Full Term

Well, here we are: full term. I would say that now we start waiting...except that we've already been waiting for nine months! So maybe now we start the anxious, "it could happen any day" waiting. I think we're pretty ready. Sure there are more work things to get done, so every extra day/week will get us closer to fulfilling all the teaching/research/preaching obligations we have made for the month of December...but the bulk of everything is done, or at least "done enough," should Pickle decide to arrive ahead of schedule.

The belly this morning: day 1 of week 38. Just think, this could be the last belly photo!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that a Pickle soon would be there...
Here we have our stockings, two of which I knit last year, and Pickle's which I just finished a couple weeks ago. No name yet--we have to wait and see if Pickle is a he or a she!

Pickle & Knitting Update

Here it is, the baby sleeping bag/blanket! I never did find quite the buttons I had imagined, but these wooden ones worked out just fine. I tried to find our dear friend Furious George to model using the blanket for us, since he did such a fine job with the diaper wrap, but it appears he has not been unpacked and I really have no idea where he is. Anyhow, the blanket is knit with two strands of KnitPicks Crayon--it is the softest yarn I have ever worked with, and machine washable--perfect for a baby blanket. [If you are having trouble envisioning how it works, I'll clue you in by mentioning that the top (right, in this photo) is actually sewn together like a hood, and then the rest is just a long blanket folded in half and buttoned up the sides so that the baby can't kick it off.]


Meanwhile, Andy's formerly hulk-like sweater-ish thing has now graduated to "hey look--its a sweater!" recognizability. This will, in fact, be a cardigan, but is currently sans zipper (hence Andy is holding it together in the front). And when will it be a cardigan? Well, sometime after I buy a zipper :).


I am now in week 26, i.e. trimester #3--where did the time go? I am also, as you can see, getting HUGE. At least I feel huge. I do occasionally see women who are 8 and 9 months pregnant, and am reminded that this is not, in fact, HUGE, this is just BIG...I still have a ways to go. I have already (several times) had the unfortunate experience of trying to fit through a doorway when I had not opened the door widely enough to let my new-size self fit through...oops. My apologies to Pickle for the random bumps into doors and doorways!

Pickle seems to be doing just fine--kicking more than ever. S/he particularly seems to enjoy mid-morning and late afternoon, then late evening as times to try poking all of my internal organs. This means that our child will already not sit still through church, even when daddy is preaching (as he was last Sunday)!

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

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...

Baby Knitting

Andy spent much of the past week up in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, having a marvelous time. Meanwhile, I kept myself busy knitting and putz-ing around the house. Not the most productive week, work-wise, but I now have two completed pairs of baby pants to show for it!

These are "Baby Bell Bottoms" and I love them--elastic + drawstring waist + super-soft Shine Sport Yarn + fully washable = awesome baby clothes. Now, if you take a moment to check out the photos in the actual pattern, you'll notice that mine don't quite look proportional...this is because I cannot get gauge no matter how hard I try (and I generally don't try that hard). I don't know why, my stitches are just weird. So as I finished my pants--particularly the blue pair--I thought "is this possibly going to fit OVER a diaper? It looks like I need another 3 inches of waist!" and indeed, I do--but I had reached the full measurement for the pants, and didn't have the picture from the pattern nearby to compare, so I thought "oh well, must be close to right" and stopped anyway. Turns out my baby's pants will be long in the legs, and low-riders, thanks to my abnormally tall stitches that made the crotch about 2 or 3 inches higher than it should have been. ...sigh. Its a good thing I have a few years to practice before my child notices such oddities in the clothes I make for him/her.

Here we have a knitting creation I finally finished a few weeks ago, at the end of June. It's a wool diaper wrap, to go over a cloth diaper, also known as a "wool soaker". I knit it because 1) I stumbled across the pattern online, 2) had recently learned we were pregnant and wanted to make anything baby, and QUICK, and 3) I had random scraps of Wool of the Andes lying around the house. Now, this isn't the right gauge either--its supposed to be the newborn size, but I'm guessing is more the 3-6 month range. (I'm learning that anything I knit never looks quite as cute or proportional or fitted as it is supposed to...luckily, I don't really care.) It was easy to knit, but then sat around for weeks waiting for me to buy and sew-in the velcro closures. Once it was finished, I wanted to try it out to see how well it might actually approximate the size and shape of a baby's diaper-covered butt--George the Gorilla, below, is the closest I could find to a baby-sized object around the house...and he's been wearing it ever since:

I don't know how great it will actually be in real life, seeing as my messed up gauge means its not a very tight knit, which makes me think it won't actually have all of those great leak-containing benefits of wool soakers...but I have more random half-skeins of Wool of the Andes lying around, so now that I also have extra velcro, I might try again with some smaller needles and see if I can't make a true newborn-sized one.

For those of you who don't give a darn about knitting and were only checking my blog to see more pictures of the pregnant belly...I do have a belly photo we just took, and I will add it below...but I do so hesitantly, because it truly looks identical to the week 15 shot we posted two weeks ago. So those of you who are just dying to see my growing belly will have to patient, it can only grow so much at a time!

Jess & the baby belly: week 17.

Baby BBQ

Yesterday we had a delightful time celebrating our baby-on-the-way with many good friends--and look, I'm actually posting photos the VERY NEXT DAY! (Don't expect this trend to continue.)

Many thanks to those of you who were able to come and share your well-wishes and good company with us!

Adam, meet Ella--Ella, this is Adam. No, he is in no way related to you, but seeing as those are probably cheerios in his hand, I think you two will get along just fine.

Natalie, Brian, & Toby--and their baby-on-the-way--arrive on the scene.

With Erica & Alex comes baby-on-the-way number three--it was practically a pregnancy convention!

Dane & Sigard, who chose to be photographed sans parental units...

...giving their parents their own photo opp; Marc & Katherine.

Jess, Sara, Nikki, & Paloma--the knitting contingent :-)

Paloma, managing to entertain both Mia (2 years) and Ella (1 year), neither of whom is actually her child, whilst reading my favorite children's book: My Many Colored Days, by Dr. Seuss.

Toby, a.k.a. Mr. Cool.

Ioan, looking incredulous..."you really want to take my picture?"

Proof that time flies: I was particularly excited to see these good friends again--I used to work as a nanny for this family. Billy, far left, was only 10 months old when I started working for them--here he is, almost 5 years old already!

We are *Pregnificent!

*many thanks to Pete for coining this awesome term while visiting us last week!






Well, there you have it--we're pregnant! Above you can see our progress at 6, 8, 10, and 15 weeks--we just took the 15 week photo today thanks to our new (replacement) camera arriving in the mail.

Most of you (well, hopefully all of you) who actually know us already knew we were pregnant. We're having a celebratory BBQ this weekend, and thought it was about time to put up an official blog post.

Our due date is December 28--one day before Andy's birthday, 3 days after Christmas, 3 days before New Year's, 8 days after the end of Jess's fall semester of teaching...any way you slice it, we're pretty sure this baby will be born during a hectic time, and also fairly certain we'll end up with whichever nurse/doctor/hospital staff drew the short straw and had to work over the holidays--but as long as the result is a healthy baby (and mommy and daddy!), we're game!

One very happy pregnant lady :-)

Baby's first hand-knit gift from Mom.