My favorite blogging tradition

(Previous years: 2009, 2008, 2007.)

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
Got pregnant. Painted a room. Attended a French wedding.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I actually did make resolutions this year, and looking over them, I would say yes, I kept all five. And I'm very proud of myself for that. I don't think I'll make any for 2011, though. Dealing with the giant life change that's headed our way in just a few weeks should be daunting enough.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes. Several in-person friends, not to mention quite a few bloggers.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
France.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
Just, you know, a baby here on the outside instead of in my uterus. And maybe some disposable income.

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
May 8, when we found out I was pregnant, and September 2, when we found out we were having a boy.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I would say managing to support Torsten in doing what he wanted for his career, i.e., leaving his job to start his own company. It was a huge change and a lot of risk, but he is so much happier and more fulfilled now, and so am I.

9. What was your biggest failure?
That's an interesting question. I guess this would be the flip side of my answer to the last question--sometimes letting the stress of being the sole breadwinner get to me. It has been an adjustment for sure.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, other than morning sickness.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
We bought almost nothing for ourselves this year, with our new budget in place, so I guess I would have to say all the baby stuff. Like, you know, the crib.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Like last year, I'm going to say Torsten here. He has absolutely blown me away with his incredible work on and dedication to his company, without sacrificing our marriage and quality time together as a result. He works so much, but when he's not working, he's very present, and he is very good at prioritizing so that the important non-work things, like childbirth class, still get done. He has been incredibly supportive and involved throughout this pregnancy despite the stress of work, and I can't wait to see what he's like as a dad.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The Tea Party.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Our mortgage. Sigh.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I'll give you one guess.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
This is embarrassing, but Haven't Met You Yet by Michael Buble.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
b) thinner or fatter?
c) richer or poorer?
a) Happier
b) Fatter in the belly, thinner everywhere else
c) Poorer in terms of current cash flow, richer in terms of future income prospects

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Um. Earning money?

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Vomiting. But it was in the name of a very good cause, so I'm not complaining. Just saying that if/when I get pregnant again, I will have the fluid taken out of my lap-band the second the nausea hits, and hopefully that will help me avoid the miserable weeks of puking that accompanied the first trimester this time around.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
In our house here in Denver, just the two of us and the dog. It was very low-key and pretty much perfect. Even though I'm sure that next year's Christmas will be pretty much the exact opposite and yet equally perfect.

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?
More so with Torsten (and I am telling you, I don't know if it's the oxytocin or what, but since getting pregnant I just feel OVERWHELMED with love for him, like I can't even believe how much I love him, and I just want to grab him and squeeze him all the time because I love him so much), and for the first time with this baby.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
House. The Colbert Report.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No.

24. What was the best book you read?
Huh. I am reading The Unhealthy Truth now, and that's been very interesting. I also really enjoyed The Help, like pretty much everyone else in the world.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Cee Lo Green. There, I said it. And yes, this is on the basis of his one profane song that I LOVE SO VERY MUCH.

26. What did you want and get?
Pregnant.

27. What did you want and not get?
A million dollars?

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Toy Story 3 was great. But, to be fair, I only saw like three or four movies all year.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was in DC on a business trip. Torsten was in Denver, so that was slightly grump-inducing, but my mom was in DC too, so that helped, and we had dinner at a friend's house, which was lovely. I turned 26.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I really can't think of anything. As I said last year about 2009, it was a great year exactly as it was.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
Elastic panels figured heavily.

32. What kept you sane?
My husband, for sure.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I still love me some Barack Obama.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Let's see. Health care. Gay marriage. DADT. I'm sure there were more.

35. Who did you miss?
I'm going to steal last year's answer here: Most of my friends and family, since pretty much all of them live far away now.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
More Denver people. Including Emily and her family, and another Emily, and Artemisia (except I can't even remember if she and I first met this year or last year). And some of the couples in our childbirth class, and several other lovely people.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
Mostly things really do turn out fine. Not always, but often enough.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
For the first time ever, I actually have a response to this question, and it's because that Michael Buble song that I mentioned in question 16? It really reminds me of pregnancy:

"I promise you, kid, that I give so much more than I get/I just haven't met you yet/I might have to wait, I'll never give up/I guess it's half timing, and the other half's luck/Wherever you are, whenever it's right/You'll come out of nowhere and into my life/And I know that we can be so amazing/And, baby, your love is gonna change me/And now I can see every possibility."

