our first baby shower!

today our friends from luke's school and work gave us our first baby shower. it was perfect.

the food was amazing. pizzettas, quiche, beer bread, dip, cheese, salad, vietnamese sesame balls, chips, salsa, cake, and strawberries covered in hot fudge. (i was so lucky to get permission in advance to go off the diabetic diet for the day)!

29 people came. we ate & drank, talked & mingled.

luke's entire basketball team was there. the men all seemed to linger in the kitchen with the beer. i love that it was a co-ed shower.

ben & steph & sophie (below) hosted.

maren (from germany) sent out the invitations and handled logistics.

jen and fabio (from italy) decorated and brought tons of amazing italian food.

***

once we got home, we opened all the gifts. so many wonderful and thoughtful and generous things!

we never really thought about it before, but now we are such fans of the baby shower! it's such a generous part of our culture. we were given so many things that we would have had to buy ourselves. when everything baby is already pretty costly. it reminds me of the "it takes a village" thing. we feel super blessed.

at the pool

luke came to visit me at the community pool yesterday. it was such a great surprise! i've gone every day for an hour for the past month, and it's been really, really great. i feel super energized afterward.

here are some photos of the belly and my homemade yoga-top/swim shorts swim suit:

house

we were supposed to close today.
now they say "next tuesday".
...

at this point we just have to laugh.

mini veggie pizzas

so while the above photo might be hard to distinguish, i made my husband and i some mini veggie pizzas this week. it is super hard to cook anything in this tiny studio with the mini oven and stove we have here, plus the extremely sensitive fire alarm that goes off anytime the oven is on, so i felt pretty accomplished afterward even with such a simple meal.

on the bottom are whole wheat english muffin slices, topped with baby tomato halves sauteed in a little olive oil. on top of the tomatoes: shredded baby squash, diced eggplant, and sliced mushrooms also sauteed a bit in olive oil. i started to worry toward the end when i realized we didn't have any mozzarella cheese but then i remembered we had some mozzarella string cheese on hand (apparently a great snack for diabetics) so i sliced some of that on top. we drizzled a little balsamic vinegar on top and some oregano and sea salt before baking.

luke's first word after taking a bite was "AMAZING!" which made me happy (and emotional) since i am not able to cook much for us here. :)

the business of being born

we saw this documentary a few weeks ago. it goes into the birthing process in the usa vs. other developed countries, and the abundance of c-sections and drugs used in the american hospitals today. it also goes into home birthing and water births with a midwife and/or doula. it really opened our eyes. we recommend it, in general, not just if you are having a baby. here is the website, if you want to watch the trailer.

luke and i are generally super non-intervention people. we don't take medication for headaches or colds or really anything if we can help it, so naturally we are hoping and opting for a natural birth. there is an awesome natural birth center here in east lansing that we'd love to deliver at, but unfortunately they don't accept our insurance. hopefully we will be able to experience a water birth with a future child. :) the good news is that my doctor who delivered her own babies both at her home (by herself!) and at the birthing center, has set us up with natural birthing classes there so we can prepare ourselves for a natural birth in a not-so-typical natural environment.

our classes start next week. we're also already signed up for the hospital birthing classes. my doctor said the hospital classes will teach us about the drugs they offer, etc, which is great if i end up wanting them, while the natural classes will teach us about massage/breathing/coaching techniques. i'm not sure how excited my husband is about taking two sets of birthing classes, but i am super excited. :)

more house drama...

so today is 2/25. our scheduled closing date.

we got a phone call yesterday evening saying that our insurance company all of a sudden had a problem with part of the roof. so they won't insure us until it's fixed. which would take weeks. our insurance man's advice to us was "find another insurance company who won't go look at the house." so, while the advice seems a bit shady, we think everyone involved has good intentions and understands our need for closing on the house pronto.

we wondered (again, like so many times) if this is a door closing and if we should just forget about buying, but when we are told "only a few more days" it is really hard to walk away from all that, and all the work we have put into this for the past 6 months.

