General life update coming soon (all is well; we're approaching 39 weeks with no sign of baby yet). In the meantime, I wanted to show you this super-fast apron I made for Arlo, using this tutorial.

Arlo continues to enjoy helping out in the kitchen, so I thought he might like having an apron of his own. I bought both the tea towel and the twill tape at Bolt. I used 2 yards of the twill tape, but if I did this again, I'd go for 2.25 yards, to make the ties a little longer. The only problem I had was that the front of the apron is a little low, because I had to make the neck strap big to fit over Arlo's head. I think it should fit better once he gets a little bigger (assuming his head doesn't keep growing too!).

The pockets are about 5 inches deep; I like Megan's idea of unpicking the pocket seams and adjusting them as the wearer gets bigger.

Yay for a fun and easy weekend sewing project!

We hit the 37-week mark on Tuesday, I got a haircut, we've got kind-of-healthy oatmeal cookies in the freezer (I substituted half whole wheat flour and added chopped walnuts, and they're still very good), and my mom and stepdad get here tomorrow. I'm hoping the baby stays put long enough for me to get a pre-baby pedicure next week (I hardly ever get pedicures, but I liked having pretty toenails when I gave birth to Arlo--the doctor who did my C-section even complimented me on them while I was being prepped!), but otherwise I think we're just about ready to meet this little guy whenever he decides to join us!

I had my last routine ultrasound (because of the two-vessel cord and low PAPP-A levels) this morning, and the baby is still growing well--he's approx. 6lb, 11oz (58th percentile). We didn't get to see a good profile of his face today (space is pretty tight in there--his foot was right on top of his head!), but the ultrasound tech did note that this baby has hair, like Arlo did. Fun! He's also head down, with his back on my left side, which is the position we want him to be in, so hopefully he'll decide he likes it over there.

The weather is supposed to be beautiful this weekend. I'm excited!

Here are a couple of Arlo's 22-month orange chair pictures, as promised in my last post. He was in kind of a grumpy mood, having just gotten up from his nap, but the tape measure cheered him up.

April is just flying by (March did too!). We had a low-key Easter. No egg dyeing, but the Easter Bunny brought Arlo a small basket containing Chester the bunny and some Arlo-sized cloth napkins (so exciting, I know--we'll have to up the ante next year). We also hid some treat-filled plastic eggs around the house, and Arlo enjoyed hunting for those. The thing he has enjoyed most, though, is repeatedly sorting all of his Easter chocolates. He'll ask "how many chocolates?," and then we'll help him count them. He has enjoyed eating them too, of course, but he's happy to share them with us. Next year may be a different story.

(I made the cloth napkins using the same approach I did originally. I made three more adult-sized napkins, and six Arlo-sized napkins, starting with 8-inch squares and doing the inner stitching 2 inches from the edge)

We continued our Easter food traditions of hot cross buns (no candied citrus this year; the store didn't have any pre-made, and I didn't feel like candying my own) and deep-dish pizza. We have no particular reason for eating deep-dish pizza on Easter, apart from the fact that it's yummy and somewhat labor-intensive, so it seems holiday-appropriate.

We've been having more sunny and warm days lately, which is awesome. We still haven't gotten around to hanging blinds on our downstairs windows, so we've had to improvise when the sun shines in Arlo's eyes at breakfast :)

With nice weather last weekend, Patrick was able to finish building the new fence next to our rose bush, and I think it looks great!

Arlo has been spending a lot of time with Patrick in the backyard recently, and he has finally gotten to use his garden tools (a first-birthday gift from Susan and family!). I've also been trying to get outside when possible. We had a bunch of sproingers (hairy bittercress, if you want to get fancy) pop up in the past few weeks, and my nesting instincts have forced me to get down on the ground and pull them up whenever I see them, even though it's getting increasingly hard to do so. The good news is that our yard is almost sproinger-free at this point, so my job is done (I'll just try to ignore the dandelions that are taking their place).

I love spending time in the yard with these two. It's still a little hard to believe that in a couple weeks we'll be a family of four instead of a family of three!

This is actually our last weekend with just the three of us, so we're trying to spend as much of it as possible just relaxing together. Next week, my mom and Alan are coming to visit on the train, and my mom will be staying with us until the baby is born. I'm so glad my mom will be here to help out! It'll be a relief not worrying about who will take care of Arlo while we're in the hospital (we have some contingency plans in case the baby decides to be born before Friday, but here's hoping he decides to stay put until his Nana gets here!).

I'm currently 36.5 weeks pregnant and feeling pretty good. I feel like I have a little more energy than I did last month, and more patience with Arlo, which is great. I've reached the point where I can count on having to get up at least once a night to pee (typically followed by an hour of laying awake worrying about baby names, or whatever is on my mind that night), but I still feel pretty well rested.

