Three months of Maren

Maren is now three months old. Again, it is surprising how quickly time goes by and yet how it is hard to imagine life without her.

I am not sure whether I have measured her totally properly, but I think she has grown about three and a half or 4 inches since she was born. She is a tall kiddo! She hasn't been weighed on a proper scale since December 10, and her weight gain has been a pretty consistent source of worry for me. Ever since learning that she was not gaining weight appropriately at about two and a half weeks, I have been vigilant about tracking her weight. For a long time, she was gaining weight consistently – about 1 ounce per day. But when she was weighed on December 10, she had gained a little less than that since her last weighing on December 1. I have tried weighing her on our bathroom scale by weighing myself and then holding her and getting a second weight, and if this is accurate, her weight gain has slowed considerably. But I don't trust that this is accurate, so sometime in the next couple of days we will take her to the public health office (where there is a baby scale in the waiting room) and get a more accurate weight. Jeff tells me to pay attention to other things, like the fact that she seems happy, and is meeting her developmental milestones, and seems to be eating fine. I know that he is right, but at the same time can't help worrying!

Fortunately, she doesn't give me a whole lot else to worry about. She continues to be a happy, easy baby, and seems to be thriving. She smiles and "talks" all the time, and continues to be easily soothed. A couple of days ago she seemed to discover a new kind of crying, which was quite disconcerting – extremely loud and intense, and it seemed to me that she must be in intense pain to be crying like that. However, Jeff was able to calm her down by walking her up and down the hall for a few minutes, and she has used this cry a couple of times since with similar outcomes. So it seems that it is just a new kind of crying.

As is typical with a baby, sleep is inconsistent and sometimes difficult. The night before last she was up to feed to five times. But last night she slept for a four hour stretch, nursed for twenty or thirty minutes, and then slept for about five more hours. She usually wakes me up probably twice a night to nurse, but she never fully wakes up, and is asleep again by the time she's done nursing. There is no difficult time getting her back to sleep. So even if she wakes me up a couple of times in the night, as long as I can get back to sleep quickly (which I usually can), things are not at all bad.

At three months old, Maren is more interactive than she was when she was younger. She demands more attention, and wants to see more of her world. She used to be content facing me and staring at my face or even just the chair or the wall behind me, but now she wants to face out and watch everything that is going on. She seems to love watching Jeff when he is busy in the kitchen.

She is also getting very strong – she holds her head up really well, and can now do a mini "baby push-up," and kicks and swings her arms all the time. She has not quite discovered putting objects into her mouth yet, but spends a great deal of time with her hands in her mouth.

Jeff starts back at work after the new year. He will resume his normal teaching load, and will be expected to be active with all his other duties, but fortunately there is a lot of work he can do from home. It has been nice having this time together as a new family, and although I wish we had more time, I know that we are extremely lucky to be in the position we are in!

We are also lucky to have such a sweet baby :-)

Merry Christmas!

Twelve days of baby Christmas

Today while Maren was nursing, I rewrote the twelve days of Christmas song for life with a new baby. It is of course repetitive, so here is the final verse:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my baby gave to me
Twelve toothless smiles
Eleven baby cuddles
Ten coos and goos
Nine cries for feeding
Eight wet diapers
Seven stinky toots
Six little sneezes
Five hours of sleep
Four bouts of hiccups
Three loud burps
Two outgrown onesies
And a poop that was legen-dary



Merry Christmas :-)

Stuff of the week

I have just a few minutes to do a post, so it won't be coherent, just some random things that have happened:

1. Our vacuum broke. Rather than figure out how to get it fixed, we decided to purchase a new, somewhat nicer vacuum. It was on sale at Canadian Tire (for you Americans, this is a huge chain store in Canada, and a little hard to describe – they have a little bit of everything), and I don't think it cost much more than our old vacuum, but the difference in suction power is pretty amazing. It is a Shark brand. So far so good.

2. Maren is getting quite strong. She has developed some excellent head control:

We think she might have grown about an inch in the past week. She was measured when she had her shots, and measured in the 50th percentile, and then ten days later was measured at a doctor's appointment and was in the 98th percentile. I don't trust that she was necessarily measured properly either time, but we have seen a fairly sudden change in which clothes fit her. It is kind of amazing just how quickly she can grow!

3. We all have a cold. I'm not naming names, but someone in our household does not have the best habits related to washing his hands after being around people who are sick. Fortunately the rest of us do not seem to have gotten the cold quite as badly.

4. We finally got around to decorating our Christmas tree. For the first time ever, we have an artificial tree. There were many reasons for deciding to go with an artificial tree this year, including the fact that we wanted a tree at the end of November for the Loucks family Christmas and wanted the tree to stay up through Christmas day, and the fact that Christmas trees aren't actually grown anywhere near here, so they are shipped from very far away and are both not so fresh and not so environmentally friendly because of it. So we bought a fake tree, which has LED lights that can be either white or multicolored, which is pretty neat. In the past week we have finally decorated the tree, and it is looking pretty good.

5. My sister and brother-in-law are going to be visiting this week, arriving late tomorrow night. It will be their first trip to Regina and their first time meeting Maren, so we are all looking forward to it!

Loucks family Christmas

Last weekend we celebrated an early Christmas with Jeff's siblings and their families. They all traveled to Regina to meet Maren and celebrate with us. We baked cookies, had presents, and did all of the things that we do for Christmas. Here are a few photos:

Maren is now two months old, and so much has changed since last month! She smiles big smiles all the time, and even has what Jeff calls "proto-conversations" by cooing and making goo sounds in response to being talked to. She is beginning to demand a bit more attention, and if she gets fussy it no longer necessarily means that she is hungry – she might be bored, want to be moved to a different position, or need a diaper change. She has started burping on her own, so that she does not need to be burped several times during/after each feed, and she has gone from farting like an old man to having largely silent poops and toots. She continues to be happy most of the time, and although we are able to put her in the bassinet for naps sometimes (two days ago she broke the record by being in the bassinet for fifty minutes), she spends most of her time in bodily contact with either me or Jeff. She and I are getting more comfortable venturing out on our own, although we haven't done very long trips yet. She is still the easiest and sweetest baby I have ever met – she had her two-month immunizations last week, and the nurse commented on how social she was and what a good baby she was. I absolutely agree :-)

Birth story, monster Maren

I think it is finally time for me to put my birth story on the blog. I don't know whether this will be the long version or the short version, it kind of depends on how much time Maren is willing to stay in the baby K'tan.

