Well it is that time of year again. Time for pumpkin guts and crazy costumes. For the first time in a long time, we did not do the matching costume thing this year. Mostly because we have run out of ideas by now. We did finally carve pumpkins last night, though, and opted once again for something a little less. . .involved. . .than our spectacular Pirates of the Caribbean pumpkins from a couple years back.
Cy bravely scooped his own pumpkin guts even though he hated every second of it.
Cy's pumpkin was a funny smiley face. I told him that the crooked smile reminded me of his crooked smile. The resemblance is uncanny! Mine was supposed to be a vampire. It looked really cool on the paper, and it was much harder to carve than I was hoping for, but when I turned out the lights, it looked pretty stupid, so I was disappointed. To me, it looked more like Strong Bad or Magneto or some sort of weird owl (not a deer/owl) than a vampire. Oh well.
There was also this really weird picture where the pumpkins looked spooky and possessed. . .I snapped the picture, thought the camera was done, then put it down. When I heard it click a few seconds later, I realized it was still doing its thing. The result? Evil demon pumpkins with flames shooting out the tops!!! Ahh!!!
It is official - there will be a little addition to our family of two next May! Baby Shealy is about 12-13 weeks-ish right now (there has been much debate in the doctor's office as to the official dates). The official due date is May 13, but we are expecting it to be earlier than that. We have been to the ob/gyn several times now, and have had two ultrasounds. On the first ultrasound, the baby was measuring a bit smaller than expected, so they pushed the due date out. On the second date, the baby had caught up to where it should be according to the original date, so there was much confusion about the due date, after which they decided to just stick with the May 13 date even though that seemed wrong. . .we don't get it but they insist they know what they are doing. :)
We are very excited. Things have been a bit rough for me trying to finish up my last semester of grad school while being pregnant. It of course happened that my worst week of morning sickness coincided with the worst week of the semester (the week I had to take the comprehensive exams) but oh well. I also thought (and hoped) I was through the worst of the morning sickness (which is a total misnomer, as I have been feeling nauseous all day long) because I started feeling like a normal human again, but apparently it was just a few days' reprieve and now I am back to the 24-7 nausea. Lovely. Oh well. In the end it will all be worth it when we get to finally hold that precious little baby!
Everything has gone well at doctor appointments, and I was able to get both a seasonal flu shot and an H1N1 flu shot to provide some extra protection for the baby (which is good, as College of Charleston is pretty much Swine Flu Central these days). We are already making big plans for getting the house in order, picking out baby furniture, etc. Now we are just counting down the days until the next big doctor appointment when we get to find out if it's a boy or a girl! Also very exciting. . .our little baby Shealy will get to have a cousin exactly the same age as him/her!
It's been a really long time since we've posted anything on the blog. That is due to it being my last semester of graduate school. In order to make sure this is in fact my last semester of graduate school, I'm having to take three classes and also prepare for the comprehensive exams (which is basically the equivalent of an additional class). I'm taking a class on British Fiction from 1900-1945 (Joseph Conrad, E.M.Forster, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf), 18th Century British Women Writers (some poetry, some plays, and some Jane Austen - yea!), and a class called Principles of Literary Research that is basically a library science/bibliography type class.
It's a lot of work and I'm struggling just to stay caught up, but I finally feel like there is an end in sight! Tomorrow is the comprehensive exam. Once I get through that, I just have to finish up my classes and I will be done. The comprehensive exam is based on a reading list that covers three time periods in literature: British Literature before 1800, British Literature after 1800, and American Literature. For the first category, the works are: Parliament of Fowls by Chaucer, King Lear by Shakespeare, and The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift. The second category is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Man and Superman (play) by George Bernard Shaw, and Crow (super crappy poetry) by Ted Hughes. The American lit. works are The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville (horrible book), The Golden Apples by Eudora Welty (also terrible), and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.
After months of reading the primary works and stacks of literary criticism about the works, I will be taking the exam from 9-12 tomorrow at the Citadel. Cy has planned a celebration for afterward that includes purchasing pumpkins, hitting up Joe Pasta and the used bookstore, and hopefully a pumpkin cupcake. :)
Then with Comps out of the way, I just have to write 4 more papers (one of them being a 30+ page bibliography with 100-150 sources), give a couple of presentations, and take 2 finals in December and I will be done with school forever! Hooray!!!
Cy bravely scooped his own pumpkin guts even though he hated every second of it.
Cy's pumpkin was a funny smiley face. I told him that the crooked smile reminded me of his crooked smile. The resemblance is uncanny! Mine was supposed to be a vampire. It looked really cool on the paper, and it was much harder to carve than I was hoping for, but when I turned out the lights, it looked pretty stupid, so I was disappointed. To me, it looked more like Strong Bad or Magneto or some sort of weird owl (not a deer/owl) than a vampire. Oh well.
There was also this really weird picture where the pumpkins looked spooky and possessed. . .I snapped the picture, thought the camera was done, then put it down. When I heard it click a few seconds later, I realized it was still doing its thing. The result? Evil demon pumpkins with flames shooting out the tops!!! Ahh!!!