I took the group B strep test at my last midwife appointment, and the results came back negative--yay! (and for the record, I didn't eat any pickles or sauerkraut this time around) The midwives also checked out the baby's position, and they said the same thing that our doulas said--he's head down, with his back on my right side, which tends to lead to posterior positioning in labor. Ideally, we'd like him to have his back on my left side, so I've been continuing the Spinning Babies exercises my doulas recommended, along with a few new ones that the midwife recommended. He seems to change position pretty often--I've tried feeling for his back a few times this week, and one night he was on my left, but the next night he was back on the right. Who knows--I'll just keep doing the exercises and hope for the best.

I don't know if I've mentioned that I've been way less strict about what I eat during this pregnancy. With Arlo, I spent a good couple of months avoiding virtually all processed sugar and white flour, but this time around, I'm eating sweet stuff when I feel like it. I've rationalized it by telling myself that this baby appears to be smaller than Arlo was, so I can afford to fatten him up on sugar a little. I know, not the most convincing argument, but it's hard to resist sneaking a little treat when Arlo goes down for his nap in the afternoon. I've especially been wanting chocolate recently. My mom mentioned chocolate milk during our last Skype conversation, so of course I went out and bought some the next day. Yum! I also made a batch of fudgesicles today, and I'm considering making chocolate pudding tomorrow. At least it has some protein in it!

As of this morning, I think we've agree upon a first name for the baby. It could, of course, be replaced by a new favorite in the next few weeks, but it's nice to have something ready, in case the baby comes early. We still need to come up with a middle name to go with it, but that shouldn't be too bad.

About a week ago, we bought a chest freezer for our basement (I like our new fridge, but its freezer isn't big enough to hold a bunch of new-baby meals), and I've been working on filling it up (and Alan is planning on adding even more to it while he's here, which is an awesome present!). So far, we've got spaghetti and meatballs, black bean chili, corn muffins (our go-to recipe from Whole Grains, Every Day Every Way), and multigrain waffles. We're going to add a few bricks of unbaked zucchini and eggplant lasagna (double recipe, divided between an 8x8 and two 9x9 pans), and maybe a batch of oatmeal cookies, and then we'll call it good.

And in other food news, this double coconut chicken breast recipe yielded perfectly cooked, moist chicken breasts--impressive! We ate it with plain white rice, and it was kind of a boring meal, but I'd definitely like to revisit this technique for cooking boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I just need to add more exciting side dishes next time.

What a crazy week! My sister Lianna came to visit at the beginning of the week, and unfortunately, Patrick and I came down with a cold almost as soon as she got here. Luckily, she was still able to get out and enjoy Portland while we stayed home and convalesced. She was also able to fit in some good auntie/nephew time with Arlo, who didn't start getting sick until yesterday.

For me, the cold started with a bad cough and then progressed to the normal runny nose and congestion (strangely, it was the reverse for Patrick). I was worried that I had bronchitis early on, because I was wheezing and having trouble breathing, but I visited a doctor on Tuesday, and she thought it was just a normal cold, so that's a relief. Despite dealing with cold symptoms of his own, Patrick has been doing as much as possible to take care of Arlo so I can rest. I'm so grateful for him! The congestion seems to be on its way out, but the cough is sticking around and making me pretty uncomfortable at the moment. Luckily, the baby doesn't seem bothered by it, but I'm ready to be healthy again!

Before we got sick, we went on our second-annual winter/spring cabin trip, to the same Mt. Hood cabin as last year. It was a different experience with a 22-month-old instead of a 10-month-old, but still very nice. I stayed inside most of the time and knitted, while Patrick and Arlo got out and played in the snow (there wasn't a ton of snow, but enough to keep Arlo happy). Patrick went snowshoeing at Trillium Lake one afternoon, which sounded nice. Maybe we can try it as a family on one of our future trips.

Arlo's favorite thing about the cabin was a basket of handmade wooden trucks--they kept him entertained for our whole visit. Sweet!

I didn't try using all of the fun kitchen appliances like I did last year, but we did have waffles shaped like farm animals, much to Arlo's excitement. Otherwise, we kept it pretty low key, which was perfect. We might try going again this summer, since we ended up canceling our plans to visit Glacier again this year (a Montana road trip with a 2-month-old baby did not sound like fun, so we postponed it until 2013). Yay for having a nice, relaxing vacation spot only an hour away!

Arlo turned 22 months old today (orange chair picture forthcoming). I forgot to mention in my last post--lately, he has been really interested in watching us when we prepare meals in the kitchen. He'll drag my chair over to the counter, climb up, and provide running commentary on what we're doing, while asking for samples of all the food (he learned about free samples at the grocery store bread counter, and he thinks it's a fantastic idea!).

