Alexander Jake Hansen

Born Monday, December 5 at 3:56pm
9lbs, 9oz
21 1/2 inches long

After birth he spent many hours awake and looking intently at everyone. When he does that he has the same little frown-y face his mother had when she was a baby. (It's so funny to see! He looked at me like that right when he came out and they handed him to me!)

His favorite music is the John Rutter Christmas album. He calms right down when he hears it, no matter what is wrong. I'm thrilled for him to hear and enjoy so many well-crafted suspensions so early in life!

Everyone is doing well and the birth story will follow eventually. (after the nursing story gets worked out!)

a date on the calendar

Today is my due date! :)

I never realized how silly I thought it was for a doctor to pick a due date until last Wednesday, when my doctor told me that we'd be doing a sonogram at my next appointment to check fluids and the baby's safety, since it will then be past my due date. If you're going to check on my baby, why not do it this week, today, while I'm here? It just seems so primitive to be so bound to a date on the calendar like that, especially when you're a highly trained, experienced doctor with astounding research and technology in your brain and at your fingertips. And you're hung up on a calendar date?

With all the knowledge available in modern medicine, it amazes me that they still actually assign specific days as due dates to expectant mothers, since one thing they do know is that they can't accurately predict when labor will start for anybody! Maybe they assign dates because it makes it easier to pigeon-hole you into a category of some kind. As far as I'm concerned, my "due date" is between the middle of November and the middle of December, and that's all anyone really knows.

So then, since about the week before Thanksgiving, I've been trying to stay ready, with a clean house and bags (sort of) packed and all that. The Christmas tree is up, the baby's room is all finished, the cloth diapers are all set up and ready, my mind is all peaceful about labor now and, the biggest relief of all, as of yesterday George is so clean that I don't have to follow her from room to room with a strongly scented candle anymore to cover up her smell.

I finally chose the baby's going home outfit, which was kind of hard for me. I was glad it was hard, it sort of assured me that I'm still me, even just shy of 200 pounds now, not wearing anything but sweats (me?!) and going through ten different personalities a day. Here's his outfit:


I am totally obsessed with the pears!! It's from a Japanese company called Sckoon Organics.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is a boring post or not. Too many words, not enough pictures, probably. Here is quick cell phone picture of our Christmas tree from where I sit. (No, I'm not moving to get a better angle, you'll just have to know that I have moccasins and a TV. And that it's all wonderful and GRAY outside today!!!)

That's all for today! My brother is coming over to do yoga with me and hang out, and then tomorrow I'm getting a pedicure at a fancy pink place with some of my sisters. Have a great weekend!

A tale of two rooms

I wish I had taken more before pictures, but you all know what junk and boxes look like. Yesterday I started out with two very junky, box-filled rooms and ended with two functional rooms instead. (Actually, I also started the day with a gross kitchen, (full of flies to boot, thanks to the heater fixer leaving the door open so much) and ended with it perfectly scrubbed and mopped for the first time in ages. And don't even ask me about the dog hair I swept up! But this isn't about that...)

I think this is the beginning of my being able to relax. I suddenly realized that if I've been tense and stressed the whole time leading up to labor, how will I suddenly be able to turn that off and have a relatively non-stressed labor? Sounds like a miracle anyway, but since I'm going to try for it, I realized that all this tension about projects is going to make it impossible! So, yeah... Relaxing, even with a few chores left, is starting NOW.

It's not quite finished, but here are some shots of the baby's room at this point.
The crib is mostly full of birthing class books and clothes that need to be washed and sorted, and I decided to leave the stack of suitcases since I needed a little table to have by the chair while I'm nursing.

Still waiting on one last piece of furniture for the corner over here,
but right now as I type, that piece of furniture looks like this:
Oh, and those things above the changing table are these sort of airy balloons made out of starched yarn. A friend from college threw me a baby shower and she made like 50 of them as decorations! I love them! Here's a better look:

You're not surprised that my baby's room has a piano in it, are you? The wall over it is going to be covered with the letters of the alphabet, all decorated differently by each of my Dallas shower guests! I like my big stack of music next to the toy shelf. Of course, that probably wont last there once he is old enough to be interested in it!

And on the toy shelf there is a special little toy that Aunt Amy brought back from Spain. It's a real carousel that spins and everything!


Wish the picture were better quality, but you get the idea. It's really beautiful and so old-fashioned!

I really like the dresser top, with the tiny little plant. (it's real!)

And finally, the office. Still not very pretty, but you could barely walk in there before yesterday and there was no bookshelf, just books all over the floor!

At long last I have a little sewing and craft corner in the office, which means, aside from work space, I have an actual place to put my sewing and craft STUFF!

Everything you see on those shelves was holding up the baby's room from looking neat and tidy.

So yeah, that's what I did with the extra hour yesterday. Thanks for listening!!

Where did I ever get the energy?

"To give truth to him who loves it not is only to give him more multiplied reasons for misinterpretation." ~George McDonald

It's such a relief to just stop talking when you realize the person you're talking to isn't interested in the truth about anything.

