My last two weeks, the Cliff's Notes version

I spent a good many hours enjoying this view last weekend. This is the view from Kenny’s sister Robin’s cabin in San Juan Island (near Seattle). The island was just full of beautiful—hills, moss, Puget Sound, lots of trees, a view of Canada. If you walk down the hill from where this picture was taken you come to a cliff overlooking the water and where there are sometimes whales swimming by. Sunday morning we went to a pumpkin carving brunch at an equally beautiful wooded area near an adorable cabin.



My pumpkin is the one on the left that says BOO. It also has a sadly misshapen witch's hat on the left side out of view. Robin carved the next two. Our friend Carri who lives in Seattle and joined us for the island adventure made the cyclops. Kenny made the roboty one, and Robin's boyfriend, Jason, made the horned fellow on the right. I love Halloween, but this will probably be the extent of our Halloween celebrating for the year. Lame.

We spent the last two days of our trip in Seattle. We were going to stay with Carri and her husband Derek, but Derek had to go and get the flu or some such illness. Apparently asthmatic pregnany ladies should avoid getting the flu and other such illnesses, so we stayed at Robin's Seattle studio for one night and a hotel for the last.



This is of course the belly at 24 weeks + the Public Market + Puget Sound. Apparently I am just going to keep getting bigger. Our hotel was hilarious. It had black hallways and giant black and white pictures of rockstars on the doors. It also had a pillow menu. I dialed zero and requested a body pillow. Will now have to buy a body pillow for home use and hope there is still room for Kenny in the bed in addition to me, my belly, the pillow, and two dogs who sleep attached to me.

And last, but not least or even chronologically last, a report on the 2009 3Ms conference:
We all enjoyed milkshakes when they arrived last Friday night. Saturday we bravely headed to Ikea. Something like 5 hours later, we emerged. Megan bought herself a nursery (pictured below in the 4 big boxes at the right. The cart is also hers. Did I mention she flew to Chicago? Molly wins the Ikea restraint contest. She is holding her one purchase. Kenny and I are responsible for the cart on the right. We (read Kenny) somehow fit all of this and 4 people (plus 2 half people) into our Corolla.

When we got back from Seattle, etc. there was a large box waiting for us in the foyer. The crib we ordered from Target a few days earlier (the one that said it would take several weeks to be delivered) had arrived. I am now pretty convinced we are having a baby because there is now a bed in our house just for it. Feels kind of like it did when we bought a crate before we got a puppy. The boxed up crib is living for now along side Megan's boxed up nursery furniture in our guest room. Sorry Kenny's parents who are coming to stay in that room this weekend!

I guess I never finished discussing the rest of the 3M weekend, but now that I've already come back to present tense, it seems confusing to do so. Have a good Halloween!

I break dresses

All the fun was indeed had last weekend, but I’ve been trapped under something heavy all week and unable to tell you about it. Yesterday was the last of day of our giant 3-day all member annual conference. Our wonderful bosses gave us today off, which is great because I need today to clean the house and get ready for our trip to Seattle. We leave tomorrow morning and some friends come to stay with the puppies. In other words, I will also fail to tell you about last weekend today.

Because of the conference I had the challenge of dressing in business dress for three days. I do not own 3 suits that can fit around the belly, so I had to get a bit creative. For two of the days I ended up wearing two non-maternity dresses that happened to have belly space. Everything was going swimmingly until the third day. I was sitting in a session and the, um, upper part of the dress (actually it was a jumper) was a bit snug and inhibiting my breathing. I was at the back of the room so I decided I could unzip my breath and have a little reprieve. The session was ending so I went to zip back up. I couldn’t reach so asked my friend/coworker, Lisa, for help. The zipper got stuck. She tried for a few minutes with no success. Another coworker suggested that standing up might help. Meanwhile, around 400 members are sitting in the rows in front of us learning about investment risk. Standing up did not help. A managing director saw what was happening, and he came over to help as well. Zipper. Would. Not. Budge. Lisa and others tried to convince me that it looked like a style feature of the dress. I went to the bathroom to survey the damage. From far away it did conceivably look like an intentional feature. Really though, it looked like I was walking around with my dress unzipped. I took the jumper off completely to see if I could fix it. Nope. Zipper looked tired and angry I had forced it to close earlier.

I ended up borrowing a suit jacket from a coworker to hide for the rest of the day. When I got home I handed the jumper to Kenny who promptly zipped it up in about 15 seconds.

And now, the poor belly, pictured here at 23 weeks trapped under two layers of spandex. Not its best look. I blame Kenny's photography.

All the fun is about to happen!

Fridays almost feel better than Saturdays. There’s just so much hope and promise in a Friday. And there’s the jeans at work. It’s just a recipe for wonderful.

The second annual 3M conference is to be held in Chicago this weekend. The 3M conference has nothing to do with the people that make adhesives and such but everything to do with my Molly and Megan coming to Chicago where there's an eMoly. I’m almost too giddy to work today.

This year’s cast features two pregnant ladies with sciatica and muscle aches and one who is running a marathon next weekend. I’m pretty sure Molly usually snores and Megan wrote ahead to make sure she could have 5 pillows to sleep with—so they will most certainly have a great time sharing a bed. The last trip involved lots of wine drinking. Kenny said he'd make milkshakes for Megan and me while he and Molly took care of the wine drinking this year.

Regardless, it's certain there will be much estrogen, shopping and pizza had by all. I think Kenny is planning to immerse himself in projects involving power tools.

The weekend's accomplishments

While we were looking for a home to buy, we considered several severe fixer uppers (i.e. they needed new roofs, walls, electricity and plumbing). After 5 months of moving into a place that really had no problems, I now understand that we are not the sort of people who can do that.

Exhibit A: We found this mid-century dresser at a second-hand store to use as a TV stand. It was what I believe my grandma would have called baby-shit yellow in color and had the world's ugliest hardware. Kenny has been slowly, and I mean slowly, refinishing this on our porch for more than the last 3 months. I of course would have helped had I not been in my delicate condition. I do think he did a wonderful job.

Exhbit B: We got on this big mid-century kick (our parents love that term since it also applies to them) and bought these lovely chairs off of craigslist. They had the original cushions on them. Apparently foam is not meant to last 50 years. I would find powder of said foam below both these chairs and our dining room chairs. My mother had offered to buy me a cruise ticket for my birthday last year. We ran out of times when we could go, so I asked her to make me new cushions instead. I think she should quit teaching and take up cushion making full time.

And Exhibit C: Our still not complete dining room. It is mostly complete. Kenny finished recovering all of the chairs this weekend. I would have helped, but I lack the patience and perfection threshold that Kenny has. I somehow managed to not capture the chandelier in this photo, but you've seen it. All that we have left is for Kenny to make me a pretty picture for the wall.

I was in charge of switching out winter/summer/too small clothes and emptying out the future baby's room this weekend. There just really aren't any pictures to go along with that. Also, I have been working on one other rather taxing project:

A picture with a head for once because my mommy asked for one. I can now see it is time for a haircut. Today I am 22 weeks. Because I don't quite understand how 40 weeks fit into 9 months, I looked it up online today and was shocked to discover that I am now in my 6th month. When did that happen and when did my belly get so horizontal? I also read that my belly button might pop out any day now. Am terrified.

Fish baby

There's not a lot of story here, but I felt this should be documented and such. I just realized I’ve never discussed the kicking and poking that’s being going on for quite some time. Before any official kicks or pokes, I could feel motion when I put my hand on my belly and sat quietly and still. It felt like there was something swimming in there. I put my hand on Kenny's belly to make sure that I wasn't just feeling normal organ stuff. Kenny thought I was making stuff up and imagining things or at least that's what his facial expression said he thought whenever I mentioned this phenomenon.

September 2nd, Fetus gave its first real tap, tap, tap that I noticed/felt. It sort of felt like somebody flicking me with their thumb and pointer finger—but in a pretty light way. It happened a couple of more times that day and then I didn’t feel it very much for the next several days. That was just cruel really. I was telling Kenny every time I felt the baby kick but stopped because I decided he wasn't acting excited enough. I did tell our friend Kyle who requested that I tell him and reacted as if he were being given candy every time I told him.

In the past couple weeks the movements have become more and more pronounced (as one would predict what with it growing bigger and all). Kenny finnnalllly felt one from the outside the other night. He’s been very eager to feel it but impatient. Fetus would usually kick a few seconds after he removed his hand. I feel things the most when I am sitting at my desk at work, particularly if I am smushing him/her by sitting too close to my desk. I like to think of the kicks as my reward for sitting still--not that I really needed any additional encouragement on that front. Fetus also seems to be most active around meal time. Clearly this baby is a Kodner.

HGKenny&Emo

About a month before this whole pregnancy thing started, we bought a condo. Between our travels and having visitors in town over the summer, we've been trying to sneak in bits of home improving/nesting. Our first step was to buy furniture. I've shown you our dining room table before. My coworker's antique dealing boyfriend found these lovely chairs for us on Ebay.

The seats were last covered during Thanksgiving weekend in 1983. I know this because the people that did it dated and signed their work. The frabric isn't really our style. After at least 6 trips to fabric stores and several hours of looking for fabric online, I was sitting in the car with Kenny before going into Jo-Ann this weekend. I told him, "Let's pretend this is the only fabric store left on earth and we have to pick something out here." I needed to move on with my life. We picked out a fabric that is marketed for outerwear. Kenny is in charge of the recovering process because he is better at this sort of detail, patience-requiring work than I am. The first chair only took him about an hour:

Because he's taking over my TV to watch the Cardinals in the playoffs this week, he has promised to simultaneously complete the other 5 chairs.

While some friends were visiting a few weeks ago, I asked Kenny to hold up this light fixture in the dining room (where there used to be a recessed light) so we could see if it would work. He started installing it, and though I feared it was a bit rude to install light fixtures while you have friends over, I did not stop him for fear it would otherwise never get done. A good six or so years ago, Megan, Molly and I took a trip to Chicago at the beginning of winter break in college. We made the pilgrimage to Ikea and bought everything in site. I thought my mom might like this lovely light fixture. I was wrong.

It makes our dining room much more dining room like and cozy I think. I'm hoping we will finish up some major projects this weekend ahead of our next wave of visitors/travels, and I'll try to do a before and after thing for all of the rooms.

And for the sake of consistency, here is this week's (21) belly picture. I never know what to do with my hands.

20 weeks and our return to DC

I do think the headless belly picture are a little creepy, but there are reasons. We usually take these in the morning for it is otherwise nearly impossible to catch me before I change into pajamas when I get home from work. They're headless because the time when Kenny can take my picture before going to work is the time when my hair is still wet and I have no makeup on. In other news, this shirt is from my mother-in-law. I can't explain why, but it makes me feel like a beautiful catepillar.

This has been the week of the being run down—hence, my failing to post until today. Belly continues to grow. I think my body is just wimping out about moving the extra blood through the system and carrying the extra belly in front. I’ve been going to bed at 9 or 9:30---getting a hefty 9 to 9.5 hours of sleep—and still stumbling around like I was up all night. I dropped a mug of hot cocoa the other day because I think I fell asleep while filling it up.

Enough complaining though. I am officially at the stage where strangers on the street comment on my belly. It’s amazing how much your belly can grow without people thinking you look pregnant. I guess we all give each other lots of allowances to just be fat.

While we were in DC 3 strangers, in one day, commented on the belly. One older guy who had just finished playing tennis asked me if it was my first and urged us to wait and be surprised about the baby’s sex. One cocktail waitress looked at me and assured me that they had non-alcoholic drinks too. One bouncer scolded Kenny for his role in the matter and what he had gotten himself into. Hmm, funny how two of those exchanges happened at bars.

Speaking of DC, I never did a lovely post I had planned to do about it. Being in DC was great. It’s very strange to go on vacation to a place that feels more like home than where you live. I’m still working on bonding with Chicago and am sure I will one day feel the same for it that I feel for DC. DC is just so easy to love because it’s small in size but big in city-ness. In DC, I was never lost. I knew where places where and had favorite places. I took a nap in Dupont Circle. I could walk between neighborhoods in no time. We stayed with our friends Kate and Kyle. They threw us a BBQ so that we could get together with all of our people at once. It felt so normal to be with all of them and so sad that it wasn’t really normal anymore.

This is Kyle and Kate on our trip to see the rebuilt Eastern Market. We lived in the Eastern Market neighborhood when the market burnt down. It's now rebuilt and a surprising nice shade of pink.

My friends Lindsey and Molly threw me a baby shower. It was nice to have girl time and get all sorts of adorable things for baby. Below see baby’s first piece of DC propaganda.