Well wasn't that a party...

Kris and I had a party last night. We invited the junior faculty in sociology, anthropology and history and their significant others over to our house to celebrate (?) the beginning on the semester. We had 22 people here, which is the most we've had in our house before. It was a lot of fun. It's a good group of folks. We're really lucky to have found such a great group of friends here.


It turned into a beautiful evening, so many of us moved outdoors. Some of us sat on the front stoop to watch the sunset.


And some played bocce ball. Apparently this was "Extreme Bocce" with "Canadian rules." I'm not really sure what that means other than we have a big yard, so they could really hurl the ball. I will note that one did get lost in the soy bean field at one point.


It was apparently a pretty serious game as Kris had to go get the flashlight in the end so that they could finish up. I guess we need to install flood lights for next time.

Another belly shot

Mom requested a belly shot where you could actually see my face, so here's another one. I look a bit like a doufus in this one, but ah well. I guess I prefer the ones where you can't really see my face!


Yes, it's about 6:00 am on a Sunday. I've been awake since 4:00. Arg. I can't sleep.

belly pic

Okay, okay, I've had several requests now for a belly pic, so here you go. This isn't a very good one as I had to take it myself. I never remember to ask Kris to take a pic when I actually look half-way presentable. So this will just have to do until I remember! This can also count as my "first day of school" pic for this year. :) (pic taken at 24 weeks and 6 days)

Apparently I really do look pregnant now and not just like I ate too much pie as I was standing in the hallway at work yesterday chatting with a friend and one of my colleagues I hadn't seen all summer walked by and screamed "Oh My God!" and got super excited and wanted to talk babies.

Baby Gear

We got our carseat today! We actually bought it a few weeks ago, but it was out of stock so we had to wait for it to come in. Kris's colleague picked it up for us at the Babies R' Us since the closest one is in Indy and he commutes from there. Isn't it groovy? Now we just have to see about getting it into both of our cars. Makes this whole baby thing seem a little more real to have a carseat!

I also discovered my new favorite store today: Once Upon A Child. I could spend a lot of money there. I just had to buy a few things, but I know people are likely to give us clothes for Jolly, so I tried to limit it. But I got these three super cute outfits all for $10!

They also have used maternity clothes, so I bought a few fall-type shirts for teaching for cheap.

Hummingbirds

We had six hummingbirds vying for our hummingbird feeder this evening. They were actually not really fighting with each other either like they normally do, but there are only 3 feeding spots on the feeder, so 3 were always hovering. This is the best shot we got, which is not that great, and only has 3 of them in it. I think we'll need to put out another feeder next summer.

And on a lighter note...

This is what Kris is up to today.

Doesn't he look manly? Well, okay, you can't really see him, but trust me on this one. That's a plate compactor in the foreground. And what I didn't take a picture of, and probably should have, is the six pallates of pavers sitting off to the right. He has lots of work ahead of him.

Edited to add: I think Kris would like it noted that while it is manly to drive heavy machinery, he only got to use the tractor for the third load of gravel. The first two loads of gravel, totaling roughly 11 tons, he moved using a shovel. That's manly.

Blood Pressure

Well, I had my 24 week OB appointment yesterday. I had a stressful drive down to the office because of road construction, slow drivers and forgetting I was almost out of gas. So I was almost late to the appointment, and we all know how much I hate being late. So I was a little stressed when I got there. But Peter was running a little behind, so I had time to sit and calm down for about 10 minutes before we saw him.

But even so, my blood pressure was really high. It was something like 150/90, which is not good. I’ve had problems the whole pregnancy with high blood pressure, but it had seemed to be holding at about 140/80, which is high, but not so high as to worry too much. But because it was so high yesterday we had to have the pre-eclampsia talk. That wasn’t fun. That’s some pretty scary stuff, and the only treatment is to deliver the baby. Peter doesn’t think I have it yet, but I can tell he’s concerned I’ll develop it. And this baby is definitely not ready to come out yet. So he wants me to come in once a week to have a nurse check my blood pressure between now and my next appointment with him in 4 weeks. It’s no big deal to do that, but it definitely means he’s concerned, which makes me concerned. He had a nurse take my blood pressure again at the end of the appointment and it was 140/88. So it had come down some, but was still high.

So because Kris and I were worried, we decided to just go buy a blood pressure cuff last evening. Mom was going to bring me hers to borrow when she comes in September. But since Kris and I were both a little freaked out about the possibility of pre-eclampsia, we decided for peace of mind to just buy one. (Man, there’s a huge range in how much you can spend on a blood pressure cuff – or sphygmomanometer – at Walgreens, anywhere from $17 to $100+. We went with the $40 one.) So when I got home I took my blood pressure and it was 126/72. Much better! And Kris took his, and it was right around there too, and he’s never had high blood pressure issues. I’ve taken it twice so far today and I’m right in that range today too. So hopefully I really do just have “white coat hypertension.”

I think when I go in this week to have them check my blood pressure I’ll take this cuff with me to see if it reads roughly the same as theirs, so we’ll have some idea of how accurate it is.