Love is, is what i got

Snorkus,

You get to go to ACL tomorrow! We are riding our bikes; I promise to be careful. Went a little wild today at the Target. Your dad bought me Spore which I am about to install into this here computer. I get to create little tiny lives and raise them, such valuable practice. Although these are prokaryotic organisms. But still. We also got a puzzle of an ivy-laced building in Limerick, Ireland. We figured our huge kitchen island would be wasted without a puzzle. Oh and some stuff for you, because I am a huge holiday nerd, particularly Halloween and Christmas.


OK yes you are a year away from using this but how can you resist "I Love Mummy" with a mummy that cute!!!


This is a sparkly zombie dish scrubber (only .99!) but we might use it as decoration because it's so cute.

Don't take my kodachrome away

Me, Miette, and McAloon hand



Now I know what that pesky raccoon was capable of...entrepreneurship!


Odd mural on bathroom door at La Zona Rose- carrier budgie?


Onion wearing the glow-in-da-dark star necklace and whiskers


And Sprout...

Moving on up, to the East Side

Snorkler,

I don't think I have mentioned yet but I totally scored my dream job with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department! I rocked the interview and will be starting on Monday, part-time. This is the reason I decided to go to graduate school in the first place---to get my foot in the door with TPWD! I hope you enjoy thinking of advertising campaigns about saving all the aminals and trees:) Shout out to Lydia, without whom this would not have been possible. Love ya girl!

XOXO,

Mama

You and Me Against the World

Noodle,

I am just dropping in to let you know that I love you more than anything in the world and I will keep you warm and safe as the most loved being on this planet. No one will come ahead of you, not even myself. It's all you baby. Like waves on the ocean my love keeps a crashin'. Do you like the ocean? Is that what it sounds like for you deep in the belly?

Mama

Ellen's Immaculate Miette!

Courtesy of Auntie Ell:

Your mind is racing like a pro now

Darling,

Your dad and I are reading a book called "Behind the Attic Wall" and the main character, Maggie, is a precocious, insightful, spunky, angry young orphan who is hardened by her lot in life but exists carved into a singular existence within the beauty of her imagination and accepted, fierce alienation.

In one of the earlier chapters, her great aunts who take her in decide that she is in need of a respectable friends. "I don't want a friend," she says, immediately withdrawing and defensive due to her experience with past "friends." They go on to describe the girl, Jeanette, who aspires to be a singer and they liken to a lark. Jeanette comes over and flaunts her superior upbringing and accomplishments while Maggie flips idly through a National Geographic magazine, which features mainly birds. When Jeanette gets so frustrated at Maggie's lack of sychophantic behavior and obvious apathy, she attacks her and says she know that Maggie has been kicked from home to home and no one wants her and that she knows her parents were killed in a car accident. The next paragraph continues:

"Maggie flipped the pags of the magazine quickly and stopped suddenly at a glossy study of a brown-and-gray bird. It had speckles on its creamy breast, and it resembled a sparrow more than anything else, but in flight it took command of the entire page, and the trees in the distance were small and vague beneath the spread of its wings. It was a lark, the caption said, an Old World Lark, and she could see by its open beak that it was in full song. In a moment she had ripped the page in half and then in half again, so that she had four fluttering strips of broken wings and fragmented feathers. These she crushed into a solid ball, and walking, almost marching- step-stop, step-stop, across the room, she reached Jeanette's frozen figure and in quick movement pressed the crumpled bird hard against her mouth. A soft cry rose, like the cry of the rubber doll when Maggie had pressed its face in the day before, and Jeanette's face flamed."

Obviously I don't wish orphaned or cynical or violent qualities on you, but the other parts resonate so deeply as part of who I am and also instinctually what I feel you might be as a part of me. I could be completely wrong but I think there is a reason we are reading this book right now and that I am absorbing it like it was the most nourishing sustenance for me and you. After all, I read on pregnancy360.com that the soul is developed in week 7. :) Wouldn't it be great if that was identifiable?

