Pi Day and the Burgeoning Belly

That would be an interesting book title...

For those of you not so math-minded as Ben, this past Saturday was Pi Day (it being March 14, aka 3.14 which is pi). So we made pie at our house. I think it was the first time I ever made pie all by myself. We bought some frozen pie crust, but I made the apple filling from scratch. It was pretty fun, and I must say it turned out pretty good, though I had a little too much liquid, so we spooned some if it out after we ate our Pi day pieces.
And for loved ones far away that are wondering if I'm starting to show, I have proof. This first is a picture at at 15 weeks.
And this is at 22 weeks
And this is fun times with the belly.

Just Keeping With Tradition

*First off, I would have posted a picture from the ultrasound, but I haven't scanned it yet, and they aren't really the clearest. So I thought this would be nice too.

On to the real news. We had the ultrasound on Monday and got our first peek at the baby. It was so cool to watch the doctor point stuff out. The neatest thing for me was when the baby would move I could feel it AND see it.

Of course, we wanted to know the gender (Ben is such a planner that I don't think he could handle it otherwise). And we are proud to be keeping up a quasi-family tradition by having a GIRL first.
I'm the oldest and a girl, and so is my mom, several cousins (8 of a possible 13), two nieces, and Ben as a sister as the oldest in his family as well. So we'll call it tradition. The doctor also moved up the due date from July 20 to July 15 because she is measuring a...healthy size for her age. We told him that both of our families were NOT known for small babies (Ben was 10 lb. 11 oz, and my siblings had huge heads--they still do actually).
At any rate, we are planning on naming her Eleanor Lee Lewis and calling her Ellie. It's a tradition in my family to give the oldest girl the middle name Lee, so that was a given. I had picked out Eleanor before I ever met Ben for a few reasons. 1) I liked it and the famous historical women who have been named Eleanor (Roosevelt, of Aquataine), 2) I'm a nerd and love Lord of the Rings, and in the end of the book Sam names his daughter Elanor after the flowers in Lothlorien. That's when I first thought of it as a name. Not that I am naming my child after LOTR, I just liked the name. 3) Elinore Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility is one of my favorite literary characters (who, incidentally, was played to perfection by Emma Thomas in the film adaptation). So that's the plan.
And besides the obvious reasons to be excited about a girl (finally a girl for me to play with!), it just means that we will have a built in baby sitter for all the boys we'll probably have to keep up the other family tradition (which is to have more boys than girls).

Seriously?! (And some parenthetical comments)

I had a really busy day last Thursday. I did a full day of substituting at the junior high, where I was an English teacher and got to teach about Romeo and Juliet.
Sidenote: I love Shakespeare, and I think that R & J is a fantastic play, if a little over-done and over-studied (why don't more of us read Titus Andronicus in school-oh yeah, it's really really gorey). However, I had forgotten what a dirty little rascal old Will was. As we read/listened on CD to Act I scene i (and I was probably the only one who got it all), I noted again how as the two Capulet servants banter back and forth rather wittily, that they spend most of their jesting on less than savory subjects. Basically they joke around about beating up Montague men and raping montague women. It's fabulous. But again, these ninth graders don't get it. They have no idea what maidenhead means.
Okay, back to the original story. Ben had Parent/Teacher Conferences that night and we had signed up to can beans at the dry pack cannery in Lindon at 5 and then I had to go to a meeting-thingy at 7 down at BYU and then go pick up Ben at about 8:30. So I thought I had a few spare hours between the end of school, 3:00, and canning at 5. I decided to be proactive and take our car in for an oil change (it's probably overdue).
I hauled myself down to Wal-mart and a very nice mechanic-man checked me in. I was the second car in line, and I knew that an oil change shouldn't take that long so I should be fine (I'm sure you see the problem coming). I wandered around Wal-Mart (and I'll admit to looking at baby stuff and wondering what it is that is kicking around inside me). After an hour I headed back over to the auto section. My car hadn't moved. At all.
So I sat down in their little waiting room and watched the end of National Treasure. I like that movie. It's fun. But 40 minutes later, my car still hadn't moved and it was time to go. Additionally, I had noticed sitting there that there didnt' really seem to be any mechanics around, except for the girl who came in with another wally-world employee to get coffee and she complained about the laziness of the current employees. Fantastic. So I found coffee girl and told her that I needed to leave, though I had been waiting for over an hour and a half. She kindly took my name off the list and I left fuming. Clearly I still haven't recovered.
On the upside, canning was really fun and we are now the proud owners of 60ish pounds of black and pinto beans and two cans of hot chocolate mix. And on the radio to the cannery I heard that Autozone is having a deal on their oil changes; I just hope their customer service is better.