Fortuitous Doggie Walk

Well, the hockey game last night was great. It was so good to see live, professional hockey again. What a great game. The new dimensions, the new trapezoid, the 2-line pass, the tag-up offsides, all of that seems fine. Really didn't seem to change the game that much. They've succeeded in reducing the number of icing calls by saying the team doing the icing can't do a line change. So that helped keep the game moving. However, and this is what I feared the most, they completely countered that by calling more penalties. If the NHL wants to keep the game at a fast pace and keep scoring high, that's great. But don't then turn around and start calling more penalties. Anyway. Regardless, it's hockey and I love it. DAMN I hope they bring me a NHL team to the new arena.

I took the doggies for a walk yesterday and found a glider rocker at a garage sale for $40. I'm practically dragging the dogs I'm going so fast to get back to the house and get The Wife. I call once, no answer. I call twice and get a confused, "Hello?". I guess she was napping.

"Put your shoes on, there's a glider rocker for sale."

"Huh? Uh, well, where? What?"

"Just put your shoes on, I'll be there in a second."

"Uh, Okay."

So we ran, errrr, waddled very quickly, down to the garage sale. It's not the best, but it's comfy and it works. So I offered the gal $35 and she took it. Fortuitous doggie walk, indeed.

Oh, and The Baby ate the part of The Wife's brain that stores her ATM PIN. Luckily I was with her and had my card and The Baby is not eating my brain, yet.

FILE UNDER: SPORTS, PRE-PARENTHOOD

Swimfan

The Wife really enjoyed swimming this weekend at the lake. She's going to check out the YMCA tomorrow. I scheduled her for a spa day next week. A massage and some other stuff.

We had the second birthing class. I didn't watch the graphic parts. Maybe I'll change my mind when we're there and it's my wife, but at this point, I still don't want to see. We're learning to breathe and about the different stages. We've got a newborn class this Thursday.

We meet with another pediatrician next week. Seems like it might be tough to pick one.

We had our hospital pre-registration and a tour. It all seemed good. The rooms are huge.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

7 Things

At KD's request (I normally can't do your lists, but I think I can do this one):

7 things I plan to do before I die:

1. Travel to Europe
2. Raise the best child(ren?) I can with The Wife
3. Worry less
4. Own NHL season tickets
5. Learn to play the harmonica
6. Own a house = no mortgage
7. Learn to be a better dancer

7 things I can do:

1. Play soccer
2. Fix computers
3. Play foosball
4. Water ski
5. Snowboard
6. Make the vein in my hand wiggle like a worm by moving my finger
7. Gleek

7 things I cannot do:

1. Whistle (well)
2. Sing (well)
3. Dance (well)
4. Differential Equations (Calc I - III was fine, but DiffEQ kicked my butt)
5. Lie to The Wife (my cheeks puff up like a squirrel hoarding nuts)
6. Barefoot water ski (never tried)
7. Levitate

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex:

1. Sense of humor
2. Common sense
3. Easy going
4. Red hair
5. Boobs
6. Nice Butt
7. Nice Legs

7 things that I say most often:

1. What the fuck?
2. Dude (in all it's various forms)
3. I'll ..... (repeating the last phrase said with a sexual overtone regardless of context. Ex. "I'll fluff your pillow.")
4. I'm like ...
5. Well, clearly (or, Obviously)
6. Riiiiiiiiiighhht
7. That's jacked up.

7 celebrity crushes:

1. Audrey Hepburn
2. Gillian Anderson
3. Nicole Kidman
4. Alyson Hannigan
5. Angie Everhart
6. Demi Moore
7. Mia Hamm

7 people I want to do this:

I don't have 7 blogs I read.

Baby Doctor / Baby Date

I had some mild panic attacks today thinking there's not much time left. Perhaps brought on by class last night. Pack. Schedule induction. Pick names. Pick a doctor. Circumcision. Only 5 weeks. Deep breaths. Calm. Woooo-saaaa.

Baby Doctor. No, not like Doogie Howser. As in "baby daddy", "baby momma", etc. You know, "baby doctor". As in, we're trying to pick one. I called one office today to set up a new mom visit. The scheduler was kind of cranky, which turned me off. But we'll meet with them and see how it goes. I stopped by another office and got some information about them as well. They have a "sick waiting" and "well waiting" side to their waiting room. Cool idea.

Baby Date. Well, unless this dude(ette?) decides to come sooner, we check into the hospital on 10/16/05 @ 20:00 Central. Induction will begin the next morning. I guess if between now and then something happens that determines it should be sooner or later, we'll adjust accordingly.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Baby Learnin'

Well, we got quite a bit of loot from her baby shower. More than what I expected. I guess we're just about as ready as we can be, as far as stuff goes. Now we're gonna go get our learn on tonight. We've got our first of 4 birthing classes tonight. And then next week we've got a newborn care class. Why do I feel like I'm back in college, cramming for a final exam?