Arlo has also recently developed an interest in stickers, mostly because our grocery store offers free stickers to kids at checkout. We've had a few tearful moments when he's wanted to take more than one sticker from the basket, but he has handled it pretty well so far. He and Patrick also encountered a fire truck on a recent walk, and a firefighter gave Arlo a Junior Firefighter sticker. It was a very exciting day!

Arlo has also recently become familiar with the hokey pokey. He's not entirely clear on all the steps, but he's good at turning himself around. He's still figuring out the connection between spinning around in circles, getting dizzy, and bumping into things, but I'm sure it'll become clear soon.

When Patrick works from home, Arlo likes to sit on his lap and do work too, which consists of typing on the keyboard and putting the computer mouse to his ear as if it's a phone. I know I'm biased, but this kid is just so awesome!

On the less awesome side of things, Arlo is currently going through a phase where he throws things on the floor when he gets frustrated. We try to respond calmly, but it can be hard. It's especially frustrating when he accidentally drops a piece of food during a meal and then feels compelled to sweep the rest of his food off the table while shouting. Argh.

Things are going well with baby #2. I went back and read my posts from when I was 8 months pregnant with Arlo, and the same kinds of things are happening this time around--tingling thigh syndrome, more stretch marks (that one was kind of a surprise. I figured since this baby is smaller than Arlo was, my skin wouldn't need to stretch anymore, but boy was I wrong!). One thing that has surprised me about this pregnancy is that I have much less patience than I did when I was pregnant with Arlo. I guess it's not a huge surprise, since this time around, I'm interacting with a willful toddler all day.

I've had a couple of pre-dinner meltdowns where I snapped angrily at Arlo and/or Patrick and then cried and cried because I felt so bad about it. And in general, I just have a hard time staying sweet and patient with Arlo. Even though my rational side knows that he's just being a normal almost-2-year-old, sometimes I can't stop myself from snapping at him when he makes a mess or knowingly breaks a rule, especially when it's almost dinnertime and we're both tired and hungry. Poor guy :( His encounters with Grumpy Mama don't seem to bother him too much, but they sure make me feel awful! I'm hoping that much of it is due to pregnancy hormones and that I'll be more patient with him after the baby is born, but I guess there will be other hormones to deal with then, plus sleep deprivation. Oh well, I'm doing my best, and he knows I love him.

A few weeks ago, we went through Arlo's old clothes and got all of the size 0-6 month stuff ready for the new baby. Arlo especially enjoyed looking at all of the tiny baby socks when we were folding the laundry (have I mentioned how much he enjoys sorting laundry with us? It's one of his favorite things!). Everything is folded neatly in the nursery dresser now, all ready to go.

I had another ultrasound to check on the baby's growth last week (33 weeks), and things continue to look good. The baby measured 52nd percentile, and he was head down, which is good. The only thing that made me a little nervous was that the doctor said that his head was tucked kind of crookedly, which reminded me of the positioning problems we had during Arlo's labor, where his head was crooked and couldn't fully engage my cervix to finish dilation. I'm not sure if it's worth worrying about at this point, since the baby is still moving around a lot, but at our doula's recommendation, I've been doing a couple Spinning Babies exercises to try and ensure he's in a good position. (Yep, we decided to hire a doula again, and we decided to stick with Gracie and her new co-doula Corinne, since Gracie was so great at Arlo's birth!)

When I was looking back through my old entries, I came across these pictures from when I was 33 weeks pregnant with Arlo, and I thought it would be fun to take a similar set of family portraits, this time with Arlo on the outside and baby #2 in the tummy (34 weeks along). Here are a couple of my favorites from this time around:

I mentioned some of our ambitious pre-baby house projects in my last post, and the good news is that Patrick has managed to replace both our upstairs and downstairs toilets as planned (how cool is it that he is willing to tackle this kind of project? I can't even imagine doing that kind of work myself). There were some unanticipated complications with the downstairs toilet installation (it involved leveling a flange and making multiple trips to George Morlan), but he still finished it up pretty quickly. The upstairs toilet replacement went faster. Patrick had been worried that there might be some water damage to the floor underneath the upstairs toilet, but when he took away the old toilet, everything looked fine, which was a big relief.

The new fence I mentioned in the last post is still a work in progress, thanks to lots of rain, but Patrick was able to put together a nice new trellis for our front porch roses (the old trellis rotted and then blew off in a wind storm a while ago).

As far as our living room rearrangement goes, we bought new (used) end tables and moved our bookshelf, as planned, and our new couch arrived last night, three weeks early (better to have the couch arrive early than the baby!). Arlo was super excited about the couch delivery truck and delivery guys!

