Born on the 4th of July!

Amy Grace Ariail arrived on the scene at 7:23 AM. She weighs 7 pounds, 13 ounces. Christie was in labor for about 17 hours, but had no complications. Amy Grace started crying immediately upon arrival, but quickly settled in for a snack and was quite content. Now she is in the nursery getting her first bath. More to follow...

More pictures will be added at my father's photo site in the 2008-0704AmyGraceAriail folder.

Evan Goes Blueberry Picking

In an effort to give Christie some rest this morning, Evan and I went blueberry picking. He loves to eat blueberries, but has never seen them growing. When he got out of the car, he walked over to a blueberry bush and got a very excited look on his face. He pointed at the bush and proclaimed "Buberr!" I could not be prouder.

Check out the video of the morning's events.

Let the Waiting Begin

Christie finished week 34 on Tuesday, and reports that she is ready for this whole thing to be over. For those of you who are not oriented to pregnancy math, the end of week 40 = due date. Delivery before 38 weeks is "premature," but anything after 38 weeks is "normal." Anything past 41-42 weeks doesn't happen much anymore, because most doctors feel the need to "do something" at that point. Scientific studies are inconclusive on whether the "do something" need is caused by the 42-week pregnant woman grabbing the doctor by the collar and saying "DO SOMETHING!" or not. Although I think pregnant women might be able to survive past 42 weeks, I'm not sure their doctors would. More research is needed.

Christie has been busy nesting over the past few weeks. For you fathers-to-be out there, "nesting" is a polite term to describe how everything you thought about the way things should be for the new baby is wrong. Seriously, the quickest way to figure out the best arrangement for baby furniture is for the father-to-be to pick the arrangement. That way, the worst possible arrangement (WPA) is immediately seen and the mother-to-be can see clearly to the best possible arrangement (BPA). Note to fathers-to-be: The BPA can and will change...sometimes daily.

On a more serious note, Christie really does have things coming together here. The nursery is 90% put together, the car seat is in the car, and the hospital bag is packed. Newborn diapers are stocked (have they always been that small?), and the infant toys have been unpacked. Soon we'll start cooking some food to throw in the freezer. That's for the nights to come when achieving cold fusion looks easier than cooking dinner.

In other news, Evan is saying lots of things now. Our favorite is "stop" and "go." He knows what red and green traffic lights mean, so he is quite happy when he sees one while we're out and tells us what to do. Occasionally at a red light, he gets impatient and says "go," and thinks it is funny.

Evan's second birthday is rapidly approaching, and NBG's due date happens to be about a week before that. We're doing all we can to get things taken care of while being mindful that we could actually have a second child anytime before, on, or after Evan's actual birthday. To that end, we're celebrating his birthday a few weeks early with one of his friends whose birthday is on July 4th. Evan's only two, so I don't think he's got the actual date of his birthday pegged in his Blackberry just yet.

Christie has also set up a registry for Evan (and NBG as well). We're experimenting here and trying out myregistry.com. Please understand that we're not asking for gifts here...it's just a way to answer that question of what to get if you were planning on getting something but hadn't yet. On the main page, you just put in first and last name (Evan or NBG, Ariail) and the appropriate registry comes up. It's pretty neat, and Christie reports that it was very easy to set up.

Other than that, we're keeping busy here with Evan. We're enjoying the last few weeks of one of us being able to take a break while the other one plays with Evan. According to knowledgeable friends, that period of life is going to come to an end very soon. We'll take it while it lasts.

It's a Girl!

That's NBG (New Baby Girl) in the picture above. Christie and I went in to the doctor's office Friday afternoon for a 4-D ultrasound. If you've only seen the old 2-D ultrasound images, the 3-D/4-D images fall into the "medically unnecessary" category. You pay for it out of your own pocket, but those pictures are so amazing! I've posted a 3-D image above, but we got to see several 5-second clips of actual video (that's where the 4-D name comes in). We managed to see the baby yawn a few times, stick her fist in her mouth, and generally look cute. If you look closely in the picture above, you can make out a hand (close to the mouth) and a foot (level with the nose, but to the right).

We almost left the doctor's office without pictures and without knowing our new baby is a girl. The ultrasound technician was having trouble with the machine because the computer was crashing, so we didn't get very far the first time. As we were packing up, I mentioned that we just wanted to know the gender...so the technician kindly rebooted the machine and turned on the older 2-D technology (that didn't crash the computer). Within seconds, we confirmed it was a girl. If that hadn't worked, I was going to be convinced that we didn't need to know at all and that we should wait. To make a Friday night even better, the 3-D/4-D ultrasound worked this time and didn't crash. Both parents were ga-ga at this point. I'm quite relieved now, because we were having trouble coming up with boy names again.

Christie is about 30 weeks in now, and she's ready for week 40 to be here and have the whole thing over with. She has stopped sleeping well, can't breathe deeply, and is having back pain issues periodically. Thankfully, the back pain seems to be linked to the baby's position...so it does come and go as the baby moves around. We are currently in a good phase right now. I have no idea what it is like to be pregnant, but I do know what severe back pain is all about. If you've never had it, it isn't one of those "oh, suck it up" kind of things. I'm guessing that's what the whole pregnancy experience must be like.

Evan is doing very well these days. He is babbling a lot, and can say many recognizable words. At least, they're recognizable to us. He's signing and saying "more," which is a useful concept to understand. He also regularly uses:

• mama/dada
  
• yes/no
• juice
  
• milk
• blueberry (ok, it's "bu-bear," but we know what it means)
  
• choo-choo (too cute!)
• thank-you (it's tank-u)
  

Evan is running around, getting into all kinds of things, and generally being an outstanding 21-month old. We've avoided our share of major disasters lately, with the only notable exception being the inevitable discovery of fire ants. His hands and arms had about 20 bites each, so he looked pretty rough for a while. Still, if you ask him today where the ants bit him...he'll point to his hands. We think he learned that lesson well. Maybe he can teach his little sister to avoid that in the future.