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

5 weeks, 2 days -ish

The Wife has a Baby Shower today. After that, we'll be able to make our list of stuff we still need and go shopping.

Swelling of the hands and feet is now a regular problem. It's not as bad as her sister had it, but it's still annoying and painful. She's also got a pain in her foot, possibly related to the swelling or maybe just because The Baby happens to be pressing on a nerve that affects her foot. She told work that she's done either this coming week or next, but I'm not certain she'll be able to go that long if her foot doesn't get better.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

How About Wednesday, at 9:53am?

The last Doctor visit went well, everything seems to be normal. She said that the circumcision decision (if it's a boy) shouldn't really be based on any medical reason and is primarily a personal decision. So I guess we've got to think about that.

One thing she did seemed kind of weird, let me know what you think. She gave us some dates to pick from for a scheduled induction. One was the given due date, one was 3 days after, and the others were 7 days before and 4 days before. She said she doesn't like to go too long because of potential complications. I didn't know we'd actually be trying to schedule this, I thought it would just happen.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Experiment

So I've frequently been waking up around 4am and can't go back to sleep until 5:29a, just in time for my 5:30a alarm. Which makes me feel like I didn't sleep at all. So today I'm just getting up and seeing what happens.

FILE UNDER: THINKING

Dinner Conversation

Me: "Does it hurt your feelings or make you mad or anything if I decide I don't want to watch The Baby being born, or catch, or cut the cord, or anything? I mean, I might change my mind when we get in there, but at this point, I'm thinking no."

The Wife: "No, I just don't want it to be something you regret missing out on. You know, I don't really *want* to *have* it, but I don't have much of a choice in the matter."

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Man-Slave, Peel Me Some Grapes!

We're now to a point where The Wife gladly accepts help tying her shoes and has mentioned that shaving her legs might be in my near future. I've also made the suggestion that she sit down while drying her lower half after a shower. I thought that would be safest for all involved after watching her precariously balancing on one foot (after she was out of the shower, at least) and then strain to get her other foot up on the counter.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Letters To The Editor

The Wife has requested a clarification. "Quite a snore" does not mean an obnoxiously loud, keep-me-up-all-night, shake-the-walls snore. She's gone from almost never snoring, to snoring most every night. But it's not very loud, just something new.

She worked 4 days this week instead of 3 and that caused a little too much swelling in her legs, so she told them to cut her back to 3. The response she got was, "Oh, I didn't realize I started scheduling you for 4 days.". Right. Sure. 'Cause there are so many with the same name (only 1), and so many people to schedule, and you do it so far in advance (less than 1 week). Anyway, they cut her back to 3, so that's good.

Baby still moves like crazy. Still no name decisions. Not much else to report.

Something I have been thinking about. We love our dogs. They are our "kids". Neither were supposed to get so big according to the shelters, but we now have 55lb. & 75lb. dogs. Inside dogs. And they're clean. Well, as far as dogs go, anyway. But they get so much hair everywhere. And we brush them pretty frequently. I don't think I could ever bring myself to make them permanent outside dogs. But I sure wish our house was laid out where we had like a basement entrance, like a mud room type of thing that could be the dog room so the rest of the house wouldn't get so hairy. There are certain rooms they can't go in. Anyway, I'm just rambling.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD, THINKING

Sawing Logs

Testing the Blogger pic upload thing I just noticed.

Also, The Wife has developed quite a snore. Sometimes she wakes herself up.

Oh, and with my last post, I started receiving spam comments, so I had to add an extra step for those who want to leave a comment. Hopefully that will help. Sorry for the inconvenience for those of you with legit comments.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Baby Room Photos

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Originally uploaded by polesposition.

Here are the baby room photos. I don't use flickr much, so I'm not sure how this post will turn out.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Burn Baby Burn

That was the subject of an email I got from The Wife last week when she was having really bad heartburn. Tums and Tylenol weren't helping, but the Pepcid Complete seemed to help. I don't think she's had as much trouble with it since then. Knock on wood.

Her sister and mom came up this weekend and helped her paint the baby room. It's pretty cool. I'll try to get around to posting some pics. So now we just have to put a baby in there.

We looked at glider rockers yesterday. Damn those things are expensive. We're thinking of alternatives at this point.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Snubbed

Changing Table, Check. $100 @ Baby Depot / Burlington Coat Factory.
Matching Dresser, Check. $150 @ local furniture store.
Mostly matching crib, Check. Free from sister-in-law.

