My first semester of graduate school is over. I have a thesis project (no experiments yet, though) and a 4.0. I am just as busy now as I was in the school year. It sucks. If I am not in my office reading about my thesis work and putting down ideas, I am preparing to go out in the field (and I'm camping in the field tomorrow and the next day...I am planning to FINISH Wednesday).
My stepson's birthday is Wednesday. I won't get home until later, so we're doing our family birthday celebration on Thursday. It's really hard to juggle all this field work with family.
I am huge, and baby River is bigger every day! He kicks and bounces around a lot, so forcefully now that folks can see my belly poke a little when he kicks, and other people can definitely feel it. He's doing a little tap dance right now, actually. He's head down, so I feel it mostly at the top of my tummy and just barely off to the side. We had our last ultrasound at 20 weeks (I am now 24 weeks!) and he looks wonderful. He even yawned for us! It was great. We start homebirth classes in just a few weeks, and I was encouraged by two natural births that I attended last week. It was hard work, but both mamas were victorious and had some cute babies! :D
Mother's Day was wonderful! Elijah made me a necklace at school; it was really sweet, especially because I've only been his stepmom for six months, and actually taking care of him with Stewart for only two. Stewart gave me an AWESOME bag that has Krishna and the Taj Mahal on it (and various other Indian things)- I told him I loved it so much it would be River's diaper bag. I don't know if he liked that, but it just means I am going to be carrying it around a lot! My mother gave me a little photo album and candle, my cousin Rissa gave me a really cute card, and Katherine gave me a handprint/footprint frame set. I can't believe I got presents for Mother's Day! It was so fun!
Well, it's 4 p.m. and I haven't eaten lunch. Guess I should do that. I've been busy trying to figure out field work and crew stuff so we will have enough people to work tomorrow and the next day. We have a midwife appointment next week; I'll update after that.
