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Wow – I can’t believe it’s been about 9 months since my last post. Life with a baby has been much busier than I could ever have imagined! We now have a son, Samuel, who was born this past February. Delivery and the childbirth process was pretty dang painful, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I made it through, and I have a wonderful son to show for it! With a serious lack of sleep and various breastfeeding problems, the first couple of months were pretty rough, but we’ve been having a lot of fun being parents these last few months. Sam is a great kid (we think so, at least) – he’s got a fairly easygoing personality, and for the most part is a smiley, happy baby. I just can’t believe he’s getting so big so fast! Sam’s about 8 months old now, and he notices everything. He’s also very mobile – he can crawl and is pulling up on furniture. He’s even starting to cruise a little. Mostly for the grandparents and other family members (but for anyone else who is initerested too), Larry and I have started a blog about all things Sam, with occasional posts about other happenings as well. We’ll be updating that blog a lot more frequently than I update this blog, so please check it out!

It’s been a fun & lazy weekend for us so far – just hanging out around the house, playing with Sam. I think we plan to make a trip to Babies R Us later today to check out convertible car seats. Sam still fits in his Chicco infant car seat, but lately he’s been looking a little uncomfortable, like he’s running out of room fast (which is kind of weird, since he’s still well below the weight limit of the car seat). Anyone have any advice about good convertible car seat brands? Tomorrow, we hope to make it to the Cake Wrecks book signing here in Austin. Cake Wrecks is currently one of my favorite blogs – I highly recommend it; I think it’s hilarious. The woman who writes the blog has compiled a book of horribly funny cakes, and will be at Book People at 3pm tomorrow for a book signing. I hear that there will be lots of free cake, in case anyone is interested…

The end of the pregnancy, that is. I’ve got just less than 2 weeks until my due date – I can’t believe the time has flown by so fast! I’m just hoping that I don’t go past my due date; I’m starting to get a little tired of being pregnant. I still feel pretty good, but my feet and hands have started to swell quite a bit in the past week or so, and it is now really hard to bend down to pick up stuff. It’s also getting harder to do a lot of simple everyday things, like putting on socks, cooking, or doing the laundry. So yeah, I’d be fine if the baby came anytime now… plus, we’re anxious to meet the little guy!

Larry & I have been keeping ourselves busy these last couple of months. We got the baby’s room ready (it looks pretty good for not really having a theme), Larry did some more work on the hardwood floors, and we attended a couple more baby-related classes and took a tour of the hospital facilities. And of course Larry has been madly working on homework and TA stuff (his part-time job at UT) as usual. We have also seen a lot of family & friends in the last few weeks – we saw Larry’s family at Christmas (and Bert last weekend), have had a couple of baby showers (including an awesome one that Amanda & Brandi hosted – thanks so much, gals!), and we’ve attended some fun game nights and other get-togethers. We’re planning on seeing some more friends this weekend too, so that should be fun – something to take my mind off of the little discomforts of pregnancy.

Hope everyone had a great start to the new year! I’m especially excited about this year – we have a new, wonderful President!

well, it’s been a busy past couple of months. Larry started an extensive flooring project (putting engineered hardwood floors in our living room, dining room, hallways, and guest bedroom) in late September. It took quite a bit of time, since Larry has also been busy with grad school and part-time work at UT, so he was only able to work on the floors one or two days each week. I was going a bit crazy with the floors being unfinished and the house looking like a disaster for so long, but thankfully (and with some help from friends & family, for which we are very grateful), the floors are finally almost done. They look great!!

We got 2nd trimester ultrasound pictures taken at about 20 weeks, where we learned that we’re having a boy! I’ve hit the third trimester of my pregnancy now, and I am starting to really feel the pregnancy (more aches and pains, the little guy moves around a lot, having more trouble sleeping, etc). And I’ve still got a little ways to go yet. You can see some pictures of me as my pregnancy progresses here.

This holiday season coming up promises to be a busy one. We had a great Thanksgiving a couple of days ago – my parents and my sister’s family came over to our house for Turkey Day this year. It was awesome not having to travel anywhere, but we had lots of house cleaning to do and lots of food to make. Still, it was wonderful seeing everyone, especially since we will probably not see my family again until after the baby is born (we’ll be in Dallas with Larry’s parents for Christmas, as usual). We’ve got a lot of activities coming up for the Christmas season – lots of church stuff, a cookie-decorating party at a friend’s house, more child-related classes/appointments, gift-buying, etc. Probably life won’t slow down for us again for years – but maybe, just maybe, January will be a moment of relaxation before the baby arrives in February (let’s hope he’s not too early).

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday and a great Christmas coming up!

I hope that everyone affected by Hurricane Ike this past weekend is OK. Looks like it sure wreaked plenty o’ havoc in Galveston and the Houston area. We knew lots of people who were in the path of the hurricane this time around. Facebook has updated me on the status of many of our friends in the area – we’re thinking of all of you guys! My parents & my sister’s family were hit pretty hard (they live a little east of Houston, just a few miles north of Baytown), but they pulled through OK. They had some roof damage and their ceiling leaked some, but my parents’ house was not flooded. However, it sounds like (as for much of Houston) they might not have power for up to 4 weeks! Thank goodness they have a generator… but I’m not sure it can sustain them for that long. Hopefully power will be restored to the Houston area soon!

