Kickstart My Heart

Kickstart my heart
Give it a start
Ooh, yeah, baby

We saw the baby kicking today.  A lot. And I fell in love a little more with each kick. Our future skater, kick boxer or soccer player was fiercely practicing this morning.  Lauren still can’t feel it, but I’m guessing that’s a good thing.  If this baby is this active when it’s bigger, her insides are going to be pretty banged up. 

We went in for a check-up, but he couldn’t find the heartbeat with a Doppler.  He said that’s pretty normal for 12 weeks, but I was totally bummed.  He opened the door and said, “Oh, the ultrasound room is open, let’s take a quick look.”  YAY!!  We weren’t supposed to have an ultrasound today.  He found the heartbeat (151 bpm) and took a quick look at the baby.  Baby K was kicking and moving around like crazy.  The ultrasound pics are starting to look like a baby.  At least to the trained eye of someone who knows what they are looking at in those things.  Thankfully, we had the Doc point everything out to us, so we can point it out to everyone else.  

Crib Wars

We have actually come to an agreement on the cribs.  I can choose the crib as long as she can choose the color.  I am just curious what others think.  So far, everyone loves the one I like less.  I still like it, don't get me wrong.  I should, I picked them both out.  One has just grown on me more though.  And everyone we ask, likes the one she likes better.  Like I said, I might get this one anyway.  It was her idea to give me the style I want if she gets the color she wants.  Compromise rules.

So what do you think? 

Crib A:

Or

Crib B:

I started typing out the differences in the specs, but it sounded like I was trying to stack it towards the one I want.  I was just typing out the facts, so I think I just confirmed my choice.  It's not only better looking, in my opinion, but I think it's more practical and safer.  Still curious though, so vote away!!!



Girl Vs. Boy

I am keeping a gender spreadsheet.  I have been tracking all the urban legends and old wives tales that we have done so far.  Right now, that sheet is seriously stacked towards a little girl.  However, I have a theory on the universe keeping things even.  I have been keeping track of all recent babies I know of to see how we would balance it out.  Right now I know of 3 girl newborns (or soon to be newborns) and 2 little boys.  So, as of now, based on that, we would be having a boy.  There is a friend who is due in a couple weeks that doesn’t know what she is having.  If she has a boy, they are even and we are right back where we started.  I am going to start adding our friends’ guesses to the spreadsheet.  Feel free to leave your guess as a comment.  I will add it to our list.  Here is the list of old wives tales/urban legends.

Boy:

Her age is even and the year is odd

Girl:

Chinese Gender Chart

She sleeps on her right side

Her magic 8 ball said so (to be fair, it did predict this working on the first try)

Bad morning sickness

Her hands are real soft

She has been craving sweets

She’s been having crazy mood swings

When I asked for her hand, she gave it to me palm up

We are both dreaming about boys

I will edit this as we come across more.

Dirty Dozen

The wife is feeling better, FINALLY!!  Yay!!  The morning sickness seems to be subsiding.  It was relatively mild for a few weeks, then seemed to get better and then came back with a vengeance.  The past few days have been much better.  She actually has had some energy, too.  However, it doesn’t help that it is 8 million degrees out.  She is cooking a baby; she doesn’t need help from Mother Nature.  I feel for our friends who are getting ready to pop (or just did.)  I know the heat is awful on my lady carrying around our little plum.  I can’t imagine if she were carrying around a watermelon. 

We have been looking into the 3D (elective) ultrasounds.  At first, I thought it was creepy, and totally unnecessary.   However, I like seeing the baby.  I miss seeing the baby.  I would do it every day if we could.  And it’s not as expensive as I thought.  We could go in now and get a teddy bear with a recording of the baby’s heartbeat.  And then at 15 weeks………. We can go in and TRY to find out the sex!!  We are dying to find out, so we will most likely make an attempt at this.  Even if they can’t tell right away, we can go back for free until we can and it will help pass the time until the OB will tell us.  Speaking of, we go see the OB again this Friday.  Not sure what we are going to do, but hoping to at least hear the heartbeat again. 

I still freak out a little when I realize I am going to be a mom.  I have a feeling I will still get that way when my kiddo is heading off to college.  I just CANNOT wait to meet the little munchkin.  Time seems to be speeding up these days.  Hard to believe we are at week 12.  Mamma is even starting to show a little. 

I hope ours is just like her...

I took our 7-year old niece shopping today.  We had a long discussion about the baby.  It’s interesting (and awesome) to hear her take on everything.  It went a little something like this:

She doesn’t care if it’s a boy or a girl.  They are both fun in their own ways. (Like her and her brother.)

She does want to find out ASAP.  She can’t believe we have to wait another 9 weeks. (Seriously, the wait is killing her!!)

She will love the baby either way.  (Seriously, it doesn't matter to her at all.  Ok, she kind of wants it to be a girl.)

She is super excited to have a baby cousin that she will see all the time and hopefully someday babysit.

She promises to get her CPR certification before she babysits. (Her mom is making her)

She thinks it’s weird that I am going to be a mom.  I’ve always just been her aunt.

While we were having the whole weirdness of me being a mom conversation, she segwayed into the baby having two moms.  That lead to a whole discussion (and her cracking up) of the kid saying, “Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom,” to both of us.  After a pause she said, “Yeah that will be weird.” I saw this coming so I said, “What, the baby having two moms?” She looked at me like I had 4 heads and said, “No, you being a mom.”  I love this kid.  I love that she gets it.  Well, mostly.  She is hoping the baby looks like me (so, like her, too, basically.)  I didn’t explain how this all went down.  I just let her go with her idea of the baby having Lauren’s black hair and my big feet.   

Cat out of the bag

Well, we finally went public with the news.  Or I should say we ALREADY went public with the news.  After all, we are 10 weeks today.  I guess "they" say that is still kinda early, but at the last OB visit, he said that chances of things being AOK are higher than most just because of how well we have been able to check in on baby.  We have another ultrasound on Thursday and I can't wait.  I miss visiting the lil gremlin.  Speaking of, we watched Gremlins 2 tonight.  I started rethinking the whole gremlin nickname, but then realized they are hilarious and mischevious and I am cool with a kid like that. 

On facebook last night, we started talking about the baby between the two of us.  Anyone who is friends with both of us could have seen it.  The only people that said anything were people that already knew, but we were opening the door so they knew we weren't trying to keep it a secret anymore.  I wasn't really planning on bringing it up again tonight.  I had a bad day.  I was thinking it would be a bad night to bring it up because I wasn't in the mood to be excited about anything.  Parenting lesson 1:  Other people being excited about your kid will automatically cheer you up and make the other crap seem a whole lot less important.   Reading my friends's comments about how excited they are for us was another little pinch that reminded me how real and amazing all this is.  We are going to be MOMS!!! It put things in perspective for me.  I now get that my life is about my family.  Everything else is details.  I need to stress less about the details. 

Independence Day

I leaned over to the wife during the fireworks last night and said, "Next year, we will have our baby here for their first fireworks."  I was so happy while saying it, I almost cried.  I can't wait to experience all these firsts with my child.  Mostly it's being able to see these things all over again through my kid's eyes.  I can't wait for them to see their first fireworks, go trick or treating, or solve their first long division problem.  I know it will be hard at times and it's not all fun and games, but I am going to try my hardest to make it mostly fun and games.