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!

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!

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!

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.

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).

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!

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!

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.

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!

Ethan and I are very happy. We already have lots of plans for the bedroom that will become the baby’s nursery. My family is also excited, which is really fun to see. I can’t wait for my little baby to grow up and pop out. Right now baby is only about 2 1/2 inches long, but is growing rapidly. November feels like forever away, I can’t wait to meet my little baby!

Once the baby does get here I am planning on taking the full 6 weeks of paid maternity leave offered by Gustavus. That will basically take me from the middle of fall term through to the end. I will start work again in January. And I am still planning on accompanying the Gustavus orchestra to China in January. There are lots of other plans that need to be made between now and November, but we’ve got time. ^_^

I will definitely be updating this blog as the pregnancy progresses! So keep coming back! In the mean time here’s the first ultra sound pic!

On Sunday Ethan and I left the con earlier than planned and met up with my parents and brother at the zoo. Then we went back to their house for dinner. Dinner was really good, so I ended up eating a bit too much, and regretted that on the drive home. hah. My own silly fault.

I think the stress of the con (mostly eating badly and getting not enough sleep) has taken its toll, and I think I’ve come down with a cold. Whee. Today is going to be a long work day, I think. I need a nap.

Last week Ethan and I went to Chicago. Ethan was doing a poster session at the EduCause conference and I was tagging along. I had never really been to Chicago before. I have driven through it, and I went to the out-skirts of Chicago for an orchestra trip in 9th grade, but this was my first time downtown. It is a pretty nice city. We had wonderful weather and a beautiful hotel, so it was overall very nice and relaxing. I got to see Yi, my good friend and roommate from college, and that was great. I hadn’t seen her since my wedding. We had a nice steak dinner then got drinks at this place with an amazing view of the city. That was definitely the highlight of the trip.

Now I’m back at work. Gustavus is approaching midterms, so things are a little busier than normal this week and next. The first week of April is spring break for students, but i still am working every day but Friday, which I am taking off so I can have an extra day at MiniCon (Minneapolis’s longest-running sci-fi convention). Last year Ethan and I took spring break off to travel to Japan, but this year we’re doing our main “vacation” after school is out, to go to the Star Wars Celebration IV in L.A. and then to Boston to visit friends, and New Hampshire for my cousin’s wedding. It should be a fun trip. I’m hoping to get a costume sewn for the Star Wars convention, but we’ll see if I have the time, what with work and class (I am still taking Chinese).

Well, that’s enough for now. Have a good weekend!

Also, since I last posted the regular hockey season has come to an end. We ended in 4th place (out of 12) with a record of 14-4-4. (good thing I’m not a superstitious Chinese person, or that would look really bad…) The state tournament starts in a week. We will play three games, against Synergy, Mystics and Blast, and our record in those 3 games will determine if we make it to the championship or consolation games. I hope we do well, although I’m nervous that we have forgotten how to play with 10 skaters and will get tripped up by that. We have a practice this weekend, hopefully we’ll get some good practicing done, practices are a bit hot-or-miss with us…

Other things that have happened since January… well, we had a great Lunar New Year celebration at my parent’s house, with lots of fun decorations and good food. I tried making steamed dumplings for the first time from scratch, and although I learned some lessons about not over-rising or over-steaming them, they were tasty. We also had Ethan’s home-made jiaozi (pork dumplings), mapo dofu, Chinese broccoli with garlic and oyster sauce, rice, and egg tomato soup. I will post pictures in the picture section soon!

Also, Ethan and I went to MarsCon last weekend. It was fun. The media guest of honor was Don S. Davis who played General Hammond on Stargate SG-1. It was cool to meet him (I spoke to him while waiting for an elevator) but he was a little weird. The story of how he just sort of fell into acting was pretty funny. Basically he got his first part because he was the only guy strong enough to lift the female lead (she was very tall), and he hadn’t wanted to be in a play at all, he just worked on the set. Anyway, it was interesting to hear him talk. And it was fun to see friends and meet new people at the con parties (we hosted a MiniCon party room, which was a nice laid-back party). I was really tired though, so it wasn’t the most exciting con ever.

The spring term is in full swing, both at Gustavus where I work, and at The U of MN, where I take an evening Chinese course. At work I’ve been helping/co-teaching/guest-lecturing in Mark’s Intro to East Asian history course. It has been fun, even if the class isn’t organized the way I would have chosen. Today we had a fun activity where the students debated the importance of the influence of China, Korean and indigenous culture on Early Japan. I think the Korean group won the debate, but they did have a debater on the team after all. In the class that I am taking at the U, we just had our mid-term on Wednesday, which was half oral (a 2-3 min presentation) and half written (listening, writing, and reading comprehension). It was not too bad, I am hoping for a good solid A. ^_^

Now I should get back to work. Hopefully I will get back into the habit of updating this website. I will be adding New Years pictures soon, and look for a new section coming towards the end of April.