A while back, I bought a cute fabric headband at Union Rose (you can see it here and here). I love it, because it keeps my hair out of my face but doesn't give me a headache like normal headbands. Today I used the headband as a pattern and made myself four more. I'm hoping they'll help me look more pulled together after the baby comes and I haven't washed my hair for days.

It's a really easy sewing project, so I thought I'd share the steps with you (and if you find my instructions confusing, there are plenty of other tutorials online--for instance, this one and this one).

1. You need a 10" piece of elastic (I used pretty fold-over elastic from Bolt) and enough fabric to give two 3.25" x 12.5" pieces. Cut two blunt-ended ovals, each measuring about 12.5 inches long, 3.25 inches wide in the middle, and 1.25 inches wide at the ends. I traced my existing headband and added 1/4" seam allowances to get my pattern.

2. Fold over and iron 1/4 inch of fabric on one end of each oval, and then sandwich the ovals right sides together with the elastic in between. One end of the elastic should be even with the non-ironed ends of the ovals, and the other end of the elastic should be floating freely somewhere in the middle of the fabric sandwich.

3. Pin together and stitch around (using 1/4 inch seam allowances), leaving the ironed-down edges open. I pinned the loose end of the elastic to the middle of the fabric so that it wouldn't accidentally get caught in the seams.

4. Remove pins and turn right side out. Flatten, pin around the edges, and iron.

5. Tuck the loose end of the elastic into the open end of the headband by about 1/2 inch, and pin in place.

6. Topstitch all the way around (I did this by moving my needle to the right and using the edge of my presser foot as a guide). Backstitch over the pinned elastic to make sure it's well secured.

Voila--you have a headband!

So the ultrasound this morning was interesting. We learned three things:

• My placenta has moved higher, and it's not blocking the cervix anymore. Yay!

• The baby is currently in a frank breech position (hey, that's a good name for a boy!). His butt is facing downward, and his legs are up by his head. That doesn't sound too comfortable, but I guess babies are flexible. I'm not sure if I need to actively start trying to turn him around (there are all sorts of unusual methods described online!), or if there's a pretty good chance he'll flip before birth. I won't do anything before talking to my doctor. Luckily, our next appointment is on Tuesday.

  Because of his funny position, we didn't get any good views of his face or profile (but we did get visual re-confirmation that he is a boy). Oh well, we'll see him soon enough.

• Mr. Frank Breech is huge for his age! He's supposed to weigh 3-4 lbs at 32 weeks, but based on the measurements the ultrasound tech made, he weighs about 5 lb, 5 oz (equivalent to 34.5 weeks gestation). Wow, baby, I haven't been eating that much! It's better than him being underweight, but he's big enough that it merits some attention, apparently. So we'll be discussing that with the doctor next week as well.

I spent a little time reading about both findings online. It sounds like these could be cause for a C-section or early birth via induction, both of which I'd like to avoid if possible. But I'm trying not to worry about it. My boss told me that when she was pregnant, there were multiple times when her doctor predicted she might need a C-section, but everything resolved before birth. I think this baby knows what he's doing.

Thirty-two weeks! This marks the start of the eighth month--whoa! If I think in terms of months, two months still sounds like a decent amount of time to get ready, but 8 weeks, not so much. Babies are normally born between 37 and 42 weeks gestation, which means that he could be here 5 weekends from now. Oh man...

Not much to report in the past few days. Our follow-up placenta ultrasound is tomorrow, and we're hoping for good news.

As predicted, the meal planning kind of fell by the wayside this week, so I only have one meal to tell you about--saffron-basmati rice with chicken in garam masala sauce (from Whole Grains Every Day) and sweet and sour okra. Patrick made this, and it seemed pretty easy to put together, and the end result was nice. The chicken was good, but the okra was my favorite part of the meal. Yum!

Although I didn't get much cooking done, I did get some crafting time in. Remember the ripple blanket I started back in November? Well, I'm still working on it--almost halfway done now. I had originally planned on crocheting a row a day, in which case I would have been done by now, but that's not how it worked out. I'm not going to stress out too much about finishing this before the baby gets here. It'll get done eventually. Patches likes sitting on my lap (and periodically attacking the yarn) while I work on it.

And I finished sewing that potato sack dress I mentioned in my last entry. Luckily, the addition of a waist tie and ruffles helped a lot. It was based on the maternity or not frock tutorial on Presser Foot, with a few changes based on the limitations of my cheapo sewing machine (I attached the elastic differently, and I pleated the ruffles instead of gathering them). I used Joel Dewberry's Deer Valley columbine fabric.

I love projects where you don't have to cut and pin pattern pieces--this dress is basically two rectangles sewn together and embellished. Very easy! And if the dress isn't flattering when I'm no longer pregnant, I can take it apart and reuse the fabric to make a skirt or a different dress.

Thanks to Patrick for taking these pictures, by the way. They turned out much better than my tripod self portraits. While we were both semi-dressed-up, we took a few family portraits too. And then we went to Por Que No and had fish tacos and strawberry-mango lemonade for dinner. Life is good :)

Thirty-one weeks! Actually we're at 31.5 at this point. Patrick was out of the house this weekend enjoying some pre-baby hang-out time with friends from college (they rented a condo downtown for the weekend and sampled beer at many locales), so my normal routine kind of fell by the wayside. I didn't do my weekly meal-planning either. What are we going to eat!?

• I seem to have reached the stage of pregnancy where strangers feel comfortable assuming I'm pregnant. I've had a couple people ask me when I'm due, but no belly touching yet. I've even had one person express surprise that I still have 2 months to go (I assume because my belly is so massive). I actually found that strangely gratifying, like I'm doing an extra good job of being pregnant or something. Silly, I know :)

• We had another OB checkup last week, and everything continues to go smoothly (yay!). The doctor palpated my belly and guessed that the baby is head down, with his back facing to my right. I had been thinking that he was sideways with his head on the right side, but her interpretation makes more sense. We'll know his position for sure on Friday--we're going in for a follow-up ultrasound to see if my placenta has moved off of my cervix into a more normal location. Cross your fingers!

  When the doctor had me lie down for the exam, she told me I was having a contraction (apparently a normal occurrence when pregnant ladies lie on their backs). I had no idea! Even when she pointed it out, I couldn't tell--it just felt like the baby's back was pushing on my belly, which is a pretty normal occurrence. I wonder how often I have contractions and mistakenly attribute them to the baby.

  It turns out that I don't have sciatica, but something similar--the baby is pressing on my femoral cutaneous nerve, not my sciatic nerve. The doctor said sciatica affects the back of the thigh, but for me it's the skin on the front of the thigh that goes numb. Actually, my condition has a much racier name than sciatica--tingling thigh syndrome! So I can't walk around talking like an old lady anymore, since the people who most often get this condition are women in tight jeans and high heels. Patrick and I have been referring to it as tight pants syndrome, but apparently that's something different. Anyway, the good news is that this should go away once the baby's born, so it's nothing to worry about.

• In general, I've been pretty comfortable during this pregnancy, apart from some normal aches and pains. A strange thing happened on Saturday though--I walked up to Cool Cottons, which is less than a mile from our house. By the time I got there, my lower abdomen was aching. Sitting down and standing still helped a little but didn't make it go away. The pain lasted all through my walk home, which made it pretty unpleasant. I considered calling a cab, but I just gritted my teeth and kept going (I know, probably not a prudent decision). I made it home, lay down on the couch and put on my relaxation CD, and within 10 minutes, I felt totally fine. My guess is that the baby settled on some nerve or internal organ while I was walking, and he just needed some help getting repositioned. I should have gotten on all fours at the fabric store and done a couple cat-cows to help him out. Pregnant ladies are allowed to do weird stuff like that, right?

• One of the less exciting baby-related tasks I've been putting off is choosing a pediatrician (also: writing a will). This past week, we met up with a pediatrician in Sellwood, and I think we've found our doctor. Phew! She's on board with our parenting approach and seems to know her stuff, plus she went to college and grad school in the Bay Area (I guess that's not really relevant to our child's care, but it's nice to have something in common that we can talk about). She's only been with this practice for a few months, so she's actively looking for new patients (the other doctors in the practice are busy enough that they don't do meet and greets, so we lucked out that we were able to talk to her).

  Sellwood is a little far from where we live (there aren't any pediatricians in our immediate neighborhood), but it's nice to have an excuse to go down there. When the baby's older, we can bike there via the Springwater Corridor! And bonus: There are multiple ice cream shops/bakeries near the pediatrician's office, so we can institute the important "you get a treat after your doctor's appointment" tradition. In fact, we have already instituted the tradition--we stopped at Lovecup for ice cream after meeting the pediatrician. Mmm, Tillamook mint chocolate chip. I hope the baby enjoyed it!

• We crossed another item off the to-do list last week--buying a glider for the dining room. I had been watching Craigslist for Dutailier gliders for months, but most of the listings were pretty far out in the suburbs or too expensive. I was also kind of hoping that a Monte Luca glider would magically pop up for cheap (yeah, right). There actually was one listing for a used Monte glider and ottoman a month or so ago, but the seller was asking $800, which, while reasonable (they're $1400 new), was still a lot of money. I hemmed and hawed about it long enough that it was gone by the time I contacted the seller. Oh well!

  Anyway, I finally got it together and responded to a listing for a Dutailier glider and ottoman out in SW Portland. The seller was asking $150 (they go for $600-$700 new), which is pretty standard. It looked good (apart from some pen scribbles on the wood and some dinginess to the cushions) so we brought it home. Based on what I've read online, Dutailiers are considered very comfortable, but not particularly stylish. I agree with that. I'm planning on covering the cushions in a more exciting fabric. If we had unlimited time, I'd also want to stain the wood a darker color, but with all those little spindles, I think it would be better to just leave it alone. I'm sure I won't even care what it looks like once the baby's here.

  

• I was originally planning on covering the cushions this weekend, but I ended up doing some maternity clothing sewing and fabric shopping instead. The maternity dress I'm working on now looks kind of like a potato sack, so I don't have high hopes for the finished product. But I'll persevere. I also bought some beautiful Anna Maria Horner voile at Bolt for a sundress, and I'm much more excited about that project. Hopefully the sun and warm weather will return by the time I finish it!

In house news, the plasterers started today, and they're basically done--no more holes in our walls and ceiling! The guy just has to come back on Wednesday to do a little sanding. I continue to be impressed by how quickly contractors work. Here's a picture I took of our stairwell wall hole while they were plastering it. Instead of installing new wood lath, they used metal mesh--much easier!

Now we just have to paint over all the new plaster work. Actually, that's not as straightforward as I make it sound--we don't have all of the paint that the previous owners used on the walls, so we'll need to match those colors. I'm guessing we might end up putting that off in favor of more pressing house work. But you never know--Patrick is way more motivated than I am about getting this kind of thing done. I'm so lucky to be married to him--I would do such a crappy job of taking care of this house on my own. I'm pretty good at keeping it tidy, but it would totally fall down around my ears over time. I'm just put off by the bigger home improvement stuff.

A quick round-up of last week's food:

1. Patrick made fancy pizzas topped with sauteed nettles (yay, spring!), fromage blanc, mozzarella, and farmers' market eggs. For future reference, he added the egg 5.25 minutes before he took the pizza out of the oven, and it turned out just right. He used the whole wheat dough recipe from Whole Grain Breads. He's getting good at pizza-making!

2. Black bean chili (from Morning Food) and corn muffins (another batch from Whole Grains Every Day). This chili wasn't super exciting, but doctored up with cheese and sour cream, it made a perfectly fine meal.

3. Brown-sugar rubbed pan-seared salmon (from Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook), roasted brown rice pilaf scented with leeks (another repeat from Whole Grains Every Day), and sauteed spinach. Healthy, easy to make, and tasty. Yay!

It took a little work, but we have obtained a dresser for the nursery!

Yesterday, we went to five consignment/vintage stores (Consigned Home Furnishings, Rerun, I Heart Retro, Shag, and Hawthorne Vintage). We didn't have any luck finding a dresser at those stores, but we did get a cute nightstand for me and a sweet mini credenza at Hawthorne Vintage. Both were priced reasonably, as far as I could tell. I love those little legs.

Just a note--for future Portland furniture shopping, I would skip Rerun and I Heart Retro. Rerun didn't have much furniture, and I Heart Retro's furniture seemed kind of run down (drawers didn't open smoothly, loose drawer pulls). But we didn't spend much time in there--maybe I missed some hidden gems.

