Today was our fourth wedding anniversary! I celebrated with a day full of meetings - I had meetings scheduled from 8:15 am - 6:00 pm. Luckily I had a break for lunch and Jeremy brought by sandwiches from our favorite deli. When the deli guy found out it was our anniversary he gave Jeremy free carrot cake - which caused Jeremy to declare the deli guy his "second favorite person in the world". He clarified that I still had the number 1 spot, but by a fairly narrow margin. I mean, I may be carrying his child, but we're talking about FREE CAKE. I think if it had been pie I might have been out of luck.
After my late meeting we went out for a nice dinner in Pacific Grove. It is amazing to think that this is the last time for quite a while that we can go out for an anniversary dinner without having to find a babysitter! It was a delicious dinner and we really enjoyed having a nice night out before we both head back to school.
The other exciting thing that happened today is that Danger felt the baby kick. After my alarm went off this morning, Danger sprawled on top of my belly. Right as he settled in, Bagel gave a big kick. She's still pretty little so the kicks aren't super-hard, but it was enough for Danger to lift his head and look at me accusingly, as if to ask "what just happened?". Jeremy says he can't wait for Bagel to get bigger and for the kicks to get harder because he wants to see if Danger will fight back. I can't say that I am particularly looking forward to baby-cat show downs with me caught in the middle.
The other memorable event that happens in the middle of August is my mom's birthday. Happy birthday Mom! (Actually it was the 17th). On Tuesday I got a phone call from my brother (well, actually Jeremy got a phone call from my brother's best friend, but that's a much longer story) chastising me for dropping the ball and not calling him to warn him about mom's birthday. Apparently he and his friend found out about her birthday when they stopped by my parent's house because it was half way between the liquor store and their final destination. Although, as his friend pointed out, John had thoughtfully picked up a "bouquet of a dozen Bud Lights" to commemorate Mom's birthday - THAT'S thinking on your feet!
Happy birthday Mom and happy anniversary Jeremy! Here's hoping for many more of both!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
What's in a name?
If you haven't heard, baby Bagel is ... a GIRL ... maybe. The only thing we're sure of about Bagel is that he/she is uncooperative and would not let the doctor get a good shot of the parts that are important when determining gender. So, the doctor offered up a guess (based, I'm guessing, on NOT seeing some particular equipment) that Bagel is a girl with 90% certainty. Luckily, she also offered to throw in a freebie ultrasound to double-check at our next appointment. The doctor also said that she's relatively sure she's right, but (GRANDMOTHERS PAY ATTENTION HERE) not to go out any buy any pink stuff just yet, because there's definitely a chance that the next ultrasound might turn up some evidence to the contrary.
Now that the gender question is close to being settled, everyone wants to know about names. So, were just going to come out and tell everyone - WE'RE NOT TELLING. Why? Pretty much the only unanimous unsolicited advice we have received from our friends is to keep the baby's name to ourselves until the baby is born. Our friend Joe gave this advice best - it involved many emphatic hand gestures and the use of the phrase "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" at least three times. His point was basically that before the baby is born, everyone is going to have an opinion on the name of your baby - probably negative. You will hear things like "I hear that X is the most common name for serial killers", "A kid named X stole my lunch money in the third grade", "I got a great lap dance by someone named X once", etc, etc, etc. However, once you have an adorable baby and present it with its given name, nobody and I mean NOBODY is going to bring up their stolen lunch money or tell you that with a name like that your bundle of joy is going to grow up to be the best tipped stripper in the club (just like nobody is going to tell you that your baby isn't really all that adorable).
We considered this advice and decided it seemed pretty wise. Also, it allowed us some flexibility in case we decided to change our minds about the baby's name. We then had many (I'm sure many more than Jeremy would have liked) conversations about what to name Bagel (other than Bagel). After a while, we decided on a girl name and a boy name that we both really liked. In fact, we were particularly fond of our girl name. BUT, then ... we did the unthinkable ... we did not follow Joe's advice. We let the names slip. The inevitable happened. Our carefully chosen girls name got TRASHED. Trashed to the point where we couldn't really use it any more. By someone who we thought would actually be touched by the reasoning we used to select the name in the first place. At the time, we still weren't sure about the gender, so we clung to the fact that our boy name was still (relatively) untarnished and we were probably not going to need a girl name anyway. And then we got the ultrasound. Joe, we will never doubt you again. If you tell us that the best sleeping position for a baby is upside down like a bat, we will immediately purchase bungee cords and make it so. You are a wise, wise man.
