I briefly thought about naming this post: “2007: the Year of Carrie’s Pregnancy,” but decided that seemed too self-absorbed though it probably fits better.

In the same vein as last year, here’s a summary of our year.

January:
Carrie goes to Oregon to surprise her cousin Julia for her 21st birthday. We celebrate with delicious food, awesome crafting, fun movies, dips in the hot tub, and lots of family time.

February:
Carrie turns 27 years old. We celebrate with Kenny and Yuni at the UC Berkley Botanical Gardens. David rocks his first annual review. We also attend a Kenyon College alumni event up here in wine country. We even visit the beach since it’s 75 degrees out.

March:
Laura visits us on her spring break. We tour wineries, hit the San Francisco sights (including the modern museum), visit the beach, and eat a ton of great food. Also this month, Carrie begins volunteering at the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens.

April:
David visits Tokyo, Japan for work and has a fantastic time eating lots of sushi and touring the city! Also this month, we think about buying a townhouse, but decide the housing market is about to crash. (Thank goodness we waited. Oh boy have prices dropped here in California.)

May:
David transitions over to a new position at work that they created especially for him. We head to Ohio for Laura’s graduation! We see many dear friends and family and finally get to meet Laura’s college friends. Carrie takes a Japanese ceramics class.

June:
We learn that we’re pregnant! (Evidently David just needs to look at Carrie to knock her up!) Carrie spends a day with Kenyon friends Amanda, Abby, and mentor Siobhan, tagging along on a wetlands tour of Napa County.

July/August:
David turns 27 and we celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary. We have a string of visitors: Carrie’s aunt Deborah-Miriam and cousin Julia, David’s brother Lee and his girlfriend Geneva, Carrie’s mom, and friends Josh and Adam. We make it to the second trimester and finally share the news with friends and family.

September:
We take a fantastic natural building workshop and camp out on site for the week. We learn a ton, feel so inspired, meet wonderful people, and have one awesome family vacation. Also that week David begins a graduate level computer science course online at Columbia.

October:
Carrie begins attending two prenatal yoga classes and meets some awesome people. We move from our one-bedroom apartment to a two bedroom-house rental. We start having regular dinners (and knitting nights) with the West County crowd once every other week.

November:
We celebrate our important anniversary. Carrie’s mom visits and we spend the week getting ready for the baby’s arrival. David heads to Colorado for work and spends some quality time in Fort Collins with his brother (with a quick stop in our beloved Boulder). Kate-Robin flies up from San Diego to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. Carrie also moves this blog into WordPress and it’s so. much. better.

December:
Baby presents start to arrive! Natalia comes to visit. Carrie joins a mama-baby group, makes more new friends, and then is put on bedrest. We also hear lots of good news, including that David rocks both his grad class this semester and his end-of-year review, which earns him a promotion. We see Selena for the first time in almost a decade and meet her boyfriend Taka. And spend much of the month getting ready for the baby… We’re finally in the home stretch!

Overall, we’ve had a fantastic year. We both feel that right now we are the happiest we’ve ever been in our lives. We’ve met wonderful friends (one of our big goals for the year) and been much more social this year, we’ve each maintained a regular yoga practice, we’ve traveled and seen many friends and family (as described above), and we’re on the cusp of becoming parents.

As awesome as this year was, we are so excited for the year to come. Happy New Year!

We had such a treat this weekend. My friend Selena, who I went to high school with, visited us on Saturday with her boyfriend Taka. I hadn’t seen her in almost 8 years, yet it was as if hardly any time had passed, with us clicking immediately and feeling completely at ease. That’s one of the best things about close friends: once you’ve formed a bond, it is easy to pick up where you’ve left off, regardless of how much time has passed. I had such a great time getting caught up, discussing the travels, studies, and adventures of the past decade. It thrills me that Selena is doing amazing things with her life. I firmly believe she will be a fantastic doctor.

As an extra special treat, they brought along the most yummy oranges and a delectable book for the baby called Food For Thought. Oh, the photos are fantastic! We also love its educational component as its broken into five sections: shapes, colors, numbers, letters, and opposites (above are 6 of the 7 fish made out of vegetables!). So creative and fun. I foresee hours of entertainment and learning ahead of us, pouring over this book with the little one.

Thank you both for a fantastic visit and the awesome gifts!

Here’s the question that we’re really getting curious about…

Are we having a girl or a boy?

(Your guess is as good as ours!)

Don’t forget to vote in our Month Six and Month Seven polls!

(And, yes, I know that we are almost to Month Nine… We’ll post our last monthly poll soon!)

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with spoon!

Commissioned especially for the baby. Such an amazing present.
Thank you, Diana and Bob!

This is what I’ve been up to for the past week:

I’ve never spent so much time on the couch. Constantly lying on my side is rough…
thankfully I am finally getting the hang of eating, reading, typing, etc. with one hand.
I even spent a little time online yesterday and today for the first time in a week.

This has been the week of wonderful news. Congratulations to my best friend Ranni, her husband Ricardo and their daughter Izzi on their newest addition: a baby girl named Liliana born at home on Christmas morning! And to two fabulous couples who recently have gotten engaged: my friend Charleen and her boyfriend Matt, and our cousin Rachel and her longtime boyfriend Ed! We are so thrilled for you guys and wish you the best.

UPDATED: Congratulations also to David for earning an A+ in his graduate level computer science course at Columbia!

I love having David home (and free from work) for the holiday weekend. Good eats (seared scallops, challah french toast, bagels with lox, vegetable casserole, spiced cider), awesome handmade gifts (from David’s folks), and great movies (Stardust, episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus). David has been such a trooper: He’s gotten a ton of things checked off our to-do list and has been waiting on me hand and foot (never once complaining, in true David fashion!). Such an awesome and supportive partner. I am one lucky woman.

The baby is still cooking!

Thank you to everyone for your cards, emails, phone calls, facebook messages, visits, and blog comments! I’m spending little to no time on the internet, and am extremely exhausted (third trimester!), so I haven’t gotten back to many of you, but I wanted to let you know how much your words of support and love mean to us! THANK YOU!

And now I’m back to the couch…

My midwives have put me on house confinement. (I know, it sounds like I’m being shipped off to a nunnery!) I’ll spare you the biological details, sufficient to say that my body is tittering on the edge of going into labor and it’s just too early. So, I’ve been told to take it easy (ha!), take a variety of natural supplements to postpone labor, and lay down for the next three weeks. No more yoga or trips in the car. Lots of books and movies and down time. Thankfully David can work from home, so I have someone to bring me food and generally try to keep my spirits up. The upshot is my labor should be fairly quick and easy… and my midwives are completely nonplussed about the whole thing. So, I am trying to chill out and relax… and not get too bored. Hey, this will probably be the last bit of relaxing I’ll be doing for a long time.

Let’s all say together, “Baby, stay in mama at least 4 more weeks.”
(Technically, we have 7 weeks to go.)