Today, we visited Lounge Lizard and Look Modern, both of which had some good options. I love the furniture at Look Modern, but it is definitely more expensive than we're used to. They had a couple dressers for $500-$600, which I could almost justify paying (a new dresser from Land of Nod costs about that much), but the drawers were a little fussy, and it seemed kind of imprudent to have the nicest piece of furniture in the house be in our child's room. What if he drew on it with markers? I'd be sad. So we didn't buy the pretty dresser. Someday I would like to buy some furniture from Look Modern though.

Lounge Lizard had about four dressers that met our requirements, each in the $100-$150 range (much better!). We ended up getting a lime green changing table/dresser combo from the 80's (the woman who sold it to us was really nice and told us that she's a mom, and she'd checked to make sure it hadn't been recalled, so everything seems fine on that front). The drawers stick a little, but Patrick thinks he may be able to fix that, and if not, they work well enough. I'd definitely like to repaint it, if we have time.

Since we have most of our key nursery furniture now, I decided to spend some time thinking about the room layout. I started out using Google Sketchup, but it was too fancy for my purposes, so I went with graph paper and little scale representations of the furniture instead. Fun!

This one's my top choice. It puts the changing table by the door, keeps the crib away from the bookshelf, and still leaves a decent amount of space in the middle of the room for some sort of a rug for playing on. And there's room along the left-hand wall and in the closet for more storage in the future. The chair will prevent us from opening and closing the closet door a lot, but I think we'll just keep it open all the time, unless we want to make it look nice for company or something.

My plan right now is to move our IKEA Poang chair and ottoman into the nursery for seating, and then since I think we'll be spending more time downstairs than upstairs, we're going to set up a little nursery annex in our dining room with a glider (still need to get one of those), a rug, and maybe a second changing pad and diapering supplies on the mini credenza.

I realize all this careful planning will probably go out the window when the baby actually gets here, but it makes me feel better to have some sort of plan!

Wow, 30 weeks! Three-quarters of the way there. I'm definitely starting to feel a little unwieldy, but it's not too bad.

• I've been feeling fewer sharp kicks recently, which is consistent with what the pregnancy book says--the baby has less space to flail around in at this point. Now he's working on putting on some fat, rather than growing any longer, which sounds like a good plan to me.

• It's becoming harder to sit comfortably for long periods of time. I can sit on the couch for a little while if I cram two pillows behind my back, but that only works for so long. I think I need to start carrying around a little lumbar pillow for when we go out to restaurants (I've also found that a roll of paper towels works well, but Patrick doesn't want me carrying those around everywhere). We finally got around to buying an exercise ball for me earlier this week, and that has worked out pretty well as a couch alternative (it's also supposed to come in handy during labor, and the books say you can use it to soothe a gassy baby).

• And hey, I have a new pregnancy side effect this week--sciatica! If I stand up for more than 20 minutes or so, the upper part of my right leg goes numb. But it goes away when I sit down. I'm just glad it's manifesting as numbness instead of shooting pain. It kind of puts a damper on making complicated dinners (or washing the dishes from complicated dinners), but it's not so bad. Plus I get to walk around the house talking like an old lady and complaining that my sciatica is flaring up again.

  Also, I think I might have had my first practice surge (Braxton-Hicks contraction, for those of you not up on the hypnobirthing lingo) this morning. It didn't hurt at all; my belly just felt extra firm for a few minutes, and then it went back to normal. Pretty cool!

• I wasn't feeling super excited about our name list last weekend. I'm just having a hard time finding a boy's name that I'm excited about (when it comes to girls' names, I have much stronger preferences!). Like every other parent out there, I want a name that is unique, but also one that won't be so unusual that it will be a burden to our son. I shouldn't worry so much; it'll be fine. Anyway, I spent some more time with our various baby name books (this one is my favorite; it has more information than is available on the website) and our full list of names and added some more names to the in-the-running list. So now the list is up to 30 names, but I'm sure Patrick will veto some of those. We're also working on narrowing down our girl name list, though we're a little less motivated on that front. But it seems wise to have a girl's name in reserve, just in case the ultrasound was wrong :)

• I've been feeling anxious about not being prepared enough given how far along I am. We are pretty well prepared in some respects (educating ourselves about how to take care of a baby), but we're kind of lagging in the "buying stuff" department. Part of it is that we want to buy as much as we can used and/or locally, and that takes more effort than ordering everything off of Amazon. I think most of my anxiety stems from the fact that we haven't made much progress on the nursery, which is a silly thing to worry about because (as Patrick helpfully reminds me) the baby won't care if his room is finished when he gets here. Still, there are definitely a few more basics that we need to buy--like a dresser/changing table (we're working on that one this weekend).

  I thought it might help motivate me if I post a before picture of the nursery. Here's what it looks like right now (the first picture is the room, the second picture is the closet, which is actually pretty big!). I'm not a big fan of the brown color, so I'm excited to paint it! So far, we have been cramming all baby-related stuff in there willy-nilly, along with guest room sheets, laundry drying rack, out-of-season clothes--you name it! Everything is extra disorderly because we had to move stuff when the electricians were here. Anyway, stay tuned for a dramatic nursery transformation sometime in the next 10 weeks. Well, maybe not dramatic, but there will be a transformation of some sort. There has to be!

  
  
  

  I actually made a good amount of progress on sewing the Roman shade for the nursery last weekend, but we won't be able to hang it up until we've painted, which we can't do until the plaster man does his thing and fills all the holes from the electrical work. We've got two plaster guys coming to give quotes early next week, so that should get the ball rolling.

This past week, we made some fun plans for my 30th birthday in early May. Since I'll be 36 weeks pregnant at the time, we didn't want to travel too far away, so we decided to take a quick overnight trip to Hood River. I'm excited! We're going to stay at the Columbia Gorge Hotel, which is supposed to have awesome breakfasts, and on the way there/back, we'll get to see the Historic Columbia River Gorge Highway and Multnomah Falls (can you believe we've lived in Portland for one and a half years, and I haven't seen Multnomah Falls?!). I'm looking forward to it!

Patrick continues to do lots of work on our garden, which I appreciate, since I haven't given it much thought this year. I wanted to share a cool project that he did. He made cloches out of used bike wheels (which he got for free from Seven Corners). He removed the spokes, cut the rims in half, and then covered them with plastic sheeting (using wire to attach the plastic to the rims). He used some of the spokes to secure the rims to our raised beds. Our baby radishes and spinach seem to like them, as does our cat. Perfect for warming up on a cool day!

We've had some pretty good meals this week.

1. Sole with chanterelles, cherried and chickpea'd couscous (both recipes from How to Eat), and roasted broccoli. I was happy with this meal--it wasn't too hard to prepare, and it was tasty and pretty healthy. I was worried at first because the sole was full of bones, but most of them stayed attached to the backbone, so we ended up with perfect fish skeletons at the end of the meal. Plus it was cheap and locally caught. Yay, sole!

2. Red split lentils with cabbage and whole wheat naan (recipe from Whole Grain Breads). The lentils were pretty good, though not remarkable. The naan was hearty, but not bad. Definitely not as delicious as the naan at Indian restaurants, but that was to be expected.

3. Braised pork chops and creamy cabbage (from All About Braising) with roasted sweet potato wedges. The pork chops turned out fine, but I probably wouldn't make this recipe again. I think my main problem with it were the caraway seeds. I'm just not a big fan of them. But if you like caraway, definitely give this recipe a try!

4. For lunches this week, I made the tart and tangy baked beans recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook. I was expecting them to be like normal baked beans, but that's not really how they turned out. They're more like beans with some baked apples and tomatoes thrown in. Not exciting. On top of that, the recipe made 10 servings instead of 6, so we've got plenty of disappointing beans waiting in the freezer to be eaten later. Oh well, it's food!

5. I was craving rice pudding last weekend, but since I'm still trying to eat more whole grains and less refined sugar, I tried the coconut-black rice pudding recipe from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way. It sure is purple! It was more hearty and less sweet than normal rice pudding, but definitely not bad. Patrick and I both ate it happily.

Ooh, and last night we finally made it to Dove Vivi for the first time. We'd heard good things about the corn pizza, and it did not disappoint. Yum! After dinner, we went to the Laurelhurst and saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was fun. An excellent Portland date night :)

I wanted to leave you with a few recent pictures from our garden. I'm sure I posted an almost identical tulip picture last year, but I just can't help it--it's so exciting to see flowers blooming! I've also thrown in a picture of a surprise anemone growing under our grapes, plus a very sneaky kitty hiding in some long grass in the front yard. I love hanging out with Patches. She's always entertaining :)

Twenty-nine weeks! This belly means business.

• I wasn't sure if I should mention this, because it might move me from the "slightly unorthodox pregnant lady" category to the "crazy new age pregnant lady" category, but what the heck. So in one of our hypnobirthing classes, the teacher mentioned the concept of placenta encapsulation--dehydrating the placenta after birth and making it into pills, which are then taken daily for the first few months following birth. The assertion is that they can prevent postpartum depression, improve milk production, and prevent anemia, since the placenta is full of hormones and iron. Not surprisingly, there's a local midwife who offers this service (which is good, because if I had a food dehydrator and had to use it to dry my placenta, I don't think I'd want to make dried apricots and fruit leather in it later on, you know?).

  There's not really much scientific evidence on the subject, apart from a study conducted in 1954. On the one hand, most non-human mammals eat their placentas after birth, so maybe it's not a bad idea, but most humans don't consume their placentas, and they do just fine. I'd be more inclined to try it if it weren't so hard to get the placenta from the hospital after birth. Apparently the hospital we'll be birthing at holds all placentas for 10 days, and then you have to request your placenta in writing (and make sure that they store it properly so that it doesn't go bad while they're holding it). Otherwise it goes into a big bin with all the other placentas and gets incinerated (poor placenta--after nourishing a baby for 9 months, you'd think it would get a little more respect!). Word has it that a doula once stole her client's placenta from the hospital so that it could be encapsulated promptly, and it caused a rift among the nurses--those who believe the placenta belongs to the woman it came out of vs. those who believe hospital procedure must be followed. I thought that was pretty funny :)

  So yeah, it sounds like it would be a hassle to liberate my placenta from the hospital, and there's no guarantee that the pills would actually have any benefit. I probably won't do it. But it is an intriguing concept...

  By the way, I find it pretty amusing that I just devoted three paragraphs to talking about placentas. This kind of thing was totally off my radar before I got pregnant. See, pregnancy is expanding my horizons :)

• We're still not making much progress in narrowing down our list of baby names. We've got our top 10 list (five from me, five from Patrick), but we've kind of lost momentum in narrowing it down further. We'll get there! And actually, after seeing a recent episode of The Office, we're down to only nine names, since one of my top 5 was also on Dwight's list of acceptable baby names (Ebenezer, Jebediah, Honus, Jedediah, and Worf). Nope, it wasn't Worf...it was Honus! When I first came across it (probably in a baby name book), I thought it was kind of neat--old-timey, but not trendy, and the baby's nickname could be Dutch! I associated the name Honus with baseball, not Pennsylvania Dutch beet farmers. Shows what I know! I was already on the fence about it, since it's pretty unusual, and now that it's associated with Dwight Schrute in my mind, I'm feeling like we should spare our kid and give him a slightly more normal name. No offense to any Honuses out there!

On to this week's food...

1. Quinoa and gruyere with sauteed mushrooms (from Super Natural Cooking). I wasn't expecting much from this recipe, but it turned out surprisingly well, especially given how easy it was to make. Not very fancy, but if you're looking for healthy comfort food, this would be a good recipe to try.

2. Healthy pancakes (from Morning Food) with blueberries and pecans added during cooking, shirred eggs, and buttered toast fingers. The pancakes were indeed healthy, perhaps a little too healthy. The flavor was good, but the texture was a bit on the leaden side. The eggs were a fun change from our normal egg preparation methods--a good recipe to try if you have a couple teaspoons of heavy cream leftover from another recipe. I love food in ramekins!

3. Pot-roasted brisket with rhubarb and honey (from All About Braising), spicy sweet potato wedges, and sauteed kale. I tried the brisket recipe because we have a bunch of rhubarb in the freezer from last spring, and I was looking for recipes that used rhubarb without a lot of added sugar. This one fit the bill. It required a decent amount of work to prepare, but it did turn out pretty tender. I'm not thrilled with the flavor, but that could just be because I'm not wild about beef. Now the sweet potatoes--those are definitely worth a remake.

