On home birth

Baby invited me to guest author a post on her blog about why we are choosing a home birth.

As we are preparing for the birth, we've been experiencing a roller-coaster ride of emotions (me especially).  Being able to write out some of my thoughts about birth helps me feel more prepared and calm.

If any of you are interested in reading that post, you can find it here.

On being kind of tall

Generally I think I'm of average height;  I don't really consider myself a "tall" person.  But then when I stop and look around me, I see that at almost 5'9 I am taller than average or at least on the tall side of average.

This is not so fun when buying pants.  Regular length are usually a tad bit short, and tall length are WAY too long.  I'm actually pretty self-conscious about always having pants that are too short for me.  My height was not so fun when I was dating.  There are a lot of guys out there who like dating smaller women because it makes them feel bigger.  It's not all their fault though, I mean, there are plenty of women, myself included, who aren't too keen on the idea of feeling HUGE next to their boyfriend or date.  However, having many friends who are taller than I am, I know I am in no position to be complaining about being tall.

So I'm not.  This post is about some advantages of being kind of tall that I have been enjoying recently.  Being tall and pregnant is awesome!  Since we first announced we were expecting (at about 4 months) to when I really started showing (around 6 months) to now I frequently hear "Wow!  You look great!" when people find out how far along I am.  I'm not used to people telling me I look great.  It feels awesome.  I also get "You're so small!" which is another thing I'm not used to hearing.  Being on the back row of every class picture, I'm not sure I've ever been told I was small.  I don't buy size small anything for myself, even at my thinnest.

I haven't had any back pain, no stretch marks (yet), my feet aren't swollen, my wedding ring still fits great, and I have a lap!  I can still drive, and with about six inches between me and the wheel, I expect to be able to drive right up until Baby's birth day.  (This is a big deal.  With my current schedule, I don't know what I would do if I couldn't drive.)  I'm sure that these things are a combination of there being a lot of room in my torso for the baby to live in and the healthy choices I've been making during pregnancy, but either way, it's awesome!

I know not every pregnancy is this easy.  I feel so lucky to have had such a comfortable and easy pregnancy up to this point.  I've had great support from Blake and a wonderful midwife and a fantastic childbirth class that have all helped me have a great pregnancy.  Being kind of tall is not so bad.

On resilient, inspiring people

All things considered, I believe most people do an incredible job living their lives and meeting their responsibilities.  People are capable, dedicated, creative, and devoted.  I love hearing the stories of real people who do amazing things.  I think most people would fall into this category if we spent the time to get to know them.

I love my work (minus the paperwork part)!  It is so inspiring and hopeful, and even when I am tired, I feel rejuvenated and uplifted at work.  I get to work with the most incredible people.  I am continually awed by the trust people place in me and consider it an honor to be invited into the more intimate parts of their lives.

My clients are amazing, and so are my coworkers.  I work with people who, for next to no pay at this point, pour their hearts and souls into the people they work with.  We meet regularly in small supervision groups to discuss cases.  I love going to supervision!  We sit around a table and talk about how we can help people, how well people are doing, and the amazing strengths they have.

Despite the challenges people face, which are what bring them to therapy in the first place, they do so well and accomplish so much.  They care enough about their families and relationships to ask for help, to pay for help, and to keep coming back.  For some of the people I see, I honestly don't know how they do it.

I get to see people fight to save marriages.  I see parents' concern for their children and their willingness to do whatever it takes to help their children, even when that means making serious changes in their own lives.  I see individuals who do so much already just wanting to make themselves better.

My job is to help people reach their goals, to help them be a little better off, a little happier than they were when they came in.  How could I not love it?

Last week I heard the details of a grizzly death of a child, a family member, that some of my clients witnessed.  It was incredibly difficult to listen to.  After the client left, I sat in our staff area and cried for about 30 minutes.  I've never heard first-hand a story quite that bad and never had a client affect me in that way.  I thought about them all weekend.  I feel so sad for what they have been through and am completely amazed at their resilience.  Knowing the details, I am in awe that they do as well as they do now.  The family has pulled together and stepped up to the plate for one another in truly inspiring ways.  I think these people are absolute angels on earth.  My life is better because I know them.

Because I don't have and can't share pictures of the people I work with, throughout this post I've included pictures of just a few of the people I know who are completely amazing and inspiring.

On baby radar

This post is not about a baby version of the character Radar from MASH.

It's about how I have developed what I'm calling Baby Radar.  I notice babies everywhere now.  Most of the time, okay, all of the time, I think they are completely adorable.  Blake just laughs at me when I point them out everywhere we go: the mall, church, a restaurant, the grocery store, anywhere.

