The baby shower

Opening presents

Yesterday, Nan's friends Kathy and Jen threw her a baby shower at Nan's parents' house. Nan's mom cooked a big Thai feast, and Jen baked a giant cake and four smaller cakes shaped like building blocks. After lunch, it was on to presents!


Mike and Monica got us baby clothes from Guatemala. The outfit looks like hill tribe clothes from Thailand.


Kathy helpfully did the writing down of what people had given us. She was concentrating very hard on the writing.


Nan opening a card. There were lots of very nice cards, and some people even hand made their cards, which was really cool.


Cutting into Jen's cake. You can see how big it was by the next photo, where everyone has had a piece, and there's a huge sheet leftover.

Later we played a game where people had to guess which one of us had experiences like "was almost swept out to sea by a rip current" or "drove over a log and blew out my tire when I was coming back from an interview." Although Nan's brother had a commanding lead, he was disqualified by popular assent and Joe N. won the prize: a manly chenille throw!


Scrapbooking afterwards.

Afterwards, Kathy and Jen and many friends put together a scrapbook of Polaroids of the guests and their well wishes.

When everyone had left, and we were loading up the car to drive home, it began to dawn on us how different life will be when the baby is born. I think all the baby things really made us think how in 6 weeks, it's not going to be Mike and Nan anymore, but M., N., and O.

Nan says, "I feel lucky to have such a kind, caring, and generous group of family and friends."

Christmas is coming

Our mini Christmas tree. The reason it's not on the floor is because we discovered that our rabbits would like nothing better than to eat the whole tree and its needles. Jeremy, one of our rabbits, is checking it out and trying to figure out how to get at it.


Yesterday's sunset. It was really cool but I missed its maximum intensity because I had to run in the house and grab the camera.

About a boy: a name

(And it's not Hippo Mariner)

Ultrasound at 33 weeks

We went in today for an ultrasound since Nan's been feeling tight in the abdomen lately, and our doctor wanted to look at her cervix. Apparently the cervix is a little thinned and the technician called an obstetrician--she said it looked okay.

Another surprise was that the baby is breech. Our obstetrician had thought the baby was vertex (head down) at 30 weeks, but now his head is near the top of the uterus. Both of his feet are by his head, which is called frank breech. You may be able to see this in the bottom ultrasound. The top of his head is pointed to the left of the screen, and his left foot is the bright rectangle near the left side of his head.

The baby's estimated weight is about 4 pounds, 8 ounces, or a little more than 2 kg.

Wild Animal Park

This weekend we drove down to San Diego to see Nan's friend Michelle and to visit the San Diego Wild Animal Park.


Etosha, a 2 year old lion, having hamburger for lunch. You can't see the part of her belly where the hair is growing back from being shaved. She had a cesarean section a month and a half ago.

When we got to the park, we went to the Lion Camp, which consists of a window and a large open enclosure where the lions can sun themselves on a grassy hill. Etosha and her mate were out, while the others were hanging out in their bedrooms. After visiting the lions, we went to see the huge lake they have in the Heart of Africa section. They were feeding the ducks and the pelicans. The ducks went crazy when the keeper threw the food out into the water. There were also huge catfish in the pond that were eating the duck food.


Mallards fighting over duck food


Baby gibbon and mother. They were picking branches off of the trees outside their enclosure by reaching their arms through the wires.

One of our favorite things to do in the park is to go to Lorikeet Landing, where you can feed these brightly feathered birds a sugar-starch water concoction. They're really aggressive and fly up to your hand and fight over the little cup of food. Sometimes they fly up on your shoulder to watch for a chance to get in on the food.


Nan at 32 and 4/7 weeks with lorikeets


A male black rhino, which is apparently the only one in the Western Hemisphere. You can see a little of how big the plains are in the Wild Animal Park.

At night, we went to see Pride and Prejudice, which was surprisingly crowded for having been out for a few weeks. It was pretty good, but apparently Nan and Michelle didn't think it measured up to the Colin Firth mini-series one on A&E.

And this morning, finally...



I am obsessed with this little Mexican restaurant. They have the best tacos and burritos. Every time we go to San Diego, I have to stop here. It's at Leucadia and PCH just off I-5.

Thanksgiving weekend

It's been a few weeks since we last posted, but that's because not much has been happening. We spent Thanksgiving at Nan's parents, where we made the traditional dinner with turkey by Alton Brown. It was two days of cooking but everything turned out great! Too bad there's not that much left over.

Nan is almost 32 weeks pregnant now, and there's some serious "nesting" going on here. We cleaned out the garage of all the stuff we haven't used in 3 years living at our place. Then we packed away our wedding stuff for safekeeping. On Saturday we bought a dresser/changing table from Ikea and I spent Saturday night putting it together. We also saw Harry Potter this weekend and a funny German movie about a retired miner who plays the accordion. Nan's been feeling more tired lately, and she's been sleeping like 9 hours a night.