While we most certainly will not tell you what we're planning on naming Bagel, we will tell you what we are NOT naming Bagel. We are not naming our baby girl Maxine. We originally chose Maxine because we thought it did a great job of honoring both of our families. My grandmother is Maxine, and Jeremy's great-grandfather was Max (which is what we were going to call her as a nickname - although Jeremy did at one point argue that it would be cooler to call her Mad Max). We both liked the name, we thought a girl called Max wasn't going to get any static on the playground, and we looked forward to telling her stories about her families and how they both contributed to her name. Then, we accidentally told some folks about our plan (the part where we did not listen to Joe). It turns out Max Gottlieb was a real SOB, nobody liked him, you don't want to name your kid after him, etc etc etc. While we were hoping that both of our families would eventually tell Bagel about where her name came from, we were not envisioning those conversations involving quite so much use of the word "jerk".
So, we are back to the drawing board for a girl name. Luckily, there's an app for that. Seriously, we downloaded an iPhone app of baby names. Every night while we're brushing our teeth and getting ready for bed, we go through a few more pages of baby girl names and we're keeping a list of names that we both find acceptable. We'll wait until after the next ultrasound and if the gender gets confirmed we'll narrow down to a few contenders and will probably put off the final decision until Bagel is born - unless we find something else that we both really, really like which hasn't happened yet. At least we're having lots of laughs making fun of some of the ridiculous baby names out there, and even more laughs making fun of each others' selections. Jeremy thinks I tend to like "old lady names" and has unequivocally outlawed any name including the letters "wyn". I think Jeremy tends to pick names that belong to women who in middle age still shop in the juniors section and dot their "i"s with hearts. But I'm sure we'll find something we both like, if we don't our fallback name is "George Foreman" :)
So, I guess the moral of the story is LISTEN TO JOE. Although, his other piece of parenting advice was that as a guy, it is best to have all girl children because then when you get in the minivan, you can turn around and say "hellllll-oooooo ladies", so, you know, the jury might still be out on that one.
Now that the gender question is close to being settled, everyone wants to know about names. So, were just going to come out and tell everyone - WE'RE NOT TELLING. Why? Pretty much the only unanimous unsolicited advice we have received from our friends is to keep the baby's name to ourselves until the baby is born. Our friend Joe gave this advice best - it involved many emphatic hand gestures and the use of the phrase "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" at least three times. His point was basically that before the baby is born, everyone is going to have an opinion on the name of your baby - probably negative. You will hear things like "I hear that X is the most common name for serial killers", "A kid named X stole my lunch money in the third grade", "I got a great lap dance by someone named X once", etc, etc, etc. However, once you have an adorable baby and present it with its given name, nobody and I mean NOBODY is going to bring up their stolen lunch money or tell you that with a name like that your bundle of joy is going to grow up to be the best tipped stripper in the club (just like nobody is going to tell you that your baby isn't really all that adorable).
We considered this advice and decided it seemed pretty wise. Also, it allowed us some flexibility in case we decided to change our minds about the baby's name. We then had many (I'm sure many more than Jeremy would have liked) conversations about what to name Bagel (other than Bagel). After a while, we decided on a girl name and a boy name that we both really liked. In fact, we were particularly fond of our girl name. BUT, then ... we did the unthinkable ... we did not follow Joe's advice. We let the names slip. The inevitable happened. Our carefully chosen girls name got TRASHED. Trashed to the point where we couldn't really use it any more. By someone who we thought would actually be touched by the reasoning we used to select the name in the first place. At the time, we still weren't sure about the gender, so we clung to the fact that our boy name was still (relatively) untarnished and we were probably not going to need a girl name anyway. And then we got the ultrasound. Joe, we will never doubt you again. If you tell us that the best sleeping position for a baby is upside down like a bat, we will immediately purchase bungee cords and make it so. You are a wise, wise man.
