Thirty-six weeks! I'm in my ninth month of pregnancy now, and strangers are not shy about commenting on how pregnant I am (which I have no problem with--I think it's kind of cool!). Surprisingly, I haven't had any unsolicited belly touching, except from a very friendly four-year-old girl at Chaos Cafe, who not only touched my belly, but also gave the baby a kiss. It was sweet :)

We just got back from a quick overnight trip to Hood River, to celebrate my 30th birthday. We drove up yesterday afternoon and had a very nice birthday dinner at Sophie's--tender gnocchi with morels, fava beans, and other spring vegetables. And for dessert, tapioca pudding. Yum! I'd definitely go back there next time we're in Hood River.

We stayed at the Columbia Gorge Hotel. I was especially impressed with the customer service and the awesome views (there's a waterfall right in their backyard!). Breakfast was tasty, though not as amazing as Sunset had led me to believe. The highlight was when the waiter poured honey onto our huckleberry scone from 4 feet above the table ("honey from the sky"), as a tribute to their backyard waterfall. I enjoy a little breakfast theater every now and then :)

After breakfast, we wandered around downtown Hood River. My favorite part was getting ice cream at Mike's and eating it while soaking up some sun in the Adirondack chairs outside their shop. The weather was very obliging! We had lunch at Full Sail Brewery, but we skipped their free tour and headed back toward Portland instead.

We took the Historic Columbia River Highway both there and back, which was one of my favorite parts of the trip. On the way home, we stopped to check out the Bridge of the Gods and the Bonneville Fish Hatchery (Herman the Sturgeon is large!), plus Horsetail Falls and Multnomah Falls. We also stopped at the Vista House at Crown Point and enjoyed some awesome views of the Columbia River.

Although Multnomah Falls was impressive, I actually liked Horsetail Falls better because there was hardly anybody there, and we were closer to the waterfall. My being nine months pregnant kind of limited how much exploring we could do, but we'd like to go back and do some hiking in the future. It's such a pretty area.

We've made some more good progress on the baby front this week:

• This past weekend, we made a trip out to Beaverton and bought a car seat at Segal's. Based on the recommendation in Baby Bargains, we got a Graco Snugride 35. They come in some cute patterns, but the only one Segal's had in stock was plain gray, and we didn't want to order one and go back to Beaverton to pick it up, so we just got the gray one. I have enough other patterned baby items that a neutral car seat is fine with me. As long as it keeps the baby safe, we'll be happy!

• Speaking of patterned items, I sewed two envelope-style pillow covers to use with the Poang and glider. I used Nano Iro Hana Yura fabric for the fronts and plain Kona cotton for the backs. They make me happy :)

  

• I also made two super easy newborn caps out of an old T-shirt of mine. Using my sewing machine with knit fabrics is kind of frustrating, but these were pretty forgiving. I embellished one of them by attaching a few extra strips of fabric to the front. I'm tempted to sew a bunch more with the other old shirts I have saved up, but I figured I'd wait and see if we actually use these two before making more.

  

• I also made reusable nursing pads this week. I looked at Etsy to get an idea of what size they should be and what types of fabrics people use. I ended up cutting 4.5-inch circles of fabric--1 bamboo velour circle and 2 bamboo fleece circles per pad (the velour goes next to the skin). If we'd had any old flannel blankets lying around, I could have used those instead. I stacked the circles on top of each other and then zig-zagged around the edges. Because the velour was stretchy and I used a normal sewing machine instead of a serger, this was not the prettiest sewing job, but I'm okay with that.

  

• I have my Group B strep test next week, so I've been eating pickles and sauerkraut for the past few weeks. Our hypnobirthing teacher told us that these foods may inhibit the growth of the strep bacteria, and I figured I might as well give it a try. People do weird things when they're pregnant, huh?

This is kind of random, but I wanted to make a note for posterity--a few days ago, we were looking for wire shelving (to help organize our office/guest room closet, now that we're moving stuff out of the nursery closet). Our search led us to Krueger's Supply, which we'd been told sometimes has used wire shelving. On the day we visited, they only had new shelving (which is kind of pricey), but they also had all sorts of other cool used industrial items, like old gym lockers and big ladders on wheels. It was just a fun place to explore. We didn't end up buying anything from them, which worked out well, because on the way home, we saw a set of used wire shelves in front of Lounge Lizard, so we got those instead. That's the second time that Lounge Lizard has had exactly the furniture that we were looking for. Yay for cool Portland stores!

I made polenta casserole this past week, in an effort to make a large amount of reasonably healthy food for dinners, so we'd have more time to devote to the other stuff we're working on. I think I kind of sabotaged the recipe, because I used the lame salsa that I canned last summer, and I threw in some extra beans and some spinach to make it healthier. Not surprisingly, it turned out pretty boring. It's probably worth a remake, following the recipe a little more closely (and maybe adding more cheese--that's always good!).

And in my continuing effort to make more room in the freezer, I baked individual rhubarb and sour cherry crumbles with oat-pecan topping, based on the recipe in Rustic Fruit Desserts. The rhubarb makes this crumble pretty tart--I think it would be perfect with a big scoop of ice cream on top. We didn't have any ice cream, so I added some milk to mine and ate it as a mid-morning snack, and that helped cut the tartness nicely.