What happens when your actor brother from the Big Apple comes in town to celebrate the holidays and readily admits I don't know how to relate to children ???
You round them all up of course. Shout GROUP PHOTO WITH UNCLE TOMMY!!! Begin piling them onto the couch beside him. Shove one onto his lap. Try to tuck this one up into his armpit. Quick! Quick! Quick!
I'm not sure who's more freaked. Uncle Tommy. Or any one of my three children. Picture taking is torture, I tell you. Pure torture. I'm going to stop threatening with time outs and instead say, Okay ____________, you do that one more time and it's a portrait session for you!!!
Thanks for being a good sport brother of mine. Safe travels back to NYC. XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX !!!
How far along? - 13 weeks - doesn't matter WHICH scale you go by, this is the second trimester!
Total weight gain? - Official weight gain/loss for first tri: down 3 lbs.
How big is baby? - A shrimp (approximately 3" from head to rump).
Symptoms? -
The usual: food
aversions, random bouts of nausea, & exhaustion (Christmas Eve/Christmas Day kicked my butt!).
Maternity clothes? - There is no denying this bump - which is, in fact, a real bump & no longer bloat. The pre-pregnancy jeans don't button anymore, although they still fit everywhere else.
Stretch marks? - Same as ever.
Sleep? - Still waking during the night often, but sleeping later than I was.
Best moment this week? - The first u/s on my birthday! I don't think there could have been a better birthday gift than a strong heartbeat & active baby bouncing around in there.
Movement? - None that I can feel, but this baby is ALL OVER THE PLACE in my uterus, as evidenced by our NT scan!
Gender? - Still guessing blue.
Labor signs? - None, & let's keep it that way for at least another 24 weeks.
Cravings? - Right now, fruit - pineapple, strawberries, peaches, plums, watermelon. In other words, all the yummy summer fruit that isn't good right now! :(
Aversions?
- Still hanging onto the beef & tomato-based foods aversions... ick.
Belly button in or out? - In!
What I'm looking forward to?
- Seeing all the family in Pgh for the first time during this pregnancy!
What I miss? - Right now, not much. I'm a happy camper, knowing that this little one is growing healthy & strong in there! :)
Weekly wisdom? - Just trust - there's no use in worrying, because it won't help anything.
Weekly joy? - Seeing the husband's face at our u/s on Tuesday - nothing beats the expression on his face at seeing our baby for the first time. :)
To pull off this feat, here are the necessary steps.
1. A year or less before or after your birth your parents decide to tempt fate once again and nine months later successfully have another child.
2. You and your sibling make it to adulthood growing up surviving whatever it is your family does for all those years.
3. Once you and your sibling are out of the house--you both date/fall in love/ find THE ONE with whom you wouldn't mind mixing your gene pools together.
4. You both decide to live in the same city--a short jaunt from one another's homes.
5. You both (are legally insane) decide you must have some babies NOW. And hop to it.
6. You both conceive at regular intervals within a few months of each other. Uhh. Huh. I know what you were doing on such and such date....
7. After all is said and done, you still like each other enough, trust each other enough, love each other enough to expose your little wonders to your sibling's little darlings as often as possible.
Simple, really. Only 28 years in the making.
End result: so so so close cousins.
Stephan's nana & papa got him a Fisher-Price camera for Christmas and he's spent time wandering around snapping pictures. Gotta love seeing things from a 3 1/2-year-old's perspective
I started him his own Picasa site and if you'd like to see his first album, the link is here. I weeded through about 2/3rds of the pictures, most of the floor, wall or ceiling and a few too blurry to recognize.
Enjoy my budding photographer!
I almost went to bed and forgot to do this whole writing thing. Now, I could have coped out and cited my earlier work on this wedding website of ours as my writing of the day. I managed to conquer the elusive 'our story' page as well as the 'yes we are getting married way the fuck in croatia, here are the details' page. So, that was a plus.
Well, here I sit. Christmas in the quaint cabin in the middle of the Smokey mountains. There are presents under one of the sadder trees I have seen. It isn't a tree, really, just some plastic molded into a two and a half foot tall solid white cousin It mass with a sad, reflective red butterfly on top. I haven't asked why there is a butterfly on top of a Christmas tree. I pretend it is justified by some Christ-like fluttering from the dead. Or something.