The couch was made in Vancouver by Stylus (it's their Metro design), and we bought it through Portico. I'm really happy with it so far--lots of room to stretch out. Our downstairs is currently in a state of disarray while we figure out where everything will go. We listed our old IKEA couch on Craigslist (goodbye, first real couch!), but while we wait for it to sell, it's sitting in the middle of our dining room, taking up lots of space. My pregnant lady nesting instincts don't like it one bit! Hopefully it will sell quickly so we can get everything back in order.

I finished two more knitting projects recently--a sweater that turned out too big for Arlo (Ravelry link) and a stripy bunny for his Easter basket (Ravelry link). I'm hoping the sweater will fit him in the fall; for now we'll just keep squeezing him into his original yellow and white sweater.

And a quick recipe roundup:

• Skillet chicken with broccoli and ziti - tasty, try adding mushrooms next time
• Creamy Asiago polenta with broccoli rabe and sun-dried tomato topping - this was really good and pretty easy to make
• Classic spaghetti and meatballs - ready in about an hour, yummy
• Shrimp in coconut milk, served over brown rice. To save money, I cut back the amount of shrimp to 1lb and added 10oz baby spinach. It was easy to make and tasty.
• Orange pan-glazed tofu over soba noodles - the tofu was really nice; next time I would toss the noodles with sesame oil and/or fish sauce, since the glaze reduced so much that it wasn't very saucy.
• To celebrate Pi Day, I made the apple custard pie from Rustic Fruit Desserts, but the custard didn't quite set up, and the apples were too crunchy for my tastes. Next time, I'd stick with normal apple pie.
• I made Patrick a fancy birthday cake this year--I got ambitious and made the devil's food cake with marshmallow frosting from the cover of Baking. I was excited about the marshmallow frosting, but it turned out to be too sugary for us; I prefer frosting with some fat in it. But the devil's food cake itself was really nice! Also, as Patrick gently reminded me, he actually prefers simple cakes instead of big frosting-festooned layer cakes (although he certainly appreciated the work that went into this cake). I'll have to save the fancy cake-making for children's birthdays!
  

Wow, it's March already! Arlo turned 21 months old last week.

As you can see in the pictures, his hair has been getting pretty crazy, so a few days ago, I decided to try cutting it myself, rather than dealing with another hair salon struggle. I watched a bunch of how-to videos online and rounded up a spray bottle, some nice barber shears, a little cape (which he refused to wear, of course), and a big comb. I set him up in his booster seat in front of our brand new Raffi DVD, to try and distract him (he became a big Raffi fan after watching a few clips from this video online, so I decided to order the DVD. He isn't watching videos for more than a few minutes at a time yet, but it'll probably come in handy when the baby gets here). I quickly realized that things wouldn't go as smoothly as they do in the videos I'd watched--he kept turning his head and putting his hands up, and I'm not coordinated enough to hold the scissors and comb at the same time. So I ended up just combing up big pieces of hair and cutting off approximately the same length all over his head, and trimming the hair at the back of his neck and over his ears (as much as he'd allow). If you look closely, you can tell he has some uneven spots, but the curls hide most of the flaws. Good enough for me! Maybe next time I'll try a milkshake + Raffi combo, for even more distraction!

Arlo is really into lining things up lately--he especially likes gathering all of our shoes and lining them up in a row. Here he is lining up our cookie cutters (I think it's just coincidence that they're sorted by size--he's not that advanced yet).

He has also gotten really good at identifying colors lately, and he's picking up new words every day (at least it seems that way). It's so much fun watching him learn new things!

Sometime over the last month or two, Arlo transitioned completely to walking--he hardly ever crawls now. His latest thing is running--he'll run around the house in circles, then shout "more yunning!" (still working on his R's). He tries to get me to run, but at 8 months pregnant, I don't get far. The big treat is when Patrick takes him to the park and they can run around in the grass. He loves it! Good thing the weather is getting nicer (though we're still getting some raincoat opportunities too).

I've pretty much stopped trying to put him in undies lately; it's just too much work when I'm tired and trying to make dinner. One thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that the way Arlo used to let us know that he needed to poop was that he'd say "cat poop" (this originated from our discussing how Patches uses the litter box to go potty, and we use the toilet). This evolved into "Arlo cat poop" (as opposed to "kitty cat poop" when talking about Patches), and now he just asks for a potty sit, which is useful, but less adorable. Of course, most of the time, after he says "potty sit," he changes his mind immediately and says adamantly, "No, no, no. No potty sit!" Oh, silly boy!

As of my 30-week checkup last week, baby #2 is doing well (yay!). Here's a 29-week belly picture.

I'm feeling good, apart from tiring out easily. I think it's all the Arlo-lifting that does me in--lifting him onto and off of the changing table, the potty, and the high chair all day long. At least he's able to walk and get up and down the stairs on his own. I'm so glad that he still takes a 2-hour-long nap in the afternoons--I use that time to relax and put my feet up and gather enough energy for the afternoon and dinner-making. Sometimes I feel guilty that I'm not taking Arlo out and about more often, but it feels like such a big effort to get him bundled up and into his stroller that we usually just stick around the house. I think as the weather gets nicer, I'll be more inclined to get him out of the house, even if it's just for a walk to look at daffodils.

