I’m loving my early morning walks. It starts off cloudy and cool and then slowly the clouds burn off and the sun and bright blue sky arrive. I feel invigorated by the beautiful scenery, not to mention the endorphins. I really love working out.

Here are some photos of my breasts and I taking my tummy for a walk. (I swear my baby bulge isn’t quite that big yet — it’s just distorted by my camera phone and the fact that my shirt kept inching its way up my belly!).

I wrote this back in July and forgot to post it… Whoops!

This summer I’ve stumbled on a number of articles and useful websites rating chemical additives in basic everyday products: make-up, cleaners, sunscreens, and even toothpaste. Even products that sound green can be unsafe. For example, Simple Green All Purpose Cleaner contains additives that are hazardous to women’s reproductive health.

One of my favorite sites is the The Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database, which scores and ranks personal care products based on a synthesis of known and suspected hazards from databases of scientific literature. Search for your toothpaste, moisturizer, contact lens solutions, shampoo, deodorant, mouthwash, make-up, sunscreen, and more to identify unsafe chemicals. (If your particular brand isn’t listed you can search by ingredient instead.) I’ve already switched our sunscreen and daily moisturizer to avoid known cancer causing agents from seeping into our skin. I find it terrifying reading about what we put in our cosmetic products.

The best part of the Skin Deep site is that they rank products, so it’s fairly easy finding alternatives to our household favorites. Of course, just because they are natural doesn’t mean they are affordable. I’ve found that has been the most trying aspect of this whole thing: finding affordable and safe cosmetic products. You’d think it would cost more to process all those chemicals, but evidently not so much.

“The next Harry Potter movie comes out in November 2008. We’d better make sure we line up a babysitter so we can go see it.”

Thank you to our loving and supportive friends and family who have written and called us over the last few days offering congratulations! We love hearing from you and have been thrilled with your response!

Our company left on Friday, so now we are trying to get back to each and every one of you (over 70 people!), so please be patient with us. As we wrote in our family email, we’re trying to spend as little time as possible on the computer/phone and doing email at this time in our lives. What can we say?! We have other things going on.

In the meantime, we wanted to send out an enormous thank you and let you know how much we appreciate your well-wishes!

We’re into the second trimester now, so it’s time to share our news: yep, we’re having a baby! Finally, the news you have all been waiting for. As you can imagine, David and I are thrilled!

We’re planning on having a natural, at-home birth (under the guidance of two fantastic, very experienced midwives), so we won’t know the gender until our little one arrives in late January/early February.

So, here’s what I have really been up to this summer: Growing our peanut. Taking naps. Watching my belly grow. Developing porn star boobs (and the corresponding constant backaches). Wearing maternity clothes (shopping for some in the above picture). Going for lots of walks. Craving kiwi fruit and string cheese. Researching baby names. Feeling our little one move around.

Bliss.

Where have we been? We’ve had house guests. Many, many house guests. Only one more this week and then that’s it for the rest of the summer.

Driving to the airport, we came to a complete standstill on the highway. Was it a serious accident? Construction? No, it turned out to be rubbernecking because of a photo op. Two car loads of tourists (who else could they be?!) who were in a minor fender bender, took turns posing for photographs with the very tall and distinguished local policeman in front of their cars. I’ve never seen anything like it.