so after talking and praying it over, luke is currently searching for a new insurance company. if he can find one by 5pm today, we can "supposedly" close by this friday.

the timing is still good. the week after next is luke's spring break, so if we can be renovating and moving and taking advantage of that week, we'll be happy.

brother mark on the oscars!

luke's brother mark recently shot an advertisement for coke in spain. last night we were semi-watching the oscars, and as it went to commercial and i grabbed the remote to press mute. then i froze and grabbed luke instead. we were so happy (and shocked) to see mark there on our tv screen! and during the oscars!

it's a really kind of a unique and artistic commercial, no words and lots of hidden stuff to see. hopefully you can see it above.

congrats, mark!

a resting place

so we've started the search for furniture for our little one. sometimes ordering online for these big items can take months, so we'd like to find something soon. we're still searching craigslist and other places for used furniture, but haven't come up with anything yet. so far, in the new dept., we have two (budget) favorites.

they are both convertible - so they both can be turned into toddler beds and later on, into twin-sized beds. both are simple and classic, which is what we are going for.

here is the first:

it has a drop railing. if i am short, and luke is tall, is this something we will need for me?

and the second:

(try not to be biased by the color and super cute bedding)

this one doesn't have the drop railing.

how important is the railing for a short and tall couple?
what else should we be considering?
what do you think?

some good-ness from far away

one of the blogs i follow is good-ness. leslie is super creative and i love her ideas, plus she lives in japan and frequently blogs about japanese culture. our dear friend john-paul has been living in japan for a few years now, so i especially love learning about life and culture there.

leslie had a giveaway on her blog a few weeks ago and i won! she sent these awesome little alphabet stamps contained in their own little box all the way from japan, plus a few extra japanese treats. i love them and can't wait to use them. thank you leslie!

dia del amor

happy valentines day!

we had a beautiful, low-key day just spending time together.

after a few sunny days that melted all the snow and ice and made us hopeful for spring, we woke up to 6.2 inches of fresh snow.

so we spent 4 slow morning hours at a new coffee shop, talking and reading and grading papers.

we made lunch together and went on a snowy hike with unica.

we had a late dinner at our favorite indian restaurant.

it's become our unofficial tradition to eat indian food on valentine's day, since it seems to be a place not many people think of. no reservations, not too crowded, and, as always, lots of yummy curry, naan, and mango lassi.

we hope you had a beautiful day of love!

the registry

luke and i took some time on a recent sunday afternoon to once again visit the massive Babies'R'Us store in lansing. we've been once before and we were both a bit lost and confused about everything that is being sold and everything they say you "need". we definitely want to be simple and minimal and avoid buying into all the commercial-ness. but we also want to be smart and buy what really does work.

does anyone have any advice on what we really should or shouldn't get?

anyways, we went this time to begin our baby registry. apparently there are a few baby showers being planned for us (!) and we've been asked a few times where we are registered. so we did a little research ahead of time, printed off a few checklists, and went to lunch to get the much needed energy for the afternoon as well as hash out the what-we-need vs. what-we-don't-need on the checklist.

from there we headed to BRU and pretty quickly became lost and confused (again) under the harsh florescent lights. aisles and aisles of one item in different versions and brands and prices. we noticed how the other people registering had brought real moms to help them decide what bottles/baths/strollers/etc were best... that would have been a good idea.

despite our frequent breaks to the restroom or to catch our breath in the rocking chairs, despite the stress of our cluelessness about what baby things are best, we did have a lot of fun picking out stuff for our little one. i handled the checklist while luke (of course) handled the laser gun. in the end, i think we were there a total of 3-4 hours.

and for now... it is complete. and can be found here, under plonsky.

mystery box

this box came this morning. i put unica next to it for perspective. it's big. really big. and light. really light. it came from ups. which means it's not from my family who are major postal service supporters. no return address.

it is addressed to me. but i'm waiting to open it with luke when he gets home tonight. we get so little mail and so few actual packages that we like to wait and open things together in a long, drawn out, savoring process.

