Made it past Labor Day with no labor! 30 week belly pic!

We're now two weeks into the third trimester and it feels good to be in the "30's" now.  I think we're both breathing a little easier knowing that by now all the babies should be over the 1500 gram mark (3lbs 4oz), which is the designated weight for being very low birthweight and their lungs should be mature enough at this point.  The flip side of "being in the 30s" is that it is really setting in just how close we are to the arrival of these three tiny babies!  Statistically speaking, they should be born in two weeks, which is average gestation for triplets!  Did you catch that??? TWO WEEKS!!!  Now of course we are hoping to be well above the mean and make it to the 35 week mark, but even the very last possible day that these babies will be born is now less than six weeks away!!  October used to seem so far away!

Michelle is really slowing down.  This weekend after her afternoon nap she called me into the bedroom.  (At this point in the pregnancy, I always come when called!)  When I got to the bedroom she feebily lifted her head and in the most whiny, pathetic voice with the edge of a two year old temper tantrum in her voice, she said "I'm putting myself on bedrest! I'm never getting up!"  I couldn't help it, and laughed hysterically for the next few minutes because her delivery was so spot on.  It was so cute and pathetic, but really sums up how much these babies are drawing on her energy.  It's really tough for her to be productive and get a lot of schoolwork done now.  She usually sleeps in a bit, works for a couple/few hours, and then lays down for a couple hours in the afternoon.  Monday night was the first time we noticed that in the evening her ankles were both swollen and hurting a bit.  So she's been trying to put her feet up even more, but it's really hard to find a position where she can have her feet up and still be productive for school.  I might need to try to rig some type of table up for her this weekend.  

I've been a busy bee, which I'm sure isn't that surprising to anyone who knows me.  I spent some time working on slides to prep for guest lecturing in Michelle's class on Wednesday this week.  The talk went fine, but was a little rushed because class was interrupted by a fire drill about five minutes into my presentation!  I spent all day Monday working in the garden, trying to get a handle on the massive weed explosion.  And tonight I cooked up a storm.  We have generous friends with huge gardens who shared a ton of tomatoes with us so tonight I made a black bean, tomato, corn salad, a batch of homemade tomato sauce, and one of our standards, Tuscan tomato soup.  I put all the sauce and soup into jars, labeled them, and stuck them in the deep freezer so we can have some quick and easy meals post babies and get a taste of summer.  Next up is making tons of kale chips and maybe a kale soup because I have two big bags of kale from our friend Joreen to use up too!  

Okay, on with the pics.  These profile pics with a shirt on aren't as dramatic, but you can definitely tell a difference in size still from 28 weeks!

28 weeks

30 weeks

Michelle & our three pregnant friends in Penn's Valley in order of due date from right to left
(this was the last prego shot of Erin, in white, because she went into labor
on Labor Day and had her little boy at 33.5 weeks!  Mom & baby doing well now)

the fruits of my labor!