This book and the song from which I took the title of this posting both match this intrinsic feeling, don't really know why other than that they both remind me of the aforementioned qualities mixed with the stillness of antiquation and the poignancy of something utterly fundamental:

The National- Racing Like A Pro
You’re pink you’re young you’re middle-class
they say it doesn’t matter
fifteen blue shirts and womanly hands
you’re shooting up the ladder

Your mind is racing like a pro, now
oh my god it doesn’t mean a lot to you
one time you were a glowing young ruffian
oh my god it was a million years ago

Sometimes you get up and bake a cake or something
sometimes you stay in bed
sometimes you go la di da di da di da da
til your eyes roll back into your head

Your mind is racing like a pro, now
oh my god it doesn’t mean a lot to you
one time you were a glowing young ruffian
oh my god it was a million years ago

you’re dumbstruck baby
you’re dumbstruck baby now you know
you’re dumbstruck baby
you’re dumbstruck baby now you know

Your mind is racing like a pro, now
oh my god it doesn’t mean a lot to you
one time you were a glowing young ruffian
oh my god it was a million years ago

you’re dumbstruck baby
you’re dumbstruck baby now you know
you’re dumbstruck baby
you’re dumbstruck baby now you know
you’re dumbstruck baby

It's always best when the light is out

Snood,

We hope you enjoyed your first play today! My favorite part was the dancing popcorn man that sang about the discomforts of having butter and oil in "your popcorn hair." Hehe. I also hope that you enjoyed your first fondue experience as much as I did.

Came home and got some wonderful footage of Sprout sprouting as only a sprout can:

Bullet with butterfly wings ( i am going to try to just use song titles to name these postings b/c otherwise it's too cheesearific)

Snork,

Daddy and I saw your today and you are so much bigger and you look like a curled up butterfly with fast beating wings for a heartbeat. You are perfect and here you are:



Your father tried to stuff this printout into his shirt pocket and get away with it! He wanted to keep it because I got the last one and he wants picture of you. I understood and found it nice, but I shut his ass down anyway. Daddy also got teary at the indignity of my being on the exam table with my little napkin to cover my unmentionables. It was sweet. He is bringing home steak calzone as we speak. Sweeeeeeet.

Did you enjoy your first concert last night? Chris ran man many yellow lights on the way there, bad:


Haha sorry for that loud raucous of German metal music fronted by nymph-like blonde woman. But it was a better alternative to being trapped here while the apartment complex threw a huge hipster party ripe with horrible techno and miniskirts. Everyone as the concert was really friendly and talking the strangers around them about all the metal concerts they had seen. Chris described it like being at church: a lot of people gathered in unity to celebrate something he doesn't quite get. Yes, you're a heathen. But I am hoping to find god before your arrival! :)


Nightwish

Calzone. I hope you enjoy!

Mama

Hummus

Spork,

I hear crunching sounds coming from the kitchen as your dad eats hummus on tortilla chips. Had extended conversation with Uncle Ethan about why there were 11 votes but 13 choices. We discovered a person can choose more than one option when voting. Don't know why a person would do that but hum (to borrow an Auntie Ellen phrase).

I tried to make Miette on a leaf:



But I couldn't edit out her couch with PowerPoint. What a shock.

Internship going well but please give me a break from the stomach heebie jeebies in the mornings. It's unbearable.

We see you tomorrow. Looking for that rabbit-quick heartbeat. Until then...

Mama McAloon

Rents

Snork,

So your Grandma and Grandpa McAloon have been alerted to the miracle of your existence and are just as excited as we are to welcome you into our hearts! Between Chris and I, you are going to be spoiled rotten with love from our families. As long as no one calls you "Princess" (if you are a girl but especially if you are a boy, I suppose), then it should be smooth sailing. I start my internship tomorrow! Excited but also been feeling super exhausted. Daddy and I went to the botanical gardens today and after 10 minutes I had to leave because I felt like I was going to puke all over the varietals. I did not puke, but this could be signs of turbulent seas ahead. Here are some pictures of the gardens for your viewing pleasure (your dad is going to superimpose a picture of Miette on the large leaf at some point soon):

Snork

So I added a little preggo ticker to my blog and your dad came over and said it looked odd and that you looked like a Snork. It might be my favorite name for you yet.