Today we went to our weekly childbirth class (now on week 4 out of 6). It's at a baby store in Santa Monica, which means it caters to a lot of highly educated and high maintenance people who think they know everything, which I guess kind of describes us. I had some preconceived notions about the kind of material that the teacher would be giving (i.e., no vaccines! no epidural!), but she's actually pretty good. While you can tell what she thinks, she doesn't tell you what you should do. That is, except for this week, when she basically said that if you get an epidural, you will be on the fetal monitor continuously, have your own heart rate and oxygen saturation monitored, a fetal scalp electrode will be placed, and the baby will have a much greater risk of being born by forceps/vacuum or by cesarean section. I try to keep my mouth shut during the class, but I could tell that some of these women were horrified. Who knows? Maybe she's right. But I think we're still going the epidural route.

Nan has only 15 more days of teaching left before she stops work. That means no scenes like in this photo (grading down students' assignments). Check out that smirk!

Oak Glen Apple Country

On the first weekend in November, I had Saturday off and we went to visit Oak Glen, which is out near San Bernadino, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles. It's a small town where you can pick apples, pumpkins and chestnuts and buy everything that can be made from apples including apple butter, apple pie, and apple jelly. We were too late in the season for apple picking, but it was still a neat so-close-yet-so-far-from-LA experience.


A crab-apple. Nan is 28 4/7 weeks pregnant.


"Bushels" of apples at the Parrish Ranch. That's a yodeling country singer in the background behind an old time apple cider press.


I never knew how sunflower seeds looked like when they're on the sunflower. This is a close-up of one drying.


28 4/7 weeks pregnant and the cider mill at Snowline Farm


Mini apple donut making machine

Halloween

Our pumpkins

For Halloween, Nan and I carved these pumpkins. I was trying to make a rabbit, but it came out looking like a cat.

People from a lot of different neighborhoods come to our neighborhood for Halloween because the streets are lighted and there's a lot of houses that you can walk up to. All the parking on our street was taken, and about 400 kids came by our house. Also there were a lot of older people trick or treating too. I think when you're pregnant, it's probably time to stop trick or treating.

Nan and Leng, 25 4/7 weeks

Kauai Trip

Nan and I went to Kauai early October for the wedding of our friends Oliver and Uyen. This was the first time I'd been back in years, and the last few times had been with my Boy Scout troup to hike the Kalalau Trail.

Kauai was more even beautiful than I remembered it. Green valleys, sandy white beaches, hidden waterfalls, and good food!

Nan is at the end of her 23rd week of pregnancy in these photos.

Hanalei Valley

Nan in the Queen's Bath, a giant tidepool in Princeville

Sitting at the edge of the Queen's Bath tide pool

In Limahuli Garden with original terraces for taro.

Terraces for taro, now filled in mostly. You can see a few patches of taro being grown--the dark green spots on the 4th-6th terraces.

There are feral chickens everywhere on Kauai. While we were in Kokee above Waimea Canyon, we saw this group of chicks who were so hungry, they were eating this cigarette.

Waimea Canyon

'Opaeka'a Falls

Sunset over the Na Pali coast

San Diego Zoo, 22 5/7 weeks

We went down to San Diego for a conference, and on Mike's birthday, we went to the zoo! There were lots of interesting things to see, like a family reading books to a toddler pygmy chimpanzee, a snake swallowing a whole mouse, a polar bear swimming around, and a young siamang and baboon playing with each other. Too bad we had to leave the zoo early to go back to the conference, but we had a great time.

A pregnancy update: Nan's been showing more in the last few weeks, but she's still feeling pretty good. The next visit to the obstetrician will be next week Thursday, when Nan has her glucose tolerance test to look for gestational diabetes.


Nan at 22 5/7 with siamangs. Somewhere in the tangle of apes is a baby siamang that was playing with an orangutan.

A 17 month old pygmy chimpanzee reading a book. To tell the kid he was ready for the next page, he looked at the bottom right corner of the right page, and the kid would flip the page. He really liked a pop-up book with crabs in it.

Hippo crouching beneath the water's surface. You may know why Nan is interested in hippos especially with baby names under consideration.

Three zebras eating lunch

Foot massage after a long day. The metal plate under my feet vibrated really fast, and eventually I think there was some feedback inhibition of the nerves in my feet, because it really worked! My feet felt a lot better after the massage.

Prenatal visit, 20 weeks

Mike and I had a visit with our obstetrician today. We also had an ultrasound today to look at the baby's anatomy. Our baby boy looks healthy according to the ultrasound technician and the doctor.
In the last few days, I have started to feel lots of movement from the baby. He's especially active at night around the time I would like to get some sleep. Pregnany has been going ok so far. My energy level has increased quite a bit since I have finished my credential program in mid-August.

Check back for more updates later.