Congratulations, Kristen DPT!

Kristen visited last weekend in celebration of her upcoming graduation from Northwestern (I am travel restricted and cannot attend the graduation, so we had a little pre-graduation party instead). I am so proud of her, and excited to see which of the "real world" jobs that she is interviewing for will turn into her first physical therapy position.

No celebration is complete without a giant cupcake! We felt it was best to take a picture of this while it still looked like a cupcake (after this photo was taken, we continued to coat it with sugary icing and it began to look more like an igloo).

I got Kristen a pinata for her graduation present. After my own ups and downs at Penn, I believe that the piece of paper that confirms the end of all the frustrating things that come along with graduate school (otherwise known as the diploma) isn't necessarily the answer for achieving maximal closure and satisfaction as a new graduate. Instead, the pieces of paper that really matter are all of the little pieces of paper on the ground...after the destruction of a symbolic paper donkey. Everyone's donkey represents a different challenge they overcame in order to graduate - for some people it is dealing with difficult people, for others it might be a difficult class or experiment - in Kristen's case, her donkey was named Lois.

Kristen looks quite ready for her battle with the pinata.

It turns out that pinatas bought at Target do not go down without a fight, which is fitting, because I don't think the real Lois would ever go down without a fight. The head of the pinata severed quite quickly, but it took several rounds of bat swinging for the entire thing to erupt.

Success! Congratulations, Dr. Kristen! (Keep a patient slot open for me at the end of the summer - I think my lower back might need some physical therapy by then...)

Little bits of news and spring

The weather is changing rapidly from one day to the next (it was 84 and sunny on Monday but today's high is 20 degrees colder than that, for example), and that seems to fit the state of our lives lately. My bump is growing at a crazy pace that can only mean these two little boys of ours are going to make an appearance a lot sooner than three months away feels like!

We have begun to prepare for our nursery. Thanks to all of our very generous friends and family that attended our baby shower over Easter weekend, we finally have many items to put in our nursery! We have also moved our furniture around so that the room is ready for cribs and a dresser (and Pooh decorations!) that we will pick out on Monday after my 24 week check-up in Syracuse. I will post pictures when it is all put together. As my body keeps changing, I am beginning to feel incredibly anxious and unprepared for my impending motherhood status; I am hoping that putting together the nursery will provide the organization/preparation I usually require (as a type A person) to feel ready for change.

David is also preparing for another year of farming at The Danger Zone. My role this year will be limited to documenting our garden's progress and eating all of the yummy vegetables that David grows (not a bad role to have), but I am very excited for another year "on the farm." David is still finalizing his master list of vegetables that we will grow, but I anticipate that this list will include lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, and peppers. Please feel free to comment on this post if you feel strongly about us growing pumpkins this year. David is not so convinced we should take the space since Linus and Lucy were so small last year...but I am convinced that growing more pumpkins is always great idea. Though lately I have been able to outnumber David in disagreements by simply reminding him that technically I count for 3 votes and he only counts for 1, I feel confident that other people outside of my womb also love pumpkins as much as I do (or at least, almost as much as I do), and so I leave this decision in the hands of the limited readership of this blog...

Halfway!

I am halfway through my pregnancy now, which is incredibly surprising. I think David would argue that the weeks are not going by fast enough, but I feel like time is just flying by! A few observations related to my experiences as a pregnant lady so far:

1. I am not sure how people survive being pregnant without naps. I am not taking naps, but I think if I could take naps every day, I would be a more functional person (particularly during the evening hours). Every day around 2:00 pm (right now), my energy begins to fade over time until it finally becomes time to go home for the day, and then I collapse onto the couch. I see other pregnant people walking around that look awake, and I want to stop and ask them what their secret is for staying so awake, but I don't...because...

