The Growth Continues!

So, while I was gone in India, Katie faithfully kept recording her weights. I started recording mine again, too. Now the trend in her weight and the lack of one in mine is apparent, with a few solid months of data.



I think that looking at our cumulative growths is maybe the most interesting. The baby's grown to two pounds now, and Katie's grown about 10 pounds just since january, while I keep waffling around 1 or 2 pounds heavier than I was in January.



Looking at our proportional weight change you can see that Katie's put on a full 7% of her January weight in the last two plus months.



Compare that, though with what the baber is doing. What a difference. In the first month he tripled his weight, only to go on to almost quadruple that tripled weight over the next six weeks.

The Growth of the Mama

There is an undeniable bump on my belly and we suspect the baby may have something to do with this. One of my students told me during office hours the other day that before I told the class I was pregnant, she assumed I just had a beer belly. Hmm.

The baby is kicking away these days--after dinners are its most active time, but whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, he also seems to be squirming away. We're hoping these hours of activity are no indication of his sleep patterns in the future. Regardless, it's pretty cool to have a living companion inside of me.

We've also been keeping track of our weights. So far, the baby wins for greatest growth rate (these measurements are based on averages from a book--sadly, we aren't able to whip him out for daily weigh-ins):

Tim gets the prize for most variable weight from day to day, and my weight has definitely increased, though gradually. The burst seems yet to come:

The Mothball Fleet

Mothball Fleet Trip

Our Second View of the Kid

On January 18th, 2007, Katie and I got another view of the young one developing in Katie's womb. We got about a full half hour watching the ultrasound monitor - again, what. a. BLAST. Our nurse-technician took tons of shots too, she handed us a roll so large that she said, "Don't let anyone see that I took so many pictures for you." We loved it. And the little kid was healthy and fully formed. She was very adept at determining which limb on which side we were looking at, but while it was confusing at times, sometimes we could also get the broader picture. Some of the diagnostic shots she took, such as various parts of the brian (corpus callosum?) and cross sections of the umbilical cord and the spinal column were amazing too. Neatest of those diagnostic views, though, was the slice where we could see all four chambers of the little heart pumping merrily away! So, we don't have those, but here are the best of what we do have, starting with the feet.

Feet
Side by side one in front of the other. We knew from experience that the kid is a dancer, but this must clearly be part of its moves. A shuffle. At least that's a more fun-sounding interpretation compared with the alternative: the kid was squished with the pressure of the ultrasound wand, which is probably more likely.

A Sweet Profile
You can see the little hand in front of the face, there. I'm not sure if this was the time, but we actually witnessed the tiny person open their jaw, bring the hand up, and close the jaw again a bit. A thumb-sucking at only 18 weeks!

The Hand

This one is neat, just to see all that fine detail in the miniscule hand. We got to watch those teeny fingers moving individually! Here the index finger and thumb are curled away from the plane of view.

The Left Arm
This is just a neat slice because it shows a very adult-like gesture, the whole shoulder and arm together. You can imagine that the little one is pissed from the recent lack of space, and is actively pushing back. Indeed it seems to be.

The Vader Baber
My absolute favorite! Look at that evil little thing! What little devil-creature! So naughty! A little conniver. You see the ribcage below, and shoulder bones? Just before this picture was taken, the wee one had it' hands in front of its face, after which it moved them to either side, in what appeared to be a peak-a-boo game. Terrific. I'm happy to announce that in utero our child looks like either a velociraptor or a baby Darth Vader.

The Homer Simpson / Angel Child
Katie and I are of two minds on what this picture looks like. Katie says "It's the Angel Baber," but I think it looks like Homer Simpson. What to say, our child is not just Darth Vader, but also a small Homer Simpson. What a proud heritage!


Gender Evidence
Yes, here we come down to the naked, if blurry, truth. We've got a child, and that child has a sex, as evidenced in this picture. Katie and I were equally happy for either, and to be honest, it doesn't really matter much, we're more than happy to just have a healthy child. (More results coming, so send good energy!) So, back to gender. See if you can figure out what it is. Can you see the rib cage on the left? On either side of the rib cage are two knees, connected to two shins, which pass down to a couple of little feetsies. In the middle of all that gargantuan cuteness, is the evidence. A little point. According to our technician lady, that's definitive - we've got a little boy. This is a relief, (not that it's a boy) but that it's one or the other, because now our name choosing task is half of what it used to be.

As you might guess, we are already feeling anxious about gendering this small person too soon. We are thinking about how to avoid the type-cast colors, clothes and toys for little boys, and would prefer to think of this young thing as it is, a wee child.

Love, The Hopeful parents,

T & K

We meet our baber!

Oh my!
On tuesday, Dec 12, 2006, Katie and I went to our first pregnancy appointment! It was unbelievably fun. We actually got to meet the creature! You know how parents say things like "when you first hold that child in your arms, then you will know what love is like..."? Well, this was an early prototype of that powerful interaction. And what a rush.
Given that it was an abdominal ultrasound and that we were watching a small blurry black and white image that was constantly shifting and distorting, it's amazing that one could have any sort of emotional reaction at all. But wow. There's a person in there, and it's made out of us! The first thing we saw was the head. A nice little skull, with nice symmetrical brain patterns, lying in a big sac of dark fluid. Must be warm in there. You have to wonder, what sort of things is it experiencing, that new developing brain? What CAN it experience? What can it not? We know it can hear, but what about sight? We know that it's inhaling a mix of amniotic fluid and it's own urine (the gross little baber!) but are its tastebuds or olfactory cells active yet? If they are how developed is their connection to the brain? Mostly, of course, we want to know how it feels, what it thinks, what thinking is like for it.