The recipe made a lot of brisket, so based on a suggestion in the recipe notes, I turned part of it into sandwiches for lunch--on multigrain ciabatta spread with plain chevre and grainy mustard, topped with arugula. They sound more exciting that they actually were, but again, that could be because of my lukewarm feelings about beef. Oh, and those pickles are the icicle pickles I made last August. I like sweet pickles, but these were a little too sweet, even for me. They also weren't quite as crisp as I would have liked. Not bad though.

4. Earlier this week, my lunches consisted of non-photogenic crockpot white bean chicken chili topped with avocado and Monterey jack cheese, with a side of jalapeno corn muffins (recipe from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way, substituted nonfat yogurt for the sour cream). Maybe I'm just sick of protein or I have an unfair bias against boneless skinless chicken breasts, but the chili just didn't do it for me. Patrick liked it just fine though. We both liked the corn muffins. They're made with whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour, but they're not heavy at all. Definitely worth making again.

5. And to satisfy my need for sweet things while avoiding white sugar, I did some more baking from Smart Cookies--another slab of apricot-almond granola bars and a batch of peanut and raisin cookies. Considering that these cookies don't contain any sweetener or white flour, they're not bad. The dried fruit, cornmeal, and peanut butter add some sweetness. But I'd still rather eat a brownie...

In other news, it has been warm and sunny the past few days, which has been wonderful! Our front yard is in bloom (tulips should be opening any day now!), and Patches has developed a sudden affinity for sidewalk dirt baths (I'm not sure why she feels the need to roll around in the dirt, but she looks cute doing it!).

Our electrical work is done, the sun is out--I'm definitely feeling more relaxed and happy this week. Another big contributor to this improvement in mood is that my family got some great news this week. I hadn't mentioned this before because it's not my story to tell (and it's a little more personal than I normally get here), but it definitely deserves a mention, considering how much space I devote to baby minutiae and baked goods. The short version is that my sister has a brain stem tumor (which still makes no sense to me--she's 20 years old!), which we've known about since November. She had a biopsy last week to figure out what type of tumor it is, and the preliminary prognosis was not encouraging. BUT! They got the pathology results back on Tuesday, and it turns out that it's a much more treatable type of tumor than the doctors originally thought. The expectation is that after 5-6 months of radiation/chemo, her life should be back to normal, which is such a relief compared to what they were originally projecting. I know Lianna is going to kick this tumor's ass!

Twenty-eight weeks! We've made it to the third trimester. Good job, baby! Here's a bonus family portrait to celebrate (we tried to get Patches in there too, but she wasn't interested).

We had our last hypnobirthing class this week. We spent most of it talking about labor and birth logistics (like how to apply what we've learned when we're actually in labor), and we watched a few more birth videos. I'm glad we took the class; I've enjoyed it. Now we just have to keep practicing regularly!

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm loving my pregnant belly! It's just neat that my body is set up to protect and support a baby. Early in the pregnancy, I was worried about whether I'd need some sort of support for the belly (like a girdle), but it seems to be doing just fine on its own. The human body is pretty impressive! I'm enjoying tracking the progress of my belly button too--it's pretty much flat at this point. I had expected it to just pop out at some point, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening. I guess it still has three months to do something dramatic.

I went in for my glucose screening on Thursday. The Glucola wasn't as bad as I'd expected. It just tasted like flat 7-Up, maybe a little sweeter. My doctor's office called yesterday, and I passed the glucose test (yay!), but I have low iron levels. I wasn't too surprised about that, since I haven't been eating a ton of red meat or leafy greens (with the exception of my weekly green smoothie from Sip). So I'm supposed to start taking an iron supplement in addition to my prenatal vitamins. Fair enough. I'll take low iron over gestational diabetes any day!

Good glucose results aside, it has been a rough week for a couple of reasons, one of which is that we're in the middle of having some major electrical work done on our house. It's just tough having our daily routines (and typical peace and quiet) interrupted. The good news is that the electricians should be able to finish up on Monday. I thought it would take weeks to get all this work done, but it has only taken four days. Pretty awesome! And even better, our house's electrical system is in way better shape than it was before. The temporary disruption has definitely been worth it.

The impetus for this work was to get rid of the old knob and tube wiring in our house (to reduce our insurance costs and make it possible to insulate our walls in the future), but we figured while we're having holes cut in our walls, we might as well make other improvements to the electrical system. We had the electricians update all of our light fixtures with wall switches (instead of pull chains) and upgrade the lighting in our closets, stairwell, and entryway. We're getting a second light fixture in the kitchen (better lighting for food pictures!), and--the thing I'm most excited about--our old and noisy bathroom fan has been replaced by a new model that is super quiet, with a timer and a built-in heater. Very luxurious for those cold winter mornings :)

We're getting a couple new light fixtures from Schoolhouse Electric (yay for cool Portland companies!). I'm excited to see those go up, but that has to wait until we can get a plaster dude in to patch up the multitude of holes left by the plumbing and electrical work. It's like a giant mouse has gone through our house and nibbled holes all over our ceilings and walls. It's kind of cool to see the inner workings of our house, but I'll be glad to have things looking a little cleaner and not have plaster dust all over everything.

Once this round of work is wrapped up, that should be the end of our big house upgrades for a while. The goal was to get as many big items as possible taken care of before the baby comes. Patrick has orchestrated all of our house repairs so far, and I'm so grateful to him for doing that.

Since our kitchen was taken over by electricians for a good portion of the week, there's not much to tell about food. We had a major cooking flop early in the week--cabbage rolls that were fiddly to prepare and then turned out to be totally undercooked and full of raw meat after an hour in the oven. Ugh. Thank goodness for boxed mac and cheese. We did better the next night. Patrick made lemony broccoli and chickpea rigatoni, using whole wheat penne. It seemed pretty easy to make, and it was tasty. Thanks to Alison for mentioning this recipe!

For lunches this week, we had otsu again. Tasty, but I'm feeling a little pasta-ed out at this point.

Patrick's birthday was this week (yay!), and to celebrate, I baked the lemon buttermilk rhubarb Bundt cake from Rustic Fruit Desserts, using some of our frozen rhubarb from last spring. Definitely on the tangy side, but the glaze balances it out nicely (even though much of the glaze slid right off the top and pooled underneath the cake). I love how majestic Bundt cakes look right after glazing. Sadly for this particular cake, I have no picture of it in its uncut glory; this one will have to suffice.

Having a whole Bundt cake sitting around when you're trying to avoid delicious baked goods is dangerous, but luckily we were able to send some home with friends, and then I sliced and froze most of the rest of it, to make it a little less tempting.

Speaking of delicious baked goods, we went to Besaw's for brunch today, and Patrick had a jelly roll, which was pretty much a cinnamon roll, but with jam in the middle instead of cinnamon-sugar, frosted generously with cream cheese icing. I can confirm, it was tasty. My eggs benedict (with spinach and oven-roasted tomatoes) were yummy too. The service was fast and friendly, and we only had to wait about 10 minutes for a table. Definitely a good place for breakfast if you're in NW Portland.

Twenty-seven weeks! We've got about three months left until the baby is due, which seems like a long time to wait, but I guess it takes a while to grow a human being from scratch. It's a good thing I'm enjoying being pregnant!

• I've noticed recently that it's harder for me to get comfortable and stay comfortable when I'm sitting down. My back tends to start hurting. It doesn't help that our couch pillows are old and have lost their oomph. I guess it just gives me extra incentive to get up and walk around, rather than sitting on the couch so much. Luckily, I'm still sleeping just fine--yay, Snoogle!

• Feeling the baby kick still entertains us. Every so often, he flails hard enough that we can see and feel a tiny appendage (foot? elbow? Who knows...) protruding a little from my belly. He seems to like having his head nestled on my right side--sometimes I can feel it pushing against my belly. It's nice being reminded that there really is a little person in there.

• I still haven't had any food cravings, as far as I can tell. I have been eating a lot of citrus though--grapefruit and oranges are so tasty! I guess I do have cravings for junk food, since it's not allowed right now, but I think that's a pretty standard response; I don't think it's pregnancy-related.

• We spent most of our hypnobirthing class this week discussing birth preferences and talking about what to expect when we go to the hospital. It's helpful that the teacher is a nurse at the hospital we'll be delivering at, so she has the inside scoop. I had been a little nervous about what the hospital would be like, so this helped demystify it a little.

  This class was also focused on releasing our fears (so that we can be more relaxed during birth). In advance of the class, Patrick and I listed out our baby/birth-related fears and then talked about them with each other. We had a decent amount of overlap. I think it's pretty standard stuff--financial concerns, preserving our relationship with each other after the baby comes, making sure that we have the kind of birth experience that we want. It was good to talk about it. And then in class, we did a fear-release session, where we pictured unpleasant memories from our past and then replaced them with a mental picture of the two of us, smiling and confident and eager to meet our baby. It made me kind of emotional, but in a good way. Even though we do have some fears, they don't occupy my mind most of the time. We are, more often than not, happy and confident and excited about having a baby. Life is good :) It doesn't hurt that the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming outside right now. It's easier to be joyful and eager in the springtime, I think.

In kitty news, I'm happy to report that Patches recovered really quickly from her hospital visit last weekend. Less than a day after returning home, she was back to her normal, hungry self. It's such a relief to have her back. We still don't know what caused her to get so sick, but hopefully it was a one-time occurrence. Poor kitty does have some fur to grow back though; they shaved her belly and front leg at the hospital. I think she's a little embarrassed about the missing fur.

So in addition to the healthy baked goods I just posted about, we've done pretty well eating healthily this week. We've definitely added more meat back into our diet, just because it makes me worry less about whether I'm getting enough protein. I'd like to cut back again once the baby is born though.

1. Kamut, broccoli, and sausage medley (from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way). I cooked the kamut ahead of time, so it didn't take Patrick too long to put this meal together at dinner time. Not a bad meal, though it might benefit from a little more sauciness to pull everything together--maybe mix in some pesto next time?

2. Popcorn-crusted catfish and cornmeal spoonbread (both from Whole Grains) and pickled coleslaw. A very beige meal. The catfish was fine, and the spoonbread tasted good (mmm, butter), but the texture was a little too light and insubstantial for me. I prefer a nice creamy polenta instead. The coleslaw was too vinegary for my tastes, but we learned in class that eating acidic foods might help prevent group B strep, so at least I felt good about eating it.

3. Cannellini bean and sausage gratin. This tasted good but reinforced my ambivalence about Italian sausage (I'm just not wild about the flavor). If I make it again, I'd probably try using a different type of sausage. Or no sausage at all!

4. Our hypnobirthing class this week included a potluck dinner, so we brought Tracy's favorite lentil salad (with a few slivered sun-dried tomatoes and about 10 oz of steamed spinach added for good measure). Always a good choice.

And Patrick baked two loaves of Otis Cafe brown bread, using our newly cultivated sourdough starter. It smelled so good when it was baking, and it tastes good too! Patrick had some problems with his first attempt at starter (it got taken over by leuconostoc bacteria), but his second attempt (using pineapple juice and more frequent stirring, as suggested on the linked page) behaved like it was supposed to. Go little starter!

5. For my lunch this week, I made a batch of chunky lentil soup from Super Natural Cooking, but I added some chicken sausage and sliced mushrooms, and I used cubed sweet potato instead of butternut squash. I was worried that with all my changes, it might turn out badly, but I was pretty happy with the results. It was thick, so I served it over brown rice. I topped it with a little ricotta salata that we had on hand. Not bad!

Okay, that's enough computer time. I'm going to go take a walk and enjoy the beautiful spring weather while it lasts!

As I mentioned earlier, I'm trying to cut out white sugar and white flour as much as possible while I'm pregnant, which has led me to look for recipes for healthy baked goods that taste reasonably good. Here are two recipes that I've been happy with so far.

Healthy Banana-Date Muffins

This is based very heavily on this recipe, but I made enough tweaks that I thought it would be easier to rewrite the recipe here than to list out my changes. These muffins are nice and moist. I like having one with a glass of milk for a morning snack.

