It's hullabalievable!

You know how you read or hear in the news about women that didn't know they were pregnant and their first inkling is when they go into labor? Or they feel stomach pain and in the emergency room the doctors end up solving the stomach problem by delivering a full-term baby? That's crazy! I guess I can see how that could happen in the recent case of the woman who was like 400 lbs. Maybe that is a legitimate way to not know you are pregnant. But otherwise, I don't see how it could be possible in any way to not know. It seems like I am aware at every moment that I am pregnant. I think even my subconscious is acutely aware. Add together all the excitement and preparation, all the things I still need to do before he comes, the fact that I need to use the restroom at least every half hour, the very obvious belly, and of course...the fact that this little boy NEVER stops moving, I have a hard time not thinking about being pregnant. So I don't buy it. It's just too unbelievable that someone wouldn't know. As Darian used to say, "it's hullabalievable!"

p.s. Seriously, we have a spunky little guy coming our way. He moves constantly. During choir practice on Sunday the woman sitting next to me could even see my belly moving around out of her peripheral vision. It's that visible. It's not like the kind of motion where you can only tell he's moving if you have your hand on my belly. Nope, just go about your normal life and you'll be able to see the waterbed-like tidal waves whether you want to or not. Our baby's not very subtle, apparently. I have a feeling we're going to wear out a few Johnny Jump-ups.

Erik's Birthday Party

First item of business: the Management would like to apologize for the unintended two-week hiatus of the blog. But now we're back and better than ever. And keep checking up on us, some great posts are in the near future, including the debut of the masterpiece that is Reid's bedroom. Hopefully he will debut soon, too.

The birthday festivities included Bingo (with fantastic prizes), karaoke revolution (which seemed a little intimidating to most of our guests, the only ones who played it were Erik and some tiny kids who mostly just babbled into the microphone), and Win, Lose, or Draw (pictured here). I remember watching this TV show when I was sick and home from school. We just used Pictionary cards for the things to draw and I found the rules for the game on Wikipedia. It was pretty fun, and I think it will show up again some Family Home Evening night. It's a perfect FHE game. This picture shows a good view of the gorgeous necklace that Erik got for me while we were in Hawaii. It's Mother of Pearl and I think it looks like Betty Flinstone's necklace had she been lucky enough to live on Hawaii instead of Bedrock, and if she had been lucky enough to have the world's sweetest husband ever (Erik) instead of a doofus husband who's always coming home late from the bowling alley (Fred). I fell in love with the necklace as soon as I saw it. I think I could pretty much say the same about Erik.

This is the start of lighting the candles. I debated as to whether or not I should brave the notion of actually putting 31 candles on Erik's cake, or should I be conservative and just put a 3 and 1 candle on top. But of course, I am not very conservative in matters of cake, parties, and such...so I went for all 31. There are some candles that say, "Happy Birthday" and the white ones round out the grand total of 31.

More candle lighting. But this picture shows a great view of the handsome birthday boy and his awesome 'stache. It's Mustache March, of course, and I'm happy to say that I have a fun husband that participates in such silliness. It's even better looking now, it's really grown in nicely.
A successful wish and blowout. The party was fun and we have made some really great friends here. I love times like this where we just have fun with our cool friends. There's a small ski hill on base and a great lodge next to it that you can rent out. So we rented the lodge for the night and had a ton of room all to ourselves. Erik's work buddies and their families showed up as well as friends from the ward. In the cake pictures you can see cutie Grace admiring the cake and waiting patiently for her piece of it.

I have spent a good deal of time daydreaming about what I want to eat after the baby is born. I've heard that you're monstrously hungry afterwards, and that sounds like fun to me because throughout the pregnancy eating has been a chore. It's a very sad reality for me because I've always seen food as something to be enjoyed, and now I just eat for nourishment. Nourishment only? What a bore! So my plan is that our next birthday party will be at the hospital, celebrating Reid's day of birth. I came up with this plan mostly so that I could justify getting a cake from ColdStone Creamery. Have you had one of their cakes before? They're incredible. I love cake, and this is good cake. So we'll get a fantastic cake, have a party with the nurses and any visitors smart enough to come when there's cake, and I'll finally be able to enjoy food again. At least that's the plan.

LOTS of Ice Art

Okay, so I hope you're ready for a show. These pictures are of the 2007 World Ice Art Championship sculptures. It was incredible to read the signs next to each sculpture and see where everyone comes from. There were competitors from China, Morocco, Holland, Russia, Finland, and a bunch of other places I can't remember anymore. Fairbanks hosts this competition every year, I think. Anyhow, it was fun to walk around and see these amazing sculptures. Some of the pictures aren't so great because our camera got very cold and stopped functioning properly. Seriously, that's what happened. After a while in the cold the battery thought it was running low (even though it wasn't), and our manual options gave out. We had to use the auto options for some of the shots, which means there is a flash. The flash is a bummer because then you just see ice and the flash kills the cool backlighting effect that all the sculptures had. I think the best picture of the night is this one of the camel. Doesn't it look like gold? So cool.

