The end of summer, the beginning of everything else...

I'm sitting here sipping my tiny cup of coffee, enjoying the quiet before my daughter wakes up. Matt is having a swim at the gym, and I'm enjoying the peace -- I try to be especially conscious of moments like this because I know that soon, for awhile anyway, I'm going to have to find my peace in different places. (That's my way of saying I know this house will never be quiet AGAIN, for YEARS, probably. But today I'm okay with that.) It's also nice to be awake and showered and doing things before Suzannah wakes up, especially on a weekend. Everyone with kids knows that they're somehow programmed to wake up far earlier on weekends than they do on weekdays, no matter what time they went to bed the night before. Yesterday morning, my wild-haired little girl marched into the bedroom and said, "Mama, get up get up get up." Well, good morning to you too.

I've really been savoring moments in general -- I'm particularly conscious of the dwindling time we have as a family of three. Yesterday we all piled into the car and drove to Mt. Rainier for a somewhat spontaneous day trip, and all day I found myself thinking things like, "This will be the last time we go hiking here as as family of three," or "The next time we drive by this place, we'll have two kids in the back." I don't feel sad by this, although sometimes knowing that my time with just Suzannah is nearly over is a little bittersweet; I say it more with a sense of wonder, I guess, because I am already so aware of this little person kicking away inside me and he or she already feels like such a part of our family.

Matt has been feeling the baby kick from the outside over the past ten days or so, which is cool because I love sharing this part of pregnancy with him. He has to be a little patient sometimes, because this kid is a stinker -- she'll be kicking so much I can see my belly moving everywhere and I'll go, "Matt, get over here, Baby is having a PARTY IN MY BELLY." And he'll put one hand on me and Baby's all, okay, naptime. (I wonder if his hands will have the same calming effect when we can actually hold our baby? He doubts it.) But last night after Suzannah went to bed, we curled up in the family room to watch an episode of Mad Men and Baby woke up big-time. So I grabbed Matt's hand and moved it to my belly, and pretty soon we both felt those little feet pushing back up at us.

"Whoa -- wow," Matt said after a particularly forceful kick. "That's...weird." I just laughed, because I've actually never met a man who wasn't a little weirded out by all the tumbling around in a pregnant woman's belly, like it's a little alien invader. It's still my absolute favorite part of pregnancy.

Other things I'm savoring: my last Sunday morning before school starts For Real. I head back on Tuesday for two days of in-service/professional development/mind-numbingly boring and depressing stuff that doesn't matter and makes me want to quit every year, and then the kids come back on Thursday. Don't worry, I cope with the boring and depressing stuff by ignoring it. I learned years ago that if I want to feel hopeful, energetic and excited by the first day of school, I have to literally put my head down and pay ABSOLUTELY NO ATTENTION to all the things they throw at us about what we have to do to save public education, which involves more and more work and is usually nothing that actually matters to kids. Once I'm in my classroom, doing my thing, it all falls into place and I fall right back in love with the romance of September. My other coping mechanism this year is to remind myself that I only have to do survive for a couple of months if it's really that bad. I'm teaching two sections of freshmen for the first time, although I'm actually pretty excited about this. I'd rather teach freshmen than seniors any day. I loved my juniors last year, but when they whine about why I'm not teaching senior English I have to explain that it's because I would like to continue to love them, which would never happen if I had to listen to them whine about how THEY'RE SO DONE by the middle of September.

Class sizes are apparently huge this year. Thank you, budget cuts.

At least I have new notebooks.

In which Shari writes an entire entry about notebooks

We're trying to watch our spending these days; there are certain expenses we need to allow for before the new baby is born (a new bed and dresser for Suzannah, a cloth diaper stash, a doula, etc.) and we're trying to plan for the tighter budget we'll need to follow when I'm not earning any income for at least eight or nine months. I bought all of my school supplies last spring, so I can bypass my usual school shopping this fall. However, if you've ever spent five minutes around me, you know I have this serious thing for notebooks and pens. I absolutely never leave home without at least one notebook and about twelve pens. Which is why Levenger is kind of a dangerous catalog for me to get. They sell "Tools For Serious Readers." And heeey! I'm a Serious Reader! I need their stuff.

