentric short-order cook. They have awesome burgers, breakfast stuff, and salads, and they have several vegetarian things that Jack likes, so it's one of our favorite places to take out-of-towners. I've also heard that it's a popular place to go for pancakes when all the bars close, though not being a bar-hopper, I've never experienced this particular aspect of Louie's myself. We then headed to a cluster of neat shops near downtown, where Jack and I found a really cool blue and green metal lizard to hang on Kent's wall. I'm totally loving our animal motif in there, and we're definitely stretching it beyond regular elephants and lions. =)

The afternoon was taken up by naps and sitting around reading (Steve seemed to enjoy perusing our baby books and magazines all weekend), and then we did enchiladas for dinner and rewatched the Lost season finale. We all love the show, but in different ways: Lauren and Jack love reading about it online and speculating wildly about what will happen next, though Steve and I prefer to let the show's creators surprise us since I think we both realize that we can't predict what's going to happen anyway. It's a crazy show! Anyway, it was fun to see the finale again, and it helped pass the time while we waited for Mom and her fiancé, Bill, to arrive at the NOLA airport and then drive to our house. They got to our house around 11 something, visited for a little while, and then headed off to their hotel so that we could all sleep!

We took Mom and Bill to church and then lunch at a cool local bar/grill place that has really yummy Sunday brunch, while Lauren and Steve got together with Jennifer for shower preparations. After brunch, all the planners decided to do their various jobs to bring the shower together, and Jack and I snuck away for much-needed naptime before the shower. I had been sleeping pretty poorly the past couple of days, waking up for several hours at a time and then having trouble falling back to sleep, so a nap was in order so that I could regain my perky, loveable personality to celebrate the baby with our friends. The shower was great — Jack and I felt very loved and supported by everyone, even the people who weren't able to come all the way to the swamplands to celebrate with us.

We grilled Asian stuff, plus pineapple and plums for dessert, on Sunday night, though grilling took longer than we had thought it would and we ended up eating pretty late. Jack's such a good grillmaster, even when one of the propane tanks runs out and he has to figure out how to rehook everything up in the middle of cooking. It was still nice to have everybody around the table, and hanging out at home gave us a chance to get to know Bill a little better as well, which was great! We also got everyone to try Abita, our favorite local beer. Yum.

On Monday, we had a lazy breakfast of pancakes and bacon, and then Mom and Lauren helped me sort the baby loot into clothing, feeding, and various other piles. I've done quite a bit of laundry in the past few days so that everything is clean and ready for my kid, including the onesies and pants and tiny socks and also all of his sheets and towels. It's crazy to imagine that this wiggly entity inside of me is going to be wearing socks and onesies soon.

We shuffled Lauren and Steve off to the airport in the afternoon, and then Mom, Bill, Jack and I headed to NOLA to meet up with one of Bill's aunts and then eat at Commander's Palace, a very swanky and well-known restaurant in the Garden District that Bill has been wanting to try for some time. His aunt grew up in NOLA, moved away for school, marriage, and raising her family, and then came back in the 80s (I think) and has been living there ever since. She was really neat to talk to, because in addition to being a witty conversationalist, she's an art historian and has traveled all over the world. She told us we had to stop by if we were ever in NOLA again, so whenever we end up going back (probably at Mardi Gras if not before), we'll swing by and say hi. Dinner was sooo good, but I was presented with a large head-on shrimp on top of the piece of fish I ordered, so I calmly removed its head and tried my best not to alarm my vegetarian husband.

I'm pretty sure I fell asleep in the car on the way home, and we left Mom and Bill at their hotel and said goodbye since they had to leave at first light to get to the rental car place and then the airport on time. Happy sighs have been had all week as I think about how wonderful it was to see everyone. We'll have many out-of-towners once the baby comes, since he's quite a draw, and I'm really looking forward to those visits! We make it to NC, VA, and PA a few times a year to see friends and family, but it's cool when people can make the trip here and see us in our element.

Labels: belly, eating out, family, friends, Kent, kitchen adventures, Louisiana, nesting, what to watch

• posted by erica 6/01/2007 06:18:00 PM
•  2 comments

Our friends Nikki and John took it upon themselves to make sure our baby is adorned in some awesome custom-made clothing right from the beginning. Here are the onesies they made for us (with the help of Nikki's sister, who did the screen printing). Nikki said they were laughing for about an hour while they were brainstorming ideas for these, and I think the ones they came up with are pretty top-notch humor.

