Well, TOMORROW, I'm 39 weeks, but this photo is from Saturday. I apologize for the general lack of pregophotos. My camera broke a few months ago and the iPhone is not such an alluring substitute while we research our next legit camera purchase. Any recommendations?

Work at the Rhodes abode is coming along. As soon as we got our couch and set up our living room, I lost all steam for the little unfinished projects. Jacob (who is still hard at work) predicted this.

Nothing resembling labor as of yet. Every day Jacob tells the baby to stay put for just a little while longer. And every day we are a little closer to ready. Maybe we'll be all ready by our due date, which is, ladies and gents, ONE WEEK FROM TOMORROW!!

Moving and Other Joys

On Saturday we moved. I say "we," but this is probably a serious abuse of the 1st person plural as I did very little moving indeed. Jacob and John and three friends (Melanie, Ruth, and Wendy) trekked up and down the 46 steps from the street to our front door carrying bag after box after washing machine many-a-time. I did however...sweep...and buy burritos for the real movers. 

Things in the new place are still very much in disarray.

Exhibit A: Living Room

Exhibit B: Bedroom with hole in wall

Exhibit C: Porch 

So...yes the little abode needs some love, and we're slowly tackling all the house-to-home projects. The closets need a little help before we can get anything in them...as does the bedroom. So currently we are sleeping on the floor of the living room. It's a lovely space and I give you this tantalizing little set of photos only so I can WOW you later.

Jacob is coming home now. I can hear his footsteps down the walk. The whole front of the living room is windows, and through the glass I'm admiring his familiar profile against the darkening sky. 

Last night I had another baby shower with my grad school buddies. It was a lovely little gathering with darling tea sandwiches and delicious shortcake and strawberry limeade with fresh pureed strawberries which I got to drink most of myself since everyone else was champagne-ing it.

In honor of our lit. degree we played children's literature pictionary. My team won. It was a close game, however, and I think we technically went into double overtime. We capped the night off by decorating 0-3 month onesies with fabric markers. I'm such a sucker for this type of activity...

EVERYONE won this game:

Wendy won the bio-math prize:

Front - boyfriend Moses will be so proud

and topped off her equations with a little quotableness:

Back

Ruth won the foreign language/humor-Kate-even-though-you-hate-drawing prize, 

and the judges were quite impressed with her creativity, and agreed that the highpoint of the creation was certainly the palm tree.

Lauren won the No-Surprise-It's-Perfect prize:

My iphone really did no justice to this number, (the sailboat is not at all blurry in the real thing)

Melanie won the Jacob's-favorite prize:

Front

Back

 Really...too clever, Melanie, and I think this might qualify as our baby's first costume?

So hurrah for all the winners!!

I went to a prenatal appointment today and everything is going well. My midwife informed me that the baby is dropping/has dropped which is to be expected in a first pregnancy and means that I will be having the baby soon. I thought this was a rather funny bit of professional wisdom. If there's anything obvious to everyone who looks at me it is this: I will be having a baby soon. I am 38 weeks tomorrow, and I suppose that means sometime in the next month. 

I will sign off with a memory of one of the first presents Jacob ever gave me after we started dating. It was a copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. Somehow I made it to my 22nd birthday never having read it. But he read it out loud to me and marked the page that talks about the little flower. Here's a bit of it.

"But my rose, all on her own, is more important than you altogether, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass. Since she's the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except for two or three for butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose." 

It makes me think about our old house; it also makes me think about our new little place that Jacob is busy nailing and drilling on right now. It makes me think about marriage. It makes me think about our little baby which is bumbling around inside of me right now past its bedtime. And so it became the inspiration for the onesie that I got to color:

Done, Done, and Done (get ready for some Facebook-pilfered photos!)

I am so royally finished with school right now, I can hardly contain myself. 

I realize it has been a shamefully long time since I've blogged, but I've been rather busy, and I hope to be more regular now that school is over, and I'm off all summer.

RECAP:

Indeed...what have I done in the past month. I finished my master's degree which involved all kinds of exams and papers and presentations and. I finished teaching the two sections of my spring course (Intro to Poetry) and graded hundreds of pages of student work. I went to Texas for five days over Easter break where I had a lovely baby shower and got to see so many faces of people that I have treasured so much in my life. I got to chat with old friends and take evening walks with my mom, dad, and little sister every night. It was incomparably wonderful, and made me miss the Texas Hill Country even more than I do. 

