Big news, big belly. . .

Wow!  I'm pregnant!  While Peter and I have actually known this since early May, I am only now making it widely known to people outside of my family and the folks I see every day.  First, the preliminaries:  I'm due on Peter's bday (that's fun!), which is January 20th; in 2 days, I'll be 17 weeks along.  We are not finding out the gender and we are not sharing names before the birth with anyone.. . .sorry!  But, we're very excited!  It's kind of crazy to go from years and years of trying NOT to get pregnant to, all of the sudden, here we go!  Whee!

I'm getting off lucky--no puking for me, just really profound exhaustion (which I keep thinking is over, then it's not) and extreme moodiness, which I think is worse for Peter than it is for me.  We've started getting some baby clothes at yard sales and stuff and are trying to clear the back room out, but otherwise haven't done too much preparation. I just got my first maternity wear items this past weekend and by the end of August expect to not be able to wear any of my current clothing.

In other news, we are trying our best to enjoy as much of our remaining lives as a young, childless couple as much as we can.  Since May, we have been to see Coldplay and Beyonce and have traveled to Pittsburgh and New England.  Pictures from those trips are attached.  As for Pittsburgh, it was REALLY wonderful to see family and cousins who I hadn't seen in way too long and we want to give a shout out to Uncle Turk for being one of our best blog readers!  Thanks, Turk!  As for New England, we just got back last week.  The original impetus for the trip was Peter's mom Betsy's wish to have her ashes scattered off of Martha's Vineyard.  However, with 18 family members in attendance and the beautiful setting, it turned into much more of a vacation than I had anticipated.  On the way home, we stopped and saw my good friend Indu, who really pampered us!

Another big change for us is that Matt and Woody moved into our downstairs apartment at the beginning of June and are officially Atlantans.  As I write, they are preparing to move out to a more permanent, private space, and I will miss them (though they'll only be 3 miles away!)  It has been so nice seeing so much of them this summer and I'm thrilled that they both have found jobs in this evil economy.  

Work-wise, Peter and I keep trucking along.  Not too much new on that front.  

So, I will try to blog about life and pregnancy as it seems appropriate, without oversharing or being too ebullient.  You may see an ultrasound picture here.  I promise that I will not put any pictures of the umbilical cord or placenta up after the birth (I actually heard of someone recently who did this--eew!).

Anyway, hope all of your summers are wrapping up well!  Call anytime and give us an update--if we haven't talked in the last month or so, chances are we miss you!

xoxox, r&p

Pictures, roughly from top to bottom:  fireworks over East Point; Peter with Gram in Slippery Rock, PA; Peter near the Gay Head cliffs in Martha's Vineyard; Good times with the girl cousins in Monaca, PA; Deborah H. serves up lobsters from the grill (yum!); Brunch with Indu in Boston; Happy Birthday, Woody!; Hiking on the Chatahoochee with Sarah and Andrew; Me, a little belly and the Pittsburgh skyline; Peter on the ferry. 

Our Spring!

Spring came to Georgia in fits and starts this year, going from very cold and snowy in March(!) to warm and back to cold and rainy. The good thing, though, is that we are not in a dire drought, as we were at this time last year when we were contemplating our move to Atlanta. Peter and I celebrated the start of spring, the end of the GA legislative session, and an early third wedding anniversary in the N. GA mountains. We rented a cabin in the little town of Cherry Log and retreated for a long weekend of hiking, reading, sleeping in, hot tubbing and no TV--it was wonderful! As soon as we got back, Peter started a new job. He had been dissatisfied at MALDEF because of the lack of clients and found a great opportunity at a small, boutique immigration firm that caters to the Latino community and accepted the position with some doubts because he had worked at MALDEF for such a relatively short amount of time. However, a few days later, all of his doubts were erased when the national head of MALDEF came to Atlanta and closed the office! Suddenly, Peter was the luckiest individual among his colleagues, who were stuck looking for a job in a terrible economy--how lucky we felt! He has now been at the new place for about 5 weeks and is starting to settle in happily!

We also celebrated Easter with my mom and dad and had our first year with 2 passover seders to attend, both through the wonderful temple that Peter recently joined. After that, Peter's dad John came at the end of April. The lead up to his visit was a flurry of furnishing the house so that he'd have somewhere to sleep beside an air mattress. We are now the proud owners of a fully functional guest room with a REAL bed (not a futon!), as well as a real dining room table--it's all making us feel very adult. Come visit and check them out!

