Bringing Up Bobbin

About 2 Ounces

A riddle: What do

a tennis ball,
a paper grocery bag,
a 2-penny version of the cartwheel coin of 1797, and
a Purple Martin

have in common?

At our ultrasound today I watched in complete and utter fascination at the fetal aerobics that were taking place inside me real time. At 13 weeks, 4 days it's still too early for me to be actually feeling all that movement, but there's a hell of a lot of activity going on in there. Our baby definitely knows how to amuse him/herself. It was amazing. I could have watched the ultrasound monitor all day.

Here are some images of what we saw:

As I watched, I was surprised I wasn't being jolted right out of the chair by all of this bouncing and boxing and kicking. It looks like the little peanut packs quite a punch. But then again, he or she is only around 2 1/2 - 3 inches long and weighs about 2 ounces at this point :-)

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Veterinarians, Burgers, and Babies, oh my!

It was a full day today. We started off with an exciting and heart-pumping aerobic routine I like to call "Taking Spicey to the Vet". It was time for a teeth cleaning :-).

Next on our agenda was a trip to the property to see the latest progress. They've installed the fireplace, the roof is complete, and so is the plumbing. I believe electrical work has begun as well, and they've started building the back decks off the dining room and master bedroom. Very cool.

We stopped at Kidd Valley to refuel, and then we headed off for our main adventure of the day - Registering at Babies 'R' Us! I have been looking forward to this day since November, let me tell you :-) And naturally Tim and I had done our usual meticulous research which consisted of

• creating a master checklist in excel spreadsheet format that cross-referenced our OB's recommended newborn shopping list, to the Consumer Reports suggested newborn necessities checklist, to the Babies 'R' Us New Parent's checklist.
• hours of research on ConsumerReports.org purusing product reports and ratings and checking recall information
• in depth analysis of product reviews at BabiesRUs.com .
• additional research at consumerguide.com, epinions.com, and that other internet search engine
• multiple "reconaissance" trips to the local Babies R Us store
• final consultation with our very own "new parent" friends, Debra and Chris.

So we headed to the neighbourhood Babies R Us, fully armed with knowledge and ready. We checked in at the registry desk where we received our welcome booklet, congratulations form letter, bar code scanner and instructions, and some brief words of wisdom from one of the registration "specialists". They were actually quite nice :-). Then off we charged to complete our mission, barcode scanner held high. Tim, actually, was in charge of the scanner. I was responsible for the clipboard and pen, and my nicely printed excel spreadsheet (in colour, I might add).

And we had quite a bit of fun! Despite the fact that the place was crowded with parents-to-be who had the same idea we did. We ended up doing a couple of laps around the store to avoid some of the "hot spots" until they quieted down :-) I had originally been assuming that I might get a bit more enjoyment out of this activity than Tim, but was pleasantly surprised when, after we sat down and went through the registry list at the end of our spree, I discovered that that Tim had... ahem... gone a little trigger happy with the scanner while I was browsing the aisles and had made several stealth additions to the list. "Oh - yeah... there's a whole bunch of stuff on there that you didn't know about" I think were his exact words. Cool ;-)

Now - we don't know the gender yet and won't for several weeks. So I anticipate there will be minor tweaks to the apparel, blanket, and towel sections of the registry. There's only so much sage and yellow one will be able to take after all ;-) But we got the big stuff done!

We returned to the registry counter to turn in our scanner and to get a print-out of our list. I was slightly shocked and feeling somewhat guilty at the 11 pages that were handed back to us. Had we gone completely overboard? I had to ask. "11 pages... uh... how does that compare? I mean - it seems like a lot". "Oh honey", the registration specialist replied, "11 pages is good - I often see registeries that are 25-30 pages. And you're going to add stuff. You're going to be back. We'll be seeing a lot of you". I guess we're good then :-)

On the way home we picked up Spice from the vet. Apparently he has beautiful teeth and gums underneath all that tartar. Excellent. His pupils were still dilated, and he's still quite a bit wobbly and acting a little wacked out from the anesthesia but he'll be fine. It's kind of amusing actually. He gets these little bursts of playful energy and then all of a sudden he'll fall over, or stop and wonder where he's at. He'll be fine :-)

Anyway - some folks have been asking so I've added a link to the babiesrus.com registry page in the menu on the right - I haven't linked directly to our registry, but people who are interested can click on the link, enter our first and last names in the search box, and will be taken right to it.

