One year finished

Yesterday morning, I completed my last school obligation for the year, which was to take my biostatistics final. Therefore, I have successfully made it through the semester before giving birth, and I have also completed the first year of my PhD program with about 3 years to go. Or if you combine the masters and the PhD programs together, it would total about 6 years, so in that case, I'm halfway done. Normally I would work during the summer, either teaching summer school or doing research with my advisor, but this summer will be my maternity leave. I do still have research work that I can do, but luckily it's mostly things like editing manuscripts and writing IRB documents, and that's something I can do from home.

Now that school is finished, Ally is welcome to come whenever she likes.

New nephew is here!

Simon DiGiulio Evans was born today by C-section, checking in at around 7.3 lbs and 21 inches. Hopefully Andy and Anne will send us some pictures soon!

Ally is still in the oven. We had a doctor's appointment today, and I am about 2 cm dilated and about 50% effaced, so things are moving in the right direction. We did go ahead and schedule an induction for May 3rd, which is 1 week past my due date, just in case she does not come on her own. Ben and I are hoping that labor will start on it's own though, so that we can spend some of the time at home before heading to the hospital. Plus, I have heard that Pitocin-induced contractions can be stronger than regularly-occurring ones. Oh well, I guess we'll know soon enough!

An new playmate for waiting for Ally's arrival?

Our friends Andy and Michelle gave birth to their baby early this morning at the Duke University hospital-a baby girl named Miriam. We are super-excited for them and can't wait to meet Miriam. She will be joining an already large family of farm animal siblings, including Linus the Beagle, 3 cats, a flock of chickens, several rabbits, and a flock of sheep.

We are also eagerly anticipating the arrival of a new nephew, who may make his appearance on Wednesday or Thursday of this week, depending on if my sister-in-law gets induced. With all these new births happening, I hope that Ally can be patient for just a little while longer and stay in the oven, at least until Friday after I take my biostatistics final. After that, we can negotiate.

Shrinking brain?

I get daily pregnancy e-updated from whattoexpect.com, and I am pretty sure one of the more recent ones said that your brain tends to shrink during 3rd trimester (it's supposed to go back to normal after delivery). Or something like that (case in point).

And coincidentally, final exams are approaching. Luckily, everything is open-book this semester. Especially physiology and biostatistics. Otherwise, I might have been turning in mush. Kind of like my brain.

Sleepless in Chapel Hill

Do you know what I was doing this morning at 4am? I was working on my epidemiology final. No, I was not pulling an all-nighter, and yes, I know that it is the weekend. However, I woke up last night around 2am, and couldn't go back to sleep, so I figured that there was no use stewing about it in bed. So I got up, went downstairs, surfed the net, worked on my final, and wrote some emails. Finally around 5:30am or so, I decided to venture back upstairs to try to get some more sleep. Luckily it worked.

I guess in this last bit of pregnancy, it has been harder to get comfortable and stay comfortable all night. That, coupled with middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom, does not make for great sleep. I know that this is only the beginning of many sleep-deprived nights and days to come for many months. Sigh.

We are the Champions!

Our boys did it! UNC is the 2009 NCAA Champion! This is the 2nd time in 5 years that we've won too. GO HEELS!

I passed through Student Stores today, and it was packed! People were buying up all kinds of championship memorabilia (t-shirts and the like). I did not buy anything when we won in 2005, but I think I might have to get something this time, in case we don't win for a while. For Ben's birthday, I got him a UNC coffee mug that he can use at work. It was a good buy because a lot of his students are Duke fans (poor kids), so I'll bet that today when he went to class, he had his coffee mug in hand and took drinks from it often, Haha!

Pokey is Gone

In the process of getting ready for Ally's impending arrival, we have been organizing, and in some cases, getting rid of the stuff we've accumulated over the past several years. The largest and maybe most sentimental thing we got rid of is Ben's old car-a 1990 Honda Civic named Pokey. Okay, Pokey did not go to the junkyard-we donated her. Our public TV station has a program where you can donate old cars and boats and they put them to good use. It was a good move; she's basically sat in our visitor's lot for the past year or so with a dead battery and other such ailments, and since we are essentially a one-car family (I take the bus to UNC while Ben drives to Elon), we really didn't have a need to keep her. So anyway, they came and took her away a couple days ago. It was a little bit sad, but hopefully she will go to someone who can get some use out of her. Bye Pokey, we'll miss you!