I can't believe how long it has been since my last post. I am almost 38 weeks pregnant, feeling pretty good and absolutely cannot believe that in the next 2-3 weeks we will have a baby in the house!!

Here are a few belly shots from the past few weeks for your viewing pleasure:

35 weeks

36 weeks

37 weeks

Do I even look like I am getting bigger? It is hard for me to tell, although I can feel more baby all over my belly now, when before I really felt the baby a lot on the right side. According to my 36 and 37 week prenatal visits, the baby is head down. I have my next visit this Friday.

Mike and I are both amazed at how fast time is flying. We are somewhat prepared around the house, and completed the Bradley Childbirth class two weeks ago - which was an amazing class. I feel so much more informed and prepared than before we started the class 11 weeks ago. We also had our hospital tour last week and are going for a Cloth Diapering 101 workshop this weekend. This next week I will interview pediatricians and hope to find one before the baby is born.

I feel okay overall - mainly big and kinda slow. No real complaints except for heartburn. For the first time tonight I am starting to feel like I have been pregnant for a VERY LONG TIME, so I must be entering the home stretch, right? Please, just say yes. :)

34 Weeks & Random Home Stuff

Here is my belly shot from today, at 34 weeks and 1 day.  Getting big!!

This morning, my dear friend Jenn hosted a wonderful baby shower for Mike and I.  We had it here in San Jose, and it was a brunch.  The shower was mellow, with a ton of good food and even better company!  This was a book and music shower, and Mike and I now have a wonderful library of books and cds for this little baby!  

This was a couples shower and when the first set of folks showed up, Mike jumped on the availability of extra manpower and asked a few of the guys to help him move the playhouse.  The playhouse was originally set in the middle of the yard, on the right-hand side. 

A little over a week ago, I came home from work and Mike had toppled the playhouse over onto its roof:

He managed to get the house upright, but it was too heavy for him to move by himself.  So today he was able to get the house moved to its new home, in the back, right-hand corner of our yard.  Here is a short video of the move:

In other garden news, our 2009 vegetable garden is coming along nicely.  We planted corn from seed, two types of heirloom tomatoes, bell peppers, a jalapeno pepper, and two giant pumpkins.  We planted everything on April 19.  Here is a shot of the tomato and corn, the first day of planting:

And here they are again, nearly 8 weeks later:


Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of the pumpkins when we first planted them.  Here they are this morning:

And here is a shot at one of the first pumpkins.  Right now, this little guy is about the size of a baseball.

We have two pumpkins in our little patch - a "Big Max" and a "Coastal Giant".  We are hoping to get at least one big pumpkin this year, and strive to beat our personal record from 2006, when we grew a pumpkin that weighed in at about 70 lbs.  Nothing compared to the 1000+ lb pumpkins that folks compete with, but big for us!

Lastly, we did a bit more work on the baby's room.  So, to close this post I will end with a few shots of the nursery.  Enjoy, and have a great week!

33 Weeks . . . and a Daring Exposure of the Belly

I am 33 weeks pregnant today.  I am just four weeks from being full term & I can't believe how fast time is flying by!  Over all I feel pretty good, apart from a few aches and pains.  I have pain in my right hip, some swelling in my feet, and the usual achey back.  My ability to bend over is almost gone, too!  When you see these pics, you'll understand why!

Okay, so in this pic I look big, but you don't get the full effect of the belly.

So, here is a nice little contour shot of our (not-so) Tiny Dancer, who is estimated to weigh about 4.5 - 5 lbs at this point, and will continue to gain about 1/2 lb each week until the big day.  These are just averages, by the way, from the pregnancy resources that I've read.

Mike has been busy between work (when he has it) and home projects.  He finished the bathroom (pics to come) and he is now continuing work on the backyard.  He is doing this in part because it has been on the punch list for a while now, but also because my dear friend Jenn is hosting a couple's shower at our house next weekend and we'd like the yard to be cleaned up for the occasion.

