She swallowed the spider to catch the fly...

We're into the third trimester, and everything is great... but there are some comfort issues I'm trying to tweak.

For the past couple of weeks, I've had very intense heartburn. When I talked to the midwife, she suggested some exercises and also said that getting the baby to turn head down would help a lot. As part of that, I started seeing my old chiropractor again; right now, she's just doing regular prenatal adjustments and will have me come in more regularly, concentrating on turning the baby, if Rooby hasn't decided to get into position by the time I hit 34 weeks.

Unfortunately, a lot of the comfort-issue tweaking seems to be negating the work I'm doing in other areas. For instance: Spinning Babies recommends holding a pose for 20 minutes a day wherein my head is on a pillow on the floor and my legs and feet are up on a bed or the couch. I support my backside with cushions or the ironing board. I've been trying to do this, but the position is the exact opposite of the "elevate your head" posture I'm supposed to take to avoid heartburn/acid reflex.

Same thing with my edema. It started early, and I'm thinking a lot of that is due both to my age and to some left-overs from my ruptured disc (my right foot had some swelling on and off for a good six months after I was out of pain). The best way to keep the swelling down is to sit on the couch with both of my feet up... but this forces me into a position that apparently crumples my digestive system. I get REALLY bad heartburn until I go sit completely upright at the dining room table. And I can put my feet up there, but not as well because there is still some tenderness from the ruptured disc, so sitting straight up and extending my left leg is still a little painful.

I have pretty intense meralgia paresthetica just like I did with Daphne, but this time, the "cure" my Las Vegas chiropractor gave me won't work because of the back injury. This is the one bright spot, though! I CAN do the cat/cow pose and that not only fixes the weird numbness/pain instantly, if I then go down on my elbows and stay like that for a while, it is supposed to help encourage the baby to go head-down, too.

In other news: I passed my gestational diabetes screen with flying colors. My fasting glucose level was 88, then I had a high carbohydrate breakfast and went back two hours after I'd eaten. The glucose reading at that point was 85. When I aced the test with Daphne, I referred to myself as "like a functional alcoholic, but with sugar."

I'm a little bit anemic, but since I tend toward anemia, anyway, that's not terribly surprising given my increased blood volume.

We're going to a birthing class on Sunday. I'm making Daphne go, too, in case she's here with me alone when I go into labor. I want her to know what to expect and not be scared.

A couple of people have asked me about maternity pictures, and we've taken a few "here's where we are right now" shots, but I'm not having anything done professionally. I wouldn't be a good model, because I never ever look at my belly with poignancy or drape chiffon around my sensitive areas to accentuate the paper-white skin stretched across my abdomen. James rarely comes up behind me and caresses my stomach lovingly while looking over my shoulder. If we wanted to capture the *real* pregnancy experience in photos, we'd need a bunch of GIFs of my trying unsuccessfully to squeeze between things like someone's chair and the wall because I'm not used to my need for increased clearance. Or pictures of my slapping my hand down over a specific portion of my middle, with a, "Seriously, what the heck?!" look on my face.

Or this. I do this a lot more often than I gaze lovingly at my middle. There's also the face of indigestion we'd need to capture. And the victorious dismounting of my bike after a long ride. Almost no lying on a tree limb, contemplating the future of my life with baby, though. So I'm not a great prospect for a maternity photographer.

We have had an awesome friend offer to do newborn pictures, and I'm excited about that. However, the baby will likely be just lying around on boring stuff like blankets and pillows instead of a baseball glove or inside a fishbowl of gumballs or any of the other uber-popular newbie contrivances. I think the first ever Gatannah-born baby will be cute enough without props.

I only have about a week of work left, then the swimming will get into high gear. I'm looking forward to that, as it's getting hot and humid already and I adore the buoyancy of being in the water.

We have a quick road trip coming up in a couple of weeks, a third annual event for James and me. It's almost like we're a real couple or something! I'm pretty happy and I think he is, too. Which is good, because I absolutely adore him.