The sweetest part of the whole experience was watching it move. First we saw the heart beating. It beat so quickly, like that of a humming bird! Then later we saw it jerk suddenly. We think that it didn't like all the new pressure that came from the ultrasound device. After that little jerk it continued to squirm around for a while which was amazing to behold. It sort of flipped on to its side while we were watching, and we saw its legs move around too. We were both surprised at how seemingly long and developed those little legs are! No leg-buds here, folks, these ones can kick! Of course, none of that motion is caught (what we would give to have a video that we could share and pour over instead of these paltry few shots!). But we are happy with what we've got. Perhaps the most endearing part that was captured as a picture was the hand and forearm up by the face. Perhaps sucking on the thumb? Rubbing the face? Waving hi to the parents? What ever it is, it's adorable.

Make sure to click on each picture for the larger view. There are a few more pictures here, also adorable. For the last one, on its side, you can see that it has it's hands up near it's head. The head is the lump on the right hand side. You can see the bones of the skull, and perhaps the jaw? The eye sockets might be in there too. The hands, though, are clear, one is visible as a row of four fingers near the forehead or eyes.

And a neat and clean picture of a healthy spine. Very nice to see, and very mature looking to my totally uneducated and untrained eye. Can you imagine this all in motion? Ah, it was fantastic. Unbeatable, utterly overwhelmingly thrilling. Katie and I are just beside ourselves with excitement - we just can't wait to meet this little character!

Happy holidays 2006!

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy holidays 2006! Can you believe there are still two years left until Bush is out of office! At least some progress has been made. Still we have much to be thankful for.
We’ve had a great year here in Martinez. We’re still staying in our little above-the-garage apartment that we fondly refer to as our tree house. We’ve adopted a community garden plot, which has generously provided us with all sorts of wonderful food—tomatoes, chilies, lettuce, beans, summer squash, zucchini, kale, peppers, and a few strawberries in the summer; and now, believe it or not, more kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peas, the end of the tomatoes, and infinite arugula. Despite being the beneficiaries of all of this abundance, we also managed to skirt our way out of California this summer during the hottest months to visit our old home of Kodaikanal in India.
We visited India to celebrate our Tanzanian friend Modesta’s graduation from high school after four and a half years at the international school where we both previously taught. Reuniting with Modesta was such a treat—she is just as happy and energetic as usual. After a month with us in India, Modesta is now back in Tanzania, volunteering for a community education center in a rural village. She is teaching biology, computers, AIDS education, and sports, while getting ready to apply to a university in Kenya where she hopes to study community development. We’re very excited for her.
In India, we also had the great pleasure of visiting many old friends, who treated us royally, feeding us and welcoming us into their homes as if we had never been gone. In the later part of our visit, we gallivanted around the north by train (if one can be said to gallivant on Indian trains). Joined by some Davis friends who were doing research in Bhutan, we visited Varanasi, the Hindu holy city on the Ganges, and Darjeeling, the northeastern hill station famous for its tea. We then moved on to the verdant, cloud-strewn mountains of Sikkim in the Himalayas, where we hiked along clear, swollen streams and over village-made bridges to numerous Buddhist gompas (monasteries) and other holy sites. This bit of our trip was so nice we declared it our unofficial honeymoon!
Tim will soon be returning to India in February to meet with researchers studying fire ecology in the Western Ghats and to nail down plans for his upcoming research, which will allow both of us to return to Kodaikanal for the academic year of 2007/8. If Ganesh and Agni and all of the other gods will, Tim’s research will investigate the use of wildfire as a pastoral technique in the Kodai hills, combining his passions for both ecology and human culture. He also hopes to investigate the beautiful south Indian art of kolam design, in which women traditionally draw geometric designs with rice flour on their doorsteps in the early morning. All of this research is now possible since Tim passed his oral qualifying exams on December 1st, the culmination of two plus years of study. Now, as one professor told him, Tim is defined by what he has not accomplished—his dissertation.
Katie graduated from Mills with an MFA in creative writing just one day before we hopped on the plane to India this summer. She won a departmental award for the best graduate-level, young-adult fiction and has since continued to write a full draft of her first novel, which she started last January! The story is about a young girl living in post-independence Tanzania. The girl’s village chooses to relocate and over the course of the next year, she unravels a local mystery. In addition to writing, Katie has launched herself into teaching three composition classes at Berkeley City College. She has found her niche in community college teaching—enjoying the immense diversity of her students and the opportunity to serve people who, in many cases, have been given the short end of stick in previous education.
Finally, our biggest news is that we’ll be joined by a third Quirk-Waring —we’re pregnant! If all goes well, the baby will be born at the end of June, 2007. We’re thrilled and our only regret is that we will miss the much-awaited weddings of Katie’s cousin, Kristin, and Tim’s college friend, Eric.
We feel very blessed, in large part because of our wonderful friends and family. We look forward to seeing all of you soon and hope you have a splendid year.


Love to all of you,
Katie and Tim

Tahoe Weekend

A great time with Christine and Chris and various friends up near Tahoe.

Tahoe Weekend