1 1/2 cups (240g) whole wheat flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup (60g) wheat bran
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup (75g) chopped dates
1/2 cup (70g) coarsely chopped toasted walnuts
1/4 cup (60ml) whole milk
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup (75g) mild molasses
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 medium sized ripe bananas, mashed (about 3/4 cup)

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line two muffin tins with paper liners (recipe makes 16 muffins total; you can do this in two batches if you only have one muffin tin).

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, wheat bran, and salt in a large bowl. Stir in dates and walnuts to coat with flour mixture. Make a well in the middle of the mixture.

3. Microwave the milk and butter on medium power until the butter is melted. Whisk in the buttermilk, molasses, and vanilla extract.

4. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs, then slowly pour in the milk mixture, whisking as you do. Whisk in the mashed bananas. Pour this mixture into the well in the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

5. Scrape the batter into the prepared muffin tins and bake for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean (mine took 18 minutes). Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove from pan and let cool to room temperature on a wire rack.

Makes 16 muffins

Chewy Apricot-Almond Granola Bars

This recipe is based closely on a recipe from Jane Kinderlehrer's Smart Cookies, which has a whole chapter devoted to cookie recipes for pregnant ladies. I've tried a few other recipes from this chapter, but they turned out kind of weirdly textured. But I like these granola bars. They're very hearty, but they taste good (I mean, a brownie would taste better, but I'll take what I can get right now!). I like them crumbled over cottage cheese or milk, to add a little more protein.

1 1/4 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tbsp + 1 tsp mild molasses
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp peanut butter
1/4 cup wheat germ
2 tbsp dry milk powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup dried apricots, slivered
2 tbsp raisins

1. Toast the oats, sunflower seeds, and almonds on a cookie sheet in a 350F oven for 7-10 minutes, until dry and crisp.

2. In a saucepan over low heat, combine the egg, molasses, and peanut butter, and heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. [The original recipe has you heat just until combined, but I cooked the mixture a little longer because I was nervous about the raw egg]

3. Stir together the peanut butter mixture, oats, sunflower seeds, almonds, and remaining ingredients.

4. Lightly oil an 8-inch square pan (or line with foil), and press the mixture into the pan. Chill for a couple hours until firm, and then cut into squares/bars. [I stored my bars in the fridge after cutting, but I'm not sure if that's strictly necessary.]

Thanks for your kind words about yesterday's post! Patches is back home, and she seems to be feeling like her normal self again. They still don't know what caused her problems yesterday, but she ate some food this morning and has kept it down, so they let her come home around 2pm. Her tummy is all shaved, so she looks a little scraggly, but she seems fine otherwise and is back to meowing for food and asking to go outside (sorry, kitty, not quite yet!). I'm hoping she just ate something bad yesterday, and now it's out of her system.

We're happy to have her back with us :) Also, pet insurance doesn't seem like such a bad idea anymore. We'll have to look into that...

Our poor kitty is staying overnight at the pet hospital tonight. When we got home from running errands this afternoon, she had thrown up outside, and then she came in and proceeded to throw up four more times in the span of two hours, which is not normal. So we took her to DoveLewis, since her normal vet was closed for the day.

They took x-rays to see if she had anything unusual in her intestines (string, etc.), but those came out inconclusive. So then they did an ultrasound, which showed no blockages. So at least she doesn't need surgery. But we still don't know what's wrong with her. They're keeping her overnight to try to control the vomiting and keep her from becoming dehydrated. They're also going to run some blood tests to try to figure out what's going on.

Poor kitty :( When we said goodnight, she was all doped up and wrapped in a towel. I cried in front of the vet's assistant, which made me feel kind of silly, since she's just going to spend the night there; not have surgery or anything. I just want her to be back to normal.

(Incidentally, I was really happy with the efficiency and friendliness of everybody at DoveLewis. I think Patches is in good hands)

Twenty-six weeks! Assuming all is going according to plan in there, the baby weighs about 2 pounds, and he can open his eyes. Good job, baby!

Hypnobirthing classes continue to go well. We've been practicing every day. I think it is getting easier for me to go into a relaxed state, though I tend to get a little too relaxed and drift off into sleep if I practice right after lunch. It's easier for me to stay awake when Patrick's reading to me, versus when I'm listening to the relaxation CD. We spent most of our class last night learning about comfort measures (like massage and relaxation cues) that Patrick can use to make labor and birth more comfortable for me. I'm all for that! Patrick liked it because there were very specific examples of small things he can do to keep me relaxed (as opposed to reading me the whole relaxation script). I'm so grateful that he has been open to trying hypnobirthing. I think it will make a big difference to have his full support when I'm in labor (and afterwards, of course!).

We also had our monthly checkup yesterday. Everything looked fine (yay!), though I have an ultrasound scheduled for 32 weeks to see if my placenta is still low. I'm trying not to worry about that, since there's nothing I can do about it. I've got some routine blood tests coming up in two weeks, including the glucose screening test. I was hoping I'd have the option of eating jelly beans for it, but it looks like we're going with Glucola. When I mentioned to my doctor how sugar has affected me recently, she said it sounds more like hypoglycemia than gestational diabetes. It'll be interesting to see what the test shows. In the meantime, I'm doing my best to avoid white sugar.

In crafty baby news, I've been putting off doing the more practical craft projects on my list (like sewing blinds for the nursery). Instead, I made baby legwarmers out of my much-loved Sock It To Me knee socks! They all developed holes in the toe area around the same time last month (after a year and a half of wear; not too bad!), and I was glad to be able to turn them into something useful.

I made the first pair (in pink) by following the linked tutorial exactly, and the cuffs seemed a little big for baby ankles. So I turned that pair into mitts for me using the information in Lee's tutorial about cutting a thumb slit and zig-zagging around it. Easy! I was kind of tempted to make the rest of the socks into mitts for me too, but I stuck with the original plan...

For the subsequent pairs of baby legwarmers, I made the cuff circumference a little bit smaller (by half an inch to an inch). For the argyle pair, I went even further and tapered part of the sock body and the cuff, like in this tutorial. So we have a range of legwarmer styles and sizes to choose from. Now we wait until we have a baby who's big enough to wear them! If they don't fit, it's no big loss, since I've certainly gotten my money's worth out of the socks already.

While doing meal planning this week, I tried to incorporate lots of whole grains and protein. First up, we had oven-roasted salmon with tangerine and ginger relish, brown rice, and peas. It was a fine meal, not super exciting.

Next up, we had breakfast for dinner: Swiss chard and ricotta salata egg bake (using overwintered chard from our garden and buttermilk instead of cream) and whole wheat yogurt waffles with blueberries (from Whole Grains Every Day Every Way). The egg dish was tasty, but the ricotta salata made it a bit too salty and rich for me. I had trouble eating a whole serving (so much protein!). The waffles were nice, especially considering that they were made with whole wheat flour and minimal sweeteners.

For my lunches this week, I made a batch of barley, beef, and mushroom soup (also from Whole Grains) and ate it with grilled cheese and salad. I'm not really a fan of beef and barley soup, but this seemed like a good way to make sure I was getting enough protein and iron. Not bad, and the grilled cheese sandwiches made me happy :)

Twenty-five weeks! Okay, twenty-five and a half--we've been having so much fun this weekend enjoying the beautiful early spring weather in Portland that this post got a little delayed. I'd forgotten how nice the sun is!

We had our second hypnobirthing class on Thursday. We spent a while talking about good nutrition--all pretty standard stuff (eating whole grains, vegetables, and lots of protein). One of the things the teacher emphasized was cutting out white sugar/flour as much as possible (including white rice, pasta, and potatoes), so I'm going to try doing that. I guess that means I won't be baking as much for the next few months. We'll see how long I can hold out...

This week, per the class schedule, Patrick has started reading the hypnobirthing relaxation script to me, in lieu of my listening to the relaxation CD. The teacher warned us that pets like to get in on the relaxation action, and she was right--as soon as we turn on the relaxing music and Patrick starts reading, Patches runs up, jumps on my lap, sniffs my face, and then settles in for some relaxation. It's kind of distracting, but nice. She seems to really enjoy it. I guess she likes Brian Eno.

I finished my first crafty baby project--sewing fitted crib sheets. I used this tutorial, but I made a 3/8-inch channel around the bottom and ran 1/4-inch elastic all the way around, as she suggests at the end of the tutorial. Despite my best measuring and cutting efforts, the sheets all fit on the mattress a little differently, but they should do the job. It's a forgiving project :) I made three flannel sheets and three in lightweight cotton, so we should be all set.

Not a lot to document on the dinner front this week. I made a swiss cheese and mushroom quiche (from the Moosewood cookbook), which was fine, but not very photogenic. This pasta with mascarpone, spinach, lemon, and pine nuts was more attractive. It was easy to make and tasted pretty good. I bet it would be good with spring peas.

For lunches this week, I once again made falafel and tabouleh (both from the Moosewood cookbook) and piled them on top of pita bread and salad greens. For the tabouleh, I used sundried tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes, and I added some toasted pine nuts. Tasty!

Although it still seems early to me, it appears that spring it on its way. We've got daffodils opening in the garden, and trees in our neighborhood are starting to bloom. Yay!

Patrick has been getting our garden ready for spring by harvesting our meager winter crop, which we're hoping to use in dinners this week. The only things left standing right now are our overwintered leeks, garlic, and onions. I'm not sure if we mounded enough dirt around the leeks to get usable stalks, but we'll find out soon enough!

In addition to enjoying nature, we've been exposing the baby to some cultural enrichment in utero. On Friday, we saw Das Rheingold, performed Baywatch style, at the Clinton Street Theater. You can read more about it here. It was pretty great :) We came early to play leitmotif bingo, and Patrick won a heart antenna headband, which I'm sure will come in handy in future costumed sporting events around town. Oh, and unlike the last time we saw Das Rheingold, we didn't fall asleep. This performance was a bit more engaging :)

Yesterday, we went with Star to see the Harlem Globetrotters at the Rose Garden. Patrick had seen them a couple times before when he was younger, but this was the first time for me and Star. They did some cool tricks, and it was fun seeing how excited all the kids in the audience were (there was a young man right behind us who was particularly enthusiastic, though he kept declaring loudly that he could do all those tricks too). But I was kind of surprised at how mean-spirited the Globetrotter ringleader was--he kept picking on a short guy on the other team--asking where his mama was and calling him a baby, and pulling down his pants. I wouldn't want my kid to see that and think it's cool to bully people who are different from them! What would have been better is if there was a short guy on the Globetrotters, and somebody on the opposing team was making fun of him, and then the short guy did some awesome basketball trick and put him in his place. But perhaps I'm overanalyzing things...

This morning was awesome. We took a nice long walk to Wild Abandon for brunch (excellent huevos rancheros!) and then returned home, enjoying our neighborhood along the way. So nice! I'm looking forward to taking many more springtime walks with Patrick in the coming months. It's such a nice way to pass the time.

Patrick had the foresight to bring along the camera. Here are a few of his pictures: (1) Wild crocuses, (2) chickens at Urban Farm Store, (3) me admiring spring blooms.

Twenty-four weeks! Can there really be only a few more weeks left in the second trimester? I'll be sad to see it go--it has been so fun! Increased energy and appetite, and tangible proof that there's really a baby in there. So cool. I love being pregnant :)

Baby-related items:

• We've been to two baby-related classes this week. On Tuesday, we went to a 2-hour infant CPR class at Milagros. I hope I'll never have to use the skills we learned, but it's good to have a basic idea of what to do. And then on Thursday, we walked down to Zenana for our first of five hypnobirthing classes.

  Each class is 2.5 hours long, and there are four other couples in the class. I like it so far! The teacher started out by summarizing some of the earlier chapters in the Hypnobirthing book (the history of hypnobirthing and the birth industry in the US, and a little information on what hypnosis can and can't do). Then we did a little practice hypnosis session, since nobody in class had done hypnosis before (I've actually done it once before--one day in my high school history class, the teacher held an optional hypnosis session to relax us in preparation for our big final tests). And finally, we watched two quick videos of hypnobirths. I think this might have been my first time seeing a video of a real birth (though the birth scene in Knocked Up almost counts, right?). My main takeaway from the videos (apart from seeing that women are able to give birth without any screaming and pushing) was that I shouldn't wear cute socks while giving birth, because they will definitely get exposed to some fluids.

