I’ve shared my husband amazing crayon skills on this blog before. You’ll be pleased to know that he has a new medium…the Penultimate App on his iPad. Here are two of his most recent pieces.

(Okay, so this one is just more cute than anything)

But…this one? Amazing (sent while he was on a flight home from a business trip with the beginning of a head cold)

I’ll let you know when he has his first art show. I’m sure it will be any day now.

First of all, thank you ALL for your kind comments and tweets! We’re so excited to meet this little baby in November.

For the most part, my pregnancy has been pretty easy. (KNOCKING ON WOOD) Don’t get me wrong, though, the first trimester was ROUGH. I was exhausted all the time and just crabby. I didn’t expect that the exhaustion and bloat and bad skin would set in so soon and all at once. I didn’t REALLY have morning sickness, though there were some pretty bad bouts with extreme queasiness. I tried all the ginger ales and with great pleasure, I can tell you that Vernor’s Diet Ginger Ale is the best one, if you cannot get that, then you can get Thomas Kemper in the glass bottle. Do not even bother with anything else. I lost about 6 pounds right off the bat because very little sounded good enough to eat (and maybe also because of the absence of my friends Cava and Oregon craft beer).

The bloat is really a funny, funny thing. Some days, my pants would button just fine – other days they wouldn’t. Because of this, I bought a few pairs of maternity pants right away, even though I found that I really didn’t need them just yet. Then, I remembered that WAY back in the day, the lovely Whoorl mentioned a neat little add-a-button kit and I bought that and have been golden ever since.

A recommendation: when trying to hide your pregnancy from your coworkers, avoid stripes. On the first morning of my 10th week, I was in Eugene (GO DUCKS!) for our big annual conference and I packed this. Now, you might not see much there, but when I looked down? I saw a giant belly. I went downstairs to the conference and was sure that the cat was out of the bag. Either nobody noticed or they all thought I over-ate the at the reception the night before.

I finally have a note from my doctor to continue on with my beloved Bar Method classes and I am really, really looking forward to getting my tuck and shake back on. While my goal to look like Olivia Wilde may have to be put on hold for a bit, I can still aim to look like her pregnant sister, perhaps.

And, I am now accepting recommendations on what to do for super, super dry and itchy skin. Particularly about the legs and tummy. GO!

And, now here is a link to belly pictures and such if you are into that sort of thing. You should at least go over to see the wee wooden shoes that my brother-in-law brought back for the baby from Holland.

This darling little blob (pictured here at 11 weeks, while snoozing during my first trimester screening appt.) has been living in my womb for the past few months and will be moving into our house around the 8th of November. If you’ve noticed cryptic tweets about general malaise, ginger ale, tylenol and exhaustion…well, this little guy (or gal) is the culprit.

It’s okay though, we kind of like Baby on Board (which is what we call him/her) even if we’ve been thrown for a bit of a loop.

So…what’s new with you?