Morning

Where: Solterreno, Spain
When: April 2011

I love that pre-opening stretch that flowers seem to do early in the morning.

Projects

Where: Home
When: May 2011

I'm learning how to knit! So far, I can purl and knit and cast on and bring in new colors! I like knit stitches best, the purl stitches make my hands cramp. I haven't gotten to the binding off stage yet. In theory, this will be a scarf, but I don't actually think it will be a scarf anyone wants to wear. It's more complicated than a scarf really should be, honestly, but because it's got lots of different elements, it is good practice for a variety of techniques.

The next thing is a hat, which is also a part of the learn to knit kit that had the scarf. And then I will either take a stab at a lovely looking afghan I just ordered the kit for, or I will try to hunt down enormous US 19 sized needles so that I can tackle the whole reason I decided to learn to knit in the first place, which is to learn to knit THIS most adorable of all adorable things.

At the moment, I'm stuck on what type of yarn to order for it, and also on finding needles that big, but I'm going to find a NYC yarn shop and see what they say.

Where: Highline Park, Chelsea
When: May 2011

Does wisteria come in yellow?

Where: Church garden across the street (NYC)
When: May 2011

Because this looked like a yellow version of a wisteria, but I'm not sure that that exists.

Bad back day today - no sharp, crippling pain, but a lot of continuously sharp and nagging pain made doing just about everything difficult, and made me feel extra cranky. Swimming was lovely, in that I didn't have any pain while I did it, but it didn't really help beyond that. I think this is weather related - it's been pouring rain for a couple of days, and I've noticed that rain seems to make it worse.

Make Way

Where: St. James Park, London
When: April 2011

These guys were so cute! They were very tiny, and there were at least a dozen of them.

Mommas

Where: St. James Park, London, UK
When: April 2011

I forgot about all these photos I took in Europe! I'll try to get more of those up.

Peeking Through

Where: Church garden across the street
When: May 8, 2011

Seven. My stamina for the "picture a day" game apparently goes to seven, because I cannot bring myself to pick up the camera today. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted! Maybe I'll pick it up for another week long stint in a few days.

In fabulous news, I tried swimming today, and found that not only did it feel wonderful, my back felt much better afterwards too! So between that, and the Pilates (which I found also helped my back a lot) I might actually be able to maintain a reasonable level of fitness through this pregnancy. I am so relieved.

7/7 More Purple

Where: Hudson River Park
When: May 10, 2011

6/6 Evening

Where: Church garden across the street
When: May 9, 2011

Well, so far, taking the picture doesn't seem to be the problem, although posting it is something I don't always get around to! This one isn't my favorite, but I think it was the best of the bunch - I was pretty tired by the time I got around to it, and my back wasn't up for much bending over.

We'll see if I get to today's photo. It's a lovely evening so we're going to go for a stroll after dinner, so hopefully I'll find something to shoot.

5/5 Hello Spring

Where: Church garden across the street
When: May 8, 2011

My SI joint felt much, much better today, we went on a moderately long walk today, and I was able to walk at a pace that was only slightly slower than normal, and didn't feel exhausted when I got home, and didn't really have any pain, so that was a big deal, and a big improvement from yesterday. Once I got home, things were pretty twingy for a while, but some sitting seems to have resolved that.

I'm going to try Pilates tomorrow, and swimming on Tuesday, in the hopes of finding some form of exercise that I can do through the rest of this pregnancy that won't throw everything out of whack too badly.

4/4 Rushed

Where: Union Square Farmer's Market
When: May 7, 2011

Wish I had taken more time with this - I was reaching the end of my allotted energy reserves for the day, plus other people with cameras were trying to take a photo of the same subject, plus my back hurt, so this was a very quick one-off. But there was a lot of potential there for a much nicer shot if I had just had a little more patience.

I love the farmer's market at Union Square, so many delicious things to look at and select from. We bought the most delicious tomatoes I've had in years and years, I had forgotten what a tomato is supposed to taste like!