While we most certainly will not tell you what we're planning on naming Bagel, we will tell you what we are NOT naming Bagel. We are not naming our baby girl Maxine. We originally chose Maxine because we thought it did a great job of honoring both of our families. My grandmother is Maxine, and Jeremy's great-grandfather was Max (which is what we were going to call her as a nickname - although Jeremy did at one point argue that it would be cooler to call her Mad Max). We both liked the name, we thought a girl called Max wasn't going to get any static on the playground, and we looked forward to telling her stories about her families and how they both contributed to her name. Then, we accidentally told some folks about our plan (the part where we did not listen to Joe). It turns out Max Gottlieb was a real SOB, nobody liked him, you don't want to name your kid after him, etc etc etc. While we were hoping that both of our families would eventually tell Bagel about where her name came from, we were not envisioning those conversations involving quite so much use of the word "jerk".
So, we are back to the drawing board for a girl name. Luckily, there's an app for that. Seriously, we downloaded an iPhone app of baby names. Every night while we're brushing our teeth and getting ready for bed, we go through a few more pages of baby girl names and we're keeping a list of names that we both find acceptable. We'll wait until after the next ultrasound and if the gender gets confirmed we'll narrow down to a few contenders and will probably put off the final decision until Bagel is born - unless we find something else that we both really, really like which hasn't happened yet. At least we're having lots of laughs making fun of some of the ridiculous baby names out there, and even more laughs making fun of each others' selections. Jeremy thinks I tend to like "old lady names" and has unequivocally outlawed any name including the letters "wyn". I think Jeremy tends to pick names that belong to women who in middle age still shop in the juniors section and dot their "i"s with hearts. But I'm sure we'll find something we both like, if we don't our fallback name is "George Foreman" :)
So, I guess the moral of the story is LISTEN TO JOE. Although, his other piece of parenting advice was that as a guy, it is best to have all girl children because then when you get in the minivan, you can turn around and say "hellllll-oooooo ladies", so, you know, the jury might still be out on that one.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
The Stakes are Raised
It is no secret that Jeremy and I have a small wager on the sex of baby Bagel. However, yesterday Jeremy announced that he has prepared a choreographed "I'm Right" song and dance number to perform at the OB's office if he wins. I'm sure that's something the doctor doesn't see every day. Of course, I guess you can't blame Jeremy, he is right so rarely it truly would be a reason to celebrate :)
Monday, August 2, 2010
How I spent my summer vacation
I've been pretty swamped this summer with work related things. This past week I was at a workshop on remotely operated vehicles (underwater robots essentially) and how to teach students how to build them for a competition and classroom projects. It was a lot of fun, but pretty exhausting - we had really long days and in addition to all the lectures we went to, we had to build a robot in groups and then show them off on the last day. We did everything from soldering circuit boards, to waterproofing our robots to writing the control software. All in a week! I am pretty exhausted, but excited to share everything I learned with my students. Here are a couple of pictures of my team's robot and control station:
The robot itself is made out of PVC pipe, but that's what makes it affordable for classroom use. One of the best parts of the workshop was meeting all of the cool people involved. Our workspace was at a local community college's auto shop and the guys that run the place did an amazing job of hosting us. One night, during a late robot building session, they even hosted a cook-out on their custom BBQ:
That's an old Honda Civic and the engine has been replaced with a huge BBQ pit. It was pretty amazing. The trunk was full of speakers too so that while you grill, you can enjoy some tunes. Pretty impressive. I can't believe John hasn't done something like this! If only he had somewhere he could get an old beat-up car that doesn't run ... :)
 | ||
| Yay! It doesn't leak! |
 |
| ROV control station |
 |
| Auto-shop BBQ |
Bagel's New Digs
This Friday, I'll be 20 weeks pregnant which is half-way through. It seems like Baby Bagel will be here any day! While Friday is the half-way point, Thursday is even more exciting because it is the day that we find out if we are having a he-Bagel or a she-Bagel! There has already been some trash talk, so we're hoping we can contain things at the doctor's office. It would be a little embarrassing to be known as the couple that found out the sex of their baby and then one of them started gloating about being right instead of paying attention to the ultrasound :)
Since we know we'll both be ridiculously busy once school starts in September (I go back August 23 and Jeremy goes back a month later) we've been trying to get things ready for Bagel now. The first thing we did was clean out the room we are using as a nursery. It is the smallest of our two extra bedrooms, but it is also the closest to our room. It had a desk and a bunch of random crap in it before, so we had to re-assign everything to other rooms. We also cleaned the carpet, although with three cats, that is kind of a losing battle.