We are still enjoying the hot tub, which was one of the first projects that he worked on after we bought the house.  I have been absolutely loving it as I get further along - it is just amazing how great my body feels when buoyant!  Although I feel a bit shy about posting a bikini shot on the blog, I decided to go for it because I just think it is a crack up how big the belly has gotten.  I was in the hot tub this morning when Mike took these pictures.  Ignore my non-matching bikini - I mixed the top and bottom based on what would fit me right now.  I have a maternity suit, but it is all skirty and has a tankini top, which just floats around when the jets are on.  So, here I am, in all my glory.

Hey, in this shot you can't even tell that I am pregnant!  And then . . . 

Bam!  Tiny Dancer emerges from the depths of the deep blue hot tub, in all his/her glory!  I apologize if I blinded anyone with my fair skin, btw!

31 Weeks!

Here I am at 31 weeks (about 7 & 1/2 months)!  I can't believe I have been such a slacker with my blogging lately.  Well, enjoy the photos:

Don't make me open up a can of Food Network on your ass

For the past few weeks I've been eating two eggs for breakfast with the goal of getting more protein into my diet.  Two eggs a day is part of the Bradley Method recommendations for nutrition during pregnancy - and since I enjoy eggs I figured, what the hell, why not?

I primarily eat them fried, but for some reason ever since I've been pregnant I have not been able to muster up the perfect over-medium fried egg that I generally take so much pride in.  I either break the yolk or I over cook it.  So, I've been working on my timing - and on my egg flipping as a way of avoiding yolk breakage.

This morning I thought I'd try to flip the eggs with a quick jolt of the pan, the way they do it on the cooking shows on Food Network.  You know what I am talking about.  If not, click here for a link to a video and brief tutorial.  Let me be clear and say that this video suggests that you practice with bread first.  I neither a) watched the video or read any sort of tutorial prior to trying this at home, nor b) practiced with anything before going for broke (no pun intended) with my two beautiful eggs this morning.

So, I picked up the pan and jiggled the eggs.  They were cooked on one side to perfection, and as I jiggled the pan, they slid beautifully across the base of the pan, slipping up and down the sides in sync with my movements.  I thought to myself - Here's my moment, I can do the flip!!!  So, I went for it.

The egg flipped, and landed in the pan!!!  Well, one of them did, at least.  The other egg was all over the kitchen floor.  And the stovetop.  And the bottom of the pan.  And the front of the oven.  Literally, there was egg yolk dripping down the door and all over the knobs.  Miraculously, I did not end up with a stitch of egg on myself.  I even waddled over to the mirror to make sure there wasn't any yolk hiding under my belly, where I couldn't see just by looking down.

I wish I'd had my camera handy to take a picture of the whole debacle, but my camera battery was dead!!

This makes me think that it isn't quite the right time to start my own cooking show:  Cooking with Tracy K.  Alas, at least I got a good laugh and a blog post out of it, right?  

Two Years

It is amazing to think that two years ago today, Mike & I exchanged wedding vows.  How time flies!

Pocket Door

The bathroom is still a work in progress.  It is almost done, except for a few projects - most of them minor and one of them a bit bigger.  Mike was almost done with the bathroom when I mentioned how much more space we'd have if we had a pocket door.  So, Mike is now in the process of putting a pocket door in, which of course ended up being a bigger project than anticipated.

Here are a few pics from this weekend.  He has the wall open to install the door.

That little blue electrical box is where he shocked himself tonight - scared the shit out of me.  He is okay - apart from a bruised ego from me getting upset that he didn't already have the power shut off to that part of the house.  He got a pretty good shock - I think it was pretty unsettling to him, too. 

This one is looking in from the bedroom.  The door frame is gone and part of the wall is cut through from when Mike was removing some of the original door framing.  It doesn't show up that well here, but the cut is parallel to the door frame.