Ali’s Life

This has been an amazing year. I can’t believe all that has happened. New job, new home, and of course new baby!

Kaylee will be 7 weeks old tomorrow. The time has FLOWN by since she was born. She’s already smiling and laughing and really starting to interact with the world around her. And she gets cuter by the day, I swear! ^_^ She likes to hang out in her bouncy seat and watch us. She also likes her tummy-time mat and huge triangle stuffed block thing that she can slide down by wiggling on her tummy. She’s sleeping better, although we still have some rough nights (like this past Tuesday night, when she pretty much wouldn’t sleep all night! Ahh!) Ethan and I are tired of course, but also really enjoying her. Sometimes I think she gives me more energy than I used to have. lol.

I’m back at work now. Transitioning to being back at work has been hard, I miss her during the day, especially on days like today when work is really quiet (Macalester is on winter break). But knowing she’s home with Ethan for a while yet makes it better. We’ll see how I feel in February when I take her to daycare.

I think my body is healing quite well from the birth. I got back on the ice for the first time at 5 week post-partum and it was GREAT. My team isn’t doing too well this season, but I’m just glad to get the chance to play. I’m working at getting back into shape. I’m back into most of my pre-pregnancy clothes, but I still have more to loose before I’m satisfied. I want to hit my goal weight by my friend Josh’s wedding in early May.

With the New Year almost here I’ve made 3 new resolutions:

1. Get down to my goal weight by May 10th

2. Breastfeed Kaylee for at least 6 months, but try to make it to 1 year

3. Write and submit a presentation proposal for the next IALLT conference.

Happy New Year!

Kaylee is now 3 weeks old and Ethan and I have learned a lot about parenting a newborn over the past 3 weeks. Kaylee is being breastfed, and after a few latching stumbles at the beginning she has been doing wonderfully. Now we are also feeding her pumped milk from a bottle to get her ready for when I return to work in December. At her 2 week appointment she had gained 4 1/2 oz over her birth weight, which is excellent. Overall she is a very good baby. She doesn’t fuss much, although she does prefer to be held rather than sleep in her crib, but she’s getting better at that.

Our sleep schedule is totally crazy right now (I am writing this post at 3 am for crying out loud!). When Ethan is home it is pretty easy to take shifts and both get enough sleep, but during the week when I’m home with Kaylee it gets harder. Luck for me, my family has been amazingly helpful. My mom has come over a few times to watch Kaylee, and has helped me with housework. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I am so glad we moved up here to Apple Valley!

I start back to work part time a week from Monday, then full-time after the New Year. Ethan will work part time while I am, then be home full time for the rest of January. So that means Kaylee doesn’t go to daycare until February, which is good because at this point I can’t imagine her at daycare, I hope by February I feel differently. I do look forward to going back to work while Ethan’s home with her though. I love spending time with her, but I am going a bit stir-crazy being in the house all the time.

Having a baby is hard, but totally amazing. She is so adorable, it’s unbelievable! I love looking into her cute little face, kissing her cheeks, and snuggling her. Right now she’s sleeping soundly on my chest. People always think their kids are the cutest, but seriously, SHE’S SO CUTE! She has her dad’s eyes and my mouth and dimple. I look forward to watching her grow up and seeing what other parts of Ethan and I emerge in her.

She is so worth all the pain and stress of pregnancy. It seems crazy, but I actually do want to do it all again in a year or two to give her a little brother or sister. heh. If you had asked me in the third trimester I would have told you I never wanted to be pregnant again. But babies are amazing and just make life shiny.
We are posting pictures every week on http://gallery.ethanet.com, so please take a look!

On Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 6:37 pm Kaylee Rose Sommer was born! She was born via emergency c-section after 14 hours of labor and 2 hours of pushing. It wasn’t the birth I had wanted, but Kaylee is amazing and I love her to death. The first week with her has been tiring but magical. She’s so cute!! Pictures are available at http://gallery.ethanet.com.

I started my maternity leave today. No, the baby is not here yet, but I planned to start my leave on her due date anyway. Working while 40+ weeks pregnant would just be a bit too much for me. So here I am. The baby is less that 4 hours away from being officially “late” and as there are no signs of real labor yet, it looks like she’s going to make it. I am extremely anxious for her to hurry up and get here, as is Ethan. If she is not here by 41 weeks (next week) I will be induced. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it’s nice to know that the end is in sight, even if it might be a full week away.

Once she’s born I’m sure there will be lots of e-mails going out, and pictures thrown up on gallery.ethanet.com, and if I manage to bring my computer to the hospital I might eve get a blog post up before we get home. But no promises. Right now all I can think of is holding my little girl. It is extremely frustrating that there is nothing I can do but wait, but that’s how nature designed us crazy mammals, I guess. I’ve tried eating spicy food, taking walks (I have clocked so many miles at the Mall of America, it’s getting kind of sad), and all that stuff to no avail. I guess she just takes after her mother (I was something like 18 days late) and I will just have to be patient.

Hopefully this is my last post as a pregnant woman! Take care!

Since my last post I have started working at my new job at Macalester. I’ve actually been there over 2 months now. I really like this job. September was a bit stressful, especially with the added stress of pregnancy, but I got through it and I think I am really getting into the swing of things. It has been good to get to know my coworkers, the faculty I support, and the students who work for me. My coworkers in ITS are pretty awesome. They are really fun to work with and have made me feel very at home in the department. I am still getting to know the faculty (there are so many of them!) but the ones that I have gotten to know are nice and interesting and generally enjoyable to work with. And my student workers have been great to, although I still hope to get to know them a lot better over the course of the year.

So all in all I am happy and settled into my new job, and Ethan and I are all settled into our new house in Apple Valley. We even have the baby’s room all ready for her. I have a little less than a month to go until her due date, and I am getting really impatient. I can’t wait to meet her, and hold her, and do all those parenting things. I also can’t wait to be not pregnant. 9 months is just too long, man. But I’m sure she’ll be worth it. ^_^ Once she gets here I will be taking 6 weeks off of work, and then go back in late December. It’s weird to take off so much time so early in my career at Macalester, but that’s how things are so I’m sure it will all work out fine.

So that’s the short version of life these past few months. I hope that once Kaylee is born I will take the time at home to keep this updated and post lots of pictures of my baby girl.  Keep looking at my website to see more pictures and updates and stuff.

This blog is always the last to hear bg news…

Anyway! I got a new job! Starting August 6th, I will be working at Macalester College in St. Paul as the Academic Information Associate for Languages and Fine Arts! I am really excited. This job should be similar to my job at Gustavus, but with a whole bunch of bonuses, including a great location, diverse student body, more vacation, and the chance to work with other Carleton grads. I am super excited, but also nervous. I have a million things I want to do when I get there, and I only will have about 3 months before I have to take off for maternity leave. What timing.

Due to the job change, Ethan and I are selling out house (if you are interested in a 3br 2ba house in St. Peter, let me know!) and moving into a rental townhouse in Apple Valley. We sign the lease tonight! The townhouse is really cute, and actually quite big for the cost of rent. I can’t wait to get moved in so I can FINALLY start to set up the baby’s room for real. I can’t wait to get curtains ordered and furniture set up and all that jazz.

So this friday is my last day at Gustavus. There are definitely things I am going to miss about this job.  Mostly I’m going to miss my student workers. They were so awesome. I only hope that the students I have working for me at Macalster are awesome too. Otherwise I might have to force a couple transfers. ^_~

Anyway, that’s the big news. I can’t wait to get all settled in the new place and new job. It is really helping keep my mind off how slowly this pregnancy seems to be going (I am 24 weeks now).

As I was cleaning out my messy messy work computer, I came across 3 sets of videos that I had been meaning to post on the site for a long time. The videos are pretty cool. One is the video that was made of my Tianjin Seminar trip out to Datong and Inner Mongolia. It is really neat, although quite long for an internet video. I’m in the process of uploading it to YouTube (in 3 separate parts) as well. Another video is from the first GTS paintball outing. It was super fun, and the video is neat because it shows Ethan, the sole survivor on his team, getting taken out by somebody who Dave seems convinced is me. I don’t think it is, but whatever. The third thing is actually two short videos from my J-term Chinese course. I invited my college professor, Qiguang Zhao, to come talk to the class and teach them a little taijiquan. The videos are of the taijiquan. I also uploaded a windows media file version of my wedding video, since I know some people have been unable to watch the quicktime versions.