Except that most of it is really high-end, expensive stuff. It's good stuff, but I can't quite justify spending $200 or more for the sexy leather book bag I want. (I don't care about "purses" or "handbags." I also don't care that the sexy leather book bag -- did I mention it's red? -- is essentially a purse or handbag, but they advertise all its room for BOOKS and NOTEBOOKS!) Especially since the only bags I'll be carrying for awhile will be diaper bags. Not that you can't find great diaper bags, but I'm not about to spend two hundred bucks on one of those, either. Nor can I justify spending sixty dollars on a fancy rollerball pen, especially when I have a fondness for a very specific kind of blue Papermate -- which come twelve to a box at Office Max.

A few years ago, I did splurge on an expensive journal. It would have been the most expensive journal I'd ever bought in my life, but it was on clearance for over 50% off. And I loved it. Blank books, notebooks, journals -- those are truly my weakness. I'm always on the lookout for the "perfect" notebook, and when I find it, I buy it. I've filled several leather journals from Barnes and Noble and I love Moleskines, even though people complain that they're overpriced for what they are. Don't care -- still love them.

Last week, I was flipping through my Levenger catalog -- usually I do this quickly and toss it in with our recyclables so I'm not tempted to accidentally order a Pelikan Tradition R200 Rollerball Pen or something -- and the most fabulous set of notebooks caught my eye. Behold:


I wasn't going to do it. I don't, strictly speaking, need any more notebooks.

But I couldn't stop drooling over these babies. They were the perfect size -- large enough to write in comfortably, but small enough to slide into my bag (which I love, and which didn't cost me two hundred dollars). They had the right amount of pages -- not too thick (although it's hard for a great notebook to be too thick for me), not too thin. And the colored paper (which, being from Levenger, I knew would be of high quality) intrigued me.

But I wasn't going to do it. I informed Matt quite virtuously that I would not be buying these notebooks EVEN THOUGH I REALLY, REALLY WANTED THEM. LIKE REALLY BADLY. He was like, that's nice, you know I'm not the boss of you. His refusal to acknowledge my SHINING VIRTUE kind of chipped away at my restraint.

The next day I sent the link to Kyanne. Again with the wanting and all of my shining restraint. (Actually, by then I might just have whined, "I waaaaaants it." I can't remember.) Kyanne replied, "Whatever, I would SO have had those forever ago."

And then? I don't know what happened, but my fingers? They were suddenly disconnected from my body or something. I really couldn't stop them. They flew out and just punched in my credit card number and ORDERED THE NOTEBOOKS, and oh crap, I bought them.

And you know what? I didn't regret it. Sometimes when I have an "Oh, crap, I just bought something I don't need" moment, I have this instant pang of regret. I didn't have that with these notebooks. I felt nothing but sheer elation, and the only thing I regretted a few days later was not spending two more dollars for slightly faster shipping, because a week later, as I was still waiting for them to be delivered, I decided I had suffered much more than two dollars' worth of waiting angst. Maybe this is one of those opportunities for a stupid life lesson in patience, except that I am a mother of a three-year-old and soon I will have a newborn, so I'm pretty sure I don't need my journals to teach me about PATIENCE. I know, patience is a virtue, my mother always, always told me that, I HAVE TOTALLY LEARNED. Anyway (and here are my impressive rationalization skills at work), I think I'm a dying breed; I still write as much or more on paper as I do anywhere else, and when I buy quality notebooks and journals I actually do fill them. (I've often thought that perhaps that's why I like writing. It's nothing to do with actually writing, which, let's be honest, can really just suck sometimes, especially when I don't feel like it, but what can be better than cracking open a great notebook in a coffee shop and spending an hour alone there? I ask you.)

I had this whole speech planned for Matt about how I accidentally bought these notebooks, but! I got three of them, and for three, this price isn't bad -- they cost about what Moleskines do, plus shipping, and did I mention I ordered the slowest, cheapest shipping? Even though the wait would likely TORTURE ME?

"Well, I'm glad you're happy with them," Matt said mildly. Then he smiled. "And patience is a virtue."