Once the room was all cleaned out, we painted. We specifically chose to paint before we knew the sex of the baby, because we wanted to make sure we picked something gender neutral. If we have another baby, we sure don't want to have to repaint! Since both Jeremy and I like blues and greens, we found a nice turquoise that we think will work well for either a boy or a girl. We spent a small fortune on the environmentally/kid/pet friendly paint from Sherwin Williams, so we hope Bagel appreciates it! Here is the nursery with its fresh coat of paint:
We tried to do a good job and (mostly) followed my dad's extremely type-A painting process (with a few shortcuts - for example, we only washed the walls once and there was no bleach involved). We also used painters tape around the top and bottom, but it didn't stick so well to our textured walls/ceiling. This led to a some-what less than perfect edge around the walls, but we figure Bagel won't care.
We also bought some furniture for the room, but that is a whole separate post :)
Since we know we'll both be ridiculously busy once school starts in September (I go back August 23 and Jeremy goes back a month later) we've been trying to get things ready for Bagel now. The first thing we did was clean out the room we are using as a nursery. It is the smallest of our two extra bedrooms, but it is also the closest to our room. It had a desk and a bunch of random crap in it before, so we had to re-assign everything to other rooms. We also cleaned the carpet, although with three cats, that is kind of a losing battle.
Once the room was all cleaned out, we painted. We specifically chose to paint before we knew the sex of the baby, because we wanted to make sure we picked something gender neutral. If we have another baby, we sure don't want to have to repaint! Since both Jeremy and I like blues and greens, we found a nice turquoise that we think will work well for either a boy or a girl. We spent a small fortune on the environmentally/kid/pet friendly paint from Sherwin Williams, so we hope Bagel appreciates it! Here is the nursery with its fresh coat of paint:
 | ||||
| Chez Bagel - sans furniture |
We also bought some furniture for the room, but that is a whole separate post :)
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Bagel Update
Last Friday we had our 16 week doctors appointment. Nothing too exciting because we didn't get new ultrasound pictures. We did get to hear the heartbeat, but it took the doctor a minute or two to find it which made us both really nervous. Luckily, once found, Baby Bagel's heartbeat was strong and right in the range that it should be for this stage of things. Of course, everyone is looking forward to next month's checkup when we get to settle the Bagel gender-bet once and for all. Speaking of which, if you want in on the gender guessing pool, make sure you let us know before August 5th :)
Danger got to test-drive a baby the other day when our friends Kristin and Geoff brought over their 9 month old Kestrel. Mostly cat and baby just stared at each other curiously, but Danger was surprisingly interested in what Kestrel was up to. Of course Kestrel didn't make any sudden lunges towards the cat and he also dropped a good amount of cheese on the floor, so those two things in combination may have made Danger much more tolerant than normal. We're a little worried about how the cats will adapt to Bagel, but I guess eventually they'll just get used to him. We've also started to get worried about the vast number of baby items that feature dangling toys - although maybe that just means that the cats and Bagel will be able to share toys for a couple of years - I guess that could be one way to cut down on the cost of raising a kid - does anyone know if cat nip is safe for babies?
Danger got to test-drive a baby the other day when our friends Kristin and Geoff brought over their 9 month old Kestrel. Mostly cat and baby just stared at each other curiously, but Danger was surprisingly interested in what Kestrel was up to. Of course Kestrel didn't make any sudden lunges towards the cat and he also dropped a good amount of cheese on the floor, so those two things in combination may have made Danger much more tolerant than normal. We're a little worried about how the cats will adapt to Bagel, but I guess eventually they'll just get used to him. We've also started to get worried about the vast number of baby items that feature dangling toys - although maybe that just means that the cats and Bagel will be able to share toys for a couple of years - I guess that could be one way to cut down on the cost of raising a kid - does anyone know if cat nip is safe for babies?
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Operation Bagel
12 weeks ago, two scientists collaborated on a top-secret experiment to create the next generation of super humans. On or about December 24, this new breed will be unveiled in:
If you look closely, you can see its nose and, in the first picture, an arm.
OPERATION BAGEL
If you look closely, you can see its nose and, in the first picture, an arm.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)