I watched a National Geographic special a few weeks ago about buffalos.  It was pretty good, except . . . I didn't like the part where the baby buffalo got stuck on the river bank and was having a hard time getting up to its mom.  I really didn't like the part where the other baby buffalo got eaten by wolves.  My Baby Radar is active even with baby buffalos.

I am getting increasingly excited about our baby's upcoming birth.  We've only got about 10 weeks to go, give or take a few.  I'm gathering supplies for the birth and doing some cleaning while I'm on break from school to get ready for Baby.  My plan is to be a really good, overachieving student next quarter and get all my assignments done early so that I can be stress-free (at least as far as school is concerned) when Baby arrives.  To allow myself time for that later, I'm getting ready for the birth now.  So exciting!

Baby Radar just might have something to do with all that.  What do you think?  I can't be the only one to have developed this wonderful new ability.

On Black Friday

After a lovely and very fun outdoor Thanksgiving with my aunt, uncle, and cousins (that's right!  We ate outside on the deck and it was perfect!  Jealous?), Blake and I headed out for a wee bit of shopping yesterday.

We got out of bed at a very respectable 8:30 am and headed out to the Mattel store to buy this rocker/bouncer seat for the baby that we like.  Unfortunately, the coupon we had and the in-store sales did not apply to the seat.  The checkout line went all the way around the outer walls of the store and almost back to the entrance.  We decided we'd just come back another day to get the seat.

Next we went to Target, where we bought Blake some shoes and me a maternity coat on clearance.  Our trip out to Disneyland Wednesday night convinced us that a coat for me would probably be a good investment, and this one was 50% off.  We picked up a few "doorbuster" DVDs at $1.99 and $3.99 respectively.  A quick romp through the health and beauty section for some essentials and we were on our way.  Thus far, we may have qualified for some award as the most practical and relaxed Black Friday shoppers ever.

Next was lunch, then a thrift store to look for ugly Christmas sweaters for a party.  We didn't find what we wanted so we went to a craft store to buy some embellishments to make some normal sweaters into Christmas sweaters.  Our jingle bells and sparkly foliage might not have come to much dollar-wise, but we saved over 40% on our total purchase.  Not too shabby.

The last stop of the afternoon was BabiesRUs, where we got some little clothes for baby on clearance.  The deal was an additional 50% off items on the clearance rack.  We didn't spend over $5 on any one item and got some for as little as $.50.  The real reason I started this post in the first place was that I wanted to share a treasure we found in the clearance rack.  I couldn't find a picture of the exact one we saw, but it was basically one of these: 

in 18 and 24 month sizes.  How did THAT one slip through design, marketing, and manufacturing meetings unnoticed?  There was no one in those meetings who spoke up and said, "You know, I'm not sure that we'll sell many 'My 1st Thanksgiving' outfits in larger sizes.  We might end up taking a loss on those"?  We just might have found the limit to the excessive holiday crap, 'if we sell it they will buy it' mentality.

We finished off our Black Friday extravaganza with the traditional holiday decorating and trimming of the tree.  It was a pretty big job, but we got it done in a jiffy.

Ah, so festive!  Thanks to my mom and Grandma Bonnie for supplying the bulk of the decorations.  We traded out the old ornaments for those silver ones we found in the $1 bin at Target this year.

Despite the potential for some serious craziness, I think our Black Friday was a smashing success.  On the agenda for today? Homework. :( and then dinner out to celebrate Small Business Saturday! :)

Happy Holiday Season, everyone!

Note:  I had the hardest time typing "Black" so many times in this post. My fingers kept trying to type "Blake."  I must use that a lot more than black.  Although, Blake Friday doesn't sound like such a bad idea.  I mean, I'd celebrate it every year, even every week.  Who's with me?

On InterViews

For one of my courses this quarter we have a text InterViews about using interviews in research.  No one in our class likes this book.  Someone complains about it every week, how it's hard to read, how there was a grammatical error, how blah blah blah.  I'm pretty indifferent to it.  I don't love it, but I don't hate it either.  This morning I was reading a chapter to prepare for our quiz this afternoon and came across this beauty of a sentence:

"With a transition from an individual storage conception of meaning to an interrelational constitution of meaning in the original interview conversation--and in the readers' conversations with the interview text--the power asymmetry of the interview researcher and the subject become more obvious."

I think I see where my classmates are coming from.  Seven more months of grad school . . . I can do this!

On baby rex

This brought a smile to my face.   It's irreverent and very funny.  Just thought I'd share the smiles.