On the top row, we have the math-inspired onesies. The first two may take you a minute like they did for me, but I think the only one that needs explanation is the top right one, which apparently means "I'm #1." Don't feel bad if you didn't know that; I had to ask Jack while we were unwrapping them.

The bottom row contains the music-inspired onesies: the one that says "Hold Me" has a fermata, which is a musical symbol to hold a note a bit longer than its stated value (ha), and the one that says "Kickin' it Old School" has an example of black mensural notation, the system in use during the late Middle Ages. That last one is our favorite! It'll also be the perfect size for Kent to wear to the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory, which he'll be attending in November with his mom. He'll be the coolest baby at SMT!

Labels: craftiness, friends, Kent, music, nesting

• posted by erica 5/30/2007 01:49:00 PM
•  3 comments

Everybody left, and now I'm a little sad. But it was an awesome weekend. I'll post more about the whole visit later, but the baby shower is foremost in my mind at the moment, so I'll blog on that first.

The shower was such fun, and Jack and I got a bunch of great things we really need! We didn't take pictures with our camera, though several other people did, but we got a friend to tape some of the gift opening and gaming with our digital video camera, so in a little while, as we learn to get the video onto our computer and edit it, there will be actual footage somewhere on the internet (probably Google video). More on that story as it develops.

Our moms put together little photo collages of Jack's and my baby pictures, so everyone got to see Jack's wild, curly platinum blond hair that mysteriously transformed into straight, brown hair at some point. He was such a cute little boy, though I think he's even cuter now.

People wrote down advice for us on little notecards, and my mom even got contributions from some out-of-town friends and family. Those were neat to read, and some of them were pretty hilarious, like a friend of ours from church (whose son is grown) who wrote that her advice was never to invite the whole third grade to a pool party, because inevitably it will rain, and then we'll be stuck with 20-some third graders running amok throughout our house. We'll have to keep that in mind.

We also played a game with nursery rhymes in which each person was supposed to try to write down the word(s) that would answer a particular question, such as "What did Little Jack Horner eat?" or "Whom did Simple Simon meet on his way to the fair?" I knew a lot of them, but Jack didn't, and since we were sitting next to each other and tend to be giggly and conspiratorial during games, we started using the word "carrots" as a default answer for the ones we didn't know. So the answer to "What did Mrs. Hubbard get from the cupboard?" was, of course, "carrots." What did the three little kittens lose? Carrots. You get the idea. It kept being funnier as the game went on, and my favorite answer that arose from the whole thing was "Tuesday's child is full of carrots." I actually knew the real answer to that one ("grace"), but it was so funny with "carrots" thrown in there that Jack and I are still laughing about it. I'm not sure anyone else was quite as amused as we were, but it was a really fun game, and all the older folks at the shower, mostly people from our church, kicked the younger folks' butts (and my mom's fiancé got every single one right!).

Lauren, Jennifer, my mom, and their significant others put together a really fun party with great food and just the right balance of activities and chatting time.

We sorted through all of our loot yesterday afternoon, and, after the clothes and blankets and things are washed, I will endeavor to find a place for everything in the nursery. My clothes system may need to be reevaluated somewhat, but I think it'll work. While sorting through all of our amazing gifts, I hit upon the idea to put a hooded towel on my head. Don't look for a logical explanation here — I think I just like putting things on my head. Anyway, Lauren, who had given us the hooded towels, decided to join in the fun, and we picked up a couple of the fun toys to hold in the picture. I'm holding a stuffed lion that doubles as a teether toy, and Lauren is holding this hilarious banana from Pier 1 that has four little stuffed monkeys hiding inside it. Now there's yet another silly picture of his mom for Kent to roll his eyes at when he's older. I can't wait!

Labels: church, family, friends, husband things, Kent, nesting

• posted by erica 5/29/2007 11:29:00 AM
•  2 comments

and this is what you see above your head every time you wake up.



I just finished making this mobile.

It's my favorite thing I've made for Kent so far.

Labels: craftiness, nesting

• posted by erica 5/24/2007 05:25:00 PM
•  5 comments

I have people coming this weekend! Wahoo! Lauren and Steve are coming on Friday and leaving Monday, and my mom and her fiancé are coming on Saturday and leaving Tuesday. Their full day of overlap, Sunday, is the day of the Great Baby Shower of 2007, which I haven't really been involved in planning at all and which I'm really looking forward to. They're in cahoots with my friend Jennifer, and it should be a very fun time (and co-ed, so Jack will be privy to the oohing and ahhing too)!

