ashman!

look who came to town! my sweet sister ashley came for a short visit and it was really wonderful. i was especially lucky since she was here for my birthday. 

we did all sorts of things. we ate cupcakes, went for walks, played games, watched shows, ate dinner, and jumped around on icebergs. 

it was a pretty cold and grey week but it didn't rain too much. 

if you're wondering how fat i'm getting, here's an update:

on not being special

i like being pregnant. i like not having to use my ab muscles all day and every once in a while i get a funny belly touch from a stranger or an awkward colleague which really makes me laugh. since i got pregnant, i haven't vomited once and i don't feel inconvenienced by the little nugget kicking my bladder. 

to me, finding out i was pregnant was like falling asleep comfortably in my bed and waking up in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. how did i get here? where am i? how do i catch a fish? is that a spider? it's like going from a comfortable normal situation to one in which everything is a big giant question mark. why am i sneezing so much? is my hair getting lighter? why can't i poop? is my skin getting drier? did i come from lizard ancestry? what is labour going to feel like? when i finally poop will it be on a hospital bed in front of my midwife? and don't even get me started on my fear regarding actually raising a human being. do they really just let you take home the baby you deliver? in my brain, bathing a newborn baby is like trying to hold on to one of these toys: http://bit.ly/SjGWsD. 

the day i found out i was pregnant i called my sisters and my mom. we had fun exciting phone parties and then i got down to business asking my mom questions. she gave birth to three cute little girl babies naturally and she talks about it like it was no biggie. this might annoy some people, but to me it's very reassuring. my mom says things like "labour is work! that's why they call it labour, but by no means is it the worst thing in the world." and "billions of women have done it! it's no biggie!" basically what she's saying (whether she'd admit to this or not) is that i'm not special. i'm not the first girl to get knocked up and i won't be the last. my fears are not unique and my labour pain won't be unique either. i'm not the only one wondering if at some point i might pee my pants when i sneeze and i'm not the only one finding out that pants really do have a limit. 

not being special makes me feel better. it's like when i was learning how to drive, anxiously clutching the steering wheel and darting my eyes around like a crazy person. sandy said to me "jenessa, look at all of these people around you driving around like they own the place. at one time they didn't know how to drive either. but people do it every day." duh, i'm not the first person to be a beginner at this!

i am excited and i am terrified and i am blessed, but i am definitely not special. yahoo!

iceberg, right ahead!

have you ever wondered if you've heard someone say the words "iceberg, right ahead!" a-la-titanic enough times in your life? if your name is ian bitton, the answer would be no. on saturday we flew back to iqaluit from our month long vacation in ontario and what a sight this place is! the wind is blowing in an unusual way, so thousands of icebergs have come into the bay from the ocean. yesterday we went out to explore. 

iceberg, right ahead!

after a little while, we got chatting with some clam diggers. they told us that the wind and icebergs brought in a polar bear over by the causeway. so we went on a polar bear hunt!

here's ian at the causeway, on polar bear watch:

sadly we didn't find the bear.

after the causeway, we went down by the beach to climb on the 'bergs. they're really close together so it's surprisingly hard to find a path to walk through. i can't imagine being in a boat out there. all of the ice is actually quite inconvenient for people waiting for things on the sealift boats. the first barge came in early july but since then all of the boats have been delayed. they're thinking that each boat will be delayed about a month because of that dang ice. 

cheeeeeeeese!

it was 4 degrees and misting/raining when we walked around so it didn't feel great after a month in 30 degree weather. just kidding, it felt nice to not have a sweat-stache for once. 

sandy's buttday

here we are! august 13. the wonderful day on which my sister sandy was born (30 years ago!). 

oh wait, am i not fooling anyone? i know, it's august 19. i'm the worst! i just hate my blog. but i absolutely do NOT hate my biggest sister sandy. she's so big! i wonder at what age it becomes a bit taboo to refer to someone as "big" like that. my feeling is that it's always okay under two circumstances:

1. they're not fat, and 

2. they're your big giant sister. 

anyway, all this is to say that last monday sandy turned 30. yahoo!

sandy is the funniest person i know. she's sweet and loyal and very good at investigating. she's an amazing writer and she loves pizza. sandy is both the glue that sticks our family together and the boss of all of us. she's witty and kids love her. she loves exploring and nobody (i mean nobody) knows how to panic about timbit flavours like she does. oh, and she's pregnant too! 