On Friday, September 25, I was starting to get impatient about the arrival of the baby. I was messaging back and forth with a friend about ways to get labor started. On my unofficial to do list for before the baby came, I had everything done – all the food in the freezer, the little cardigan finished, and even dough for two kinds of cookies frozen in little individual cookie sized balls. One of the recipes was for ginger molasses cookies, and I had never tried it before, so we still had to eat a couple of test cookies to make sure they were good. We baked two cookies in the toaster oven, ate them (they were indeed good), and started to get ready to go on a walk to try to bring on labor. As I was tying my shoes, my water broke.

We called the doula, and called the labor and birth unit at the hospital, and were told to come in for an assessment, and that after that if all was good we would likely be sent home to wait for contractions to start. We went right away to the hospital, and by this time it was about 11:30 AM. At the hospital, they hooked me up to monitors and checked the baby and checked my vital signs. The baby was doing well, but my blood pressure was high. I told them it was probably a fluke, because my blood pressure had never been high, and wasn't high just a few days earlier at my last appointment with my obstetrician. They checked my blood pressure again a bit later and it was still high. They kept me for monitoring a bit longer, and my blood pressure never went down. At this point they suggested that I be induced.

I was not thrilled about the idea of being induced, so at first I declined and said I would go home. However, they were going to make me sign papers saying that I was leaving the hospital against medical advice, and in my experience working at a hospital, it was pretty much only crazy people that did that. So I waited, talk to more doctors, kept having high blood pressure readings, and eventually agreed to be induced. I decided that the risks associated with high blood pressure at that late stage were probably not worth taking, and since I was five days past due already, there was likely no benefit to the baby of waiting.

So they allowed us to go home for about an hour, during which time I changed into more comfortable clothes and ate a big dinner. We went back to the hospital around 7 PM, only to be told that now we would have to wait because several women had come in in active labor, and we would be given a room as soon as one became available. So finally at about 1:30 AM we got a room, they did some baseline monitoring, and they started synthetic oxytocin to induce labor.

I started having contractions almost immediately, and for eight hours I labored with out any pain medications, etc. According to Jeff, during that time I became more and more distant. The photos taken by our doula at that time show me starting to look almost ghostly. At around 10 AM I was told that labor was not really progressing, and I decided that I could not really take it anymore, and asked for an epidural. The contractions had been coming one on top of the other, and were extremely intense, but at the same time were not effectively moving me along. I have a fairly high pain tolerance, and this was like nothing I had ever experienced.

When I caved and decided to have the epidural, I felt like I was on a slippery slope toward a birth that was completely counter to what I had wanted. But when I actually got the epidural, I was pleasantly surprised that it actually really helped things along. The doctor who performed the epidural did things perfectly. I was able to feel my legs, feel every contraction, but was not in pain. They call it a "walking epidural" and while many people are not actually able to walk, even with my mobility limitations and sensory limitations, I was actually able to walk and move around.

A few hours after getting the epidural (probably five or six hours – I can't totally remember, though it felt like no time at all) I was fully dilated to 10 cm. However, I was not yet ready to push, because the baby's head was still very high. They kept checking, and I kept waiting, and after four hours the baby's head still had not moved down. I was told it was time to get that baby out one way or another.

I pushed intensely for about an hour and a half. I was pushing so hard that my face was red, and I was breaking capillaries around my eyes. There was still no movement. At that point I was told by the doctor on call that I had two choices. The first was to try using forceps to help guide the baby's head from its stuck position. This would require that I push as hard or harder than I had been pushing, as the forceps would only help guide, they would not actually be pulling down, so I would have to push the baby out. The second option was to keep trying without forceps, but the danger with this is that I would become too tired, and at that point the only option would be C-section. I chose the forceps.

At that point a team was brought in to help out if the baby was in distress after delivery, I was given an extra dose of medication through the epidural, and the doctor went in with the forceps. After three or four very intense pushes Maren was born.

Immediately after she was born they put her on my chest. Then Jeff cut the umbilical cord, and at some point she was taken to be weighed and to get her first diaper, which Jeff also did. At that point I was told that I had some pretty significant tearing from having such a quick birth. I didn't feel it yet, but in the days and weeks that followed, it was quite painful and fairly limiting. I may talk about that some other time. Also at that point, I noticed that I was experiencing double vision. I still don't know exactly what caused it, but it did go away within about forty-eight hours. I had pushed so hard that I basically had two black eyes from broken capillaries, so maybe that was part of it.

The next couple of days are a bit of a blur, and then my mom came, and we went home. And after that, we had our perfect little Maren, and started our new life as a family.

So that is the relatively long version, as I remember it, and I am sure that there is quite a bit that I have left out, or that Jeff might remember slightly differently.

Things are quite good right now, and we are very much enjoying our time getting used to the new normal. Here is a video from last night showing a little bit of how we spend our time:

Distorted sense of time, smiles

It is sort of freaking me out that we are halfway through November, and that Maren is seven weeks old. In many ways every day feels the same, and my time is dominated by feeding Maren and taking care of things like eating and bathing in between. I do go out every once in a while – I have been to two moms group meetings at the YMCA, and two La Leche League meetings. I have been out shopping a couple of times, once alone with Maren, and have been on a couple of walks. I have also been to various doctors appointments. But in general, my time is spent at home with Maren, and it is hard for me to keep track of what day it is, and sometimes even what month it is. I am sure this is normal :-)

At times I do find that it is difficult to understand why I can't seem to get anything done, even blog posts and responding to comments from previous blog posts. I have wanted to say lots about what is going on, and write emails to people who have commented. But there somehow is only time for feeding, eating, and doing a few other essential things. 

One awesome update is that Maren is smiling all the time now. She has gone from cute to cuter. Her smiles have eluded the camera until tonight when we were eating dinner, when I was able to capture a little bit of smiliness on Jeff's iPhone. Here are the photos from earlier tonight:

Also, she is healthy and continuing to gain weight, and we are all doing well! We noted the other day that she hadn't cried it all the day before, and in paying attention to how much she cries, we figure it is only an average of a couple of minutes a day. She continues to be our little sweetie!

Family portrait

There is much to report, and very little time. First, overall Maren is doing very well – we had a doctors appointment on Tuesday, and she had gained 8 ounces in one week. We were shooting for anything above 5 ounces in order To have evidence that things were going well, so 8 ounces was excellent news. We will have her next weight check a week from tomorrow, but all signs suggest she is gaining weight and doing well. There are still some challenges with feeding, though she seems to be making improvements all the time. I am still spending quite a lot of time feeding her, but as long as she is gaining weight and the feeding is effective, it is fine with me.