And they'll know we are Christians by our love

"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." --Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I wasn't going to write this entry -- at least, I wasn't going to post it here. I had this idea, I guess, that my public blog should be reserved for fun, light stories about motherhood and anything else that wouldn't make anyone uncomfortable. And I thought that if I gave it a few days, and got it all down on paper somewhere, that I'd be able to take a deep, cleansing breath and let it all go. Usually, that works. But last night I was awake for most of the night, and this morning I scrubbed my kitchen from top to bottom, did three loads of laundry, vacuumed the house, washed the hardwood floors, tried to organize odds and ends in the baby's room, and started dinner in the slow cooker -- and I still couldn't shake it. And then I thought, what am I so afraid of? That people won't like me? I've been disliked before. That my family will stop loving me? I've done worse than voice my Disagreeable Opinions, so possibly this won't get me disowned. That people will stop reading? I know a handful of regular visitors, but there are also a lot of hits here that I don't recognize. For all I know, I could be pissing off a ton of people, and for whatever reason, that makes me pause, even if they're anonymous people. I should probably get over that, because stifling my thoughts really isn't me. And I don't want my daughter to be afraid to speak her mind, especially when she's taking a stand against bigotry and ignorance or voicing her passions or trying to make sense of this often very stupid world, even if it rubs some people the wrong way. Which it will, because it always does. But to me, this is too important to sweep under the rug or pretend I don't have an opinion about it.

So here I go.

Recently, the ELCA voted by a two-thirds majority to allow the ordination of sexually active gay clergy (as opposed to celibate gay clergy) and the blessing of same-sex marriages. I wasn't surprised, because it's hardly a new issue in the church -- it's something we've wrestled with for longer than I've been around. I'm also thrilled. I understood that many of my fellow Lutherans would not be so thrilled, and I truly am sorry that many of them feel disheartened right now. It's a little like the fallout after the presidential election, I guess, but the difference between the political scene and the Lutheran scene has generally been that Lutherans can debate and disagree passionately, vehemently, and at the end of the day, they come together in a spirit of love and respect. Or so I thought.

I shouldn't have been so naive, I suppose, but I've been genuinely shocked -- shocked, horrified, sickened -- by some of the responses I've come across by fellow members of the ELCA. I've loved the ELCA for many reasons, not the least of which is that its members tend to be educated, thoughtful, and respectful. There's plenty of room for doubt, for questioning and discussion. I thought (rather childishly, it seems) that "we" were safe from right-wing nutjobs, surely the only kinds of people who still hurl slurs about fags and homos. We don't have the kinds of people who proclaim that things like the tornado that touched down in Minneapolis that day was a manifestation of God's wrath (I swear, there's nothing I love better than arrogant Christians who know what God is thinking. And also, really? THAT'S the thing that would inspire God's so-called wrath? Out of everything there is to choose from? And also, hello, Pat Robertson?). Of course I knew there would be people unhappy with the vote, and I fully expected to read plenty of that old cliche, WE LOVE THE SINNER BUT HATE THE SIN! (How big of you! Here is some polish for your halo.) But surely -- surely I wouldn't encounter people comparing homosexuality to pedophilia, for crying out loud. Members of my church wouldn't do that. They wouldn't say, "What's next, we let people marry their dogs?"

I was wrong. I read a lot of that. The comments got worse, but I'm not going to quote them; I'd prefer not to spread such things, even to illustrate a point.

I see enough of this in the world; I can't stand it from members of my church. If you honestly think that ridicule, abuse, harassment, and threats against the LGBT community aren't a daily reality, you haven't spent much time in a high school lately -- or, I don't know, in the world? With your eyes open? Although I will also say that while high schools are pretty universally homophobic -- trust me on this -- high school kids also give me a tremendous amount of hope, because the good ones, and that's a lot of them, more than you think, are the ones who will rage passionately against injustice. And they can often debate emotional topics with maturity, compassion, and empathy that puts most adults to shame.