OK, so I haven’t updated this blog in so long that I’ve pretty much officially fallen off the face of the blogosphere. Sadly, this trend is likely to continue for awhile. We’ve been crazy busy around here lately. I do have a reason/bad excuse for my blogging absence, however – as the title of this post would indicate, I’m pregnant! I’m about 19 weeks along right now. Larry and I have been having lots of fun doing stuff like signing up for childbirth classes, interviewing day care centers, picking up a crib & playpen my sister had waiting for us in Houston, reading pregnancy & baby books, etc. Wow, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done to get ready for a baby! Larry and I are really excited, however. I’m scared of exactly how this baby is going to get out of me, but I hope that with enough drugs, I can get through it.

We’ve had a couple of busy weekends recently, and it’s involved a lot of going out of town. While the past few weekends have been fun, I’m happy that for the next several weekends, we’ll be in town and have minimal plans; hopefully it will be more relaxing.

At the beginning of June, we drove to the Dallas area to attend two weddings in one weekend. This was a first for us – it was lucky that we could make it to both, since they were on different days (one on Saturday, one on Sunday) and they took place in locations not too far away from each other. It was good to see lots of old friends again, and the weddings were lots of fun! And on Saturday evening, Larry, Bert, & I met up with Vic and a couple of his friends for some gaming at a central location (a Starbucks in Grapevine that for some reason we had a lot of trouble finding, even though we got so close to it; Vic had to guide us to the location via cell phone). We played Loot (a pretty fun pirate-y card game that Larry got for his birthday from Amanda & Nick) and Guillotine (one of my all-time favorite games), among others.

And last weekend, Larry & I drove down to the Houston area for a get-together at my parents’ house in honor of my grandmother’s 93rd birthday. I got to see some relatives again that I haven’t seen for quite awhile. The best parts were that my Uncle Alain cooked some wonderful food for the occasion (I’m pretty sure it was best food that has ever been served at my parents’ house; it was definitely the first time that I’ve ever eaten red meat at their place), and that my grandmother had a great time! I can’t believe how active she still is at 93. She played ping-pong (she has a great serve) and jacks along with the rest of us, and out-performed many of us! I just hope I’ve got her genes…

Well, I’m back from a 3-month or so blogging hiatus. It’s been an extremely busy past few months (that, and I’ve just been too lazy to sit down and write a blog post in my free time until now). The good news is that some of the friends on my blogroll (like TR and Megan) are now blogging much more regularly than I am, so please visit their websites for reading material if I disappear for awhile again!

In March, we had a scare with our diabetic cat, Mocha. Apparently the vet we’d been seeing, who told us that our cat’s insulin was being controlled with the 4 units of insulin we were giving him once a day, was sadly mistaken. Our cat was still exhibiting all the signs of a diabetic cat and was still losing weight, but when I mentioned to our vet that he was still always hungry and was still drinking a lot, he said it was normal. We went on a trip to Houston in March and decided to board Mocha with another vet’s office in town. A vet from this new office called us while we were out of town to let us know that he didn’t think our cat’s diabetes was being controlled with the insulin he was on. We decided to have this new vet do a blood glucose curve on Mocha a couple of days from then so we could put him on a better insulin regimen, but before they could do the test, our cat crashed. On Sunday night (the night before we were supposed to pick Mocha up from boarding at the vet’s), Mocha wouldn’t eat or drink anything, and started vomiting. He had developed diabetic ketoacidosis. The vet techs found him in a bad state on Monday morning when the office opened. Mocha was put on an IV catheter for 2 days, and lots and lots of fluids were pumped into his system, plus he was given fast-acting insulin shots every couple of hours. When he came home from the vet’s office after a couple of days of treatment, he looked pretty awful. He’s doing much better now though. We’ve been trying to figure out a good insulin level for him for the past month and a half, and I think we might be almost there. He now gets a shot twice a day. We really recommend the Northwest Veterinary Hospital in Austin for anyone with a diabetic pet – they definitely know what they’re doing.

And another Swanee (the Round Rock Community Choir‘s annual spring variety show) has now come and gone. We had our show at the end of April, and it took a heck of a lot of practice and preparation, especially the 2-3 weeks preceding the performances. But I think it went OK. Swanee pictures (the Charlie Brown sequence has especially amusing costumes) can be found here. And Larry’s parents & brother also came into town the weekend of the show to help us install a new kitchen sink. It’s a white porcelain sink, it’s really deep, and it looks a heck of a lot better than the 5.5-inch-deep basic stainless steel sink that was in our kitchen previously. We are (very) slowly but surely making some home improvements to our place…

Larry had a really busy spring semester with classes, but I know he had a lot of fun too. He had a well-deserved (though way too short) couple of days’ break last week before heading back to work at IBM for the summer. A few days ago, he finally had time to fix our MythTV system, so our DVR is working once again! We’ve spent waaay too many hours watching recorded programming in the last couple of days, but it’s been so much fun to actually be able to watch stuff that we like on TV again.