  Another cool thing I found out is that there is a birthing center tucked away in a house at SE 16th and Ankeny, staffed by midwives (Alma Midwifery). Two of the couples in our class are planning on having their babies there. It's right along one of our preferred bike routes, but we'd never noticed it before. Patrick and I joked about biking over there when I'm in labor :) Anyway, I think I'll stick with the hospital for this little guy, but if things go smoothly and we end up having another baby, I'd consider going to Alma. It sounds like a nice environment to give birth in.

  My homework for the class is to listen to a relaxation CD daily. It contains half an hour of affirmations and half an hour of guided relaxation/hypnosis practice. I think the purpose of the affirmations is to get positive thoughts stuck in my head (like listening to the same song over and over), and then when I'm in labor, I'll be more likely to have one of those good thoughts pop into my head than think negative thoughts. Most of the affirmations are pretty general ("I am focused on a smooth, easy birth," "I feel confident, I feel safe, I feel secure"), but there are a few that make me smile every time I hear them because they're so anatomically specific (my favorite is "My baby emerges, and my blood vessels close to the appropriate degree"). I like the affirmations--they're pleasant.

  The half hour of guided relaxation involves getting comfortable (but not too comfortable--you don't want to fall asleep), closing your eyes, and taking deep breaths. The recording guides you through a series of visualizations related to the colors of the rainbow. The idea behind the guided relaxation is that if I practice it often enough, I'll be able to switch into a relaxed state at will. I did my first round of relaxation practice yesterday at lunchtime, and I was definitely nice and relaxed (and ready for a nap!) at the end of it, but still aware of what was going on around me the whole time. I had some trouble turning off my conscious thoughts, but the instructor said that this was a pretty normal problem at first, and it gets easier with practice. It would definitely be a great trick to be able to turn on that relaxed feeling during labor. We'll see if it really works!

• We've been checking out a bunch of baby-related books from the library. Patrick's recent choice was Parenting, Inc., which is about all of the things that parents spend money on these day that weren't in existence a generation ago. Like Patrick said, it makes me wants to go live in the woods, away from consumer culture. Anyway, it provides a good counterpoint to the other baby books and websites I'm reading, and it's a good reminder that babies don't need that much stuff.

• We're making some progress on the name front. We went to lunch at Chaos Cafe last weekend and took our top 10 lists with us (okay, mine was a top 15 list; I had trouble narrowing it down) and, over the course of the meal, we whittled them down to 10 names, about half from my list and half from his. We seem to have slightly different (but not irreconcilable) taste in names--Patrick gravitated toward names with a literary bent, many of them evoking distinguished old men in elbow-patch jackets, while I seem to prefer shorter, cuter old-timey names. We were hoping for some overlap between our lists, and there was one name that was on both of them, but we're not ready to rule out our other favorites. I think we can come to an agreement--our tastes aren't too different. If one of us was pushing for American-Gladiator-style names, things would be harder.

• I've started working on one of my crafty projects for the nursery--sewing crib sheets. It's a really easy project. I'm hoping to finish them up this weekend.

  Oh, and two days ago, we had a free nursery color consultation from YOLO Colorhouse. What a cool company--they saw my post about paint colors, and they emailed me to let me know that they offered free color consultations. So I figured why not take them up on it! One of their color consultants, Puji, stopped by our house and took a look at the fabrics we'd chosen for crib sheets and blinds, plus our art and the general scale of the room. Her assessment was that since much of the fabric we've chosen has a lot of green in it, it might be good to choose a wall color that isn't green. She suggested a light aqua (water.01), white trim (air.01), and then a nice neutral green on the ceiling (leaf.04). I like it! The next step is to go to Ecohaus and pick up poster-sized swatches of the colors (plus maybe thrive.02, since we like that one as well), hang them in the room, and look at them at different times of day.

Our noteworthy food accomplishment of the week was making ricotta calzones with sausage and broccoli rabe, served with that yummy butter and onion tomato sauce. They turned out really well. The sausage was my least favorite part--next time I'd like to try them filled with greens (sauteed nettles, perhaps?) and roasted garlic. Yum!

Recently, I've noticed that my body is responding differently to sugar than it did pre-pregnancy. I'll eat a square of chocolate or a bowl of ice cream and will feel totally crappy afterwards. Bummer, but not unexpected--I've had previously pregnant friends tell me the same thing happened to them. So, I guess that means no pearl milk tea until after the baby is born (probably a good choice anyway). I've been making an effort to get protein into every meal and snack, both so I don't feel crappy and because I need to get 71 grams a day! That means lots of cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, and glasses of milk at snack time. And I've been having eggs for lunch this week. Marion Cunningham's knothole eggs (an egg dish of many names) are my current favorite, though I know I'm breaking the rules by eating runny yolks. The eggs are from a local farm, so I feel pretty safe eating them a little undercooked.

I've also been enjoying Dorset fruit, nut, and fiber cereal. Such a simple combination of ingredients, but they're so tasty! The raisins are the best raisins I've ever had--they taste like they're dipped in honey or something. Yum! It's pretty pricey, but at least it's packed with good-for-me ingredients. I would try to make it myself for cheaper, but I don't know where to get awesome raisins or malted wheat flakes. Hmmm...

I've also been making a variety of grilled sandwiches on Dave's Killer Bread (Good Seed has 6 grams of protein per slice, and it's so yummy!). Inspired by a recent visit to the Grilled Cheese Grill, I made my own version of their Jaime sandwich--banana slices, Nutella, and mascarpone. Mmm, so good! It almost went over the too-much-sugar line, but I added a glass of milk and felt fine afterwards. Also yummy: grilled banana, peanut butter, and mascarpone.

Patrick has been spending time doing some garden planning, which is great! I think we're going to keep our garden pretty simple this year, since we probably won't have much time/energy to tend it this summer. We're going to stick with the same things we planted last year, but this year we're going to try growing San Marzano tomatoes for sauce.

Patrick spent an afternoon last weekend cutting down the big butterfly bush near our garage (visible on the right side of this picture). In its place, he planted a baby lilac bush, courtesy of local artist Amy Ruppel, who was on his Friends of Trees tree-planting crew a few weeks ago (such a cool coincidence!). She had an extra volunteer lilac from her garden, and we had been wanting to plant a lilac, so it worked out really well. I was actually going to plant a lilac for Patrick as our anniversary present back in October (flowers are one of the traditional gifts), but I kept putting it off because of morning sickness and then baby preoccupation. So he ended up doing all the work for me. Thanks, Patrick :)

I'm so looking forward to having our own little lilac flowers in the spring. Right now the lilac bush just looks like a few sticks--I hope it blooms!

So, like I said, I was in California for work last week, so I had to find a substitute mirror for my weekly photo. Luckily, there's one in the womens locker room at work that did the job just fine.

We've been checking out a bunch of baby-related books from the library recently. This past week, I read The Diaper-Free Baby, which is about elimination communication. The basic premise is that babies are born with an awareness of their need to pee/poop, and an ability to communicate that need to parents (albeit subtly at first). Typically, we train them to go in a diaper, and then a few years later, we have to retrain them not to go in their diaper. Theoretically, if you follow the EC approach, they will communicate with you when they need to go, so you can have them use a potty from the start instead of using diapers.

When I first heard about EC a few years ago, I thought it sounded pretty crazy (and stressful--like do you have to spend all your time watching the baby, always poised to rush them to a toilet?), but after reading the book, I think it seems pretty reasonable. The nice thing is that there's no need to go cold turkey; you can just go diaper-free a few hours a week if you want. If it means fewer diapers to clean up, it seems worth a try. Of course, I say that now, before the baby's born. Trying EC might fall by the wayside when we're actually in the midst of figuring out how to care for a baby. But the nice thing is that you can start at any point, so we don't have to worry about it right away if it seems overwhelming.

In other news, I bought this cute giraffe, made by local crafter ScissorStitch, at Union Rose. This is the kind of thing that I would normally see and say "I can make that!" and not buy it, and also never end up making it. But this was reasonably priced, and I figured I have enough crafting projects to do, so I just bought it. It makes me happy :)

Since I was traveling last week, I don't have much in the way of food pictures to share, but we did get in a couple of meals before I left.

1. Tomato sauce with butter and onions. This was easy and tasty, as promised. I definitely plan on making it again.

2. Vegetarian baked beans (from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook) and golden northern cornbread. The beans turned out really good, probably because of all the yummy butter and sugar that went into them. The only downside was that for the first 8 or so hours of cooking, the house smelled like cooking beans, which is not the most pleasant aroma. But the end product was worth it.

3. I had some heavy cream left over from various meals, so I used it to make hot fudge sauce (recipe from Dorie Greenspan's Baking). It hardens when you put it on ice cream, which is my favorite part about hot fudge sauce. Yum!

In other food news, I'm a little worried about the Little Blue Waffle Wagon. They've disappeared from their spot on Division Street! I know they had cut back their hours for winter, but this seems a little extreme. Are they gone for good? I hope not! In the meantime, I'm comforting myself with waffles from the nearby Waffle Window. Not a bad alternative!

Since I'm in California for work, Patrick was nice enough to pose for the belly picture this week.

He makes me laugh :) Real post and picture to come in a few days when I'm back home...

I played around with Photoshop today, trying to find some good paint colors for the nursery. I think I'd like to get paint from Yolo Colorhouse (they're local! And environmentally friendly, but of course), if they have a color that works for us. Luckily their website lists hex codes approximating each of their colors, so it was easy to plug each color into Photoshop and change the background of the photo I posted yesterday.

The bigger paint companies have all sorts of fun online tools for choosing paint colors, but I'm having enough trouble choosing between Yolo's 85 colors--I don't need hundreds more to choose from! Although Sherwin-Williams' iPhone app does sound cool.

My top five Yolo colors in no particular order:

Nourish 01:

Aspire 03:

Thrive 02:

Water 02:

Dream 04:

Yolo's website recommends blues, greens, and neutrals for bedrooms, and there is the anecdote about the color yellow making babies cry, so maybe we'll just stick with yellow accents instead of painting the walls yellow. I think that could be nice!

Week 22! All is well.

• The baby book says the baby can hear at this point, and to celebrate, we took him to a Builders and the Butchers show at The Woods. Okay, so the timing was just a coincidence. He could definitely feel and/or hear the music--he moved around a lot more than usual. I hope it was because he was enjoying the music and not because it was too loud.

  The book also says the baby can sense light, and if we shine a flashlight on my belly, the baby might move to get away from the light. That seems kind of mean, but I'm tempted to try it anyway. Maybe if we get really bored this weekend...

• I had my first charlie horse of the pregnancy yesterday morning. Woo! Apart from that, I'm still sleeping pretty well. Thank you, Snoogle!

• This morning we went in for the monthly checkup and for a quick ultrasound redo, to try and get some better pictures of the baby's heart, since it was hard to see two weeks ago. Unfortunately, the little goober was in the exact same position that he was in at the last ultrasound (sideways), so the ultrasound tech didn't have much luck getting better pictures (also, no cute profile pictures to be had, though we did get to see the baby yawning, which was fun). She assured us that the heart looks fine; she just needed better pictures to send for routine analysis. It's not clear if we'll need to come in again.

  Also, I forgot to mention that at the ultrasound two weeks ago, the tech noted that my placenta was low (placenta previa). I didn't think much of it at the time because she mentioned it so casually, but she commented on it again this time, as did my doctor. It looked like the placenta had moved up and off of the cervix a little, compared to two weeks ago, so it will probably resolve itself, but I may need to go in for another ultrasound at 32 weeks just to check on its location. I figure it's not worth worrying about at this point, since there's nothing I can do to change it. I haven't had any bleeding, so that's good.

• Last weekend, Patrick checked out the used crib a little more closely, and some of the slats on the drop side were loose, which made us nervous. He used wood glue to make everything tight again, but we were feeling generally uneasy about the used crib issue, so we decided just to give in and buy a new crib after all. (Not sure what to do with the used crib--it's hard to find anyplace that will take crib donations, because of liability issues. I was thinking I could make some sort of crib slat art with it, or use the sides to display quilts or something)

  We narrowed our options down to three cribs: the Pacific Rim Arts and Crafts crib, the Ikea Gulliver, and the Land of Nod Straight-Up crib. We liked the Pacific Rim and Land of Nod cribs because they're made in the US out of solid wood. Taking shipping into account, they're approximately the same price. On the other side of the price spectrum, the Gulliver is also mostly wood and has gotten pretty good reviews in Baby Bargains.