Last week, we finished our Inner Work of Birth class at OHSU. I'm really glad I took it--discussing my C-section experience with other moms who had also had C-sections helped me work through it and prepare for this upcoming birth. The midwives who facilitated the class also had a lot of good suggestions for getting into the right mindset and preparing for whatever comes our way. I have a more positive perspective on my first birth experience now, and I feel ready to give birth to baby #2, however it ends up happening.

I also had my last diastasis recti checkup with Kelly last week. My diastasis is still at 3 fingers, and it will probably stay like that until the baby is born. I'm going to keep doing the exercises until the baby is born, and then we have a plan for closing the gap the rest of the way postpartum. Even though my diastasis won't be fully closed before the baby comes, I'm glad I went to see Kelly; I think my core is stronger than it was 6 weeks ago, and doing the exercises now will help me push more effectively during labor and heal faster once the baby is here.

Lately, I have been spending too much time thinking about names for this baby and reading baby naming websites. I have some top contenders, but they're all too popular, too similar to (or different from) Arlo's name, don't appeal to Patrick, don't sound quite right, etc. I shouldn't worry too much; I think we went through the same thing at around the same point in my pregnancy with Arlo, and it all worked out just fine.

We've also been working on some home improvement projects in advance of the baby's arrival. We had Mission Craft Furniture (out in Linnton) build us a great new platform bed, for much less than a bed from Pottery Barn or someplace similar would cost. It took them about 2 weeks to build. We had a few false starts, where they said they would deliver the bed and then didn't show up (and didn't call until the next day), but the bed was finished and delivered a few days later, and we love it! I think we might have them build us a nice dining room table at some point too--back in October, we talked about buying or building a table as our joint sixth anniversary present (wood!), but we still haven't gotten around to doing it. I suppose we could also just say that this bed is our sixth anniversary present. Yeah! (Also, that is not a giant snake in our bed--it's my Snoogle!)

We also recently ordered a new couch from Portico (a sectional, upholstered in microfiber--makes me feel like a grown-up). Since it's custom-built, it should be delivered when I'm about 37 weeks pregnant (don't come early, baby, we need to get our living room in order first!). I've asked Patrick to build a console to go behind it, like this one, which would mean we could get rid of our coffee table. And we want to move our bookshelves, buy some more end tables, build a new fence next to our yellow rose bush, and replace both our toilets, all in the next six weeks. Spring nesting craziness! I think it will all work out though--Patrick has those last two projects underway already, and the rest of them aren't that essential and can wait until after the baby gets here, if needed.

Thanks to Patrick being proactive, we've also been doing some of the not-fun grown-up stuff that we meant to do before Arlo was born--buying more life insurance and getting our wills written. Both are in progress, though I have to wait to submit my life insurance application until I'm no longer pregnant--apparently if I did it now, we'd have to pay more because I weigh 20 pounds more than usual, even though it's because there's a baby inside of me! Silly. The life insurance agent we talked to asked where we see ourselves in 10 years, which was a hard question to answer. Assuming all goes well, we'll have kids in 5th and 7th grade, but will we still live in Portland, in the same house? Will I be working (probably yes, but doing what?)? Tough questions. Ten years ago, we were about to graduate from college, and we were trying to figure out where to go to grad school (and I was knitting lots of i-cord, apparently). It doesn't seem that long ago.

Hey, speaking of i-cord, here's a baby hat I knit recently (Ravelry link). I made it for friends of ours who are expecting their first baby in June. Yay!

I also made another Jane hat for myself, this one a little bigger than the first (Ravelry link). I'm not sure if this style is the most flattering on me, but I've been wearing it a lot, because the doubled brim is nice and cozy, and I like the cables.

And here's a food list!

• I made another batch of Early Bird granola, this time to give to Lee for her birthday. Yum!

  

• I made bagels! Kettleman, our favorite local bagel place, was recently sold to a chain, and they are going to stop boiling their bagels. I figured this might be a good time for me to try making bagels at home (good to get this kind of craziness out of the way before the baby comes). The only hard-to-find ingredient in the Cook's Illustrated recipe was the high-gluten flour, but New Seasons just started carrying it in their bulk section, fortuitously (or maybe in response to the Kettleman announcement). Arlo and I made the dough rings one afternoon, and then I boiled and baked them the following day. They turned out very well--nice and chewy, and not too much work. I don't think I'll be making these every week, but this is definitely a recipe to return to if we can't find a new favorite bagel place in town.