Whew, that was a lot of uploading. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them. There are more updates I would like to make to the page soon, but it’s time for me to head out for the day. Also, there are some things in the works in my life, that I would love to share, but have to wait a while yet. ^_^ Anyway, have a good day!

Hello. I recently returned from the IALLT (international association for language learning technology) conference at Tufts University in MA. The content of the conference was very good. I just to see what other colleges are doing, and get some new ideas for my own school (as well as a few good ego-strokes when I saw something we were doing better than others). Unfortunately the organization of the conference was terrible. The hotel we were at was supposed to be a mile from campus, but ot was more like 2 1/2 miles, which is a bit much for a pregnant woman to do in late June. And there were a few other things that made me frustrated. But overall it was a good conference. I hope to go to the IALLT conf in 2009 in Georgia.

Anyway, now I’m home and back at work. Ethan and I are getting started on some summer projects. I am now 21 weeks pregnant with my very active little girl. Hmm, I think that’s about it for now, this was a short update. Take care!

I have not been good about updating. Hmm. Well, it is summer now, which means the campus is quiet and big projects can be done. For my center, this means tearing down a wall and expanding the international tv and movie viewing room. It will be pretty awesome once it’s done, and I hope it will encourage students to hang out and watch foreign language tv more. I know that the comfy couches and relaxing space in the Asian Languages Lounge at Carleton got lots of students to sit and watch Japanese and Chinese TV and discuss language, so I guess I’m trying to duplicate that here at Gustavus.

In non-work-land life is going well. We found out a few weeks ago that we are having a GIRL!! There are some more ultra-sound pictures up in the baby part of the page, and the 16 week ultra-sound video is available on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d25WWUneoY

We are thrilled to be having a little girl. We are still doing the room in blues and greens with a dinosaur theme. It will be so cute. We have a name picked out, but you’ll have to ask me in person, because I’m not sharing it with teh internets yet.

At the end of May Ethan and I took a nice, long, and action-packed vacation. First we flew out to L.A. for the Star Wars Celebration IV convention, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars film. It was pretty awesome. There were something like 40,000 - 60,000 people there each day,  but the center was big and there were lots of things to do, so the lines weren’t as bad as at Celebration III. I got to see and meet Carrie Fischer (Princess Leia) and Anthony Daniels (C-3PO). And we bought a 2+ foot tall Yoda doll for Baby.

After 4 days of the convention, we took the 5th day in L.A. to visit with my friend Amy, who had been my roommate first term senior year. We went to Rodeo Drive (spelling??) and then to the beach. It was really fun, despite the sunburn and 3 blisters I got. Her family had us over for dinner and then took us to the airport for our red-eye to Boston.

In Boston we spent 3 days hanging out with another good college friend of mine, Josh (http://www.joshourisman.com) and his girlfriend Jessi. That was fun too. We got lots of good food, although it’s hard to be in a good Irish pub in Boston when you can’t have a beer. We left Boston on Friday to head up to New Hampshire for my cousin’s wedding. (I told you it was a long trip.) The wedding was nice, although my favorite part was going swimming at Connie and Nick’s lake home.

Anyway, that’s the vacation. I’ve been back at work for about a week now. We’re actually leaving again soon for a conference, but I’ll tell you about that once I’ve gone. In the mean time, take a look around the baby part of the page, as it is the most up-dated at the moment. Bye.

I have made it safely into the second trimester! Baby and I are still doing well. My tummy is starting to really grow, and my nausea and tiredness of the first trimester has faded away. Although now I get super hungry instead! It is really neat and kind of weird to see and feel my belly grow. I’ll having a hard time imagining that I can really stretch to accommodate a full-sized baby! I put up more text and pictures in the baby section of the page, so take a look. Also, I should be finding out the gender in about a week and a half, so check back here then for the news!

In other news, my Chinese class at the U of MN is now over. It was a great experience, although quite taxing during the time that over-lapped with my morning-sickness period. I’m glad I took the class though. Hopefully I’ll have the chance to use my Chinese often enough to keep in practice.

I also added pictures from Chinese New Year to my pictures section. Take a look! Although I warn you, it may make you hungry!