  We made a trip out to Beaverton to see the Pacific Rim crib on display at Segal's, and we both liked how sturdy it was. I like the color and style of the Land of Nod crib better, but we decided to go with the Pacific Rim crib because it's made in Eugene from local maple, using non-toxic finishes, etc. It just seemed like if we're going to use the resources to generate a new crib, we might as well support local craftspeople while we're at it. Plus it seems sturdy enough to last through multiple kids (assuming we have more). We ended up ordering the fixed-side version from Go Natural Baby, since they have free shipping. Now we just wait 6-8 weeks for it to arrive!

  I hope the baby likes his crib! The funny thing is that the plan right now is to have him co-sleep in our room (in an Arm's Reach bassinet or similar) for the first 6 months and then transition to the crib, so he might not actually spend much time in the crib for a while. But I have no idea how things will actually work out, and it seems like he'll end up in the crib sooner or later. Who knows...

• We've been thinking about nursery decoration (okay, that's mostly my department--Patrick is busy making sure all of our pressing home repairs are done in a timely manner). I think I want to go with yellow, brown, and gray, inspired by these two photos by Elizabeth Soule.

  

  I think the general feeling I'm gravitating toward is cozy forest--woodland creatures, wool blankets, etc. Pretty stereotypically Portland, I suppose :) The picture below has a collection of some of the things that will be in the nursery. I think the Pendleton blanket at the top of the picture fits pretty well. We bought the brown tulip print fabric in the middle to make into a Roman shade for the nursery window, and the four fabrics at the bottom are for crib sheets. I mostly picked them because I liked the fabric, not because they fit in with the grand plan. The three on the left are flannel for winter; I need to pick out a few more fun cotton prints for summertime.

  

  We decided to forego an expensive rocker/glider, since we're getting an expensive crib. Instead, we'll try using our existing Poang and ottoman in the nursery (I've seen quite a few people online recommend the Poang for nursing, though I'm worried I won't be able to heave myself out of it while holding a baby). I'm thinking of re-covering the Poang, but I haven't found the right fabric yet. It's possible I'm overcommitting myself with all of these sewing projects...

  Our goal is to choose the paint color for the nursery walls this weekend. I'm thinking light yellow, but I'm not sold on that. Any suggestions?

Foodwise, none of our meals has really impressed me this week. At least the desserts were good!

1. Pasta with walnuts, caramelized onions, and ricotta salata - This was okay, but I probably wouldn't make it again. Maybe it would have been better with the recommended whole grain penne (we used fresh pasta from our farmers' market instead). It seemed a little cheese-heavy, and not saucy enough.

2. Artichoke, leek, and fontina frittata with whole grain sourdough waffles (from Dorie Greenspan's Waffles) - The frittata was pretty good (it probably would have been just as good without the bacon, by the way), but not super exciting. The waffles were yeasted, which meant they were light and crispy, but they also got cold really quickly. They were nice, but I think we prefer non-yeasted waffles (which is weird, because a lot of people love yeasted waffles!).

3. Halibut and sweet potato chowder - This was better on the second day after the flavors had blended a little. We used half the amount of halibut called for (halibut is expensive!), and it was still plenty fishy. I liked the twist of using sweet potatoes in the chowder, but I don't think I'd make this particular recipe again (a common theme for this week).

4. Pumpkin custard (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) - This was pretty labor-intensive (because you make vanilla shortbread cookies to use as the crust), but it was tasty! The vanilla shortbread dough was crumbly and kind of frustrating to work with, but the cookies tasted good. The custard was nice and smooth and tasted just like pumpkin pie (not too surprising). Yum! I think given the amount of work involved, it would have been easier to just bake a pumpkin pie. I do like things in ramekins though!

5. Chewy almond cookie + ganache sandwiches (old-fashioned almond cookie recipe from Paris Sweets) - I had some egg whites to use up, and this recipe seemed like a good candidate. I made one batch using the standard recipe, and a second batch using the cocoa powder and cinnamon variation mentioned in the book. I liked the original almond cookies the best, but both types were yummy with ganache in the middle. Kind of like macarons, but not quite. The sandwiches ended up a little too tall to eat daintily, but they were still good. I figured the almonds and egg whites provided some protein, so they weren't the unhealthiest cookies ever!

Twenty-one weeks--the baby is allegedly as long as a (large) banana. That seems about right. His kicks are getting stronger, which is exciting! We can count on him to put on a little kicking show right when we go to bed, with a couple other appearances in the late afternoon and evening. Hi, baby!

• After moping around for a day or so, feeling kind of sad that the little girl I was imagining wouldn't be making an appearance (at least not this time around), I got over it and got on board with having a boy. I think having a son will be great! It helped that Susan brought over some adorable little boy clothes that she picked up at Children's Exchange (on the left in the picture below). The little red shoes make me especially happy :)

• Speaking of clothes, I've been trying not to go too crazy buying baby stuff, but there have been a few purchases I've felt compelled to make. I picked up some sweet German baby bunny slippers at Mamas n' Papas back in December (my first baby purchase), and then I bought a pair of corduroy overalls at Vintage Pink. And most recently, we made our first purchase of new baby clothes--an awesome pair of Hatley footie pajamas on sale at Black Wagon. How could we resist that bear print?

  

• We also made our first foray into buying a piece of baby furniture--we picked up a used crib and mattress from Baby to Baby this past weekend. It's a pretty standard crib. The only thing is that it's a drop-side crib, and we didn't read up on the risks associated with used drop-side cribs until after we'd bought it (I figured it was just a risk of pinched fingers, but it's a little more serious than that), and now we're second-guessing whether we should use the crib. Patrick's going to assemble it and check to see if there's any sign of a gap between the mattress and drop side. On the plus side, we can definitely use the mattress even if we don't use the crib, so we won't be out too much money either way.

  Edited 1/22: I spoke too soon. Apparently buying used crib mattresses is not recommended because of sanitary issues (or possibly because of a fungus that reacts with fire retardants in the mattress to create toxic gases, though that theory seems a little less mainstream). Oh, but also, new mattresses are bad because of off-gassing. Man, there's no end of things to worry about regarding babies! That's it, our child is going to sleep in a dresser drawer lined with a scratchy old wool blanket ;)

• Finding out that we're having a boy got us working on narrowing down our list of names. We're currently putting together lists of our top 10-15 names from the master list of ~130 names (plus anything else that catches our fancy), and then we'll compare to see if we have any overlap between the two lists. Fun! The Baby Name Wizard Name Voyager has come in handy in figuring out which names are trendy right now (like most other parents to be, I don't want a name that's too trendy, but I have a feeling that my taste in names is just like that of other parents-to-be in SE Portland). Plus it's just cool seeing how names have changed in popularity over time.

In non-baby news, we finished a house-related project that I've been working on since August! I sewed a Roman shade for our bedroom using hardware and directions from Terrell Designs (so helpful!), and Patrick took care of hanging it up. Even though it took me six months to finish the project, it really wasn't that hard to do; I just kept putting it off. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it looks so much nicer than the spare bed sheet we were using as a curtain before.

We've got another shade pretty close to finished for the stairwell window, but that one is on hold because we may end up replacing the window (it's old and leaky and maybe a little rotten on the outside). I'm also gearing up to make a shade for the nursery. I'd better get going on that before too long!

And then there's the food. I'm still putting my second trimester energy to good use in the kitchen. It's good to be back! All recipes are from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone unless otherwise noted.

1. Quinoa chowder with scallions and feta. This sounded intriguing, but it turned out kind of boring. It could be that it was too light and brothy for a mid-winter soup. Maybe worth a remake in spring or summer.

2. Rice cooked in black bean broth (with 2 cups of cooked black beans added along with the broth), topped with scallions, queso fresco, tortilla chips, and our pickled roasted peppers. I wasn't a big fan of the pickled peppers, but everything else was great! It was like a burrito in a bowl.

3. Mushrooms and tofu in hoisin sauce on soba noodles, with lightly steamed shredded carrots and cabbage. This stir-fry included diced tomatoes, which made it kind of unorthodox, but it wasn't bad. The flavor was nice, actually. I'd make it again.

4. Bun-bun noodles with spicy peanut sauce (recipe from Morning Food), garnished with carrots, peanuts, lime wedges, and green onion. We had a little stir-fried baby bok choy on the side. The noodles were very easy to put together (and we had all the ingredients in our pantry). Definitely comfort food--probably not very healthy, but I'd happily down another bowlful.

5. Pepper-crusted tuna with oven fries and lemon spinach (I used tilapia instead of tuna steaks). Real Simple tends to stress me out more often than it simplifies my life, but this recipe actually was really simple! It yielded a well-rounded, tasty meal that only took about 45 minutes to put together (with 20 minutes of downtime in the middle). Cool! It reminded me that we should eat more fish--it's so easy to prepare.

6. This past weekend, I baked a batch of classic chocolate chip cookies (from Cookies and Brownies) for a bake sale to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. The first sheetful came out underbaked and structurally unsound, so I kept them for personal consumption. The cookies turned out really well. I actually liked the underbaked ones the best, so that worked out well. Man, looking at that picture makes me want more chocolate chip cookies!

7. Last night, I baked a batch of lemon poppy seed muffins (from Baking) to use up some leftover sour cream. I added a little bit of plum-amaretto jam in the middle as a little surprise. The muffins turned out super moist and tasty. Next time I'd actually omit the jam surprise--the muffins are perfect just as they are. I took particular joy in making these muffins because one of my favorite baking-related activities is rubbing lemon zest into sugar. It smells so nice!

Twenty weeks--the halfway point (give or take)! The big news this week is that we had our 20-week ultrasound this morning, and it's a boy! Whoa!

We actually had a little false start related to the ultrasound--we showed up at the doctor's office on Wednesday, and they told us to come back today. Turns out I'd written down the appointment date wrong. Bummer! At least I was only off by a day, so we didn't have to wait too much longer to find out.

The baby was in a funny position, so the tech had a hard time getting a good profile shot. We're actually going to go in for another ultrasound in two weeks (mainly to get some more pictures of the heart, since it was hard to see, given the baby's position), so maybe we'll get some clearer overall baby pictures then. We also have a picture showing pretty clearly that it's a boy, but I figured I didn't need to share that with the whole Internet :)

The tech didn't have a lot to say other than remarking on how cute the baby was (I'm sure she always says that) and how hard he was making her job by being in the wrong position. But everything seemed fine, based on what she said and what we could see. The baby has all the right internal organs and the right number of limbs, which is a good start :)

My two favorite parts of the ultrasound (apart from having the question of boy vs. girl answered) were seeing the baby's little spine and arm and leg bones (it's just reassuring that our baby has a skeleton, I guess) and simultaneously feeling the baby kick and seeing him move around on the ultrasound. Pretty cool!

So yeah, a boy! Not what I was expecting, but I'm sure having a son will be awesome. I guess ruffly pink dresses are probably out, but I think I can still have some fun with his wardrobe. Definitely lots of stripes and zig zags, and plenty of hats and jackets with ears. And maybe I can sneak in some floral prints. This is Portland after all; I think I can get away with a little bending of baby gender roles :)

I think the toughest boy-related decision we'll need to make (at this point in time) is whether or not to circumcise. If it were just a religious thing, it would be an easy choice, since we're not religious. But since it's also a cultural thing, it's more complicated. I think we're leaning toward not circumcising, but there are definitely arguments for both sides.

For some reason, knowing the baby's sex kind of drove home the fact that this baby is going to grow up to be an adult someday, and we need to figure out how to raise this little guy so that he fits in and is able to make friends, but still make sure that he's sensitive and caring and feels comfortable being whoever he wants to be. I hope we do a good job and are able to raise a good man, whatever that means. I think we can do it :)

Some other highlights from week 19:

• The belly continues to grow, which is great! My belly button won't be an innie for much longer :)

• This past weekend, I dropped off my deposit for the hypnobirthing class, and in exchange I got this book, which I read over the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised by how well reasoned it seemed. And there were no healing stones mentioned in the book (maybe those are an in-class bonus).

