this little one

and here are the photos of this little april baby. it looks to me like he or she has a nose like mateo's. we'll see.

luke was away on interviews so he missed out on the ultrasound, but it all worked out in the end. i went with mateo since we couldn't find a sitter on such short notice. in classic mateo form, he got really protective and worried about me the minute we walked into the room. a nurse offered to watch him outside and he went for it. the technician who helped us said that if we'd tried to reschedule for luke during the holidays we wouldn't have had much time to see the baby. since i went in before the holiday madness, she let me look at the baby for an entire hour. i saw hands and feet and spine and a lovely heartbeat. it was nice to have time alone with this little one. and when i came out, mateo was in a room surrounded by nurses and doctors and soaking up every bit of attention he could.

date night on the cheap

i know, maybe it's not technically "date night" when you bring your toddler along, but it's all we can work out right now. here was last week's rundown:

two meals split three ways on a buy one get one free coupon - $6
one family photobooth photo, something that has been on my list for over a year - $3
two blizzards on a buy one get one free coupon - $3
bonus: eating them at the mall playground while mateo played giving us just a little bit of time by ourselves to talk

roasted red peppers are my fave

not the best photos to show you, but luke and i made something new the other night. pasta with roasted red pepper sauce encouraged me to try broiling for the first time in my life and i am totally hooked. i never knew roasting peppers in the middle of winter was even possible! also: a spinach salad. and french onion stuffed mushrooms. it was a feast.

at 19 months mateo

got his very first haircut, after we noticed a little (long!) tail of hair down his back in the bathtub...

it made him cry (me, too), and yes, we kept some for the baby book. i hope it stays red so we can show him someday.

that's all for 19 months, since we missed posting during the crazy holidays.

just an observation

5 years!

luke and i have never really traditionally celebrated our wedding anniversary. it's the 1st of january, so we are usually with family, or traveling, or in lansing where everything is closed that day. for our first anniversary, we broke off from a family walk in nyc and grabbed a quick slice. one year we drove around lansing looking for somewhere to have dinner but ended up at walmart, the only thing open. (we bought a canvas and some paint and went home to paint together, which ended up being fun.)

this year we celebrated 5 years of marriage, and a year ago i had big plans to finally REALLY celebrate. ideas of puerto rico or somewhere sunny were in my head. maybe a cruise? then i got realistic about money, and started putting just $20 aside each month to save up for something special. maybe a weekend in toronto? then we went to mexico for a wedding, and had to use that travel stash. so i began thinking smaller: maybe an afternoon in chicago where mateo could stay with his grandparents? but then Christmas came and we got so busy and spent so much and suddenly it was AGAIN the morning of our anniversary and AGAIN neither of us had made any plans.

luke came up with a surprise that morning, that we like to joke wasn't the most romantic, but instead was totally our style. he took us to the heidelberg project in detroit. he'd first heard about it on npr. it is in a sort of sad part of town, in the middle of tons of burned down houses and factories. a resident began cleaning up the neighborhood in the mid 1980s, and he began making an art installation with all the refuse he collected from the abandoned homes. now the installation has expanded down the entire street.

we saw so much of what has been left behind: countless dolls, phones, tvs, and shoes. paint everywhere. shopping carts and abandoned cars. some people still live in the homes on the street.

after walking the street we took a tour of some of the more heart-achey parts of detroit. more abandoned and burned homes and churches. blocks and blocks of lots and houses without a single soul. it's something neither of us could ever imagine without having seen it with our own eyes.

we saw some brighter spots, too.

below is our all time favorite building in detroit, the depot. it is way bigger than it looks here. almost every window is shattered. we hope they never tear down the depot.

and after that, in true pam-and-luke-anniversary-style, we went to mexican town to eat and eat and eat. it was a nice way to celebrate 5 years of marriage.

the greenhouse: how it's going

i think i mentioned earlier that for this pregnancy, we are choosing to get care through the greenhouse birth center. luke was offered some extra work right after we found out we were pregnant, in almost the exact amount that we'd need for the birth center. for our first pregnancy, we took natural birth classes there and felt so much peace every time we stepped in the door. (our exact words at one point were "it feels like flagstaff!"). and we learned so, so much about pregnancy and birth and all of our options. it was so completely different than the birthing classes given by the hospital that we also took.

this time around, i've been looking forward to experiencing the differences in using a birth center vs. a regular obgyn office, getting care from the midwives vs. doctors, etc. our first appointment at the greenhouse was in october. they told us to schedule 2 hours for an appointment - instead of the 5 minutes we'd had with our doctor while pregnant with mateo. it was so refreshingly different.

we sat with a midwife, drank tea, talked about our hopes for this pregnancy. we told her our birth story with mateo. and she asked us all sorts of questions - medical and otherwise - to actually get to know us. all with mateo playing at a train table in the same room. there was no rush. and she really emphasized to us the importance of following our instincts. it was pretty much the exact opposite of our experience at a regular obgyn office, where we often we found ourselves begging the doctors to stay and answer our questions as they stepped out the door.