3/3 I took this yesterday I swear

Where: Home
When: May 6, 2011

I just didn't get around to posting it. No cooking yesterday either, Dave made me a salad for dinner. I had been to various practitioners yesterday (massage and chiropractic) to see if they could help my pain. After the treatments everything felt pretty loose, which is dangerous, and I ended up having quite a bad spasm. However, this morning I feel terrific, so maybe they helped after all, although I haven't actually moved around much. I'm just noting that rolling over, getting out of bed, taking a shower and getting dressed didn't hurt.

It's hard to say, and will require a more scientific experiment - ie, I will need to spread out the treatments to different days - to determine what, if anything, actually helped.

2/2: Coming Up

Where: Highline Park, NYC
When: May 5, 2011

It was such a beautiful, blustery spring day today, it made me miss running. It was too nice to stay inside, so I hobbled down to Chelsea to see what was blooming in the Highline Park. There's been a new water feature installed, which was a surprise, and it looks lovely as well.

I think I've figured out a walking posture that works - if I widen my stance so that the outside edge of my feet stay in line with the outside edge of my hip (I'm used to walking fairly base-narrow, my feet swinging in almost in front of each other), and concentrate on activating my glute muscles with every step, I do much better, so I was able to get there and back with very little pain. I also enjoy that the level of concentration required makes it like a little walking meditation every time I try to go anywhere. I was exhausted by the end though, and slept heavily all afternoon, embarrassingly enough.

No cooking tonight, we've decided to go out with a friend. Last night's meal was delicious though, and ridiculously easy, I think the longest part was the bread, and that was largely because it took 14 minutes to preheat the oven. Dave coached me through the salmon, and I think I now feel confident enough to do it on my own next time. Part of me wants to tackle homemade ravioli next, but that might be a little ambitious. But I LOVE ravioli. We'll see.

1/1: The best laid plans

Where: Home
When: May 4, 2011

So, I had all these plans. One of those plans was to get myself in excellent physical condition, partly because I enjoy that kind of thing, but mostly because we've decided being alive is too awesome to not share, so we were going to try to have a baby, and I wanted to prepare myself beforehand in order to be able to maintain some semblance of that fitness throughout the pregnancy, hopefully making pregnancy and the labor easier on both me and the baby.

Mission accomplished. Sort of.

I am now with (a very wiggly and energetic) child, according to our brief view via ultrasound a week ago. This is obviously delightful. And I was definitely pretty fit into the first 5 or 6 weeks of this.

I'm now 13 weeks, and the past 6 weeks or so have featured a long, slow decline in the integrity of the ligaments that hold my pelvis together. This is a predictable side effect of pregnancy, it's necessary that everything spread out so that the baby can actually be born. But today it took me 10 minutes to walk two short blocks. While 6 weeks ago, my joints were just aching and uncomfortable, and I had to sit down occasionally while walking places, things have progressed to the point that I am now getting a stabbing pain in my sacroiliac joints that leaves me gasping and unable to move for several seconds. The only way to avoid it is to walk very, very slowly with a shuffling gait and no sudden movements. And even then I still get unexpected jolts of pain at delightfully unexpected moments. (This makes walking the dog awesome, by the way.)

So, plans for an active pregnancy filled with hiking and spending time in the weight room have been shelved. Plans for working until at least my third trimester have been shelved (my work is massage therapy, which requires both standing for long periods and lots of leaning over, neither of which are currently tolerated by my joints).

New plans - find things to do so I don't go crazy. Currently in the works - learn how to cook, and start a new photography project.

I am very, very wary of calling the photography project a 365 day, or even a 30 day - who knows how long I'll keep this one up for. So for now, I'm aiming to take and post a photo a day, and I'll up the count as I go, rather than trying to predict the desires and energy levels of my future self.

The cooking will be interesting - I'm scared of the kitchen, it stresses me out, but since I have lots of time with nothing to do but grow a baby, I may as well learn how to feed the two of us properly. Tonight's attempt:

Pan-Seared Salmon, with (frozen dough from Whole Foods) a warm french baguette, and Sugar Snap Peas with Pine Nuts and Garlic. Recipes all courtesy of America's Test Kitchen, who produce the only recipes I feel relatively confident that I can't mess up.