Happy New Year, everybody!

Maternity photos eeee

Torsten and I booked our maternity photo session months ago, after discovering an amazing, and incredibly reasonably priced, photographer online by chance. I loved her blog and portfolio, and after a couple of quick email exchanges, I knew that she totally got the vibe we wanted--not the traditional studio portraits involving bare bellies and gauze, but more of a regular family photo shoot wherein my pregnant belly was considered part of the family.

We also knew we wanted it to be outdoors, somewhere that really looked like Colorado, so after some consultation with our photographer, we settled on Red Rocks Park. And it turned out to be the perfect choice.

I am so, so happy with these photos. I don't think I've ever liked so many photos of myself out of a single batch before in my life. All photos are courtesy of the absolutely amazing Kristy Rowe of Moodeous Photography. You can see a much bigger set of them here.

Pet peeve: how long pregnancy ACTUALLY is

Yesterday marked exactly one month until my due date. Which means that technically when people ask when I'm due, I could say, "The 19th," and not need to qualify it with a month, because it's the NEXT 19th. Yikes! I think I'm going to keep saying "next month" until we actually get to January, though. But still. Less than a month away.

Speaking of pregnancy months, here is a pet peeve of mine: it feels like every pregnant woman I know complains that nobody ever told her that pregnancy is actually TEN months long, not nine (which, given that everybody seems to complain about this, makes it surprising that they all seem so shocked by this apparent revelation, since you would think they would have heard each other complaining about it in the past).

But my real issue is this: pregnancy is NOT ten months long. It's not really even quite nine months long. Let me break this down for you. Those of you who have been pregnant before likely know this, but I didn't know some of it until I myself got pregnant, so let's start at the beginning.

Pregnancy is measured as being 40 weeks long. As in, when you hit 40 weeks, that is your due date. BUT, the 40 weeks are counted from the date of your last menstrual period, NOT from the date of ovulation or conception (and those can actually happen a day or so apart as well). Most women ovulate at least two weeks after the first day of their period. So for those first two weeks of "pregnancy," you are NOT actually pregnant. You are only considered to have been pregnant retroactively, but during those first two weeks you could easily have avoided getting pregnant, by using birth control or not having sex (or not going through fertility procedures, and so on--the point is, during those two weeks, the pregnancy was not a foregone conclusion).

Got it? For the first two of the 40 weeks, you were NOT pregnant, even though that time is counted as part of your pregnancy.

So for one thing, pregnancy is actually only 38 weeks from conception to due date. Though sometimes it pushes closer to 40 weeks again if the baby comes late.

But let's just say, for a second, that pregnancy really is exactly 40 weeks long. THAT IS STILL NOT TEN MONTHS. That is approximately ten LUNAR months, but we DO NOT COUNT TIME IN LUNAR MONTHS. If we did, we would say that a year is 13 months long, but we don't. We say it is 12 months long, because that's what our calendars say--all of our months except February are longer than four weeks.

To be exact, a 30-day month is 4.29 weeks long, and a 31-day month is 4.43 weeks long. Let's average those out and round down a tad to account for February (or we could divide 365 by 12, and then divide that by 7, which would give us the same result) and say that a month is, on average, 4.35 weeks long.

So, if we count pregnancy as 40 weeks and a month as 4.35 weeks, that would make pregnancy about 9.2 months long. And if we count the actual time that you are pregnant, assuming an on-time delivery, as 38 weeks, that makes pregnancy about 8.7 months long. NOT EVEN NINE MONTHS.