Jeff's birthday was this past week, as was Maren's one-month birthday. And of course yesterday was Halloween. This is probably Jeff's favorite week of the year, as of course he loves Halloween. For his birthday he got a new camera, and last night he figured out the timer function and used it to take a quick family portrait:

I know that I am sort of supposed to write a blog post detailing what has changed about Maren in the past month. This seems to be the convention for moms who blog. Unfortunately,  Maren needs to be fed right now so I will have to be quick. Over the past month she has become much more smiley, and a bit more assertive. She is still extremely calm with an easy temperament, easily soothed, and generally the best baby I have ever met. I might be biased, but that's exactly as it should be :-)

On super suckers and awesome mamas

Your special guest blogger this evening is Dr. JT! Bridget is busy feeding a wild animal baby. She does this sometimes at night after Bridget takes a bath - she'll eat, but she'll protest and wriggle and writhe around the whole time. It's pretty funny really, and we'd love to show you, but, well, breastfeeding and the internet.

The good news is that Maren is doing MUCH better since the last post. She had her tongue tie corrected on Monday afternoon, and we saw some small, but immediate, improvements. A few days later, however, was the high point of our stress, when 1) Maren wasn't eating well, 2) Bridget was alternating pumping and feeding every 1.5 hours, 3) I was supplementing her with bottles of expressed milk, which 4) she would sometimes explosively vomit. So we called the lactation consultant again, and she visited us Friday morning, and showed Bridget one more little trick to encourage Maren to suck well, and BOOM - she was eating so much better. It was like she had been building some skills in the background, wondering when we were going to give her the chance to show them. Since then she had been eating well much of the time, and pooping up a storm, I get so excited when she fills a diaper I break into song - many 80's top 10 hits have been altered to allow for poo worship.

So Bridget has been hogging our little one a lot since Friday. Mom and Maren have been lounging out on the rocker for most of the day, so that Maren can snack as much as she wants, and also for further mouth retraining (she still has some work to do). I get her for diaper changes and during bath time, so she gets intense snuggles during those periods. Overall,life is much, much, much calmer around here, and we are happy. It is so nice to have the support of all of our friends near and far during these crazy days.

With stress levels down, Halloween decorating has resumed. I feel that it is critical that Maren understand the importance of Halloween, so she needs the full display even when she is a little wee one. I'll snap a photo on Halloween so that Bridget can post on here!

Oh, and did you know that Bridget is the best mama that ever lived? It's no word of a lie! She is so loving, sweet, and nurturing. I love both of my girls!

Tongue tied

This will be a super short post. I have had some concerns about Maren's breastfeeding from the beginning - shallow latch, long feeding times - but was reassured by several nurses that all was well. Last week concerns were raised about her rate of weight gain - not terrible, but not ideal. We finally called a lactation consultant, and found out on Friday that Maren has a tongue tie (frenulum is keeping her tongue held in a position that makes effective feeding impossible). So now in addition to feeding her every two hours during the day and every three hours at night, I am pumping after each feeding to protect/improve my milk supply. It is like feeding went from being one full-time job to two, and we are quite sleep-deprived. We have an appointment to correct Maren's tongue tie tomorrow, and hopefully next blog post I will have time to say more!

Grandma, baby wearing, unpredictability

We are settling in to life with Maren.  For the first week and a half that we were home, my mom was out visiting from Oregon. It was incredibly helpful to have her here, and she helped with baby holding while also cooking dinner for us every night and helping with cleaning and laundry. We were fortunate to have help starting immediately when we got home.

She left very early on Friday morning, and we are now learning to take care of everything with just the three of us. Fortunately I am starting to feel better, and recovering from the birth, although I am definitely still not at 100%. The sleep deprivation is also starting to catch up with me a bit, but in general things are going well.

One thing that we are finding very helpful is baby wearing. We currently have a borrowed Boba wrap that Jeff has been using, and a Baby K'tan wrap that I have been using. Maren generally sleeps while one of us is wearing her, and Jeff has been going out for walks with her in the wrap, and I have been practicing wearing her around the house.

I think that this will be an extremely useful tool for us to be able to get things done while keeping Maren close. However, so far it only works for me if she is very sleepy to start with, because otherwise if I put her in that position (held close to my chest) she just wants to nurse. As we get used to this arrangement I imagine I will be able to use it in more situations.

We are starting to understand the unpredictability of life with a newborn. For example, Maren has had some incredible nights of sleep, and some quite poor nights. The night before last she slept for a five hour stretch, was up for about an hour for feeding and changing, then slept another three hours. We were incredibly well rested yesterday. Then last night she had a bout of projectile vomiting probably related to eating more than her little stomach can hold, and gulping down a lot of air. We have been diligent about burping her, but sometimes apparently this projectile vomiting of copious amounts of milk cannot be prevented. After that, she was hungry and restless most of the rest of the night, so I slept very very poorly.

We are working on strategies to manage this, and Jeff is insisting that when I am not sleeping well I wake him up. I have been working under the idea that if I can let Jeff sleep then at least one of us will be well rested, but I think he is right that sometimes it makes sense for him to wake up and take the baby so that I can get a bit more sleep. We will figure it out. In the meantime, we are managing quite well, and still  totally loving being parents :-)

One week old

Maren is now one week old and it is hard to imagine that there was life before this. We have been home from the hospital less than a week, and it seems like no time at all has passed, but also that this has been our life forever. We are so far incredibly lucky in that she has a very sweet temperament and is very easy to soothe. She rarely cries, and when she does it is for a specific reason – she doesn't like diaper changes or having her clothes changed, she cries when she wants to nurse but I am not immediately available, etc. We are getting much more sleep than I thought we would (bedsharing, which I know in controversial but we have taken many precautions and it is working well for us), and although there is plenty of waking in the night, we are figuring things out and it gets more and more manageable and easier by the day.

I have not read or responded to emails, text messages, or Facebook messages since she was born. I will get around to that eventually, so I am sorry if you have been trying to get a hold of me and I have been silent. But I can't imagine wanting to stare at my phone or computer when I could stare at my baby instead :-)

Fashion show - wearing the sweater that I knit just to see if it fits

Introducing Maren Ione Klest Loucks

Introducing Maren Ione Klest Loucks, born September 26 at 10:09pm, 8lbs 2oz, 20in. Maren rhymes with Karen, and Ione is pronounced "eye-oh-knee." She is as healthy as can be, and I am recovering from a long and somewhat difficult labor (giving birth is hard!) but also healthy and doing well. Sorry for the delay in posting this update, but we pretty much don't care about the outside world at this point - we are totally and blissfully in love with our little girl.