  
  
  

• Last summer, I froze strawberries, raspberries, and sour cherries from the farmers' market and red currants from our garden to make a batch of four red fruit jam from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving. Six months later, I finally got out my canning supplies, thawed my fruit, and made jam during one of Arlo's naps. Hooray!

  

• Steak fajitas - very good, and not too hard to put together.

• Roasted vegetable and ricotta pizza - I made this with store-bought pizza dough (from New Seasons), and it turned out really well. I'll definitely be buying pizza dough from them again (in fact, there's some in our fridge right now!). It had a nice sourdough flavor, and it was so easy to use.

• Simple lasagna with hearty tomato-meat sauce - very nice, took about 90 minutes to put together.

• Pork tenderloin with apples and mashed sweet potatoes - tasty! Arlo seems to be warming up to sweet potatoes again after rejecting them for many months.

• I finally tried making a batch of NYT chocolate chip cookies, inspired by my recent purchase of a cookie dough scoop (I bought it to get free Amazon shipping on a much less exciting item, and then I figured I should make cookies with it right away, to convince Patrick that it was a worthwhile purchase). I made some changes to the recipe--I used a mix of chocolate chips and chopped bittersweet chocolate instead of the feves, I didn't put sea salt on top, and I made the cookies smaller than specified. So really, it's an entirely different recipe :) The cookies were good, but a little crunchier around the edges than I prefer (this may be related to my making them smaller than the recipe called for). Still, yum!

  

Hmm, somehow it's already the middle of February. We've just finished getting over a nasty stomach bug. Luckily, it only seemed to affect Arlo for a couple hours, and it didn't hit Patrick too hard, but it took me out for most of the weekend (oh, pregnancy-impaired immune system). Patrick felt good while I was sick over the weekend, so we were hoping it had passed him by, but it hit him on Monday. The timing was good, at least--if we had all been sick at the same time, who would have gone to the store to buy coconut water and applesauce?

Here's Arlo's 20-month orange chair picture from two weeks ago. He needs another haircut, but I'm procrastinating since he didn't like his first haircutting experience that much.

Twenty months is such a great age--I think it's our favorite so far. Arlo's vocabulary has been growing really quickly. He's picking up new words every day, and he's really good at mimicking what we say. He has started identifying colors--mostly blue and yellow (any color that he doesn't know is also "blue").

Earlier, I mentioned that we were going to try putting Arlo in training pants. We haven't made much progress on that front so far. He's very excited about his new undies, but he doesn't seem to understand that they're different from cloth diapers. He'll happily walk around in wet training pants until I notice they're wet and change him into a new pair. So we can only use them when we'll be at home and I have the energy to check to see if he's wet every 20 minutes. I try to remind him that he can pee on the potty and keep his undies dry, but he's not interested. Oh well, there's no hurry to get him potty trained.

A few weeks back, Patrick took Arlo to visit our friends Nat and Sara (and their daughter Rose!) in Chicago. Initially, I was going to go too, but since we had to pay for a separate seat for Arlo (no way he'd sit patiently on our laps for such a long flight), it would have been expensive to have all three of us go. Instead, I stayed home and spent a long weekend all by myself (well, except for my easygoing in-utero friend)--the first time since Arlo was born. It was nice, but I was happy when Patrick and Arlo got home!

Arlo got to hang out with Rose, watch a Packers game, and play in the snow multiple times. It sounds like a good time :)

I don't think I posted this 24-week belly picture for baby #2.

I took it on day 1 of my Tummy Team program. I'd intended to take pictures once a week for the duration of the program, but it's Week 4, and I haven't taken any more pictures, so I guess that plan's not happening. Not that it really matters--I don't think there have been any dramatic changes in my belly's appearance. I went in for my Week 3 check last week, and my diastasis was still 3 fingers wide (it was 4 when we started). It sounds like people normally make faster progress than this, but since I started pretty late in my pregnancy, I shouldn't expect to be able to heal it completely before the baby comes. But I still feel good about the progress I'm making, and I think that these exercises will be valuable when it's time to deliver the baby. And hopefully I'll be able to heal any remaining separation pretty easily once he's born.

We're halfway through our birth preparation class (Inner Work of Birth at OHSU). The class is very different from the hypnobirthing class we took with Arlo--Inner Work of Birth is (so far) much more about talking about our feelings, rather than practicing specific techniques to use in labor (although it sounds like we'll be getting a booklet with more technique-specific advice in a later class). I think this is good for second-time moms like me, who have a previous birth experience that they want to work through (about half the women in the class are trying for VBACs, and the other half are first-time moms). I'm already feeling better about my previous labor and less apprehensive about delivering baby #2. It just helps to talk about it with people who have had a similar experience. The ultimate goal of the class is that we feel good about our birth experience, whether it ends up being a VBAC or another C-section.