In case your eyes crossed when I started using decimal points, I charted my cycle the month I got pregnant, so I have exact dates that I can use to demonstrate this more concretely:

My last period started on April 13. I ovulated on April 26. My due date is January 19 (though some calculators/wheels list it as January 18, which I think is actually more accurate--but is not what's in my chart). So, let's see. April 13 to January 19? NOT ten months. April 26 to January 19? DEFINITELY not ten months.

I KNOW, the point pregnant women are trying to make is that pregnancy is long and often feels even longer, but it drives me NUTS when they try to express this by talking about how it is ten months long. IT IS NOT TEN MONTHS LONG.

Nine months is long enough that we all have PLENTY of legs to stand on when it comes to complaining about the misery of the experience. Let's not all undermine our credibility by exaggerating just to make our plights sound THAT much more dire.

Give away MORE of someone else's money!

You know, pseudostoops' Giving My Money Away extravaganza is going on all week. Which means that if you haven't clicked through since Monday, there are THREE more posts where you can donate just by leaving a comment. For easy reference, here are the three:

Today: The Women's Treatment Center
Yesterday: Erie Family Health Center
Tuesday: The Night Ministry

Off you go!

Pregnant body image

I'm 35 weeks pregnant. Just over a month from my due date, only a couple weeks from full term. Very, obviously pregnant. Strangers comment on the belly and ask when my due date is. I wake up at least three times per night to pee. The baby kicks me regularly in the ribs. My belly is round and the only clothes that fit me include giant elastic panels.

And yet... sometimes I don't see it. Sometimes I don't feel like I look pregnant at all. Maybe it's because I'm tall, maybe it's because of the way I'm carrying, but even though I'm at the point now where I underestimate the size of my belly and accidentally bump it into things, it doesn't feel to me like the stereotypical basketball-under-the-shirt look. It doesn't feel like it protrudes, exactly.

But I'm also very comfortable with my pregnant body. All my weight gain has been in my belly... I haven't been retaining water (so far). My weight gain has been reasonable, and even with the pregnancy weight, I'm still significantly lighter than I was before I had my lap-band surgery. Maybe that's part of it. I'm not having struggles with the loss of my thinner body, because I have very clear memories of having a much fatter body. Seeing pictures of non-pregnant thin people doesn't incite any sort of jealousy or envy in me; I am pregnant, I am supposed to have a big belly, it is healthy, and honestly it's nice for once not to feel like I should be sucking in my gut.

I think it's just because it's happened gradually. I didn't wake up one day with a 5- or 6-pound baby in my belly, and so as it has grown slowly rounder and rounder, I have adapted with it. The same way you probably don't notice your child getting taller overnight. It just seems to me that my belly has always been round and big, and it's hard to remember what I used to look like.

So it came as a bit of a shock yesterday, when I was looking through the photos of my pregnancy progress, to realize that I've gone from this:


To this:


As Torsten says, "From slim to rhino in just 35 weeks."

(We'll forgive him the rhino comment since he did refer to me as slim. Fair trade, yes?)

Do something good! For free!

This year, once again, the lovely pseudostoops is doing her holiday Giving My Money Away extravaganza. All you have to do is leave a comment, and SHE will donate more money to a worthy cause. So go! Give away someone else's money and feel good about yourself in the process!

Neighborly holidays

Two days ago a box from 1-800-Flowers arrived on the doorstep. It contained this snowman plant:


Isn't that cute? Of course, the snowman head was in a separate compartment in the box, waiting for us to stick in the plant ourselves, and I couldn't bring myself to do it because I didn't want to CRUSH the beautiful plant, so instead we have a plant in a white pot with three candies on one side, and a snowman head lying on our coffee table. But I still love it!

Anyway, it took us forever to find the card (turned out it was taped to the outside of the shipping box, which Torsten had tossed in the corner), but when we did we discovered that it was a little holiday gift from our next-door neighbors. Isn't that nice of them? They are already the nicest ever, doing things like giving us a jump when we accidentally leave our car trunk cracked all night and the interior light kills the battery, and helping Torsten carry our nursery furniture upstairs, and taking care of Montana when we went to the mountains in September, and promising to take care of her again when I go into labor.