Much more to come :)

Probabilities, superstition, and squirmy tummies

As was my general prediction, no baby yet – I am hoping the baby comes soon, but so far have no signs of labor. We had an appointment with the obstetrician last Wednesday, and at that time it seemed like the baby was content to stay put for a bit, and we have another appointment tomorrow to see if anything has changed. Maybe, but my gut feeling is that things are pretty well the same. 

We found this handy calculator that gives probability of labor by date, given the due date. By these calculations, only half of first babies are born by their due dates. I am hoping to wait not longer than a week or maybe nine days, because apparently at ten days past due date they start suggesting induction. From what I hear, induced labor can be quite a bit more painful than spontaneous labor, so I have my fingers crossed for spontaneous labor sometime in the next week. We shall see.

In the meantime, our freezer is completely full (we count thirty-three nights worth of pre-made frozen dinners for me and Jeff, including potato-chard-cheddar pockets with potatoes and Swiss chard from the garden, homemade mac & cheese, enchiladas, calzone, lasagna, chili, lentil soup, lentil sweet potato curry, and a second kind of lentil soup with Swiss chard from the garden, plus over fifty chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, forty-seven muffins, and forty-five energy balls). From the perspective of having food ready, I don't think we could be more prepared. I have read multiple books related to sleep, breast-feeding, and what to expect in the first little bit after baby comes home. The only other bits of possible preparation include putting up some hooks to hold a laundry bag in the baby's room, and finishing knitting a little cardigan sweater I started for the baby. 

I am not usually particularly superstitious, but at the moment I feel like the baby will not come until I finish this sweater (and then who knows, the sweater may never actually fit). I am getting reasonably close, but still have hours worth of work to do on it. I was planning to spend a good deal of time knitting this weekend, but I can only do so much at one time without getting some pain in my right arm – I always have to be careful about how much I use my right arm, for everything from writing to mousing to knitting, because overuse can seriously exacerbate my neuropathic pain. So knitting on this sweater is a bit slow, and my superstitious side is telling me that means the baby isn't ready yet either.

I feel like my ability to function is getting to be less and less, and my stamina is lower and lower by the day. Last week I went to my prenatal aqua fit class twice, and that was fabulous– being in the water takes a lot of pressure off of joints and such. I am also still using the exercise bike and stretching on days when I don't go to aqua fit, and trying to get some kind of exercise in every day. Yesterday Jeff and I went for a bike ride on real bikes outside, and I think that might have been overdoing it for me. Today I woke up not feeling great and was on the verge of a migraine for a good part of the day. I feel a bit better now, but still not 100% of my already compromised energy level. So I think I have to really watch it and pay close attention to how I'm feeling so as not to overdo it again! I need all the energy I have for labor, whenever it happens to come.

It is becoming clear that the baby is becoming increasingly cramped for space in my belly. As big as my belly is (and it is quite big – most of my maternity shirts are now too small to cover my whole belly, even though they used to seem like it would be impossible to ever fill them completely) it is not really cutting it size-wise for this baby anymore. I am getting near constant pokes and jabs and waves of movement. I tried to take a video, and of course as soon as I started filming the baby quieted down, but if you look closely the first couple of seconds of this video show some good squirming:

You may have to watch it a few times to actually notice, but the squirming is more at the top. It just doesn't do justice to the weird movements that I feel and see all the time, where suddenly the left side of my belly will be sticking out, or it will be clear that there is a knee/leg poking out. It is now possible to tell by feel where the baby's back is, versus arms and legs. It's such a strange thing to think of a real baby squished into my belly, and I have taken to telling the baby that there doesn't seem to be enough room in there, and it needs to come out to where there is plenty of space to move around :-)

Still hanging on but slowing way down

Today marks thirty-nine weeks pregnant, which I can hardly believe. It seems like this has all gone by very quickly, but at the same time I sort of don't remember what it's like to not be pregnant. The baby is hanging in there, and my prediction is that I will go a couple of days past my due date. I also have a prediction that the baby will be eight and a half pounds or bigger. I don't particularly have any investment in being right about either of those things, but that is my gut feeling, so we shall see.

Earlier this week our department threw a baby shower for us. We got some things that were on our registry, and lots that were not, so it may not have been necessary to do the registry after all, but I suppose it was potentially helpful for some people. We were given a mix of toys, clothes, and practical things like swaddling blankets and bassinet sheets. We were also given a hand-me-down rocking horse from someone who used it for her grandchildren, and it was given to her by someone else who used to be in our department and has since left, and we found out later that it was given to that person by someone who is still in our department, and it was made for her children (now in late high school and university) by another psychologist in town who works at the rehabilitation center (where I have gone for my physical therapy). It will be a while before our baby can enjoy a rocking horse, but it is neat to have something that has a history to it here.

We have really prepared for the fact that we don't have family in town to help out. My mom is coming for about ten days, a week after my due date (fingers crossed that the baby arrives by then), but it's not the same as having someone who lives here who can help out. However, we have been getting lots of offers of help from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, so it is nice to know that we have backup if we need it. And just the fact that Jeff will be off work from when the baby comes through December will be amazing. I think we will do just fine even being so far from family.

Jeff has been extremely involved and helpful, and I'm sure that will only get to be more so when he is off work after the baby comes. I feel so incredibly lucky to have Jeff as the father of this baby, because I don't think that the average dad is nearly so involved. Certainly it would not appear that they are based on  all the baby books and websites I have been looking at. I know there are lots of great dads who are very involved out there, but my bet is that Jeff will be more involved even than the average great dad. Anyway, I know this baby is lucky to have him.

Also, Jeff got me a gift as a sort of end of pregnancy, this has been physically hard, thank you for carrying the baby gift. He bought me a lovely silver necklace with a sapphire stone in it, which will be the birth stone of our baby (assuming it is not more than ten days late). It was so thoughtful and so sweet, and such a reminder that I am awfully lucky too :-)

Swollen feet and breakdancing carrots

Monday was my last day at work, but on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I did feel a bit like I was working from home as there were lots and lots of emails to respond to and things to do. However, on Friday I got exactly 0 emails that I had to respond to, so I think that my leave has really and truly started. There are some little things that I will do, like sign things and attend to any urgent issues that may graduate students are having, but there are backup people in place and for the most part there is nothing that I have to do this someone else can't do. So I'm finally feeling like my brain has transitioned out of work mode, which is great.