This week is all about getting through those last few boxes of stuff that are still in the guest room (since we'll have guests who want to sleep in there). Over the weekend and yesterday, we tackled our coat closet, which had been housing a bunch of packing materials, boxes, and some coats in a very disorganized manner but which now looks like a perfectly respectable closet. I also reorganized my crafts, which had just been ridiculously thrown into a huge pile in the guest room closet. Now, everything shares a box or a compartment with its like-minded peers, and it makes me very happy. The yarn box is the biggest. =)

I have my 34-week doctor's appointment on Thursday, and this will be the last one before she starts checking the baby's position and checking to see if I'm dilated (that'll be in two more weeks). How crazy is that? We went over the birth plan last time, so there's a copy in my chart and several more copies at home waiting to accompany us to the hospital, and I feel better about having our wishes on paper and having discussed everything with her explicitly. She's been great about listening to what we want and trying to make it happen, so I'm cautiously optimistic that the hospital staff will do the same (but I'm still glad to have Jack in case somebody needs to lay the smack down).

We've been practicing our Lamaze breathing (well, really MY breathing) a few times a week and getting more of our pre-baby reading done than was possible when I was still teaching, and I think those things have helped us feel a bit more in control. I'm not sure anyone really feels in control when faced with a newborn for the first time, but as I've said before, info is good.

Kent has been persistent lately about rolling all around and having a dance party when I'm interested in sleeping, which should be great preparation for when he's out and crying and needing things around the clock. Owen Wilson's character in Armageddon has a great line when he's being strapped in to the space shuttle before takeoff that I think applies here: "It's like I'm 98 percent excited and 2 percent scared. Or maybe it's 2 percent excited and 98 percent scared, I dunno. That's what makes it so INTENSE!"

Labels: belly, craftiness, family, friends, Kent, Lamaze, nesting

• posted by erica 5/22/2007 01:10:00 PM
•  1 comments

We have only three things left on our 17-point plan; two of them are organizing tasks that are well underway but not finished yet, and the third is "Have a baby." I think we're doing well! The linen closet has successfully been transformed into a cat closet, solving our problem of where to put the litter box after we moved it out of the baby's room, and now instead of a door, the closet has a lovely curtain with a tieback for a little decoration and the illusion of privacy. I'm kind of proud of our solution.

We're driving to Mandeville, about an hour east of here, for dinner with some friends and some of their friends, and our contribution to the evening is Abita Amber and Turbodog (beers), plus something else for me. I'll be taking a few sips of Jack's Turbodog, because I miss it SO, but it'd be good for me to have something of my own to work on besides water. I've been good about drinking lots of water, but events like this call for fun beverages of some kind. I really do miss beer, which is funny to say since I didn't even like it until about a year and a half ago.

In belly news, my belly is rather round at this point, and in the past few weeks, I've started developing the dreaded stretch marks. They're way below my belly button, so no one will really see them, but I still find myself eyeing them suspiciously in the mirror (because I can no longer see the underside of my belly without a mirror). Also, I'm pleased to report that my belly button is still an inny, but only just. I'm not sure whether it'll pop out like a turkey thermometer thingy before I give birth, but time will tell. We're only six weeks away from the due date — can you believe it?

Labels: belly, nesting

• posted by erica 5/19/2007 03:29:00 PM
•  3 comments

I've been exploring my past in several ways this week. First of all, I successfully went through ALL of my school papers, articles, notebooks, etc., that had been cluttering up our living and dining room (because I don't have a desk) for the past several years. The mess started to get bad a year and a half ago when I was studying for my comprehensive exam, and though I had kept it to one quadrant of the living room since then, it got much worse when I had my entire academic existence spread out over the house while I studied for my general exams. Yeesh. I spent two days putting every piece of paper into stacks, reminiscing on what I loved about all of those classes and making mental notes of what might be useful to return to later, for my dissertation or otherwise. There are now three matching plastic file boxes with hanging folders for each class, plus extra folders for conference handouts, miscellaneous articles, and the like. I'm relieved to have that sorting finished. The nesting instinct is not a myth.

