Geographic Expedition Team Visits Rural Georgia Town

A geographic expedition recently visited our little town. They discovered that when NewMom-To-Be is lying down, she is the second highest point in our little flat coastal plain county. The name they applied to their maps was "Mount Mommy." (*) Unfortunately, camera malfunctions prevented the team from taking pictures of Heidi, the Abominable Snow Kitty, while she was climbing Mt. Mommy.

NewMom-To-Be says that she has nothing new to report. Baby movements have increased in frequency and strength. I've felt NBA moving around many, many times now. A week or two ago, we both could feel him having spasms for several minutes. We felt silly when it took us a while to realize it was hiccups. The little guy must have been nervous about the upcoming NBA playoffs. You can groan now.

In the cool department, NBA's movements can now be detected without touching NewMom-To-Be's tummy. A well-placed kick caused a mini-earthquake on Mt. Mommy. Watching it was definitely an out-of-this-world experience. In other news, NewMom-To-Be's alarm clock went off a few mornings ago and woke the baby up. He started kicking right when the buzzer went off. I couldn't be prouder. If he is anything like his father, he'll quickly learn not to kick the covers off. Instead, he will learn that the first alarm is really just a suggestion and that the inventor of the snooze alarm really does deserve a prize.

We are starting to move in on serious baby preparations. We've picked out paint colors (who am I kidding? I just looked at the "chosen" sample and nodded my agreement). The Easter Bunnies from Lake Park brought us a great crib, and one of the Easter Bunnies took a fabric sample back to make some great stuff for the nursery. Long Live the Easter Bunnies.

After, or during, setting up the nursery, NewMom-To-Be keeps mentioning the necessity of going to "classes." Apparently all actual fathers know what I am referring to here, but will probably snicker in silence and let me suffer alone. The best idea I have of what is in store comes from my friend, Mike. In addition to inspiring this blog, his blog is pretty funny, too. See the post titled "Birthing Class."

That's it from Mt. Mommy-Land.

* = This term was coined by NewMom-to-Be and is used with her permission. NewDad-to-Be is not foolish enough to think that he would survive to be an actual father if he made up this name and posted it on his blog. He may try to make a flag and plant it in Mt. Mommy's belly-button before it pops out, though.

Brief or Verbose?

When I was growing up, I would often ask my mother a question. She had a gift for explaining things from many different angles, something that usually led to an endless conversation about the current subject. It was a good thing, really, but after a while I learned to throw up my hands and say "Enough! Mom, turn off the 'verbose mode' and go to 'brief mode'." I laugh about it to this day, because I think I answer questions in a way similar to hers. You see, it all started when... (just kidding) =)

In that spirit, I'll offer this blog to you in two forms. One is "brief mode" if you're pressed for time and the other is "verbose mode" in case you have time to read all of it. Here goes.

Brief Mode
NewMom-To-Be is doing fine. NBA is kicking and can be felt doing so quite regularly. Nobody cares about NewDad-To-Be anyway, so I won't waste your time on that. The End.

Verbose Mode
Things continue to go along well in NewBaby-To-Be-Land. We had another appointment with Christie's doctor two weeks ago, but there was no real news to report from there. Sadly, my time in the waiting room didn't result in any major inspirations. Perhaps that was because I remembered to bring a book!

Last week was our school system's spring break, so we had a great week of vacation. We're both counting down the school days (29 left!) until the end of the year. We're both enjoying our third year of teaching much more, but NewMom-To-Be is super-psyched about taking next year off. I'm looking forward to it too, not just because I'll be eligible for retirement years before her, but also for all the good father-type reasons. =)

NBA continues to grow and develop like a champ. NewMom-To-Be can feel him moving around all the time. I can feel him moving about 50% of the times I try. Something stranged happened the other day, though. NewMom-To-Be was reading in bed, and the baby wasn't moving at all. Our dog, Darwin, got up and stepped on Ginger (our other dog) and Ginger didn't like that one bit. She let out a high-pitched yelp. Apparently, our baby is not deaf, because at that very instant he kicked. Hard. We were in awe. Looks like we'll have to start watching what we say now...you never know what they can hear.

In other news, we finally managed to agree on a name for NBA. We had one or two versions at first, but we had to change it in the end. Several friends suggested thinking of a name, then saying that name over and over again in a stern voice to see how it "really sounds." #1 and #2 names were thankfully edited out by this process. #3 ended up being great, so we're going with that. What's that, you want to know the name? I'll post it here in four more months. =)

One last thing...due to the hard work of NewMom-To-Be, we are now officially registered for lots of baby gadgets. You can find us at JCPenny, Babies 'R Us, and Walmart. I tried to link directly to the page for the registry, but apparently that is beyond the skills of this humble NewDad-To-Be. If you go to the main page, each page has a link for registries. If you enter my name or NewMom-To-Be's name, you should find it pretty easily. And you thought I wrote this blog just for the fun of it... =)