Huh. I think I hear Ginger hissing at Spice again. She hates it when he comes home smelling like the vet. Better go check it out.

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Doesn't anyone review this stuff?

I have my home page in my browser set to msn.com. I noticed when I went there today that they are advertising a sneak preview of "The new MSN.com". The tagline in the ad, which is set against a blue background, is

Fast. Clear. Easy.

Is it just me, or does that sound more like an advertisement for a home pregnancy test?

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What's in a Name?

Finding just the right baby name is hard. Especially if it’s a girl, since we pretty much know what the name will be if it is a boy - or at least we have already come up with the short list. We’ll keep you in suspense for a little while longer though.

Logic would dictate that we wait until we actually know whether it is a boy or a girl before we spend a whole lotta brain power on thinking up names, half of which would be completely irrelevant once the gender of our little bundle of joy is made known (7 more weeks! Assuming he/she is not as shy as Ella was ;-))

But where's the fun in waiting?

What's so hard about it? Well I think it is a fairly big responsibility to be naming another human being. This is the name that he or she will answer to (or not answer to, which is more likely the case once he/she hits the teen years). And he or she will have to hear it, say it, write it, read it, day in and day out for the rest of his or her life. At least until he or she (damn I’ll be glad when we learn the gender of this kid) is old enough to legally change it. What a huge responsibility! (I know. you’re thinking if we think just choosing a name is a huge responsibility, are we in for a rude awakening).

Anyway – it’s a very important task.

So as with everything I do, I’ve taken a very “Program Manager”-like approach to the whole naming thing. Which should come as absolutely no shock to any of you.

Tim – he’s happy with just watching me go at this point. I think he finds my whole process amusing and slightly baffling. We’ve got 6+ months to pick a name and in all likelihood we will know the gender well in advance. So he’s being smart and waiting before getting too deeply entrenched in wading through my list of girls’ names. Because like I said – if it’s a boy, the whole naming game is a moot point since we’ve already made our choice. But me – I can’t wait! That’s several weeks away at the earliest! I must have a plan! Besides – it’s one of the fun little exercises we get to indulge in as parents-to-be :-)

Well, after spending a couple of hours perusing various baby name sites on the internet, as well as the Social Security Administration “top 100 baby names” list and being completely overwhelmed by the thousands of choices I decided I needed to narrow the playing field a bit. So the first thing I did was to come up with some criteria.

Heather and Tim’s Baby Naming Criteria

The name must:

1. be easy to pronounce and spell – especially by the average North American ;-)
2. have a good meaning. Nothing lame or negative.
3. have acceptable short forms/nick names. Although this one is tough to satisfy because kids can find a nickname for anything. So he/she in all likelihood is just going to have to have thick skin when it comes to his/her name at one point or another in his/her childhood or adolescent career.
4. not be in the top 10 most popular names for 2003 or 2004
5. not be so rare that he or she will get made fun of or feel awkward about it or resent it when he or she gets older.
6. not be the same as any living family member (immediate or extended) so he/she is uniquely identified at family get-togethers and when she hears her/his name she/he will know the person is speaking to / about him/her.
7. not be the same as any of our close friends or their kids for the same reason.
8. not be a stereotypical “pop tart” or “porn” name. I.e. no “Brittany”, or “Amberlynn” or “Candie” or… (although one could argue this is the most subjective criteria and there are a number of names still on our list that could probably qualify as pop tart names... or at least cheerleader names)
9. not have initials that when written together will spell an undesirable word (exercise for the reader - create a list of all 3-letter words ending in H. We can limit it to the english language for now)
10. not be the same name as our pets, or our friends or family’s pets.

That last one I added most recently after Janel suggested “Lucy”. Of course, Janel was mocking me and my criteria when she suggested it. Still – it’s a good rule to add :-)

Obviously the final set of criteria is that it has to "fit" right. But we won't be able to evaluate that until the baby is actually born.

