So… right. It’s been along time since I did a belly update. Since week 18 which was like forever ago. Anyways the baby has grown from a little week 19 mango:

This pic was taken the day of our ultrasound:

Through the terrifying week 20 cantaloupe (seriously that sounds HUGE):

And the not so scary week 21 banana (how is a banana smaller than a flipping cantaloupe?!):
And is now the size of a papaya.
They will be a papaya from week 22-24 – which I actually have real live belly pics of..

22 Weeks:

23 Weeks (at which point my uterus was officially the size of a soccer ball):

24 Weeks:

Dexter looks as thrilled to be awake as I was this morning.

So I’m at 24 weeks now…


which means that the baby is about 12 inches long measured from head to feet. For reference that would be this big:

I think everyone should have a $5 footlong this week in celebration. That or a footlong hotdog but who would ever want to eat that. Ew.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Gizmo photo shoot #2

Finally! The Ultrasound Pics! Let’s get right to it then:

Fuzzy and kindof alien looking but still adorable! We had the ultrasound a few weeks ago and the most important thing is that all is well. Baby is completely healthy – passed all of the many tests that they do with no problems. S/he was moving around so much during the ultrasound that the tech had problems getting all of the measurements they needed. It was really fun to watch! How about a profile shot:

Totally looks like a baby.

It was so easy to make out what everything was once you found the spinal column… we could see it all. Little rib cage, little legs, little hands, and little arms:

Squeee!!! Actually seeing that baby skeleton inside of me was the inspiration for my Halloween costume.

So to answer the big question – yes. That was the ultrasound that we could find out the sex at. And yes. We know. It was kindof hard not to with everything going on right in front of us. But we have decided that we would like to keep it a surprise. So no one in the world knows but me and Matt. It’s actually really fun this way. We can be prepared but we still get to have the big “It’s a ???!!!” moment after the baby is born. And we are forced to keep with gender neutral purchases. This truly is what works best for us. At first I was worried about how hard it would be but honestly it really hasn’t been. Everyone around us has been so supportive of our decision. As long as everyone is respectful and isn’t trying to catch us or isn’t poking at it constantly and being a jerk about it then it’s not that big of a deal. Because, really, everyone will know in a few months anyways. Right now all that matters is that it’s a healthy baby:

A darn cute one, too.

They’ll make liars out of you.

So one nugget of wisdom in the pile of assvice* I keep hearing during this pregnancy is that kids will make liars out of you. And that’s exactly what just happened. Right after I go and announce to the whole world of the internets that I’m “feeling like myself again” Gizmo decides to teach me the important life lesson that it is possible to have heartburn so bad that you throw up. Who knew that could even happen?! It was clear that I have been feeling much better because I had no supplies to stop the puking. No ginger ale. No Kix cereal. No string cheese. Let’s just say it was a loooong night and by yesterday morning I was so out of it that when I called in sick to work I accidentally dialed Matt’s office and the receptionist had to explain that I didn’t work there. Yeah.

*Assvice = unsolicited advice. It ranges from just annoying, to borderline insulting, to straight-up rude. Examples include things that of course we’ve taken care of/really aren’t anyone else’s business such as finances (really? It’s going to cost a lot to have a baby? Wow we didn’t think of that at all); things that are SO not helpful such as “Oh you’re in the second trimester - you should feel better by now!” (The second trimester is when the migraines started. I’m glad it was all sunshine and roses for you but it might not be that way for everyone so stop telling me how I should feel); things that noone should have an opinion on other than the 2 people who actually created this baby such as “You definitely need to pick a common/uncommon/family/non-family/traditional/unique/religious/whatever name”; or things that are just plain wrong such as “crackers will calm your stomach down.” (Crackers are bull shit. I’ve thrown up every type of cracker known to man). The assvice seems to be getting worse the bigger I get so I can only imagine how bad it will be by the time I actually have this baby. I know people are just trying to help but seriously – leave the sick pregnant lady alone. She’s a bit crabby.

