You got that right...

No, I' m not kidding.

I knit a miniature scarf that happens to match exactly the scarf I knit for Jono two years ago. Guess who it's for.

Jono is ecstatic. Like, more excited about the matching scarves than I've seen him about anything since that plastic stick blinked "pregnant".

Jono's scarf was my first knitting project. I splurged on this Chinese homespun yarn (or whatever) with a color combo called "mineshaft". I figured that was manly enough, so I bought it and started stitching away. The only problem was that when I was finished I had 3/4 of a ball of the Chinese Mineshaft yarn left to work with, and I didn't really want Mineshaft Potholders. I was stuck on what to do with it.

Then it occurred to me: dad-and-baby matching scarves would be kind of funny. Actually, just a fat baby wearing a knit scarf is funny, even if it didn't match.

Timidly, I mentioned the idea to Jono. His eyes lit up like fabulous Roman candles. He started asking me EVERY DAY when I was going to start on it. I'm in the middle of a rust-orange scarf for moi at the moment and was trying to finish that first, but after fielding "the look" from Jono for over an hour as I added row after knitted row to my own scarf, I finally caved and borrowed some of Jessie's needles for the mini mineshaft scarf-ito.

I started out making the scarf 20 stitches wide, to which Jono said: "Too wide." So I unraveled the first row and started over with 15 stitches. I showed it to him again and got approval for the smaller size. As I continued adding rows, I held it up for Jono every ten minutes or so and got a bright-eyed, eager look every time. It was very rewarding work.

We used Jono's bicep and then my ankle to figure out how long to make it. Hee hee. I was pointing out to Jessie the other day that babies don't have necks, so the scarf will probably be halfway up his face.

Oh well. Still funny, if not funnier that way.

Indulge me as I post the un-cropped version of this photo. Anything else cute in this picture besides the scarf-ito? (Hint: black, white, upper right corner).

My mom sent this (and she would know)

Why Boys Need Parents

You find out interesting things when you have sons, like...

1.) A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house 4 inches deep.
2.) If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
3.) A 3-year old boy's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
4.) If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20x20 ft. room.
5.) The glass in windows (even double-pane) doesn't stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.
6.) Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.
7.) Certain Lego's will pass through the digestive tract of a 4-year old boy.
8.) No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk on water.
9.) VCR's do not eject 'PB & J' sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.
10.) Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
11.) Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
12.) The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.
13.) It will, however, make cats dizzy.
14.) Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
15.) 80% of men who read this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid.

Thanks for the heads up Mom. I'm okay with him blowing things up as long as it's supervised (we'll call it "science"), but I'm relieved Mona doesn't fit in the washing machine.

Naughtiest Day Ever

Mona had her naughtiest day ever.

Because of past destructive behavior while we are away, she sleeps in a big kennel in the basement during the day. This week she got out two days in a row by somehow unlatching the door. (This is the kind of latch where you need to first lift it and then move it over to the side before it will open.) Anyway, she visited every room in the new house and did something terrible in each one. Jono had forgotten to put one of our bags of groceries away the night before and she found it. She put a stick of butter in the couch, a huge hunk of pepper-jack cheese in our bed (which she crumbled and spread around) and some lunch meat in the sun room. She then took the soap out of the shower and put that in our bed too. She went into the baby's room, took all of his little diapers off the shelf and threw them on the floor, and then chewed up his wipes. She peed in the basement twice and chewed up a few boxes.

We put two padlocks on her kennel the next day, so I'll be jiggered if she's out when we get home. She is obviously traumatized by the move and is trying to tell us how mad she is about it.

Looking back it's kind of funny, but we were pretty angry at the time because we're trying to get our house looking decent and she was having a retro-active effect on that process.

32 weeks / 8 months

Pic 1: Hmmm.
Pic 2: Hey Mona, are you ready for this? Wait...am I?
Pic 3: Mona with knitted brow, expressing her feelings for both of us.

