Some January Pictures

Haven't posted in a while. I've been very absorbed by my writing lately, and I've preferred to spend my few spare moments hanging out with the wife and fetus (as opposed to blogging about the wife and fetus).

But here are some pictures of the goings on these last couple weeks. Here are Carin and I two weeks ago (She is 30 weeks pregnant in this picture).

It is citrus season, and we are loving our oranges and tangerines these days.

Coming right on the heels of our previous series of cat and pregnant wife photos, here are a couple shots of a 31-week pregnant Carin doing yoga with her pal Scottie.

More Information Than You Require

Warning: You may end up finding out more than you want to know if you continue reading.

So, there is a special kind of pain reserved for when you get a hemorrhoid cut off of your bum, and then the local wears off. Especially when the strongest thing you feel comfortable taking for said pain is Extra-Strength Tylenol.

(Yeah, that happened today.)

I'm not going to go any further into the details, but in the interest of self-mockery and humor, I wanted to share two things that the very distinguished surgeon -- who has been practicing many many years -- said during the very short time I was in his office today:

1. [Upon first examination of said 'roid:] "Well that is bigger and badder than most I've seen."
2. [While removing it:] "I've taken out appendices smaller than this!"

People, let this be a lesson for all of us. More prunes. Stat.

Pillows: Real and Imagined

I've been having some positional challenges while I sleep. For reasons I won't go into, my doctor advised me that whenever I am lying down, I should lie on my left side. When I do this, I need my back supported so that I don't roll onto my back in the middle of the night. This has led to a king-size-pillow barrier between me and Bill. Love you honey! I'll wave to you from way over here.

I also having been using a regular-size pillow to sort of do a combination support-the-belly plus between-the-knees thing. Not surprisingly, when I wake up, the pillows are nowhere near where I put them when I fell asleep. And it's hard, when you wake up in the middle of the night, to readjust all those pillows. In the dark. Half-asleep.

So I finally got a Snoogle yesterday. It's a pillow that's sewn into a pre-formed shape somewhere between a "C" and a "J" and you can hypothetically shape it many different ways. Behold (click to see the details):

Very promising when I went to sleep last night, because having that c-shape between your knees basically should prevents the long back support from shifting away from you. Theoretically.

Some time during the early morning, I woke up in a bit of discomfort from the neck portion. Did I also mention I have a pre-existing neck issue (herniated cervical disc - maybe C5 or C6? I forget which) that can be aggravated by side sleeping? Awesome. (In terms of pain management, I just wrapped up a month of PT, so at the moment I can once again turn my head. So I'm sticking with the side sleeping for now.) The snoogle is... not so great for my neck. The nice firm support for the back ends up being a bit firm for my head, and was sort of craning my head up a little too much. So I pushed the neck portion aside and pulled up the normal soft pillow I had tossed on the floor before falling asleep the night before.

But then the back portion was pushed away too. And somewhere in there, it came out from in between my knees? Anyway, I was having issues.

So in between snoozes on my alarm clock this morning, I have a dream. I dream that I have given birth to the baby, and isn't she (in the dream it's a she) adorable and just the sweetest thing, especially all bundled up and swaddled. She's soooo cozy and snuggle-able. So I'm snuggling with her, and maybe I start to snooze a little (in the dream), and I wake up a little bit later, quite well rested, and I can't find her. I'm searching through the sheets and comforter since it's all very fluffy, and a small bundle could be easily covered up and we wouldn't see her, but for all the fluff of the comforter (much the way our cat totally hides under the comforter and we don't even realize). So I finally find her... and I have used her as my pillow. And yes she has died because I have accidentally smooshed her to death from SLEEPING ON HER, but she sure was a comfortable pillow.

Horrifying.

Week 28 - An Ultrasoundin' We Will Go!

As Carin described in her previous post, while in New Jersey, we visited Carin's sister, the famed ultrasound tech, and spent a long time looking at our little guy.

We came home with a whole batch of cool ultrasound pictures. Here are a few, starting with the now infamous shot of our little guy (let's call him OLG for short) giving us the finger:


That whippersnapper! So irreverent! And now, he gives us the feet ...


Now to the best pictures of the bunch, the profile shots!


The picture above might be my favorite on account of how adorable OLG is. Also, the more I look at it, the more I say, "Wow! He totally looks like me! No--Wait! He totally looks like Carin!" Look at the lips, the chin, the under-nose! Am I crazy or is there actually something there? I know. I'm probably crazy.

The picture below features OLG sucking his thumb:


Nuclear powered cuteness, don't you think?

Don't believe he's sucking his thumb? I've added my artistic interpretation below:


Now, not every picture is so darn cute. The straight on shots of his face were--to be charitable--not all too flattering. The less charitable way to describe them would be ... um ... slightly demonic. But try photographing a flat cross section of your face and see how spiffy you look! Here's one of the prettier scary ones:


And now, let's end this picture session with the classic "baby kicking himself in the head" shot. Not sure if this is reflective of his mother's occasional clumsiness or his father's penchant for stretching. Perhaps, it's a bit of both.


I've added my illustrations below to help illuminate what I think is going on here. I've declined to add a thought bubble because I think it's best for each viewer to imagine what OLG is thinking for him or herself. I did, however, in the interest of imbuing our unborn son with super powers, add a cape. Enjoy.

Photographic Dispatches from the Grand East-Coast-wide RUB-THE-BELLY Tour

Yes, the belly was rubbed. The East Coast was toured. Chinese food was eaten for Christmas.

And good times were had with family and friends.

We started our vacation in Sarasota, Florida ...


where we hung out with my family, eating food ...


... and taking pictures of each other ...


... on the beach ...


... even though it was a little cold.


Then it was off to New Jersey we flew.

Here we got to hang out with Carin's family ...



... and build snow penguins.


We even met up with Carin's old high school pals.

They threw her a little surprise baby shower ...


... which made her very happy.


Here she is with fellow pregnant girlfriend, Danielle. See the matching baby bumps:


We also went to New York, where we saw friends and had a fun family get-together in my sister's apartment ...


... which provided one very proud great-grandmother-to-be with the opportunity to feel some kicks.


This is my favorite picture of the trip.

Definitely our kid

All my ultrasounds so far have been very clinical. Here's the neck fold, here's the length of the femur, yes the organs are forming correctly, and oh it's a boy. Interesting, but just-the-facts-ma'am only (since my doctor does the scanning himself). Plus, I have to watch the scans through a handheld mirror since the doctor doesn't even turn the screen in my direction. It's like trying to look at the hair on the back of your head. I like my doctor, and I would recommend him to others without reservation, but this sort of ultrasound experience is less than touching.

Fortunately for me, my sister is an ultrasound tech! Unfortunately for me, she lives 3000 miles away. So Bill and I scheduled our final unencumbered trip to the east coast right at the 6-month mark to hang with our families and swing by my sister's place of employment. She spent a good long time (45+ min) scanning for nothing in particular, just poking around, sometimes just hanging out with the wand waiting for the baby to move so we could see it on the monitor. A couple measurements for due diligence told us that he's presently 2 lbs, 13 oz, which is in the 53rd percentile for size.

Here are three ways we know the baby is definitely ours:

1. He gave us the finger.
2. He played with his penis.
3. He kicked himself in the head.

Pictures to follow.