Anyway, I just thank God I didn't hear these comments at the church I attend, and I don't really expect to; I read them online. But I read them in a lot of places -- online forums, discussion groups, Lutheran blogs. I should have stopped reading, because I get really, really worked up about this stuff -- my poor husband had to endure a full day's worth of my sputtering and ranting and raving. But it just sucked me in and gnawed at me. I feel a little like Meg Ryan's character on You've Got Mail -- I rarely know what to say in the moments in which I'm confronted with such horrible, ignorant statements. The responses come to me later, when it's too late to say anything and possibly too late to matter. This frustrates me to no end. Many of my friends articulate their thoughts on such matters so much better than I do, though, and the fact that they do gives me a little hope that someone is saying the things I really want to say but haven't found the words yet. (But if you know me, or if you ever speak to me, and you believe or say these kinds of things, kindly try to hide that from me or I'll do my best to channel Barney Frank. It won't do wonders for our relationship.)

I'm not really interested in debating my position, at least not right now -- that's not really why I'm writing this. If you want to argue that you're a better Christian than me, you may very well be right, okay? I know perfectly well that I fall short in a lot of ways. And normally, I do enjoy a rousing theological discussion -- but I've found very few people on the "other side" who are truly interested in discussion anyway, which I suppose is often true of such emotionally-charged topics where it's so important (on both sides, to be fair) to be right. Here's a little food for thought, though: You might remember that people on both sides of this issue have read and studied the Bible. You're not going to impress me because you can quote a passage from Leviticus, and you're definitely not going to convince me that you're "right" if you act like I'm too stupid to understand the Bible. (Again, to be fair, yes, I know this goes both ways.) I'm never a fan of using scripture in an argument anyway, because scripture has been used to justify an awful lot of horrible things and because people who brandish the Bible that way are often champions of manipulation while their arguments lack weight. And another thing -- when you're having an argument and you resort to shaking your head sadly and saying you'll pray for the other person (to see the light, I presume? For the state of her sorry, sinful soul?) it's neither loving nor Christian; it's condescending and arrogant and you know it. (On a sidenote, sometimes I wonder if the few people who send me forwards warning me that Obama is somehow both a baby-eating Socialist and grandma-killing Nazi are praying for my soul because I voted for him. On another sidenote, by Christmas I fully expect to be receiving e-mail forwards warning me that he's actually a vampire with a taste for NRA members and preschool children.) I recently had a conversation about this very thing with someone I'm growing to consider an important spiritual adviser, and he smiled and said, "How arrogant -- to presume to know what God is thinking, or who's saved or not. Or even worse, to take credit for it."

Okay, sorry, little tangent there.

I freely admit I don't understand the mentality of people threatening to flounce out of the ELCA over this, but I don't understand the mentality of people threatening to move out of the country after every presidential election, either. I am saddened by it, and I'm saddened by the rift this will inevitably create in the church. And frankly, it seems that many of the people who are so deeply upset and focused on ALL THE EVIL SINNERS and what roles they should or should not have in the church have lost sight of what matters so much more -- being the light of Christ. Spreading His love. I remain somewhat encouraged by the way I've seen the Christians I know and love actually treat each other, even since THAT FATEFUL HOUR, and I hope and pray that none of them are the ones posting the comments that leave me quite literally sick to my stomach. (I'm also encouraged by the elderly lady who chuckled and said, "Oh, I remember when people threatened to leave the church because we adopted the green hymnal. That was really out there, you know.") And I'm also infinitely more excited that maybe now, people who have left the church because they've been scorned, humiliated, judged, and rejected (even as I'm sure they're being "loved") will find a new home there.

I'm not going to end with a Bible verse or quote a Biblical scholar, but I do like what NPR reader Emily Kann had to say:

To me, having faith is a constant struggle and full of doubts. It is the journey of growing in faith and facing those struggles with doubt and sin that unites us with God. I am a member of the SE Iowa ELCA, but I don't believe that any religious order, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc. gets it 100% right all the time. No single person or group of people will ever be able to get it right or pierce the veil of God's mystery. I believe that a religious community is one of three critical elements to building faith- the other two being prayer and the writings of God. The purpose of a religious community, like the ELCA, is to grow together and support each other. This decision reflects that process. We are a family, trying to figure out the best way to be faithful, to be just, to be compassionate and to serve God, by serving others, together.

I want nothing more than for my daughter to grow up in a world more compassionate, merciful, and loving than the one in which we live now. We have so far to go, but I believe this is one step in creating that world.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming soon, I promise.

