Quality Time

This is me staying home from book club so I can spend more time with Britton. It was a nice thought!
Britton repays the favor by working on...hmmm, not sure what he's working on. It looks like he's doing something with computer code. (Look how small our kitchen is. I can't wait to move to a bigger place next month!)
And thus we see the consequences of not planning. Renee left on her own gets sucked into looking at a lot of blogs while leaving very few comments behind. Britton left on his own is very productive, and quickly becomes an aeronautical zombie in the "zone". Very few things can get his attention while he's in the nerd zone. One of them is dessert which I'm supposed to be making. But I don't see how I could possibly do this since there is absolutely NO chocolate in the house. We'll have to settle for some fake Crystal Light. Next time I stay home I'll have to make a plan to avoid getting sucked into the computer.

Touring Campus with the Warrens

We had friends come visit us this weekend! It's the first time for us to show off our tiny apartment to pre-Stanford friends. Not much to show. It gets crowded with visitors so we spent most of the day outside or playing ping pong downstairs. We had a picnic at the oval in front of campus, and then walked to different gardens. Ok, not the best picture of me, but Dani said I looked cute that day. Lately I'm grateful for any comment about my appearance that doesn't involve the word huge.
Meet Emma the new addition to the Warren family. I think she looks a lot like her older sister, but with darker hair. Sorry to state the obvious. This is the New Guinea Garden, or as we like to call it...the totem pole garden. You'll have to see it for yourself when you come to visit. Yep, most of our pictures were imitating statues. Dani and Paige posing with one of the weird plants in the cactus garden. Our last stop was the Stanford Mausoleum. This is where the Stanford family is buried. I thought it was pretty creepy the last time we went there, but it's not so bad when you're sitting with the sphinx.

Ultrasound Day!!

Well, the ultrasound technician has spoken. 53% of you were wrong, and we are actually having a boy! You can see his handsome silhouette above. Please notice the larger dark spot in the chest is his heart, and the smaller one is a kidney. Just kidding, I don't really know, but the technician was showing us all four chambers of the heart, the different sections of the brain, and the lenses in his eyes! It's amazing she could find all that even though he was moving constantly and I didn't drink enough water. She really had to jam that thing in my belly, but it was all worth it to see his cute little face. We're almost halfway there to see him in real life.

I'm Organic

Well, I've never really bought into the organic hype before. Organic to me = more expensive at Safeway. But thanks to our friends the Conti-Browns, we made organic omelets this morning filled with fennel, spinach, mushrooms, and swiss cheese. There's some local farms that actually deliver fresh vegetables and fruit on campus. We missed out on the strawberries last week, but we did get some fun carrots, radishes, fennel, leeks, spinach, lettuce, mushrooms, parsnips, mustard greens, that grassy looking stuff, and some other kind of big green leaf. So we get all kinds of fresh, healthy food delivered for only $10 a week! It's amazing! I just have to figure out what to do with it now... Nikki let me borrow her vegetarian cookbook, and so far we've made zucchini soup, and fennel omelets. Let me know if you have any good parsnip recipes, etc. Thanks Kate for the potato leek soup recipe on your blog!

As Promised...

I did promise there would be more tutus, babies, and ravioli in my blog...here they are!


Do people really do this with their babies?


The ultrasound is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, and I can't wait!!! I finally felt the baby kicking for sure last week at work. It was just like one of my friends described, "like a flopping fish." So my little flopping fish is about 8 inches long now, and should weigh about 9 ounces I think. I can feel it flopping in all corners of my belly, but Britton can't feel it yet. Good to know it's there and getting comfortable kicking my bladder and pancreas out of the way. 4-ish more months left...

Here's another tutu picture just for fun.

Traveling

Britton and I have both been traveling away from each other a lot lately! First I took a trip to St. Louis to see my old roomie Amy get married. It was like a college reunion. I got to see four roommates, one roommate's husband, and one roommate's fiance turn into a husband!
Before the wedding I got to visit the St. Louis Arch--Gateway to the West right next to the Mississippi river. We rode up in these cozy little claustrophobic "pods" that went through the middle of the arch and dropped you off at the top where you can look out these little windows at the city and river far below.It's 630 feet tall! I'm not really scared of heights, but it was so weird to be so high up in well...an arch. Instead of having floors of a building below you it was so unsettling to be kind of hanging in the air. It also didn't help that Amy said there's a 3 ft sway at the top. Anyway it was fun, and I got to see Amy get married at the St. Louis temple to a great guy. Here's a picture of the happy couple.After I got back from my trip which ended in a 6 hour flight in front of a screaming kid. I just remind myself I will most likely be the parent of the screaming kid someday. Anyway after I got back Britton finished his finals, and then took a skiing trip to Bear Valley with his mom and little brother.



