Baby Ewald's newest pictures

Note: the pictures didn't format in the places that I wished them to go, so you'll just have to bear with me and refer back and forth, I guess. I'm still an amatuer blogger, I'm afraid. The order of the pictures as I refer to them is: Proud Dad, Me Looking for a Family Resemblance, Contortionist Baby (with foot near nose...maybe it takes after Aunt Jordan?), Tar Heel Born and Bred, Big Yawn, Profile, and Thumb Sucking.

I just love my baby. Seriously. I wish I could have an ultrasound every day, except that would probably mean something was wrong, so I don't REALLY...but it would be nice if I had a machine at home, a la Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Minus the creepy Scientology part. And being married to Tom Cruise. You get my larger point, I'm sure.

Anyway, our baby is wonderful. I could hardly sleep last night for excitement. They tell you to report to the ultrasound with a full bladder, whicfh all pregnant women know is NOT a problem. The main problem I had was being overly full. I finally went before we left the house, because I was going to be too uncomfortable to enjoy it otherwise. To make up for this, I drank two glasses of Gatorade before I left the house and secretly worried that my inability to resist the siren song of the flush would compromise the ultrasound. I'm happy to report that was not the case at all. Tim later said that was mainly for early pregnancy ultrasounds and that the baby was large enough now for it not to matter. NOW you tell me. I suspect motherhood is just going to be like this for me...a series of worries that I will later find out are totally trivial. I have a feeling I'll be one of those that sterilizes everything her first baby touches, while the second or third child is allowed to eat dirt as long as it isn't TOO near the flowerbeds!

Anyway, back to the star of the show. He/She was endlessly fascinating today. We saw our baby sucking its thumb right away. Tim grabbed my hand because of course, he knew what it was right away. I needed someone to tell me what I was seeing, frankly, but then it was really cute. Our baby has a beautiful little mouth, by the way, with a full bottom lip and a curvy top lip. Here is a shot of the baby sucking its thumb. For those of you that see mostly shadows and blurs like me, what you're seeing goes like this: the arrow is pointing to the lips. This is a side view of the mouth, with the nose on top, and the upper and lower lips parted. The baby's hand is resting on its cheek, at the bottom of the picture, with it's thumb in the corner of its mouth. If you were to strike this pose (VOGUE!!!) you would lay your left hand alongside your face and place your left thumb in your mouth. If that makes any sense at all, I'll be shocked. The other shot is SmallWald's profile.

We also saw the baby grabbing its foot and the umbilical cord. I had a minor heart attack over that one! Oh, AND we saw the baby yawn. It was too precious. I had tears in my eyes and couldn't believe how much I adore this child already. I cannot WAIT to meet this little person. The main reason they do this screen, of course, is to make sure that the baby is healthy.

Below are the shots of the yawn (the top image) and the foot. Tell me THIS isn't a Tar Heel born and bred, just LOOK at that picture perfect team emblem display.

Of course, the main reason that they do all this is so that they can make sure the baby is healthy. I'm so happy to report that our baby looks to be in fantastic shape, and is still measuring out to be a big, healthy boy or girl. And yes, our ultrasound technician does know what sex the baby is, so someone in the world knows whether we are having a boy or a girl. It was REALLY tempting to find out, but I'm glad we are waiting. Finding out who and what this baby is will make our December delivery that much more exciting, I think. Have I mentioned that I'm excited yet?

To celebrate, Tim and I went to the Pizza Hut lunch buffet (ah, Philadelphia restaurants, we hardly knew ye) and then to Babies R Us for the first time! I was really gung-ho about this, but I have to say, we left completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of STUFF that babies require. Thank goodness for baby showers and E-Bay, right? Our task is a little bit daunting, but also very very (yes, you guessed it) exciting. I'm finally ready to start really preparing for this little person's arrival. Up until this point, a baby has felt more like a strong possibility than a reality. I tended to think in "ifs" and "maybes" ..."if this baby is ok", "if all goes well", "maybe we'll do this" ...but now it feels like WHEN . Like our baby isn't a possibility anymore, but a reality. It's a huge mental shift, and a very welcome one!

Montana 2009: Day 5

Today we drove all around the surrounding area.

BUT FIRST, MAJOR EXCITEMENT!!! I saw my first moose today. Three of them, to be exact. I feel somewhat guilty about this, because Tim has always been perturbed to be the only Ewald not to see a moose in the wild. Now somehow his little Southern belle of a wife has stolen a march on him, and seen not one, but THREE moose in the wild. How does that happen in a fair universe? It's a mystery. By the way, they are huge in person. I was glad to be in the car. I don't think I got a picture of all three of them, as there appeared to be a mom and two calves. The mom was mostly lying down in the tall grass, taking a break while she could, most likely. My pic is of the two calves.

I didn’t take many pictures, because it’s hard to do justice to the scenery from a moving car with a tiny little digital camera. We did see not one, but two, spectacular lakes and went to check out the local ski resort. I’d love to come back and ski sometime. Not when I’m heavily pregnant THIS winter, but maybe another time.
We found a wonderful picnic spot that was very scenic and peaceful and absolutely surrounded by wild sage. It smelled delicious. This picnic was much better than the one the day before, even if Steve did have a run in with the wild sage brush! He was very heroic about his injuries.

