funny how time works...

here is bunny in her dance digs last friday before her very first class... doesn't she look just like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face when she does the spontaneous dance in the beatnik club?  wicked cute.

today my dad called and asked me to cosign a car loan for him.  i guess his car died, poor guy, head gaskets blown.  that car was all paid up, but he filed chapter 11 five years ago so now he can't secure a loan on his own.  so he called me.

isn't it funny how given enough time, all things will eventually come full circle?  here i am, being a financial steady hand for my father... of course we said yes, no problem.  i think it was hard for him to ask me, not only because i am after all his youngest child, but mostly because he has a history of having so much trouble keeping money stuff sorted out.  but honestly i know that he is very solvent now that he isn't struggling to maintain a practice and mortgage and all that, so i have faith in him and it will be nice for him to have something simple he can prove faithful on to himself... you know?  maybe a bit of a selfesteem builder for him to show that he can make good on a favor from me.

the funny thing is, i asked him what the payments will be so i could help him sort out if it is a practical loan for him given the fact that he could possibly be unable to work sometime in the next several years (he is, after all, 73 years old) and then would be living exclusively on his social security.  i just wanted to be sure that if it came down to me needing to take over the payments that I would be able to swing them.  hehe.  yeah.  the payments will $160 a month.  ONE SIXTY a month.  remind me, next time i am buying a car, to do it in new hampshire...

dance class

Biscuit had her first dance class yesterday afternoon!  It was very exciting.  She is taking Junior Contemporary Movers class, kind of like pre-modern I guess, at ODC dance Commons where I train too.  She was awesome and very happy and the class was good. Especially because they did not allow parents in the room and kept the door closed.  Woohoo!  As we went home i told her how proud I am to have a daughter who is a dancer and she said, "I have been a dancer all my life Mama".  Duh.

I had a great practice yesterday.  I did 40 minutes on the elliptical trainer first, so I was really warm and limber.  I did a 90 minute practice and my range was huge.  It was great.  It felt amazing.  That is a good combo.

practice

So yesterday i saw 5 clients in the 6.5 hours Ava was in school, so I didn't have time to practice or workout or anything.  Actually, I had no time for lunch either.  But Ava and I had a snack of avocados with salt, soymilk, and bananas with peanut butter when we came home.  And i did the mountain of dishes.  But i guess that since I renounced the fruit of my actions (dishwashing) and did it simply because it had to be done, it was, in fact YOGA.

Ava and I practiced together from her new yoga poster from Auntie Michelle and the girls before bedtime.  Ava said "that's not cat and dog, mama, it's cat and COW".  color me proud!  But we loved it and had a fun time together.  She really digs her mat, especially the having her very own mat part.

feeing good so far

no sickness yet or anything.  did the level one series last night after I spoke with Lis, and did pilates during the day.  Today i am going to do a big hard practice and rock my danurasana while I still can ;p

today I clean the house, too.  wish me luck...

midwife!

so yesterday I did some internet research and read up on various local homebirth midwives.  chose to call Lis Worcester of the Bay Area Homebirth Collective. ~ www.jadelotusmidwifery.com ~  www.bayareahomebirth.org ~ because she seemed like a nice one and the bay Area Homebirth Collective appealed to me.  The childbirth educator for them is Jane Austen, who is a very well known prenatal yoga teacher here at Yoga Tree.  

Anyways, she was super nice and asked could she call me back in the evening so we could talk at length after she put her kids to bed.  (RAD)  So she called me at 8:15 and we spoke for nearly an hour.  She is an RN, since 1986.  Wanted to be a midwife all along, but felt she was too young when she left nursing school.  She started as a labor and delivery nurse, then left hospitals to be a nurse practitioner doing primary care, then became a doula and then went into direct entry midwifery training.  She has been CPM since 2003.

I like her.  She said that nutrition is a big focus for her, she likes moms to follow a whole foods diet and she works a lot with specifics of nutrition.  She used to be a gestational diabetes educator when she was an in hospital RN so she is very savvy about GD.  And their care is so cool.  They come to your house for prenatal visits, which are between an hour and an hour and a half long each time.  She has an intern who she works with all through, a woman who had three homebirths.  One with a midwife and two on her own with her husband!  For most tests she uses her own lab, and she has me drink a big bottle of juice for my gd test instead of glucola.  So hooray.  At the birth would be her, her intern and a another midwife from the Bay Area Homebirth Collective.  They do everything, and would accompany me to the hospital in the even of needing a transfer to a hospital birth.  But their rates of that are fairly low.

Anyways, after delivery they stay for about 3 or 4 hours to make sure we are all tucked in and cosy and have what we need.  They come back the next day, check me and do all the baby care.  Then they come back for extensive postpartum and newborn visits on days 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 40 and 60.  Can you imagine?  Post partum care and breastfeeding support extending to day 60?  In home newborn screening and care so we don't have to rush out to a pediatrician?  Getting to rest in your own bed with your husband and baby and other children after you deliver?

guess how much?  for everything, start to finish, all included: $4000

That is not very much money.  Not at all.  It is unbelievable really.  We are so happy.  She is coming over next wednesday with her intern to meet us and so we can interview her (her words).  If we didn't like her we could check out others but I like her a lot so far.  I expect she'll be my midwife if we get along when we meet on wednesday.

it worked!

so, Hooray!  I didn't think it had, because I tested saturday and it said definitely no.  But I was very sad and very puzzled, because I really thought that I was.  It made me scared we would have some kind of problem... but since no period still as of yesterday morning I decided to test again and WOOHOO!!!!  two lines.

I am thrilled and delighted.  I remember that the first time I was thrilled and simultaneously like oh shit! what will I do?  None of that this time, since I know the drill I guess but also because it is easier to know you are ready the second time around.  That makes me happy because I really always meant that I would have another baby when I felt like I wanted to.  So I am glad that I was listening to my heart and am so happy and ready to be pregnant and give birth and have another child bless my life.

Ava is very excited as well.  She swears my belly is already a little bigger, hehe.  Cutie pie.

Have fallen off the wagon a little with the daily practice in the last week or so.  Having dance class again kind of made it harder to schedule.  But I am going to commit as much as I can to a daily practice through my pregnancy, since it is a conveniently packaged time frame.  And, hey, atleast this time I don't have to quit smoking.