*More accurately, breastfeeding was hard for me. But I found some comfort googling "breastfeeding is hard" & reading the results before dawn during that first month or two, and now maybe someone else will too.Like labor and delivery, breastfeeding is one of those skills that you can't practice ahead of time. The classes and books and websites make ( Read more... )

Yes, it took me 15 months to get this together... If you really feel like you're missing baby reports you can follow me on Twitter (@barnswallowkateAdriana was born in early December 2012 after a pretty average labor & delivery (drug assisted, woo!). Carlos was so great and gave me exactly the kind of support and encouragement I needed. He was ( Read more... )

Confession: I am a recovering packrat. In elementary school my parents went to Parent Teacher Night and found my desk stuffed with acorns and rocks. Around the same age I cried when we left the beach without a big stick I’d been playing with. I’ve always had a bad habit of keeping things I might use someday, just in case. Even now I have to ( Read more... )

This is incredibly late! Unfortunately, my mom spent the first two weeks of March in the hospital with an intestinal infection. I spent a lot of those two weeks going back and forth to the hospital, plus I stayed over a few nights. That has really messed March up and pushed back this post. Here’s the February report - March is going to be such a ( Read more... )

Yesterday on Twitter I posted a link to an old LJ post (the first time I ever mentioned Twilight, all the way back in 2006 - I disliked it before disliking it was cool!) and I realized how nice/amusing it is to reread old posts.  It's like a diary and time capsule and I really want to get back into it!  So here's my first post in months.

I've mostly ( Read more... )

Ok! So! I never got around to mentioning this on LJ/Xanga during the planning stages, but: Carlos and I got married at the end of September (yay!).  We only dated 11+ years and were engaged for 4+, so you know, we may have rushed a little, but I think we're going to do alright.  I want to write a post to record a few things I don't want to ( Read more... )

Part 1 (Arrival and Arenal) is here and Part 2 (Monteverde) is here.  More pictures (and fewer words) from this part of the trip are on Picasa here.

Friday, April 9, 2010
Once again we had a long drive, but this time it at least half of it was paved and not so winding.  Our GPS had a tour guide function that told us about things we drove past.  As ( Read more... )

Read Part 1 here, and see pictures on Picasa for this part starting here.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010
About midday on Tuesday we left the Arenal area and drove west around the northern shore of the lake.  Apparently there is sometimes a road around the southern shore of the lake, but we didn't want to risk it in our rental 4WD.  The drive took a long ( Read more... )

Back in April, Carlos and I went to Costa Rica for a week.  We hadn't been on a vacation alone together in years, basically since we bought the house (mortgage = no travelin' money).  Carlos wanted to go somewhere as a Christmas present to me.  Costa Rica had been on my list of places to go for a long time, mainly for the birds, so that's what ( Read more... )

Hello LJ friends!

I am hoping to write an actual post sometime soon, but meanwhile:

1. I have a Twitter now, it is much more active than my LJ because I only have to think of 140 characters to write at a time. I am @barnswallowkate.  (And if you don't have Twitter you can always add it to an RSS reader if you'd like.)

2. I will have a morning to ( Read more... )