I had my 27-week ultrasound and glucose screening test last week. Everything looks good (yay!)--I passed the screening test, the baby is growing well (57th percentile), and my placenta has moved away from my cervix. Can't ask for better results than that!

We just started the third trimester today. I still tend to get tired in the afternoons, and I've had a few days of back pain (probably related to carrying Arlo up and down our stairs too many times), but otherwise I'm doing well. Since we kept all of Arlo's baby stuff, our to-do list is much shorter this time around, which is awesome. The biggest thing left to do is pick out a name. We haven't made much progress on that front; we've both revisited our name lists from when I was pregnant with Arlo and have added some new names, but nothing is jumping out at us. We still have a few months. It took time for Arlo's name to feel like the right fit too, so I'm not too worried.

This baby is going to be getting a lot of hand-me-downs, but one thing Arlo won't part with (understandably) is his blankie. So a few weeks ago, I sewed up a set of blankies for baby #2 using some Japanese elephant fabric and butter yellow minky (both from Etsy). Hopefully having two will allow us to wash them on a more leisurely schedule when needed (rather than having to get them washed and dried in between naps, like we do with Arlo's blankie). They're about 12 inches on each side, and although they're not as professionally sewn as Arlo's blankie, I think this baby will like them just fine (or he'll decide that he doesn't' want to be like his big brother and will choose something else as his attachment object). Arlo took them for a test run, and he approved.

I'm not sure if it's spring cleaning or nesting (or lack of a job?), but I've been motivated to tidy up our house lately. I recycled, sold, and donated a big pile of stuff that had been collecting in our basement, and I've been working on reducing my yarn stash (I want to dig into my fabric stash too, but I'm just not feeling motivated to sew right now). Some recent projects (details on ravelry, as usual):

• Bright lights cowl and hat, made using some pretty handspun that Lee gave me for my birthday (I've been saving all of her handspun because it's so special, but I've decided that I should use it!). The cowl pattern is Lee's parallel lines pattern, and the hat is Stephen West's botanic hat.

  
  
  

• Tulip Fields Pullover - I've had this pink variegated yarn for seven years now (!). I read about the afghans for Afghans youth sweater campaign, and I decided to make a sweater to donate, using the pink yarn and some dark blue yarn that matched surprisingly well. I hope it goes to a good home!

  

• I crocheted this super fast choker to wear to a goth/industrial night with friends last week, but then the stomach bug hit, and I didn't get to go. Too bad! (Long-time readers may recall that I spent a summer at Cornell in college, and a group of us went to the local goth night a bunch of times--I totally didn't fit in, but it was fun!) Anyway, I'm not sure how much I'll wear this in my normal life, but it was easy to make, and it's pretty.

  

And finally, a roundup of meals we've had recently that were worth making again:

• Early bird granola - This was super good--it seems like a special occasion granola, since it's pretty sweet. I cut the maple syrup down to 1/2c, and it was still plenty sweet.

• Pastitsio with roasted cauliflower - This was reminiscent of Hamburger Helper, but in a good way.

• Chicken parmesan - Fast and tasty. Yay for having a working broiler!

• Roasted broccoli with shrimp - Quick, healthy, and tasty; the only drawback is that shrimp is expensive. We ate this over rice, next time I might try quinoa.

• Indonesian coconut rice with chicken and zucchini - Very nice. Next time I would shred the chicken before serving.

• Buttermilk roast chicken, green bean salad with pickled red onions and almonds, and roasted potatoes - The chicken tasted good, but the texture made it seem a little undercooked, which was off-putting to me (Patrick didn't seem to mind). The green bean salad was yummy (and Arlo loved the pickled onions--what a surprise!).

• Pulled pork sandwiches with coleslaw - You have to be around the house much of the day to make this recipe, but it's not too much work. Still, I bet there's a crockpot recipe out there that would give similar results with a smaller time investment.

• Not a recipe exactly, but we had some friends over to play board games on Superbowl Sunday, and Patrick made a big batch of nachos with refried beans and cheese (with an array of optional toppings) for dinner. Yum! Maybe we should make this a Superbowl tradition.

• Easy egg custard - I made this for Arlo and me to eat at snacktime, but he refused to try it. I loved it though, especially as a dip for apple slices. I might reduce the sugar a little next time, since I've got the same heightened sensitivity to sugar that I had when I was pregnant with Arlo, and eating two servings of custard (I couldn't let Arlo's go to waste!) made me feel yucky.

• I made this hazelnut brown butter cake again, and it was just as good as I remembered. Yum!

My first meeting with Kelly about my diastasis recti went well. She gave me lots of information about the anatomy of the abdominal muscles, what causes diastasis recti, and how to fix it. She confirmed that I have a diastasis (about four fingers wide, which is significant but not the worst ever), but she is confident that we can fix it. Yay!

