Absolutely ages since my last post! I guess that is what happens when you move halfway across the country...it takes a long time to get packed up and then unpacked again! As far as the crucial updates go:

1) The baby: appears to be doing very well. We had an ultrasound at 12 weeks. I wrote an email to my closest friends then, that I"ll include below, because it really says it all! I have my first appointments at the Mayo Clinic next week and I'm really ready to get our 20 week ultrasound scheduled. I just love seeing that the little one is alive and well, it's so reassuring, especially considering that I still struggle with anxiety from time to time.

Also, I think I felt the baby move for the first time this week! It would be on the early side of things, since I'm 16 weeks. I'm not positive yet, since so many people say it feels like a little flutter or a tiny feather brushing their uterus. For me, it felt like a very tiny but definite "thump". If that IS my baby, I guess I'm not having a delicate little feather of a child. If this little thump is actually Baby Ewald, the first time I felt it was at right after my "spouse orientation" at the Mayo Clinic. I met Tim for lunch and we went to Victoria's, an Italian restaurant in downtown Rochester (cue Billy Joel). Of course, right as we got our food, Tim's pager went off. I love that sound already. Tim walked out to check his page, and as he walked away, I felt it. The tiniest little thump. Maybe the baby was hungry? :-)

2) The house: is fantastic. I have about four hundred things that I love about it, but very high on my list are the dishwasher, washer/dryer, the automatic ice maker, and the quaking aspen leaves right outside French doors to the deck. They are paler green on the underside of the leaves than they are on the tops, and the slightest breeze really causes them to flutter. It's incredibly beautiful, like living in an Impressionist painting. I also love our neighborhood and the masses of space we have. It's sometimes hard to believe that all of this is OURS. Of course, there is a certain Zen quality to our house, due to all the bare rooms and empty space, but we'll get that covered soon enough. For now, we just live happily in our mostly empty rooms and concentrate on painting and such things.

3) Rochester itself: is a bit of an adjustment. It's a nice small city, but it's a small city. There are lots of chain restaurants and box stores and that takes some getting used to after Philadelphia and Boston. My sister in law, Bonnie, came to visit this weekend with her boyfriend, Sam, and I had a real crisis of "WHAT DO WE DO???". What the heck do people DO with their guests when they don't live in cities full of tourist opportunities? I'm used to thinking things like "ok, we can go to this Revolutionary War site, or this awesome ethnic restuarant, or this museum, or this very important and scenic park...." and here it's more like "well, we can go to the Olive Garden and Target". Oh well, I'm sure I will figure it all out sooner or later.

4) Jobs: still non-existent for me but Tim is enjoying his job thus far. He is on trauma right now, and so far there have been relatively few traumas, which is nice for the city of Rochester and its environs. His schedule sucks (no shock there) and his first day off is a week from today. He started on Saturday and works 6 to 6 most days. Sunday he is on call, Monday he is post call (which means he is done at noon) and Tuesday he is off. So it's nice to not work, so I can be home when he is to spend his precious free time together.

All in all, lots of changes, but I feel good physically, mentally, and emotionally. I'm VERY glad to be done with the moving process for a while and to settle down the business of making new friends and discovering a new place.

Today I had an appt for an ultrasound, and we were able to see our baby!

In-utero-Ewald looks great, very active and BIG. We thought, based on our last ultrasound, that today would be 12 weeks, 3 days. The baby measured out today at 12 weeks, 5 days. So, granted, not a huge difference, but enough for me to insist that the baby is going to take after Tim. The baby was flipping and turning all over the place, probably wondering why it was getting pushed around so much. We also saw it waving its little fists at us. And of course we saw the heartbeat and all the limbs were present and accounted for in the ultrasound.

Overall, it was a HUGE relief for us to get past this point. And it was the first time I'd seen the baby, so I cried, of course, out of sheer relief, and happiness. It's starting to feel like maybe this is going to work out for us this time, which brings us both a very deep and profound feeling of thankfulness and a very giddy sense of excitement. Kind of like drinking champagne after your wedding vows. ;-)

I've attached some pictures of the baby to this email. We have six pictures, but I just attached one strip because they're basically all the same view.

Love!