He doesn’t look like a Lil Smudge any more! He really looks like a camera-shy baby. 
And even… 
Those are the most no-paparazzi pictures. There are a few more, including with little feet and fists, in the photo album.
But I have to end with my favorite one!
Something tells me we’re going to see a lot of this expression on his little face.
Fruit & Veg Count, 11/16: 1/2 cup frozen raspberries, 3/4 cup mixed veggies.
I went in for our final, bonus, 3-D ultrasound this afternoon, and can I just say — it was the coolest thing EVER!
First, there’s REALLY a baby in there! And he LOOKS like a baby!
At the last ultrasound, or maybe even the one before that, we joked that he takes after my Dad because he hates having his picture taken. That’s still true. Almost all of the pictures have his hands or arms in front of his face, at least partially. It’s like he’s avoiding the paparazzi.
That said, we got one cute picture of him yawning, and a very sweet one with his little fists visible and his nose in profile. We also got a cute one of his little foot. And you can see part of his face in two of the pictures.
Also, Smudge is sitting in the breech position at the moment, meaning butt-down, head & feet up. This is different from what the midwife thought last week, but I think him flipping over after my big dip was the agitation I felt on Saturday night.
I’ll try to get the pics scanned in and uploaded before we leave for St Maarten.
Oh yeah, and Fruit & Veg Count, 11/15: 3/4 cup mixed veggies, 3/4 apple.
With all the excitement about The Dip, I haven’t posted anything else about the weekend!
The class was amazing. This was the final weekend — there is one more evening session, in January — for a 10 month long course designed to bring fun, play, and ease into your life. I have to say, I think it worked.
This weekend, we looked at how we each envision the eternal and our relationship with or access to it. In particular, we looked at art (in the broadest, Greek sense, including science, mathmatics, music, etc), spirituality, and participation in community and the physical world as being three different — and each alone, incomplete — models for thinking about and being in some form of communication or understanding with the eternal.
Heady, intellectual stuff! In the best, most fun, sense of the word.
For me, the Talent/No Talent Show was about participating in the community of the class, being physically engaged in the world, and about expressing myself in a way that is outside of my comfort zone. As I put it the next day in the class, "I can’t sing. At least not by the traditional rules of singing, like carrying a tune."
What was amazing about it for me was just fully committing to the performance, without letting any concern about how I looked or sounded getting in the way of my enthusiasm.
So even though I know my singing is bad, I sang with enthusiasm. And I stuck with it when I flubbed a line, or noticed that my voice was shaking and not as loud as it had been. And I even did the "Ernestine" snort in the song, which has to be the least sexy moment in the whole thing. I did it loud and proud.
And it was great! It was so much fun, and the audience laughed and laughed.
The other amazing thing we did was an exercise in acknowledging and appreciating people. In groups of 6, each person told each other person in the group what they appreciated and wanted to acknowledge the person for. Some of us knew each other pretty well; others were strangers. But it was surprisingly easy to pick up things about the people we didn’t know, and the acknowledgement was still wonderful.
I was acknowledged for being:
And, my overall grade for the class was an A.
Two of the other people in the Atlanta class were doing the weekend out of town with me. We decided to create a community of people committed to pursuing our dreams and supporting each other in pursuing their dreams. We aren’t sure exactly what that’s going to look like yet, but ideas in play right now are:
I’ll link to the blog and post more about it when it launches later this week.
I’m especially excited because for the last 2 years, Jill and I have created "next year" around this time of year, and both times, the results have been amazing.
We created 2004 as the year of Unprecedented Results. In that time, Jill had her professional theater debut, started her flexible-theater-supporting-day-job, and I got a big promotion at the old job and then recruited for the new job here in Atlanta. Our household income increased by approximately 50%!