My love letter to the road

(For Traci, on the day before her own epic road trip)

I've always believed that people who consistently choose the shortest distance between two places miss the essence of travel. Flying is convenient, to be sure, especially if the destination, rather than the journey, is the point of a trip. But I hate flying. During my high school and college years it held a certain novelty for me, and I still admit to feeling a little thrill in my stomach when the plane takes to the air. I also deeply appreciate the perspective and occasionally the peace that comes from seeing the world from the sky, but those moments are usually fleeting for an airline passenger -- soon the plane rises above the clouds and there's not all that much to see. Instead, one's attention turns to the beverage cart jostling down the narrow aisle, to seats leaning too close to one's knees, and the unsettling proximity of unidentifiable odors.

I actually enjoy airports, espcially when I have the luxury of enjoying some good coffee or a glass of wine while I watch the travelers bustle through, heels clicking, luggage rolling, eyes fixed ahead. Brisk, efficient movements. But now that I have a three-year-old and a baby on the way, that leisurely people-watching is -- at least for now -- a luxurious memory. Flying itself fills me with more and more anxiety as I grow older -- no need to tell me dismissively just how irrational that is, please. It is what it is. (And the truth of the matter is that, for me, flying with small children can be challenging, the exact opposite of relaxing. If you've done it, you probably understand, and if you haven't, kindly refrain from sharing your opinions on what parents should be doing to shut their kids up, and be grateful that at least you can plug in your music and ignore it.)

But I don't love road trips simply because I don't enjoy the alternative. I love them because I completely believe the cheesy bumper stickers and inspirational posters proclaiming that "Life is a journey, not a destination!" Memories are made on the road.

Sometimes I think my relationship with my husband began as a road trip. In August of 2000, following what I had briefly imagined would be a European summer fling, Matt rode a Greyhound bus for twenty-five hours, traveling between Minneapolis and Bozeman, Montana. Almost immediately we filled my car with camping gear and drove five hours to Glacier National Park for our first camping trip. We took day trips to Yellowstone and the Lewis and Clark Caverns. We spent weekends during my senior year at Concordia driving back and forth between Moorhead and Minneapolis.

But the real magic began after both of us moved to Washington state, a move which meant we'd be seeing a lot of I-90 and I-94. We flew to Minneapolis at least once or twice a year before we became parents, since it isn't exactly practical to drive over 1500 miles one way for a long weekend. But we drive to Bozeman a few times a year, and we've taken a few extended vacations that allowed us to drive from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest. These trips carry me across every landscape I've ever loved, all the landscapes of my youth: my life's history written in prairie grasses and mountain passes. I breathe best in open spaces. (In 2005 I wrote, There really is no sky like the Montana sky, even in other wide-open states. I can't explain it. The drive between Chester and Fort Benton is like breathing deeply for the first time -- your lungs expand and fill with air you didn't know you could hold.

"Wow," Matt kept saying. "This is just...huge." But it's really a struggle to find a word to attach to it. The evening sun lit the fields against the distant Highwood Mountains. We braked for pheasants, for a new spotted fawn. I lost track of time, my age, of what car I was even driving. I just kept breathing, clinging to the thought that at least some things never really change.)

We're building our memories on the road. I know where to find the best coffee, the cleanest bathrooms, and the most reliable food between Seattle and Minneapolis, as well as all over Montana. I've learned to be present and aware driving through golden fields lit against a backdrop of purple, snow-capped mountains, to notice the Yellowstone river running lazily parallel to the interstate and the storm clouds gathering above the mountain ranges, the Painted Canyon in North Dakota, the hills and rock and sagebrush. But the treasures are also found in the most ordinary moments:

Eating the world's creamiest tomato soup at a truckstop 4B's in Missoula (which, sadly, is no longer -- a fact we mourn each time we pass exit 99). Heading north to Great Falls in August, my bare feet on the dash, reading poetry to my husband and telling him, "I'm going to find a poem that knocks your socks off." Lowering our fourteen-month-old toddler into one of the bucket seats on a swingset in the park in Miles City, Montana, and nursing her later on a park bench amidst the sounds of laughter from the community swimming hole and the buzzing of the overhead power lines. The heavy, humid air in Fargo, so thick it was almost tangible, like I could have pulled it down out of the sky with my fingers. Clothes flapping on lines near the road, old cars, and grain elevators along Highway 2. My daughter's first carousel ride in Riverfront Park. Ordering homemade egg salad sandwiches and drinking fresh-squeezed lemonade in a tiny small-town diner with flowered tablecloths, and being the youngest people there by about forty years.