Apparently the only iPhone worthy event of this weekend however was visiting Jacob's goat. 

She's the one I'm feeding. She's over a year old, but she's still little.

Jacob named his goat Beatrice. A name that I love. But Jacob named the goat Beatrice because he hates that name and figured we could avoid any daughters named Beatrice if we already had a nanny goat named Beatrice. Isn't he just the sweetest?

So what else of note in the last month...

I graduated. My parents came to watch. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, I LOVED seeing you!) I got all regalia-ed up and processed with my buddies and shook the president's hand. 

I had a (sort of) mother's day. I got a "mommy to be" card from my neighbor. Everyone in the pews around us in church prompted me to go up to receive the obligatory carnation. I was bashful about the whole thing, but I tried to be cool. TRIED. At the front (our dear sweet old Irish) priest asked for my due date. 

I said, "June 8th."

He smiled big and proceeded to announce to our entire (Beverly Hills) congregation in his lilting accent:

"This young lady's having a baby on my birthday!" 

Thank you, dear sweet old Irish priest. 

Neither Mark Wahlberg nor Joseph Fiennes nor Paris Hilton were in attendance...it was perhaps my one day to outshine a celebrity, but alas...

On Mother's Day I conference called my mom with all my siblings to wish her a happy one. It was very fun. Robert:

was a little late to the tele-party, and he's the most punctual one. Scotty:

 was game

 as usual.

My older brother Jonathan:

 

Made lots of jokes. Mostly about my noble illusions to cloth diaper. 

Everyone thought this was very funny. 

Especially Lily:

 who laughed more than anyone.

 Don't look at me like that. It's true.

I had some of my grad-school 

 buddies 

 and their cohorts over for a cook-out last Sunday and had a blast. 

I still smell smokey. Perhaps this is because I have only washed my hair once since then. Pregnancy has thoroughly dried out this body o' mine, so I don't really think the coiffe needs much washing these days

...or maybe pregnancy has just kept me from looking in the mirror as often. Despite being 8 and 1/2 months pregnant I'm still surprised when I catch a glimpse of my round self. (ComingSoon: I have 8monthspregnant photos somewhere.)

Jacob's relatives sold the property we live on last week, and while they gave us 60 days we decided to leap straight into apartment-hunting, and thankfully we've already found a new place! Papers were signed yesterday, and we will probably make a slow process of the move over the next week or so.

Such is la vita of the famiglia Rhodes di Los Angeles. Jacob and John are shooting the end of a short film tonight, and I am prepping cloth diapers in a stockpot of boiling water...Jonathan.

Signing off with one (two? three?) final photo(s):

This is my youngest brother Robert in a photo with a bison. It struck me because it seems a bit like if I were in a photo with a watermelon.

Speaking of!

 It's all I think about these days.  Jacob cuts it up into cute chunks for me.

what a long-limbed-dearie he is.

The Bunkhouse

Two weeks from today I will take the written part of a comprehensive exam for my MA in English Lit...So yes...I should be reading something right now. Or perhaps grading papers. Or perhaps prepping to teach on Monday. Or doing any of the other things that were on my oh-so-impossible To-Do list for the weekend. 

Instead, I've spent the majority of my weekend working on a baby registry, and consequently researching my way, not through Tristram Shandy or Derrida, but through allaboutclothdiapering.com.  

To put in perspective how it feels for us to confront all the acquiring and spending and prepping that goes along with having a newborn, let me say that, currently, we live in a one room converted garage. 

And we love it. 

Jacob and his dad, Keith, put in the kitchen and the bathroom. Jacob built me a huge bookshelf that serves as a type of divider between the living area and the bed(room). Jacob finished everything right before the wedding, so I hadn't seen it till we drove into LA as newlyweds. 

Sometimes people come in, take one look at the house and and my pregnant belly and become very concerned and start treating us like a charity case. Believe it or not we live here because we WANT to...I know...crazy... Mostly people recognize how happy we are. When my parents came to visit last summer, my father saw the house for the first time. I'll never forget how his eyes swept our 300 sq. feet, and he said with a little admiration and envy in his voice: "Everything you own fits in here."