Graze boxed snack delivery review

There are all sorts of delivery services advertised online: meals, age-appropriate toy boxes, tea, razors, snacks, you name it. A couple of weeks ago, a friend told me about ordering a box from Graze for $1 (the normal price is $6, but there were coupons all over the internet for $5 off), so I decided to try it.

Unfortunately, I got distracted in the process of ordering and the page timed out, then I wasn't able to find the coupon later. However, one good thing about appearing to reject a website is that they typically come back begging. I received an offer for a free box, and that's the kind of offer I can't refuse.

Graze is a "healthy" snack delivery service that includes four (4) 200-ish calorie snack packages per $6 (including shipping) box. Your options are to have the boxes delivered every other week, every week, and you can also custom order boxes. There is a bit of customization you can make over time as you "like" or "trash" certain snacks, but you're pretty much stuck with whatever they choose to send you within those parameters.

Within about a week of my order, I received this box.

Actually, four individually-packaged snacks might have fallen out, and even I'm not Type A enough to consider that a "mess," strictly-speaking.

Although this box was free, as I sampled (and shared) the snacks, on my mind was this primary question: Are each and every one of these snacks worth $1.25 each? Would I pay just over a dollar for any one of them at the store?

While I realize that they were delivered to my front door and so there is a bit of convenience there, 4 snacks don't go a long way in a family of 3. So this is not saving me a trip to the store at all. The deal then becomes: Am I happy enough with their choices to make it worth my money?

The contents were varied and interesting.

I ended up eating two of these, and sent the other two to work with James.

My medium-adult-sized hand versus the snack box size.

This snack was dried apples, lime-infused raisins, and dried cranberries. Except for having to try to find or make the lime flavoring for the raisins, I could have thrown this together myself from bulk items. The same held true for the yaki soba (seasoning the broad beans with chili) and the jalapeno fiesta (spicing up the nuts and salsa-fying the almonds). The chocolate orange flapjack was basically three two-bite sized soft oat bars.

All of these were tasty enough, but I knew before I'd opened the first treat that unless the flavor just knocked my socks off, there wasn't any way I was going to buy into this for $12 a month for 8 little snacks. So, these things are fine, but not "I'd pay for that!" good, so I'm not going for it.

What about you? Anyone tried Nature Box and liked it enough to keep it? Plated? Other subscription services you recommend?

Fighting Viral "Science" with Observational Science

Someone on the internet is wrong?! THIS CANNOT STAND!

Help One Now's Austin event: Cocktails for Education

Last night, James and I got to go to the beautiful home of Dan and Cathy Rourke for an event called Cocktails for Education, to help raise funds for 10 classrooms and teachers, or $25,000, through Help One Now. It is my understanding that the funds raised this evening will benefit schools in both Uganda and Haiti.

This time last year, James and I were on our way to Haiti on a learning trip with Help One Now and New City Church. You can read about that impactful trip on my personal blog, starting with the intro, the Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Days Five and Six, some commentary, Day Seven, and a little adventure on the way home. I loved Haiti. I think James did, too. I want to go back; next time, we'll take Daphne.

Since we're not in a position to travel again this year (the trip is one month after our baby is due), I was excited to have the opportunity to catch up "in person" with what Help One Now is doing.

This is the Rourkes' amazingly beautiful home on Mt. Bonnell. They were extremely gracious to open it up to host the event.

When we walked in, this was up in the foyer. The "simple" part of helping the orphaned and at-risk is hosting a Garage Sale for Orphans. Now, I see the grammatical error, which I'm sure was a deliberate choice since "were" sounds stilted, and I probably just need to get with the program on that kind of thing. However, at the time, I didn't really even notice the words; I just noticed the girl. I commented to James that I'd seen this picture online and that the girl looked a lot like Dave-Kathie Mesidor, a girl in Ferrier Village that we help sponsor. Jill Stockton overheard me and told me that it *was* indeed Dave-Kathie. I was so happy to see her! We've only ever seen her in two other photos, so it was pretty exciting to get a glimpse of her life-sized.

After looking over the auction items, we went out back for some finger food from The Peached Tortilla.