Then we created 2005 as the year that was All About The Boolings. (Our family word for children.) Obviously, that worked extremely well, although technically we won’t get the result we created until early 2006. (Or so we hope!) Plus tons of the people in our lives also either had babies or got pregnant this year, so we’re sharing the wealth. We found out about another couple of friends being pregnant this weekend!!! (They aren’t telling people yet, so I can’t identify them.)
I’m not sure what we’re going to create for 2006. But I think it will be cool and fun and even more powerful to create it with a whole group of people.
Fruit & Veg Count, 11/14: ~1, maybe 1 1/4 cup carrots.
Back from the doctors!
Lil Smudge is fine. Flourishing, in fact.
They plugged me into a fetal monitor to record his heartbeat, movement, and any contractions, for about 10 minutes. His heart does this "acceleration" thing that it should be able to do by 32 weeks, which is an indicator that he’ll be able to handle the stress of being born. Now is about the earliest most babies can do that, and they wouldn’t have been worried if he wasn’t doing it. But that he CAN and IS, is a very, very good sign.
And he’s moving around and kicking appropriately. Even if I don’t feel it the same way I did.
Still, I’m done with any vigorous dancing. Maybe some nice, slow romantic dancing while we’re on vacation next week, but that’s it.
I was in class most of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and mostly, it was fabulous.
But I overdid it, and I’m getting worried.
On Saturday night, we had a talent/no talent show. I entered, with my friend Dave. Here’s a picture of us singing "The Last Duet" (Barry Manilow/Lily Tomlin).
There’s also a video clip, including the moment when I overdid it. You’ll know.
Immediately after that, Lil Smudge was totally agitated, moving around like he’s never moved before, for about 15 minutes. Then he quieted down. He’s been extra quiet — although still moving some — since then. Also, my lower back hurts.
I’m going to see if I can get in to see the doctor today.
Fruit & Veg Count, 11/13: ~1.5 cups fresh raspberries, 1 banana, handful edemame.
The last couple of days have been action-packed and fun filled, including the potential start of more new adventures that I’m not yet at liberty to blog upon. Nothing bad, nothing to do with Lil Smudge, and possibly nothing more than some intrigue and distraction to keep life interesting. As always here in Casa Booskis, when it rains, it pours.
Today I have the gestational diabetes test. YUCK. They gave me a foul looking bottle of orange drink that I have to consume EXACTLY 30 minutes before being tested. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. I’m not a fan of sickly sweet drinks in the first place, and these tests are conducted in my least favorite possible way.
I also have to get ready to travel again this weekend, for the 5th and final weekend of my Wisdom Course. It should be a lot of fun, and I expect to see some additional old friends. But I’m feeling very nesty and homebody-ish, and I just don’t WANNA be apart from Jill for a long weekend. But the weekend the class is in Atlanta includes a day when I have to be in California for the Anti-Spyware Coalition. And I *really* want to be there to do the going-on-maternity-leave handoff of that work as it should be done. Which includes introducing Ben and Scott to the other participants in person, so they know they key players at the DC Public Workshop in February.
At least my homework is done, and all that remains is printing out of some of it.
Yesterday was a good day for fruit and veg, although nothing like the amazing Tuesday. Full Count: 1 apple, lots of lettuce and mushrooms on a sandwich.
We had the most amazing dinner yesterday, at the home of our friends Harry & Jacquie and their baby Max.
It was a combination of the best culinary memories of my childhood, and really healthy, vegetarian cooking: salad, home-made squash ravioli, red cabbage with cranberries, and blackberry cobbler. Plus I had an apple as part of breakfast.
Max is an extremely serious baby, roughly 2 weeks older than Levi. He did smile, especially at Jill. But mostly, he just watches everything, with a faintly quizzical expression on his face. He seems to find their cat especially facinating. After we’d been there close to an hour, he relaxed a little bit and began "talking" with us while munching on his toy. Actually, Max reminded us a lot of his Mom, who is also charming, but takes a little while before she seems to be having fun.
I loved watching Jill with Max. Especially while he was in his bouncy chair — she seemed to be having a wonderful time playing with him.
