At the Zoo

Halloween was fun for us. We dressed up pretty well all day. I won the pumpkin carving contest at work (after placing 2nd last year, I was out for the win this time!) and that came with a nifty $100 prize.

I will try to get a pic from work to post.

Bronson trick or treated for the 1st time this year, he does not say trick or treat, instead after entering our neighbours houses he thrusts the bag at them. We just went to a few of our building's neighbors and then drove to Laura and Walter's to trick or treat. The astro Halloween party began at 9pm, by then Bronson had been asleep for 2 hours and Matt and I were heading to bed after relaxing with Halloween candy and television.

We had a really hard week with lots of commitments which just left us exhausted. So we tried to take it easy on the weekend. We did a few errands on Saturday, but Sunday we just slept and went to the zoo and hung out.



Bronson has been asking to go to the zoo for the past 2 weeks "Zoo, zoo zoo zoo zoo!" so he was thrilled to go. When we got in we saw our friends Dania and Bertrand and their 2 year old son Niki. Happy coincidence, so we went around the zoo with them for awhile before we got tired and had to head home.

Mama & baby Koala, so cute and so gentle!

The highlight was when the 2 boys were looking in at the gorillas, who have a huge area to play and hide in, but enjoy being near the glass. The boys were pressed up to the glass when the 2 year old gorilla came up to them and stood on the other side and banged at them. Bronson was stunned, Niki banged right back. It was an amazing interaction to see. The gorilla then sat near the glass while the boys conferred on what had happened.


In other news, we head up to OVRO on Thursday, until Sunday, which means that we're missing the Olive Harvest, which is so sad, but I do not have the energy to do it alone with Bronson anyhow, so might as well enjoy Owen's Valley instead. The weather up there is sunny, in the 60's, but cold at night. I look forward to wearing sweaters. We don't have the cabin this time, so we'll be at the motel, which is fun, too. Walter and Laura are up there, so we can dine with them some time. I will take pictures this time of what we do in Big Pine and Bishop, I really do enjoy our time up there.


The weather here has gotten a tad cooler, I now can wear a sweater with my shorts and t-shirt and it has rained a few times, for a few minutes this past week.

Bronson has become interested in tackle soccer, which is a great game for a 5 month pregnant lady to be playing, as well as frisbee.
I am 5 months today, 20 weeks, just past halfway until baby is here...only?!?

Happy Halloween from Leia, Han and Chewy!

Crouching fetus, hidden baby

My ultrasound took a long time on Thursday because the baby was hiding down under my pelvic bone. The doc was getting a little annoyed, but he was funny. He could only see the head and check that out, and it was all good. He showed me the whole big uterus that the baby could be swimming around in, but instead baby was crouched down low in the corner. He said he'd never seen a baby at 18 weeks hiding so far down.
So, we tried many things; drinking cold water, moving around, shaking my belly, using the restroom and finally they gave me a sweet candy to eat.

Then baby moved up. The assistant ran and got the doc and they finished the ultrasound. Baby is lying on my placenta with it's butt in the air, but everything checked out, the heart, which is why I was sent for this special ultrasound, looks great, all the other organs look great too.
I didn't want to ask if he could find the sex for me after he'd had such a hard time with everything else.

But the assistant asked if I knew and the doc said, "well, let's find out" after some more jiggling to get the baby to roll he caught a glimpse of something, then baby moved a little further and doc got the "money shot", which I feel that I can not post online because it's not PG, as you can quite clearly see that this baby is definetly a boy!

Bye bye Grandma Val

Well, the loiterers outside of LAX got a show on Saturday as Bronson and I tried to outdo each other with the waterworks, saying goodbye to grandma Val. Unfortunately for Bronson I had a secret weapon: pregnancy hormones. Poor Matthew had to drive home two whimpering babies who would periodically start bawling all over again, through downtown LA.

We really enjoyed your visit, mom, thanks for all the help! Everytime one of my family comes to stay, they leave me with a renewed love of salads. It happened last year with Amy, and again now with mom. Salads...mmmm.

Here's B telling Grandpa Tim how it is.