Here we have an Asian Pear Bite (pear with blue cheese, honey, and spiced pecans), Hawaiian Pork Belly Bites (with caramelized pineapple, cilantro, and Chinese barbecue sauce; I'd never had pork belly before and didn't know what to expect, but I'm here to tell you that it was DELICIOUS), and Curried Chicken Tostata (with Asian slaw and lemon curry aioli).

After enjoying a few bites, we headed back to the cocktail bar so that James, at least, could have a drink.

Their courtyard, patio, or whatever you want to call it was beyond beautiful.

The cocktail bar was set up in front of the greenhouse/potting shed. I mean, seriously. It was awesome. I got a La Croix berry water and proved to myself that even if you carbonate it and add flavoring, water is still pretty disgusting. 

Almost 9:00 PM at the beginning of June in Austin? Yep, this looks about right.

This was a Brisket Jam Spoon with tomato jam, dry-rubbed brisket, and chives. Very nice.

Brennen Leigh and Noel McKay provided entertainment the first hour of the night. After that, Lamar Stockton, local musician, lead worship pastor at Austin New Church, and director of international operations for Help One Now, told us the story of Olivia in Uganda to illustrate the importance of education to those of us who take it for granted. This segued to the live auction, which was a lot of fun to watch from the sidelines. The Hank Williams, Jr.-signed guitar went for an astonishingly low final price, but people were generous and excited about making straight-out donations, and seemed to favor local offerings.

Although we stayed out of the live auction drama, we did restock our Rebo coffee supply for a while, and we finally got a Richard Cadet painting!

After the auction, Matt McCloskey performed and dessert was served.

Lick Ice Creams provided tiny scoops. Here is Hill Country Honey and Vanilla Bean and Too Hot Chocolate. They're not kidding! I could only take one bite and James had to finish it. According to their website, it is chocolate combined with cayenne pepper, chipotle, cinnamon, and local honey. Whoo! Potent! They also had Caramel Salt Lick, which was my favorite.

Also, Tiny Pies was there with Teeny Tiny pies. This one was peach. They also had apple, mixed berry, and Key lime. Although I didn't get to try the Key lime, the other three were enjoyable.

At this point, it was already 10:30 or so, and between mosquitoes, swelling, and general expectant fatigue, we called it a night... a very enjoyable night, as well as an encouraging one. I am so impressed with Help One Now and the work it helps facilitate. I adore the mindset of, "We're foreigners; we have no idea how to help... but locals do, so we're going to find locals who are already working and we're going to get them whatever support they need." If you're ever looking for a solid charity to which you can contribute, I cannot recommend them highly enough. 

The gorgeous view on our way out. Thanks for a great evening!

A short, long year ago...

This time last year, we were packing for Haiti and dealing with a brand new reality. In my blog post from June 6, 2013, I wrote, "I'm supposed to go in for an ultrasound today, but I don't want to. I know that I'm losing this baby... This is reality, and I'm not going to change a bunch of plans to wait for something. I feel fine now, and life is going to go on."

Here we are, having covered 584 million miles, and are back to where we started, even though I know that the universe is expanding and we're not fixed in space, so even though things look the same, they're different.

First of all, I saw two amazing videos about Haiti this week that I think you should watch.

This one, if you're a business owner intending to expand your operations:



And this one, if you're trying to decide where to go on vacation:



This year's Help One Now Haiti trip is in October, so I won't be able to go back, but I hope to return very soon. This time, I want to take Daphne, too.

Pregnancy-wise, I'm doing very well. I've ridden my bike 4 of the last 7 days, and last night rode up a hill I had to walk my bike up when we first moved here. I got my support belt in the mail earlier this week, but haven't walked since then. Looking forward to seeing how it helps.

