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... =)