Happy day after Christmas, all! I have posted a new album of Christmas pix...and one showing my finally visible baby bump!

 

Christmas was sort of a whirlwind for us, but a really nice one! We went down to San Jose on Friday and stayed until Sunday so we could spend some time with Chris's family and so we could see my best friends (Lisa and Jeanette) and their hubbies. This is the second year we've done a pre-Christmas lunch/brunch thing with them, which is a lot of fun because we rarely get to see both couples at the same time. (Lisa and Chris live in Seattle, so we're lucky if we get to see them twice a year or so! Jeanette and Brian live in Folsom, so we get to see them a bit more often, but a get-together is always excellent!)

 

Chris's parents had the family over for dinner and presents on Saturday night, and then Sunday Chris and I met up with his friend Megan before heading back to Roseville.

 

Christmas Eve was a frenzy of cooking and cleaning for us! My Mom came over and spent hours doing odious tasks like chopping onions and peeling apples to help me out as I prepared much of our Christmas feast. Meanwhile, Chris cleaned and straightened the house and yard so it would look decent when people came over.

 

Chris's parents drove up on Christmas Eve to spend Christmas Day with us, which was really nice! Chris hasn't gotten to spend Christmas Day itself with his parents in a couple years, so it was a really nice treat for us both to have them come. My sister and her family came up to spend Christmas with us as well, which was wonderful because we hadn't gotten to spend Christmas Day with them in a couple years either. (Last year everyone was sick, so Christmas sort of imploded.) And my Grandma was able to come spend the day with us too. It was a full house—13 people in our tiny, tiny living room. So it was cozy, but a lot of fun!

 

The food turned out decent (if I do say so myself), with the only mishap being that I burned the rolls and thus set off the smoke alarm! Ah well, I always burn the rolls. It's expected now....

 

I got really wonderful gifts from everyone, but the best thing of all was a "gift" from little Pigwidgeon--he FINALLY made an appearance! No, I didn't give birth 3.5 months early! But I DID finally "pop!" Just in the past couple days, I have actually gone from looking just rather pudgy to looking pregnant. Yahoo!! I have been WAITING for that! To see the evidence, take a look at the newly posted photo album....

 

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

I've had a couple people ask me when I'm going to post a picture of my belly. And I keep saying, "When you can actually TELL that I'm pregnant!" Last night, for the first time, someone actually recognized that I'm pregnant with me telling them! So, without further ado, I've added a picture of Chris and I, taken at his company Christmas party last night. I think you can mostly tell I'm pregnant only because it's a maternity dress, and thus it's really billowy over the belly. Today, I'm back to wearing sweats, and it's really not terribly apparent. Which is kind of a bummer—now that I feel Little Pigwidgeon scrambling around in my belly often, I can't wait to actually develop a nifty little "baby bump!" But, for the moment, I just look like I have a nifty litte "beer gut"—which is kind of sad given that I don't even drink beer!

 

The other picture in our new album is of the dogs. Luna has gotten rather territorial about three of the many dog beds in the house. When we go into another room, she will immediately race to her favorite bed in that room and steal it before Bitsy can get near it. But Bitsy is sly and quiet and subversive—she has figured out that I spend most of my time during the day in the den, working, and if she just waits it out, I will come back into the den within a few minutes of going to another room. So, whereas Luna follows me to whatever room I go into, Bitsy quietly steals the bed in the den at first opportunity and refuses to move, despite Luna nagging her when we come back into the room. At which point Luna will finally just plop down sadly onto the edge of the bed and use Bitsy as her own personal pillow. I think she hopes to annoy Bitsy to the point of moving, but it really never works. Chris managed to capture a cute picture of this "dance" of theirs, so I thought a posting on the blog was in order.

So, we had our 20-week appointment with the nurse practitioner on Friday, and our little Pigwidgeon is doing beautifully! His heartbeat was a rapid 157bpm again—on the very high end of normal. We could hear something other than just the heartbeat with the Doppler-thingy--sort of a swooshing sound. We think he may have been flailing around in there or something—the nurse practitioner said he was quite active! So, as usual, he was being a hyper little fellow.

 

Pigwidgeon is starting to move around quite a bit these days—mostly in the evening and in the wee hours of the morning. I think he's a night owl, like his papa.