Snowbound Herpetologist

Last night, husband and I celebrated the fact that we have 50 days left until the due date (we had celebrated 100 days as well...with fondue :)).  This time, we celebrated with "make-your-own sushi night," which was really a ton of fun.  I used to do this upon occasion in grad school - one of my labmates had lived in Japan for some time (maybe a year?), and he was often the instigator of such get-togethers.  Bonus: this can be a super veggie-friendly event! My favorite two veggie rolls, unabashedly stolen from restaurants in the town where I went to grad school: The Guido : Avocado, cream cheese, garlic, basil, macadamia nuts The Thailander : Cilantro, peanut butter, lime, carrot, sesame seeds (I think there was more in this roll, but this restaurant - and its website - has since gone out of business, so this was the best I could recreate from memory!) Here are some photos of the event: All the fixin's! Notice the green can of "Izze" near the fron...

My new trick of the day: bending my knees, splaying them out wide, and tilt-stomping slowly around the house while bellowing in my deepest voice, "SU-MOOOOOOOO!" in between giggling hysterically. The cat loves it.  Husband, not so much. As a bonus, I think it's opening up my hip flexors quite well.

A few days ago, my mom emailed me a recounting of her grandmother's struggle with Rh incompatibility during the 1910's-1930's.  I wanted to post it here so that future readers will have a better appreciation for how helpful RhoGAM has been.  I think it's deceptively easy to lose sight of the real contribution that medical advances have made to infant well-being over the last 100 years, when you don't have anyone left around to give first-hand accounts of how heartbreaking it was to have children suffer and how amazing it is that such suffering can now be so easily avoided.  True miracles! Some quick background: my great-grandmother Pearl* was Rh- (A-, we think) and gave birth to a number of Rh+ babies - some which did not make it.   If this is something that will overly upset you to read about, stop reading now!  My grandmother Jane was A+, and the third born.  Edna was the first born, Gerry the second, and Mikey the fourth.  Both of Jane's daughter...

It just happened: I ordered a bunch of (super on sale) newborn-size cloth diapers.  We're now officially going to give cloth diapering a go - hopefully she's not 12lbs at birth, because then we're screwed - and if we hate it, we won't buy any one-sizes for when she's bigger.  It is an absolute gamble, but if we can manage to stick with cloth diapering, I WILL BE SO DAMN PROUD OF MYSELF.

Not a lot of time here to write, but I wanted to do a quick update.  The theme of the last two weeks has been immune system challenges!  The unprecedented happened last week when husband, for the very first time in our entire relationship, caught the cold that I had.  Literally, germs in our family have only ever travelled in one direction - from him to me, even when he doesn’t show any signs of infection - which has left me feeling seriously immunocompromised for several years.  Apparently, our systems have now equilibrated, but the downside to that is that husband also has asthma, so colds are way more dangerous for him than me.  We took him to urgent care on Saturday after 24 hours of some incredible wheezing, and he’s on much more high powered asthma meds now until he can recover.   He also had an ear infection (to which he’s also prone, poor thing), so he’s on antibiotics for that as well.  It was a busy weekend. I’m still not *quite* over my ...

Really?!? Yup, apparently it's time for the AARP....