California and Other Updates

We had a lovely visit to California for Erik's grandpa's surprise 80th birthday party. Lucky us, a baby shower was thrown for us as a cover for the surprise b-day party!

Beautiful quilt handmade by Erik's Aunt Shirley!

Sweet presents from Erik's Grandma & Grandpa Whalen

And from the secret agent cousin in the background (don't listen to her, Firecracker - you're not to be a future agent...).

Erik's grandpa (in the patterned shirt) - lookin' good at 80!! Boy was he surprised when 50 of his family and friends showed up after the baby shower!

And we had a lovely day at the beach the day before we left.

Fed Firecracker a yummy sandwich on the beach.

Saw a sweet little seal below the long pier on which we were standing (he was stealing fish off of people's rods...not everyone was a fan of this seal but we were!)
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The beginning of the pier.

And we saw an awesome demonstration of a rescue with lifeguards in training! While we didn't successfully film the super awesome helicopter that swooped in over our heads and did a sample rescue of someone in the water (like Superman!), we did catch the lifeguards jumping off of the pier into the very cold and deep ocean.

Then we went for an awesome dinner on the beach with Erik's mama and her husband, Kim.

She just had back surgery right before we got there, but you'd never know it by how she looks!

What wonderful hosts - we had such a great time.

Then it was back to Austin to celebrate a very special someone's 30th birthday!

But first, some eco-friendly painting (does anyone else paint in their apron?).

And then the party (20 people gathered to celebrate)!

The happy birthday boy with his new present (action shot) :)

Easter and Our Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of our wedding two years ago (we've been together for almost 10!). But first, I'll share a couple of pictures from Easter...

Quiet internal egg hunt with Firecracker at home (Firecracker is looking hard for that ovary).

Who makes the bed on Easter?

Change locations and into the kitchen with the fam. Make room!

Let's get a shot of the kids with Great Grandma Fahrenthold! Hold it....

Wait...

Beautiful! Nine great grand kids (though there are more) and one on the way!

And now to reflect on our beautiful day that we shared two years ago...

And to revisit last year's anniversary...

And this year - we added a "plus one" to our celebration:

Watching the sunset at a beautiful vineyard after a full day in the Hill Country. We canceled a beach trip because someone was sick...

That someone is STILL sick...

But at least another room got painted!

Happy Anniversary, Puppy! Can you imagine what we'll be doing next year with like a 9-month old? A beach house in Mexico, right...?!!

I love you!!! I raise my glass of Emergen-C to the most special love I have ever known. I cherish every moment together. Still.

26 Weeks...Almost 27

For those that beg for belly pics (or any pics), here are a few (sorry about the really bad outfit). Different angles, same belly - I just threw them all in...

Childbirth class homework (with lots of tea, hot and iced)...

Good Puppy!

New Stuff

Thank you for the concerned comments I got. What happened to me (like, where did I go)? I don't know. Sort of a combination of things.

I have had a very sad past week or so. Since my mother's death, I have gone from devastated to better (like just having crying episodes every day or so), but this past week I just can't get my mind to get on a different track. Part of it is the changing of the season. Easter and flowers remind me a lot of my mom, and everything right now is screaming Easter and spring (flowers). Texas thunderstorms and dark rolling clouds remind me of her (she loved storms), and it's been a week of nothing but. Watching dead things come back to life (spring) has always been my favorite thing. But spring forgot someone this year.

As I am still somehow in this stage of denial (with her having died less than 3 months ago), I have not forgotten that she's gone but I still can't make my heart or mind accept it. I still almost buy a candle for her every time I see a gardenia scent. I still almost call her while I'm making dinner, the time I reserved to talk with her. She's the only one in my life that always wanted to know what I was making. And I struggle endlessly with regret over so many things, but mainly my last weekend with her. I can't express how grateful I am that I saw her two days before she died, but I have a lot of pain associated with that trip. I was a morning-sick holiday-exhausted daughter that was not cherishing the time I was spending with my mother, even if she had just gotten out of the hospital. I wish I could re-write the entire weekend; make myself the heroin that swoops in and makes it all better. But instead, she begged to get out of the hospital too early to come home and be with us (she had been there 4-5 weeks already) and I didn't cherish it. And then she died. Typical mother-daughter conflict that happened that weekend haunts me. I can't let it go. It symbolizes something much bigger than I can explain right now.

