Baby #3: The Ultrasound

"I don't usually tell people I'm 100% sure," the doctor said. "But this baby is leaving nothing to guesswork."

Yoga baby

Miriam loves doing yoga. The other night she was showing off some of her yoga moves (when she was only halfway into her pyjamas). She gets very serious when she's trying to balance and can balance for quite a long time.

I asked her if she could smile and balance at the same time. She tried but it broke her concentration, I think, and she soon lost her balance. 

Happy children

On Thursday at lunch the girls were being "best of friends" again—their term. This time they were still friends by the time I got the camera and no one was elbowing the other one in the face or anything like that.

They played babies in the living room while I made dinner. Rachel created a crib for Miriam out of the laundry basket, with a couch cushion over top and a blanket draped over the rest. Miriam was completely content to suck her thumb in her cozy little bed—when I first walked into the living room (at Rachel's behest) I wasn't even sure where she was. Rachel had to show me.

Lion vs. Lamb

Springtime in Utah is predictably unpredictable. Thus it was that on March 1st we spent the afternoon outside in the snow—at least, that's where the girls spent their afternoon. I told Rachel she could struggle through building a snowman by herself because I just didn't feel like going out in the snow (I'm kind of over winter). It was a good learning experience for her.

She experienced some failures—this snowman was actually about as tall as she was but its center of gravity was way off:

Perpetual Education...Fun.

It is with a bit of a heavy heart that I announce that Andrew has been accepted at Indiana University—Bloomington (with full funding). Over the past few weeks I've fallen in love with the idea of Duke, that's all, and the other schools were taking so long to get back to us that I'd just about given up hope that they ever would. I mean, it's been ten weeks since we applied to some schools. At this point, because Andrew got into Duke (a really good school in a really great place) with full funding and Indiana (his top choice, academically) with full funding, we're really giving up on Michigan and American University.

They don't have much to offer that we haven't already been offered (by way of money, location, or academia) so we don't feel too badly about narrowing our choices before we even know if they are choices. We're rather indecisive so choosing between two things is much better than choosing between four things.

We've already decided, fairly firmly, that a PhD is the direction to go (although it was an honour to be selected as a PMF finalist).

Recently I had a conversation with someone about our future plans. They wanted to know if Andrew had gotten any jobs or internships and I excitedly announced, "Well, he was accept at Duke for a PhD program!"

This person, who probably should have been more supportive, kind of narrowed their eyes and said as if we had gravely disappointed them, "That's more school, you know?"

What I said was, "Well, it's fully funded—with a scholarship and a generous stipend and..."

What I thought was, "WHAT?! He told me PhD stood for [insert bogus expanded acronym here]!"

Examples: Public Health Director, Publicity/HR Director, President-Highness-Dictator, Professional Hair Dresser

I think I chose the better thing to say. I find that it is often better not to say the first thing that pops into your head. Still, sometimes I think that what I don't say is infinitely more funny than what I actually end up saying.

We're quite looking forward to more school, actually—especially since we've been offered full funding and because this is it: the final stretch. After this there is no more "school." You know, beyond post-docs and being a professor and all that (if that's the route we go when the time comes). Our state of Perpetual Education will draw to a close, at least formally, and we'll settle into a real grown-up routine (at least, in theory).

For now we just have to decide where we'll be at the end of the summer: Indiana or North Carolina.

There will be much discussion about this: lists of pros and cons drawn up, dancing line graphs constructed, and advice thrown our way by numberless concourses of opinion-holders.

Your input is most certainly welcome as well, especially those of you who currently live in or have lived in Indiana. Do my husband a favour and sway me in favour of your state.

PS. Friday turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The doctor's office called about 10 minutes before we were due to leave the house to announce that the doctor was out delivering a baby and so our appointment would have to be rescheduled. So now tomorrow is the big day. Someone asked me if I was mad about this, but I'm not. It takes a lot more than something like that to make me mad. But I do start to feel antsy when people who are due weeks after me are already making their announcements. We'll be 21 weeks on Wednesday and I had a friend announce who is only 18 weeks. Boo.