Rooby is extremely active. Seems to get very excited when I eat certain foods; not all, but I can't discern a pattern in the excitement, so not sure if the baby has any "preferences." It might all have to do with sound. Or an awareness that *I* am excited about eating. :)

Tonight is date night with my supermodel-level sexy husband, so I'm pretty excited about that. Daphne is spending the evening and night with her cousins, going swimming and to watch a movie at their neighbor's house, and then tomorrow morning, we're all going to a breakfast and cartoon screening that is part of the ATX Television Festival.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

A Little History, a Little Romance

Next weekend will mark the second anniversary of the weekend I insinuated myself upon James in his Tulsa apartment. I'd been trying to get him to visit me for weeks, and could tell that he was depressed. I'd asked if I could come see him, but he'd been reluctant. Then, as I was finishing up a two-day seminar for work and looking at the prospect of returning home for a weekend alone and with no plans, I just insisted. I told him (online; he had no phone at the time) that I was coming to see him, and that if he didn't tell me where he lived, I'd just let him know where I was staying once I got there.

On my drive up, he did message me back and even offered to meet me half way. Looking back, I think he didn't want me to see how he was living... but I had my suspicions. And I wanted to stock his refrigerator with homemade food. And I really wanted to catch up with my friend.

After we'd chatted Friday night away and before we went to buy groceries on Saturday, we spent the morning touring the Philbrook Museum of Art. We hadn't exhausted our conversation, and one of the things James told me as we walked around the museum was the reason he'd never had any kids. He said that lots of his friends had either been married, had kids, and split up, or decided to make babies with someone and share the responsibilities of rearing them. He said that he felt like it was a two-person job (imagine that) and he'd never met anyone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

As we discussed that, I told him of my experience and how, 20 minutes after Daphne was born, I knew she'd be my only one. I was done.

I guess things have changed for both of us since then.

When I got home from that weekend, I was surprised to learn that James wanted to pursue something like a relationship with me. We seemed so different, in terms of what we wanted in our personal lives. Over the next few months, we struggled mightily to come to some sort of agreement. Sometimes, it seemed like it was just doomed because of how dissimilar we were.

Looking back, I can see that what our hearts actually wanted was the exact same thing; we just had vastly divergent expectations based on our experiences and our baggage. Actually living together and making things work has been a lot easier than talking about living together and making things work. I'm tempted to say "virtually effortless," but it has been work on both of our parts (and, honestly, probably more so on his, because I tend toward domesticity, anyway). It's just so beyond worth it, the effort doesn't feel extreme.

Daphne asked me once why I was having a baby, since I've always "known" she was going to be it. I told her that sometimes, when you really love someone, what you know to be true about yourself changes. Back in the fall, I was disappointed about the miscarriage because it represented something I was going to have given James that no one else had ever given him. I wanted to do that. I wanted to experience being a parent with him. He stepped in with Daphne at a time when she is probably at her most perplexing, and he's been amazing. He loves her. He accepts her. He wants the best for her. And I wanted to get to see him do that from the start of a life.

Additionally, it turns out, I might be a bit competitive.

When James and I got together, I asked him what his longest relationship had been. As an adult, he said, he'd dated someone six months. That was an easy beat. But in high school, he dated someone three years. We still have a year and 3 weeks to go on that one, but I'm confident. Why did I need to know up front? I'm not sure.

But apparently, I'm consistent.

See, recently, I mentioned to James that part up there about wanting to have a baby with him because no one else had ever done it. He laughed and said I'd already boldly gone where none other has dared to tread, and then he told me something of which I have absolutely no recollection.

When we were about a year and a half out of high school and James was getting ready to join the Navy, we'd set aside one day to do something together as a "goodbye" of sorts. James said I wrote him a note and asked him to list everything he'd ever done, because I wanted to take him to do something he'd never done before. He jokingly told me that the list of things he hadn't done would probably be shorter.

We ended up driving down to Hot Springs to go to the Mid America Science Museum and a wax museum there. I remember being offended because James slept so much of the time in the car (hello?!) and he remembers being terrified of my driving.

Some things don't change too much.

The Nuthaus, an Update (Including the Nursery, a Work in Progress)

Several people have asked for pictures of the nursery, so we'll get to that in a minute.

First, I wanted to take you on a tour of the Nuthaus in general, so you can see how much has changed since we moved here a little over a year ago.