They are wonderful, is the point, and nice and thoughtful and generally everything you want in a neighbor. And since they have done so many nice things for us and saved us a ton of money in the process (in dog boarding costs alone), not to mention time and stress, and since it is hard for us to reciprocate because they rarely ask for or seem to need anything, we had decided that an appropriate way to thank them would be to stretch our budget to buy them a modest gift card to a local restaurant, and put it in a holiday card, and bring it to them along with a plate of homemade cookies. So we bought the gift card, and are planning to make the cookies this weekend.

Torsten will be making his traditional German Christmas cookies, which honestly? I do not like. They are dry and crunchy, and I like my cookies soft and chewy. To be fair, Torsten doesn't like my cookies either. I seem to be in the minority on not liking his cookies (they are full of so much butter that it is a WONDER I don't love them), so I have absolutely no qualms handing them out as gifts to others, but I DO want to make at least one thing that's to my own taste to include on the plate, so that if one of the neighbors is ALSO not a fan of crumbly cookies, there will be something on the plate for them too.

So now I am stewing over what, exactly, to make. I was thinking about peanut butter buckeyes, which I made last year, and loved, but since Torsten doesn't like peanut butter and I won't have family in town this year, seems like the perfect thing to make and then give away (I mean, not ALL of them, OBVIOUSLY I would keep some for myself, I mean PIGLET NEEDS PEANUT BUTTER BUCKEYES, but that way I won't eat the whole batch myself). But also, that isn't a cookie. So maybe I should make a cookie too? Like a traditional chocolate chip? Or something more unusual or fancier?

What are your favorite cookie recipes? Extra helpful if they are things that are generally universally liked, since we don't know a whole lot about this family's tastes.

(Also, is it kind of bad that I am a little annoyed that now that this lovely plant has shown up, it will look like we are doing our own holiday gift for them as a reciprocation? I am guessing it would not be so festive if I wrote on the card, "WE PURCHASED THIS GIFT CARD FOR YOU BEFORE YOUR PLANT ARRIVED, SO THERE.")

Visiting Santa and other miscellany

We bought our Christmas tree on Saturday. We let it settle and drop its branches for a day, and then decorated it on Sunday. On Sunday night we turned on the Christmas tree lights and then lit the menorah and sang the Chanukah blessing. It made me think that we will be just fine raising a multicultural kid.

Also this weekend, Torsten put out the holiday lights on the bushes by our driveway, and made a bunch of pizzas that are now in the freezer, waiting to be eaten post-baby. And he hung all the art in the nursery. The yellow lamp we ordered is now all set up, and the only thing that's missing is the blinds. Those should be arriving in a couple of weeks, and then I will be able to post pictures of the finished room, awaiting Piglet.

This weekend we also attended a holiday party. It was the first time in awhile that I had encountered a room full of friendly strangers. It occurs to me that I don't have many occasions to interact with people I don't know--no office, no commute, nothing but errands and other such things where people mostly don't talk to each other, you know? So it was at this holiday party that for the first time I got a bunch of comments from strangers about being pregnant. Things like "Oh, you look like you're getting close!" and "Wow, look at that belly!"

And you know what? I liked it. But I'm not changing my policy about not making similar comments to other people, because you just never know, ever, if someone really is pregnant, and if so, if they're happy about it, or if they want to talk about it. So I keep my mouth shut. But I like it when other people comment about my pregnancy, so there we are.

I'm 34 weeks along today. According to my midwife, this is the magic number: now that I'm this far along, if I go into labor, they won't try to stop it. It still would not be optimal to have the baby now--he would likely have some respiratory and eating issues, and would have to stay in the hospital for a few days at the very least, possibly longer--but we are at the point now where if he were born, he shouldn't have any major health issues, and therefore the harms of medically stopping labor outweigh the benefits.

Still, I want him to go to 40 weeks. At least. Every last day he can spend in utero helps him develop that much more.

