Doctor's Orders

About a week ago, when Mari went in for her routine check-up, she told her doctor that she had experienced an alarming number of contractions during the course of one recent night, some of which were fairly strong. At the time she was not much more than 24 weeks into this pregnancy and the doc told her that some of his colleagues would prescribe strict bed rest from here on in. He didn’t want to do that, but he did advise her to reduce her activity level by a significant amount, to avoid stairs, and to stay off her feet as much as possible. “We’ve got to keep those babies in there another ten weeks at least,” he added, setting 35 weeks as a goal (the week of October 15th). (On a previous visit, he had told Mari that twins are recently born during the 36th week of the pregnancy.)

Over the past week, Mari has greatly reduced her activity level and has noted a correlation between the time she spends on her feet and the strength and frequency of the contractions. We are thankful that Gimena has been here this week to help us transition into this new phase of household habits. In addition to cooking every day and watching over Emilio (and blogging about him and the rest of Chicago), she has done some shopping and house-cleaning and has helped me move boxes into our basement. We will miss her after she leaves a week from now.

Mari had hoped to start back to work in September, but that’s out of the question now. This means that we’re going to going through her remaining sick days sooner, and after that we’ll be without income until she can go back to work in the spring. We have savings, but flying without an income net for that long is a little scary. I’m doing everything I can to wrap up my dissertation (I recently completed a first draft of the last chapter and the epilogue). I plan to apply for jobs this fall and, hopefully, land some interviews at this year’s Modern Language Association convention (which is being held in Chicago this year).

After Gimena leaves, Emily (Emilio’s babysitter) will coming on a regular basis again. She’ll help Mari with Emilio and other household chores, while I get some work done. We’re thinking about getting a second babysitter to fill in on days when Emily is booked elsewhere (she’s wrapping her master’s degree in poetry this fall and has classes and a thesis project to finish).

Thanks to everyone who has offered to help us out over the next couple of months with offers of food, counsel, transport and cash.

Wed, we went in for a routine “level two” ultrasound and got the good news that the babes continue to grow at a similar rate.

Lefty (the boy) weighs 1 pound, 15 ounces and Rightie (the girl, although I prefer to think of her and her brother: "Lefty" and "Far Lefty") weighs 2 pounds, which is right on schedule, too. That was my first opportunity to see the tykes “live.” The highlight of the experience was seeing Lefty yawn (it was early in the morning). He and his sleeping sister are both taking this all in stride, clearly.

There's a New Blogger in Town

Gimena joined the blog world about an hour ago (that's her behind the flash in the photo at right). Woo-hoo!

When we were walking home from Lincoln Square tonight (25 minutes from the plaza to our front door), I told her I think of my blogs as letters to friends and family. I think that helped convince her to stick a toe in the blogwaters.

Her first post is rich with clever comments and observations (in Spanish). It also includes a lot of photos she has taken of Emilio. Click here to check some of them out (I've also added a link in the column at left.)

¡Bienvenida, Gime!

¡Gime!

Mari's little sister Gimena (Gime of the title) flew in from Madrid an hour and a half ago for her third visit to Chicago, wearing a "Too Much Light Makest the Baby Go Blind" t-shirt no less (she bought it last summer when she was here with Mari's little brother, Gerardo).

She'll be with us until the 24th and we're very happy to have her.

This photo was taken before Emilio had gotten up from his nap. That's a take-out menu from Andie's in her hand. We had Andie's on Sunday when Fay and Company came to visit and we liked it so much, we're ordering again: vegetarian couscous, spinach pie, greek salad, stuffed artichokes with dill rice.

Work Camp

When Mom and Dad flew in from Texas on Sunday, I told Dad, half-jokingly that he should think of his next seven days in Chicago as Work Camp, as a number of times since we’ve moved in to our new house, I’ve told María José something like, “Maybe we can do that when Dad comes.”

Since then, Dad has assembled Emilio’s backyard pool, spent a day cleaning out our basement (which included moving washers and dryers around--see image at left; thanks to Franz Stuck for the illustration) so that we can move stuff there that we are now keeping in storage, spent another day installing two child-safety gates (a process that was much more complicated than expected), took notes at my request on several books relevant to my dissertation that I have not yet had a chance to go through myself, proofread and provided editorial suggestions on rough drafts of the last two chapters and the epilogue for my dissertation, spent an afternoon going through those chapters with me line by line, and, during his “down time,” built a cardboard fortress for Emilio.

Mother, meanwhile, in addition to watching over Emilio and assisting Dad with his many labors, washed the dishes from our first potluck, consented to read two books from my Forty Reads list, and spent last night making gold-medal French fries and pork chops (see video at the bottom of this post).

As I write, they are in the backyard, scrubbing down dingy patio furniture that we inherited from the previous residents.

So, come to Chicago, folks! And find yourself, in the words of Carl Sandburg:

Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
. . . Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.