193 Cents

On January 22nd of 2012, the U.S. Postal Service increased the required postage to send a letter from 44 cents to 45 cents.  While George and I were writing a few thank you cards, we noticed that we still had eleven 44-cent Simpson stamps.  We placed them on our cards with the intention of running by the post office and picking up eleven 1-cent stamps from a stamp machine.  We got to the post office at 3 pm on a Thursday.  There was a very long line and two extremely slow postal workers; one of the two stayed in the back room.
Luckily, we just had to use the stamp machine, and there were only two people ahead of us.  Those two people took much longer than we had anticipated, and by the time we got to the machine, we had talked ourselves into buying two additional books of forever stamps so we wouldn't have to deal with this again in the near future.  The machine itself incredibly slow, and made us process each book separately.  It was no wonder the two people ahead of us had taken so long.  After getting our books of stamps, we tried to purchase 1-cent stamps.  The machine would only let us purchase 17-cent stamps.  With great disgust, we left the machine and stood in line.
We tried to entertain ourselves.  I showed George how to use the RPN calculator on his phone.  I browsed the greeting cards.  Fifteen minutes passed with about a dozen customers ahead of us, and we hadn't moved an inch.  As we had been waiting at this place for half an hour by this point, I suggested, "We could pay an extra (16*11) $1.76 to not spend all day here."  George nodded and walked back over to the stamp machine line.  I followed him and we waited again.  When we tried to purchase eleven 17-cent stamps, the machine informed us, "Please choose a number of stamps between 6 and 6."  We had to buy twelve stamps in another two extremely slow transactions.  That meant it cost us an additional $1.93, about 45 minutes, and drive to the post office for eleven lousy cents of postage.  The big line still hadn't budged.

Grinch

George and I made this with our baby on Christmas day.

It's our first recording on The Volkert!

36/36: The Little Worst

121412.  What very pretty numbers.
Today, George turns 36 years old.  I turn 36 weeks pregnant.  For his birthday present, I wrote and illustrated a 36-page children's book called The Little Worst.  It goes like this.

36 Weeks

Smile away each rainy day.

Breech

George and I went into our 34 week appointment on November 29th to learn our baby was breech.  I hadn't the faintest idea there was anything to worry about, due to a total lack of discomfort.  Having a breech baby at 34 weeks is no big a deal (especially since they tend to turn by week 36), but nevertheless, I was mildly distressed.  Immediately, I texted my friend Lauren and asked for a copy of her hypnobirthing breech meditation.  I listened to it the next day.
November 30th was the evening George and I had a date to see the Austin Symphony Orchestra perform Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.  The ASO and Ballet Austin are doing The Rite of Spring this year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the composition; Indeed, it is wonderful, famous, and historically significant.  I've written a previous blog post mentioning it, and due to the timing, my youtube of Fantasia has gotten over 100,000 hits so far.  Among the mysterious melodies and jarring harmonies are terribly exciting rhythms.  The baby went nuts.
I don't know if it was the hypnobirthing (relax your uterine muscles) or the Stravinsky (dance of death sacrificing a virgin), but I have not felt the full-body baby movements like that since.  Today we went into our 36 week appointment.  Our baby is in a perfect position.

Drawing by Leonardo DaVinci, 1511

https://www.artfinder.com/work/studies-of-the-foetus-in-the-womb-and-the-external-genitalia-leo/

20/20 Halloween

Who doesn't like holiday specials?  These are the 2 days leading up to 30/10.

01 Nov 12

Ghost baby.

31 Oct 12

Daddy G dressed our little pumpkin up like a bigger pumpkin!

Nephews III

Our favorite little guys (nephews II) came for a visit from Oct 16-19 while their folks took a well earned vacation to Costa Rica.  Aiden and Andrew turn two on Nov 1st.  This video is a sequel to the post nephews, but it's nearly 9 minutes in length and includes too much footage of banana eating.

I just love watching them eat bananas.

20/20

24 Aug 12

I'm considered to be 20 weeks and 0 days pregnant, and predicted to have another 20 weeks and 0 days to go.  The due date is an awful stream of numbers, 01/11/13, the Chinese zodiac is the water dragon, and the sex will remain unknown throughout the pregnancy.  Much to my relief, I'm convinced that water dragons are the best, and therefore refuse to arrive on unacceptable due dates.

I've been meaning to take pictures of my rapidly expanding body with the idea that some day I will return to a normal shape.  The trouble with this plan is that asking someone to take pictures of your fat body is not very fun.  But here we are at the halfway point, and the neatness of the numbers 20/20 alone has inspired me to begin documenting.  If you would rather not watch my belly grow, then get off my blog and look at all those ultrasounds and ugly baby pictures on facebook.  These are my memoirs, and I shall do as I wish.

31 Aug 12 (21)

The bugger was about 10 ounces and the length of standard pair of hair cutting shears (7") this week.

(All estimates based on information from http://www.whattoexpect.com/.)

07 Sep 12 (22)

Heavy Pants got up to a pound, and grew to the length of a Sierra Nevada bottle (7.5").

14 Sep 12 (23)

Paperback (8") managed to put on .2 pounds.  Mama put that on times ten.

21 Sep 12 (24)

The kickboxer competed in the 1.5 lbs weight class and grew to the width of printer paper (8.5").

28 Sep 12 (25)

Little pancake grew to the length of Mama's foot (9"), but needed more syrup to reach two pounds.

(My dad says my feet are like pancakes.)

05 Oct 12 (26)

Flapjack short stack made it to two full pounds.

12 Oct 12 (27)

We're now into the third trimester, where length is measured from head to toe instead of head to rump.

MacBook Pro (15") doubled in weight this last month.

19 Oct 12 (28)

The little meathead could fit between wall studs (16") and weighed 10 quarter pounders.

26 Oct 12 (29)

Baby giraffe matched my height in August of '82 (17"), but weighed in short of 3 pounds.

(This means it's time to put on some serious weight.  Babies have a responsibility to be cute if they expect to be cared for.)

13 Oct 12 (27) Bonus