2. Well-meaning people interpret my growing baby bump as an invitation to both share a lot of personal information with me as well as ask me very personal questions. (And just to be clear, I am not talking about people I know in any way, I am exclusively referring to strangers.) I do not always have the patience to carry on conversations with these people, particularly at times when I am very tired, but mostly I just find it very strange. People who hardly know me ask about my birth or breast-feeding plans like they would comment on the weather outside. And while I know that they mean no offense or imposition, I just can't for the life of me figure out why pregnancy seems to be the universal signal to ignore all personal boundaries. (Yes, woman on the elevator this morning and other woman in the Target checkout line a few weeks back, I am talking to both of you.) And so to all of my friends that have been pregnant before me, if I have ever asked you any questions that crossed this barrier, I sincerely apologize; if it is any consolation, I am sure I meant well too, even if I didn't know any better.

3. Speaking of my baby bump, it is now growing at what I would consider to be an exponential rate (and I am really hoping this translates into more weight gain when I visit the doctor's office next week). It took a while for me to show (even with twins), but now that I am showing, my reflection in the mirror is crazy weird. Because I cannot feel the twin's movements constantly yet, I sometimes go hours without thinking about the fact that I am pregnant...and then I look in the mirror and get a strange sort of wake-up call.

4. I always thought cravings were a myth, but THEY ARE REAL. And they are ever changing - in the beginning, I only wanted to eat buffalo chicken bites, but now all I can think about eating is Velveeta macaroni and cheese!

5. Not that I didn't appreciate how nice it was to be married to David, but I definitely appreciate this fact more than ever. While I am a puddle of pregnant lady on the couch, he keeps our apartment/clothes clean and brings me food. While I cannot pretend that being pregnant is easy for me, I think his job during all of this is more difficult.

Overall, pregnancy has not been nearly as terrible as I imagined, though I still cannot claim to be one of those people that loves being pregnant. But as selfish as that makes me feel sometimes, I already know that even if I don't always like carrying the Eggberts with me on the inside, I will never want to let go of them when they are finally in my outside universe! I can't wait to meet them!

This year's Lenten sacrifice

The Lenten season is back again, and it was very hard for me this year to determine what exactly to give up for Lent this year. In past years, I mostly stuck to giving up food or drink items - junk food, chocolate, or soda - but this year I am already missing some of the foods I cannot eat because I am pregnant, and so I decided that limiting myself even more would just drive me crazy. (And it's Girl Scout cookie season - can I really be expected to stop eating junk food when there are GIRL SCOUT COOKIES around??)

Instead, this year I have decided to give up all of the trashy celebrity webpages I use to distract myself from accomplishing real work. At 2:30 during an afternoon workday (particularly now that I am focused almost exclusively on writing my paper instead of doing benchwork), my mind slows down and thinking about science becomes harder to manage. I begin to browse the internet, and because the point is to not to think for awhile, I eventually shut my brain off completely and head to People.com or USWeekly.com (or sometimes, even TMZ.com), where suddenly whether or not Lindsay Lohan met her probation requirements becomes very, very interesting. My browsing of these celebrity webpages can last anywhere from 10 minutes on a slow tabloid news day to 30 - 40 minutes when "earth-shattering" news happens.

It's hard to regain my productivity after these mid-afternoon mind wanderings, and since the summer / maternity leave (seems like it) is fast approaching, I have decided to take these next 40 days to try to be less distracted at work. And so, so long celebrities...try not to make too many bad decisions while I am away.

(But don't worry, I can't possibly give up every distraction at work...you can still find me on Google chat, especially around 2:30ish?) :)

Meet the Eggberts!

Hello, friends. It has been a while since my last post. I'd say I was caught up in the chaos of the holidays and the new year and was too distracted to blog...or maybe it was because I just got back from a long trip to California to present my research and am still jet-lagged (and recovering from all of the stress that goes along with getting lots of work done before I left)...but truthfully, it has been a while since my last post because all I could think about posting was THIS:

Meet the Eggberts, 1 and 2! We are expecting twins in late July / early August!

Visiting Kristen in Seattle

Over a month ago now, I visited Kristen in Seattle. She has been completing her physical therapy rotation in Kent, WA this fall, and I thought it would be fun to visit her while she was there. We had a really great weekend.