It's a...puzzle!

Today's the day we're finding out if baby #3 is a boy baby or a girl baby. We're leaving the girls home with Grandma so I thought it would be fun to surprise them with the news somehow. But thinking up an easy-to-execute idea was a little harder than I thought. There are a ton of ideas online—you can bake cupcakes and put pink or blue filling inside or put a slip of paper in a balloon and pop it but neither of those ideas seemed like they would work for us. I don't feel like making cupcakes and we only have pink balloons. We could run to the store after the appointment but Andrew has a three-hour midterm to take so I don't think we'll have time for that. I went to bed last night unsure of what to do.

But then, just as I was rolling out of bed this morning, inspiration struck. I could have the girls put together a puzzle. My girls love puzzles. 

I thought it would be an easy idea because surely someone would have thought about it and made something and put it up online, right? I mean, everything is online these days. I looked but found nothing to suit my fancy so I quickly whipped up my own. 

Here's the "It's a boy!" puzzle:

 Here's the "It's a girl!" puzzle:

My water [main] broke

This afternoon the girls and I were downstairs watching "Harry Potter 1." Rachel watched about a third of it before Miriam woke up and we joined her. We finished reading Harry Potter 2 yesterday so tomorrow we're going to watch the movie. So, there we were, sitting on the couch, innocently watching Harry Potter when the utility closet, which was across the room from us, started going wild. 

There was a tremendous banging and a whole lot of shaking and all three of us flipped out.

Rachel and Miriam both started screaming and I probably did, too, though I can't remember. I do remember that I was in the middle of dragging both girls up the stairs when the banging stopped and was replaced by a mysterious whooshing and gurgling noise. 

No longer afraid that our furnace was going to explode, I allowed Rachel to return back to the couch to finish watching Harry Potter. I was shocked that she wanted to go back into the basement at all because she is often a regular scaredy-cat and that noise had scared the dickens out of us. At her insistence we somewhat shakily returned to the basement. She curled up with Miriam on the couch and I moved the table away from the front of the closet doors to peek inside.

Welcome to the interior of our utility closet:

Tari Saman

Here are two different videos of our Tari Saman performance yesterday. The first is from my own camera (again, I am fifth from the left (in pink)):

20 weeks—and Happy Leap Day!

Here we are at the half-way point already. I suppose if anyone wants to make a guess about the gender now's the time—we'll be (hopefully) revealing that after our ultrasound on Friday. I suggested to Andrew that we just let this one be a surprise and he said, "You can have it be a surprise if you want but I'm going to find out."

A Taste of Asia at SLCC

This morning my mom swung by our house in a BYU van full of BYU students to pick me and the girls up to take us to Salt Lake. Today was the day we performed the Tari Saman at Salt Lake Community College and we had to be there by 10:00 so the Gamelan group could practice and get their instruments set up. At around 9:20 I got a phone call from my mom's phone.

"Hello?" I said.

"Hello," said a male voice. "This is Myrna."

Laughter erupted in my ears. My mom had given the phone to a student (because she was driving) to tell me they were just about at hour house. Apparently everyone in the van thought this was very funny. It kind of was, really.

The girls were excited to get to ride in a big van with a bunch of big kids and were so good on the way up and the entire time we were there. I felt like I brought half the house with me because I wasn't sure what we'd be experiencing while we were away—I brought extra outfits and baby wipes and tylenol and a thermometer and favourite blankets and coats and hats and gloves and lunch and water bottles...

It ended up being too much hud because Miriam was just fine the entire time. She didn't have any accidents and her fever stayed away and she was as cheerful as could be, though lugging those favourite blankets with us proved to be a bonus because they helped the girls behave.

Rachel was very angry when we first arrived and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. When I demanded that she tell me what was wrong or just get over it already she pointed out that they had decorated the stage in Slytherin's house colours—gold and green. I told her that, first of all, Slytherin's colours are silver and green and, second of all, it wasn't a big deal because this wasn't a Harry Potter party—it was "A Taste of Asia" party—so their colour choices in no way reflected their loyalty to Gryffindor. Sheesh.