In other news, the night before mom left was Family night at Caltech, we went and had a pasta dinner on the lawn. followed by Disney princess entertainment. Matt and B then went to the screening of Wall-E in Beckman Auditorium. My mother and I went downtown to shop. We were finally free of the toddler (Matt had been gone for 2 days to Stanford), we were independent, we had cash and we.... were ready to go to bed 30 minutes in to our excursion. But we held out for frozen yogurt regardless :)

Yup, we let Tinkerbell tatoo our son with a dinosaur.

In other news, the Pasadena Art Expo is this week and 2 of my paintings have been selected for the juried art show, which makes me really quite happy. The 2 are Orchid and Snow, you can figure out which is which.

Tomorrow I go for an ultrasound with a specialist to check on the baby in my belly (the one kicking but not screaming), hopefully he will be able to tell me if it's a boy or girl, so look for an update on that tomorrow.

Bronson helps dad to water the garden everyday. When dad is gone, he reminded grandma and I to water it, too.

A Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

Today we drove 30 minutes to a nearby Pumpkin Patch in Mission Hills. My mom is in town and she came with us. We took a tractor pulled train ride, did a hay bale maze and climbed a hay pyramid! We also had fresh roasted corn and bought 4 pumpkins and some produce.

Apparently I am not very good at guessing pumpkin weight, there was a huge pumpkin there, and if you guess the weight, you win the pumpkin and $100. I guessed 96 lbs. I then found out that Matt guessed around 400 lbs. Oh well, at least I won't have to empty out the seeds.

The unborn baby is doing well, and I am feeling SO much better. I can barely remember how it felt to be sick, it's a nice reprieve. I didn't really get this period of feeling well when I was pregnant with Bronson. We don't know if it is a boy or girl yet, having an ultrasound on the 23rd which might tell us. My cravings are all different this time - sour candies, cranberries, tabasco sauce and bacon (not combined). The only consistent craving is coffee between the 2 pregnancies.

Hope you all have a good Thanksgiving, we will celebrate it tomorrow night with a Tofurky and some pumpkin-ish dessert (and a ton of cranberry sauce). Then we will celebrate it again with the Americans in November.

September, Club fair, OVRO, big boy bed and nausea

I've been a bad mommy blogger.

I've been a bad mommy blogger.

I've been a bad mommy blogger.

In my defense, this pregnancy has been kicking my butt. My nausea went from bad to worse and I took many days off of work, spent 3 weeks dry heaving, exhausted and on a diet of Ensure, peppermint tea and fruit. The worst of it has ended as I move into my 2nd trimester. This one has been WAY worse than Bronson's pregnancy. I don't like chocolate. I just drink peppermint tea, eat fresh fruit and crackers and every now and then crave Indian food. (Of course the most expensive of all take-outs)


We have had a nice September otherwise. Grandma Portage came to visit for a week, and she took care of Bronson while I slept and slept and slept. For Bronson's birthday Grandma and Grandpa Portage bought him a toddler bed. He loves it. I wasn't sure if we should get him one, but when he saw it at IKEA he got so excited that I caved. He slept the night through in it immediately and has been doing great ever since. He comes to wake us up around 6am now, whereas before he'd "sleep" until about 8, but Matt can usually get him back in to bed for another 45 minutes or so. I'm impressed that he's sleeping 11 hour nights and don't usually try to put him back to bed. Which is probably why he comes to my side first in the mornings.

Last Wednesday through Saturday we were up in Owens Valley at OVRO (the Radio Observatory there). We had a great time. Matthew worked long days and met with some collaborators over from England. Bronson and I enjoyed the park in Bishop and fed the ducks there in the mornings. We got fresh sandwiches from Erik Schat's Bakery for lunch, napped in the afternoon and then swam at the hot springs later in the day. One night Bronson and I took a date to a local Steak and Spaghetti restaurant, it was nice. The last night we attended a retirement function for one of the OVRO Engineers who'd worked 40+ years. It was a great dinner and nice to see friends.

My favorite part of OVRO is the cabin, it's the closest to a house we get:) And the views from the cabin are amazing. It's so quiet there and so many stars. Bronson's favorite part is the satellite tv, so he got to watch alot of tv shows. He even started responding to them, dancing with them, copying words and answering them when they ask the viewer questions. It eased the guilt of allowing him so much tv time.