There is a new woman that joined my grief group who's situation seems pretty similar to mine. Her mother died after a life of chronic illness, neediness and substance abuse (though she had sobered like my mom had recently). Her mom died just two weeks after my mom died. She told her painful story at the group without shedding a tear, staring at the ceiling while she spoke, still in complete shock and denial that her mother was gone. She's going through the things I went through right afterwords - horrible dreams of a funeral straight from a horror movie - dreams of the suffering that happened right before. She waits, like I did, for her mother to visit in a dream to tell her everything's OK and that she can just live her life. The bad dreams will stop, I tell her. But I'm still waiting on the latter.

We started our new childbirth class this week, and it's funny how unused I am to a classroom/group setting that when we sat down in the circle, I immediately associated it with my grief group. I had the brief thought: thank goodness - finally a group of pregnant women that I can talk to who have lost their mothers and know how devastating it all is. But I quickly realized this was not a place to grieve the passing of others but to celebrate and prepare for the new life inside. Of course, part of my pregnant story has been about losing my mom, so I shared honestly my fear of stalling out during childbirth because of deep sadness (this happens to many women). I'm happy I'll have a place to confront these fears and to work it out (our teacher totally gets it).

Our childbirth teacher is our neighbor - she lives just around the corner with her hip husband and precious daughters (of 8 and 6 or something?). Child art hangs everywhere and their house screams, I have been lived in and I see so much love. Their girls dance around and beg for attention from the pregnant couples, and they peak around the corner to listen to the stories their mom tells us about childbirth and how they came into the world. I have no doubt they will probably sit front and center as we watch childbirth videos as a class, right there in their living room. They enter tid-bits to their mother's stories about their births, adding, The cord was wrapped around my neck and I looked like a big blueberry-face coming out! I love how comfortable they are with the subject. I love that they are our neighbors.

I was surprised that we are the only ones in the class having a home birth. There is a couple that's giving birth in a birthing center, but the rest are headed to the hospital. Our teacher made the mistake of saying that home birth is best, as she then had to backtrack as the class verbally took playful offense to her comment. But I was glad she said it since we're the only ones. She's had a hospital birth and a homebirth, so she would know.

An automatic nursery appeared at our house recently. We went from having one precious blanket that I bought on Craigslist to having an entire set-up for baby. Erik's dad (who has two very young sons and lives in Italy) sent us all of the baby stuff that they recently used. It's all top-of-the-line Italian preciousness. We are eternally grateful. Soooooooo grateful. Thank you, Rick!!!!

Potties, baby carrier-thing, high chair, clothes...

The beautiful cradle that Erik's grandfather handmade for his little brother (his grandfather tragically died in a plane crash last year - he was a pilot).

A SWEET buggy-stroller-pram!

And a swing...

And a crib (and a play pin)!

And we've been working on the house a little.

Remember this?

Little better now...

And we got on the roof and cleaned out leaves from gutters and places...

See him?

Puppy says, "Hi!"

And Firecracker says hi, too.

Meet Firecracker

Drinking

Thumb-sucking

Face shot

Feet!

Sweet little baby :)

Howard Brown

A year ago in February, I served on a jury that convicted a man of second degree murder for beating his grandfather to death. We spent several days listening to the gory and heart-wrenching details that not only described a murder, but that also described a very broken home. As each person took the stand, their words were their truth, and their truths wrestled my brain to the ground day after day. Their personalities were animated and strong, and their faces hung in my memory long after the trial, like distant relatives I had just met at a family reunion. Each time someone took the stand, I would retrace the details as to where I had heard mention of them in earlier testimonies and how they fit into the complicated puzzle.

Thank goodness for my co-jurors, all great people faced with the same complicated obligation. Such an interesting experience to be thrown into a group of people of all different backgrounds, ages and ethnicity, all charged with deciding the fate of a man. Not your typical group project in college. As a group, I felt we were quite lucky to have the personalities we had - we all got along for the most part, and we had a good time over drinks (hard not to do). I have a feeling that were we not in a government building and someone would have passed a joint around, we may have all stayed friends for life. They made as great an impact on me as the witnesses and the accused (and the dead). I looked forward everyday to hearing about the previous nights of my co-jurors, catching-up over coffee breaks and lunches. With the stresses in all of our lives, our [forced] time together seemed like forever at the time, but it was very short looking back. Now that I have moved away from those folks, it is a greater possibility that I will never see them again: not the new-mom broker or the landscaping dad-to-be, not the pilates chic, not the bad-ass chef/mom/restaurant-owner/writer, not the woman who dressed as if it was Halloween every day.