at the end of the two hours, i lied on a quilted bed in a dim room as the midwife prepared to listen for a little heartbeat. mateo saw what was going on and made a sound and expression we'd never seen before - protectiveness for me! he was not ok with anyone touching me. i scooped him up and lied him on my chest while the midwife searched, and soon, we were all listening to the little heartbeat of a real little person inside me. i held luke's hand and we both got teary. it was an incredible moment. (pictured above).

since then, we've had an appointment each month. an hour long appointment with tea and a midwife, which still feels like a luxury to me. there have been no weigh-ins, no urine samples, no pricks or pokes - the opposite of our last experience. there was some blood work done once at an outside lab, and this month i am testing myself (at home) for gestational diabetes. and we've had one (optional) ultrasound which i will try to post about soon. so, so far so good. we can't say enough about how happy we are there.

another reason why we love miss linda

click here to see.

she's pretty unbelievable.

the csn winner...

random.org chose comment #5... tia debi!
i will let the good people of csn know, and we will be in touch soon.
thanks csn, and thanks everyone for entering!


and also, thanks for all of your comments, emails, and calls on my last post. so much support. it means a lot.

the quilt that wasn't

when we first found out we were expecting again, i knew the exact thing that i wanted to make this baby. i hoped to make the above quilt from anna maria horner's book, handmade beginnings. i've thought about it for months now, and just last night went to a local fabric shop to thoughtfully choose some fabrics - each one with our baby in mind. i chose these, and planned on adding a few bright yellows in from scraps.

but i have this habit of not adding up my purchases, and when i do i round down in disbelief. so i spent more than i should have. and when i got home i was reminded of our financial problems right now. so tonight i'll be returning them. i wanted to take a photo to remember them by.

don't feel bad for me. (i'm silly and did that enough already.) i really do want to live simply and live within our means, but the other half of me wants to prepare and nest and make something for this little one like i did for mateo. it's hard. but it is a lesson i should have learned by now.

a giveaway!

the super generous people at csn have once again offered to sponsor a giveaway! csn stores has over 200 online stores where you can find anything from modern dining furniture to fitness equipment.

all you have to do to be entered is leave a comment on this post. i will choose a winner at random on saturday morning. the winner will receive a $35 csn gift card.

flagstaff: some details

2006, just outside of flagstaff, taken by luke

thanks everyone for your super supportive comments on our upcoming move to flagstaff! we are excited to move back to the town where we met and got our first college degrees.

luke received a few job offers and had several more phone and campus interviews scheduled, but nau's program and location was always his 1st choice. we feel super blessed that he was chosen for the job he most dreamed of. and i was so proud of his negotiating skills which came out of nowhere, and required just one trip to a retired dean's house next door for some last minute advice. :)

it's funny to look back at this post, where i wrote about what we hoped for in our next town: "ideally, in our dreams, we'd live near the mountains in a walkable/bikeable community with lots of art and a diverse culture and a bilingual school and maybe some good mexican food." i think flagstaff meets all of those qualifications? plus, family isn't far.

it doesn't seem like as much as an adventure as if we were going somewhere new-to-us. but it is totally new for us to move back somewhere. i am most nervous that i will be constantly comparing it to our college days. and we are both not so excited for the higher cost of living. lansing was so good to us in the you-can-afford-a-house-on-a-grad-student-salary way.

so we don't know when we will move, or even when we should put the house up for sale? this baby comes in april, then luke graduates in may. hopefully in that same time he will be finishing his dissertation. then ideally the house will sell (we are praying!) and we'll move mid-summer. but who knows.

these days, we are dreaming about how life will be there (i won't lie - a weeks vacation in phoenix just to eat mexican food has been mentioned a few times) and we are also making lists of all the michigan things we want to see and do before we leave.

i will never forget today.

today when i went down to the basement to throw some rugs into the washing machine. and closed the door behind me so mateo wouldn't be temped to follow me. and ran back up the stairs quickly to continue playing the singing game we were still playing. and he heard me coming, and i could see his feet dancing happily from underneath the door. and when i went to open it, it wouldn't budge. and i realized he'd locked it. he'd locked me in the basement. and my body got super hot and panic-y. and i tried to pry the handle off the door but there was nothing to work with. then i tried to open a window but i knew my belly wouldn't fit through, plus there would be a big drop to the ground. so i tried over and over to open the closed-for-years passage leading to the backyard. i worked on the last door, pulling with my entire body, for 10 minutes before i saw a little glimmer of outside light. and it finally opened. and i ran in my slippers through the snow until i found a neighbor with a phone to call luke. and then ran back home. and called to mateo through the front window. he wouldn't come, and was still waiting for me at the basement door. finally, i saw him trot sadly into the living room and his face brightened when he saw me. and then he climbed onto the couch next to the window, and we played for the next 30 minutes. he brought me books and i "read" them. i sang "the wheels on the bus" for the whole neighborhood. and commented on the toys he kept putting up to the window. not once was he sad or upset or worried. in fact, he was having the best time. for 30 minutes we played. (he was locked in for an hour, total). and then luke's bus arrived and we came inside. and made a note to make some more spare keys.

luke got a job, and we are moving to...