Nursery Update

We did a bunch of work on the nursery today. We hung up a new mirror and some pictures...


Washed all of the baby clothes, organized all of the baby stuff into the shelves, installed the changing mattress...


Set up a new lamp to make a nice corner for reading and nursing...


And washed all the linens and blankets and set the crib up ready to go. For now, the baby's friends will keep it warm.

More bumpwatch

38 weeks and counting... current highlights include oh my goodness I am so thirsty and perhaps I could have another slice of pizza and by the way it's time for my nap but man it's so uncomfortable to lie down...

Grow baby grow!

Also, you can really see how the baby has dropped since last post. Neat huh?

Also, did I mention I have to pee again?

Bumpwatch continues

Still growing... 36 weeks! Go baby go!

Living Room Microscopy

I had a 2007 calendar with some awesome microscopy images, which I refused to throw away the calendar with the dream of hanging up the cool pictures. Thanks to birthday money from Grandma and Grandpa (thanks!) and the vision of Chad, look at our cool living room art!


The images are of different materials, blown up to the ~5 micron scale. Of course, no scalebars. But a girl can't have everything she wants.


I would rate this as slightly less geeky than a kitten named Entropy, but only slightly. :)

Progress (and hello, by the way)

Yes, we're still here, still doing well, and there are even signs of progress. Please pay no attention to the lack of posting. Periods of feeling good but being insanely busy have alternated with periods of needing to lie on the couch for an entire day, which has significantly cut into my blogging time.

In other news, we put together the crib! Look how great it looks!!


Complete with mascot mobile. Cute, huh?


In other news, Chad re-arranged the kitchen a few weeks ago to make space for our sexy new dishwasher...


And we decided to dress the baby up for Halloween.


Overall, a good month since last posting. :)

Baby's Room!

I had some great friends help me paint our baby's room this weekend. I love the way it looks now - all warm and fuzzy.


In fact, I think that Winnie the Pooh might live here.


I think the color scheme also does a decent job of tying the things we have in the room together so far. I think the bookshelf and the lights look nice, and the sheet set (in the bag on the corner) looks like it belongs as well. Coming soon, luxuries like curtains! And a place for the baby to sleep!

In other news, it is frigging freezing here. It frosted last night, and will definitely frost again tonight. Due to the plunging temperatures, we decided to pick the last of our tomatoes. Figured there might be just a few stragglers on the vine.


Huh.

Seems that the last of our tomatoes is considerably more tomatoes than we had anticipated. Apparently our tomato plants love October as much as I do.

What's up now, 28 weeks?

A few months ago, I got about halfway through the lawn and was so exhausted I had to quit. Chad has done most of the mowing since then, but we've been so busy lately that it's gotten a little bit out of hand. Our lawn was bad enough that we've been talking about buying a powered lawnmower in order to tackle it. I tried to capture the mid-calf grass photographically, but I'm not sure it came though:


It was beautiful beautiful beautiful this weekend, so I figured I could get my exercise for today pushing the thing around our backyard. Yes, this entire post is about how I was able to mow our lawn by myself. After getting up early to paint the trim. And after mowing I had enough energy to do yoga, finish up the baby's room, and cook a real dinner. After a full day yesterday (doing engineering with 6th graders, painting, staying late at friends' for dinner). This may not sound all that astounding but please bear in mind that the first five months I was pregnant I had to spend the entire weekend laying on the couch. Max liked it, I found it clashed with my personality.

So now I'm officially 3rd trimester (when did THAT happen!?) and feel like myself. Woot. Bring it on, 3rd trimester!

P.S. If the posting suddenly stops for a long time, you can go ahead and assume that the 3rd trimester has, in fact, brought it on, and I am laying on the couch.

P.P.S. You have to wait for pictures of the baby's room. Chad gets to come home from Boston and see it first. :)

Fired.

A second box arrived today. This is a picture of Max trying to break into the box.


She is totally fired from box watching duty.

Do not open until...

A few days ago mom warned me that we would be getting some boxes in the mail, and I shouldn't open them until my birthday. Max has taken it upon herself to guard the merchandise until the appropriate day.


Either that, or she thinks maybe she can open the box herself to find her friends. She has been sniffing the tape suspiciously as she paces around the box top...

Bumpwatch update

6 months and growing...


Though I don't think the cats are particularly impressed. I did have two strangers comment on my being pregnant this week - this was the first time that someone who doesn't already know me has said anything.

This stage is fun. The baby is moving a lot - I get kicked whenever I sit still. But he's not strong enough to actually hurt me (I hear this will change soon). I feel much less nauseous and exhausted than the first few months, but I also don't feel super bloated and heavy yet. So I'm trying to get plenty of sleep and exercise and appreciate it while it lasts. :)

More fun than a glass panel full of monkeys...

Actually, that's not true. It's exactly as fun as a glass panel full of monkeys, because that is what they are. We bought some lights for the baby's room today. Aren't they cute?


*** disclaimer *** Please note we do not intend to have a monkey theme. We just liked the lights. ****

Also note the cute little boxes in the shelves... we got those today too. Just imagine a changing table where the cat bed is and we're getting closer...

We also hung up this cute mirror:


I like the mirror idea because the room is so small, and I figured this one was fun.

At this point, you may be wondering "gee, does any of this new stuff match the crib set you bought?" The answer is no, not really.

Perhaps we are lacking in a real design vision. Sigh...

But at least when you flip a light switch the room gets lighter now.

Special Delivery

I went up to talk to Chad the other day and heard a weird noise coming from this box in his office.