Confetti Surprises

Noodle,

Daddy and I met with a Ms. Lydia and her boyfriend Stu today for dinner. She is the executive director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife---a state organization I have been trying to get my foot in the door at since I moved to your motherland. I didn't know what to expect because she was doing me a huge favor meeting up with me. Words can't describe how wonderful the experience was. Her and Stu were the most positive, encouraging, content, excited, happy, non-cynical people I have met in a very long time. Not only did they dispense wonderful advice, talk to me about available (paid) internships, and generally provide lots of laughs, but they PAID for dinner! Incredible. It was so refreshing to meet such kind strangers and be brought to them by good fortune. Chris and I hope we have met not only a possible future employer for me, but also good friends.

We went swimming when we got home. Daddy carried me in pool from end to end and we both simultaneously thought that the slow steps that resonated from his walk were like a giant in a desert.

Love you.

Making wind

Baby,

Short post. Went to cardiologist for palpitations thus wearing atrocious Tron-like heart monitor for 24 hours. Been instructed to not bathe. Upsetting.

Watched baby movie with father on couch. Tams came to visit and we discussed politics (most specifically our disgust at said topic.) Miette has developed new OCD related to balconies that translates to hugging wall when walking. We captured Sprout as mystical X-Men wizard:

Zedding (discovered this word in book today to describe sleeping, i am thinking it is like catching Zs but for non-american English speakers?)

Beany McGee,

Ok so I have more than one name for you, whatevs. Oh I got a wonderful internship! I will update you via illustrative text as to my other happenings in the last few days...

The house is shaping itself nicely (thanks to the blur):








Still been tackling the 30000 stairs from parking lot to classroom, despite vertigo:



I've felt grouchy



And tired


and hungry


But hopeful that tiddly-winks will do some good


Belly wishes, mama

The blob and the move

Noodle!

I am quite delayed on this posting! Your father and I spent all weekend moving into our lovely new apartment. It is brand new and everything smells all clean and the carpet is squeaky under your toes and the tub is so huge it makes you feel guilty to lounge in it and use up all that water. Somehow your mother, the mermaid, manages to assuage her guilt.

So....here you are:



You are the dark matter jellybean-like blob in the middle there. I won't even go into how they attained that picture, but just know that despite the indecency of it that it was well worth it. So you are in the correct spot, with the correct number of cells, and the correct amount of blob-dom. You are perfect already. Auntie Tammany saw you too!

I've been feeling super zapped of life force in the last few days. Apparently it is next to impossible to digest and grow you at the same time, because I turn into a fevered ball of non-functioning gelatinous goo after a meal. All in all I can't really complain. If this is the worst it gets I will get off easy.

My fortune cookie today said that it is likely that I will soon have a romantic encounter. I think this was a sign that your father shouldn't be so hard-working as to be at the office on Sundays and instead should come home and eat ice cream with me on the couch. That would be tres romantic. But such is a one-earner family in a two-earner world. Instead I find myself looking up TLC birth stories on YouTube. Yeah, um scary.

The cats finally were added to the new house today. Onion has been hiding all day and Sprout has been super loving. Pretty much what I expected. I have some video footage of them if you are interested. I will also add some pictures of our new abode once it is properly assembled and sans boxes. Love you, peabody.

Sob Walter

Noodle,

Walter, the amazing Beta Fish, passed onto his watery heaven today. Walter was the most magnificent fish ever to grace the rice patties. He lived for a year, surviving having been knocked from his bowl by the cats and made to lay in direct sunlight for hours before we found him. His brother, Lin, was also knocked down but did not survive. His beautiful fan-like tail became ragged after the altercation but he persevered for another six months. We are sorry you will not get to go bug-eyed over him, but one fish still remains, Mr. Burns. Hopefully he will make it long enough to meet you.

Today while satisfying a knee-jerk impulse for cheese steak I met the cutest little boy! I was waiting for my food and there was a family with a little boy in highchair. He kept looking at me and saying "mommy mommy mommy!" and giving me this huge drooling smile. I wasn't interacting with him much other than the occasional smile and when his dad put him on the seat next to him he turned around and continued to smile and giggle at me. His mom and dad kept looking back at me flabbergasted at their son's fixation. He was so adorable....maybe he could sense you were growing in my tummy? Maybe I am to have a little boy after all?

