Tahoe and Petaluma and 26 weeks

Well, we've all been transferring colds around here for the past three weeks or so. First Anja, who had the worst of it, and then me for the last two weeks, and Jay was a little sick off and on during that time. I'm just now beginning to catch up on everything and today is the first day I would say I'm not actually sick. Unfortunately I still had a really bad cough over the past weekend, sometimes uncontrollable, when we went away with my coworkers to Lake Tahoe. It was a fun trip, but I was pretty physically miserable. I slept a lot, or tried to through all the coughing. Having the depressed immune system of a pregnant woman is not fun at all. It's very frustrating to have to spend weeks fighting off a cold in addition to all the other pregnancy discomforts.

Otherwise, the pregnancy is going well. All measurements are right on target, and the baby is very active, just like Anja was. I just finished 26 weeks, so I have another 14 to go. Still seems like forever, but at least it's getting closer.

Even though the trip was tough for me, I'm glad we went. It's about a 3 hour drive from Petaluma and we left Thursday after work. Anja fell asleep in the car Thursday night and woke up Friday morning to this view out the window. The first thing she said was, "Snowmen!" when she saw some in the yard. She hadn't seen snow since she was 9 months old!


This is the back yard of the lodge we rented. Stunning. And with a great little sledding hill! That's Lover's Leap rising up in the background. We stayed for three days and even had some new snow while we were there, maybe a foot or so. We also lost power for about 12 hours the second day (overnight). It was just like being back in Michigan.


Here are Anja and I on our way out to the sauna. She was very excited to have her own towel like mommy.


She thought the snow was pretty cool. She threw a few snowballs, and we built her a little snow fort. She wasn't very impressed with how difficult it was to walk in fresh snow, though.


Meanwhile, spring has been here in Petaluma for about a month now. The hills are bright green and all the trees are blooming. We've had quite a bit of rain lately, but most days the sun still comes out for a bit. We had a few weeks of weather in the 50's, but now we're solidly in the 60's every day. Flowers are out in all the yards in town, beautiful.


We've been talking to Anja about the baby coming. Since my belly is huge now, I've been telling here there is a baby inside. She just thinks it's a joke, and shows me where her baby is: