Kids Clothes

Tomorrow we're celebrating the third birthday of my friend's twin girls. I had little idea of what size they actually are, but I used some pattern measurements to figure out the height and waist of size 3. I'm hoping that these sparklie skirts either fit well, or are too big. It would be a bummer if they were too small.

I got to use my newly rebuilt serger and also the ruffler foot that I'm still really excited about. Both skirts together probably took me 4 hours total, possibly less. I also used my serger to fasten in the elastic waist band, which is a first for me. I historically haven't used my serger to do things that don't require cutting, and it works pretty well.

I Am The Luckiest Person Ever!

Guess what I woke up to this morning? Breakfast in bed! And not just any breakfast, but an egg sandwich complete with greens and cheese and walnuts and a perfectly toasted whole wheat english muffin and other ingredients too. My honeypot, who is working his butt off right now, made me, the "big bellied" lady who is no longer working, breakfast in bed. How special is that? Extremely special and I so appreciate the attention. He's so fantastic and for many reasons way beyond today's treat.

In not so great news, I had two leg cramps yesterday. The first one was actually in the bottom of my foot while we were watching Juno last night (a great movie). I've never had one during waking hours and that one was relatively mild. I've discovered that if I take my calcium/magnesium supplements once in a while, which has a bunch of other nutrients in it also, I don't get these. Even after the mild one, I forgot to take that supplement and it's been a couple weeks now. Oops. Well, I paid for that mistake with a pretty bad calf cramp at about 5 in the morning.

The notable thing about all this is how much better I've gotten at handling these cramps. The initial bolting upright in bed from a deep slumber to this amazing pain is still the same. It's startling and annoying. Now I immediately start to use the pain management meditation techniques we learned in our birth class and it usually doesn't last more than a minute or two. Another interesting thing is that previously I would be hobbled for the entire day because my leg would be so tight, even though I would spend lots of time rubbing it out. Well, now I'm quickly relaxing my leg in that meditation and even 20 minutes later my leg was completely normal without any pain or tightness. It's pretty exciting because, besides the lack of hobble, it reconfirms my belief in these pain management meditation techniques I've learned. Which is a darn good thing, because that's the majority of what I'm going to be using for my home birth.

For the record, I think I've had maybe 10 leg cramps throughout my pregnancy. Which isn't really that bad. Zero would be better, but 10's not so much either. I can't imagine being one of these women that have them all the time. That would be a huge bummer.

The Geography of Bliss

For the past week or so I've been slowly reading this book where the author tries to quantify why certain cultures and countries appear to be happier than others according to happiness researchers.

The happiest place according to positive psychology researchers is Switzerland followed by Qatar and then Iceland. I haven't gotten to the chapters about the other countries yet.

It's pretty entertaining partly because the author has a partially jaded view on happiness (a self declared negative person) and mostly because he has a hard time trying to quantify the qualities that make these very different cultures happy.

Nourishing Traditions and the Attraction to What We Can't Have

The other day I was hanging out with Krista and she mentioned this nutrition cook book whose basic angle is that whole unmodified foods are best for you. And that our society's obsession with altering food formats (by homogenizing, sterilizing, or denaturing) is seriously detrimental to our digestion and general health. This book also promotes eating fermented foods.

While I was in college I got really into this type of nutrition; and was a huge advocate of this philosophy. My philosophy is still pretty closely aligned, however I am a vegetarian and this book isn't completely on board with that. I also feel strongly about only eating foods that have a low glycemic index.

As a side, there's been studies that have linked folks who eat fermented foods with less incidence of allergies. I've been taking a probiotic recently and my honeypot took it for some days. While he was taking it he had less issues with his body reacting to certain foods. Interesting, no?

I'm going to make yogurt today, and see how it goes. Wish me luck.

On another note, my serger has been breaking needles for several weeks now when it shouldn't be. I finally brought it in to get it fixed because the timing probably is off. It'll be gone for a week and now that it's gone I've come up with all of these projects that I want to do. Why are we attracted to things we can't have? I must be patient.

Big Bellied Swimming

I can't express how fantastic swimming is when you're big bellied. I only wish I had made time to do it earlier.

I went to our local pool today during their open swim and swam laps for an hour. They were slow laps. It was so nice!

I'm sure I'll go again tomorrow.

Has a Week Really Gone By Already?

I'm always amazed at how fast time passes on by.

There are lots of high lights this past week. Like my in-laws visiting, going to the California Academy of Sciences night exhibit to celebrate a friend's birthday, hanging out at the Thornton's complete with a watermelon seed and cherry pitt spitting contest, visiting with my friend Krista and her daughter Molly (so cute!), sneaking up to win a game of settlers, watching The Hangover (pretty entertaining and that has a character that reminds me of somebody I know), starting to write my first iPhone webapp using iWebKit, and yesterday going to Angel Island to celebrate another friend's birthday and hiking the 5 mile perimeter trail. It felt really good to hike and hang out with friends, but I can really feel it today. Besides all that, I've been running loads of errands. They never end, it seems.

Another highlight for me has been our screen printing adventures. My honeypot and I have been hanging out a lot this past weekend and we've been exploring the world of screen printing. He's done it a couple times before, but I haven't. I've had really bad luck getting good screens to come out and am going to work at it again, possibly today. The onsies pictured are my honeypot's first two color design.

In other news my Mother had emergency surgery mid week due to a hernia in her small intestine. It sounded really painful, and they finally operated on her to solve it. She's recovering well, and sounds in good spirits. It's pretty lucky that they figured out what was wrong and were able to fix it.

And another not so great thing that happened this past week is my iPhone tweaked out .. again. Just randomly my phone was acting really weird so I rebooted it (which in the past has solved it's responsiveness issues), except this time when it came back it had no service or software it appears. There's an image above. Apparently when they die, they die hard. I've had other random issues with my phone before, and while I still like what it does and mostly how it works, I find it really annoying that it's not dependable. Thankfully it only dies infrequently, or I would have ditched it a while ago. As it turns out, I rebooted it again and presto(!) it's all back to normal, even going so far as to remember all my data. I guess it was a hiccup.

It's Vacation!

Even though Friday was my last day of work, today is the first day that I didn't have to go to work! So today is the first day of my vacation. You wouldn't know it from the list I've been working through today. Half of it is probably the direct result of hormones. You don't know what I'm talking about? Well, the urge to clean my house is pretty out of control. I've been getting some pretty serious exercise cleaning my house more thoroughly than it's been in, well.... it might be forever. I spent a large portion of my weekend cleaning like a maniac, and today was the bathroom. Who knew cleaning a bathroom could be aerobic.

I think they call this "nesting."

Roomba got used in a couple rooms, but somehow it still took me hours to "prep" the room for the little robot. And our kitchen was so bad that she actually complained before she was done. Her dirt compartment was so full that she was actually dragging around this big ball of dirt. Perhaps this is more information than you wanted. (Wait until we start blogging about the bowel movements of our new baby! Kidding - I hope we never do that.) Needless to say, our home has recently gotten a "deep" cleaning thanks to the baby.

My mother-in-law is on her way here right now with her sister and her dog. Hopefully Stella will remember the dog and not be so freaked out. It'd be nice if they could just be friends, or sort of ignore each other, or something. I think Stella would prefer to be ignored and ignore, but I think Sierra really wants to be friends. If only she understood the sheer hours it sometimes takes Stella to warm up to other non-human creatures, maybe she'd just give up.

I think my two nieces are going to stay here tonight also. It's going to be a full house! It'll be fun to catch up. I fell like it's been a while. (I hope I don't go into labor tonight.)