On Tuesday night Jeff took me out to dinner to celebrate having finished my last day of work. I also went for a prenatal massage that day, and last week on Tuesday and Thursday went to a prenatal aqua fit class. I am trying hard to focus on being physically well and prepared for birth, which has been a bit hard given that I have had a cold for seemingly ever. My cold is starting to improve significantly, and I think it may be over soon, but it is hard to say how long symptoms will linger just a little.

My biggest complaint has been giant swollen feet and ankles that don't go back to normal anymore. For a while I would have swollen feet sometimes, and then the swelling would subside for a while, but now it's just constant. My obstetrician said it is normal and not something to worry about as I don't have any other symptoms of concern, and she said essentially that if I think my feet are swollen I haven't seen anything. But it is quite uncomfortable. One of the biggest challenges has been related to shoes when I go out. Most people with giant swollen feet just wear flip-flops, but I can't do that because without some kind of ankle strap they fall off my feet. On Friday I went out and bought some "yoga flip-flops" like these which are basically the same as flip-flops but with two fabric straps, one of which goes around the ankle. They are a reasonable compromise. They allow my feet more room than any other shoes, and stay on well enough, so are pretty good even if they are not great on either front. At least I can wear them without being extremely uncomfortable.

Our biggest baby preparation has been doing more food related stuff. Yesterday I baked forty-eight of my protein and nutrient dense oatmeal applesauce muffins (not sure if I have posted the recipe, but if anyone wants it they are pretty tasty and quite healthy) and froze forty-seven of them (I had to have one fresh as a snack), and today I made my first batch of "energy balls" consisting of almonds, dried cranberries, prunes, oats, and flax seed. All of that goes into the food processor and when it gets sticky it gets rolled into balls. Jeff tried one and said it tastes like candy, and I tend to agree – thanks to our friends in Ottawa for introducing us to this idea :-) I plan to make several different kinds of these for the freezer, and since they involve no baking and minimal ingredients they are quick and easy. And at last count I think we have twenty-three nights worth of dinners in the freezer, counting the enchiladas Jeff is in the process of making as we speak.

And the most involved part of everything has been harvesting vegetables from the garden. Our beet harvest ended up being completely miserable this year, and not one of the beets was large enough to save or use. We probably planted the wrong kind. However, Jeff dug up almost 14 pounds of carrots, and also quite a few potatoes. We don't quite know how many potatoes he dug up just yet, because we still have to clean a bit more of the dirt off and make sure they are fully dry before they're ready for storage. I am not really in much condition to help with the garden harvest this year, so Jeff is basically doing all of it. It is a lot of work to dig and clean 14 pounds of carrots and I'm not sure but probably 20 pounds of potatoes. I am very appreciative that he is doing it, because it is  so satisfying to eat produce from the garden. We are still also getting lots of Swiss chard, and a slow but steady stream of zucchini. Sometimes Jeff hates the garden because it is so much work, but I know that sometimes he also loves it :-)

The best  carrot by far was this one, which definitely looks to me like it is breakdancing:

Another cold

Last week my cough was finally starting to get better, and although I was a bit congested, things were starting to look up in that respect. Then, unfortunately, Jeff and I both came down with a new cold, which we caught from our colleague's two-and-a-half-year-old.  This one is a bit more traditional in its appearance – sore throat, congestion, runny nose, and the like. I am really hoping that this doesn't linger too long. It has been over a month since I first decided to go to the doctor because my cough was getting worse, and I don't want this cold last for quite so long!

Yesterday was therefore spent doing very little. That was actually quite nice – just sitting around at home for the most part. At the end of the day we went to have dinner with friends at their house, which was a bit more effort, but also meant we didn't have to cook dinner which was a bonus.

Yesterday morning I made a batch of pie crust dough, and today made a small rhubarb pie with rhubarb that was harvested and frozen earlier this summer from our garden. It is small only in that instead of putting a top crust on it, I just folded over the bottom crust to make sort of a free-form shape in the pie pan, but it's pretty much a full-sized one crust pie. I am very much looking forward to having it for dessert tonight.

Tomorrow is my last day at work before going on leave. I thought that perhaps I would not even go in tomorrow, but there are still a few loose ends to tie up, and things to bring home from the office, like my plant which will not survive a year of neglect. My mind is still in work mode, as I have been working quite hard for the last little while, but I am hoping that after tomorrow I will be able to fully shift my focus to being at home and to baby.

Lots of people at this stage are just ready for the baby to come already, but I really want the three more weeks I have until my due date. I want time to mentally prepare, to read a bit more from some of my books (I particularly want to finish the book I'm reading about breastfeeding, and read a little bit about newborn sleep), to finish knitting the baby sweater I started, and if there is time, to cook a bit more for stocking the freezer. I actually really want to make some cookie dough and put it in the freezer, which doesn't take much time but which won't happen if the baby shows up too soon. At the same time, I don't want the baby to come too late because my mom is coming out a week after my due date, and it would be nice if the baby was here for her visit!

So, if I could have it my way the baby would show up right on time, but it turns out the chances of that are fairly low. There is about a 4% chance of a baby arriving on its due date, and any time between today and five weeks from today would be considered quite normal. It's hard not knowing how much time I have, and because of that not really being able to decide how to spend my time. I'm not used to this, but I think it is probably just a small taste of the uncertainty that we are about to experience :-)

Hot and cold

We are in the final month before my due date, and all of the major important baby prep things are done. It's a good thing they are, because I am less and less able to do things. I have one more busy week at work, and then that will mostly be done too, although there may be a couple of things that I have to deal with from home after my maternity leave officially starts. I am starting to feel like we are prepared in the sense that we have done all the things we are supposed to do, but everyone tells us that we will never really be prepared because having a baby is not something that you can understand or prepare for until you do it. So that is where we are at the moment.