Separately, these are just moments, of course. It's impossible to write about any one of them as a reason my heart belongs to the highway, but together, they form a beautiful mosaic -- snapshots of the sweetest, most untroubled moments of our lives.

Sublime!

I made this salad for dinner last night. Go on, click that link. It's definitely the most ambitious salad I've ever made, so much so that it seems misleading to call it a "salad." It's not difficult; it just involves a lot of chopping and tossing, but that's part of the fun -- I love the kind of "cooking" (this isn't really cooking, I guess) in which I get to just toss in handfuls of whatever looks good. I liked it so much that I decided to dedicate an entire blog post to telling you that you should make it too, especially before the end of summer, since it's really a perfect warm-weather dish.

My notes: I used all of the ingredients she lists, even the ones not included in the pictures (such as cucumbers and cashews, which were divine in the salad). The only one I would suggest leaving out, if you don't care for that little extra kick, is the hot peppers in the dressing (Mom, I'm looking at you).

Also, this makes a ton -- A TON! -- so you might want to pick up one of those little backyard wading pools for mixing it all together. Heh! Just kidding. Kind of. I started with what I thought would be a big enough mixing bowl, but I wound up digging out the huge plastic bowl we've rarely used (because it holds ten tons of stuff). Seriously. Mix it in the biggest container you have.

Also, the recipe for the dressing makes more than enough to coat the entire salad, so no need to go overboard with the oils and soy sauce.

Mine actually did look exactly like the picture. Matt thought I should take a picture of ours, but we've already eaten a couple of meals out of that gigantic bowl, and when it was all fresh and pretty it was sitting in the midst of a kitchen overtaken by messy cutting boards and bowls and pieces of vegetables. You'll just have to take my word for it.

What the kids are up to this week...

Miss Suzannah and I have spent a quiet week at home, and it's been really, really nice. Originally, I'd drawn up a list of Fun! Things! To! Do! this week, probably because I'm just really a huge fan of making lists -- I thought we'd go to Seattle Children's Museum, maybe, or do some huge fun art projects, or -- I don't know. I realized very quickly on Monday morning that what we really both needed was a week to just chill after two weeks of doing the opposite of chilling.

It was fun not-chilling, but the not-chilling meant that I don't think Suzannah had one real nap on vacation. I am almost afraid to write this lest I jinx it, but Suzannah has taken a real nap -- without drama -- every single day this week. She has even turned to me and said, "Mama? I take a nap?" And she actually meant it. Also, and this is almost too much for me, she has gone to bed easily every single night. And slept all night long. By herself. I don't even remember the last time this happened five nights in a row. She must be recovering from some wicked sleep deprivation. (I'm more inclined to believe that than to actually hope that this is her new pattern. We've just been burned too many times before. But we'll enjoy it while it lasts.)

I've been perfectly content to just go with the flow this week, without really planning some huge fun agenda. On Tuesday, we spent most of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon with Kyanne at IKEA while we had the CR-V serviced (ouuuuch) and yesterday, Zannah and I went to the mall for a change of scenery and read a lot of books in the children's section at Borders. Then she wanted to look at magazines, so the two of us sat on the floor and read our own. I caught up on People (once in awhile I splurge and buy a copy, and Matt always makes fun of me and/or makes his scorn quite apparent, but you KNOW he always reads it when I bring it home) and Suzannah read...a bunch of nature magazines, I think, and also something about getting your novel published. Then she politely requested that we go to lunch.

