First you're another Sloe-eyed vamp.
Then someone's mother, then you're camp.
Then you career from career to career.
I'm almost through my memoirs.
And I'm here.
On December 8th, George and I held the L&G Alphabet Party with the purpose of creating this present for our baby's 0th birthday. We had a fantastic time with our guests, who shared piano, harmonium, violin, trumpet, guitar, autoharp, and vocal music into the later hours of the party. Our jam session was interrupted by about 25 tone-deaf carollers ringing our doorbell, which couldn't have been a more perfect close to the evening.
Many thanks to all the participants and artists of our Alphabet Book!
This is a sequel to 20/20, a previous post that has been tracking the growth of my pregnant belly. We're 30 weeks down now, with an estimated 10 to go. We're guessing it will be a girl.
Although the medical community predicts Jan 11th, George and I chose our own due dates with no good reasoning involved. I decided on January 6th, and George chose December 25th. This means that if the baby comes on Dec 31st, we're tied. Any day after that, and I win our bet. If I lose, I have to watch the 2005-2012 batman trilogy at home with George (see the dark wife rises). If I win, however, George has to find a sitter and take me to the live show of Igudesman and Joo, which is playing here in Austin on January 21st. Of course, for all we know, we'll be giving kisses to a sweet little boy in a sterile hospital room that day. [Editor's note: this is exactly what happened.]
02 Nov 12 (30)
There wasn't much progress in weight or height this week because baby Einstein was too busy putting grooves on what used to be a smooth brain. Gross.
09 Nov 12 (31)
McKenna weighed in at over 3 pounds and reached the height of one of those creepy overpriced American girl dolls (18"). McKenna is the American girl doll of the year, whatever that means.
16 Nov 12 (32)
Little Pilgrim could have grown to the width of our Thanksgiving placemats (19"), and will have an amniotic Thanksgiving Special on Thursday. Pre-holiday, pilgrim was nearing 4 pounds.
23 Nov 12 (33)
Over 30 years ago, I was born at 17", weighing over 4.5 pounds. Little Lan weighed the same this week, and measured anywhere between my baby height and 19".
30 Nov 12 (34)
Our breech baby grew to the height of a standard pillowcase (20"), and weighed about 5 pounds.
07 Dec 12 (35)
Height limit has nearly been reached at this point, but the bugger weighed in at 5.5 pounds.
14 Dec 12 (36) The Little Worst weighed in at 6 pounds, and we all know what 6 squared is.
21 Dec 12 (37)
We've graduated from the land of preemies. Bigwig Full Term weighed about 6.5 lbs.
28 Dec 12 (38)
We're ready to go any day now at about 7 pounds.
04 Jan 12 (39)
We're at week 39 with absolutely no signs of labor. Lazy Bones was probably between 7 and 7.5 lbs.
11 Jan 12 (40)
Officially due, Baby should have settled in at around 7.5 lbs and 19-21 inches.
18 Jan 12 (41)
Overdue got all the prompting we could handle.
He came out the next day at 6 pounds, 7 ounces, and 19.5 inches.
Drakeson was due January 11, 2013. We thought we'd try to get pictures of the family with a newborn two days later, but that's not how it worked out. This was our first time meeting photographer Angela Lind.
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.