The next step then was to find a comprehensive list of names and start applying the criteria to shorten the list. After checking out several sites, I settled on babyzone.com’s Baby Names. http://www.babycenter.com/babyname It has a very extensive list of names from a variety of origins, allows you to search on a number of criteria. and provides the meaning of the name as well.

After sampling the site a bit, I quickly found I was able to eliminate a number of entire origins right off the bat as a result of applying criteria 1 and 5. The resulting “narrowed-down” list consisted of 1455 girl’s names. A little long, but it's still less than "thousands" and I like to be thorough. Heaven forbid that I miss a potential name because I narrowed the starting list too much. So that became my starting point.

Naturally, I then (ahem… slightly embarrassed sheepish grin; but this is who I am people, so I’m not gonna feel to bad ;-)) imported the 1455 names and their origins and meanings into excel for further sorting and analysis, and set about eliminating names.

As a result, I’ve come up with a “short” list of a 42 names.

And I KNOW you’re all DYING to know what the names are, and to weigh in with your opinion. So - I'll publish them here.

BUT FIRST – a bit of an explanation of this list.

The names are listed in alphabetical order. I have not given any indication as to which of these 43 are Tim and my own personal favourites :-) We will reveal our choices later. In fact, there are some that I don't like but I kept them on the list for now for completeness ;-) The column titled “2004 ranking” indicates where in the top 100 the name falls in the 2004 most popular name list (according to babyzone.com. Naturally I cross-referenced the babyzone top 100 with the SSA web site top 100 and found them to be pretty much the same (although slightly different order)).

So there you go. And if there's a name that is not on the list that you think should be, by all means let us know ;-).

	Name	2004 Ranking	Origin	Meaning
1	Alexa	85	Greek	Form of ALEXANDER - helper and defender of mankind
2	Alexandra	58	Greek	Form of ALEXANDER - helper and defender of mankind
3	Alissa		Teutonic	Form of ALICE - noble
4	Alyssa	13	Greek	Logical
5	Amanda	79	Latin	Worthy of love
6	Anna	30	Hebrew	Gracious
7	Annalise		German	Gracious, Consecrated to God
8	Annelise		German	Gracious, Consecrated to God
9	Annika		Scandinavian	Grace
10	Breanna		Irish	Strong
11	Briana		Celtic	Strong
12	Brianna	15	Celtic	Form of BRIAN - strong
13	Cassandra		Greek	Prophetess
14	Catherine		Greek	Pure
15	Claire	74	Latin	Bright, clear
16	Elaine		French	Light
17	Elissa		Greek	Queen of Carthage
18	Elizabeth	26	Hebrew	Consecrated to God
19	Eve		Hebrew	Life
20	Gabrielle	70	Hebrew	God is my strength
21	Jessica	47	Hebrew	God sees
22	Julianna		Latin	See JULIA & ANNE
23	Julianne		Latin	See JULIA & ANNE
24	Justine		Latin	Just
25	Katherine	39	Greek	Pure, virginal
26	Kathryn		Greek	Beloved
27	Kira		Latin	Light
28	Kyra		Greek	Ruler
29	Lauren	21	Latin	Form of LAURA - laurel
30	Madeleine		French	Form of MADELINE - woman from Magdala
31	Madeline	14	English	Form of MAGDALENA - woman from Magdala
32	Madelyn		Greek	High tower
33	Natasha		Greek	Rebirth - from ANASTACIA
34	Patricia		Latin	Of nobility
35	Rachel	45	Hebrew	An ewe
36	Robyn		German	Bright fame
37	Samantha	19	unknown	Listener
38	Sophia	11	Greek	Form of SOPHIE - wisdom
39	Sophie	67	Greek	Wisdom
40	Tricia		Latin	Form of PATRICIA - of nobility
41	Victoria	50	Latin	Victory
42	Zoe	33	Greek	Life

Now – because I know you’re utterly fascinated by this, I thought I’d also share with you some of the names we liked that we eliminated because they were in the top 10 for 2004. Note – with the exception of the last, these were actually on our original shortlist before I started doing all the research that told me how popular they actually are:

Name	2004 Ranking	Origin	Meaning
Abigail	10	Hebrew	My father's joy
Emily	3	Teutonic	Industrious
Emma	1	German	Universal
Caitlyn		Greek	Form of CATHERINE - pure
Kaitlyn	4	Greek	Pure
Olivia	6	Greek	Olive Tree

I'll spare you the remaining list. But rest assured, if you are so interested, I do have them all in spreadsheet format just in case ;-)

UPDATE
New rule - #11: Baby shall not have a name that is the same as any past boyfriends or girlfriends. Hehe. :-)

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The Great Stork Derby

I was visiting www.snopes.com for an entirely different reason but learned that there is an entire section there devoted to Pregnancy urban legends. So of course, I had to check it out :-)

Most of the pregnancy stories ("girl gives birth to [insert noun here]") are predictably false, and I'd heard almost all of them before a million times, but this one was new to me and is actually true:

Lawyer leaves his estate to woman who gives birth to the most babies within a ten-year period.

It's such a great story I just had to share it. So here, for your entertainment, I bring you The Great Stork Derby.

As I was reading this, the thought "this sounds like a perfect plot for a made-for-tv-movie" came to mind several times.

As it turns out, It was released on Canadian TV in 2002. As is standard for any Canadian movie, especially made-for-TV ones, it stars Megan Follows, a.k.a "Anne of Green Gables".

I'll have to check it out at some point, but I think a better movie would focus on the life of the man himself and also some of the other odd bequests that were contained within his will. He had to have been quite an eccentric and interesting character!

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How NOT to instill confidence as a medical professional

So... I went to the dr today to see about getting some immunizations. The travel advisory for France that I got from my travel agent at work "highly recommends" Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, tetanus, and flu vaccine (and of course the standard vaccines one gets as a child).

I took care of the flu shot last week. However for the rest... a) I don't know what I already have and b) I'm pregnant so if there's any I am missing, I wanted to know whether it was safe to get them. So when I was at the dr last week for the flu shot, I had the nurse practitioner check my file. But she couldn't find any record of any immunizations (duh... I never brought any medical records from canada 10 years ago) so she scheduled an appt for me with my doctor to find out what I should get.

Anyway - I'm sitting in the dr's office with a thermometer in my mouth and a blood pressure cuff on my arm playing 20 questions with her assistant - the standard stuff... where are you going, for how long, etc etc. (Generally I would think it's better to limit your questions to the yes or no variety when the patient has a thermometer in her mouth, but what do I know). I'm convinced these assistants are just really filling time for the doctor to arrive because generally the doctor ends up asking me the same questions. Although my doctor is much more chipper and knowledgeable about it all (If you get to choose your doctor, choose a young one. They are idealistic and hopeful and still believe they became doctors to actually help people).

So during the course of our little banter ("Where are you going?"..."Wance"... "For how long?"... "Aye gays"...) the assistant asks me "Well, did you get the flu shot before you were pregnant?"

No... that's when they had the big shortage... "No", I replied, "I got it last week" (she had removed the thermometer at this point).

"Last week? Really? Is it safe to get the flu shot while you're pregnant?"

Uh - lady, I took one semester of college biology 15 years ago and barely scraped by with a C. You're the one ASSISTING THE DOCTOR. You're the one taking my temperature, my blood pressure, my medical history.

"Well gosh - I sure hope so. When I told the nurse last week that I was pregnant she said 'Congratulations!' and then stabbed me in the shoulder with the needle".

"Oh! That's great!" was her reply.

Thankfully the doctor arrived moments later.

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To sleep, perchance to dream -

Ay, there's truth to the whole weird freakin' pregnancy dream syndrome.

They started out innocuously enough. In my first dream I was walking around naked in a public place, and then realized I was naked, and panicked and started running around trying to find something to cover up with. Only no one noticed I was naked, which also freaked me out. I figure it's your standard "feeling vulnerable and inadequate in the face of something that is about to change our lives forever, and no one is getting just how totally unequipped you are and how can they be acting so normal about it all when you're clearly so incompetent you'd leave the house naked" sort of dream. You don't have to be pregnant to have those.