Holy cow. I'm eight months pregnant. As you can see, pretty ripe for the picking at this point.

I'm supposed to gain about a pound a week from now on until he comes. Half of each pound goes straight to him.

I have two months to go, which sounds confusing. Aren't women supposed to be pregnant for nine months? I'm no math whiz, but 8 + 1 = 9 and 8 + 2 = 10. What they don't tell you about pregnancy is that it's nine full months, or 40 weeks -- you're pregnant through the end of that ninth month -- so really you've just about hit ten months by the time the kid arrives.

The whole business of when you become pregnant is also complicated as far as calculations go. For the first two to three weeks after conception, no one is sure whether they are pregnant or not because it's too early for the pregnancy test to detect the hormone your body starts releasing. So, when I told someone who had already had a baby that I was four weeks along (many moons ago it seems), she gave me a look and said, "Did you just find out yesterday, or what?" When I explained we'd known for a couple of weeks and gave her some specific dates, she gently informed me that I was actually six weeks pregnant. When the doctor calculates your due date, you're "pregnant" two weeks before you really are according to the chart they use.

Puh-leeaase.

Now that I'm past 30 weeks, my mental state is changing. I’m thinking more about how the birth might go and all the potential scenarios. When I think about it I get alternating waves of excitement, terror and determination. It's not like I have a choice at this point - that's the scary part. Sometimes I feel like this is the most important, mind-boggling thing I will ever do. You can hire anybody to do just about anything, but no one else can get him out into the world for me.*

*Well, technically they can (by c-section), but still, without my body as his temporary home he wouldn't have gotten this far.

Moving to Hope Street

This past weekend Jono, me and Mona moved to Hope Street to live with Joel, Jessie and Louie (their dog).

The move was surprisingly un-stressful. Three weeks ago Jono's dad and step-mom came to help us pack. Two weeks ago my parents came to help us fill the U-Haul and unload everything into a storage unit. This left us with a (mostly) empty house, but it still took us most of Saturday and Sunday to get every last little thing out of it. Towards the end we weren't even packing things into boxes any more -- we just tossed them into grocery sacks and laundry baskets, or threw things like brooms, driftwood and my rock collection into the back seat.

Now we're settled, and have arranged our little upstairs apartment. I made the nook up there into a pantry for our canned goods. My shoes are lined up along the wall in two sections: dress shoes and regular shoes (read: OCD). Our clothes are hung on a portable thingy next to the stairs. We're using those terracotta plant saucers as coasters so we don't put rings on Joel and Jessie's little table.

We've been watching the Olympics downstairs with Jessie every night. Jessie is knitting these fantastic booties for our little man, and I'm knitting a scarf because it's the only thing I know how to knit. It's all very cozy.

I feel like I'm on vacation somewhere. Mona does too. She was mopey on Sunday as we were getting the last of our things out of the house, but when she realized she was going with us she got over it. Now she gets to play with Louie every day and her morning walks are in a different neighborhood with new smells, so she's generally happy with the situation.

Throughout all of this, God's timing has been amazing. A couple of weeks ago we found a house we like on Orville Street near Boston Square in Grand Rapids. It's a short-sale, meaning it's in pre-foreclosure. Mainly we were impressed with the fact that it isn't trashed like all of the others we've been looking at in our price range. We made an offer with help from Jono's mom and her husband Jeff, who has a realtor's license. On Friday, the day before we moved out, we heard that our offer had been accepted. No counter-offer; just YES, IT'S YOURS.

Rundown of what could've been a bad situation, but then it turned good...

• We find out I'm pregnant and decide one of us needs to quit our job or work part-time. We realize quickly that our current mortgage payment is more than we are comfortable with under the new circumstances. We put our house up for sale in the worst housing market ever.
  
  
• We know it's likely we won't make very much on our house in this market, so after we sell we'll need to live very cheaply for a few months until we have the a down payment for our next place. Joel and Jessie live three blocks away and agree to let us live with them for awhile once we sell.
  
