The Littlest Callenberg

At 5:31am on Sunday, April 15, Michael Augustine was born.

Today he is eight days old. Already he is getting bigger: his cheeks are chubbier, his arms are starting to fill out. Sometimes I still look at him and wonder how on earth this little person was inside of me. (And how on earth I managed to push him out.) 

We are settling into our new life here, taking it slowly and quietly, and sleeping when our beautiful boy lets us. 

Last Week at Pitt

I kept wanting to title this post something about going out with a bang, but it would sound like a really bad, really tasteless joke.

My school is having some problems with bomb threats. As in 40 in the past three weeks. At first it was mostly the building where I teach and one of the other main class buildings--handwritten notes left in bathrooms. Some classes had to be canceled, and once I had to teach outside. But it has since spread to many other buildings (including dorms) and now it's always a batch of them, as in three or four buildings at a time. It's very frustrating.

I am only teaching for one more week, and I'm really hoping that the alarms don't go off and force me to climb down 23 flights of stairs less than a week before my due date.

In the meantime, several of my students have notified me they won't be around campus for the rest of the semester because they don't feel safe. I don't blame them (although I really don't think a bomb will go off), and I expect several more will leave campus before the week is up. I will accommodate them the best I can, but it makes things rather a pain in the rear.

We'll see how things go!

PS--Sorry about the weird font changes lately! I'm not sure what's up with that.

Getting There

Keith and I attended our last prenatal class at the hospital last week. The topic was how to care for a newborn, which included things like swaddling, changing diapers, and bathing. Everyone was supposed to bring their own "baby" to practice on--a doll or a teddy bear.

Well, neither of us had a doll or teddy bear (well, I have a teddy bear, but she doesn't really have legs). So we brought the only thing we did have, which was a stuffed elephant I'd been knitting for Baby C.

I knit like mad the night before to make sure our elephant had all four limbs. But he had neither ears nor eyes, which makes him look like some sort of muppet or other unidentifiable creature. (Keith didn't want to carry him in the hospital.)

The pattern is Elijah by Ysolda Teague. It's fun to knit and absolutely adorable, although I think that I need to knit any future stuffed animals from some sort of wool rather than cotton, as bits of the stuffing are showing through at my increases.

Maybe he'll get his ears before Easter.

Other projects I hope to finish this week: my manuscript (by tomorrow or Good Friday, hopefully, so that it can be printed and bound on Easter Monday or Tuesday), my grading, and some cleaning. And then baby can come as soon as ever he pleases.

This is how I'm spending my Holy Week ... say a prayer for me!

Yarning along with Ginny at Small Things.

A Brief Appearance

Taking a moment to post, as I am overwhelmed by a ten page paper (currently eight pages of word vomit understandable only to myself) that is due tomorrow, and am having a hard time forcing myself back to it after dinner.

I am uncomfortable.

As I type this, Baby C's feet (I think) are up in my ribs. Even though he has dropped. I am carrying much lower than I was before--my belly is basically in my lap when I sit down--and I definitely feel him chilling in my pelvis when I walk. But he can still reach up when he has a mind. I'm guessing he's a long baby. At least he's no longer pinching any nerves.

Now, if I were sitting forward with my feet on the floor and my legs at the proper angle, he wouldn't be in my ribs. But as it is, I am sitting with my feet propped on the couch next to me, in the hopes that they will look less like elephant feet--or at least feel less sore from the swelling. (Nothing I can do for my hands, unfortunately--I have lots of typing that needs to get done.) I am so grateful that this wasn't a summer pregnancy, because I can only imagine the swelling would have been awful.

I meant to do a lot of walking with the warmer weather, but walking is painful.

Honestly, I am just tired of being pregnant. I keep thinking, I'm ready whenever you are, baby. But that's not entirely true. Because I have this paper to write. I have a manuscript to revise. I have stories to grade. All in the next 3 1/2 weeks.

So if I'm not around here much these days ... that would be why.

Something New

Remember how one of my crafty resolutions for 2012 was learning to crochet?

Let me introduce you to my first crochet swatch! (I was too lazy to weave in the ends.)

Now that I've learned the single, half-double, double, treble, and double-treble (sheesh) crochet stitches, I'm ready to move on to increasing, decreasing, working in the round, and so on. I'm using the excellent Crochet School videos over at Crafty Minx's blog.

It took me until double crochet to find "groove", so to speak. As I moved along, I kept finding myself holding the yarn between my ring and middle fingers, which meant having to move my entire hand to wrap it around the hook--very awkward and tiring. But I seem to have found a more practical way to hold it that still feels natural to me.

My allegiance is still to knitting, but it feels good to learn something new, doesn't it?

Well, look at that!

Sometimes Googling your own name tells you things about yourself you didn't even know.*

Like the fact that I was, apparently, nominated for a Pushcart Prize! Something I totally missed.

See?

I didn't win, of course--but getting nominated is still pretty dang awesome.

*Someone asked about my name change, and I told them I was officially the only Rosemary Callenberg on the internet. I had to fact check.

On the writing front ...

Today I met with one of the members of my manuscript committee. (I have another meeting with the chair of my committee on Thursday.) It was immensely helpful. She helped me see certain patterns that I tend to fall into with my stories, some of which I had almost-sort-of realized by myself before; but there's something about an outside voice pointing things out that can make things so much clearer.

We talked lightheartedly about the possibility of Baby coming early and complicating things, and she said something about my being able to wrap this thesis up in two weeks. I don't think that's possible, especially considering the essays I need to grade and the ten page paper I have to draft (both by next week), but ... perhaps I could conceivably have this thing ready for binding and committee signatures by the end of the month? It would be nice ...

Meanwhile, I got an email from an old professor asking if I would submit something to the literary journal I used to edit in undergrad. So soon I will have another publication under my belt. Pretty awesome!