Keep your eye out for pieces of the sculpture that are missing. This big bug has an antenna and a leg that fell off and are on the snow beneath him. The caribou is missing a couple of horns too, but maybe that one was intentional. We've seen some real caribou around here with some messed up looking racks. We saw one that was missing one half of his rack, he had this big, long side and then nothing on the other side. How embarrassing. I bet that even in the caribou world that that would be an unfortunate physical characteristic to deal with.

It's hard to see from this angle, but this gymnast is missing his back leg from about the knee down.

There were a lot of "abstract" entries, and most of them were okay at best. But I really loved this one. It was called "Denali Rain" or something like that. The big blocks in front are mountains and you can see some little Dall Sheep hanging out on them. Then the big circular clouds have rain pouring down from them. It was lit up so beautifully and made me wistful for summer weather and precipitation that isn't snow.

This is one of the okay abstract entries. I don't know what it was supposed to be, so use your imagination.

This was SO much more impressive in person. The pagodas in the front are so detailed and delicate, and the thing in the back is a woman holding a lantern (or something like that). It was spectacular.

This was my favorite of the night. The picture just doesn't do it justice. The multi-block sculptures (the biggest ones) were at the end of the loop we were walking around, and by that time our camera was cold and quitting on us. This sculpture is called "Elijah" and represents Elijah being taken into heaven. You can see Elijah on the right, leading the chariot up into the sky and then the huge stallion above him. I mean, this thing was HUGE. It was so tall and grand. Absolutely breathtaking.

Here are a few shots of us freezing our tushies off. It was maybe -5 while we were out that night, which in our skewed Alaskan minds isn't all that cold. But the problem was that we were walking around in that temperature for at least an hour and by the end of it we were all so cold and a little bit miserable. In these pictures you can see the vapors of our breath. Kind of cool.

Near the end of the loop was a few ice blocks just sitting there. I don't know if they were leftovers or what, but they were just plopped there and Erik figured that'd be a great spot for a photo. By this point we were all SO cold that when he dared us to a contest to see who could sit on the ice for the longest we all said, "no thanks...you win." I hate to back down from a dare, but seriously, it was freezing out there! He's a champ.

They had some carvings advertising sponsors of the event and Cellular One put up this working phone booth. It really had a dial tone when you picked it up.

We wanted a picture together and this was towards the end. A nice but not very spectacular sculpture, but we just wanted to get the picture and then take our sorry little frozen bodies to the car to warm up. Next time we will remember to dress in as many layers as will fit in our warmest coats. That was sort of my problem this year. This is my warmest coat, but with my burgeoning belly it's hard to cram enough layers underneath it. Oh well, we're told that Spring is on its way. I'm not sure if I believe it, but I sure dream about it. I told Erik that I'm planning on our next assignment being in Hawaii. I know there's a whole process involved in receiving our next assignment, but don't worry...I've already decided that that's what it'll be, so that's what will happen. Just wait.

cloth diapers

I am sure that to many (if not all of you) the whole "cloth diaper" idea sounds like a noble experiment at best, and at worst...just plain dumb. That's okay. I'm not on a mission to change the world, I just think it's a good idea for us. Plus, I'm really jazzed about it, so that's why you get to read about it. Cloth diapers are so different than they were years ago and the new styles seem like they'll be just as convenient once I'm on top of the learning curve. There's a great store here in Fairbanks called Blueberry Baby. The two store owners are pretty granola and they are a wealth of knowledge about cloth diapers. Fairbanks doesn't offer much in the way of specialty shops, but since it is a bit of a hippie town, I lucked out that there's a great baby store.

These first two pictures are of the regular ol' prefolds. I have done a lot of research and pricing and I think that I'll stick with prefolds for the newborn stage (with a wrap covering it, you'll see that picture in a bit.) At night I'll use the fancier (and more expensive) snap diapers, but during the many daytime diaper changes I'll just use these things. The baby store has these cool clips that hook the diaper together instead of using diaper pins. They work like the metal things that hold together an ACE bandage, except that the little teeth are plastic instead.

My pictures are a little out of order, sorry. This is the inside of the wrap that goes over the diaper. This is size Small, which will work for 8-15 lbs. Check out the cool gussets along the sides. This is a polar fleece wrap, so the inside and out are supersoft fleece and in between there's a waterproof laminate layer.

This is the newborn size of the wrap in the regular fabric. It's a really soft polyester knit. This size only fits up to 10 lbs. so I don't intend on buying too many of these. Especially since I'm predicting the baby's weight to be in the low 9's. I was in the upper 8's and Erik was 11 lbs. Plus, the due date from the ultrasounds and the 40 week calculation due date are almost two weeks apart. So that says to me that the baby probably isn't coming earlier than I thought, he's just coming bigger. That sounds great to me, though. I imagine that nice, sturdy babies are more apt to eat and sleep well.