Then I met Britton back in Brentwood for the Easter festivities. Yet another video:)




Right after that...Britton flew to Dayton, Ohio (stopping in Chicago to see his ol' buddy Bill). He toured an air force research facility because he was investigating a possible fellowship(money for school) and internship possibility. His favorite part was visiting the airplane museum. He was like a kid in a candy store, a vampire at a blood bank, or a missionary in Peru. Anyone else have a good analogy? Britton suggested a pedophile in a nursery. He would. Check out Britton in front of an SR71. Oh yeah. It looks like a space ship. Brings back memories of Flight of the Navigator.
We are finally reunited! I picked him up from the train station and we had some Indian food together, and then I made him hang out in my cubicle for the rest of the day:)

Lately

We headed for the hills President's Day to try out mountain biking. There's some trails up in the redwood forests. We barely managed to fit our bikes into our four-door car by taking wheels off, and hanging the handlebars out the windows. Once we found a parking lot we felt a little under dressed because everyone else was totally spandexed out, and using their fancy bike racks, and talking about investing in property in Europe...no joke. So we set out for the trails anyway, and chose a bad one. We rode down, down, down...and never stopped our descent until we ate lunch and I started pouting on this log here.























We found some cute little banana slugs. Which are also the mascot for UC Santa Cruz. Then we rode up, up, up (and walked) and called it a day. It was probably not the best introduction to mountain biking, and Britton is trying really hard to convince me to go again except start with the uphill and end with the downhill.

We also planned to do a bonfire out at the beach with some friends. The day got really windy so we opted for a bonfire at Lake Lagunita instead. It's kind of a glorified water retention area on Stanford's campus. But this time of year it has water...and DUCKS! We got a fire going on the sandy beach-ish area, and ate Girl Scout cookies and told embarrassing stories about each other.

What is NORMAL eating?

It was Wellness Week here at Stanford, and Nikki and I went to one of their activities together. It was 90% for the free t-shirt, 9% for the free food, and 1% to learn about joyful eating. I was expecting her to review the food pyramid and tell us the saintly qualities of broccoli and spinach, but her approach to nutrition was more like freshman roomate number three. It was more of a stay in tune with your body kind of thing rather than being strict with all kinds of rules.
The first thing she said that kind of shocked me was about getting rid of society's rules about good and bad food. Cookies are not bad, and carrots are not good. We need to keep good nutrition principles in mind, but eat what we feel like eating, and the amount we feel like eating. She gave an example of someone who took that advice to an extreme and asked herself everyday what she wanted to eat. She ended up eating raw cookie dough for two weeks...and then never ate it ever again.
Please forgive another post about food/nutrition. But I really liked her message about being in tune with what your body needs. Here's some highlights from the handout she gave us.

Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food. Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more. Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your times and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.
Instead of thinking about nutrition as "What I shouldn't eat," ask yourself the question, "Am I getting enough?" For instance am I getting enough calcium? Iron? Vitamin C?

Variety & Balance: Just by including a wide variety of foods & food groups in your diet, you will get a lot of the nutrients you need without even thinking about it.
Individuality: No one diet is right for everyone. We have different nutritional needs based on factors such as: gender, age, activity level, and medical history.
Body awareness: Am I hungry? What do I want to eat? Am I full? We need to learn to tune into our hunger and satiety signals, and most importantly, to trust our bodies.

10 Ways to Feel Good in My Body
-I pledge to...
-Not read magazines that make me feel bad about my body.
-Appreciate all of the things my body can do.
-Watch my language! Would I talk to someone else the way I talk to myself?
-Not use exercise to justify what I eat.
-Be flexible and adventurous in the foods that I eat.
-Do nice things for my body, such as go for a walk or take a long bath.
-Be a critical viewer of negative images and messages that tell me I am supposed to look a certain way.
-Not compare myself to other people.
-Show respect for all body types.
-See my body as part of what makes me unique.

She wasn't a fan of diets because they tend to get people into a deprivation-binge cycle. Nikki and I were snickering during most of her speech thinking about our husbands and their calorie and weight charts and graphs. Anyway, I actually felt better and more confident about myself after her nutrition speech. Being pregnant I definitely have felt my body's nutritional needs change, and have been paying more attention to it especially when I don't feel good. "I feel sick, I feel sick...eat...NOW! But eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich not that other sandwich your husband packed." That's what my body says to me. It's so demanding nowadays!