Thursday, July 24, 2008

Contest!

Four posts in one day? What can I say, I guess I'm making up for lost time.

There is almost exactly one month left until Auggie's estimated due date, so I figured it was finally time to post the details of the baby date contest. The cut-off for entries will be whenever I go into labor, so get your entries in sooner rather than later, because no one knows exactly when that will be!

Here's what you have to do:

1. Copy and paste the ballot below into an email. Fill in your answers.
2. Email your answers to me at my gmail.com account, which is juleannwakeman.
3. There is no contest entry fee, but there will be some kind of a prize. I'm not saying what it is yet, because I haven't decided. Maybe it will be some coffee from Starbucks. Maybe it will be the placenta.* Who knows, we'll see what kind of a mood I'm in.
4. If you have any questions that you think might help you to figure out your answers, like what kind of food I'm craving or whatever, then post them in the comments here. I will probably answer them, unless I think the answers are none of your business.

A few details:
-My EDD is August 25, or August 24 if you correct for leap day.
-I only had one ultrasound done, at 21 weeks, and Auggie was measuring the right size (about 2 days bigger than gestational age, which is no real difference at 21 weeks).
-I don't know the gender, so if you think I have slipped by calling Auggie he or she at some point, it doesn't mean anything.
-At my last appointment, my belly was measuring exactly what it was supposed to measure (34 cm at 34 weeks).

*It won't be the placenta. I promise.



Ballot

Gender?
Date of birth?
Time of birth?
Baby's length?
Baby's weight?
Name?


Catching Up

So, I've been trying and trying to properly update this blog, but it seems like all of the times I am not extremely busy, I am extremely busy sleeping to catch up. I tried to blog about my vacation, wrote about 10 pages, and then realized that I was still only on day two. At that rate, I will be blogging about Auggie's birth sometime in 2014. So, here is the whirlwind tour of all the things I've been wanting to blog about in the past month, interspersed with some photos.

Rachel and I drove to Western Massachusetts for Jiffy Con. We played games.

jiffyconshock

We met awesome people, some of whom were awesome enough to pose all on one side of a table when I complained about the difficulties of photographing groups at round tables.

jiffyconbullwinkle

We did not play nutball. I did not take photos of nutball.

I finally managed to take some good pictures of Rachel.

jiffyconrachel

We stayed at Joshua's house.

jiffyconjajoshua

Then we drove to Vermont to visit my sister for a couple of days. We relaxed and played with my nephew and marinated meat for the camping trip. I didn't take very many pictures in Vermont, but I did get a few of Nick in the tub.

nicktub

Then we drove to Crawford Notch, NH, for the annual YARR camping trip. There were about 15 of us this year, including one child and two pregnant ladies. It will be interesting to see how the dynamic changes in future years as our families blossom. Jeremy joined us at the campsite, which was nice, because I hadn't seen him in almost a week.

We camped. We hiked. (Hiking photo taken by Allison.)

juleannhiking

We swam in the river.

ayronriver

We sat on logs and exposed our pasty-white June flesh to the sun.

yarrlog

It rained a lot. I didn't take any pictures of the rain. But our massive tarp set up helped keep the cooking area dry.

yarrsite2008

We spent a lot of our time just sitting around the fire pit - talking, eating, destroying confidential documents, and waiting for the dishwater to boil.

yarrfire

We played a lot of games. We took some touristy pictures of "the Notch".

thenotch

We climbed on a slippery waterfall. Dan fell and got a concussion. Phil ripped his leg open on a guard rail running to the rescue and had to get ten stitches. (Everyone is okay, now.)

danER

Sara found some luna moths while taking down the screen tent.

lunamoths

When I got home, everything I had brought with me was wet and dirty from all the rain. I did a lot of laundry, took a lot of naps, and went back to work. I didn't take any pictures of these things. Fast forward through about two weeks of post-vacation recovery, including my car having to go to the shop twice. (Poor Bitsy now has no AC, just in time for the hottest part of the summer.) Then my sister came to visit, and fun things started happening again. Like a trip to the Aquarium.

nickaquarium

My church and my mother-in-law threw an amazing baby shower for me. My nephew took his very first steps in my living room, and rode on his very first carousel (not in my living room). We celebrated Nick's first birthday with yummy Korean food and gelato for dessert. And I have no pictures of any of these things for some sad reason, but they were memorable nonetheless. And that brings us to today, which is finally routine enough for me to spend it cropping pictures and uploading them to my blog. Hopefully, it won't be another whole month before I post again!

Belly Art 5

Art by Rachel Walton

Last night was our regular Wednesday night gaming night, but we have put our regular Burning Wheel game on hiatus for the summer in order to try out several different indie games. Last night, we played "In a Wicked Age", for which we had to draw up a relationship map denoting how all of the characters were connected to each other. I had brought my face paints along, since it had been a month since my last belly painting, and volunteered my belly for the relationship map. I think it turned out pretty good.

bellyart5

Posing with the book:

bellyIAWA

July 23, 2008
35w 3d

Belly Art 4

By Alana Torraca (my sister)

Alana wanted to use proper Henna, and it probably would have looked awesome if I had let her. However, I was on my way to a camping trip where I thought I might be able to recruit more belly artists, and I wanted a clean slate for them, so I made her use the washable face paints. In the end, no one else decorated my belly for another month, so it wouldn't have mattered if she had used Henna. Oh well, you know what they say about hindsight...

bellyart4

bellyalana

June 23, 2008
31w 1d