I will never forget what it felt like to decide someone's fate for the worst. The 911 recording played over and over in my head as I fought the instinct that told me I had no business being there and deciding such a thing. Heavy-hearted, I remember wishing that I could confide in my closest friends (and husband) so that they could help me with this burden I had of deciding what to do. But of course we were all silenced by the law. Thankfully no other opinions could further confuse the already confusing evidence swirling in my brain. In the end, it was the faint voice of Howard Brown himself that told us what to do. After each of us listening through headphones for what seemed like 100 times, we all heard the eerie "Tony did it".

Howard Brown, a man with a "pip in his step", someone who liked to eat pig's ears (or was it feet) when the neighbor's brought it over, someone that wasn't even close to dying - Mr. Brown fought for his life, and his grandson is paying with his life for taking the life of another. The haze of the trial and the sleepless nights finally cleared once I finally moved on from the fact that I did not ask to judge this man's life but was chosen for whatever reason. I did the very best that I could and I only hope that should I ever be in a role reversal, that my life is weighed with as much thought, contemplation and respect as was given by the jury on which I served.

21 Weeks

Isn't it funny how we count pregnancy and babies' ages in weeks? I never understood that until I got pregnant and quickly became aware that everything is measured in weeks because every week is so critical (in an infant's life, too). Every week there is something new and major going on that wasn't going on the week before. And the milestone weeks are the ones you wait for - 14 or so weeks may bring the hope of morning sickness' end, and 17-20 weeks brings the hope of feeling your baby move.

Last week was the 20th week, and while I waited (bored out of my mind) in the Dr.'s waiting room (GP, not OB), I felt the first little flutters and pings of our child moving around. I was so stunned (as most women are), that I immediately held my tummy tightly with both hands and internally begged for another movement. As I stared intensely into the air, concentrating on feeling something, I felt it again and knew for sure that it wasn't gas or something else - it was the little creature inside of me, finally big enough to be felt. Talk about joy. I stared into space, grinning from ear-to-ear in a waiting room full of strangers that must have thought I was having a secret orgasm or something.

Since then, I have felt that same feeling pretty regularly. It still feels like little flutters and "rolling" - no real major kicks yet. As my midwife calls me, I am pretty text book in terms of when I hit my milestones and how big I am. Never have I been OK with being so ordinary and not unique. But a way in which I maybe haven't been that ordinary is my lack of obsessing. Many moms by this point have experienced a lot of anxiety and emotional ups-and-downs regarding their pregnancy (miscarriage and other things). Other than my mom's death and the emotion that has surrounded that, I have been very calm and relaxed with it all (maybe too relaxed...?), and haven't really obsessed about anything. I think I am just busy enough with the house and work that I don't really focus on it so much. If anything, I expect that I'll become more and more anxious about a natural birth at home (because of the pain, nothing else), but I'm trying to be cool about it (as I read birth story after birth story about excruciating pain and women having to access their animal brain just to get through it...). Until then, I am more obsessive about finishing the house so that I can enjoy myself when the baby's born. I don't want to be holding a newborn with postpartum depression, and crying about how much I hate the wallpaper everywhere. If I didn't have like 5 rooms left to remodel and decorate, I would probably be more obsessive about my pregnancy, but who knows.

The house is coming along well. I finally finished pulling down wallpaper in one of the bathrooms and will begin painting it soon. I have fun looking online for stuff for the baby room, but everything seems too this or that or too expensive. Hopefully the shipment of baby stuff from Erik's dad will arrive soon (he is thankfully sending us all of his baby stuff that he used with his kids) - that may help me start to figure that room out a bit. All in all, I'm having a good time decorating and figuring rooms out. It's been a little stressful with our budget, but thank goodness for garage sales, thrift stores and Craig's List - honestly, our house would be empty without those things.

The last of the wallpaper (in this room...).

Our Chinese torture tool.


The pregnant contractor (boy, was she slow...).

Erik will be heading out to DC next week for a long 10-day visit. He begged and begged me to go with him for one last hurrah in DC without a baby, but it's just too expensive. By the time we'd buy our ticket and pay for every meal out, it would be like two possible car payments (which we're trying to buy), so it just didn't make sense for me when we're so tight. But I'm sooo excited that he gets to see his friends and family, and I will just use that time to be productive on the house...

Parts of Austin, including our backyard, have started to explode into spring. While many parts of the country are getting hammered with snow and last minute season storms, we are experiencing 70-degree days and blooming daffodils :)

Our daffodils - who knew!