  
• We sell our house in a month and a half for a good price, when many homes in our city don't sell for nine months to one year (or more).
  
  
• Meanwhile we're looking at foreclosed homes in the city, but most of them are in terrible shape. We are anxious about having to completely re-do a house while I'm trying to get the baby to sleep, etc. Two weeks before we move out, we finally find a good house we can afford in a different area of the city. It needs very little work. We're shocked. We make an offer. We are told it could take three weeks for the bank to respond.
  
  
• One week before we expected a reply and one day before we move out of 135 Lowell, we hear they have verbally accepted our offer. We'll be able to move in 30 days after closing, which will be in two to three weeks. So we'll settle in on Hope Street for a month or two -- just enough time to save for a down payment.
  

There's more too, but I'll stop there. The point is, we are really thankful.

On the pregnancy front, I've had the song Another One Bites the Dust (QUEEN) in my head lately as each day I must put away another article of my clothing into a box destined for the basement. I am realizing I'm low on sweatpants and various items made of long, stretchy material. I am starting to feel the extra weight I'm carrying. One area where I thought I was safe was footwear, but even my shoes don't fit right any more. I tried to put on my favorite pair of sandals yesterday -- the kind with a toe loop -- and was confused when my toe was constricted by the loop. I innocently thought, "Now how were these packed? There must've been something heavy on top of them and it warped them." In the next moment I realized there was nothing wrong with the sandals. My feet are swelling. Yay.

Another new adventure I've been having lately are Braxton-Hicks contractions. What happens with these is the walls of the uterus contract for 10 to 20 seconds and you feel like you're walking around with a boulder in your stomach. They are not labor-inducing and are very normal -- I guess it's the uterus getting ready for the real thing.

Also, I've been packing for a camping trip and I'm realizing I'll need to wear my one pair of sweatpants or walk around in a sarong to stay comfortable. One thing I thought I'd never say: "Must have more sweatpants."

24 weeks / 6 months

Oh Mona, if you only knew what was coming...

We've hit the six month mark, and our boy is getting nice and plump. He should have some hair on his head by now, and all of his major organs are mostly developed. He is about a foot long and weighs about as much as a mango (the fruit references continue to be helpful). The most surprising thing I read about this time is: "If the baby were born in this month and given the proper care, he would survive". Of course, for multiple reasons we're glad he's staying in there for awhile (God willing).

He is rolling and kicking regularly, and the other morning while lying in bed I could feel his whole body move across my hand. Not just a foot or elbow, but a body. Sometimes I feel a little "off-kilter" and I look down at my tummy and realize that he is obviously hanging out on my right side with his bum pressed against the uterine wall. It sticks right out and makes my stomach look lopsided, which is pretty funny.

I can usually see his movements on the outside now. The other day Jono was listening for him and got kicked in the ear three times :)

This six-month mark is also turning out to be the time when I'm having to leave behind my "prego-on-a-budget" wardrobe. By this I mean the little pink rubberband I was using to keep my regular pants on with. On the way to Chicago with Grant on Thursday I looked down and saw my rubberband, which had come to seem like an old friend, snapped and lying in my lap. I spent the rest of the evening with my pants wide open and a tank top pulled most of the way down over it. I guess it's a sign that I'll need to wear prego pants exclusively now, or just make sure I'm wearing clothing with a quality piece of elastic. I'm really learning to appreciate the merits of elastic. Someone needs to give the guy who invented it a big shiny medal.

BFFs

For sale

Our little house on 135 Lowell is up for sale. It's really cute and we've made a lot of nice improvements to it. Thanks to Jono's puttering, the yard and landscaping are immaculate.

Understandably we've had a lot of people ask why we're moving. The truth is we'd rather not have to. Some assume that since we've got a bun in the oven we want more space, but this isn't the case - I hope our next place is the same size or smaller. We're moving because I won't be working as much after November and we want to keep our monthly bills as low as possible. We're making some pretty big changes to be able to do this. Because of how bad the economy is here in Michigan, there are a lot of foreclosed homes in Grand Rapids. Jono happens to be handy, so we'd like to get our hands on one of those, cut our mortgage payment in half, and fix it up.