The second one was a really horrible one... a definite pregnancy nightmare. A culmination of all the little pregnancy worries that have gnawed at my subconcious since we first found out... the "what ifs"... Brrr. Shake it off. No good can come from repeating it here.

The last one was the most bizarre. But kinda funny in a whacked-out sort of way. I assume they'll only get weirder from here. In my dream I came across a litter of tiny newborn kittens. They were crying and mewing because they were hungry. But mommy cat was no where to be found, and the kittens were starting to weaken, so I started nursing them with my right index finger which had spontaneously grown a nipple right on the tip. Hey - what can I say. All the books say this is perfectly normal :-)

Stay tuned - I'm sure there's plenty more where that one came from. The next 6 1/2 months are gonna be interesting...

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Feelin' the Heat

No no no... not pregnancy related :-) We were out at the new house yesterday! All the windows and doors except for a couple are now in. The ones missing have plastic sheeting over the openings to seal in the house. And a big air blower is blowing nice hot air throughout the upstairs and downstairs in an effort to start drying it out :-)

It was wonderfully warm inside :-). We rearranged one of the work tables in the dining room and set up a couple of collapsable lawn chairs, hung up our coats, snacked on some munchies we bought on the way, and stared out the newly installed windows at the beautiful view. Very enjoyable way to spend the afternoon!

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Sweet Music

I warned ya - I've been squirrelling these entries away for a little while now. Now that we've announced I will try and bring them to you in somewhat chronological order, albeit delayed.

On Monday the 10th we heard the baby's heartbeat on the doppler for the first time! A healthy and strong 160 bpm, right where it should be.

It was actually quite loud, and pretty darn cool. Kinda took us to a whole new level of realization that "wow - we're really having a baby". I mean, it's one thing to pee on a stick at home and see the positive result. And it's another to pee in a cup at the dr's office and be told officially that you're pregnant. And still another to see a little fuzzy blob on the ultrasound screen at 6 weeks and be told that is the embryo. But to hear the heart beating loudly and strongly - holy cow! There's a little living person in there!

I'm still awestruck :-)

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But what if you're not?

So how and when did it all start?

Before we were married, naturally Tim and I had conversations about the possibility of kids. Even then we never said "never" - always left it open as a possibility in the future. As time progressed we thought more about it, and "Never say never" turned into "Someday it might be nice", which later morphed into "sometime within the next couple of years" until we finally got to "Ok - let's do it. when should we start?".

Perhaps the latter stages of that evolution were helped along by watching our friends Debra and Chris with their new baby ;-)

At any rate, we decided we would, and it came down to when.

Now - I'm not one to leave things entirely to chance. I'll take calculated risks, and I like being surprised. But I also like to stack the odds in my favour. Luck and fate are only part of the equation. I believe I need to do my part too. The more informed you are the better prepared you are. The more planning you do, the better chance you have of succeeding. This comes as no surprise to most of you, I am sure. I am who I am :-)

So, naturally, I started with some research. webmd.com has an actual whole site devoted to fertility and was a primary source of information. I learned all about Basal Body Temperatures, and fertility problems, and statistics, and liklihood of conceiving each month, and the age factor, and anovulation, etc. I learned all of the "lingo": TTC = "Trying To Conceive"; "BMS" = "Baby Making Sex"; and there are plenty more where those come from. I armed myself with information, an ovulation predictor kit, a basal thermometer, and built a very nicely formatted excel spreadsheet for tracking temperatures and ovulation test results :-). You know I did!

Our first conversation after the "let's have a baby, when should we start" and the completion of all of my research went something like this:

Tim: We should make sure we're in the new house before the baby is born.

Me: Agree.

Tim: So that's what... next July?

Me: (looking at George's very detailed schedule) Yup, around then.

Tim: We should leave ourselves some buffer room.

Me: Absolutely. So - the way I figure it, we should start trying now.

Tim: That doesn't leave us much buffer room.

Me: Well, I've been doing research (I have to give Tim credit here - he didn't crack up at these words :-)) and everything I'm reading says it takes the average couple 3-5 months to actually conceive. And each month you really only have on average a 20% chance of getting pregnant. And I am 33 - turning 34 this year. So it could take a little longer. And sometimes after stopping birth control, it can take the average woman a couple of months to get her cycle back into gear and even start ovulating again. And I mentioned that I'm 33 right. So I'd be giving birth when I'm 34. And that's one year less than 35, which is the "magic number" when it comes to fertility, conception, and pregnancy complications.

