3 years + big belly

We just celebrated our 3rd anniversary:

In honor of this happy occasion, I thought we'd share a few recent big belly photos...

Pickle at the state fair

Pickle at the state fair, visiting the Gedney Pickle booth

Pickle at 22 weeks

Goodbye Wallpaper, Hello Paint

Here are just a few photos from last weekend's adventure in de-wallpapering and painting...it was a trying process, that took (of course) longer than expected and tried our patience on many occasions. But thankfully, the swearing that occurred was always at the uncooperative inanimate objects we were dealing with...wallpaper, glue, leaking faucets, holes in walls, spackle, paint, brushes, etc...never at each other :). And we are generally happy with the end result (though we won't get to enjoy it until we move back there, next year!), and with our decision to go ahead and do it this year, as we can't imagine it would have been any easier or less stressful with a six-month-old around!

Here Andy is spraying with de-wallpapering-gunk, to take off the bottom layer of wallpaper remains/glue.


Jess demonstrates her Shrek-ness during a momentary lapse of sanity.


Many thanks to Karlie, who donated lots of time helping us on Friday and Saturday! Here she is about to start painting primer on the kitchen wall (you can see what the kitchen walls looked like underneath the wallpaper)

Thanks also to Liz and Dave who were in town and helped on Saturday! Here they are painting the first top-coat on the bathroom walls.

The bathroom we decided to paint a nearly-white color, as we couldn't really find anything to actually match the beigish-yellow tiles. The lighting for photos never really worked well in the bathroom, so these aren't quite representative, but you get the idea...generally calmer and brighter than the 70's floral wallpaper.

The bathroom, before & after:



We decided to opt for a more sage-like green in the kitchen, with a dark green trim. Again, the lighting here isn't particularly revealing--in the before picture, the trim and green in the wallpaper is like a light sea-foam green. In the finished shot, its a less-blue, more subdued sage green. Like the bathroom, its less busy without all the patterns on the wall, and a bit more to our taste in terms of color palette.

The kitchen, before & after:

Moving Day

Hello again. It's been a long week...here's a partial recap:

Last Wednesday was officially moving day. Thursday was spent doing non-house-related work for both Andy and I, and then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent stripping wallpaper and painting the kitchen and bathroom in our (old) house.


Step 1: Packing...Monday and Tuesday were spent packing...and packing...and packing.


Step 2: Piling...thanks to Andy, this step was almost completely done before I even got out of bed Wednesday morning.


Step 3: Loading...the moving crew (a.k.a. friends and family) showed up by 1:00 and the loading began--3 trucks, 1 car, 1 trailer, and 2 hours later, we were on the road headed for Northfield.


Step 4: Arrive!...Here it is, our new digs. We're about an hour, give or take (depending on traffic) from the Cities, for those of you who are just waiting in line to come visit.


Step 5: Unload...additional moving crew members (a.k.a. Andy's new coworkers) met us in Northfield and helped unload in no time.


Step 6: Unpack...okay, so this is just another "unload" photo. Why? Because that's about as far as we've gotten. Unpacking has occurred only in the kitchen, and the rest of the house still looks like the above scene.

Stay tuned for our exciting wallpaper and painting adventure of the weekend...

Weekend of Pre-moving Denial

Andy and I had a lovely weekend excursion to Red Wing, where we spent time with friends and family, including Jess' parents and sister who drove up for a night. The weekend flew by--maybe it was our full schedule of yummy food, outing, yummy food, outing, and so on...or maybe the fact that I at least spent the weekend in blissful denial of all the work that moving will be this week, that made it go so quickly. In any case, it was over too soon, and now Andy and I are mired in the muck of packing...but enough about that, back to the lovely weekend ;-)...

We enjoyed showing my folks around our favorite winery, Falconer Vineyards. Here we are sampling the wines.


Grandmas-to-be at the vineyard

Other than the heat, it was a lovely day for a walk to see the grapes


Looking at photos from Colorado


And what is Jess knitting, you ask? I'm so glad you did! It's an oh-so-soft baby sleeping bag, well on its way to completion--so stay tuned for pictures when its done...

Sadly, as I mentioned, the weekend flew by, and before we knew it we were back here facing the packing and cleaning. Wednesday is the day--I'll be emailing our new address and phone number out to family and friends in the next week or so--if I miss you then please send me an email to get it!

Baby Development Update: All's Well

It's been an exciting week for us on the baby-anticipation front! Yesterday we had our level 2 ultrasound, and are happy to report that all is well. Baby is developing normally and we aren't at increased risk for anything, basically!

Pickle, looking up and opening his/her mouth (week 19)

During the ultrasound they looked at all kinds of things--brain structures, organs, blood flow--it was really fascinating. Have YOU ever seen your child's cerebellum? Kidneys? Diaphragm? Heart? Aorta? We have! (And hopefully never will have reason to again!)

Pickle's arm, bent with hands near his/her face (week 19)

The lab tech and doctor both told us our baby was very active, which we'll take to be a good sign :). And that reminds me, the other excitement of earlier this week--I finally felt the baby move! So exciting! I've felt it several times since, but its still pretty transitory and fluttery-like. From what we hear it will only be a few more weeks until we're feeling hard kicks that Andy will be able to feel on the outside as well--as it is I go to feel my stomach with my hand and can't even tell anything's going on inside, though as we saw on the ultrasound our baby is definitely on the move even when I can't feel it (inside OR out).

