baby BUMP!

Flash forward (brought to you by the Baby Bump Belt at the maternity store):

What I actually look like right now (at 4 months, the pic was taken about 2 weeks ago):

If I'm slouching (which I'm not in the picture) you can see the bump a lot better, and anyone who knows me can tell there's something there that wasn't a few months ago - but if I stand up straight a stranger still can't really tell. I gave a talk on Friday and some other post-doc moms in my department guessed but they said the thing that gave me away was that I put my hand on my belly sometimes during the talk that was in a way that only a pregnant woman would do. Huh!

Do you ROCK?

The Studly Hubby and I rock, that's for sure!

Because we can stay up past 9 pm (sometimes). Like last Tuesday night, when we went down to Key Arena at the Seattle Center (near the Space Needle) to go to a Pearl Jam concert.

Key Arena (I'm pretty sure the concert was sold out):

And here's me thinking about how hard I'm about to rock:

The Study Hubby thinks it bodes well for my mommy potential that I know how to rock. I think it says something about what kind of father he's going to be that he thinks that (translation: baby will be playing drums in Dad's band by age 3). While we were waiting for the music to start we figured out that this is actually baby's SECOND concert (and baby has only existed for 4.5 months!). The first one was, to my delight, Tori Amos.

The concert was good. Pearl Jam showed that they know how to rock professionally and didn't need any glitz and glam to make a good show. They told us this was their 50th show in Seattle (!!).

Highlights:

1) The drunk ladies in front of us that thought for some reason they could influence all the people in front of them to sit down by yelling and waving wildly. At first it was funny, but after three songs it got old and someone else thankfully let them know this.

2) The fight that almost broke out on the bus on the way home. Not only was it a new experience for me to see two nearly-crazy men almost come to blows in a very crowded situation, but a (very small woman) took it upon herself to break it up (and she was successful!). This one made me think a little differently.

Whoa!

It's been frigging an entire summer since I've posted.

I guess we've had a heckuva summer! Let me tell you... (and then you should forgive me my blog-neglect)

Right after my last post, we went on our family vacation to Missouri and had a blast, but then I came back to Seattle with some kind of awful stomach bug that sent me running to the doctor where I found out I was PREGNANT!!! I was quite pleased but as you can imagine but also a bit worried that the next three months was going to be a continuation of the horrible week I had been having... especially when the doctor assured me that it probably would be (and prescribed a bunch of anti-nausea drugs).

Fortunately I did get better and the subsequent pregnancy-associated nausea and exhaustion was so mild compared to actually being sick that I put up with it like a champion (although it did get kinda bad about a month later during Seattle's record-breaking heat wave... ugh). But the fun didn't stop there. While I was recovering from the stomach bug we took in a vacationing neighbor's dog - normally pleasant but not this time. Two weeks later, we returned her with a vow never to dogsit again. Meanwhile we had been hunting for a new apartment and had ramped up the motivation since getting the big news, and we finally found something... a perfect little house only a few blocks away... so the weekend after we gave back the dog, we started packing! Seriously! So all in one month after returning from the fun family vacation I got really sick, found out I was pregnant, dogsat for a totally obnoxious dog, and then MOVED. Thank goodness my very Studly Hubby helped a lot with all this, including hiring movers to do all the heavy lifting (but I learned that even with movers it is still a huge amount of work).

After that we started having some fun - we had family visit, went on a big camping vacation with a bunch of friends to a beautiful peaceful island north of Seattle, and had some other friends over to celebrate our new house and the deck that is attached to it. We also got our stuff unpacked, kept the flowers alive in the new garden, and bought shelves for the basement and a desk for the bedroom.

But as you can imagine we are pretty worn out. Then, at the end of it all, we both caught colds and were totally wiped out over Labor Day weekend. Fortunately it was a rainy weekend anyway and we had needed a good excuse to stay home and watch TV all weekend, which is exactly what we did. This weekend we are finally feeling better, a little recovered, and ready for fall and a fresh new month (with much less in the calendar).

Due: end of February
Baby bump status: starting to make an appearance
Gender bet: girl
Gender decision: we will find out ASAP (hopefully in one month)
Current names favorites: Wardonius, Carnitas Fajitas Burrito (if it's a girl), Falgar

Probably this blog will have a lot more baby stuff in it from now on, so get ready!