April: A Little Family Update

You may have noticed I haven't been doing a lot of blogging recently.  I haven't been doing a lot of things recently, and if it's a choice between blogging or say, showering, people around me would probably prefer I shower.  It's not really that I don't have time - since my last post I have polished off two seasons of Downton Abbey (if you can really call 7 episodes a season), a little Gilmore Girls, and several books, but typing requires mental effort as well as a tiny bit of physical exertion.  Tiring, so tiring.

However, I thought I would take advantage of this little holiday we are having right now (Qing Ming Jie or "Tomb Sweeping Day") to give a general update on our lives.

Kevin: Recently celebrated his 35th birthday with a yummy Mexican potluck and a team game of Pandemic (sorry to say the world was lost to disease one turn before we could save it).  Since then, he has been busy taking care of Juliana.  He has been getting up with her in the morning, playing with her during the day, and putting her to bed at night. He often makes eggs for me in the morning and does most of the chores involving food (grocery shopping, dishes), gross smells (trash, diapers), and an unreasonable amount of physical exertion (hanging up laundry, biking to get milk).  In his free time he does fun things like taxes.  The Royal Shakespeare Company just asked to use one of his pictures in a program, so that's pretty cool.  He'll even get paid!

Oh yes, he's also studying Chinese.  His class has recently expanded in both size and Koreans.  His textbook this year is a series of pictures and vocabulary lists to help describe the pictures.  Yesterday his teacher told him that if a woman is talking to her friend or relative, she might call her own husband "jiefu" - the term for your older sister's husband.  Chinese makes lots of sense.

Kevin's picture...does it look Shakespeare-esque?

Ruth: The good news is I have dropped from daily to weekly throwing up.  I really am doing better than a few weeks ago.  I've even been doing some things like cooking occasionally.  While I'm still eternally grateful to live in a city where we can get cheese and fresh milk, I have also expanded my food repetoir to include lots of Mexican food and three fruits.  Unfortunately I still have a fair share of bad days.  Usually I will have a good day or two, do too much, and then feel sick for a couple of days.  I keep reading about how I should be feeling better now and have that "pregnancy glow;" strangely nobody mentions the pregnancy cynicism (maybe that's my own contribution).  According to Mayo, my blood volume is increasing 30-50%, my pulse is increasing, my blood pressure is dropping, I'm breathing 30-40% more air, and approximately all of my joints and muscles are moving around.  Now that I believe.

Oh yes, I'm also studying Chinese.  We spent quite a bit of time reviewing measure words recently.  We have a few measure words, like a pair of pants, a flock of geese, or a can of Coke.  Approximately every Chinese noun has a distinct measure word (or two or three).  Chinese measure words are so numerous they could almost form their own language.  We also spent some time in general review last week which was very helpful since I had no recollection of some of the things I had technically learned.

16 Weeks Pregnant

Juliana:  My lack of energy is more than made up for in Juliana.  She has been in very high (not to mention loud) spirits lately.  She talks a LOT, says lots of funny things, and rather frequently breaks out into song.  Her favorite type of play is "make them talk": dolls, cars, pieces of train track, silverware - anything can talk.  She's gotten pretty used to immobile mama and now goes straight to daddy for, "Do you want to play with me?  Do you want to play with me??!"  When she misses mama she climbs on top of me and jumps around.  Her vegetable intake has suffered with my food intolerances, but I'd say she's not too close to scurvy.  She doesn't seem to mind all the extra quesadillas she's been eating.

A few weeks ago Juliana's foot got caught in Kevin's bike wheel resulting in two weeks of bandaged foot.  Kevin had to take her back to the hospital every couple of days to get the bandage changed, a process Juliana did not exactly love.  She also couldn't wear her shoe, which meant two weeks of no outside play.  Fortunately the foot is all healed up now except for a bit of remaining scab and scar.  Juliana is more concerned about the "hurt fingers" she gets three times a day since she got new Mickey Mouse band-aids.

Juliana does an Easter dance to "Up From the Grave He Arose"

Ruvin the Second:  Now around 4.5 inches long (the size of an avacado or grenade, whichever image you prefer), baby has doubled in size in the last couple of weeks.  In the next couple of weeks he'll also double in weight.  She can now hear and is sensitive to light.  Probably also sensitive to older sisterly pokes and jabs.  He is making facial expressions and moving around; I may have felt him, but I'm never paying enough attention to be sure.  While Ruvin is having an ever-present impact on my life and body, I guess all that growing is keeping her pretty quiet.

I suppose these days baby looks something like this

So that's what's been happening in our lives.  I'll just leave you with an anecdote from the morning.  Juliana worriedly examined a loose hair in her hand, "My hair!  That's my hair!  Can you put it back in?"  I tried to explain to her that hair falls out and grows back in all the time and you can't put it back, but she solved her own problem.  She placed the hair back on top of her head and said, "I put it back!"  I didn't argue.