It's not entirely clear what caused my diastasis, since I didn't have any of the normal pre-pregnancy contributing factors (doing lots of situps, being a gymnast or a swimmer, etc.). It seems like the diastasis developed at some point during my pregnancy with Arlo. The torpedo shape of my belly in this picture is indicative of a diastasis (the separation allows the uterus to stick way out). The diastasis may have contributed to my positioning troubles with Arlo during labor; when the uterus isn't held in by the abdominal muscles, the baby can go all sorts of weird directions, rather than just heading down and out. Hopefully we can fix that this time around.

We're using a three-pronged approach to heal the diastasis: (1) daily exercises, (2) wearing a splint, and (3) avoiding activities and positions that can worsen the separation. The exercises are easy and only take about 3 minutes at a time. I have to do them five times a day, but I've set reminders on my phone to help me remember to do them. When I have my next appointment in three weeks, Kelly will check my progress, and we'll talk about the optimal approach to pushing during labor. Hopefully I'll actually make it to the pushing stage of labor this time (I did push during my labor with Arlo, but we now know that I wasn't fully dilated and shouldn't have been pushing--I'm sure that didn't help my diastasis either).

In related news, I realized that it's been a while since I posted a belly picture (I hope baby #2 doesn't mind that his gestation is being so poorly documented compared to Arlo's!). I'll try to take a less artsy picture in the mirror tomorrow--I'm curious to see if my belly will look any different six weeks from now, when the rehab program ends (apart from being bigger because the baby has grown).

We had our monthly midwife appointment today. We've seen a new midwife from the group at each appointment so far, and today's midwife told me that I have a pretty significant diastasis recti. She said that I should address it now, or else it may affect the baby's positioning or my pushing efficiency during labor. Ugh. (On the bright side, everything else looks normal, and the baby still seems to be growing well)

After Arlo was born, I wondered if I had diastasis recti, but I never followed up on it. My lack of core strength bothered me, but yoga seemed to be helping that before I got pregnant. I'd bought a book about how to heal diastasis, and I'd started doing the exercises in August, but I found out I was pregnant a few weeks later, so I stopped doing them.

It's discouraging to think that my body might not be able to handle labor well. Up to this point, I'd assumed that as long as I could deal with my emotional issues relating to my first birth experience, my body would be able to handle the physical part of giving birth. Now I don't feel so confident about that. There's hope, though--my midwife recommended a physical therapist in Vancouver, WA, who is trained in the Tupler Technique, who can (hopefully) teach me pregnancy-appropriate exercises to heal my diastasis recti. I had read about the Tupler Technique after Arlo was born, but it looked kind of gimmicky, so I hadn't pursued it. But I'm going to give it a try now, since this seems important. I've got my first appointment scheduled for Thursday. I hope it helps!

I guess I shouldn't worry too much; this baby will come out one way or another. It would just be nice to have my abs stop feeling like a limp noodle at some point, whether it's pre- or post-delivery.

I've finally made it through my backlog of Arlo video footage! It went back to when he was 15 months old, and it's crazy to see how much he's grown just in that amount of time. I've included the 15- and 19-month videos below; if you click through to Vimeo, you can see the 16- through 18-month videos too.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep making these (you can tell the 18- and 19-month videos are already pretty short), but it sure is nice to be able to go back and see Arlo growing up!

As I mentioned earlier, we recently bought Arlo a toddler bed from IKEA, and I sewed a few fitted sheets using the same general approach I used when sewing sheets for his crib.

I made three sheets: (1) a combination of Michael Miller Ta Dot flannel and some white flannel from a thrifted crib sheet, (2) In the Clearing flannel from the Loulouthi line by Anna Maria Horner, (3) Lost and Found by Jen Allyson for My Mind's Eye.

I made a quick drawing to show how I made the sheets, in case it might help somebody.

For each sheet, I bought 2.25 yards of fabric (45 inches wide). I pre-washed it, then cut out squares from the corners to give the dimensions shown in the picture (IKEA toddler mattresses are 63 x 27.5 x 4.75 inches). I sewed up the corners, added a casing for elastic around the bottom, and threaded 2.25 yards elastic through. I sewed the ends of the elastic together and closed the casing. Quick and easy! The sheets aren't perfect--the flannel especially shrunk quite a bit, so the sheet pockets aren't very deep, but it stays on well enough.

Another recently finished Arlo-related project: a toddler cowl. I wanted something to keep his neck warm, and a cowl seemed like it might stay on better than a scarf. I used the bandana cowl pattern from Purl Bee with a couple modifications (details on Ravelry), and I love how it turned out! I might need to make one for myself too--I love my cabled cowl, but it would be nice to have a little more cowl coverage in front for when I wear v-neck tops.