We came back early on Saturday in order to attend the Caltech club fair and carnival - it is my favorite Caltech event of the year. All the clubs have booths, there are carnival games and club demonstrations. Free carnival food, a huge water slide, bouncy castle, etc. There's a free bar-b-q dinner, tons of prizes, a movie screened outdoors in the dark and an awesome fireworks display. All right across the road from us on campus!


We got home, changed and headed over expecting to stay awhile, then come home, then go back for dinner. Instead we stayed until the end of the fireworks, 4 hours straight. B was tired after the 5 hour drive, so he was pretty easy to keep track of. We set down our blanket, friends gathered round and we watched the performances, ate dinner and chatted. Bronson got up and danced during the dance performances, he was so excited to dance! He was totally in to it. We've been watching High School Musical, which he loves and I think that's where he gets it from.

Anyhow, the fireworks were amazing, they shoot them in time to music, and they are right overhead, off the roofs of the buildings surrounding us. It was a great afternoon/evening and B totally crashed when we got home.

Anyhow, nothing too new coming up. Trying, sort of trying, to potty train Bronson, then the final step will be getting rid of soothers, especially before baby gets here, or there might be some issues. But we've got another 6 months before then. Grandma Val is coming for 2 weeks Oct 8th to help me with cooking, cleaning, babysitting, right?... or for a visit anyways. :)

Bronson on Chilean Independence day

I've been crafting away, I've made our Halloween door hanger, and now I'm working on an ambitious '12 days of Christmas' wall quilt. Doing the embroidery on the pears. You'll see what I mean in a few weeks (or months?) Bought most of the supplies for our Halloween costumes. Yup, September! But I'm putting off making those because I have to procrastinate on something.

In Matthew news, his 2 telescopes have now finally been transported and installed at OVRO. He is now working on the electronics for his C-BASS device. He has been back and forth to Stanford and will be back and forth again and again to meet with collaborators and attend workshops related to the other project he's on, the 40M telescope project. To help keep these straight: The 40M project is on the big telescope at OVRO, is currently collecting data and is in collaboration with Stanford and Germany, he is 1 of 3 grad students on this, he used to be the only one but he is working towards having a smaller role in this to give him more time for the other. The C-BASS project is 2 smaller telescopes at OVRO, is not collecting data yet, still needs a special device built for it, the entire point of it, actually, Matt is the only grad student on this one and this is in collaboration with Oxford, England, and eventually will be repeated in South Africa. C-BASS is his major project. Hope that helps to clarify his life. Oh yeah, he also reads and watches alot of "humorous" stuff on the Internet.


I end with an anecdote that I read on a friend of a friend of a friend's daddy blog. His daughter stuck a crayon up her nose and they could not get it out. So they took her to emergency and the doc came in and said "alright, before we try tweezers, here's a trick. Plug the unclogged nostril and leave the crayon nostril open, then blow in her mouth. This is how you blow a child's nose." So after a few tries, sure enough this worked. This guy is not a doctor, he's only writing about what this doc told him, and now I am paraphrasing that - so you know, disclaimer and all. But I think it's a good trick to know and could save you a lengthy ER wait someday, perhaps, hopefully you won't be in this situation and neither will I. But, you never know.

Bronson is 2!
On Monday we had a big birthday party for the little guy, 6 toddlers, 2 babies and 15 ish parents. It was great! I was worried, but all of the kids were spectacular! I did not seek all of the parents permission to post pics, so I won't, but we got a cute one of all the toddlers on the couch together.

Aunty Laura and Uncle Walter @ the party

The party theme was "fish", here's the special cake I made Bronson.

On Wednesday Bronson was awoken at 7, we took him to the couch and let him open gifts, many wonderful wheeled gifts :), then we lifted the tablecloth hiding the wood train track set that Aunty Teri and Uncle Jay got him, and Matt spent 5 hours setting up the night before. He said "Wow" and jumped off the couch into my bowl of cereal. Then he was torn between standing there with a milky foot and running to the trains. :)


The rest of the day was alot of train play. In the early afternoon he went to park group, then took a nap, then more trains. In the evening we had pizza and he ate 3 whole slices! Also, aunty Laura and uncle Walter came over with a gift, a Thomas bath set and a Thomas swimsuit. This kid is totally the Thomas king.

Dancing in the afternoon, because it's my birthday!