Anyways! In the interest of actually posting to the blog more I thought I’d throw up (pun intended) a few distractions for while you’re patiently waiting for me to upload the cute ultrasound pics and not so cute giant belly pics.

Distraction #1:

Cracked’s Craptions.

Matt showed me this site the other night in an attempt to cheer me up. I laughed so hard I gagged. Seriously good stuff - and all it is is funny pictures that readers can caption. Hiliarous.

Distraction #2:

People’s Sexiest Men as reviewed by Mamapop

I def agree with the top 3 but dude …Zack Morris is still alive? WTF? Also the omission of Christian Bale and Jason Bateman makes me sad inside.

Distraction #3:

The Baby Name Voyager

I love visual representations of information so clicking around on different names and watching the graphs move to see how things have trended is just fascinating. And the new Namipedia is awesome. Is it wrong that I rated both Jeanne and Matthew as the highest for all categories? Just stuffing the ballot box a little.... Oh and if you really want to get sucked down an internet rabbit hole click on the NameMapper. It shows the popularity of a name by state over time. And there goes 3 hours of your life.

Have a great weekend everyone! Oh and if you're in Lakewood tomorrow night we'll be bar hopping to celebrate Carolyn's 25th! I'm sensing another Malleys stop to that pub crawl...

A list of Busy

So the last time I had a big long gap in posting was because I was so pregnant sick that I could barely lift my head off of the couch let alone worry about the blog… This time it’s the exact opposite. I’m finally… FINALLY… starting to feel like myself again. Knock on wood. So the past week and a half has been beyond busy. Let’s see… where to even start… How ‘bout with the most random:

1.) I went on a ridiculous baking jag last weekend.

I don’t even like baking. I only do it once a year at Christmas and that’s under the supervision of not only my mother but my grandmother. Usually I do the kid jobs like unwrapping the Hershey kisses or whatever…so it’s not even like I’m actually baking anything. But for some reason from the moment I woke up Sunday morning I was compelled to make lots and lots of cookies:

No seriously. Matt rolled out of bed at like 11 and by then I had already baked a batch of peanut butter cookies, made dough for 2 more types, and run to the grocery store for more supplies.

Apparently I have lost my damn mind.

2.) Our baby likes live classical music. I’m so not even making this up. Last week we were lucky enough to score tickets to the Cleveland Orchestra event at MOCA and the kid was jamming during the entire performance. I had never felt them move that much at one time. It was pretty crazy… For what it’s worth s/he liked the string quartet the best. So then when I had the opportunity to go to Severance with my mom on Sat. I was super curious to see what the baby would do. ‘Cause it might have just been a fluke. Yeah. Once again baby was jamming. It wasn’t as crazy as at MOCA but def. more than normal. So that’s kindof fun.

3.) We have started to rearrange our house to actually you know… have a baby in it. But because this is us we’re taking about things are starting to snowball. We don’t make little plans for anything. There will be much more on this later but for now let’s just say the next few months are going to be… interesting. Also oddly the baby’s actual room is last on our priority list.

4.) I’m taking prenatal yoga. Very outside my comfort zone. I’m trying… but it’s real hard to “send out peace and love to the universe” on the same day that you confirm that your insurance company only covers 80% of maternity hospitalization. I’d like to put the asshole who thought that was a fair policy’s head on a spike. The stretching part of the class is pretty good, though.

5.) Another extremely unlike me thing to do? Knit monogamously:

Seriously that is the only thing I’ve worked on in like a month. Especially at this time of year with the holidays coming up and the cold causing me to want handknits I’m a completely ADD knitter. But now? I haven’t really been distracted at all:

It’s all green baby sweater all the time. I think it’s the combo of the cables and the color that are holding my attention:

Whatever it is I’m one sleeve and some seaming away from having an actual finished project. First one of those in a while, huh!