Tim: (still alert and sincerely listening to my every word and not cracking up) Yes, but all of that talks about averages, and I'm thinking that you might not be "average".

Me: That's very sweet babe :-) But what if I am?

Tim: But what if you're not?

Me: But what if I am?

Tim: But what if you're not?

[Tim's better at that game than me. So after a couple more feeble attempts I finally stopped]

Me: But I'm getting older. And like I said, at age 35, the chances drop considerably, and then the risk of birth defects and complications during pregnancy rise dramatically (I know my stats. I did research, remember?).

Tim: But what if you get pregnant right away?

Me: The odds are against it.

Tim: We just need to be sure.

Me: You're right. Sigh. ok.

So - a few days later, I'm chatting with my sister in IM. I had left her a blog comment previously that alluded to the possibility that some day Tim and I might have a child. I think something along the lines of "Well when we have a kid we're going to do x, y and z differently. That's for sure". My sister, of course, zeroed right in on that and the very next time she saw me online, made sure to ask about it.

That conversation went something like this:

Sarah: So... what did you mean by the comment in my blog?

Me: Oh... heh. Well, Tim and I are thinking about having a baby.

Sarah: Woohoo! I knew it!

Me: Yeah - well, we're trying to figure out when it is safe to start, given that we don't have the room right now and need to make sure we're in our new house.

Sarah: Makes sense.

Me: Except I've been doing the research and [I regurgitate the facts and statistics and figures that I had previously spewed to tim; followed by tim's reasoning that we shouldn't count on me being "average"]

Sarah: You know, Tim has a good point.

Me: But what if he's wrong?

Sarah: But what if he's not?

Me: But what if it's too late or what if something goes wrong?

Sarah: Well... Mom is the oldest of 6. Dad's the youngest of 10. Both Grandmas were having strong healthy kids for a good long time. And when Mom was pregnant with me she had brain surgery and some pretty heavy duty drugs coursing through her system, and I still came out just fine. I'm thinking that fertility and complications shouldn't be as big a concern for you and Tim. You've got genetics on your side.

Me: true. (She is the life sciences major. And she is smarter than me in general.)

So that's where we left it. For a little while. But I still want to figure out a "start date". Because I'm a romantic. What can I say? So the next conversation Tim and I have goes something like this

Me: Well, I figure if we aim for August as the earliest that we can have a baby be born, then I figure the soonest we can start trying is November. That's 9 months. So even if I get pregnant right away, we should be in our new house by then.

Tim: True. It's still cutting it a bit close; what if the schedule slips?

Me: This will be added incentive for it not to! (my finely honed PM skills, intuition, and experience having obviously abandoned me at this point)

Tim: Ok... (still not entirely convinced)

Me: Ok - how about this. If Kerry wins the election, how about we celebrate by starting Nov 2nd?

Tim: Hehe. But if he doesn't win there is no way I want our baby conceived on the night that Bush wins his 2nd term in office.

Me: Absolutely agree. That would be very bad karma.

Suffice it to say our child was not conceived when Bush got re-elected. And also to say that both Tim and my sister were right in the end. When we did start trying, I got pregnant right away :-). Whether that's genes, or my astute planning and research, or a bit of both plus a lot of luck, who knows or really cares :-). George our builder says he works well under pressure, so I am quite confident that we will be moved into our house by the estimated due date. Of course, whether the baby decides to wait till then is entirely up to him or her. We do have a bit of buffer time though :-) Guess we'll just wait and see how it all works out!

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One plus One equals Three!

Well - now that we've told our family, friends, bosses, employees, architect, and builder, I'm all clear to announce it here as well:

Tim and I are having a baby!

Yup - I'm pregnant. Tim and I are going to be parents! My estimated due date is August 3rd.

