One Moment in Time

(does anyone else start belting like Whitney after reading those words?)

Well, it's getting down to the wire here, pregnancy-wise. I'm at 35 weeks today (although people helpfully point out that I look like I could pop at any time, on a daily basis). This past weekend, Jon and Baby G and I were blessed with a baby shower by our dear friend, Amy. I had a wonderful time, especially seeing the sweet friends I'd been missing and visiting with Amy and her family. While we were back in our old city for the shower and other fun things, it hit me how these fun, grown-up, young-adult things will fade away from my life for awhile after the baby comes. So I thought it would be interesting (probably only to me) to write down the sort of things I am enjoying right now, what I like to do in my free time, etc., here in my last month of being a non-parent:

TV- We don't have cable or a DVR anymore, but we still have shows we follow, either with our digital antenna or on Hulu Plus. Our current favorites from the past few months are Parks & Recreation, Downton Abbey, The Voice, The Sing-Off, and Parenthood. Favorite DVDs (or Netflix archives) of shows are Gilmore Girls, Futurama, and American Pickers.

Music- Right now the entire world is obsessed with Adele, to the point where I'm getting a little tired of her. Most of the radio stations in our new city are NOT yet tired of her, so she is constantly on the radio here. (At least it's better than last spring, right after I moved, when the every radio station was obsessed with Muse.) "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye (featuring Kimbra) is the hot single right now on pop/rock stations; so far I'm enjoying it, but I foresee it going the way of "Pumped Up Kicks" (death by overexposure) if it stays on heavy rotation for months. There is a fair amount of Whitney Houston music still getting memorial airtime. Also big right now in a more indie/rock way: The Civil Wars (yay!), Lana Del Ray (boooo), Florence And The Machine (getting overexposed as well), and Jack White (ambivalent). On my personal playlist, I've been enjoying some favorites on shuffle- The Avett Brothers, Band of Horses, Guster, Relient K, Fleet Foxes, and some older stuff (randomness from Carly Simon to Toto to Oasis). Finally, I'm working on drafting playlists for when I'm labor and for after Baby G is here, and it's hard!

Movies- Just saw The Hunger Games and it was great! We don't go to the movies very often (3-4 times a year, at max) so it's always a big event to go to the theatre and buy popcorn. Having read and loved the book, the Hunger Games movie was pretty satisfying, especially Jennifer Lawrence as the heroine Katniss. I was able to coax Jon into reading the first book, and he enjoyed it enough that he finished the trilogy in about a week's time! (I just love it when someone genuinely likes something I recommended to them!) Hopefully when Catching Fire comes out next year, we'll be able to go see it too.

Books- I've been reading a lot of parenting books, which is no surprise. Some I've enjoyed (The Baby Whisperer), some I've hated (La Leche League's hateful, out-of-date propaganda), and some I've been using a reference material (What to Expect...). We'll probably be purchasing at least a few more reference books for Baby G's first year of life, etc. ...I don't think the current parenting book trend is going away for me! Being pregnant and working full-time, so much of my free time and energy now goes to resting and nesting instead of fun reading. Hopefully that's something I'll be able to add back into my life before too long. In the meantime, I just keep adding things to my Goodreads queue, as is my wont.

Travel- in the last 6 months, I've been to Washington DC, back to my home state for the holidays, back to Old City 3-4 times, and to the mountains for at least half a dozen weekend trips. In other words, Jon and I were on the road about every other weekend during this pregnancy. We travel kind of a lot, mostly to see family (we are the most mobile, I guess?). I don't foresee this continuing once Baby G arrives, so it will be interesting to see if we get visitors more often! The perks to traveling less? Because we'll be spending fewer weekends out of town, the work weeks won't be quite so exhausting, and we'll be able to attend our new church more often. Maybe we'll even start to feel more settled here in our new city. Even though I generally love to travel, I confess I'm looking forward to there being less of it in the near-future.

Free Time- In my free time (not including time spent doing the stuff listed above), I sleep or at least stay still and try to let my body rest. Working 50-hour weeks at an active job while pregnant is not very restful, and my nighttime sleep is not as restorative as it once was, so I am just tired a lot. I know it will be nothing compared to how tiring a newborn is (boy, do people love telling me that!), but to me, it's about as tired as I can ever remember feeling, day after day. So, resting is good. Also, because it is hilarious and also true, I am going to mention an iPhone app that I'm currently enjoying- Draw Something! It's like Pictionary but since you're drawing on a smart phone touchscreen, the pictures look like drunken fingerpaintings. I'm not sure if it's more fun to try to draw things like "Tebowing", or to try and guess them! Free time, I will remember you fondly.