Kristen had to work during the afternoon that I arrived, and so my first stop was to the original Starbucks. Or at least, what Starbucks is calling their original store. Kristen and I took a coffee tour of Seattle on the Saturday I was visiting, and we learned all kinds of secrets about that sneaky company. Secret 1 - the true original Starbucks store was a block down the street from the store pictured above, but that store burned down, so they rebuilt it at the location I visited. During the rebuild, another Starbucks had already opened up in downtown Seattle, making the place I visited the third Starbucks in existence and not the first. (Silly details ruin all good marketing schemes...) I happened to be in Seattle the first week of pumpkin spice latte season, so I shelled out the big bucks to get my latte from the flagship store. (It was delicious.)

Right down the street from the flagship Starbucks was Pike Place Market. I was very excited that they had bouquets of flowers for $5.

I also took a ferry boat ride to Bainbridge Island and back while I was waiting for Kristen. It was magical, even without McDreamy to keep me company! I could honestly ride that boat all day long.

Here is a view of Seattle at night from the ferry boat, taken with my limited camera.

We visited the EMP, which is a really cool museum (especially if you like Nirvana). They had a special exhibit on the music in horror films, which featured a scream booth. Naturally we had to take photos of us screaming. Above is the two of us together (which didn't turn out as well because we we did our individual photos first and were both laughing by this point).

Here is Kristen, who looks like a normal person screaming (or singing in the shower)...

...and here is the one of me. (I do not look so normal, but I love love LOVE this photo anyway.) Lesson learned - my "scream face" is more terrifying than anything that could possibly scare me...

On our coffee tour, this latte was on special at one of the cafes we visited...perfect for David!

Before I left on this trip, David told me that he "hoped I would see Mt. Rainer" while I was visiting WA. I did not understand what he meant; how could I miss a giant mountain?? It is the strangest thing how it can be completely hidden from view...and then...all of a sudden in plain sight. We saw the mountain as we were driving back from our coffee tour.

Kristen and I took Levi to a dog park and walked around there for quite some time. This was not your average dog park in the woods; the views were breathtaking.

Happy Levi, playing fetch.

Kristen and I went to a pumpkin beer festival the day I was leaving, and we wanted to make pumpkin t-shirts with puffy paint to wear for the occasion. (I am sure you can guess which shirt I made.) We had a lot of fun making these shirts, but neither of them dried in time for the event, so we did not get to wear them. We were forced to buy Halloween-themed clothing from Wal-Mart instead.

What a fantastic trip! I am looking forward to seeing Kristen back in Butler in December (in just a few weeks)!

The lull before the holiday rush...

The holidays are fast approaching, and this weekend is my last weekend in Ithaca before I begin a massive amount of traveling to see family and friends over the course of the 2011 holiday season! There is not much to report, but here are some random photos taken over the last month or so that do not require their own post, but are still fun.

My laboratory is in the middle of another CHESS cycle. We were given three weekend blocks of time throughout October and November to conduct our experiments, the last of which is a 24 hour time block this weekend from 12 noon on Saturday to 12 noon on Sunday. My CHESS data collection has been frustrating as of late (to put it mildly), and so I am hoping this weekend's trip will be more productive. On November 4, Karen and I worked a night shift at CHESS during one of the Crane weekends there, working from 10 pm until 9:30 am. To survive, we watched episodes of Gilmore Girls while we collected data (and during our 3 hour wait for broken equipment to be repaired), and to stay awake, she consumed a 5 Hour Energy drink and I drank this 2 L of Coke Cherry Zero out of a coffee mug. These were terrible choices - we may have been awake, but we made ourselves massively sick to our stomachs. While in undergraduate, I used to consume a 2L bottle of Coca Cola (not diet) EVERY DAY, 5 days a week...and I have no idea how I did this then, but I am not capable of it now! It will be awhile until I will want to consume cola-type beverages...

Our Sunday afternoons are spent watching NFL football. Here is a cute photo of David and Ipita while enjoying the Dolphins' first win last weekend (the Dolphins also won their game yesterday too).

I have been invited to give a talk at a conference in CA during January. I was excited about this opportunity for about an hour, and then I became completely stressed out about getting more work done between now and then. David and I saw this wine in the store a few weeks ago and thought the name was clever enough to justify purchasing a bottle (the label also suits me perfectly, because I take a bath almost every day to unwind). I am sad to report that the wine itself was nothing special, but I still like their concept of a Tough Day Chardonnay...