I tell ya - it's been really hard keeping the secret for this long. We found out November 30th. Although I had a pretty good feeling the night of the 29th after peeing on a stick and seeing a faint second line. So I peed on another stick the morning of the 30th, saw a stronger second line, went to my doctor later that day and after peeing in a cup for them, the lab confirmed the good news. Peeing is something that comes rather easily for me these days. I can do it at the drop of a hat. I'm told this symptom will return in spades in my 3rd trimester.

We told our parents and siblings right away and swore them to secrecy. This will be the first grandchild for my Mom and Dad but they stood fast and said not a word to anyone. Christmas is when we let the rest of the family know, and after that I just couldn't contain myself any longer so New Year's Eve we broke down and told our close friends even though we had fully intended to wait until the proper passing of the first-trimester milestone before announcing to anyone outside the family. Hey - we were excited!

Since then it's just started coming out where-ever/whenever... when I went to get my hair done, I told my hairdresser. When I went to get a facial I told my facial technician. When I went to get Tim a coffee and the coffee lady asked if anything was new and exciting, I told her. I have to admit - I'm having a good time spreading the word ;-)

Here's some more random info.

Tim and Heather's Baby FAQ

Q: When is it due?
A: Estimated due date is August 3rd.

Q: Was this planned?
A: Absolutely. And very carefully I might add. I am a PM.

Q: Are you [ excited | nervous | scared | thrilled | * ]
A: Totally.

Q: Will you find out the gender in advance?
A: Yes.

Q: Is there just one?
A: Yes.

Q: Have you had any morning sickness or weird cravings?
A: Not really. I stopped being able to eat bananas or anything that smells like them, because the smell does make me feel icky. That's new. So no more "banana nut crunch" cereal for me in the morning. Other than that, as long as my stomach isn't completely empty, I feel fine. I was hungry a lot. In the very very early stages I was absolutely ravenous all the time.

Q: Will you be in your new house by the time the baby arrives?
A: Yup. Err... well... we sure hope so. We'll definitely be in by the estimated due date (Right George? Josh? ;-)). But if she or he comes early, well... all bets are off then and things could get very interesting ;-)

Q: Have you picked out names yet?
A: We've started thinking about it. It's much easier of course when you've eliminated one of the genders :-) I've got a whole other blog entry devoted to naming - so check back soon :-)

Q: Will the baby be both Canadian and American?
A: Yes. We'll have to fill out some paperwork for the Canadian citizenship, but yup, he or she will be a dual citizen for life.

Anyway, to contain myself to this point I've been squirreling away draft blog entries. But now that we've let the cat out of the bag, I'll start publishing them. Stay tuned! And in the meantime, check out our first baby pictures:

Little blurry baby spot at 6 weeks
Slightly larger blurry baby spot at 7 weeks
Baby at 11 weeks, 5 days. We were able to see a very distinguishable head, arms, legs, hands and feet! Cute, huh ;-)

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Doors and stairs and plumbing, oh my!

Went out today to see how the house was coming along. As you can see, it's looking GREAT! We're pretty darn excited.

All 3 sets of french doors on the main floor (Kitchen, dining room, master bedroom) are installed. They've also installed all the rails for the pocket doors that will be inside the house. I believe all doors and windows have been delivered at this point so we should continue to see the house fill out as they get them installed. These are in the dining room and will open up onto a deck:

A lot of the plumbing is also in at this point - laundry room, bathrooms, mechanical room. Pretty darn cool!

And we have a partial set of stairs to the basement.

I believe the roofing arrives next week as well, which will be a lot of fun to watch!

Check out the rest of the photos from today.

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Cannes you do the Can-can?

Woohoo! I'm getting to travel for work! It's been a few years. Last time I had to travel extensively for work was almost 5 years ago and then it was just to other cities in the U.S. Last time I had to travel internationally for work was my trip to London and Paris in 1999.

But now I've got not one but two pretty cool trips coming up.

The first is in Feb for 8 days. I'll be in Cannes, France for an industry conference. I'll actually be staying in Nice, which is nice. (It had to be said.) I've been to France several times, but never to Cannes or Nice. I'm TOTALLY looking forward to it!

The second is in March for 5 days. I'll be heading to New Orleans for another conference. Never been. Should be fun!