what could it be?

update: it was the first item from our baby registry! from one of luke's professors. we were so surprised. so thoughtful.

luke!

mr. plonsky submitted his first qualifying paper (a requirement and a major step toward his phd) AND PASSED! he was one of very few to pass. he has spent countless hours and saturday nights away from his wife and pup working away at this 59 page paper and now he will be able to send it out to be (hopefully) published in a linguistic journal.

also, we just found out that luke was chosen to receive a travel award for $800 to take him to denver this march. he will be presenting his work at a conference there. it's so amazing to see all his hard work and time and energy paying off. we feel super blessed.

great job lukas!

life with gestational diabetes

last week i attended a class on gestational diabetes. i learned about what and when to eat to control blood sugar. turns out it is mostly what we eat already - fresh food, fruits and vegetables, whole wheat everything and milk. (no more ben & jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream though). the hard part is i need to have a specific amount of carbs in each meal. so i am now compulsively counting carbs. also, i have to eat 3 meals and 3 snacks per day. i have never been much of a snack person (unlike my hubby who snacks all day long) so that is something to get used to.

also, i have to prick my finger, take and test my blood four (specific) times a day. not the most fun.

at first all of this seemed like a full time job - waking up early to test my blood sugar first thing, planning a perfectly-carb-counted breakfast, eating, being active exactly an hour later, then testing my blood two hours later. immediately after testing, i have to start planning the next snack or meal, activity, then plan a time to test. and over again. it's a little easier now. poco a poco i guess.

maybe the hardest part is the few times that my blood sugar has been higher or lower than it is supposed to be. in those cases, i'm not quite sure what i did wrong - did i count wrong, eat at the wrong time, was it that type of food that caused it? there are so many variables that could have caused it so i'm not sure yet how to learn from my mistakes. there have definitely been frequent tears of frustration in the plonsky household this week.

the scary part is if my doctor doesn't think i am controlling it well enough with my diet, she will make me give myself 2 insulin shots a day into my stomach. i am super hoping and praying it doesn't come to that.

the other really disappointing news is that the baby will probably be induced. we were really looking forward to trying a natural birth. and it is really important to me that the baby comes when he/she is ready. plus, it seems like women with gd most likely are given c-sections. we don't want any intervention. and i'd really love to experience labor the way my body was intended to. in the end, of course we'll be happy to have a healthy baby any way that he/she comes. we'll see.

one great thing to come from all this is i have discovered the community pool! since it is still super cold out, the nutritionist suggested excersize activities such as vacuuming (not really possible in a studio filled with boxes and furniture) and walking at the mall (we try to avoid the mall as much as possible). i do prenatal yoga a few days a week, but wanted something more. so i went in search of some sort of pregnancy swimsuit being sold in the michigan winter, (which ended up being a yoga top and swim shorts), and joined our local community center. i've been swimming 5 days a week for 45 minutes each and i love it. i've really missed swimming. it's a little weird for this arizona girl to be in an indoor pool, but i am getting used to it. it feels so amazing and refreshing afterwards. plus, i've made some senior friends who are really sweet to me. :)

sorry this post is so long. i think it is mostly for me. thank you everyone for your thoughts and calls and emails! they mean a lot.

another house update

the bank has once again pushed back the closing date from the end of january to the middle of february and then again to the end of february. we cannot and will not stay in this studio after the last day of february. i've seen way too many episode's of a baby story where the baby comes 4 weeks early. plus, we think 7 months of a man, pregnant woman, and dog living out of boxes in one room is about all we can take.

so, either the bank will finally close on the designated date of 2/25 (which is only 2 weeks from now!) or we will finally walk away. which is good news. also good news: we said we were walking away a few weeks ago which inspired the bank to pay over $5,000 of repairs to the house!

hello february!

we've been out of it for a week or so, but now we are back. getting used to things. hopeful about others. some good news to share. we will post more soon when we find some free moments.

we hope you are enjoying a week of love!