John was our inaugural over-night guest to stay in our guest room and we had a fantastic time with him, showing him our new town and home, as well as some distinct Atlanta sites, such as CNN, the MLK memorial, the Cyclorama and Buford Highway. On his last night in town, my parents came up and we made mint juleps, watched the Kentucky Derby and had a nice meal together at our dining room table (our first dinner there!). After John's visit, Peter traveled to Wisconsin, along with his brother David and sister Victoria to visit their Grandma Betty for mother's day weekend, while I traveled the short 45 minutes to Peachtree City to be with my mom.

Aside from all of our travels and family visits, I have discovered this spring that I love gardening! We live right near a very cool community garden where we took a lesson on spring planting at the end of winter and now I have used what I gleaned there to establish a garden of bok choy, broccoli, chard, squash, radishes, collards, tomatoes and a struggling jalapeno plant (I think it's been too cold for it). I am loving seeing the plants grow and check on my garden pretty much every day before and after work.

So, that's it for now. This coming week, we are headed to Pittsburgh to visit my cousins who Peter has never met, as well as my grandmother and aunts. After that, Matt and Woody are scheduled to arrive in GA and start their lives here living in our basement--yay! Now that I'm out of the winter doldrums, I am going to try to keep up with this blog a little more. xoxo, r:)

Pictures, top to bottom: Peter w/ Grandma Betty; Robyn with our two dads John and Wilson at our new table; Peter and John in front of the house; Robyn and John on the back porch; Robyn's garden; John reading the paper in the dining room; Robyn with Pico and Isabelle on the bed; Kathy and Wilson on Easter weekend; Robyn on the porch of the Cherry Log cabin; Peter inside the Cherry Log cabin.

Snowy Day in GA!

Who would have thought?!?!? Snow on March 1 in Georgia!

The Holidays and the End of 2008

Here are some wishes for the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009:

From Robyn:

Attainable Goals

A decent public defense system in every state;
A sitcom that glorifies public defense as a profession with a young, sexy, hilarious cast;
A shift away from vindictiveness toward mercy and rehabilitation of damaged individuals
A recognition that our worst criminals are products of poverty and abusive, neglected childhoods, and that this is society's responsibility and that we are criminals for allowing this to happen;
Abolition of the death penalty;
Abolition of drug possession crimes;
For the country's jails to NOT be a substitute for decent mental health care;
Decent mental health and bodily health care for all;
Polar bear survival;
A nationwide prioritization of recycling and environmental stewardship;
A decent place to call home for everyone in the world;
Access to abundant good food and education for every human child;
A cure for malaria;
An end to diarrhea as a leading cause of death for kids under 5 in the developing world;
A 30-hour work week and an end to all unemployment;
A living minimum wage;
More public transportation;
Less SUVs;
More condoms and sex-ed in the schools;
Free marriage for all;
The demise of FOX news and the like because of a lack of interest in hate-mongering;
A better sense of humor and less puritanism for the US as a nation, generally
A return to dancing as a legitimate and widely-pursued social activity
The demise of Wal-Mart, also because of a lack of interest in the junk they sell.
Monsanto's bankruptcy due to a breakthrough Supreme Court decision that you can't patent plants because they are their own beings.

Unattainable Wishes:

For trees to pass on their wisdom to people;
An end to national borders and the current, totally unjustifiable rich/poor dichotomy between nations and peoples;
For Betsy to return;
For all of my loved ones, friends and family, to live in the same town;
To shrink our country so that any part is accessible through a 2-3 hour train ride;
For no one to die in a DUI accident this New Year.

From Peter:

Attainable Goals:

An end to ICE raids
A half way sane immigration bill
Some real progress for gay and lesbian human rights
Some real progress toward an economy that respects and values families and workers, women, children and men
more companies like Campbell's soup (see links below), and fewer groups like AFA

http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/campbells_soup_rebuffs_anti-gay_organization

http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid69429.asp

Unattainable Wishes:

the return of all sorts of cool extinct species
the return of my mother
the return of all the folks killed in war this last year

Whatever you may be wishing for the coming year, we hope that it is a good year for you and that you had a wonderful holiday season!!!!

xoxo, us:)

Birthday Blog--What a year!

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33!

