Siblings

Introducing the first, recognizably human look at Dane's sibling:

For those of you who are unschooled in the deciphering of the amorphous, black and white blobs that are ultrasound photos, that first one is the profile of baby's face, nuzzling up against the placenta.
Legs:


Arm:

Healthily beating heart:

The doctor says everything looks great. In fact, he said that if everyone were as healthy as me and the baby, he would be out of a job. So kudos to us, contributing to physician unemployment everywhere. Just kidding. That was nice of him to say.
Maybe I appreciated it extra because the ultrasound technician was not very friendly. I felt like she was quizzing me on all the information I'd just filled out in the paperwork. And I got one wrong. But anyway.
The baby was moving around too much to get any really good profile or face shots. But that's okay. They even gave us a DVD of the entire ultrasound! Now that's entertainment! If anyone wants to come check out the 9 minute video of my innards, come on over!

We are really excited. It is nice to see that baby is developing normally and that all is well. I've been feeling the baby move more in the past few days, but I hadn't been feeling much before that, so I kept worrying that maybe something was wrong. But I feel more reassured now. I know there is always some risk, but I'm feeling pretty good about things at this point.

We decided not to find out the baby's sex. And I'd like to get on my soapbox for a moment about it, if you don't mind:
I totally understand why people find out. I think it's cool that they find out. If I were to accidentally find out what I was having, I wouldn't be upset. For me, personally, I really like surprises, and I think waiting until the end is fun. I realize not everyone shares this opinion, but that is mine. Again, I totally get that people like to find out.
What I do not get is how people will tell me to my face that they think I am an idiot (in so many words) for not finding out. I've had people make faces, question my sanity, or get upset with me. Also confusing to me are people who tell me something like, "How could you possibly plan for anything?" Um...do you really think I'm sitting around ignoring my growing belly and waiting to prepare anything until after I bring the baby home? I'm pretty sure that anything you plan for while knowing the baby's sex can be planned for without knowing it.

Colors for a quilt: check (light blue and red, like a red kite in the sky, not like patriotic. And I'm excited because once you decide on the colors, you find examples everywhere, and there are lots of cute things! Red wagons; birds; fun swirls, stripes, and dots. And then once the baby's born, if I really feel like genderizing things, I can use the same colors with flowers, cars/trucks, etc. Heehee!)


Decorations for room: check (see above motif, in wall vinyl!)
Clothes for the newborn: check (all the neutral stuff from Dane, plus any other cute things I might find)
Names: check (okay, I don't actually have that decided, but I'm just saying I will narrow it down to two instead of down to one.)

Those seem like the essentials to me. Plus diapers. I don't mean to sound like a jerk. Again, I don't question anyone's decision to find out. I just don't want people to question my decision not to. Well, you can question it if you want, just don't accuse me of being an idiot or disorganized or something.

Okay, I'm done now. I hope I didn't scare anyone off.

And the big day is officially confirmed to be August 15, 2011! Wahoo for being pregnant all summer! So baby and Dane will be a month shy of being 4 years apart. And I think it will be nice to have a few more weeks of warm weather for when the baby is tiny. Maybe it will be able to see some sun before the forever long months of winter.

Speaking of siblings, I never blogged about our awesome visit from Rika.

Since we missed each other at Christmas, Rika came out for a visit, where we hung out, ate yummy food, played with Dane, laughed a lot, and made baby shoes!

Rika got these baby shoe patterns, and we decided they were perfect baby shower gifts, so we had a lot of fun shopping and creating all the little shoes. My favorite are the sandals.
I gave Rika the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook for her birthday, and we made an extravagant Harry Potter Dinner, completed with Kreacher's French Onion Soup, Bangers & Mash, Yorkshire Puddings, Glazed Carrots made with Golden Syrup, Butterbeer, and Treacle Tart.


Oh, and the treacle tart.


One day we also went on a picnic in Murray Park. After a little incident involving crushing a styrofoam cup with a bare hand and dropping the food in the parking lot, all went pretty smoothly.
Rika taught Dane how to go down the slide head first:

Which he thoroughly enjoyed


Then they had these weird, spinning egg cup things that would start spinning out of control and render the rider unable to stop. Scroll to the end for some video.


They also had this spinning ring thing that was quite fun. This picture captures the moment just before Dane and I fall off.




Rika had the most exciting turn on the egg cups. I hope you enjoy it.

And here are the results:


Those are all the pictures I had. It was a great visit and just made us miss Rika all the more. Thanks for coming out; come back again soon!

Rear Ends and Green Things

So, I was rear-ended a couple of weeks ago.

I'd just exited the freeway and was stopped at the light, checking traffic to turn right when I felt a big jolt. I looked behind me and saw a lady in a Lexus SUV saying "Oh no!"
So we exchanged insurance information, and I went on my merry way.

Only to realize I am an idiot.

You know, for months I've been thinking to myself as I'd drive, "I don't really know what to do if I'm ever involved in an accident. Exchange insurance, something, something. I should probably look that up." But I never did. And there I was, ignorant and the victim of a minor collision. Apparently, you ALWAYS want to call the police and have them file a report so there is an official document of what happened. Otherwise, the people at fault can just claim it wasn't their fault, and you're kind of stuck because it's just your word against theirs. It occurred to me to call the police, but I thought, "No one's hurt; she's acknowledging it's her fault; no need to waste anyone's time," but that is idiot thinking. Probably anyone reading this already knows these things. But I didn't.

Luckily, it still all worked out well. She acknowledged fault and contacted her insurance, got us a rental car, and they got our car all fixed up. Dane was really excited about our new, silver car.

It's not a particularly exciting story. The impact wasn't even that hard; it was about like braking harder than usual. I'd kind of been feeling bad about myself for being dumb after it happened because at that point we didn't know if she was going to really take responsibility or not. But then we drove past a serious accident with injuries and stuff and realized that we were really fortunate, especially since I'm pregnant and all.

Speaking of which, we have our ultrasound tomorrow! We're probably not finding out what the baby's sex is, but I am really excited to see its little features and make sure everything is developing healthily. I told Dane, "We're going to see pictures of the baby tomorrow; isn't that exciting!"
He said, "Uh huh. But, not izzattly because I don't want to hear the baby because it's scary."
I'd taken him to my last prenatal appointment, and we listened to the heartbeat. It didn't occur to me until Dane told me he was scared that the loud, windy-sounding thump thump of a baby's heartbeat in utero could sound frightening to a child. Especially when he was probably expecting the baby to say hi or at least cry or something.
Anyway, we'll update about that soon.

P.S. The pregnancy is why this post is titled "rear end" in plural, because my rear end is ever expanding. More details soon.

St. Patrick's Day
A leprechaun visited our house on St. Patrick's Day, leaving his footprints everywhere and one-syllable clues toward some sort of treasure. We helped Dane sound out the clues and went on the exciting treasure hunt:






Where could the next clue be?

Hmm....

(Joel felt quite proud that this picture shows that Dane bears some physical resemblance to him.)
There's the rainbow (and a clue that said "DIG")

A pot of gold!

What a nice leprechaun. And a cute boy.

Finally, my sister-in-law Laurie Jayne commissioned me to make a blessing outfit of lederhosen for her baby boy. Here are the results:


I was happy with how they turned out. And you can even see the baby boy himself modeling his outfit on her blog.

And stay tuned for ultrasound photos!

New Developments

Here's a new, funny video from my old, funny husband: