Christmas and 23 weeks

Hello everyone,

While it may be 4 days late, I am now languishing in the over-full stupor of a delicious Christmas dinner, trying to find room for the pumpkin pie.

Christmas was pleasantly drawn out this year. Brent and I braved the mayhem on Christmas eve to finish our shopping (or so we hoped). Then on the 25th we acted as if it were our night-before-Christmas as Brent's parents flew in that night and we were planning on celebrating Christmas on the 26th. Unfortunately, neither of us had actually finished shopping yet and were both surprised to find that even the big stores respect the sanctity of the holiday and are therefore not open to late-LATE shoppers like us!

Then after a wonderful reunion with Brent's parents Christmas night, we celebrated Christmas together on the 26th, including a trip to Coronado to walk on the beach and explore the Hotel Del Coronado before an impromptu Mexican dinner at a place Diane and Elliott used to go to 30 years ago as cooking Christmas dinner at that point would have meant eating at around 10pm!

All the holiday fun has also made me a bit late with my latest pregnancy update. So to catch up, and use one of our Christmas presents (a tape measure), I've thought of a little weekly routine. So, here's week one!

Week: 23 (118 days to go till the due date [DD for short])

Jen's belly size: 38.5 inches and growing daily...

Baby's size: a very large mango - the kind that weigh over 1lb.

This week's pregnancy complaint: Bleedin' gums! Yes, that's literal. And they're so sore! Something about hormones and increased blood flow, etc. But strangely they can cause preterm labour so I need to get on the 3+ times a day brushing!

This week's highlight: Diane and Elliott are acting like great expectant grandparents. Diane has even felt her granddaughter kicking. And Christmas was good to our little mango too - a cuddly blanket (that I'm stealing from now till April) from Grandma Lois, a hemp onesie from Grandma and Grandpa Freeman, and a bottle for Dad to feed her.

This week's fun fact: If born now, she has a 25-35% chance of survival. We're hoping to go a full 17 weeks more, but it is reassuring to hear that her chances of survival go up rapidly from now on!

And I can finally post my most recent bump photos, even though they were taken a week late (at 22 weeks). The growing-shrinking thing has finally stopped and I think I can now consider myself officially "popped" :-)

Finally, here are some more photos of our week:

A visit from Brent's Aunt Joyce, Uncle Randy and cousins Kirsten and Alison from L.A. and part of our Christmas present to Diane and Elliott - a day of brunch, the Farmer's Market, a trip to the zoo, a football game and sushi.

Lots of love to you all,

Jen, Brent and our big mango xxx

p.s. For those of you who heard about John's debacle trying to fly home from Uganda (which summed up amounted to incompetent British Airways staff, a ridiculous shift of responsibility from Canadian officials onto airlines to verify the visa status of their passengers, and ongoing ignorance and systemic racism against refugees), he has finally been granted permission to leave the country and will be on a flight home tomorrow.

Puerto Vallarta

Hola!

Well I'm sitting in our dim living room, beside our one baseboard heater, watching the rain whip down from a cold, windy winters sky. It's hard to believe that around 26 hrs ago I was sweltering in a Puerto Vallarta pool in my bikini! Nevertheless, it is December, and if we're going to celebrate the holidays this year, I'd prefer the weather would cooperate with something winter-like!

We had a great 8 days in sunny PV. For years I have feared Puerto Vallarta as an endless wall of high rise resorts and timeshare sharks. We were greeted instead by a beautiful mid-size town nestled against lush, jagged hills, set on a beautiful half-moon bay.

We started out with three nights at a little local hotel in the old town of PV, set amidst cobble stone streets and overrun with bougainvillea.

Our friends Sean, Michelle, Booy and Mike all flew in the same day we did, so the 6 of us caught up over dinner on the beach and wandering the

streets of PV, watching the festival of the Lady of Guadeloupe celebrations until the wee hours. The next day Sean and Michelle moved to the resort where the wedding was to be held, but

Mike and Booy (who were staying at a place down the road from us in PV) took to the fantastic restaurant attached to our hotel, so breakfast chez nous became a daily ritual.

While three days wasn't nearly enough time to explore all PV and the surrounding area has to offer, we did manage to get in a whale watching/dolphin/snorkeling boat trip, discover a fabulous vegetarian buffet and buy some souvenirs - including a sink! (Brent's folks just remodeled their kitchen with tiles bought 30 years ago in Mexico when Diane was pregnant with Brent, so we figure we have some time to find a house for our sink ;-)

I even got to practice my Spanish more than I expected - cab drivers, servers and shop keepers were all very obliging.

Then on Tuesday we moved to the Playa Fiesta resort, 5km south of PV. It was great to see 20 of my longtime friends who are now scattered between Victoria, Toronto, San Fran, London and Cairo. And the resort was beautiful - a 42 room boutique hotel on the ocean with very attentive, friendly staff. The only downside of the 5 days was that nearly 75% of the wedding guests (including the bride) fell victim to vicious tummy trouble. We later learned that some of the staff at the all-day open bar were rinsing used glasses in tap water and promptly refilling them for further consumption! Brent and I thought we escaped it (thanking our built-up immunity from countless G.I. bugs in the past), but he has been feeling under the weather since our flight home last night. Hopefully it's only a cold!

Some of the highlights of the 5-days at Playa Fiesta included a boat trip with the girls to a private island for Michelle's bachelorette party (and a snorkeling boat trip and night out for the boys for Sean's bachelor party), S&M's beautiful wedding ceremony and celebration on Friday,

and a Karaoke finale on our last night!

Another hit of the week was the wedding's youngest guest - Erika and Tim's little guy, Aiden. He's nearly 7 months old and a very playful and easy-going baby. Even the guys in the group had caught baby fever by the end of the week! Hopefully over the next few years we may have more little ones in the group ;-)

Speaking of which, I also received a lot of comments on my belly. At first they concerned how "not pregnant" it looked for how far along I was and then later, people were commenting on how much it had grown by the end of the week! I hope that was due to a fetal growth spurt rather than all the buffet food we had! (According to the baby sites, she is now the size of a large banana!)

Brent and I also took the hours we spent by the pool to make great progress with the colossal job of naming! We managed to get through the entire girls' section of the Baby Name Bible (around 27,000 names) to come up with a final "shortlist" of only around 40! Then on the plane home last night we each wrote private lists of our top 10, then compared them for overlaps in the car ride home. We're now down to our top half dozen, which to us seems like great progress!

However, despite a fantastic holiday, it does feel good to get "home." I was sad to not be joining many of our friends as they migrated from Mexico to celebrate Christmas with their families in Victoria. But NEXT WEEK we have Diane and Elliott coming for Christmas here on the night of the 25th! We are very excited and are looking around for fun Christmas-y things to do with them over the holidays.

I also looked into flights to Victoria this morning while I was on the phone with Lindsay, Mom and Dad in England. To my surprise I found a cheap fare from Jan 8-20, so now I am trying to see whether or not I will have a job in January that will allow me to run away for 2 weeks! Look out Victoria, my big belly and I may be looking to couch-surf after all!

I hope all of your holidays have started well :-)

xox Jen, Brent and the banana

p.s. It turns out my green card actually works too! Crossing the border back to the US was FINALLY a simple process!!! YAY!

Off to Mexico with our little Mia...

Just a quick farewell as Brent, I and our little cantaloupe head on our first international trip - to Mexico!

Tomorrow we get the privilege of waking up at 4am to be on the road by 5:30am to hit LA traffic around 7:30 and hopefully make it through the city to LAX by 9 for our 10:50am flight to Puerto Vallarta (factoring in our usual tardiness and more traffic than we imagine, we'll probably get there around 50min before our flight)!

We have our good friends Sean and Michelle to thank for the excuse as they are FINALLY getting married (a little joke since they've been strong and steady for a decade now) next Friday, an event we would be loathe to miss.

We're tacking on a pleasant 3 nights in PV's "Romantic Zone" at a little local place before heading to the beautiful Playa Fiesta http://www.playafiesta.com/ for Sean and Michelle's 5-day celebration. I'm incredibly excited to be seeing many of my Victoria friends again and of course the snorkeling, kayaking and jungle hikes won't be half bad either ;-)

Finally, the reason for my reference to 'Mia' (aka Mia Hamm - one of the few women soccer players of international repute) is due to our daughter's early soccer practice, apparently going on with my tummy as the absent ball! Either I was too oblivious to feel the initial "fluttering" of her more gentle movements, or she simply skipped that stage and went straight to kicks (which my prenatal books told me were not supposed to start for another 2 weeks). Either way, after her first three little boots back in week 17, and a week to rest, she now begins a regular tootsie drum roll nearly every morning and afternoon. I only feel bad that her dad's not usually around for them, and when he is, his warm hand on my belly has an instant soothing effect. Nevertheless, until they reach my internal organs or ribs I am loving them!

I've also started pre-natal yoga classes at a women's hospital here. I think most of the women are silently wondering if I'm an impostor as they pose with their beautiful, round bellies and I come in with nothing. Counting by weeks (as opposed to lunar months) I'll be 5 months on Monday. Where's my belly? Lately even the more substantial "evening belly" seems to be shrinking! I don't have any worries about the baby, and none of my health care providers have said anything about her size or growth, so I think it's my size that's the issue, not hers. However, if I gain the estimated pound a week over the rest of my pregnancy I'll be right on track for the lower end of the advised weight-gain spectrum. So, I guess the bulk of my maternity-clothes-days will just be in the latter half of my pregnancy!

Well I should get back to work. Yes, the job that officially ended a month ago continues. Only a few more stories to go though...

Hasta luego,

Jen, Brent and "lil' Mia"