  The basic idea is that standard, non-complicated labor is painful because women are afraid. The author--who is a woman, by the way--offered some historical reasons for this, plus there's just general social exposure to scary birth stories, especially now that we have all these online pregnancy forums to read! This fear triggers the fight, flight, or freeze instinct, which diverts blood away from non-essential muscles, including the uterus. As a consequence, the muscles of the lower uterus tense up and strain against the muscles of the upper uterus during contractions, which results in pain and prolongs labor, since the cervix can't thin and open as effectively. If the woman is relaxed, the upper and lower uterine muscles work together, contractions don't hurt (there's still pressure, just not pain), and labor tends to be faster. So the hypnobirthing approach is to reach a relaxed state via a combination of self-hypnosis (breathing and visualization) and massage. Even though you're super relaxed, you remain lucid and can interact with people as needed.

  So I have no idea if any of this is true, but it seems reasonable, at least. I'm willing to try it. It requires daily relaxation practice (starting after we've taken the classes), so that the self-hypnosis cues work quickly and automatically when they're triggered during labor. It'll be interesting to see if self-hypnosis actually works for me. It's totally outside my scientist comfort zone to do this kind of thing, but if it works, that would be awesome!

Our house has been pretty chaotic for the past few days, because we had almost all of our plumbing re-piped. The pipes that were there when we bought the house were aging galvanized steel, so we decided to be proactive and replace them with plastic (PEX) pipe before the baby comes. And conveniently enough, our house's 28-year-old water heater started leaking this weekend, so we had the plumber replace it with an energy-efficient heat pump water heater while he was doing the other work. We knew the water heater would have to be replaced pretty soon after we bought the house, since it was so old. I'm just glad it didn't catastrophically fail and flood our basement in the middle of the night! Anyway, not a cheap week for us, but it's definitely good to get all this squared away now.

The plumbing is pretty much done (just a few loose ends to tie up after our city inspection tomorrow), and then we just have to have a plaster man close up the six holes that were cut in our stairwell wall and kitchen ceiling as part of the plumbing work (Patrick cut three of the holes over the weekend to save us a little money, and it looked like pretty exhausting work). We're actually thinking about leaving the holes open for a while longer, since we might get some rewiring work done within the next few months, and they could make that work easier. (The rewiring is another item that has been on our house to-do list since we bought it, and we're finally being spurred into action by the impending baby arrival). I'm sure we'll get used to having holes in our walls pretty quickly, but it might be unnerving for visitors!

Also, check out our new laundry sink! Patrick found it for free a couple blocks from our house a few months ago, and the plumber installed it in the basement for us and restored the faucet, since it was broken. Now Patrick has a place to wash his grimy bike hands and paint brushes and stuff. I like it!

I wanted to put in a good word for our plumber--Craig Anderson. He was very friendly and knowledgeable, and all of his guys were friendly and worked hard to get the job done on time. We definitely recommend him if you're looking for a plumber in the Portland area.

Also, I don't think I ever mentioned that our porch work is done. It was finished a while ago (back in October), but we never got around to taking after pictures because the rainy season started right at the same time. I'm sure we'll be able to enjoy our porches more once spring and summer are here! Maybe I'll post pictures then...

We also had our basement wall parge coating redone a week or two ago. That was noisy, smelly work, but it's good to have it out of the way.

We could go on like this for a long time (our housework to-do list is pretty long, since the house is 104 years old), but I think we've almost finished all of the big ticket items, and the rest can probably wait a few years.

The lack of reliable water for the past few days kind of put a damper on weekday cooking, but we made some good stuff during the weekend. We're still having fun exploring Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone--all of the following dishes are from there unless otherwise noted.

1. Spicy stir-fried tofu with coconut rice. This was my least favorite recipe this week. There was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't super exciting. I think my main problem with it is that one of the spices that we used was kind of gritty, which made the texture of the dish unpleasant. Maybe I would have liked it better if we'd used finer spices. The coconut rice was good though.

2. Our breakfast on Saturday was buttermilk pancakes with caramelized bananas and hazelnuts. I made some modifications to the basic buttermilk pancake recipe in the book--instead of buttermilk, I used a combination of 1% milk, cottage cheese, and 1/2T lemon juice (since that's what we had on hand), which actually worked just fine. I also added chopped hazelnuts to the pancake batter, and then I mixed the banana slices with a little vanilla sugar, put those on the griddle first, and then covered them with the batter. Very nice!

3. For weekend lunch, we had golden tofu with quick peanut sauce, leftover coconut rice, and carrots with hijiki. The tofu with peanut sauce was awesome, especially considering how easy it was to make (apart from the oil splattering everywhere when I fried the tofu). The carrots with hijiki were a little too sea-vegetabley for me (never thought I'd say that--I love sea vegetables!). Next time I'd use more carrots and less hijiki.

4. Cabbage and mushroom galette with yeasted tart dough. This was yummy but not super filling. It needed some side dishes to be filling enough for dinner. I'd definitely make it again though. The yeast dough came together surprisingly quickly.

5. All-bean chili. I made this in kind of a hurry during our plumbing adventures, and it turned out watery and bland. I think part of the problem was that the pot I used was too big, which meant that when I covered the beans with 4 inches of water, it ended up being too much water. All was not lost though--I drained the beans and used them to make nachos (chips, cheese, beans, sour cream, and green onions). Yay, nachos for dinner!

6. I also made a little something from Dorie Greenspan--World Peace cookies (or Korova cookies, depending on which cookbook you use). These are among my favorite cookies, and they're pretty simple to make. I want more!

Today marks the start of week 19! Highlights for the coming week include the baby reaching 6 inches in length and the start of vernix production. Oh, and we find out if it's a boy or a girl on Wednesday! That'll be fun :)

Here are some highlights from week 18:

• The baby is moving more frequently and more emphatically. I was able to feel movement from the outside a few days ago, but Patrick was asleep. The timing worked out last night, and Patrick got to feel the baby kick for the first time. I'm glad :) It's so weirdly awesome that there's a little person inside of me! For the most part, the kicking isn't uncomfortable (yet).
• After reading more about hypnobirthing (including this account from a local couple, plus some of the stories here), we've decided to sign up for the hypnobirthing class at Zenana. I think there are some elements that will be a little out there for us (sounds like there may be healing stones involved?), but it seems like it the relaxation techniques taught in class can be useful in reducing pain even if you don't go in for the whole kit and caboodle. I guess we'll find out!
• I've definitely been feeling much more pregnant this week, what with the baby moving and the belly getting bigger. Oh, and my appetite and energy are definitely back, which is great. The second trimester is way better than the first trimester, no contest!

The return of the appetite conveniently coincided with having the week before New Years off, which meant I did some real meal planning and spent a good amount of time in the kitchen. Fun! Patrick recently bought Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison, and we're really happy with it so far! Everything we've made in the last week has been from this cookbook, and it has all turned out nicely. (We took a break from home cooking on New Year's Eve and went to Bar Avignon for the second year in a row. Good stuff!)

1. Butterflies with chickpeas (recipe): This was tasty and super fast to make (using canned chickpeas).

2. Lentil minestrone and walnut bread (soup recipe): The soup was really good--nice and clean tasting. I made my own vegetable stock as suggested in the book (hey, when you have the week off of work, why not make your own stock?), and I think it really improved both this soup and the next one. The walnut bread, though good, was not exactly what I was hoping for. The quest continues!

3. Turnip soup with gruyere croutons: The soup was sweet and mild, and the cheesy breads made it special.

4. Spinach tortellini with walnuts, parsley, and pecorino: With all the free time on my hands, I got ambitious and decided to buy a hand-cranked pasta machine and make some filled pasta! (I rationalized the purchase by telling myself that maybe when the baby's older, we'll have monthly pasta nights! Probably not very realistic, but you never know) The pasta took longer to make than I'd expected (almost 3 hours total, and it required some pasta cranking help from Patrick), but it turned out well. Definitely a special occasion dish.

5. Millet and chickpea pilaf with saffron and tomatoes (recipe): Not quite as yellow as it looks in the picture. This was not fancy at all, just nice and comforting. I made the chickpeas from scratch, and they did taste better than chickpeas from a can. The cookbook said I could freeze the extra cooked chickpeas; I'm interested to see if they're just as good after freezing and thawing.

6. For lunches this week, I made a batch of smoky black bean spread, which turned into quesadillas with smoky black bean spread and salsa (recipe). The salsa was homemade, and it was pretty mediocre (essentially sweetened tomato sauce with a few onions thrown in), but even that couldn't ruin these quesadillas. Yum! The black bean spread by itself is pretty good, but the addition of cheese definitely improves the situation.

With the return of my appetite, I've been needing more than three meals a day, so I've added in a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack. This week, I've alternated between microwave oatmeal (did you know you can make a single serving of yummy oatmeal from Bob's Red Mill thick-cut rolled oats in the microwave in about 5 minutes? The recipe is on the back of the bag. Awesome!) and smoothies.

My smoothie recipe of the moment is: 1 banana, a handful of frozen blueberries, 1/4c lowfat cottage cheese, 1 scoop vanilla ice cream, 1T wheat germ, and 1/2c fruit juice (I'm using V8 Splash tropical blend because we had some leftover from my most recent cold). Blend it all up with a stick blender, and you're good to go! I figure it has some fruit and protein, so adding a little ice cream isn't so bad :)

Ooh, and I wanted to show you a shirt I bought from Sue Bradbury (made in Portland!). Contrary to what my expression in the picture below might suggest, I'm really happy with it--it's soft and cute, and it should be wearable as maternity clothing for a while longer (and as non-maternity clothing after that). But I'm most looking forward to wearing it right after the baby's born, when apparently I will still look 6 months pregnant. This should provide excellent camouflage.

P.S. We had a crazy good dessert at Belly Timber last night before trivia. It was a parfait with layers of chocolate, peanut butter, and salted caramel. Normally I opt for lighter, fruit-based desserts, but this really hit the spot. Yum!

Okay, where to begin with the baby post? I have 18 weeks' worth of pregnancy talk that I've been saving up! This is probably way more than anybody is interested to hear, but I want to get it all written down for posterity.

Having been together for 11 years and married for 4 years, Patrick and I have been talking about starting a family for a couple years now. We were considering it seriously back in mid-2008, before we moved to Portland, and then we put it on hold while we got settled here. We figured that aiming to get pregnant in mid- to late-2009 would be ideal. Based on some big work deadlines I had scheduled for late 2009, it seemed like I wouldn't want to give birth until 2010, so September looked like a good time to start trying to get pregnant (early summer seems like a nice time to have a baby). I even wrote it in my planner so I wouldn't forget. Yes, I'm a big dork :)

I started reading What to Expect When You're Expecting this past summer (full of eye-roll-worthy writing, but also pretty informative), and based on information in the pregnancy preparation chapter, I started taking prenatal vitamins about 2 months before I planned to get pregnant. Patrick and I spent a long time staring at all the vitamin options at the grocery store and trying to figure out which we should buy, and we ended up going with the Rainbow Light Complete Prenatal System vitamins. They're big and expensive and you have to take six a day, but they've been really gentle on my stomach, so I'm happy. I'm also taking an omega 3 supplement for kicks.

I went in for a pre-pregnancy exam in August (which turned out to be unnecessary; the doctor just told me what I already knew from reading books), and Patrick and I sat down and talked about the pros and cons of having a baby and decided we were ready to start trying, and that was that--September was go time!

I had been using the fertility awareness method as a means of birth control since mid-2006, so I already knew when I'd be ovulating and all that good stuff (Taking Charge of Your Fertility is a great resource for this--I really enjoy knowing what's going on in my body at any given time, and it's such a reasonable scientific approach!). I figured despite knowing exactly when I was ovulating, it would still take a few months to conceive, but we were pleasantly surprised (and a little freaked out) to find out that we'd gotten it on the first try!

Since I was tracking my basal temperatures, I knew when I didn't see the typical drop in temperature 12 days following ovulation that something was up, but I didn't want to get my hopes up too soon. I happened to be in California that week for work, so I had to wait a whole week to get back to Portland and buy a pregnancy test to find out if I was really pregnant (I didn't want to take the test in my hotel room by myself; I wanted Patrick to be there too!). Right after Patrick picked me up from the airport, we drove to Walgreens and bought a test (only one; not a whole shelf-full like in the movies). The next morning, I took the test, and it was positive. Holy crap!

This was about 5 weeks into the pregnancy (using the wacky counting method where you get to count the 2 weeks before you even got pregnant), and my first OB appointment wasn't until 8 weeks. Waiting was kind of excruciating. I wanted some sort of confirmation that I was pregnant beyond a plus sign on a stick!