I've also had what we're considering my first official craving, and can hardly believe I'm turning out to be such a stereotypical pregnant lady--it's pickles. I've gone through a large jar of baby dills in a week and a half, pretty much by myself. In fact, the first time I felt the baby move was after eating a bunch of baby dills and singing a rousing rendition of the Gedney pickle song with Andy (which Andy, Minnesota native, has been thoughtful enough to teach me)--hence the baby's current nickname, Pickle.

Gedney...it's the Minnesota pickle...

One Week to Moving Day

One week from today--the 15th--we say goodbye for one year to this lovely house we've been inhabiting in St. Paul, and head for the new sights and sounds of Northfield. The amount of things to be done, between research, teaching prep, packing, cleaning, and fixing up the house, has led to a massive overload of Jess' system, wherein she has been able to do very little except knit and watch movies, as her way of (not very productively) coping with all that needs to happen.


We finally started packing...not much, considering we have a whole house of...treasures...but we did manage to sort through and package up most of our clothes & books.



In the two or three days following our move, we'll be back at the house to tackle de-wallpaper-ing and painting the kitchen & bathroom, shown above (aren't they just lovely?). We have about two days until our first renter moves in, then another two until the second moves in (and two more renters move in by Sept 1st)...so we're hoping to have this project wrapped up by the weekend after we move.

It all seems quite do-able until I remember that in those 3 days we're also actually moving to Northfield, unpacking and settling in there, and trying to get our lives in order in time to start working again. Not that I can imagine actually having my life in order! It will be a frightening day when the first day of classes rolls around and I have to go out in front of the undergrads as is, unprepared due to my own procrastinating habits! (Why can't summer be longer????)

Hot Fun in the Summertime

Summer Fun 1: Knitting

Having finished the adorable baby bell bottoms, I found myself baby-project-less! I quickly ordered some more yarn to remedy that situation, and in the meantime took up a project I had begun in late spring and set aside: a sweater for Andy. Unfortunately, this happened just as the Twin Cities hit a week of 90-degree-plus weather, and we really haven't had much relief since. So I have been knitting a large man-sized sweater with bulky wool yarn in a hot non-air-conditioned house--don't I have great timing? Luckily, due to all the work I've been avoiding, I got a lot of it done in that week and a half or so between baby projects. Here's the bulk of the body of the sweater--I've since started a sleeve, too.

The color isn't very accurate in this photo--it's really a dark navy blue. It's going to be a cardigan with a zipper, so this is actually the entire width of the sweater (but it stretches WAY out due to the 4x4 ribbing)

A few days after taking this photo, yarn for the next baby project arrived, so Andy's sweater has once again been temporarily shelved. Once we move in two weeks, though, we'll have central air--so I'm thinking it will much more tolerable to work on it in that non-oven-like setting!

Summer Fun 2: Reading

Recently we've spent many hours sitting at home reading Harry Potter together--Andy reading aloud, while I knit. It's probably been the most productive spurt of knitting I've had in a year, at least, thanks to the addictive nature of the book (and the 750+ pages translated into quite a few hours, especially when reading out loud)--and we just finished it last night! Our pregnancy books tell us that around week 18 is when the fetus' hearing comes online--we we were just in time to introduce the little Nelson baby both to its Daddy's voice and to its first bedtime story, Harry Potter (which we're pretty sure it won't be allowed to actually read until its at least a pre-teen, due to the violence and difficulty level of the books--at least the later ones in the series).

Summer Fun 3: Canoeing

We own an awesome canoe...which we, as a couple, have only used a handful of times. Despite living within 10 miles of at least a dozen lakes, having the necessary equipment to mount the canoe on top of our car, and finally having a garage to safely store the canoe in, we just never seem to think to turn lazy weekend days into fabulous canoeing adventures. But having baby on the way has been an inspiration in this regard--now when we think of something fun we could do, we also think "this time next year, when we have a baby, would we be able to just pick up and go?"...whether a movie at the cheap theater or a picnic lunch in the canoe, the answer is often no. So we've been trying to take advantage of baby's current in-utero status to have some fun time as a couple. Here are a few photos from last weekend, when we finally took the canoe out for a romp around a local lake:

Baby at 18 Weeks

We had an appointment on Monday and finally got to see another ultrasound--baby is definitely alive and kicking, though I can't feel any of the movement yet (soon, they tell me, SOON!). Our doctor was in a bit of a rush this particular day. In the past when we had ultrasounds they just printed and gave us photos as a matter of due course, so that is what I was expecting--but she had practically started packing up the machine with no photos at all this time, until I asked if we could have one. She kindly obliged, though the result is not exactly the best view of baby (earlier we saw a great full-body view). We had said we didn't want to know the sex, so she was staying well away from any possible view that would lead to speculation--staying SO well away, in fact, that really all you can see here is the head, and a little bit of a hand. ...but it's OUR baby's head, and we're happy to have a picture of it! (You'll just have to trust us that the rest of him/her is attached!)

Inside the belly at 18 weeks gestation...

...outside the belly at 18 weeks!

Safe & Sound

Hi everyone--I thought rather than replying to all the emails I'd just do a quick blog post. Andy and I are home safe and sound (for those of you not in the Twin Cities area, the 35W bridge collapsed during rush hour and they're working on rescue efforts in the Mississippi and bridge).