Ok, that was my "before she had a kid" cultural wrap-up for my late-20s, non-parent self in 2012. Other than that stuff, it is spring and time to nest! Jon and I are pretty much preparing for Baby G in every spare moment, whether it's planning, shopping, taking childcare classes, or whatever else is currently on the to-do list. Jon has really taken the lead as far as preparing our home for the baby, and it's awesome! It's not just that he's helpful to me, because that implies that getting ready for the baby is somehow my job and not his. It's more than that- he is an active partner even at this pre-parenting stage, and I LOVE IT. We work together, I give my opinions when I have them, and he makes it happen while making sure I'm not overdoing it. Watching him do things for our boy is already one of my favorite things. :)

Hope everyone else is having a lovely spring. I'll try harder to keep the blog updated as we get closer to Baby G's arrival!

~Heather

A Tale Begun

Friends, we are expecting a baby boy this spring! Hubby and I are overjoyed, and our lives now seem to be filled with preparations for our new arrival. (I will be posting more about it as we get closer.) This time in our lives is reminded me of a poem I heard once read during an NPR interview, about 4 or 5 years ago. The interview was with Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1996. I was reminded of her work again today when it was announced that she'd passed away. Though the segment discussed many of Szymborska's poems, they ended the segment with a reading of a poem she published in 1993, in a collection entitled,"View With a Grain of Sand". The poem is "A Tale Begun", and it opens:

The world is never ready
for the birth of a child.

That's certainly how life feels right now to me! Every movement, every molecule of energy is directed by the anticipation of our son's coming, in getting our world ready for him. It is a busy time, with lots of joy and happiness, but also worries and weaknesses that accompany such a life change. It is a time of renewed gratitude and awareness of God's faithfulness as we endure these new challenges and prepare for all of the ones that lie ahead. The last two stanzas of the poem end in a sort of prayer for the coming child, and these are the words that have stuck with me for the past several years:

May delivery be easy,
may our child grow and be well.
Let him be happy from time to time
and leap over abysses.
Let his heart have strength to endure
and his mind be awake a reach far.


But not so far
that it sees into the future.
Spare him 
that one gift,
O heavenly powers.

-Wislawa Szymborska
(Polish Nobel laureate in Poetry, who passed away at age 88, yesterday)

I could sit here and dissect what it is I love about the specific, measured wording of these wishes-- for health, first and foremost; for happiness (but not continual, monotonous happiness); for the ability to overcome and endure things. But I most love the mental image of a mind that is awake and can reach far. Such a powerful gift that would be!

And yet, at the end, she cannot help but temper even that wish with a request for a protective limit.
It says so much about the heart of a parent, to me. And also, of our temptation to want to snatch control away from an all-powerful, all-loving God.
Beautiful, evocative stuff.

~Heather

saw this today

...and it made me laugh! I think the dissertation writing/defending and graduation hoop-jumping have started to give me a similarly snarky mindset in dealing with reviewers, etc:

wrongcards.com

That's basically what the first draft of a rebuttal letter sounds like! :)

(A WORD OF WARNING if you go to that site: some of the cards are mean, dark, gross, and completely unfunny. This one, spotted on another blog, make me smile though.)


(PS- a LOT has been going on in my life lately and I'm gearing up to write about it, but I'm not ready just yet. So stay tuned!)

bella penguino!

I am so in love with the look of the new Penguin classics! The covers of these gorgeous hardcover editions (designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith) are just perfect- timeless, yet visually interesting. They would look great next to any book on any bookshelf, but I especially love how they look in a grouping. Also, they feel great. The covers are that great, old-fashioned linen thread-y material, and the pages are a satisfying weight. So far, the following titles are available for sale (I've seen them at Borders and Davis Kidd, as well as online):

GoodReads update

Number of books on my "already read" shelf: 213
(I had to remove a bunch of embarassing ones because my coworkers would tease me!)

Number of books on my "to-read" shelf: 127

Optimistic, much??

~Heather

I heart reading

When I was growing up, almost nothing made me happier than reading. My sister and I wore out the childhood books we had at our disposal (most notably the Little House series, whose paperback covers were in tatters by the time we hit our teens). We went to the library religiously, and devoured every piece of literature, great or not, that we could get our hands on. Later during our teenage years, we would each frequently stay up all night reading (or re-reading) a good book. (Our mom discovered this eventually, and began to start policing "lights out" a little more firmly than before.) Even sleep, which is arguably my favorite pastime, is no match for a good book!