Jack has also asked me to go through our old digital pics today, since his 10th high-school reunion is coming up, and they'd like pictures and updates from him for their little memory book. He had been so looking forward to the reunion until we got pregnant, when it became quite clear that I wouldn't be able to make the trip to VA in late June. He also wasn't interested in leaving me so close to the due date. I haven't finished going through the pictures, but it's amazing to see just how enormous our Cats folder is. I'll bet that the baby folder will be even bigger as time goes on, AND we'll have digital video to boot once we get comfortable using the video camera.

Last, I've finally finished labeling all of my old posts. (Sorry to those who use RSS feeds and have had to scroll through hundreds of updated old posts in the past few days so that they won't show up as "new" anymore!) Though I had gotten labeling capabilities a few weeks ago, it took me quite some time to sift through my 408 posts and categorize them. It's a unique experience to look back on one's old writings, in whatever form they may exist, and it's weird to me to get into the head space of who I was back then and then be jolted back into my present. Just ten minutes ago, I was reading posts about applying to grad schools and planning our wedding from Philly, and now I'm back in the present world of someone who's writing a dissertation and is about to have a baby with an amazing man she feels like she's been married to for much longer than four and a half years. It's hard to remember what it felt like just to be engaged to Jack, when we hardly knew each other in comparison to our relationship now.

So far, the largest collection of posts is under the label "school" (the guiding force behind many things, to be sure), followed somewhat distantly by "felines," "kitchen adventures," and "Louisiana." When I first started labeling, I noticed the most frequent labels were "belly" and "Kent," but of course, there was a sizable chunk of my blogging life that took place long before I was ready to have a baby.

Go read old journals, or sift through old posts or emails you've sent. Remember who you were, and reflect on how you've evolved.

Labels: blogging, husband things, nesting, observations, school

• posted by erica 5/18/2007 03:12:00 PM
•  2 comments

Since we moved into our house almost three years ago, we've managed to paint about one room a year. This year, it's the nursery! Our friends came over on Saturday to help us paint, and including our rather long lunch break, it took about four hours. That's way better than the long, involved ordeal it's been when only two of us have been painting. Jack and I did a few touch-ups on Sunday, since our walls are a funny texture and tend to have little white spots showing through, but it was pretty painless, and we're so happy with the results! The color, called Crocodile Dreams, is actually a little less yellowish and a little more bluish than what it looks like in the pictures, but you get the idea of our burgeoning little nest as it is right now. Immediately on the left, you can see the corner of the changing table, and then the crib is along the other wall. Notably missing at this point are the rug, which we need to have cleaned, and the IKEA storage thingy, which is currently buried behind many boxes in a different room. Nevertheless, it's starting to look like an actual baby could live here. Trippy.

Here's a picture of that wall that's to the left as you walk in the room. It's kind of bare right now, but we have plans for things to put on the walls, and I'm sure other things will fill up the space as time passes, like a diaper bin and a hamper, etc.

This is what the closet looks like right now, with all of his little clothes washed and hanging up. Awww. It still has a few remnants from the room's previous existence as an office, but as we sort and toss/put things away, we'll get to the other stuff taking up space in there. It's on the 17-point plan.


And finally, just for fun and because I'm proud of it, here's the switchplate I painted and stickered. Kent won't be able to see the little animal stickers for quite some time, so it's really more for me, but I still think it's cute. Decorating switchplates is such a fun little detail thing to do.

So that's what I've been up to lately, besides finishing up life as an adjunct. Now I begin the next chapter of my life as a dissertating stay-at-home mom. What a change, but I'm looking forward to it!

Labels: Kent, nesting

• posted by erica 5/15/2007 04:26:00 PM
•  4 comments

You'd laugh if you could see me, because I'm currently wearing an empty Bjorn carrier around the house. My sister got it for me and I just got the box a few minutes ago, and since it's the baby thing I was the most excited about getting from the time I started working at BRU, I screamed a little when I opened the box and then had to put it on right away, despite the conspicuous lack of baby being carried in it.

The cats are eyeing me suspiciously. I think they know that I thought briefly about putting one of them in the carrier, just to see what it would feel like to have ten or twelve pounds of something in it. Luckily, though, they're in the clear — I'm not excited about sustaining the injuries it would require to get one of them into a Bjorn.

