The baby room is finished!!!
The reason I haven’t been doing pretty much anything for the last three months, including posting stuff here, is because Ive been working on getting the house together for the baby. I had some help from some lovely ladies named juliet, patty, trish, jenny and of course mama erin spent all day sunday helping and motivating me put on the finishing touches. Here’s the final result:
I’ll put a slideshow up to as soon as it’s uploaded. Sorry if the picture quality is a little off, we had some bad lighting at the time.
Ok, here’s a link to the plain photos.
and… Pinky
after reading the post below, if anyone’s thinking about getting us some baby clothes, a little brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white, grey (ok, not grey) or plaid might be a nice contrast to all that pink!!!
Pinky!
Well, as many of you whom have visited or spoken with us recently may know, we became obsessed with pink the day we discovered she was a girl. And, because I kept slipping on the name when feeling her kick, Peter implemented the womb name “Pinky,” in honor of one of his favorite Ms. Pac-Man ghosts, and also for the pink color we imagine she will be when we first see her (outside of the womb, that is). So, we had both grandmas visit in the last month and each contributed a bit to Pinky’s pink wardrobe. Whenever anyone comes over I run them down to the basement (remodel done!) to show them all Pinky’s clothes. I keep remembering the time when I was hanging out with my sister before the twins came, and we were folding and putting all their little newly-washed outfits into drawers. She said, “I just want them to hurry up and be born so I can dress them!” Now I fully appreciate that sentiment, although Pinky has a little longer to incubate (3.5 months! That’s it!) 
This is how we’re looking around here in Portland- pretty preggers! Holly has only 6 weeks to go. Wow!
By any other name…
so now that we know we’re having a girl, we’ve come up with a few names. i’ve associated a picture with each name so you can know what we’re thinking. let us know what you think, or if you have any ideas of your own!
tipper cowan?
that’s so irish, though, and we’re not very irish.
madison “maddie” cowan
but madison is insanely popular right now.
holly cowan?
pretty, but one of our closest friends up here is named holly.
frida cowan?
my mom and sister suggested that one, my guess is they thought it sounded like frida “kahlo”.
sacred cowan?
ok, sacred’s not even a name, but if it was sacred cowan would be awesome.
Half-Baked
Well, a little more than half, if you can believe it! We’ll be at five months next week, wow! You know what that means, yes, four months to go! I think when I first found out I was pregnant, I thought, well, it’s such a long ways away, nine months. I can think about it later…. Then all of a sudden, I’m looking at the 3/x/xx in the date and thinking that 3 is actually not too far from 7. The good news is, she still needs all the time to grow, and, we need the time to finish the house! Peter has been moving along at an amazing pace, and, we’ll have the satisfaction of having a completed basement (missing only new windows) in the next few days. Also, we should have the bathroom done by about Easter. Then– it’s on the baby room- finally! And for those of you who don’t know, I start my new job Tuesday, teaching 3rd grade. I’m looking forward to it and I’m going to take all the stress in stride. Just breathe… exercise, breathe. I will add I’m pretty proud of myself lately. I’ve been walking, doing yoga, and swimming on a very regular basis. If I can keep it up, I’ll have no regrets!
A Womb with a View
Last Sunday as many of you know, Peter and I headed up Mt. Tabor with a little envelope containing genitalia photos (which felt rather scandalous). We found a nice spot to sit overlooking the reservoirs and city, and opened the envelope… “I M A GIRL!” – it said. We were ecstatic. In fact, we’ve been in a state of bliss ever since, as we realized after reading the note; we had been unconsciously hoping for a girl, but not wanting to put our hopes either way, since we knew we’d be ecstatic in both cases. Early on, (i.e. the first week we knew) in the pregnancy, we noticed we’d been referring to her as “she.” We both were convinced she was a girl. Then, once we told our families, and input began to seep in, we were given a majority of boy feedback. We began to doubt. I also began to feel that I needed to entertain the possibility of our baby being a boy, as until then that reality had really never entered my mind. But…. here we are, with our baby girl growing strong. I immediately found I was in love with pink. I had visions of dressing her like Strawberry Shortcake until she’s old enough to protest. We gave her a name. Suddenly, she has an identity, a personality. It was strange to realize that I couldn’t really envision my baby until I knew which gender to expect, but, such are the realities of socialization. Since last week, I have also been feeling so many of her movements inside me. She is very active when I first wake up, during a bath (heat and light?) and at around 8pm in the evenings. I am thinking she may be a bit of a night owl like her papa. Peter has felt her twice now, the first time while we watched, “The Other Boleyn Girl” (good movie), and again during last night’s movie. I think she also likes movies. Anyways, belly photo up next, as we are now officially at the halfway point!
note from peter: when we got our ultrasound last week the technician kindly recorded a 9 second clip and put it on loop for me to film. if you watch the whole thing, there is a belly shot and other fun stuff further in. last year i sat down at the piano and just sort of played a song that came out of nowhere. it kind of sounded like a lullaby and seemed to fit with the ultrasound video, so i just hit record on my laptop and played along while i watched it. if you look closely you you can see shorty’s heart beating pretty much at the tempo of the song!
Here I am… Who am I????
We had our ultrasound yesterday. Little baby was movin’ and shakin’. It enjoys kicking its legs up above it’s head. Flexible little peanut. Peter says it’s looks like me, although, it’s long fingers and extremities are definitely that of its father. I think he sees a resemblance to me because of the round head, and, I told him, every baby has a round head, even he did when he was little. So….. after much anticipation, we are about to take our “top secret” envelope on a walk up Mt. Tabor. The anticipation is too much at this point. Last chance to put your boy/girl vote in, we’re finally gonna know!
Thank you for the presents! (Look what we did with them…)
Our awesome neighbor, Susan, brought us over a delivery of 3 bags of baby clothes. She has two boys, so, is hoping we have another (which, if you don’t know the story of our block, it seems only boys are conceived on this end of Hawthorne). She also said, she is sure it’s a girl….
The clothes are adorable, my favorite outfit being a pair of red corduroy overalls, similar to the pair worn by my first cabbage patch kid. Aw…. Well, seeing as there’s no baby available quite yet, it didn’t take us long to wonder how a cat or two might look in some baby clothes. Actually, we were wondering how well the cats are going to hold up under future tortures, if, by chance, the kid has a similar obsession with animal dressup to the one its mama had (has?).
We need a kid!
Due to lack of options, Peter started teaching Alice to play the piano. She was able to play one note, two times. She has had one additional lesson…
On a personal note…
Phew! Week 18 finally found me feeling better. I have no nausea to report, and, I’m having trouble staying in bed for even 9 hours. Quite a change. In the earlier weeks, I had started growing tired of hearing, “Oh, next week will be great! Week 10 you’ll feel better…. Week 12, week 14….” I realized after about week 14, people had stopped saying that. But, here it is, week 18, and I’m finally feeling, as I described it to Peter, like a person again. Yeah!
I felt the baby at about 5 am last Thursday, Valentine’s Day. That was my first day of week 18. I felt a little thump against my swelling abdomen. I didn’t know quite what it was, but, I knew it didn’t come from me. I described it as very “third party.” It was a really strange sensation, and left no doubt there is definitely something/someone else now residing inside my body. Hmmm….