In the midst of our driving around, I realized that all the houses looked familiar to me. Oddly enough, this is because of one particular house in NC, on Badin Lake, to be exact. The Jacksons’ neighbor built a cabin beside their lake house out of logs that he flew down from Montana. This cabin had a very bright teal tin roof, which always struck me a somewhat obnoxious color, but now I realize he was just being accurate. The houses in Montana really do have brightly colored tin roofs. So I should apologize to this person for mentally slandering his choice of roof color. Now I say “Well done, way to do the thing all the way!”

This was our last full day at the cabin, and Bonnie and Sylvia actually left that night to go back to Helena. Mary and Steve and I plan to leave the next morning, after cleaning and straightening things up. This trip has been wonderful, but I’m looking forward to being back home. The extremes of weather and terrain have sculpted some incredible scenery and some extremely self reliant people. Native Montanans actually remind me a lot of Mainers…they both live in sparsely populated areas that are incredibly beautiful. I think it makes for a sort of “rugged individualism” that I can’t quite mimic. I appreciate their qualities, but always feel a secret relief to be fleeing back to long showers and easily accessible box stores. I do think it’s worth thinking about how self reliant and competent people here have to be to survive: that’s a skill that many Americans, including myself, have lost or never had. More on this subject later.

Montana 2009: Day 4

We went on a five mile hike today. We drove for about 20 minutes on dirt roads (which is what most of the roads are around here) and then parked at the trail head. We were doing a hike that was around 2.5 miles in and ended at a lake called Fuse Lake. The hike in went through at least three different types of terrain. We walked through some meadows which were filled with luxuriant plants and flowers, then into a pine forest, and by some extremely rocky areas that I presume were the result of rockslides or avalanches, although I can’t swear to it. The lake itself was beautiful, very cold and clear. Unfortunately , it was also the site of a squadron of flying insects: mosquitoes, wasps, and huge nasty black flies. Our picnic lunch was not quite as pleasant as we first envisioned and there was a lot of hasty gulping down on sandwiches while trying to keep moving. The enemy thoroughly routed us from our position and we left in defeat.

The hike was great, and I did really well on the way up. On the way down, I started to feel the jarring of the impact in my lower back, and I was really ready to sit down by the time we were done. We rested for a short while and went into Phillipsburg for dinner and a play. Phillipsburg is a cute little town, with a population of 920 people, according to the sign. It also claims to have the world’s largest candy store, which I find HIGHLY doubtful, but it is still pretty darn impressive, and I may have had a grizzly claw, turtle, and/or piece of fudge or ten. We ate dinner at a pool bar (the table kind, not the swimming kind) I had a DELICIOUS cheeseburger, made of local beef, and tator tots. I can’t even tell you how good those tator tots were. The play was called “Butterscotch” and was a small community theater production. There were only five people in the entire cast, but they did a great job. I was honestly surprised by how good it was! Community theater is something I almost never think about, but nearly always enjoy. I’d love to devote more time to exploring theater back in Rochester, but we’ll see if that happens in reality.

Montana 2009: Day 3

Today Bonnie and I toured the Cathedral of St. Helena and the Capitol before we drove up to the cabin. The Cathedral had lovely stained glass windows and the same air of “I’m beautiful and ponderous and sort of brooding” as most cathedrals do. Like if they were people, they’d be lovely and yet solemn beyond all words, like the rulers of fading kingdoms.

The Capitol was hot as Hades…maybe air conditioning is too Eastern big city for these rugged types. There was much gilding and marbling and frescoing of the proverbial lily and it wasn’t really to my taste.

After our tours, we met up with Sylvia and picked up a trailer hitch for a fishing boat (don’t ask) and drove about two hours west up to the cabin where Mary and Steve were staying. It was a great drive through mountains and valleys. The directions to the cabin were so priceless. They said things like, and I quote, “turn right by the unmarked gravel road past the Anaconda 23 miles sign” and “go over the cattle guard and bear right at the pine meadow” “go to .3 miles and curve left by the timber gate”. I loved it, it felt like an adventure right away.

The cabin itself was incredible, as snug and cozy and wood, wood, wood all around like a ship. The owner and his father made it by hand, which made it even more amazing, a real labor of love. I took some pictures of some of the more interesting details, which I will include here.

We had dinner with J. that night, a gentleman who is the father of Steve’s business friend that owns the cabin. He built most of the main cabin and bunkhouse himself. He was a very capable and independent sort of guy, the kind of person that’s really good with their hands and doesn’t need a lot of company. He used to raise Quarter Horses and he worked as a pick up guy in the rodeos in his youth. He had spent the last six winters in his bunkhouse beside the cabin…and he informed us that it was necessary to start plowing the roads in September. I can’t even imagine living somewhere where the snow starts falling in September. I would think it most get lonely, but I guess people around here find a way to manage. Our dinner, by the way, was yummy. Curried lentils, broccoli with bell peppers, and bbq chicken for the meat eaters, followed by apple crisp for dessert. We also had a bonfire that night, if you can call it that. J. had mentioned that he wanted some brush burned and Steve and Mary zealously hauled over brush until they had a small inferno going. Never mind roasting marshmallows, they could have roasted a bear on that thing. I think Steve had to stay up for about four hours until the embers burned down. Oops.

