Production

This is a rather mundane post...it simply tells some goings on...but that is Jan. right, a time for staying in and getting stuff done, keeping warm, and apparently a good time for growing a big belly.

So I thought this week I'd post some pics of the growing belly over the past month! We are nearing week 30! Daniel looks at me sometimes and goes....oh my goodness what week is it? And really, we just have to get to 40?

Late December

Jan. 18

Jan. 29

But that's still really 2.5 months, right? RIGHT?

The baby kicks harder every day. She seems to like Daniel's voice and usually kicks for him after he talks to her for a while. She still really likes the train and this month's trick was freaking Daniel out by sticking a body part way out so much that you could trace its outline. I think it's pretty cool when she does this but Daniel says its a little freaky.

My glucose screening was all good so I'm not at risk for diabetes and my belly was growing just fine. I'm no longer posting my weight because let's just say, I'm still doing JUST FINE in that area.

It does amaze me that I can literally gain this much weight and still be moderately upright and active....(I'm not running marathons but I can still swim fairly fast and still touch my toes and do downward dog in Yoga) and really, although I whine about it, it TRULY IS amazing because for most of my life I heard comments like, "oh you will have really hard births" and "are you sure you are healthy" and "you might have to try really hard to have children" and stuff about short, skinny girls not being childbearing types. Now, I still might have a hard birth (can't predict those things) but I think the human body is really remarkable in its ability to adapt and create and nurture and produce.

Daniel has started work on the nursery. Our books went away this weekend to the attic (well some of them). We managed to make room for two bookcases and had a good time choosing which books should 'stay out'. I needed a fair amount of philosophy books out and Daniel went with poetry and his favorite philosophy books. I think some classic fiction, some of our best children's books, and the nature writing stayed out as well.

Otherwise, I've been writing!!!!! I have three papers due by Sat.the 11th. The big one is the qualifying paper and that is finally to the editing stage. I can't believe I'm finished with it...it now feels like I can be productive and be pregnant....but that may simply be that I feel deadlines approaching! I have another paper due that is the rough draft of my next stage of my dissertation (remember I said there were three writing stages). And I'm speaking at a conference on Sat., so that is more of a talk than a paper but I have to polish that one a lot as well.

So, I turn in the qual. paper. I turn in a rough draft of this next stage. Both of those get critiqued and edited. I have a few months to edit and clean up the rough draft of stage 2 and then I defend that publicly. Once that is done, I have the go ahead to write the dissertation. That puts me at finishing Fall 2011, but I can search for jobs before then if some become available to search for!