I was afraid that if I stopped making the effort to share, I would change and become completely superficial. Being superficial scares me to death. I thought that sharing truth and myself was all that kept me from becoming that way. But it turns out I'm still the same. Nothing at all has changed. Only now I am free to stop caring what they think, and to stop talking.

it's October!

We have about 7 weeks until the due date! There are still so many projects to be done, not to mention practicing, and all the family commitments we've stocked up to do "before the baby comes," that sometimes I just lie in bed all day, completely exhausted and overwhelmed. Some days I have all the energy in the world, but most days I can only eat and sleep and rest while dishes pile up and fluffs of dog hair waft around the house and the list gets longer.

But, October is the best month ever, I love it so much. I almost like it better than Christmas! My projects may not be happening, but this weekend we went to a pumpkin patch and took pictures together. Those are still on the camera (surely you weren't expecting to see them!) but here are some cell phone pics of the lovely pumpkins we got! Picking them out with my Love made me so happy!!

This one seemed magical:

Here are the others--I couldn't believe we got a white one! In person it is such a delicate, glowing white that it seems like it's made of moonlight.

Settled in their new home:

Speaking of the front porch, I got the most wonderful rag rug to go right inside the front door.

It looks and feels as if it's been made out of old t-shirts, and the colors are just what the living room needed. I thought Steve might not like it, but he did!

Here are my pumpkins riding home in my lap from the pumpkin patch. It seemed like my tummy was one of them.

Happy October!!

Clock

Feeling under the weather this week, I decided to stay in bed today, and while I did, I listened to Sense and Sensibility on librivox.org (version 3 has an un-annoying reader!)and finished a clock I had started working on years ago. It was a normal old one that I bought at walmart when I was 15 or something; it was similar to this one:

I painted the hands with gold metallic paint, covered the face with magazine pictures, (that's the part that took years, because I only choose pictures that I'm really in love with!) and brushed Mod-Podge on top. I so love Mod-Podge because of the cute label on the jar:


My phone's really bad at close-ups, but for now, here's what it looks like now:











I hung it in the kitchen and I'm pretty happy with it. I really love it, actually. Hopefully I'll keep posting pictures of the projects I work on.

Under the Influence

Yesterday I had some great finds at Treasure City Thrift. I'll tell you all about what I got, but this post is about something else: one of my treasures was a $4 pair of jeans made by a brand exclusively (as they say) for Barneys. They're beautiful, amazing jeans and they fit me just about like all my other non-maternity pants fit me: close-enough/I-don't-wanna-think-about-it. They're my usual size though, so it'll probably work out. But buying something with Barneys New York in the tag made me suddenly aware that I have a bit of a history with that store, or at least a funny, one-sided relationship.

All stores want you to feel a certain way when you walk though them. Stores like Urban Outfitters and Free People set a cool, rebellious, youthful mood. Anthropologie is young but more nostalgic. Places like Dillards and Steinmart try to make you feel sufficiently rich and lovely at the same time as practical and like you're going to get a good deal. Then there are stores like Nordstrom, Saks, and Neimans that go for rich, pampered and able to afford it. (whether you really can or not doesn't matter.)

Some of the higher-end stores tend to make me feel inadequate (at least money-wise) or fat, or like maybe I shouldn't have worn what I'm wearing, or just plain sad that I can't afford anything in them. They make me feel wishful about life, but in an "I'll-never-be-that-skinny-and-rich" way, not in a fun way. Not all stores do that to me, and I'm sure I shouldn't give any of them that power, but succumbing to marketing strategies is something of a twisted hobby I have. It's fun. But Barneys is a little different.

Don't get me wrong, they're still that kind of store. In Dallas at the mall, I used to walk through Barneys all the time on my way to less astronomically expensive places, and not a single salesperson ever even spoke to me! Of course, that's Dallas anyway, but in the equally snobby Neimans or Saks, even on a bad hair and clothing day somebody will talk to me.

When I walk through Barney's though, I suddenly realize that I am feeling the way all the other fancy department stores are attempting to make me feel when I walk through them. But the others don't quite do it. Maybe it's the chic, modern yet over-the-top chandeliers in Barneys, although other stores have those. Maybe it's the fact that Barneys is a smaller store, where I am physically closer to the merchandise- to the feel and color of the fabrics and the smell of the leather and perfumes. Maybe it's the fact that there is a lavish, sweeping staircase instead of an escalator, or that they have a much smaller beauty department because they're more selective about the brands. There are wonderful lounge corners with interesting chaise lounges and love seats. The over-sized velvet chairs at the bottom of the staircase always haunt me, attached somehow like Siamese twins, and remind me of some daring, haute couture Alice in Wonderland.

The whole store strikes the perfect balance between being seriously, snobbishly rich and letting you almost forget that you're not. It makes me wishful about life in the most fun, inspiring way possible. In Barneys I remember what I routinely forget in other high-end stores: that good taste and an imagination matter a lot more than having and spending lots of money. So in a way, I already have what they sell. Not so much that I don't enjoy dreaming of $80 eye shadow or an extra $1300.00 to buy that lovely-smelling leather train case. But I am inspired, excited, content to smell the leather, touch the silk and go home with new ideas, thrilled to have seen so many beautiful and luxurious things all together in one place.