We've pretty much given up the hope of staying in the little place after the baby's born. Jacob's cousins who own the property have put it on the market and even if it takes a while to sell, we will leave before the baby comes. We'll make the flashy upgrade to a one bedroom apartment probably in May. But it's hard to let go. 

I'm already nostalgic about "our first place" and "these years." And I'm a little more than intimidated by the amount of stuff that comes along with having children. People often ask if we have our nursery ready. I smile and skirt the question and proceed to think of the shoebox on the bookshelf that holds in its cardboard walls every baby item we've acquired so far.

Granted, school has probably suppressed all my "nesting" instincts, and they will certainly emerge with a vengeance on May 11th when I turn in grades. For now we're here eating fresh limes and counting monarchs in the garden and watching crows waddle down the paths and letting everything be taken over by orange poppies. 

 A few months ago when I found out the property was being sold (which means one thing in our mega-mansion neighborhood), I got a little weepy, and I wrote this sappy poemish type thing for Jacob.

Anyhow. Enjoy.

We will leave this house soon.

Perhaps they will knock it down.
The stained, wood paneled walls.
The moldy doors and corners
full of cobwebs.
Perhaps they will knock them all down.
The surfboard suspended above the
window, resting on the bookshelf/wall.
The shelves that you hammered and painted
(one of them blue as the California sky
because I love blue
because you love me.)
They will knock them all down.

A boy loved a girl here. He made her this house.
He carried her through the front door
and showed her the home he’d built
for her books.
She budgeted a lot.
He did lots of projects.

They ate vegetables

and drank tequila.

Don’t worry. Those who demolish
the place, who knock everything down,
they won’t know the stories hidden in these walls.
They will just be doing their job.
We will not tell them the stories,
and the stories won’t be crushed.

7 months!

So as promised. Here we are at 30 weeks:

Right side 

And left side 

So yes, the waxing of the stomach. Getting closer to the end and so looking forward to it.

Not much that is picture worthy has gone on in the Rhodes cabin recently.

But of course there was Uncle Robert's visit a few weeks ago. He and three buddies were on a crazy west coast road trip for spring break and stopped in Santa Monica for a Wednesday eve.

They arrived and told me they were hungry.

I asked what they wanted to eat.

They said they weren't picky, but they wanted their stomachs and their pockets full...So we went to the grocery store, and the four strapping young men proceeded to make dinner for Jacob and me.

Look at all those big cuties in the little kitchen. We had some marvelous spaghetti that evening. I was very impressed. I was impressed by their cooking, their teamwork, their general lack of odor. I was also very impressed by how much body mass our kitchen table could handle.

The baby and I aren't sure what to make of Uncle Rob's stache, but we're definitely both crossing our fingers for those curls. Kirk's massive beard, Joey's ponytail, and Micah's recent buzz-cut all get A+'s. Jacob (as cute as he is!) doesn't get a grade because he went to Waldorf schools.

Here's another for good measure:

Apparently, Jacob is a much more entertaining photographer than I. Not even my "to dust returneth" forehead was enough to sober up the clan.

So that was a lovely evening.

Signing off. Hope all is well in your lives!

Feeding the BlogMonster

Again. Just trying to keep the little blog breathing.
I sit in my office on this Friday afternoon waiting for Jacob to come pick me up. I meant to go home this afternoon and spend it productively grading reading journals and prepping for my class Monday. Instead, I got distracted talking to my friend and then it was so late I figured I would avoid the late afternoon bus and wait for Jacob to get off work.

Let's see...what to say:

I am officially beginning my third trimester! Huzzah!

I had a hellish first trimester. I lived on our couch with my head half-submerged in a barf bowl. Jacob would get home, and I would recount how many times I had thrown up that day and lament about how "bad at pregnancy" I was. I even played the pregnancy-card with a professor and asked for a paper extension. Those of you who know me know how sick I must have been to get to this oh-so-humbling point. As I sit in this office I remember how my first trimester was eased by how encouraging and supportive people at school were. My friends on campus were and continue to be super gracious. They've given me rides home and made promises to babysit and asked me all the questions that a pregnant woman likes to answer. My boss told me I could even bring the baby into my classes when I teach in the fall. He said: "It can just sleep in the corner and you can feel good knowing that it's safe and really focus on your teaching." I wasn't quite sure I followed his logic, but I still felt very supported.