Labels: belly, Kent, nesting

• posted by erica 5/11/2007 05:37:00 PM
•  3 comments

Thanks to my mom, we got our travel system from UPS today, and I put it together in a few minutes all by myself before Jack even got home. Go me and my BRU experience. It's very exciting to have it here, just waiting for our son to arrive and ride around in his car seat and stroller. Now they'll actually let us leave the hospital with our kid all legally strapped in and everything.

Jack posted a funny picture that I took of him pushing the pram-a-lot (à la Monty Python). Now that I've shown him all the fabulous features of this thing, he's very excited about it, too!

Labels: belly, Kent, nesting

• posted by erica 5/07/2007 11:03:00 PM
•  2 comments

My friend Jennifer got me some baby yarn for my birthday, and I had found a pattern online a few months ago that I really wanted to try out for Kent whenever I had a chance. This is my first knitted sweater ever, mind you. It helps that it's very small, so I was actually capable of finishing it in less than a week, before I got sick of the whole thing. I'm pretty excited to see it finished already! I knit it with big needles so that it would be lightweight, since it won't be cold enough here when he's this tiny for him to bundle up in something thick and woolly. Now I'm inspired to try different patterns with darker, more wintry yarns — perhaps a grey hoodie is in his future.

Patti appears in the picture because (1) it helps you see the size of the sweater in comparison to an object you already know the size of, and (2) when I lay the sweater on her, she didn't run away, so I figured "Why not??" If only I could have really put it ON her, that would have been something, but I didn't want to ruin the sweater before my baby gets a chance to wear it!

Labels: craftiness, felines, Kent, nesting

• posted by erica 5/05/2007 04:35:00 PM
•  0 comments

Futon: GONE. Score.

A random guy whose wife responded to Jack's Freecycle post just came and took away the futon and both mattresses. It served Jack and his family well, but we hadn't used it in three years, and we really need the space now!

(For statistical purposes only: this is my 400th blog entry. There's nothing particularly significant about this one, but I still think it's a cool milestone. That's, like, a lot of posts.)

Labels: blogging, nesting

• posted by erica 4/29/2007 07:05:00 PM
•  0 comments

Vacations with my husband are wonderful. Things just work, even when we're tired or get lost or don't know exactly what we're doing, because we enjoy being around each other so much.

We got to Houston late Thursday night, and basically all that we did was to check into our hotel and fall into bed. On Friday morning, we decided to go to IKEA for breakfast and ended up completing our shopping in only about 3 hours. IKEA is a big place with much fun stuff to look at, and we weren't even looking at everything, though their kid section is SO cool that I'd love to go back for other stuff as Kent gets older. Their wooden toys and kid bed linens are so nifty (Jack fell in love with a striped elephant pillow), but those things are still a few years away.

We got a cool storage unit (pictured here) with interchangeable bins of different sizes and colors, and this is the arrangement we opted for. I'm thinking of spatter painting it with different blues and greens to make it more fun-looking, but we'll see how ambitious I get. We racked up on a bunch of other things as well (with links included, where applicable): several packs of kid hangers, a great laundry drying rack that has already been used for the inaugural washing/drying of Kent's clothes, an adorable stuffed elephant toy, a hand towel holder and matching toilet paper holder, a few kid-sized stainless steel bowls that we're planning to try out and possibly get more of if they work for feeding (since I'd like to avoid plastic as much as possible), some oversized rubber ice cube trays for freezing batches of homemade baby food, a freezer mold for popsicles (so I can make juice pops!), some cute blue picture frames, a suction-cup shower caddy suitable for baby shampoo and such, a red hanging closet organizer, some Black Currant sparkling juice stuff (they were out of the yummy Lingonberry flavor), and some cookies for Jennifer for watching the cats. We typically exchange desserts for pet-sitting services, and it seems to work quite well. =)

For lunch, we found The Pepper Tree, the vegetarian Asian restaurant I had talked about visiting, and it was great! Chinese food normally makes me feel bloated and the "bad" kind of full, but we ate really well at this place, even though they did have several different veggies and things that were dipped in panko bread crumbs and then fried. Fried things don't always have to taste heavy, and these didn't. They also had a bunch of tofu dishes (curry, spicy Thai, some with steamed veggies, etc.), salads, spring rolls, noodle dishes, string beans, and several desserts. I loved the fact that Jack got to eat anything he wanted instead of having me try stuff out for him and then picking around the buffet. Yum.

