Week 18 pictures

We have a hodge podge of pictures to share today. Here is Carin and the pirate ship pumpkin she carved at 18 weeks 1 day pregnant:

Mandy visited us on that day.

You may recall we painted our living area a few weekends ago. Here are some pictures of our newly orange living space:

The orange color of the walls makes the beige elsewhere in the house look less bland and more, dare I say, intentional.

Now, below you will see an illustration of a lesson we recently learned. In Los Angeles, if you carve your pumpkins a week in advance, they might not make it until Halloween. Yes, the dots below are flies. And the black inside? Not shadows. Mold.

The newly trimmed tree in our front yard. (Click here for before pictures.)

Carin at 18 weeks 6 days:

Week 17 Ultrasound Pics (or: Is it wrong to post pictures of my son's penis on the internet?)

At 16 weeks and 6 days old, this is what our fetus looks like:


We could see a spinal column and rib cage, and we could even hear a heartbeat. Cool stuff.

We were also told we might be able to determine the gender on this visit. Carin's regular doctor was in surgery yesterday, so we met with one of his partners instead, who told us, "Well, you can't really say for sure until 20 weeks, but let's check it out and see what we can see." She was clearly trying to hedge her bets, telling us that even if we saw something (or the lack of something), we might find out we were wrong in a few weeks. So, disclaimers aside, we looked. And it seems we saw ... well ... boy parts. See for yourself (and click for closer view):


Again, if you are confused by the image above, I've added some scribbles to clarify this strange upward view of our little one.


Assuming this gender diagnosis sticks, I'd like to officially apologize to my future son for putting pictures of his manly bits on the world wide web for all to see, and I'd like to tell him that generally, this is not a good practice for him to engage in. Do as I say, son, not as I do.

As for expecting a boy, we are surprised but very happy. We both had our money on girl--due, in large part to a few girl-related dreams and an uneducated hunch. But then, as future parents, I suppose we must learn to expect surprise. Our paradigm has shifted, but we are ready and enthusiastic. We've already received our first mohel recommendation. This is getting more real by the day.

Pictures from the Swiss visit

These are pictures from when Cindy and Ilan visited last weekend from Switzerland. They made LA the first stop on their round-the-world honeymoon. Fun was had.

Carin is 16 weeks 1 day pregnant in these pictures.

Lunching in Santa Monica.

The requisite tourist visit to the Hollywood sign.

Week 14 in Photographs

It's been a busy week. Carin has been working medical resident hours due to the latest thingy going on with the thingy at her job (she has explained it to me and, yes, I do listen to her, but don't ask me to articulate what's going on to you; the explanation involves a certain phase of a project and uses words and abbreviations I don't understand). Tuesday night we had a comedy of errors when she was supposed to pick up a chicken for dinner, but then never left work, but then never told me she never left--until she finally did and I was able to order a pizza that she then never picked up. Funny stuff. It's okay though; we're still married.

As for me, I've been busy picking up all the domestic slack, recovering from a cold, trying to get on the substitute teaching lists of more schools, dealing with mundane-yet-time-consuming house issues---and, oh yeah, trying to write. I have also, as you can tell from the photo above, been applying blue tape to walls.

Yes, we are about to enter the weekend of the big paint. We're finally attacking the living room and hoping it won't attack back. Due to budget cuts, we've slimmed down our house TO DO list for the moment (or, to be more accurate, our TO BUY list. We still need to get that new fridge before we entertain on Thanksgiving, but non-ghetto window treatments and a tiled bathroom shower will have to wait a while. As for replacing our Craigslist bedroom furniture or getting anything resembling a headboard for the bed...we just chuckle about that now and say, "once the writer money starts pouring in..."). But, as I said, at the moment we are focused on the big paint. If we successfully conquer these 500 square feet of wall framed by an abundance of tape-worthy molding, I'll be sure to post pictures.

As for pictures, I know you aren't visiting the blog to see pictures of our living room. So here is the lady of the moment, looking bump-erific at 14 weeks, 5 days. First, the front view:


And, now, are you ready? The 3/4 side view. Bam!


Beautiful, ain't she?

(Remember, parents, you can see a larger version of each photo by clicking on it)

Now, I'll end our photo odyssey with some pictures of a botanical nature. Our guava tree has finally started to yield some ripe fruit. Here is the tree:



And now, some pictures of the fruit.






Yumm! Actually, eating these guavas straight up is kind of a mealy unpleasant experience, but we did have great success last week with making them into juice. We added some pineapple juice and a bit of honey to sweeten things up and then some more juice (some of Dole's delicious Orange-Peach-Mango and a dash of lime) to give it a smoother texture. We hope to repeat the experiment this weekend with the bowl of fruit of above, which has been sitting in our fridge waiting for us to give it some love. Hopefully, they won't go bad first.

But before we can get to our weekend of painting and guavas, I need to stop procrastinating and get back to work. So, I'll say "adios" for now. More blogging at a later time.