I am trying to decide my goals for this coming year. I want to narrow it down to three. Last year I went vegetarian, which I maintained happily and successfully (and learned to cook like woah along the way). All in all I ventured into meat maybe 10 times all year, 3 of which were for duck from the Chef's Table. So, totally understandable.
I am debating goals like 'putting my relationship first.' Because I want to, and I want to spend more time with the person who, ultimately, is my main priority in life. But then I put in my Spring class schedule on the calendar, and then my work schedule, then pencil out four blocks a week to (in theory) ride my horses. And then there is this sad little scattered gapping of unclaimed time, which in reality is meant to be spent studying, reading, and writing. This past semester I read over 100 books. When? And who am I kidding to think James can come first. The reality is my education does at this point and time, and that's that.
So, then I considered setting a goal for my education. I want to work on my writing (what's new?), and so was thinking of making myself write at least 300 words a day non-academic. This is where Vox comes in, I suppose. But then I think about how ultimately self-centered I used to find the whole blogging process, and how the good aspect (having others' feedback) also becomes this subversive force that changes not only what you write about, but how you write it. So maybe I should make a collection of files on my computer, or something....but then I remember the highlight of blogging: being held responsible to publicly show you are sticking to your goals. So there, I suppose this will be one of my three resolutions.
In all this angst (and truly, it is existential angst) over my writing and work this past semester I have committed, in my eyes, a cardinal mistake. Namely, indulging in my perfectionism. As Psychology Today so aptly put it, this an inherently selfish adventure as,"It is ultimately self-destructive to devote all one's psychic resources to oneself." A valid statement, and one to which I wholeheartedly agree to after emerging from a self-effacing and self-absorbed pit of despair over my own intellectual work over the past couple months. So, I think OK, let's do something for the community, or in a larger respect the world..or at the very least something obviously not originating from my head up my ass vision of the world. I remember meeting a really great family working with building an orphanage in Zimbabwe, so maybe I can donate $100 a month to them. Or in my local community there is a great organization working with the homeless. So them? Then my credit card bills start to loom in my face, but I won't cede because of it. I really need to spend some of this hard cash on something that pushes me at least once a month into a larger perspective. So this makes goal two.
What for the third? I wish I could write my friends more letters, spend more time with my dogs and horses, cook more, talk more to my loved ones, be more open, a million other things. But, in the end I remember that, despite the not perfect moments of the past year, I have laughed more and learned more than ever before; I have been more compassionate and more forgiving, of others and myself. And that, at the end of the day, is a damn good precedent for the coming year.
So I still need to decide how this third resolution could be best spent, because I stick to these damn things like the stubborn person I am. I just need to foster more creativity in myself. I fell flat this past semester when I let my manic perfectionism blind my creativity and, most importantly, my voice. So how to avoid this? Being in Asheville makes me realize how much I miss places that inspire me. I need to find one near home. Somewhere that really inspires me. And I need to make a point of working there a few days a week. And I need to make sure and ride, even when shit gets wild. It clarifies my mind in ways nothing else can. So, let me think on the third and get back to you.
What are your goals?
These pictures are for you Bah Humbugger. You Season Spoiler. You Grinchy Grinch who refuses to get into the spirit of things. I triple dog dare you to feast your eyes upon our little Tills and and not feel your heart go all sweet and gooey. Like a marshmallow in a mug of hot cocoa no doubt. It's happening isn't it? You're melting aren't you? Admit it.
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* At four months Matilda is 15 lbs 12 oz (90% for weight) and a little over 25 inches (75% for height) for the handful of you who might care about stats.
Houston, we have a heartbeat!
We got to see a strong little heartbeat & a wildly active bambino yesterday at our u/s - hands down, the BEST birthday gift that Momma's ever gotten. Baby is measuring a few days ahead in size, all the measurements looked great, & he/she is apparently quite stubborn - the u/s tech spent a solid 20+ minutes trying to get the measurements she needed for the NT scan, & baby was not into cooperating. We didn't mind, as it just meant more time to see the little one!
In any event, we are thrilled to know that there is a strong, healthy baby growing in there, & everything looks to be just as it should. What more could we ask for this Christmas?!
