The Holidays and After

We had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner with Linda, Peter's mom, going trad German with lentil soup (delicious, made by Peter) cold cuts, cheese, and rolls, and a really yummy arugula, pomegranate, feta, orange, beet salad, which I was supposed to make, but Linda ended up making, because after I made a cake I fell asleep on the sofa. Yes, I'm starting to get more tired than usual again, not as bad as first trimester sleepiness, but still pretty tired. I'm hoping to avoid the grumpusing that I succumbed to during the first 12 weeks, though.

Oh! The cake! We'd gone to Chez Panisse on the 23rd, courtesy of the ever-and-always generous Linda, so I pulled out Chez Panisse Desserts and followed (kind of) its chocolate cake recipe. In case you're wondering, it involves 6 eggs (separated), more than a pound of butter (oh yeah), and a surprisingly minimal amount of sugar. I quadrupled the chocolate. And added three small grated zucchinis. The result? Super moist, dense, cannot-finish-a-skinny-piece-it's-so-rich chocolate cake. I whipped cream and served with raspberries. It was yummy.

Baking really centers me throughout this pregnancy. Granted, I can't eat hardly any of these baked goods, but my friends and co-workers sure love me. Well, Julia claims I'm trying to fatten her up (girl is skinny as a rail, it's true), and is excited that I will soon have a baby to cook for instead of her.

Linda left for LA bright and early on Christmas morning to see Moni and the grandkids, and Peter and I slept in, walked the dogs, and headed over to Kristin and Cameron's for Tom and Jerrys and sharing of the chocolate bird cake. Karen and Thaddeus met us there as well, and everyone enjoyed their Christmasy drinks and dense cake (except for me, but that is a-okay). The Tom and Jerrys did smell delicious, and reminded me of being at Karl's Bar (or was it another bar?) when I was four or five, when they'd serve the same drink.

Today we went to relatively flat Point Pinole and hiked for around five miles. It's not really a hike, given the flatness, it's a walk, and for me it's slightly slow walking at this point. Still, we did it in under 2 hours, which I thought was nothing to sniff at. I mean, look at the size of this belly. That's a lot to carry around at this point.
I'm about 7 1/2 months. There's still 9 weeks or so to go. I'm definitely feeling more awkward and cumbersome given the size of my belly. It's also weird to feel how the dude's movements have changed. I used to just be able to feel his kicks, more than anything, but now, I can feel him moving around a lot more, hands, legs, poky elbows and knees, all crawling around inside me. It's slightly creepy, but mostly fun to feel. He's definitely objecting to any bending from the waist, so I'm spending most of my time bending over with ballet-esque moves (sans the grace)or squatting low to the ground.

If we are blessed with a healthy baby and healthy birth recovery, as I hope we are, I am pretty confident I can handle everything from the get-go, save the patrolling and exercising of Ozzie and Haiko; okay, well, mostly of Haiko. He is crazy energetic. We spent half of the walk playing stick ball with him today, and the other half he ran around in giant circles for the rest of the walk. And he was only minimally tired. Then he puked in the car on the way back, but that is another story. Mostly I'm just worried about bundling up baby, me, and the dogs in March weather in Berkeley and getting the pups' ya-yas out to some degree. I guess we may be doing some Tilden loops. We'll see. I think that we're going to have to rely on the kindness of friends and neighbors, as well as increased dog walks from our lovely dog walker Ashley.