Morning sickness kicked in around week 5, with general yucky feelings, lack of appetite, and a bad taste in my mouth. Oh, and sometimes there was excessive salivation, which is kind of unnerving. Those symptoms stuck around until about week 14. I hadn't realized it before I got pregnant, but that's a long time to feel crappy! But I think it was pretty mild morning sickness (no vomiting; phew!), so I consider myself lucky. I ate crackers a lot at first, but then those started making me feel sick (I think because I associated them with feeling sick), so I had to move on to other mild foods, like oatmeal. I ate a lot of salad in the first trimester, because it was the only thing that I could bring myself to eat, and as a consequence, I ended up losing about 7 pounds compared to my pre-pregnancy weight. I'm putting that weight back on now, not to worry.

At week 8, we went to the OB, where they gave me all sorts of brochures and ran some blood tests and--the best part--did an ultrasound. The baby looked like a little frog at that point, but we got to hear its heartbeat and see the corresponding flutter on the ultrasound, and suddenly it was real--I was really pregnant! That was a pretty amazing moment :)

We opted for the First Trimester Screening, which meant we got a bonus ultrasound at week 12. The baby looked much more baby-like at this point, and the ultrasound tech even got a picture of it waving at us (we'll pretend that's what it was doing, at least). The screening results were good, which was reassuring.

I started sleeping on my side around 12 weeks, since stomach sleeping is out, as is back sleeping (so many things to worry about!). I picked up a Snoogle at our neighborhood consignment store early on, and although it's kind of cumbersome (especially when I need to get out of bed), it definitely makes sleeping on my side more comfortable.

My morning sickness mostly went away around Thanksgiving (13 weeks), though I came down with a cold soon after, followed by another cold a few weeks later, so I wasn't really at full appetite/energy levels until about a week ago. It was kind of disconcerting when the morning sickness went away, because I suddenly didn't have any day-to-day tangible proof that there was a baby in there, and it had been a few weeks since my last ultrasound. It made me unreasonably nervous. I'd keep sticking out my belly in front of the mirror, looking for signs that I was pregnant.

Things got more reassuring about a week ago (around 17 weeks), when I started feeling the baby move! (This is also known as "quickening." I wanted to go rent Highlander to celebrate, but it was checked out at our neighborhood video store. Bummer) I first felt it when I was lying in bed a little over a week ago. It's hard to describe--it was like a little pop or tickle on the inside of my belly. The day that we flew back from California, we got Lebanese food (Ya Hala, yum!) and went to a movie (Whip It at the Academy), and something about that really riled the baby up, because I felt it move four or five times that day! It has calmed down since then, but I usually feel it move once or twice a day (most often at mealtimes), which is really reassuring. I'm excited for when it gets strong enough that Patrick can feel it on the outside.

We're lucky to have two great maternity/baby consignment stores within walking distance of our house (as well as additional stores around Portland). Although it was a little early, I picked up a few maternity pieces at Piccolina before I left for California in mid-December, and I was glad I did. I splurged on some used Citizens of Humanity maternity jeans, and I have been so happy to have them, because they fit really nicely and give me plenty of belly room.

Speaking of belly, here are a couple of pictures. When I was in my first trimester funk, I didn't take any pictures, because I figured that everybody has seen plenty of pregnant bellies. But now that I'm feeling more energetic, I've decided to start documenting the pregnancy in pictures. I think I'll enjoy having them.

14. 3 weeks

15.4 weeks

17.6 weeks

(I'm sticking my belly out as far as it will go in that last picture; I don't think I normally look quite that big)

We went in for our monthly checkup a few days ago, and we got to hear the heartbeat again, which was nice. I'm really looking forward to our appointment in two weeks, when we get our third ultrasound and get to find out if it's a boy or a girl. It will have been 2 months since our last ultrasound, and I'm excited to see how the baby has grown (but I don't want a 3D ultrasound--those pictures creep me out for some reason).

We had considered waiting until birth to find out the sex of the baby, but I've found that I'm operating under the assumption that it's a girl (partly based on the timing of conception, but also just on my own unintentional bias, I think), so if it's a boy, I want time to change my assumptions. Either a boy or a girl would be awesome, of course; I think I just have a tendency to imagine our child as a girl because most of the babies and little kids I've been around have been girls. Raising a boy is kind of a mystery to me, since I didn't have any brothers, but Patrick has plenty of experience with boy stuff, and I'm sure we can figure things out either way :)

As far as names go, I've been keeping a running list of possible names for the past few years, but we haven't made much progress narrowing it down yet. There's also the question of what to do about our last names, since neither of us changed our names when we got married (and our names are too long to hyphenate comfortably). I had originally suggested that we give the baby my last name if it's a girl and Patrick's last name if it's a boy, but that would probably be too confusing. I think we'll go the least-confusing route and use Patrick's last name for all children. At least it's easier to spell than mine :)

We're planning on turning the room next to ours into a nursery, but we haven't done any work on it yet. Over the past week, I've spent an unhealthy amount of time on Ohdeedoh, which is simultaneously inspiring and stressful. Too much to think about! And as one commenter said, in retrospect she should have spent less time perfecting her nursery and more time learning about how to take care of a baby! So I'm trying not to get too caught up in nursery madness. The baby won't care what it looks like (but I would like to create a nice space, since the rest of our house was kind of decorated on the fly as we unpacked in 2008). I'm also hoping that we can get a lot of our baby stuff at our local consignment stores, rather than buying new. I think we can do it!

Speaking of learning how to take care of a baby, I checked out The Happiest Baby on the Block from the library and read it over Christmas break. Dr. Karp has some interesting theories, and it sounds like a lot of parents have found his method useful. I've put a hold on the Happiest Baby DVD at the library, since I think seeing the 5 S's in action will be helpful. I have no idea if this is something that we'll actually need to know, but it seems good to learn about it now, rather than after we've got a colicky baby in the house.

Oh, and I've just started reading about natural childbirth techniques. At the moment, my feeling is that it would be nice if I can give birth without drugs, but since I have no idea what labor is like, I'm not going to rule out an epidural as an option. But I would like to take a class in pain management. Lamaze seems reasonable (that's what my mom used when she had me), or there's something called hypnobirthing, which sounds kind of iffy based on the name (hypnotoad!), but when I asked my OB about it, she said she's seen women have success with it. I don't know, I need to read more about it.

It's funny how many things there are to think about related to having a baby. I feel like I shouldn't spend my time obsessing about all of this, but I'm not sure what is important and what can be ignored. And I'm sure all of my careful planning will go out the window when it comes time to actually have the baby. I'll definitely need to learn to be more easygoing. Being organized and planning ahead might work for us now, but it probably won't work once we have a child. That'll be an interesting change for me :)

While I'm writing, I also wanted to say how lucky I feel that this has all gone so smoothly so far. I'm really grateful that we were able to conceive so quickly and that my morning sickness was relatively mild. I know not everybody has been so lucky. Here's hoping that things continue to go well!

Okay, I think that's everything I wanted to say for now. I expect that my posts will be baby-centric for a long time to come, though hopefully I'll still have time for baking and crafts and all that good stuff. Now that my energy is back, I'm definitely enjoying spending time in the kitchen again. That's a relief. It was weird not wanting anything to do with food!

This past year has definitely had its ups and downs for friends and family and for the world in general, but we were lucky enough to have a pretty good year. Some highlights:

• We made new friends and managed to see many of them regularly thanks to our weekly trivia night get togethers. I feel so lucky to have made friends in Portland. It was one of my biggest worries about moving somewhere where we didn't know many people (especially since we're both kind of introverted), and we ended up meeting a group of really great people who seem to enjoy our company. Phew! I'm hoping to organize more social gatherings this year. It's something I mean to do every year, and it never really happens. Maybe this will be the year :)

• Excited about finally having a yard of our own, we made a pretty ambitious garden plan and stuck to it, for the most part. Our main problem was actually harvesting everything that we grew in a timely manner. Most of the lettuce we planted bolted before we could eat it, because we were too busy eating lettuce from our CSA box. We'll probably skip the CSA this year and rely on our farmers' market to fill the gaps in our garden.

• I took up running with the help of the couch-to-5k plan (with lots of support from Patrick and Star) and completed a couple organized 5k runs. It was kind of mind-blowing, since I totally didn't see myself as a runner (I still don't), but I actually started enjoying it! I pretty much stopped running after my 8k run in October, but now that I know I'm capable of it, I'm hoping to be able to start up again next year when the weather's nicer.

• We cut back on the amount of meat we eat at home, not because of any strong moral convictions, but because it seems healthier for us and better for the planet (fewer resources used to make vegetables vs. meat). My biggest accomplishment on that front was no longer buying lunch meat for sandwiches (though Patches was not happy to lose her daily turkey snack!). I still eat meat when we go out, though Patrick is pretty good about sticking with vegetarian options at restaurants. I'm not sure if we're going to become vegetarians in the future (I do love those cured meats!), but it's not out of the question. It just seems so much easier to live this way in Portland than in the Bay Area. I'm not sure why.

• I worked up the courage to try canning, and I generated all sorts of jams and pickles during the summer. That was fun, if a little exhausting. Now that it's winter, we need to get to work enjoying all that summer bounty. I would have liked to have done some apple preserving too (apple butter or applesauce), but it just didn't happen this year.

Plus we spent a good amount of time enjoying Portland and our lives in general. We're still really happy that we moved here. It was a good choice :)

There's one more big thing that happened in 2009 that I haven't told you about yet. I'm pregnant! (I know, you were probably totally expecting that after last year's post) The baby is due on June 3, and we'll find out if it's a boy or a girl in a few weeks. We're really excited :)

I have a lot to say about being pregnant, but I'll save that for a separate post. Hopefully I'll be posting more frequently now that I can talk about baby stuff. It has been hard keeping quiet for so long, but we wanted to keep it a secret until we could tell our families in person at Christmas.

We kept our Christmas gifts pretty low-key this year. We took advantage of our cabinet full of jams from this summer and gave those as presents, along with felt trivets. The trivets, based on directions in Kayte Terry's inspiring Applique Your Way, were easy to make and turned out nicely. I got the wool felt sheets at Gossamer, and they had so many pretty colors to choose from! I had a great time coming up with all the color combinations. I was too lazy to go through all the tracing steps to get the exact doily patterns from the book onto the felt, so I just freehanded patterns on the felt and then cut them out as if I was making paper snowflakes.

I did a little knitting for our two youngest sisters. I made Patrick's sister Meg a buttony hat out of super-soft Mirasol yarn and this pattern. Because the band was done in seed stitch, it doesn't really hug the head as well as ribbing, but I'm still happy with how the hat turned out, and Meg seemed to like it too. (More info on Ravelry)

I made my sister, Lianna, some stripey gray mitts out of Malabrigo. They were pretty quick to make, and they're nice and cozy. I'm tempted to make myself a pair too. (More info on Ravelry)

I also did some embroidery a few weeks ago, which is a rare occurrence for me. Lee recently started selling connect-the-dots stitch sets (great idea!), and she gave Star and me some unicorn canvases to play with. It was such a fun little project, and it was great seeing the unicorn emerge as the embroidery progressed. I embellished mine with some French knot roses.

Right now, Lee is selling the connect-the-dots sets in two themes (with five designs per theme)--cryptozoology and craft tools--and it sounds like she'll be coming out with more themes soon. Fun!

Like I said in the last post, I didn't do any Christmas-specific baking this year, but I did make some mini cupcakes to celebrate Star's birthday in early December (using the recipe for yellow cupcakes with simple chocolate frosting in The New Best Recipe).

And then I had sour cream leftover from the cupcake baking, so I made a batch of the apple streusel cinnamon swirl cupcakes from Cupcakes!, but I used the same yellow cake recipe from The New Best Recipe that I used for Star's cupcakes. They turned out really nicely--like little moist coffee cakes.

Yesterday, I had some ricotta to use up, so I made the fluted polenta ricotta cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking (plus some mini cakes, since my tart pan was too small). I like the general idea, but the only honey we have in the house is this really strong stuff from the farmers' market (it tastes almost like eucalyptus to me, but I think it's linden honey), and it overpowered the cake's flavor. So I'd like to try it again with milder honey.

And that brings us to today. For breakfast, I made our traditional Dutch babies (recipe here), but I used eggnog instead of milk. Yum! I also made tangerine-vanilla spritzers (tangerine juice, vanilla sugar, and club soda) since we didn't have any orange juice. It was a nice way to start the year!