Lots of other things have happened since my last blog post too, but this sucker is getting way too long, so just visit our photo gallery for pictures of other happenings in our lives (if you are at all interested).

Well, to be more precise, there’s pain in my jaw, head, and shoulders too… but yeah, my TMJ has definitely become a huge literal pain in the neck lately. I’ve had chronic TMJ for many years now (thanks to my teeth-grinding habits at night), and I’ve tried a couple of treatments over the years, including a NTI-tss device and a nightguard. Neither of them worked very well, and so the TMJ pain has continued. I decided to give things another try, and found a TMJ specialist within my dental group. I now have a new nightguard, which I have to wear 24 hours a day (except when I eat) for about 5-6 weeks (I hope it will be no longer than that!). It fits on top of my bottom teeth, and it’s clear plastic, so it’s not too noticeable (except that I have a little bit of a lisp, especially when I get tired). It is, however, very uncomfortable. I go to the dentist once a week so that he can adjust the nightguard a bit until my bite fits the nightguard perfectly. I’m hoping that once that happens, the pain will magically disappear. Right now, the nightguard being in my mouth 24/7 is just making my mouth and jaw hurt worse than ever. My dentist did prescribe me some drugs this past week, though, so it’s more bearable than before (we tried the first week without any medication). I’ve been trying to keep busy to keep my mind off of my mouth, however:

• Larry and I had a great valentine’s day a couple of weeks ago. He got me pretty flowers and truffles on Feb 14th, and took me out to dinner on Saturday!
• We’ve been doing lots of yard work the past 2 weekends. Our backyard has been neglected for way too long, so it’s now waaay overgrown. We’re attempting to make it look more civilized again. Larry chopped down a huge privet bush/tree next to our deck, I ripped out a few vines and tended to the roses, and we’ve trimmed quite a few bushes, but we still have a long way to go! (Check out the big pile of clippings on our curb right now…)
• Last weekend we went to the Harry Ransom Center and saw the “On the road with the beats” exibit (about the beat poet movement). Lots of cool stuff by Alan Ginsberg & Jack Kerouac, among many others. Oh, and if you ever wanted to know if you’re a beatnik, they’ve got a beatnik questionnaire for you to take online! Aside from the beat exhibit, they also had a Gutenberg bible (one of a remaining forty-some copies) and the first photograph ever on display.
• We haven’t been hanging out with friends as much as we usually do (because I haven’t been feeling so great), but we have gotten a chance to see a few friends lately. Our friend Unni came over last weekend for a little while and we caught up with him (he just got back from India and brought a churidar back for me – it was so pretty!), and we had dinner at Wing Stop (yum!) with Amanda & Nick this weekend.

So as many of you might already know, our cat was diagnosed with diabetes a few months ago. We switched him to diabetic cat food as soon as we found out, at the vet’s suggestion (it’s a very low-carb cat food – we call it the catkins diet ). We were all hoping that once he got on the right food and he lost some weight, his blood glucose levels would go down. Well, three months of diabetic cat food definitely caused Mocha to slim down – his kitty bulk was reduced from just over 17 lbs. to about 12 lbs. Unfortunately, his blood glucose levels remained high. So a few weeks ago, we started giving Mocha insulin shots. He doesn’t seem to mind them at all (he can’t feel the tiny needle), but it sure has made our lives more regimented. We have to feed him a small amount of food every morning at 6:45 am, and then give him his shot at 7am. Then, as soon as we get home in the evening (around 5 to 5:30), we need to give him the rest of his food for the day. Gone are the days of sleeping in in the morning. And we can no longer leave our cats at home (at least, not this cat) when we go out of town for the weekend. Mocha will either have to travel with us, or we’ll have to board him at the vet, where they’ll be willing to give him his shot each morning. Man, it’s almost like having a kid!

They’re still in the process of trying to figure out the right dose of insulin to give Mocha, so he’s seeing the vet every couple of weeks for blood glucose curve tests. And he hates being on such a strict diet. The limited amount of food he gets each day, coupled with his diabetes, makes our cat feel hungry all the time. We have to make sure to put away all food and clean up the kitchen after each meal, or else he will eat whatever happens to be out (he’s eaten some granola, potatoes, and a flaming hot cheeto in the last few months, among other things). This week, he got into the pantry while I was at work (we must not have shut the door hard enough), dragged out a half-full bag of his diabetic cat food, and ate as much as he wanted. He looked huge around the middle when we got home & found him – I think he probably gained at least a pound from his eating frenzy. I was sooo upset – we’ve got to be more careful so he’s not able to do stuff like that! Anyway, I’m sure the cat (and we) will be fine. We’re just adjusting…

and God bless us, every one!

As a digital Christmas present of sorts, Larry’s been posting Christmas music on his blog for the past week (and hopefully he’ll post a few more songs once we get back from all our Christmas traveling). Please visit his blog & get some good (and some just plain weird) Christmas songs!