Happy Birthday, Bill!

We had a great early celebration of Bill's birthday yesterday, but today is Bill's actual birthday. Hopefully work will be easy and fast for him today, and then we'll head out for a great birthday dinner tonight!

Weeks 23 to 25 - Still Growing!

Here I am at 23 weeks - the baby is the size of a large mango!

24 weeks - an ear of corn! This picture isn't in our kitchen, but is in our living room, which is undergoing construction. We are building additional storage - I think we'll need it pretty soon!

25 Weeks - A rutabaga (what is a rutabaga?). Amazingly, she's 13.5 inches long and 1.5 pounds. The construction on our house continues - hopefully we can do a shot of the final product in a week or so!

We've had a really busy summer so far. We spent last weekend in Michigan with my college friends Shayna and Sandra (and their husbands and kids). It was a fantasic and relaxing weekend! And my very sweet friends sent us home with some fun baby gifts and lots of hand-me-down maternity clothes.

This weekend we had a birthday party for Bill - a cookout on the harbor islands (3o minutes from Boston). It was a fantastic Sunday, full of boats, burgers, and whiffle ball. What more could you want?!

Tonight we're headed to a celebratory dinner for our friend Oppie. He just finished riding 175 miles from Boston to Cape Cod in the MS Bike Ride. An amazingly nice gesture, as he dedicated his ride to me. He raised over $3500 for research on multiple sclerosis. We are very thankful for having such a great friend!

22 Weeks - A Spaghetti Squash

Here I am at 22 weeks! I'm getting bigger all the time, but am still very comfortable and not feeling too big at all. I'm sure that will come, though!

Our busy summer is definitely underway, and this has been a busy week!

Last weekend we were in DC for my cousin's graduation. We also went to a Red Sox game at Camden Yards.

After the graduation, my parents came up to Boston for the awards ceremony for a pro bono award I won. The ceremony was fantastic - a couple of my former asylum clients gave really nice speeches - and I had a great time with my parents.

(Here's a picture with Larry, a partner at my firm, and my clients from Tanzania)

Yesterday, we bought a crib and crib mattress (and some other baby stuff) at Ikea (thanks for the crib, mom and dad!). Having a crib (albeit in a box) in our actual apartment makes this seem much more real! Then my mom and I went shopping for fabric for the baby's room. My mom is going to sew a bed skirt, blanket, pillows and a few other things. I'm really excited about all of it - I wish we could get the baby's room together now, but I think that would be a bit early!

Today, Bill and I had our first of two Natural Childbirth classes! It was a long day of class, but we learned a lot, and it was interesting. There was one ridiculous couple there, where the husband actually asked what it felt like to have a contraction (you know, so he could spot it when he had one?) and whether you could bring balloons into the labor room. He had some other spectacular ones, but I can't remember the rest.

We'll go back next week for the second class - and will hopefully make it through what may be the less "modest" videos. It's sort of nice to take the class so far in advance, so that getting the information isn't quite as immediate. We'll have a few months to digest all of this before the big day!