After shopping and lunch, we were wiped out and had happy, full bellies, so we drove back to the hotel (and got a little lost on the way) for a nap. We napped for about an hour and then got ready for the Astros game, since we wanted to get there early and scope out parking and food options. The Astros lost, so the people around us were sad (except for the few boisterous Cardinals fans in their jerseys), but a few of Jack's fantasy baseball players had good nights, so he was excited to see them in action. Plus, baseball games are really fun in general. It was pretty late by the time we got out of there, but it was fine. Fun times.

On Saturday, we awoke to 40-degree temperatures and a nasty, grey sky that was threatening rain. Yuckola. We hadn't brought anything long-sleeved with us at all, so our fluid plans for "walking around downtown Houston" suddenly seemed really dumb. When we were lost on the way back from lunch on Friday, I had seen what looked like a cool coffee shop, so we found our way back to it in hopes that they'd have something yummy for breakfast, or at least some good coffee. It turned out to be this really delicious indie restaurant (called The Dry Creek Cafe) with lots of vegetarian and other eclectic food options, good coffee, and a witty, outgoing waitress, so we had a fabulous breakfast experience despite the weather.

We went back to the hotel to check out, and by that point we had pretty much decided that leaving town earlier than we had planned was fine with both of us; it was raining by this point, and we didn't have any concrete plans, anyway. We swung by the HRC to feed my pin addiction (and paid 50 cents for 6 FREAKING MINUTES' worth of parking on the street), and then we decided it was time to head home. The weather was pretty yucky the whole way back, but I had a little nap for part of the time, we stopped at a random Mexican restaurant for lunch that turned out to be quite yummy and fresh, and we listened to a baseball game on Jack's new XM radio that his parents got him for his birthday. We had just activated the radio on Thursday, so this trip was spent getting to know XM and finding several cool stations, such as 102, "Sur la Route," the French pop music station, which is so fun! XM never seemed like a necessity to me, but because of their baseball offerings, it was a great present for Jack, and it's neat to explore all of the options that aren't available on the airwaves in a city like Baton Rouge.

This was our last non-baby vacation, and it was nice. Vacations with kid(s) will be nice, but in a different way, so I'm glad we had this one to share.

Labels: baseball, eating out, IKEA, Kent, nesting, travel

• posted by erica 4/08/2007 05:29:00 PM
•  1 comments

We took our tour of the hospital this afternoon, and it was really neat. We're having this baby in quite the swanky locale. Woman's Hospital is awesome. They do all kinds of treatments and surgeries there, but they're pretty focused on birthing, and it was so reassuring to see the amazing facilities and hear about all the care we'll be getting. The birthing rooms are very nice, sort of hotel-esque with wood furniture, paintings behind the bed, inconspicuous high-tech monitoring equipment, etc., but the one they showed us looked so peaceful and sterile that I couldn't help imagining the range of intense emotions people go through in those rooms. I also saw myself screaming and red-faced, which was pretty exciting. =)

They have the baby stay in the room with the mom all the time after birth, unless the parents want to send him/her to the nursery for a little while, or unless the baby needs more care in the transition area (for the first six hours) or the NICU. They were showing us the little table where they place the baby for the first tests and stuff, and I was getting all dreamy-eyed, picturing my tiny son wrapped up in a blanket, until the nurse called the table a "warmer," and then I guffawed a little too loudly, in spite of myself. Apparently, I was the only one in the room besides Jack who found it funny. All I could think of was a plate warmer at a buffet restaurant, an image that doesn't really go with a soft, new baby. Amusing stuff.

Another baby development of the weekend was the procuring of no-VOC paint from Sherwin Williams yesterday. The light green color we selected is called Crocodile Dreams — a fairly perfect name to go in a safari-themed baby room, I think. (I really like to narrow down paint to a small family of colors and then select the one with the best name, like "Monet's lilies," which is the color in our guest room.) The lack of harsh fumes in this paint means that I can help with the painting if I want, but I'll more likely be doing cheerleading and other peripherally-related tasks while Jack, Jennifer, and Rob do the actual rolling and ladder-stepping. I'm not sure when we'll get around to painting, but two weekends from now is a distinct possibility. After we paint, we also need to install a smoke detector in the room, in addition to decorating and furnishing the nest for our little one.

I can't believe he'll be here in three months.

Labels: belly, Kent, nesting

• posted by erica 4/01/2007 03:01:00 PM
•  2 comments