The part about me being less and less able to do things stems from me getting bigger and bigger, my feet being swollen more often, and generally being very easily fatigued. Our regular obstetrician was on vacation last week and so we saw someone else from the office, and she noted that I was "measuring big" and that although my regular obstetrician had said it was still within the normal range on previous visits, on this visit she thought that my growth was rapid enough to warrant an extra ultrasound to make sure that everything was okay. So I had an ultrasound on Thursday, and depending on where you look and what statistics you go with, the baby is measuring within the normal range, but somewhere around the 90th percentile. So there are no problems (like extra amniotic fluid or other things that can be signs of a problem), just a big baby. I feel kind of huge, and it is a little bit validating to be told that yes indeed I am kind of huge in an objective sense. But I am happy that the baby seems to be healthy, and it is certainly better to have a baby who is measuring big than measuring small, because even if the baby were born today it probably would not be considered low birth weight :-)

One slight issue/battle that is going on in our house at the moment is that I am constantly hot, which means that Jeff is constantly cold. The air-conditioning is set to a level that is colder then Jeff would prefer, and this has been the same all summer. This morning was a very crisp cold morning for August, and I decided it would be a good idea to take advantage and open a bunch of windows. This brought the temperature of the house down below even what the air-conditioning is normally set at, and Jeff has been freezing all day long. I normally like things warm, and normally get kind of annoyed when the air-conditioning is on all the time, but I now have a new appreciation for what it is like to be hot. Being more than 30 pounds heavier than I usually am, it doesn't matter how little I am wearing, I can't seem to get cool enough. I brought ice packs to bed last night even though the temperature outside was down to about 5°C/41°F. Jeff does not like that he has to wear a sweater indoors in the summer. I totally get his point of view, but right now if the house is not cold, I am beyond uncomfortable. I told Jeff that this will only last for a few more weeks, and he asked what if it never goes back to normal. Thinking about it, if that were to happen, it would be an awfully good thing that we live in Saskatchewan so that at least I can be comfortable in the winter!

Two weeks, three weeks, five weeks

It is just two weeks until I start my maternity leave. I can hardly believe that I will really be off work for a year starting September 1, and it scares me a bit how much work has to get done before then. But, I also know that if things don't get done the world will not end. I had planned to really not have anything left to do by this point, but things didn't work out that way. I have been working more slowly these past few weeks, so things that I thought should be done by now are not done. It is also the case that certain things out of my control have held things up (both of my graduate students are being held up by bureaucratic issues, and I hope all of this is resolved within the next two weeks).

Today we also prepared the garden for harvest in three weeks. Jeff cut down what was remaining of the potato plants so the potatoes can start the process of "hardening off," so that when we harvest them the skins will be a little tougher and they will be ready for storage. I went out and bought a soaker hose today so that we can continue watering the parts of the garden that still need water, while no longer watering the potatoes. We finally got our first two zucchinis today (one green and one yellow), as previous ones rotted before they were ready to pick due to blossom end rot. It seems that this problem has disappeared, and I am hopeful that we will see lots of zucchini in the next few weeks.

Going out shopping was a bit exhausting (even though it was an extremely short and easy trip), as was helping Jeff lay down the soaker hose (it had to be secured with landscaping pins, and we had to sort of pass the hose back and forth across the garden beds). These are things that it seems reasonable to be a little bit tired from, but I was totally exhausted. I am definitely moving into that end of pregnancy exhaustion phase. At the same time, I still have my cough, and now have nasal congestion as well. I have never had the experience of a cold starting as a cough and then developing other symptoms afterward. I did go back to the doctor, and she did prescribe a steroid inhaler, which I have been using and which I do think is helping some with my lung irritation. However, it seems pretty clear that this is a virus that is lingering and in some ways getting worse, and I will probably just have to wait it out. I hope it doesn't take too long to get over this, as it is not all that long until the baby will be here!

As of today, it is now five weeks until my due date. There are very few things left for us to do to prepare. One thing we will probably continue to do until the baby comes is stock up on freezer meals. We have been making large batches of food, eating it for one night, and putting all the leftovers in containers in the freezer. A couple of months ago we bought a used upright deep freezer from someone at the University who was moving, and put it in the basement. We had this on our baby to do list, specifically because we wanted to have extra space for food made ahead of time. As of tonight we have thirteen days of dinner for me and Jeff packed away in the freezer, and I think we will probably try to fill every inch of space we can before the baby comes - so that we have options for things to eat and few dishes to wash in the early days when things are hard.

One thing that I am super happy about is that on Friday the wall in back of our shower finally got fixed. We also ended up doing a bit of a shower makeover, and although in some ways it doesn't look all that different, it feels drastically different and I have great peace of mind knowing that it is now structurally sound, and knowing that my grab bars are not going to budge. I took my first standing shower in I don't know how long on Saturday, and it felt extremely relaxing to do so.

Before

Partway through renovation

After

We also did our best to relax a bit this weekend. Yesterday we went for a very leisurely bike ride. Today a good part of the morning was spent in pajamas, and we slept in as well as we could. I am running into a bit of trouble with sleeping, finding that I get lower back pain from laying down all night. It goes away fairly quickly when I get up in the morning, and I don't have any back pain during the day (knock on wood). I seem to wake up a few hours before I would like to, and find that I can't get comfortable in bed no matter what position I put myself into. I have decided that next time this happens I'm going to get up out of bed for a longer time (I usually get up long enough just to go to the bathroom), and see if I can make the back pain go away by standing and moving around or even just sitting.

And as I have been thinking more about comfort and sitting, we decided to move the glider rocking chair from the baby's room into the living room, at least for now. I am thinking that for now, it will be very nice to have a chair that is comfortable for me to sit in with my feet up (and for the past twenty-four hours this indeed has been great), as it seems I need to have my feet up most of the time when I'm sitting in order to avoid having giant swollen feet and ankles. Once the baby comes, if I spend a lot of time in this chair nursing I will be happier to be out in the main area of the house as opposed to in the back corner in the baby room.

Despite some fatigue, difficulty sleeping, and swollen feet, I have not yet reached that point in pregnancy where it feels like I will be pregnant forever, or where I just want the baby out. I am still very much enjoying being pregnant, and once again hope that the baby does not decide to make a surprise early arrival – at least not too early :-)

Maybe I do need a little more rest…

I have been feeling still relatively okay, but a little bit worse and more complainy this week. We started the week with our trip to Saskatchewan Landing Provincial Park, and did have a nice time. We had a picnic by the lake, went on a short (1.2 km) hike, and Jeff went for a short swim. It took almost as long to get out there as we had time there once we arrived, so it was quite a long drive just for a day trip (over two and a half hours driving each way). But it was quite nice to get out and away from people and away from farms into a more natural landscape.

I have been more tired so I used a crutch instead of a cane or hiking stick even for our short hike – a crutch provides a bit more stability. I also had to stop and rest along the way, which I would say is not typical for such a short walk. It is certainly a combination of all the extra weight I am carrying plus this cough that won't go away.