Simultaneously, I am dying to meet him. Six weeks until my due date is just not very many weeks. We are feeling relatively prepared--nursery done, childbirth class nearly completed, lots of food in the freezer, minds wrapped around the idea that there is going to be a baby--and I feel so, so bonded to him already. But I have absolutely no mental image of what he will look like when he's born. I still swear that he looks like Torsten--and I hope that's true--but I can't visualize what that would actually look like on a baby. I have truly no mental picture whatsoever, not of his coloring or anything else. I wonder if this means that when he is born he will look like a stranger.

It's weird to think that in approximately six weeks, I won't be pregnant anymore. Just like that. I mean, not that it's a fast or easy process getting from not pregnant to pregnant and back again, but still, one day I will be pregnant and the next day I won't.

I've been wanting to start an annual photo similar to Erin's pumpkin patch series, of our family in some sort of context to see how it changes every year. I'm thinking us in front of the Christmas tree would be a pretty good location for that. Hopefully we can get it together to take the first one soon. And don't worry, of course I'll post it.

Speaking of holiday photos, I feel like my reader and Twitter stream are full of people talking about their experience taking their kid to see Santa. A lot of them are in the situation where the kid is too young to understand or enjoy the experience, so they really do it for the parents. Which is great for them--I love that they enjoy it and get meaning out of it, and I'm sure they will always treasure the photos, and I imagine that it's something that many people look forward to doing with their kids for years before they even have kids.

But I personally have no attachment to the idea of a Santa photo--other than that I would probably laugh really hard at a photo of Piglet freaking out on Santa's lap, and that's because I am a bad, mean person--so I'm thinking we'll hold off on that particular tradition until he is old enough to actually want to go see Santa himself. Unless it turns out that Torsten is attached to the idea of a Santa photo from a young age, in which case, I am happy to brave the crowd to get the picture. But I will insist that we not dress the baby up in red velour with white fur trim.

What about you? Do you or would you take your kids to see Santa, even if they were too young to really get it?

Good decisions

When I moved to DC, I thought I'd stay there forever. It was the perfect city for me. (I enumerated all the reasons why I loved it here--in one of the very first posts I ever wrote on this blog.) Everything was right about it for me at the time: I had a network of friends and family (most notably my sister) there; I had a great nonprofit job and, after awhile, the opportunity to move into an even better one (where I still am); it had great public transportation and lots to do; it was lovely and vibrant and just right for someone single and just out of college, and then for a new couple. Moving there was absolutely the right decision. (Plus, you know, I met Torsten while we were both living there, so that was a bonus.)

Moving away from DC was also absolutely the right decision. Denver is perfect for us, long-term. I know I've written about it before; the only thing it lacks is family close by, but our families are good about traveling, and in certain instances (ahem in-laws ahem), it can be nice to have that bit of distance. And everything else about this city is glorious: the size, the weather, the mountains, the atmosphere, the people.

I picked the college I wanted to attend when I was 11 year old. My sister was looking into college applications, and one day I sat down with her giant book of the top 300, or whatever it was, colleges in the country, and read through them and picked the one I wanted to go to. Then when I was in high school and it was time to actually think about colleges, I decided it was dumb to go to a school that I had picked when I was 11. So I picked out a bunch of others to look at instead. But I visited the one that I picked when I was 11, and as soon as I visited, I knew it was the school for me. And I went there. And I was right. I guess sometimes 11 is old enough to make big decisions.

I knew I wanted to marry Torsten the day I met him. He knew it too. I still made him wait nearly a year to propose. Both of those were the right decision too.

It's funny to think about how you got to where you are; some of these decisions were carefully deliberated over and thought through, but others were sort of random. Torsten and I met on Craigslist; the decision to get married was obviously more thorough, but the fact that we even know each other is completely random. In college I originally wanted to move to Chicago, but at the last minute my summer internship there fell through and my sister helped me find a place to live in DC, since she was living there at the time. Otherwise I have no idea if I would have moved there after graduation or not.

Sometimes I think that things have a way of working themselves out, and other times I see people who've endured unspeakable things and then I think that I have just been lucky so far. And not all my decisions have been good, for sure. But the big ones, they definitely have.

What about you? What are some of the best decisions you've ever made? And did you realize at the time what an impact they would have?