Seeing is believing

Do you have any idea how many babies there are around? And how many baby girls? A ton! Everybody, it seems, has a baby girl. And do you know what? Baby girls are adorable! Simply adorable, I tell you. And did I mention that they are everywhere? In every restaurant, at funerals, walking down the mall near my work, riding the train, at church. The list goes on.

How have I not seen this before?

This little girl has me wrapped around her little (very little) finger and she's still not due for 20 weeks! Not that I'm counting, but its only 143 more days. Just over 3400 hours.

But I'm not counting. No, not me. Never.

(How am I going to wait the two hundred and five thousand minutes until her arrival?? Agony, I tell you, agony.)

Can you tell I'm excited?

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It's a .....

We went in for the ultrasound yesterday, and I have to tell you it was an amazing experience. I kept wondering to myself if the ultrasonogropher ever gets tired of her job. I can't imagine that she would. We got to see the baby moving and kicking and it was amazing.

Oh, and by the way, they tell us that it is a girl. We are way excited. :)

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Movie Ratings

I don't go see a lot of movies. The most recent movie we saw in the theater was Cars, which admittedly wasn't that long ago. But we maybe go once every three months or so. All of this is just to say, we haven't been to see any of the new movies recently. All my intelligence on new movies has been gathered from a variety of sources, including my friend D.

I'll be honest. I don't think D is a very reliable source for a movie review. For example, I heard that the new installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean series is quite violent, and was long and mostly a waste of time. D loved the movie. When D was describing the movie to me, he told me that he thought the movie was so violent that 20 years ago it probably would have gotten an R rating. I said, "Well, then I'm really not interested in going to see it."

D said, "Well, it wasn't really that bad." Then he continued, "I mean, I wouldn't take anybody under eight years old to see it, because it was PG-13 for a reason."

D, can you run that by me again? Are we unclear on the concept?

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Developing a Taste for Good Food

According to the books we've read, by now little C Junior (or Paul Jr.; we hope to find out on Thursday) has developed taste buds, and is adjusting to the types of food that C is eating. Apparently this affects the baby's food tastes for years to come.

C told me this today at lunch while she was pouring on the vinaigrette dressing that I detest. "Stop!" I wanted to cry. "Don't train the baby to like yucky food like vinaigrette dressing! Give it ranch or blue cheese or something yummy!!"

C has recently been indulging her love for pickles, which I don't mind as long as she doesn't try to kiss me after words. I just don't do pickles or olives. Or vinaigrette (vinegar in general, actually). And absolutely no fresh tomatoes. This is basically C's diet lately.

Great. We're going to have a baby who craves pickles and olives with vinaigrette dressing with tomatoes (eaten like an apple, but with salt) for dessert.

If it were up to me, I'd be force feeding with marzipan cake. And watermelon. And all kinds of breads (whole wheat, of course). Plus Angel Food cake with lemon sauce, whip cream, and toasted almonds. Not to mention home-made ice cream. And ribs. Lots of spare ribs. Beef or pork; I don't mind. Are you salivating? I am. Just call me Pavlov's dog.

In the end, I think we're lucky it is C that is pregnant, and not me. Not only would I teach the child to love food that is horrible for you, but I'd eat it in such quantities that would make me blow up like a balloon.

So pass the tomatoes. I'll see if I can't roast them on the grill to make them edible.

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Realistic Consequences

As a married couple without children, C and I have spent the better part of 3.5 years watching how other people parent. One thing we've learned from observation and personal experience (from when we were kids) is that when parents are warning their children of the consequences of an action, those consequences must be realistic and actionable.

For example, let's say you live in Salt Lake, and you go on a family trip to Disneyland. By the time you get to Las Vegas, the kids are so tired of driving that they are constantly bickering in the back seat and getting on everybody's nerves. In this situation, a parent might be tempted to threaten, "If you kids don't knock it off back there I'm going to turn this car around and we won't go to Disneyland!" I think they hope this will scare the kids into obedience, despite the fact that the park tickets are paid for and the hotel is already reserved. (And really, are you willing to spend the next 6 hours driving back to Salt Lake with the crying children who don't get to go to Disneyland?) Then don't threaten to turn the car around unless you are really going to do it.