On Tuesday I went back to the doctor because my cough had gotten worse. The doctor suggested that at this point it was worth trying antibiotics, so I have been on antibiotics since Tuesday and it seems to be having no effect. So chances are it is just a virus, but now my lungs are so irritated that my coughing fits are becoming more violent. We had an appointment with the obstetrician late last week, and she suggested that I might need a steroid inhaler to deal with inflammation. She said this kind of thing is not uncommon in pregnant women whose lungs are being squished from below. I thought I would give the antibiotics a few more days, which it has now been, so I'm going to call about the possibility of getting that inhaler prescribed. When I search for this condition on the Internet, I see some doctors and some studies that say you just have to wait it out and that no intervention is likely to help, but others suggest that in their clinical experience a steroid inhaler is helpful. At this point my lungs feel so raw and irritated that anything that might help seems like a good idea. I am not as positive about this virus as I was a week ago :-)

Also this week my feet once again swelled up to an unnatural size. It seemed relatively unprovoked, but the obstetrician said perhaps it was somehow related to changes in barometric pressure, because she had seen a lot of it this week. So I wore my compression socks for three days, exercised, drank lots of water, and things did improve.

At the same time, I figured out that my wedding band was stuck on my finger. I was hoping it was just due to swelling, but when the swelling went down it was still stuck. It was getting to the point of being quite uncomfortable, and I realized that if I didn't get it off it may soon start to cut off circulation to my finger. In all the pregnancy books and apps that I have, not one of them made it clear that it was really necessary to take your rings off every day to make sure that they did not get stuck. So if there is anyone reading this who has not been pregnant before and will be pregnant in the future, be vigilant about your rings. I tried many tricks including making my finger slipperier with moisturizer and cooking oil, icing my finger to make it shrink, and spraying glass cleaner on it (I did not think this would work, but other people on the Internet said they were skeptical but it turned out to be the only thing that helped). None of these things worked; the ring was still stubbornly stuck.

So as a last resort I tried something that seemed a bit barbaric, but better than having the ring cut off. It involves using dental floss to squish a little bit of your finger at a time just above the ring, then moving the ring up to that squished spot, unraveling the dental floss, and moving up slightly. At first it seemed hopeless, but slowly I did make progress. I continued to ice my finger throughout this process, partly because it helped keep it small, and partly because I had heard that this method can result in quite a bit of bruising. Eventually I was able to slide my ring off, but it was a fairly painful process. However, I am realizing that the ring had been digging into my skin for a while and it feels much better having it off. This is a picture of my hand, taken today, twenty-four hours after I took my ring off, and you can see on my ring finger that there is still an indentation from where the ring was.

So as much as it was a somewhat unpleasant process to remove the ring, it really does feel much better now.

I think the lesson this week is that right now I really do have to slow down whether I want to or not. With the level of fatigue I felt on our short walk on Monday, my cough, my swollen feet, etc., I am finding I have no choice but to rest a bit more. Yesterday the son of one of our colleagues had his bar mitzvah, and I went to the (long boring) part in the morning (the actual bar mitzvah as part of the Shabbat service), but was so tired that I had to stay home from the fun part (the evening reception with a buffet dinner held at the science center, complete with a demonstration about how to make ice cream with liquid nitrogen). Jeff went, and won a mug and a CD for his air guitar skills, and it sounded like a great time. However, there was just no way I would have held up being anywhere but on the couch in my pajamas.

I was expecting this, and the planning for this, but somehow have been feeling so good that I thought maybe the fatigue would never hit. And maybe once I kick this cough I will go back to feeling pretty good, or maybe this is just a sign that the end of pregnancy is nigh…

Slowing down

This was a fairly uneventful week, and yet still quite busy. Somehow we had things to do every evening this week, Monday through Thursday, plus there was work like normal. However, I do think that things are starting to slow down.

First, we had a date night on Friday for the first time in a while. We went out to eat at a popular and nice but fairly casual restaurant, then came home and worked on a puzzle. Not necessarily super exciting from some standards, but a very good date night for us :-)

On Friday I worked from home because I wasn't feeling so well. I have had a cough intermittently for quite a while (maybe two weeks?), and it seemed like it was starting to get worse. I have never had a cough like this, where it came on without any other cold symptoms, started out where I was coughing maybe twice a day, and now has progressively gotten to where I'm coughing a lot and it is, as they say, "productive." I went to the doctor on Friday afternoon, and was told it is probably just a virus and not to worry about it unless it gets worse. If this is my cold for the year, I'll take it – this is probably the least sick sickness I have ever had :-)

This weekend Jeff has been doing his best to get me to rest, as that is what was prescribed by the doctor (along with plenty of fluids, and fresh air outside of air-conditioned buildings). He says that yesterday I did not do such a great job, and he gave me a grade of B- on relaxing. He says it would have been a grade of C except that he knows I was trying. So today I decided to try to do better, and with much coaching from Jeff I think I have succeeded – I spent the entire afternoon just reading and knitting. This morning I made ice cream, and after dinner we made some homemade veggie burgers to put in the freezer, but other than that I have not been working too hard.

Tomorrow is a holiday here (Saskatchewan Day, which exists I think only because there is no other holiday in August), and we are planning to head out to a provincial park for the day. It is one we have not been to before, and hopefully it is a lovely and relaxing time!

Lists

For the last while, our life has revolved around lists. We have lists of things that need to be done before the baby comes, and sub lists within those lists for specifics. There are many items to acquire, plans to be made surrounding labor and birth, things to get done around the house, and things to make sure we have ready to make our lives easier once the baby comes. This weekend has been nonstop doing things on the lists, which feels good in a sense because we are accomplishing things, but exhausting because we don't have much time to relax at the moment. However, when we look now at our lists it seems that most things are done. There are still things that we have to prepare that will take some time (like acquiring items for and putting together a birth bag, which we are coming to realize is probably several bags, some of which may or may not be needed depending on the length of the hospital stay and such), but really the majority is finished. So I'm thinking that soon we will go back to having some relaxing weekends, relaxing evenings, and time to prepare mentally for the baby.

