braided rug

this year for my birthday, i decided to check something off my to-do list...something that could be accomplished while having to take frequent breaks to feed and hold felicity.  i finished the braided rug i started making last fall!  i have had it mostly done for months.  i just needed to spend a couple hours sewing it together (which needs to be done by hand).  yesterday and today in my spare moments, i stitched away.  now we have a lovely new braided wool rug and i have one less thing on my to-do list!

1 month

felicty at 1 month

today felicity is one month old...and maybe we are slowly starting to figure life out.  it has been a really bizarre week here.  on tuesday i got back from my morning walk and started getting the chills.  when i took my temperature shortly there after i was running a low grade fever and a couple hours after that said fever had spiked to 102.6.  i talked to a nurse at the midwives' office and she thought i was heading towards heat stroke.  so i spent the day in bed with ice packs drinking lots of fluids and hoping that my headache would go away.  sure enough, my temperature went down and the headache did abate later that day.  i admit i never saw any sort of heat illness following a walk coming after all of the exercise i have done in heat in past years.  it is better to always be on guard!

in some ways, it was a great time to be recovering because the last few days have been very rainy and full of thunderstorms.  yesterday a break sort of occurred and i got to take in a little bit of artscape.  artscape happens just a few blocks north of where we live and as i walked around all of the closed streets, i found myself very grateful that i did not have to go anywhere north in a car this weekend.  i look forward to being able to take in a bit more of the festival next year too (and hopefully there is better weather for it given that its all outside!).

inner harbor

felicty takes in the uss constitution at the inner harbor

yesterday morning i went out for a walk and felt lonely.  after walking around with a wee person in me for 9 months and during that time also having eric with me frequently for longer runs, it felt weird to be out for a walk by myself.  so this morning, i brought miss felicity with me (and let eric steal a few precious hours of sleep!).  we did an early morning tour through the city and then walked along the inner harbor for a bit.

baltimore is definitely being blessed right now with cooler weather (sad that "high of 92" is cool, isn't it?) which makes leaving the air conditioning much less painful.  i am sometimes finding myself missing the cool mountain air that i have had the fortune to spend so much time in the past several summers for races.  eric and i are starting to look for job and school options for 2013 when my postdoc is done.  i find myself wondering if and/or how we can manage to have ourselves end up somewhere west with mountains and/or ocean!

walks

felicity and i pre-hike on july 4th

 one not-so-good thing about having a baby earlier in the summer is that you then have to worry about the heat.  i just took felicity on a walk around the park near our house to be sure she got some outside time, but even at 7am it was in the 80s.  the forecast is for 108 degrees here today.  even the air conditioning is straining with all of these hot hot days and high humidity!

baby girl waving hi (yes she has all of her fingers but it doesn't look like it here!)

felicity is here!

i have been on a bit of hiatus from the blog.  pregnancy is now done.  baby is here.  and now that i am on maternity leave though i hope to post updates a bit more frequently to let you know what is happening in baltimore.

we welcomed felicity anne into our family on june 22 (41 weeks and 4 days).  she weighed in at 6lb 13.2oz and was 19.5 inches long.  she's a great eater though and at 10 days has already put on more than a pound.  those baby rolls and cheeks are starting to fill out!


felicity and dad

felicity's first bath at home

i'm enjoying learning all of her quirks, faces and squeals.  it is still hard to comprehend that she is ours.

her name "felicity" means "a source of happiness" or "happiness" depending on your source.  we wanted a shorter middle name and with anne "with an e" we hope to instill her with a sense of the mischieviousness of anne of green gables.  her initials spell "fay" is how the word for fairy is prounounced in french (though it is spelled differently in french).

now back to figuring out how to get the smell of baby puke to disappear from the couch!