Yaaayyy!

Also, we went to a different grocery store this weekend, hoping for a better selection of lunch meat. And we got it. Since it was a store we weren't familiar with and since we didn't have a list, we were going up every isle to see what we needed. But when we got to the isle of frozen deserts, I looked up the isle, decided we didn't need anything, and moved on. I heard The Wife announce, "We snub you, isle of frozen delights.". Maybe you had to be there, but it was quite amusing.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD, THINKING

Single Digits

The Baby had The Wife's stomach all out proportion last night. Normally, it's just a perfectly round belly. But The Baby decided to camp out on her lower left side for a while and it looked crazy because her stomach was now oblong and catty-wompass instead of round.

I chose Jimmy Buffett's Defying Gravity as the song to sing to The Baby. I'm not sure if The Baby hates it or loves it, but it sure moves like crazy when I sing it. I wish I had a cool-guy Radio Blog like KD so I could upload it and you could hear it, but I don't. Now I want to learn to play the Harmonica part of the song. I haven't been able to find the sheet music for it yet, maybe I can figure it out by ear. Any suggestions?

If we're going with the due-date of 10/16/05, then today marks the official day that we have entered the single-digit weekly countdown. We're getting closer to ready, but still have a fair amount to do. We managed to choose an infant seat / stroller travel system to register for. I guess we'll also register for a convertible seat since that's what they recommended. The Britax one's seem really nice, but based on Consumer Reports, there are others that are just as safe that are half or less than half the price.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Overload

We tried to go register for baby stuff but we didn't have a plan and we hadn't done much research before hand. What a nightmare. So much shit. And so many different kinds of the same shit. Convertible car seat / infant car seat / travel system / umbrella stroller. Straight bottles / angled bottles / baggie bottles. Hundreds of different nipples and binkies. We actually left one store without even scanning one thing.

So, we sat down and talked about how we planned doing things to maybe help narrow it down. That seemed to help and I guess we'll have to go back soon and sift through all that junk to figure out what we want / need.

There's just so much crap to do and think about. I guess we'll figure it out. It's been done a bajillion times before.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Turtle Surprise

The Wife called herself a beached whale the other day when she couldn't get off her back. I said that was really more like a turtle. She agreed, sort-of.

Her 30th birthday is 8/16/05. We had a surprise party for her yesterday. It was great. The rouse was a family baby shower at her sister's house about 45 minutes away. And then they would come back this direction to go furniture shopping and I'd have them swing by to get me. Except she didn't know about that second part of the plan until yesterday. The Wife said she was a little suspicious, because she thought, yah, I'll be gone all day and then have a party tonight. But her family played it cool and didn't act like there was any set time to leave. And when she called me to find out what I wanted to do and when, I was very nonchalant. "Yah, I'd like to go, just come by and get me whenever."

So she gets here, leaves her mom and niece in the running car, comes in and says, "You ready? Let's go."

"Yahhhh, come see what your dogs did in the back yard today."

"Okay, but mom and Kendall are in the car!"

"I know, it will just take a second."

I didn't realize she was carrying cake from the baby shower, and as she's walking through the kitchen, she starts to put it in the fridge, with all the party food (all the guests are out back).

"HERE. I'll get that!" As I accidentally stab her hand with my thumbnail. I've lost all my play-it-cool at this point.

She steps outside to a ton of people and, "SURPRISE!".

"Oh. Wow." Then she turns to me, "But mom and Kendall are in the car."

"No they're not, they're coming in."

"But everyone's going furniture shopping."

"No they're not, they're coming here."

"Oh."

Heh-heh. Even though she was suspicious earlier, she had completely dismissed the possibility, never suspecting her family was in on it.

It was good fun. I even made homemade ice cream like she requested.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

Good Times

The Wife says, "Having kids must be great, 'cause I can't imagine anyone doing this more than once."

Editorial Note: This post is as much for my amusement as it is for The Wife to go back and read some day when she brings up having another kid.

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD

The Waiting Game

The Baby Dr. appointment yesterday went well. She ask if we had a pediatrician and if The Wife wanted an epidural. We didn't know the answer to either. She recommended someone, and told us we could talk to the anesthesiologist about the epidural.

The Wife is low on Iron, so we got some OTC Iron for her to take in addition to the pre-natal. She just loves taking pills (not), so she's excited about that.

Everything seems normal, we're seeing the doctor every two weeks now. Which is kind of painful because they always seem to be behind schedule. They always seem to have some lame excuse like, "She had to deliver a baby earlier, so she's behind schedule.". ;-)

FILE UNDER: PRE-PARENTHOOD