So yes, I'm becoming what they call a housewife. It sounds like a joke, but it's true. It's no longer a "given" that people stay home with their kids, so here's why we've decided that one of us will. It's not just that we don't want to deal with daycare - I’ve heard working moms say they think daycare is good for their kids because of the social interaction, and that’s probably true in many cases. We want to enjoy being parents without feeling like both of us are stretched too thin. On top of that we want to save money, stay healthy, and be easy on the environment by having a garden, cooking from scratch and using cloth diapers. All of this will take time that we wouldn't have if we both worked full-time elsewhere. We want one or both of us to be with our children as often as possible when they’re small, because it isn’t going to last very long. I have the rest of my life to have a career but only a few years to have little kids.

Like many women, I plan on working full time up until my due date, or beyond if the baby is late. Sometimes I feel guilty about the fact that I'll be taking care of our baby at home while Jono goes out to work. I realize this used to be a completely normal thing for a woman to do. My grandma never had a job off of the farm. She raised her kids and her chickens; de-tassled the corn and walked the beans. She was happy as she could be, and nothing else was expected of her.

Since then women have been "liberated". We go to college, we vote, and we have jobs outside the home, often with benefits. But sometimes I wonder how liberated we and our families really are when the cost of living and cultural pressure to have more materially makes many families feel as if they need to send both parents off to work full-time, even when they have small children, and even if it isn't what they really want.

(It's also true that some families have no choice, especially in single-parent households. Others make a decision to work because they feel they'll go stir-crazy at home with kids all day, which is understandable.)

I'll still get my brain exercise in 15 hours a week at least -- I’ll be putting in some hours from home writing and doing design work for my current job. I know it's important to hang on to that other side of you so that you have something to go back to when your family is more independent. That's what's great about the time we live in. If you can somehow skirt the financial pressure to work full-time all the time, you can manage to raise your kids at home and have a career, before and after the kids.

So all of that said, I'm trying not to feel guilty about our changing roles. I'm not taking "time off work", because I have a feeling I'll be at least twice as busy as I am now doing a job that's twice as hard once I'm a mother. But as Jono pointed out to me the other day, "Em, just admit it - it will be nice." Okay, fine. It will then. I'm ready for it.

For those of you who are wondering, Jono would love to be a stay-at-home dad. Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to worry about benefits packages and each parent could work part-time and stay home part-time? Maybe if we get universal health care soon :)

The United States is the only industrialized nation that doesn't guarantee paid maternity leave.
- The Project on Global Working Families

Dog does not come with house. (People have asked.)

P.S. Notice sly look.

Um....what??

This was Mona's reaction to the news (left).

We say that Mona is an "only child". She loves having the place to herself. A baby in the house is really going to cramp her style. We plan on reading up on some ways we can prepare Mona for this event, but quite frankly, I don't think anything we read is going to make any of us more prepared.

Mona really does like babies. She tries to lick inside of their mouths, mainly. But toddlers are something else. One of my cousin's young children, Claire, adores Mona, and chases her around the house. Mona is not a big fan, and generally tries to hide under the table. It's not that Claire is mean to Mona. But Claire does have a cute blonde 'fro that floats around her head like a golden cloud. I think Mona is terrified of it. Secondly, Claire is right about at Mona's eye level, which I think is disconcerting for her. Dogs feel as if they are being "challenged" when someone stares directly into their eyes.

I have heard some folk wisdom on the dog-and-baby topic. I guess it helps to bring the baby's blanket home from the hospital before you bring the baby. Then give it to the dog and let her sleep with it, spoon it, whatever. I guess giving the dog the scent of the child before actually having to *meet* him or her is the point.

We'd love to have some advice on this topic, if you have any. And no, giving Mona away is not an option. Forget it. I mean...LOOK at her.