The second trimester (well...post-nausea...which didn't pass until mid-month 4) was a breeze. I started exercising and drinking lots of veggie juice and just feeling generally on top of things. The kid started moving and gets squirmier every week.(Some appendage is lodging itself in my ribs currently.) I paraded my second trimester belly in DC, visiting college friends. Dear Glencora (whose birthday is tomorrow! Yay!) lamented that my face wasn't fatter. I think she was hoping I looked a little bit more like an infamous picture one of my friends took of me in Greece. I will replicate it here to show how not insecure I am about all the weight I'm gaining...

I made it nice and big for you.

There. Far left = Me. I don't really know how it happened. For the first time in my life I was selected to go up and be the display person on some little show. They put this traditional garb on over my normal clothes, and somehow I ended up looking like that. Among my clan I was affectionately referred to as Fatty McFatFat for the rest of the term. I can't blame them. Those cheeks are impressive.

I won't probably be able to ward off those cheeks for much longer...especially the closer I get to my due date...not to mention my comprehensive exams and paper writing and the corresponding stress induced eating. Fatty McFatFat will reign again.

In commemoration of Glencora's birthday (and the book she should've been reading last weekend in DC instead of playing with me) I would like everyone to reminisce with us about the under-the-sea costume party we went to while living in Italy. Our expatriot selves didn't have much by way of costumes but we made do:

Hail, Queequeg and the Fishing Net.

Happy Weekend! I promise to post another picture of my burgeoning belly soon, those posts seem to get the most reactions :)

Mom and Kate Go A-Cruising

My mother and I got back from a seven day cruise yesterday morning. It was a lovely little trip down Baja California. Here are some very non-polished pics for your enjoyment.

A little Cabo. A picture mom snapped with her i-phone on our 10$ taxi ride/glass bottom boat tour.

It was stunningly beautiful. We saw some really cool fish, my mother, the aquatic biologist, named every single one of them. 

Let's see...some cruise highlights. 

1. There was the issue of my being (eleven days) too pregnant to sail, a problem we didn't discover (in typical Ramsay style) till the day before we left. So I spent the whole cruise lying about how pregnant I was for fear that it would somehow get back to the Cruise Police who would put me ashore and leave me and my pregnant belly in Mexico. I suppose I paid for my lies with all the wow-you're-big comments I had to endure because of them. Someone had the nerve to ask: "You sure there aren't two in there?"

Honestly.

Who asks that?

2. Melon sorbet in Puerta Vallarta. It was so delicious.

3. The food poisoning I got from the melon sorbet in Puerta Vallarta that had me throwing up for 24 hours. Dr. Mom was essential in this frustrated time. She happily assured me that the baby was blissfully ignorant of my hurling. And she made it so I didn't have to go to the infirmary and get subsequently referred to the Cruise Police.

4. Looking for some Mexican pottery to replenish my mother's collection and after we spent 45 minutes picking out our favorites, we finally asked about prices and the man in this not-even-center-of-tourist-town, everybody-practically-has-the-same-thing-anyway flea market quoted us 38$/bowl. He said he would give us a twenty percent discount, but we were pretty sure that wouldn't quite bring the merchandise into our 8$/bowl price range...We told the vendor what we'd be willing to pay. 

He blinked. 

We stood up and walked away.

5. The name of our taxi/glass bottom boat in Cabo: "Sex Machine 2."

6. The ladies we ate dinner with every night:

Two quilters: Shirley and Diane. They were both born and raised in Eugene, Oregon. Shirley (left) was planning on dying in Eugene until she bought a house which she later found out was technically in Springfield, Oregon. She sighs: "Now I'll probably die in Springfield." 

But if I am completely honest. The cruise looked mostly like this:

Yes. Reading reading reading for my comprehensive exams next month while my mother worked on her book.

It was a super grand time. And now I'm back to a crazy week of school before Jacob and I head to DC on Thursday. Six months pregnant and I'm taking a red eye. Probably not the best decision I've ever made. Any tips for the pregnant woman on the plane are super welcome!