Our Big Event this week was our "big" ultrasound, our anatomy scan for Baby #2. We brought Suzannah along so she could see the baby, and while I think most of it was a little abstract for her (she got bored with the close-up shots of the heart and kidneys and various limbs and focused on tickling my toes instead) she was very excited to see pictures of the baby, and she asked for them several times throughout the day. She says "Hi, Baby!" to my belly every day now (she has to lift up my shirt first -- reminds me a bit of her nursing days!), and she loves to touch it and rub lotion on it. (Sidenote: No, it doesn't matter how much I grease the belleh, so don't give me any advice on "preventing" stretch marks, please. If you're gonna get them, you're gonna get them. I thought I was safe when I was pregnant with Suzannah, so much so that I bragged noisily to a friend about not having a single one in my twenty-eighth week. Naturally, I woke up covered with them the very next morning. But whatever, I really like the lotion anyway.) Of course, then she lifts up her own shirt and jabs a finger at her belly button, announcing that she has a baby in her tummy too. Why not?

We read The Berenstein Bears' New Baby several times each day, which, in theory, should get Suzannah excited both about the baby and the new bed we're going to get her when we move the crib into the nursery. We're actually painting the nursery this weekend because I have this relentless need to Get Things Done; I'm reaching a point of panic here, with the school year approaching and all, and this is one manageable task we can take care of. Once we have paint on the walls, we can begin to put the room together and, more importantly, turn Suzannah's room into more of a little girl's room. (I say "more importantly" because if this baby is anything like Suzannah, we won't actually need the nursery for quite some time. But the room will look good.) We're losing our guest bed, due to an unforeseen, er, hiccup in our plans, but I allowed myself to stress about that for one afternoon only and I've made my peace with the fact that a.) it wasn't a great bed to begin with, as anyone who slept on it can attest to, and b.) for now, we'll have more room to organize everything that needs to be in that room. I imagine we'll replace it with something better in the next year or so, something that could actually be used as a regular bed for one of our children and guests.

Anyway, the ultrasound went well. I tend to go the route of fairly minimal prenatal care because I think so many of those "routine" things only serve to make women anxious or give the impression that they increase the odds of a good outcome, when of course they have nothing to do with it; I don't have betas drawn, I'm not a fan of more ultrasounds than are strictly necessary (with Suzannah I didn't even have a dating ultrasound, although this time I really wanted one to convince myself that there was actually a baby in there making me so sick), and we've declined all screens and tests. I did enjoy the ultrasound, though. I mean, it was fun to see the baby. I didn't have the same innocent excitement I had with Suzannah, and after carrying her I didn't have any expectations that I'd feel closer to my baby because of what we saw on the screen -- I felt Baby moving during the ultrasound (I didn't with Suzannah; I had it a few weeks earlier and hadn't felt much movement yet) and I was relieved, only because I felt reconnected with the baby after focusing on a screen. Frankly, it's strange to me to see my child above my head with someone else who doesn't know her talking to me about her, if that makes sense. But it was still good to see that everything is where it's supposed to be. Baby's growth is pretty symmetrical, and I'm measuring a few days ahead just like I did with Suzannah. The OB in the practice reads the results so I don't actually know much, but my midwife said she wouldn't be concerned; she talked to me about some of the numbers (cervix looks good, heartbeat is strong, fluid is fine, etc.) and said that the ultrasound tech usually leaves her a note if she finds anything of concern, which she didn't.

I will say that this baby was a wee bit more uncooperative -- and more wiggly -- than Suzannah was. It took quite awhile to get a good profile shot because Baby kept flinging her arms over her face; actually, it's exactly what Suzannah does now when we're trying to get her out of bed before she's ready to wake up. I could almost hear this child mutter, "Go away, I'm sleeping," just like her big sister. It's probably a good thing that we didn't try to find out the sex; I doubt she'd have appreciated the invasion.

Travel Tips

At some point this week I will have more to say, but it's after midnight and I'm only logged on here to try and relax enough to go to sleep after days and days and daaaaays on the road. So right now, let me just give you some friendly advice:

When you go on vacation, especially one that will last nearly two weeks, make sure you clean out your refrigerator.

We are usually quite diligent about this. Matt hates to throw anything away, so he'll usually scoop up everything that could reach a state of "questionable" to "downright bloody disgusting" (was that a cucumber or some kind of vegetable soup in that bag?) in our absence and pack a lunch for the first day of travel, and we always make sure we've used up things like milk. Unfortunately, about an hour ago I opened the fridge to find that we'd missed emptying one of Suzannah's cups. Of milk.

It looked like orange juice and it smelled like LIQUID HORROR.