exciting news

i realize my posts are actually not too different from one another, but you're sweet to keep checking in on me anyway. i promise there will be some exciting news sometime within the next few weeks! i' changed my silly profile pic too.. it was funny, but i'm over it now.

These days I’m fairly forgetful, but amazingly focused and single-minded. I go to the grocery store almost every day now because I forgot some little piddly thing the previous day. Yesterday was milk & sugar & tortillas, today is t-p and cereal… but it’s all for the best, you see I’m supposed to be walking at least 30 minutes a day until lucas drops his head into my pelvis. He hasn’t done this yet and, frankly, I can understand why he would not want to stick his head into the bony cavity any sooner than is absolutely necessary.. it just doesnt sound comfortable .. he’s already standing on his head for several weeks now! Poor little guy, probably all wet and pruney too. Hehe.

Later this week, I’m officially “full term”.. they say 2 weeks before -or after- the projected due date (june 3) is normal and he will not be premature, just early. I’d love to know if any of y’all have a premonition about when this is going to happen.. anybody wanna venture a guess? Too bad we’re not all living in the same town so we could start a betting square for day & time. I really don’t care when, in fact, I’m ready NOW.

My friend Julia came for an afternoon visit yesterday, it was nice sitting around with a girl. We ate ice cream bars and talked about birthin’ and boys. She’s in hot-pursuit of a certain greek boy… I guess you could say the same about me. (lucas being my certain greek boy..)

It occurred to us that he will probably get a GREEK birth certificate. How neat is that? I hope it’s all typed up on an old typewriter or something. ~and it just might BE!~

yemis-yummy

our neighbor lady, Francesca brought us a steaming hot plate of γεμισμένα φύλλα σταφυλιών "yemismena filla stafilion..." - i think that's how they say 'stuffed grape leaves', i personally cant get my tongue around the words, but i CAN get my tongue around the food pretty well! .. maybe you know the ones.. i'm going to figure out how to make it.. maybe one day soon, maybe one day later, but one day for SURE! ---- it's seasoned rice and ground meat rolled up into little grape leaves, and then covered with a delicious lemon butter sauce.

i think the little neighbor ladies all like to 'compete' for the love of the little preggy foreign girl on dafnis.. because this comes a day after i got two huge fistfuls of freshly cut flowers from the OTHER neighbor lady, Vouta. 5 long stem roses, a few gardenias (smell good!) and some other floral delights to accompany the roses.

i've got a busy windowsill these days, and i feel like la plus chanceuse du monde!

let me catch my breath!

I am officially beginning my NINTH MONTH of preggyhood today. My mom pointed this out to me on the phone yesterday when I told her I had 5 or 6 weeks left, and she questioned my accounting of the matter. I have been known to mis-count things before (remember the first due date miscalculation? Haha, good times good times) so she is right to check my math. May 3^rd to june 3^rd is precisely one month by her method of counting.

I am starting to feel more and more like a baby-vehicle instead of a person, and since he’s literally crowding my lungs I do feel a little out-of-breath these days… doc says its normal, and that he’s only slightly larger than average now. Mr. Little Le Sager is 5-lbs now, and I have heard he will grow a LOT MORE this month.. I asked my doc to show me how much bigger I would get by holding his hand out over my belly, and it just didn’t seem feasible. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they call this a miracle.

On Sunday afternoon we put the crib together and I got all emotional as we listened to the Winnie-the-pooh tunes coming out of the lighted musical crib-side hanger. This is actually happening, y’all!. I looked at my huge egg-of-a-belly, and then at the empty mattress and then again at my belly, and knew it wouldn’t be long before we saw our kid in that crib. .. and waking up in the middle of the night for him.

Sunday was also Easter Sunday here and Philippe had Monday off because of it. We bought 6 bright red-dyed boiled eggs and did the traditional wishes & cracking-thing they do here. Philippe’s wishes are going to come true this year, as his egg cracked my egg on 3 different occasions. And we were going to go to the church at midnight on Saturday night for the fireworks and chanting and candle-lighting processions, but we nodded off around 1130. oops. oh well.

As a side note, I was really struck by how easter is really a religious holiday here, no chocolate bunnies and egg hunts, just people at church all week and steeped in Christian symbolism .. blood and body and light of Christ and all that. I wasn’t raised catholic, so I wondered if it was just all the catholic ceremony that’s so foreign to me, or if it’s really different. Philippe said it was probably a little of both.