here she is on the right not wearing pants:

here we are just a few weeks ago:

happy birthday, cindy.

pregnant

hey guys, have you ever wondered if ian and i would ever join forces to create a mutant very pale or very dark skinned, long haired, brown or green eyed, short or average height baby? well we did! we're pretty sure it's a human baby, but we won't find out for sure until december. 

being pregnant is fun. people are really nice to you and they don't judge you for suggesting toast with raspberry jam and cheese on it for dinner. yum, i'm hungry. 

nance!

look who came to visit! 

what a hoot that was! we had all sorts of fun. we ate, drank, high fived, went on walks, had brunch, and went to the circus. it was neat. 

p.s. please ignore my pyjama pants in that photo. i'm sorry you had to see that, baby. sometimes, in this world, we see things we don't want to. (that was a fairly obscure dirty dancing quote, by the way). you're welcome. 

walk

today after work ian and i went for a walk. it was a very special occasion because it was very windy so there were no bugs. what a treat! last week i was walking from our apartment to the car, breathing, as per usual protocol, and as a punishment for breathing i swallowed a mosquito. well, i sort of half swallowed it and coughed it up. since i'm a vegetarian, though, i really appreciated the momentary increase in protein. anyway, back to today's walk. it was bright and sunny after a rainy day. everything was looking shiny and green. 

here's the summer version of that hill i posted about in the winter. you know when it's wintertime and you're trying to climb a hill and you keep losing your footing over and over because it's really icy? that's the worst. 

here's some pretty water. 

here's ian being totally irresponsible. he was trying to get me to cross this creek but since i value my life, i didn't. we walked all the way up and down the creek for a good 20 minutes trying to find a safe place for me to cross but it didn't happen. not today, graveyard!

here's some arctic cotton. 

 here's part of a spine. i'm trying to think of a good way to explain to you how normal it is to see bones lying around everywhere. you know when you walk onto your lawn and see grass everywhere? it's like that here but instead of grass, it's bones. 

green!

it's really green here right now. i might even call it scotland-ish. it's really awesome and i love it. it never gets dark and there's a good healthy mix of rain and sun so it went from brown to green very quickly. 

last sunday ian and i went to apex to walk around and climb hills. it was really pretty. oh! i forgot to tell you guys that the sea ice has melted (for the most part). today i smelled sea water for the first time since we first got here. 

here's ian getting a little too close to the edge, if you know what i mean.

here's the bottom of one of the hills we climbed. 

here's the sea. 

remember when i told you about the giant ravens? everything is giant here. i think it's because animals need to pump iron and take steroids to survive the cold. anyway, recently the mosquitoes have arrived and they. are. huge. like, HUGE. they swarm you and the bites hurt wayyy more than an appropriate mosquito bite feeling. apparently it hasn't even gotten that bad yet, so i'm a bit concerned for july. rumour has it that breathing through your mouth when you're outside is a no no. 

seal city

hey! it's me. i'm alive, so don't worry about it. i hope you're having a fun summer. i sure am. it turns out that it's really pretty here in the summer! for some reason i assumed that it would be brown here all summer but when the snow melted and the sun decided to never go down, things happened. 

last friday ian and i went to the celebration of the seal at sylvia grinnell park. it was a hoot and a half. actually, it was really cold and raining. it was still neat, though. even though i'm a vegetarian i can really appreciate the way inuit use seal. they use everything. seriously, everything. so on friday evening we watched seals get sliced up and the meat was handed out for everyone to share. we ran into one of ian's students and he was chewing on one of the eyeballs. that almost put me over the edge. 

here you can see the seals in the background. the air smelled really strongly of seal.

after this, things got really graphic. ian took a ton of photos but i won't put those on here because you might not appreciate it. 

have you ever wondered what my face looks like when the colour gets washed away and i have to concentrate on not looking grossed out? refer to the photo below. 

i'll post later with some better photos of the green-ness that i didn't expect to see. bye!

three years.

three years ago today i got married to my favourite bearded guy in the whole world. 

i just want to say for the record that ian is an amazing husband. no, seriously, he's better than yours. he's always cleaning and he does the laundry. he chops my carrots every night for my lunch and he pretends to think all of my opinions are interesting and thoughtful (they're not). he never laughs at my jokes but i know that it's for my own good because my humor-related ego is already huge enough. he's also a real looker, obviously. 

as anyone who's ever been in a relationship can relate to, we generally just sit around gazing lovingly into each others' eyes. 

happy anniversary!