Happy 9 Months + more!

What's the best way to celebrate Theta's being 9 months old? 

By printing and turning in a Master's Thesis and a Doctoral Dissertation of course! 

Theta Comic
A: Mom! This post is supposed to be about ME!!
B: Hey, what's that? I want it!
C: She's just not paying attention to me; I have such a hard life.
D: Oh, look! Those flowers look tasty -- and oo! a stick!

My husband, F, and I have been research-reading-editing buddies (like 'exit buddies' in Finding Nemo) throughout this whole process -- F's 4 years and my 2 years. Now we got to be printing buddies as we printed and turned in our theses together.

The titles and page lengths, should they be less-than-recognizable in the photos:

Master's Thesis:

"Fractions and Musical Notation: An Analytic Autoethnography"

# of pages main text: 70, # of pages total (with appendices, bibliography, etc): 82

Doctoral Dissertation:
"'Experiment upon the Word': A post-secular, literary approach to the Book of Mormon"

# of pages main text: 247, # of pages total (with appendices, bibliography, etc): 300

This joint printing also commemorated Theta being outside the womb about as long as he was in it! 

Although, 9 months in and 9 months out? During my postnatal yoga course, the midwife talked about pregnancy being more a process that is about 10 months coming and 10 months going (as the body prepares for and guides gestation, through birth and then recovering and returning to a more non-pregnancy normal).

I think he had a clover in his mouth at this point. Tasty!

I found it interesting that the typical "40 weeks" of pregnancy are actually calculated from the first day of the previous menstrual cycle (which is when the body is mourning the previous egg that was not fertilized and is shedding the carefully prepared uterine lining). So, how does that count as 'week 1' of pregnancy?

Along these lines, we figured out (I think correctly?) that this calculation method contributes to the early pregnancy miscarriage rates being so high. During these first two weeks where the egg is maturing, but hasn't yet been fertilized (please someone correct me, if we're wrong :) ) all sorts of things could go wrong--during ripening, traveling down the fallopian tubes, being fertilized, implanting into the uteran wall, etc. 

No wonder the miscarriage rates are so high . And it's also impressive that, with all that could go wrong at so many stages of pregnancy and fetal development, it so often goes so well! 

In any event, with that calculation system, Theta came at 41+1. But however you count or don't, we are so grateful for our healthily developing and adorable Theta!