6.) I know I owe the internet belly pictures. And ultrasound pictures. Hopefully I’ll get to those soon. But since I haven’t uploaded any of that yet how about a cell phone doggie pic instead:

Dexter likes being the sole dependant.

Maine Day 3:

So on our third day in Bar Harbor we got up super, super early and headed up to the top of Cadillac Mountain to watch the sun rise. Cadillac Mountain is the highest point along the East Coast and in the fall and winter it is the first place that the United States sees the sun rise. So clearly we had to go there. Unfortunately because we are NOT morning people we forgot our camera. I did take a few cell phone pictures…


But they don’t really capture the experience all that well. It was really stunning.

Cold. But stunning

Matt is wrapped up in the Almost Garter Scarf that I knit awhile back.

From there we headed into Bar Harbor for some Maine breakfast – blueberry pancakes made with wild Maine blueberries covered in fresh maple syrup. It was delicious. After a little downtime we decided to take an adventure to the southern part of the island. Once again the drive was beautiful:

We stopped for some whoopee pies:

And checked out Somes Sound – the only fjord on the eastern coast of the US:


And stopped for a break on a natural seawall along the way:

Finally we reached our destination – the Ships Harbor trail. Knowing that we couldn’t do much hiking we picked an easy trail that packed a lot of interesting sights into a few short, relatively flat, miles. It started out meandering through a pine forest… where Matt harassed a woodpecker until he got a good shot of it:


And I just tried to keep up:

Then it reached the rocky shore:


This part was really neat because the rocks formed little tide pools:


That were filled with tiny creatures:


We spent quite a lot of time exploring the shore.


From here the path loop back through another pine forest.

This time it stayed along the edge of a small bay:

Overall it was a great little trail!

Next we headed further south to check out the Bass Head Light. This lighthouse also claims to be the most photographed in Maine. Again I can see why:

I did not go exploring on the wet rocks. I just enjoyed the sunshine and view while Matt took over the camera.

At this point we were starving which was perfect because we were almost at our ultimate destination – Thurston’s Lobster Pound:

Lobster Pounds are supposedly the best place to get lobster. They are low on frills but the lobster is literally straight from the boat. And the view just can’t be beat:

Neither can the lobster:


One last pic of us in front of stacks of lobster cages after enjoying our lobster dinner:


And that’s about all for Day 3!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get it together to do another baby/belly update....

Circle of Friends Baby Blanket

Yeah this is another one for the better late than never file….

So the big knitting project for my friend Jennifer (check out her blog for adorable pics of her new family!) was the Circle of Friends baby blanket from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. There were 7 of us who wanted to knit something for her and I found this pattern – the whole premise is that each person knits a plain garter stitch strip and then at the end they are sewn together to create a blanket. But because I’m OCD about stuff like this I wasn’t happy with the arrangement of the colors in the original pattern. So I did a CAD mockup:

I am a geek.

Thankfully one of our group volunteered to take over the sewing it all together part:

So my finishing duties were to basically just to come up with a border. The original pattern doesn’t have a border and I thought it looked kindof sloppy. Back to the OCD thing. To keep things simple I just picked up stitches on each side of the blanket and knit 5 ridges before casting off.

In the end it kindof had the log cabin thing going for it. But in a good way.

Then I blocked the shit out of it to even out any of the unevenness caused by so many hands working on it:

(sidenote: where the hell am I going to block stuff when this is the baby’s room? I hadn’t thought of that until now… hmmmmm)

Anyways I think it turned out pretty great!

Jennifer loved it.

And while I was doing all of the finishing business two of the other girls made her a matching pillow with the leftover yarn!

So to sum up:
Ravelry link: Jennifer’s Baby Blanket
Pattern: Circle of friends baby blanket from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino
Mods: Screwed around with the color sequencing and added a garter stitch border.
Verdict: SUCCESS!