Well, October is over and still no baby. Wendy's Grandpa Steele pointed out there hasn't been a November birthday in the family for several generations. Looks like Isaac is going to be the first after all. 

This year all of the Jewish holidays fell in October. The weather was so warm, though, it felt like they were early! Wendy got busy decorating the house, including making a wall-hanging. Craig sang in the choir for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He had his first big solo debut for Kol Nidre (the service that starts Yom Kippur). Wendy enjoyed her fast-free year and resolved to be pregnant or nursing every fall for the next 10 years. Hmm...Another advantage to the pregnancy was that we were able to con our friends into helping us put up our sukkah. For details and photos, click here. Not only was sukkah raising easier, but we had a great time! We also had our friends over for a pot-luck shabbat in the sukkah at the end of the festival. We may need to either get a bigger sukkah or fewer friends for next year! Wendy was bound and determined to make the baby come early. She danced in the synagogue on Simchat Torah, then concluded the holiday season by taking the sukkah down entirely on her own. It remains a mystery how she got the 10 foot long wooden beams that were seven feet in the air down by herself. Craig came home to find a pile of sukkah parts in the front yard. The baby didn't come, but she was too sore to move for the next three days. 

Craig spent the month getting ready for the annual American Institute of Chemical Engineers conference, where he successfully presented on October 31. He even got offered a job as a geothermal researcher at US Filter in Wisconsin. Hmm... He also busied himself getting all of the requisite material together to apply for a faculty position at Henry Ford Community College. Wendy and his advisor are pushing hard to get Craig out of here and into a real job by next fall. 

Wendy spent the month "taking it easy" and wrapping up loose ends at work. By her definition, taking it easy meant: cooking all the food for Isaac's bris, baking a four-month supply of bread, cooking 3 gallons of chilli and 3 gallons of pea soup, taking a machine quilting class, finishing Isaac's quilt, starting and finishing a quilted wall hanging to count the days between Pesach and Shavuot (stay tuned for photos)--she had to use her new free motion quilting skills after all, taking a knitting class, knitting a 4' by 6' baby afghan, celebrating the holidays, cleaning the house top-to-bottom (including the basement), and cleaning the cars top-to-bottom. At work Wendy got her manuscript back from the reviewers and resubmitted it with revisions. Her advisor called her on Halloween to tell her it had been accepted for publication in Biomaterials (impact factor 3.667 the editor informed her). 

Wendy's parents also visited us for a weekend in early October. They took Wendy shopping for Isaac's bris outfit. Since it cost $30, you'll probably get to see a lot of pictures of him in it! 

Liz Rodriguiz, the assistant for Wendy's advisor (before he moved to Harvard), made a quilt for us. It is absolutely gorgeous! It is way too pretty to use for the baby (i.e. get spit-up covered), so Wendy has claimed it for herself. She can use it to keep warm while nursing this winter. With the price of baby diapers, we'll have to set the thermostat to 62. All of you who visited our uninsulated, 14' ceilinged apartment in Cincinnati during the winter months should recall what 62 feels like!

Liz's quilt and our pet dragon Lamont. Craig bought Wendy Lamont one day when he had been mean (being stingy about the $80 price tag for her leg wax--clearly Lamont predates our graduate student days--Wendy now makes do with a $5 do it yourself waxing kit) and made her cry. He was named half after Lamont the Lonely Monster (one of Wendy's favorite books as a girl) and half after Lamont the very gay waiter at Carroll's on Main in Cincinnati (one of our favorite restaurants).

Next time you hear from us, we will be parents!