Tim is going to take care of the kitties and dogs while I'm gone. I believe his exact words were "I'm going to get the cats back on track". See - I have a bit of a problem with the kitties. It's been going on for a couple of years now. As they've gotten older their feeding habits - actually, their hungry times - have changed. I've always fed them fixed portions at fixed times; I can't leave food out all the time or Spice in particular will gorge himself and explode. So as kittens they would get fed one serving in the morning at breakfast, and one serving in the evening at dinner. When they got a bit older, they stopped wanting to eat in the morning and started getting hungrier at night, so I would feed them two servings each at dinner. When we moved in with Tim, their eating habits changed yet again - and I started feeding them one serving each at 10pm and another each at 11pm so that they wouldn't wake me up at 2am starving and wanting food.

Well now they've discovered that they can still wake me up at 2am starving and in order to preserve my sanity and maintain a decent night's sleep, I'll give in to their wet-noses-in-the-eye and paws-in-the-ear and scalp-kneading, and give them another half portion or so.

So now they're now testing the limits, and it's starting to affect Tim (because invariably now at 2am not only am I getting up to feed them, I'm also muttering "god damn stupid cats" and swearing a lot, which wakes Tim up). They don't bug Tim. They know he is immune to their charms. So while I am gone, Tim's going to "get them back on track". I hope it works :-)

Anyway - Back to Cannes. I found an interesting history of the city at cannes-on-line.com that is worth a read. Not sure if I'll get up the courage to use any of my french while I'm there. It's pretty rusty... could do me more harm than good :-) Ah well. We'll see. At any rate, I'm SOOO excited!

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Cleaning out the Fridge

Been a while since I've updated our site so thought I'd throw a bunch of leftovers together and whip up an entry. So:

Here's Diva (Mom & Dad's baby) with her new Christmas toy. She's such a sweetheart. Had this one left over on the camera from the holidays

Went back to work last tuesday the 4th. After being off for a glorious 15 days (17 if you count the 2 sick days prior to my official vacation starting). Actually wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. I did ease myself into it though - getting in between 8:30 and 9am instead of my usual 7:30 - 8:00am. You can't rush these things. But all in all, a pretty good week. Lots of cool exciting projects on my plate taking off this year, and should be rather fun. I do love my job. If you gotta work, it's much better if you love what you do. We'll still be playing the lottery hoping to win the big one though. Cause if you DON'T gotta work, then why would you? ;-).

One of the first things we did when we got back into town was check out the progress on the house. It's looking excellent!

Went to the football game on Saturday. Seahawks vs Rams in the first round of playoffs. Seattle won the NFC West division title this year with a 9-7 record. Doesn't say much for the division. But they just couldn't make it past the first round of playoffs. Sigh. We were in good company though this wildcard weekend. 3 of the 4 wildcards that played beat the home team and advanced to the next round. There's always next year, right? And the tickets make nice momentos.

Weather forecast was calling for snow on Thursday night. No actual snow Thursday night though, which was a bummer - cause I really was hoping for a snow day on Friday (because the 4 day week wasn't short enough ;-). It did finally arrive - Saturday. We got about an inch overnight Friday Saturday which mostly melted away by Saturday afternoon, and then about 3 inches overnight last night. Tim had to sweep off the car this morning.

Well that's it for now. More later. Promise! ;-)

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Six Hundred and Eight Minutes...

That is how much time it took to watch all 3 Lord of the Ring movies (the Return of the King was the special extended version :-)). Actually - that is the total feature runtime - it actually took a lot longer if you factor in the pauses for bathroom breaks (and water breaks, and meal breaks, and sleep breaks since I didn't actually watch all 3 in one sitting; I was smart enough to spread the viewing over 2 days ;-)).

608 minutes. That's 10.13 hours. 10.13 hours. The extended DVD edition of the Return of the King was 251 minutes alone (50 minutes longer than the regular version).

I hadn't seen any of the movies before this weekend - for some reason or other always missing the team morale event where these were shown, or the "LOTR" house parties, etc. I've been really wanting to see them - I've always loved the books, and these movies are right up my alley. So I decided this weekend would be the one.

Great movies, all of them. Beautiful. Glad I watched them. But have to say am equally glad to have them behind me now so I can move on with the rest of my life ;-)

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