I sit to write this blog on the eve of my 33^rd birthday. For my birthday last year, I was going out to dinner in Seattle with Peter and our good friends Steven, Emily and Jules. Afterwards, we went to see the Pogues. This year, I am feeling a little homesick for my friends in Seattle—we are so new in Atlanta that we don’t yet have a gang with whom to celebrate our occasions like birthdays, so it will mostly be a family affair this year. (And, unfortunately, I will also be working some this weekend.) Now, don’t get me wrong—we have had an amazing year and I wanted to move to Atlanta to be closer to family, to be in a place where we could afford to buy a house and to be out of the cloudy, drizzly weather of Seattle. And, I have all of that. Still, I can’t help but miss all of our dear, fun friends there, especially at a time like a birthday.

Since I last wrote, a lot has happened in Peter’s and my lives. First, we bought a house and we moved in last weekend! We are delighted to be homeowners and the house is adorable! We even have some pictures up on the wall and have started to make it feel like ours. Plus, we are in a wonderful, neighborhoody part of the city of Decatur called Oakhurst, where we are able to walk to cafes, bars, restaurants, and the subway into the city. Neither of us has to have a car to get to work at this point, which is such a relief after our 1.5 hour commute each way for the last month from PTC.

Our journey to getting the house was a little fraught, however, in the week leading up to closing. Because of the crappy, ridiculous, totally unnecessary and preventable (if only we had had competent leadership these last 8 years!) state of our economy, Peter and I learned that the Federal Reserve had put a freeze on all federally-backed cash accounts, about two days before we needed to access ours to get our money for the downpayment! After a frantic appeals process, our financial advisor was able to free 90% of the amount we had requested—still leaving us short by about $5000. We ended up having to take out an additional, last minute loan from the bank to cover that shortfall. Crazy! We had the money and weren’t allowed to use it b/c the government was afraid that there would be a run on the banks! So strange that it was easier for us to get a loan than it was to access our own money. . . we did close on time, but not without a lot of stress—we were literally sitting at the closing table, 20 minutes after the closing was supposed to start, not knowing if the money would arrive in the closing attorney’s escrow account or not. Suffice it to say, I do not want to move again for a VERY long time. An amusing side note to this whole fracas is that I got to talk personally to GA’s republican Senator Saxby Chambliss on the phone because I had called our legislators to see if they could help us and he was nice enough to return my call. He couldn’t do anything, but it was fun to actually talk to a Senator.

Enough about finances and politics! After we got all of that squared away, Peter left for California to see our young nephew Ben, who had to have brain surgery to remove a tumor. He came through the surgery beautifully, thank goodness and we are all very much relieved. While in Cali., Peter also got to celebrate his sister Victoria’s fortieth birthday with her. Yay, Victoria!

After a week in the west, Peter then flew to Roanoke, VA, where he met me and my parents and the whole rest of my extended family on my mom’s side for my cousin Brian’s marriage to Olivia. We also got to meet Kyle and Annika, my cousin Vonnie's two twins who are just so fun and beautiful! My mom, dad, Peter and I then rode all the way back to GA smooshed into my mom’s tiny Saab, which was funny until it became almost unbearable.

Finally, when we moved into our house, we welcomed Pico the kitten into our family. Isabelle is still working on truly welcoming him, but Peter and I love him. I have never had a kitten and it is amazing how much energy and how little fear he has! At the same time, he is equal parts cuddly and clumsy and SO tiny. He has perfected the art of scaling my bluejeans and then climbing onto whatever piece of furniture or counter I happen to be standing next to. He does this to compensate for his almost-total lack of leaping ability at his age. I can’t wait to see him grow!

As for the rest of it, we are still settling into jobs and trying to find friends—let us know if you see any! So far, my job is fun and I even got to go interview witnesses in South GA by myself, which was a hoot. Who knew that there was a town called Santa Claus, GA (with streets named “Reindeer Way,” “Elf Drive”, for example), or that Waynesboro, GA is the bird-dog capital of the world?!? Now I do. Peter is still evaluating his. So far, it’s been frustratingly slow, coming from the public defender pace that he was used to. Hopefully, it wil pick up when the legislature is in session.

So, that’s pretty much it! I’m 33 today and am excited to see what shape our lives take during this next year in our new home. As always, please be in touch, visit, call, or email if you can! And, go vote November 4!

Xoxo, robyn:)

Pictures, top to bottom: Pico asleep in a packing box; Me, cooking in our new kitchen; Peter in the dining room; Peter and Ben, post-surgery; Happy 40th, Victoria, in Santa Cruz!; Me and my cousins Vonnie and Lauren; Our new dining room; Our new living room; Brian and Olivia--Just Married!; My mom and her two sisters Aunt Tata and Aunt Jan; We meet Kyle and Annika!; Pico perched.