Can't wait to see you tomorrow, lovely.

Bumps in da road?

Hi Noodle,

I don't know why you are giving me scares! Or maybe it isn't you and it's all me. Regardless of fault, yesterday I was having intermittent sharp pains in my left side that gradually abated and then switched to the right. I called the doctor, positive it was my tubules rupturing and she didn't seem to think it was necessary to rush into the emergency but good idea to come in tomorrow for ultrasound. So, if everything is in its right place, I will for sure see you tomorrow. You will look like a little blob and I won't be able to tell much of anything, but the good doctor can assure me that indeed you are doing just fine. Which in my heart of hearts I do feel is the case.

Sorry for making you watch the GOP convention yesterday. Your daddy and I needed a laugh after all the stress we went through yesterday. It did the trick! I hoped you enjoyed your first dip in the pool! You'll come to realize that rather silly things like "catching leaves between your toes" and "touring the waterfalls around the pool" are all status quo with your parents. The night was inky clear and the stars shined on our face as we played in the water. We talked about the future and of you, of course. We fell to sleep easily, side by side.

Sleepie

Noodle,

That was such a lovely card that you sent to Daddy today! He is looking forward to meeting you too. :) The doctor called and said that my blood levels were looking great and you are doing fantastically. The levels are a bit higher than normal, which indicates you are a Maya, but they are not so high that you could rule out a Rowan. I still have the feeling that you are a girl, although sometimes I find myself speaking of you as a "he." I get to see you in less than two weeks and might be able to see a heartbeat! One step at a time.

I told my professor today about your existence. I wanted to warn her in case I'm sick and can't come to class or run out of class retching or the like. It was awkward (I think she thinks I am about 23) but ah well. I am feeling tired today (nearly passed out in the aisles of Target) so this is going to be a short entry. I love you, dearest.

Labor of Love

Noodle,

I took the weekend off from writing to you so I hope you aren't upset. Your father and I had a fun weekend. One of the highlights was on Saturday. We went to a company party (his coworkers are fantastic) and got to see all the kids running about and playing in the pool and the like. It made me miss you even though we have never met. You might as well know that your Mommy (and therefore you are) is Irish and likes to indulge in whiskey now and again at soirees such as the one on Saturday. However, we innocently fed the dogs strawberries and apples in awe of their vegetarianism, whilst sipping Vitamin Water and plain ole water. It was a great time. The house was not too far from us or the city proper, yet was on acres of beautiful land. We leaned on the perimeter of the fence and watched herds of deers and a few cows. We swiftly side-stepped the numerous deer droppings and turd piles. A few people at the party knew of your existence but were sworn to secrecy. Kevin, one of Chris's friends and co-workers, told me that he just knew something was up because Chris had been walking around "with a shit-eating grin on his face all week." That made me smile like rainbow from side to side. After the party we went to Babies R Us and we bought two outfits for you: one a bear-like pajamas with paws and ears on a hoodie, and the other a green feetie onesie with two frogs and the inscription "Mommy and Me." Your father picked out the latter and I the former.

Yesterday we went to Bailey Banks and Biddle and looked at assorted engagement rings! I have a very good idea of what I want, something with rose-gold with the center diamond haloed. But they didn't have anything like it pre-made so your father is determined to set out on his own to make the creation with a jeweler. This makes it even more special. I had two hormone attacks yesterday. One involved my hearing a BlueBell ice cream commercial on the radio in which a country singer croons about the simple days on the farm and how Blue Bell Ice Cream brings him back to those days. Yah...

Today I have been reading a bunch of poems, particulary those of Galway Kinnell. I discovered GK around the same time that your father and I met and we bonded over the loveliness of the poems which depict the beauty of everyday reality. One of Chris's earliest gifts to me was a book of his poetry. We both really love his poems about cherishing the moments in a family's life, even if some are too risque for little eyes and ears!

Here are some pictures of the rain I promised ya the other day. It has kinda a nifty blurry-through-the-window effect. The sky after a heavy storm always reminds me of eyes after a good cry.









Video of freaky Sprout defending his toy from Onion and me! As you can see the house is a wreck from moving and I love my bottled water.