All we have in this box is a bunch of stuffed animals that we never unpacked after moving. So basically, any noise coming from this box is weird. I thought maybe one of the stuffed animals had come to life.

Chad suspected Max. He was right.


She had dug her way into the box to be with the animals. Nice, cozy company, that doesn't chase her around the house like Entropy does.

Still Bumpy

Just before taking this picture, my darling husband complemented me on my outfit with the following:

"You are looking very bumpy today."

Aw, shucks.


In other news, it seems we suck at blogging. You may have noticed the complete lack of posting. It seems I promise to blog more, then weeks and weeks and weeks go by with no posting. So let's be honest, it's not going to get better until we have better material. Expected in t - 16 weeks.

cat update

Max likes to watch the olympics, but once in a while she prefers to watch us. In a somewhat creepy way from the bookshelf.


When she tires of us, she goes back to watching the olympics. This is somewhat dangerous, as Entropy has found a new spot to stalk her from.


I am rather impressed by Entropy's athleticism, personally. She jumps all the way up there from the TV stand and manages not to knock the whole thing over. Maybe she's actually part squirrel.

The big news in the life of our cats, though, is the newly installed screen door. They were definitely scared of it at first, but now they seem to really like hanging out in front of it. It's the next best thing to being outside!


Perhaps once the baby is born we will have more interesting things to post about than our cats. I'm not making any promises.

Its a boy

Well, this may come as a surprised to you if you haven't heard the news yet, as we've neglected to post it here, but Rachel is pregnant! On Thursday we had an ultrasound and found out that it's going to be a boy!


Here's a nice picture showing the current state of Rachel plus baby. Stay tuned for continuing coverage of Bumpwatch 2008.

Out of control

This is what I picked from our garden this afternoon. Notice the other junk intentionally left on the table for context. These suckers are HUGE!!! We picked a zucchini as big as the large one less than a week ago (last Tuesday, to be exact). We had two friends over for dinner, had grilled zucchini AND zucchini bread, and only used half of the giant. Clearly our garden is out of control.

Anyone need some Zucchini?

July 4th at the camp

So posting once a month is better than nothing, right? Right?

We had a great time at camp no class over 4th of July.


We did a lot of paddling, and basically just enjoyed the beauty of the beaver river.


It was great to hang out with Mom, Sue, Sarah and Al all at the same time. Also, I had no idea Sarah was so good at darts.


This place is just so beautiful and peaceful.

Can you find Sarah and Al in the picture above?

Back to Neutronworld

Sorry about the light posting lately - suffice it to say that life has gotten a bit exhausting. More on that later, but for example, the past three weekends have involved Rachel traveling to Atlanta for USAV nationals, Chad going to Portland for Railscon*, and then Rachel heading to Gaithersburg MD to shoot some neutrons and Chad heading to Boston.

At any rate, I'm back at NIST, and was informed when I arrived at the gate this morning that there is a bear on site.

A BEAR.

NIST is a totally fenced in, guarded, federal lab. Apparently one that is now inhabited by a bear. You know scientists, not satisfied with working in close proximity to a nuclear reactor, might like having a bear around for extra excitement.

I guess the story is that bear was in someone's back yard, and when animal control came after it it jumped the fence into NIST. Apparently the plan is to just wait for it to leave on its own accord. Which is fine with me (I don't think I'm in any bear danger as I walk the short distance from my car to the building), but funny. The gatehouse has a big "bear warning" sign up. Such silliness.

*Did you see the first picture on the railscon website? I guess there are places with a more narrow demographic than WPI. And I thought physics conferences were bad!

First Harvest from the Garden

I picked the first vegetables from our garden today:

Radishes! They looked great, and I soon had them cleaned up.


We had one radish casualty - This radish was slightly above ground and it looks like an animal or bugs got into it.


Otherwise, we had 8 great looking radishes, one of which ended up on tonight's salad.

catfight

Chad caught the furry aliens that live in our house fighting over the blanket by the door. We keep this blanket there, by the way, to keep the drafts from coming through the door. You can see how effective this is when the cats pull it out of the way.

Sunny Day

aka time to spend some time working outside. We got some tomato seedlings and added them to the plot. Also in this picture you can see the basil that seems to be popping up quite nicely

The beans are doing great - I had to thin them down around the poles.


Also thinned: lettuce, spinach, radishes. The zucchini and cucumbers are also looking good, but we planted those few enough and far enough between to not really need thinning.

Check out our new sunflowers:


Ok, they're not much to look at yet. Hopefully by the end of the summer they will be big and beautiful, and you know I will keep you updated on their progress.


Also the garden on the side of the patio is doing very nicely. The mums are perking up, we're seeing lots of leaves on the lilies, and one of the azaleas is almost blooming!
Time to do some work outside!

Which of these books is not like the others?

Which of these books is not like the others?


To the untrained eye, they may all look like boring books about unintelligible subjects. But in fact, one of these unintelligible books is written by Ruby on Rails superstars Chad Pytel and Jon Yurek (and some other guy I don't know, so I'll feel free to totally discount him here). Here is Chad, posing with his book.


In Barnes and Noble, actually. How cool is that? He wrote a book that you can buy anywhere! And then learn all about active record! And then do.... stuff! In Active Record!

**Disclaimer: There may be people who actually use this thing called Active Record, and I hope they like the book. :) **

Hello, old friends (and other signs of summer coming)

I mowed the lawn the other day, for the first time of the season. It was a jungle out there, but now that I know how to use the mower it's just great compared to the last time. Other fun things going on in the back yard: the beans are growing like crazy!


We have enough sun to make some delicious sun tea:


And everything is just getting greener. Yay springtime!