Changes: 1) Daphne got a desktop. 2) We never watched the TV James had (literally, we didn't turn it on in the year we had it here), so we put it out on the curb and someone took it! We use the space for the litter box that used to be in James' office, which will be the nursery. It's mostly Aish's box, and I think she likes the privacy of the fireplace. 3) I think there are more tchotske on the mantel, including a speaker system we bought solely because our laptops wouldn't play "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." loudly enough. Also, we have one outlet in the whole living room, so we have a lot of old-fashioned running of the wires all up in here.

The white shelving unit is new. We'd had the printer in James' office, and all of our school books (which are difficult to see behind the table) in the black bookshelves. We moved our school stuff over when James was re-homing some of his books, and the drawers have all of our pencils, envelopes, etc. That stuff was also on the bookshelves and fell off frequently. Don't know why we didn't think of that sooner.

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James' new "office" has less privacy but a great view! He admits to missing his little hobbit hole, but you do what you have to do, and we kind of like having him around.

Our nerd robes adorn the back of the door in our tiny bathroom. Pictures courtesy a story National Geographic did on sugar and how horrible it is on both nutritional and cultural levels... But to illustrate this, they had frame-worthy art of sugary foods like cupcakes, candies, and cereal.

Still making do with not much storage of which to speak.

Finally got our corkboard "Wall of Awesome" up after "winning" the board at a Christmas white elephant exchange. We'd had a WoA in the trailer and are filling this one with Team Dave's memorabilia, much of it from our recent trip to Colorado. 

Pardon our recycling; since we have so many deliveries these days, I filled up our outside recycle bin the day after it got picked up last week! Just 5 more days and I can dump this stuff. I love how the kitchen and living room are basically one room. It makes working in the kitchen not seem like a lonely task, even if I'm the only one in there.

Our beautiful bedroom, with the wedding quilt James' mom made us and the new bookshelf we got to help make space for James' office eviction. The metal heart we watched a blacksmith make at the Celtic Music Festival and James bought it back when we were still dating. The marker picture is of James and me as ponies, a gift from Daphne on my last birthday. On the bookshelf, we have both of the flowers we wore at our wedding. Mine was a fabric flower that came with my dress, and James' was a squirt sunflower.

The only closet in the house barely has room for James' Browncoat, a couple of suits, and our luggage. Everything else is on display for the world to see.

We rearranged D's room a bit, and it's still one of my favorite rooms in the house. I love all of the color.

The bookshelves helped us to move all of D's books back into her room. We'd had a lot of them in the built-ins in the living room, but decided to free up that space for, yes, more of James' books. Also, she has room now both to get new books and for all of her filled-up drawing pads.

I don't think we ever took a picture of her "closet" before. We moved her smaller bookshelf over here to make room for the new shelves. And, yes, Harry Potter is wearing an old pair of girls' underpants both as drawers and a hat, has on a fake blonde mustache, and is carrying a giant lollipop instead of a wand.

So, here are the money shots for those of you who wanted to see the nursery. It's good that we have all of the furniture we need now, because there is no more room for anything else!

I love, love, love bright colors, so this all makes me happy. A friend said he was afraid that our MamaRoo bouncy chair thing would become sentient and Borgify the baby, and that'd be super cool. It's neat; it has several white noise settings (it also has an input so you can play MP3s), and there are 5 different movements it can make. The cushiony things in the mobile will pop out for grabbing and chewing.

During graduation weekend, my sister noticed that someone had left a dirty little minky monkey in our driveway. We put it up on the porch and left it there for 3 days. When the weekend was over, I brought it in, washed and dried it twice, and decided it would be our first baby toy. Also, we can only accommodate clothes, shoes, socks, etc. that will fit in this cabinet.

I can't wait to fill up this bookshelf!

Aish loves sitting in "baby jail" underneath the elevated crib cushion. Also, for those of you thinking, "Wouldn't there be more room for the rocker behind the door?" Maybe. But where it is, you can see out of both sets of windows, and I prefer that.

So there you have it. As James said, "We're building a home." It definitely feels more like it every day. Thanks for your interest. Just 3 months to go!