This is the cloth wipe. It took me a while after deciding to use cloth diapers to come to the question, "but if I'm not throwing anything away, then where do I put the yucky wipe?" I would never have guessed that cloth diaperers use cloth wipes. But I guess it makes sense. You're washing a diaper anyway, so what difference does it make to throw in a wipe? These are super soft cotton terry and they're the perfect size. Plus, they're inexpensive and I imagine that I'll be using them for just about everything.

So this is the most exciting part. The actual diaper. This is the brand that I'll be using, Kissaluvs. After some price comparison research and weighing pros and cons of different types, I really like this kind. Plus, this brand came with a very high recommendation from my local hippie baby store owners (who have each cloth diapered 3 kids) so I figure they know what they're talking about. This is the smallest size, fitting 5-12 lbs. I think I'll only use this diaper during the night, until he gets to the next size. The next size goes from 10-25 lbs., so that will last him a long time. They have snaps that hold it together and adjust for size. The fabric is incredibly soft, unbleached cotton sherpa. They also come in different colors. So I plan to use these guys once he's out of the 10 diapers a day stage. Also available for cloth diapers are flushable liners, these cool things that you put in (especially great for when he's starting solid foods) and then you just dump the yucky liner into the toilet. No soaking or scraping, yuck.

This is the diaper folded up and the top edge folded down so that it doesn't mess with the umbilical cord.

Last of all, this is a liner that you can put in for night-time or whenever you want extra absorption. There are also some really cool all-in-one diapers that have the waterproof lining right on the outside of the cloth diaper. Those are very cool and I think that I'll go for those once he's older and starting solid foods. There's not much of a difference between all-in-ones and disposables, at least in terms of construction. They're cool.

So that's the story. For our first baby I don't think we'll see much in the way of financial savings by using cloth diapers because these new-fangled kinds can get pricey. But we'll definitely see savings once Reid's little brothers and sisters come along. And as far as the energy issue is concerned, I realized that that's probably a wash too. Disposables use energy in production, as do cloth. Cloth also use energy and water to launder them. But the one-time energy use for cloth production + laundering energy = the production energy for the thousands of disposables. I don't have any stats on that, that's just what I figure. So the real difference between the two for me is that these won't end up in a land fill, they'll end up on the next baby's bottom. Plus, stats do show that kids in cloth diapers potty train much earlier. That is a big plus for me. When I was at the hippie baby store, the store owner had her youngest son with her, less than 18 months. He is starting potty training. I think that's pretty great. Don't worry if you think that I'm crazy for all of this. It won't hurt my feelings. In fact, if you've known me long enough, this won't be the first time that you thought I was crazy. You've probably come to expect this sort of thing from me. But if you have any ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I probably won't be talked out of it, but I like to hear others' ideas. Plus, I'd love to hear suggestions on how to fold the darn prefolds. That is something that I've never really done, and I'm going to have to get good...fast. Thanks for hanging in there with me, this was a lot of ramble about a topic which I'm sure is only exciting to me.

nearing the finish

Today we are at week 33! It's wild to think that in a little more than a month there's going to be a baby in the house...our baby! Now that we're picking up speed towards the end, or rather...the beginning, I'm getting excited, anxious, nervous, and tired. It's really hard to imagine having a baby. Not the labor part, I don't try to imagine that part too often, it's hard for me to imagine holding a baby that's mine. I get to hold friends' babies all the time, but it's going to be wild to hold my baby. I've got a few projects left to do in the next few weeks. I have a little quilt that I need to finish. I bought some fabric to make a bedskirt and bumper with, so I need to get started on that. We found three more prints like the "Happy Landing" one, so I need to get all those framed and hung up. But, in case you were wondering, we have settled the stroller issue. It was a very hard decision for me because I don't want to end up with a gazillion strollers because that would mean that we would have purchased all gazillion of them, and it would mean that we would have to pack and move all gazillion of them each time we have a new assignment. The stroller that I loved (in theory) is still a great one. We got to see it in person when we were in Anchorage in February. There's a cute baby store there that carries the Bumbleride line and it was good to see what it can do. It wasn't as sleek as I had hoped, and it was still fairly expensive. So...after examining just what we want from a stroller, we realized that our needs would be met by two inexpensive kinds. A carseat frame for when the baby is small enough to still be in the carseat, and an umbrella-type stroller for when he is bigger. By the time he's too big for the carseat, he'll do just fine in the umbrella stroller. Both of these types will fold down compactly and they're lightweight. Perfect! Here's the carseat frame that we're getting. It has a basket and cupholders (both mentioned as necessities by our kind readers) and the carseat will just snap right in. I'm glad this stroller decision is done. I really went around in circles on that one. Be sure to check back on our blog soon, the next post will be about the cloth diapers we'll be using. They're very cool.