One thing that we did this weekend that we had not planned on doing was create a baby registry. We more or less intended to get all of the things that we needed on our own, get some secondhand things from family and friends, and be done with it. I know that people like to give gifts, but we are pretty self-sufficient and financially stable, and creating a registry really seems like asking people to buy you things, and this feels uncomfortable to me at this point. However, we were informed that our department will be holding a baby shower for us, and people in our department are more likely to contribute cash than to actually go out and buy a gift. So what will end up happening in this case is that our department secretaries will be given some cash to work with, and it will be up to them to actually purchase gifts for this shower. Without a registry, this makes their job extremely difficult, and we absolutely did not want to make things difficult for anyone. 

So over the weekend we took a trip to Toys "R" Us/Babies "R" Us, and created a registry. This shower will not be held until September 8 due to people being on vacation and dates for start of term, and that is only twelve days before our due date. So we didn't feel that we could put anything on the registry that was a "must have" before the baby was born, so we have more or less purchased all the essentials ourselves. I thought that we would be able to create a registry with just a few things on it, enough to make the lives of our department secretaries easy when they are planning our shower and buying gifts. However, when we showed up to make the registry we were told that we had to put at least fifty items on it. In some ways it was fun, but in many ways it just felt like work, trying to figure out how many onesies and in what sizes, how many teething toys, etc., we could reasonably add. But it's done, and it is a relief. 

While we were there, we also purchased a few things in order to have the basics of what we need for the very beginning. That part was fun for me – especially buying some newborn size clothes for the baby to wear home from the hospital. Because I know some people are wondering, the sex of the baby is going to be a surprise – it seems like the thing that everyone asks about and everyone cares about, but that is so much less important to us than other things, like the fact that we are having a human baby :-) So, we got some very cute gender-neutral onesies and sleepers, and thinking about the fact that in just two short months our little baby will be wearing them makes me all mushy and melty.

As promised, below are some pictures of our nursery progress. We have a dresser that we already had, a comfy glider rocker, a change table, and a bassinet in the baby room. After I took a few pictures I realized that the creepy baby doll was in some of them, so I took one last photo with the doctor removed :-)

In our bedroom, we have a crib with one side removed pushed between the wall and our bed. We will be securing the crib to our bed frame with bungee cords (which I purchased today – one more thing checked off the list). Currently, the crib is filled with plastic bags to keep cats out.

And lastly, speaking of cats, although ours have been very well behaved (no pooping outside the litter box, no attempts to escape from basement cat jail at night), we are continuing to have problems with Maddy's neighborhood friend. This is the cat that had peed on our front door several times. Well, he has stopped peeing on the front door since we put out the stayaway, but he has since started peeing on the back door. This is actually less of a problem because of how things are structured there, and it is easier to clean up. But recently we had an experience that was a bit jarring. I smelled cat pee, and couldn't find the source – it was not outside the front door, and it was not outside the back door, but I definitely smelled it in the house. Occasionally we leave the door open to allow some air in and to allow Koshka, who is a big scaredy, to explore outside knowing that she can run back in whenever she chooses. So apparently on one of these occasions when the door was left open (for probably ten minutes, so not very long) the neighborhood cat came inside and peed on a storage cube that we had in the shelf, and on our wall.

I could not believe it, but it was definitely mail cat spray, so there is no other reasonable explanation than that he came in and actually peed in our house. We threw away the storage cube and we were able to clean the wall, but now we can never leave the door open unattended. If it was our own cat, I would be frustrated but would feel better about it somehow, because we get absolutely nothing from this cat other than pee. I wish I knew where this cat lived and could talk to his owners, though that would probably do nothing to solve the problem. Anyway, at least we are reasonably able to clean up the smell!

Calgary visit details

So as I mentioned, we decided to take a quick road trip to Calgary and while we were there take a day trip to Banff. We have also been doing tons of work related to baby prep, and I will post photos of our nursery progress next week, but I haven't taken any pictures so can't post them today.

Just before we left, we had to do some last-minute garden maintenance – we have many, many peas, and they are growing so tall that they are starting to fall over off the tomato cage trellis that I have them on, which has not happened in previous years. The peas are really growing more as a thicket than a collection of vines. In any case, we had to be sure to pick some peas before we left so that they wouldn't be all over ripe when we got back.

Then we made the long drive – about eight hours with stops for bathroom breaks and lunch – with Jeff doing all the driving. Not too fun for him, and quite tiring, but driving is very fatiguing for me so we don't switch off, and Jeff gets to be behind the wheel the whole time. We stayed at a condo that we rented through Air B&B, and it was great except that we didn't think to ask whether there was air-conditioning. Fortunately there was a small portable AC unit in the bedroom, because while we were visiting it was super hot – highs around 32°C/90°F.

The day after we arrived, we went to the Calgary Stampede, which is like a fair but enormous. It is known as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth." Everyone wears cowboy hats:

Jeff and his brother tried out some pitching at the major-league baseball roadshow:

I rode my scooter around, which allowed me to see lots of the stampede grounds without getting too tired. However, I am not used to sitting for that long, and being in the seated position combined with the heat, was horrible for my feet and ankles – they swelled up like little sausages and I had trouble fitting them into my shoes after that. They kind of stayed that way the whole time that we were in Calgary because it was so hot. Fortunately they are back to normal size now that we are home, with air-conditioning at home and work, and a lot less sitting.

Besides the stampede we also spent lots of time visiting Jeff's brother and family:

And on our last day before heading home, we spent the day in Banff National Park, which is only about an hour and a half drive from Calgary. It is beautifully situated in the Canadian Rockies, and although there is much more to see than what can be done in a day, a day trip was better than nothing – this was my only chance to see mountains this summer!

We went for a short hike around a lake, which ended up being quite tiring for me even with the aid of my trekking poles and a lot of help from Jeff. Fortunately it was not so hot in Banff the day we went, because if it was I probably would not have been able to finish the hike at all (even though it was only about 3 km and mostly flat). However, despite being a bit difficult it was lovely to be out in the woods and in the mountains:

After our hike and after lunch, we went for a ride up the Banff gondola. It was a great way to see lots of mountains without having to do lots of hiking.

All in all it was a great trip. We don't have any specific trips planned for the rest of the summer, and there is some chance that we might go camping, though not super likely because it is getting harder and harder for me to get up off of chairs and especially off the ground. I also likely would sleep very poorly. It is hard to think of a summer without any camping, but probably better to stick to day trips at this point. My belly has been growing rapidly the last few weeks. Jeff took a picture of me sitting on the couch while I was talking to my mom on the phone a few days ago, and this is currently what I look like:

I have two months to go, and growth is likely to be fairly pronounced in these last two months. Looking at this picture is a good reminder of why I may find it hard to go camping as the summer progresses :-)