Montana 2009: Day 2

Bonnie and I explored Helena a bit today. We went down into the pedestrian mall in downtown Helena, which was really quaint. To be a small city, Helena supports an amazing amount of shops and restaurants. Sylvia postulates that this is because people from the surrounding rural areas come in and make a day of it in the big city. The pedestrian mall was divided into blocks. One of the blocks was called Bullwhacker Block, which was just…I guess I have a dirtier mind than the average Montanan. I blame my time in Philadelphia. Anyway, there is a big statue of the Bullwhacker nearby. He’s a large statue brandishing an even large whip. The other blocks were less picturesquely named, but no less interesting. We even saw a bookstore called Aunt Bonnie’s Books, which pleased Bonnie to no end, given the presence of Baby Ewald on this trip.

We met Sylvia for lunch and had some sandwiches at a little café with a beautiful view of the mountains off in the distance. This city offers a lot of visual drama, which I appreciate. I can imagine that when your spirits are low, seeing the spectacle of the Sleeping Giant off in the distance would do a lot to inspire you.

After lunch, Bonnie and I took a train/trolley/tram tour of Helena. We drove through the mansion district, which was lovely. Helena was extremely prosperous at one point in time and had more millionaires per capita than any city in America. There is a club in Helena called the Montana Club where the qualification for joining used to be 1) being male and 2) being a millionaire. There were 134 members at its founding. Now the qualifications are slightly less stringent: you can be male or female (but maybe not both at once) and the membership is $200 a year. Anyway, I say all this to say that there were lots of mansions for a small city. Most of them I didn’t care for, since they seemed sort of out of place in Montana, being mainly based on Tudor mansions and Italianate villas and Victorian dollhouses. Why not build something that embraces that massive sky and sweeping mountain vistas? I guess it wasn’t fashionable at the time, but it offended my sensibilities to see brooding faux castles in granite perched on Montana hillsides. Nonetheless, the tour was enjoyable. Our tour guide, complete with pin striped overalls and cap, announced that she was running for state representative next year. Only in America. I love it.

Montana Trip 2009: Day 1

This is a journal that I kept while I was traveling. It's obviously being posted several days (weeks?) after the fact, but I wanted to make sure that I included it on my blog.

Bonnie and I rode to Helena in one of those tiny little regional jets. I love those things, because you can gate check your bag. I hate the process of heaving heavy roller bags over my head into the overhead bins. My spaghetti noodle arms always tremble with the effort and I’ve come perilously close to decapitating innocent bystanders (bysitters?) in the aisle seat.

The ride was interesting, in part because of the people on the plane. There were young fellows with receding hairlines and cowboy hats (which explains the receding hairlines) and cowboy boots. They had a good chuckle when the flight attendant said that we were going to “HeLAINA”. The woman riding directly in front of Bonnie and I was traveling alone with three children. The children were beautiful…redheads with plump cheeks and little ski jump noses sprinkled with freckles. The woman herself had a long red braid and a very weathered face. Her skin was tan and creased with faint lines, like she was outdoors a lot in all types of weather. She looked very capable and tough, and I could easily picture her snapping open baling twine on flakes of hay or driving some kind of heavy machinery. Most likely this was all fantasy on my part…she probably lived in a nice house in downtown Helena and did heavy lifting only when it was time for a weekly grocery trip. But I secretly hope she DID live on a ranch…she fit my image of “Western woman” perfectly. She was beautiful in a rugged, outdoorsy way that had nothing to do with J. Crew or LL Bean catalogs and a lot to do with life.

Our plane touched down in the middle of a field. I guess that’s usually the case, right? But there was nothing around except little houses and waving grass. I didn’t realize that Helena was so small…it’s only about 50,000 people and that’s a generous estimate that includes surroundings. Helena proper is about 30,000 people. I think that may be smaller than my hometown. Despite its’ small size, the city is immediately charming and warm. I can’t wait to explore it further.

Good grief, my best intentions somehow never come to fruition. I wish I could dictate directly from my brain onto this thing, I'd have so many more posts. I'll work on it.

I just sent my Mom home after a long visit. It was very productive, we got a lot down on the house, and it was just nice to see her. Of course, now I'm sad and homesick, as is usually the case after a visitor from home leaves. I actually found myself thinking "I hate Rochester" when I was driving back. I don't think that's really true, I think I'm just feeling particularly far away from home at the moment. I'm trying to cheer myself up by reminding myself that I always have these feelings when I relocate. I can remember having moments of loathing Boston and Philadelphia at first, as hard as that is to believe now!

Tomorrow I am going to Montana with some of the in-laws, and I think that will be good for me. It will snap me out of my mood.

In baby news, all is great. My stomach is really starting to grow (I'll post pictures soon!) and the baby is a real flipper and kicker. It's wonderful to feel and amazing how much calmer I am now that it feels so "real" to me. I worry much less. And I feel great, which is a constant blessing.