My mother-in-law (MIL) had an experience as a child where her mom threatened to burn my MIL's crayons if my she didn't stop a particular behavior (I forget the details). The next time the behavior happened, mom remembered the threat and threw the crayons into the fire. She was willing to do what she threatened, and my MIL never forgot it.

As a parent, my MIL did the same thing with her children. C learned from an early age that her mom would follow through with threatened punishments. Once C was going to a friend's house. Her mom said, "Call me when you get there or you will have to come home." Upon arrival, C forgot to call home. Her mom called over and had her sent home. The next day the same thing happened: C was to call when she arrived, but forgot. Her mom called, and C was sent home. The third day when C got to the friend's house, she went to call her mom, but her friend's mom was on the phone so C couldn't use it, but said she'd come get C when she was done. C went to play and forgot about it. When my MIL called, the other mom said, "Oh, it was my fault. She came over to use the phone but I was on it, and I didn't go get her when I was done." My MIL asked how long she had been off the phone. The answer was more than five minutes. "Has C come back in those five minutes to use the phone?" No. "Send her home." It may sound harsh, but C learned that her mom was serious. If C didn't call, she had to come home.

When we are parents, I wonder how we will implement this in our own family. I've read all the books (hee hee), so I'm an expert on the subject (yeah right!); but I suppose that we'll try to be careful to only threaten realistic punishments that we're willing to live with the consequences of. Maybe we'll seem like big meanies, but at least our kids will know we are serious when we warn them of consequences.

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A historical look

So that you might understand us better, I thought I'd give you some historical context surrounding our family. C and I have been married for three and a half years. A little over a year and a half ago, C found out she was pregnant for the first time. Twelve weeks later, we were at her second doctor's appointment and the doctor was unable to find the baby's heartbeat; it was a missed miscarriage.

Before we found out that C was pregnant we had begun discussing options for adoption. It was an option we had been considering since before we were married. There wasn't anything that would suggest that we would have any kind of fertility issues, but we still had discussed our openness to adoption. We said that we wouldn't wait a long time without children before we considered the adoption option.

Well, a couple months shy of two years of marriage found us pregnant, and we decided that if something were to happen, then we wouldn't waste any time finding out more about adoption. About a week after the miscarriage, we met with our bishop (we found out that this step isn't required anymore) for a referral to LDS Family Services, and went in to an orientation not long after that.

We spent the next months getting our adoption profile ready, and in September our adoption profile was approved, and we became available as potential adoptive parents. Six months later, we found out that C was again expecting, so we called our adoption worker to have our profile put on hold, again with the expectation that if anything were to happen to the pregnancy, then we could easily re-activate our profile.

Now C is almost 5 months pregnant, and all seems to be going well. She had some heavy bleeding that started about a bit more than a month ago. The doctor saw her every two weeks for a while after making a diagnosis of low-lying placenta (apparently it's not really placenta previa until after 20 weeks). But today C had another appointment, and the doc thinks she's doing well enough to not come back for 4 weeks (the normal schedule at this point in the pregnancy). So that was great news. And we go to hear the baby's heartbeat again, which considering the history, is always a major relief.

Now we are just waiting for the ultrasound next week (it will be 2 days shy of 19 weeks when it happens), and we'll hopefully know the baby's gender.

What about adoption for us? Well, we still intend to adopt. But we don't know if we'll keep trying for an infant with FamServices, or if we'll go for an older child. There are a lot of options out there. We've been looking at some international adoption options as well. So we'll probably have kids "both ways" as one of our ward members put it. But that's a story for a different day.

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A nudge from within

As you can guess from the title, C has experienced the first baby kicks. We're very excited. Here's how she tried to explain it to me. She said it felt like being tapped by one of those little rubber reflex hammers, but from the inside of her abdomen.

Its only happened a couple of times, and never when I could feel it, but this is exciting. I think C is finally starting to believe that there really is somebody growing in there.

Next week we go for the fetal survey ultrasound that should tell us gender, if the little squirt isn't too shy. With me as the dad, I'm guessing that shyness won't be a problem.

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