Let us not forget about the furry baby around here. Don’t worry. He still gets lots of lovin’ and spoilin’. It’s too hot out here for him though. He was done playing after about two minutes.
I absolutely adore this photo of Turk even though technically speaking it’s not the best photo in the world, especially since he’s not really in focus. He just looks so happy with a huge smile on his face galloping straight toward me. I also like his glowing backlit fur. Such a sweet dog.
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And she’d be so happy to know that her girly bits are being pointed out to everyone, I’m sure! She was a modest little stinker. It took 15-20 minutes before she’d spread ‘em legs for us to find out what she was, and even then the umbilical cord was getting in the way for a bit. I think Justin was on the verge of laughing because he knew how tortured I’d be if we couldn’t tell what she was. Luckily the doctor was just as determined as I was!
Other than that, all’s well. She’s healthy and apparently very active. The doctor had a time of it trying to get measurements what with her moving around so much.
I’m pretty sure this announcement is old news for most people at this point what with all the calling, texting, twittering, and facebooking I’ve done already, but I had to post an announcement here anyway of course!
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In general, I think Justin and I both tend to mask our excitement about life changes from other people because we figure most other people have gone through these changes before and they’re only exciting to us. I know we were both pretty laid back about wedding plans to the public eye but when it was just us two we could hardly contain our excitement.
In some ways it’s been the same with the baby news. I’ve been pretty unable to mask my excitement this time around, I think, but I still try to downplay it in public to a certain extent because I realize that Justin and I are way more excited about it than anyone else could possibly be, plus most other people have already had their own kids and pregnancies to be excited about, so it’s not like I’m the first person ever to go through this. It’s no original accomplishment.
But I think Justin and I have both been surprised by how excited others have been about our news (certainly because it’s our first) and it’s been fun for both of us when other people show enthusiasm about it because then we realize it’s okay for us to publicly be excited as well, whether it’s one of his co-workers enthusiastically congratulating him in the hall or one of our friends being so excited that she couldn’t even wait to find out the sex before going out and splurging on these generous gifts for us.
I can’t believe how thoughtful and generous some people can be. It really surprises me sometimes and this would definitely be one of those times. So far all I have for the baby is a stuffed animal and lullaby album from my mom and a onesie from my sister that she brought back from Scotland (just realized I never posted a picture of that, oops, I meant to). So this gift pretty much increases my baby supply by thirteen times!
Here’s all our adorable loot from a bird’s eye view.
If onesies don’t make you want to scream out in girlish cute overload fashion, congratulations, you probably aren’t growing a baby inside your uterus. (This should be especially reassuring for the male portion of the audience.)
Cute burp cloths.
She even took into account the fact that people always get gifts for when the baby’s newborn but don’t take into account that the kid’s going to growing exponentially in those first few months. So she got a little outfit and matching onesie for when he/she is a little older.
Newborn pacifiers, 6+ months pacifiers, silicone-tipped spoons, and a pacifier clip. I am still in shock that someone would do this for me. It’s too nice!
P.S. 48 hours until we find out the sex. Not that I’ve been counting down for weeks or anything.
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Finally, I have gotten back in the habit of starting and finishing books… and in under six months no less. I am liking this. Not only do I feel a little bit smarter and truer to my “I like to read” claim, but I just have a sense of accomplishment when I finish 500 pages of legitimate literature.
I finished two books yesterday, one of which I also started yesterday morning but I hardly consider a book — The Last Lecture — even though it’s for the church book club I pretty much turned down leading yesterday afternoon. I ended up turning it down because it was directly through the church and if I were going to do a book club, I just couldn’t feel comfortable associating it with the church. I’d want to do something totally secular, even if its only members were also members of the church. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone, but that’s how I feel. I just don’t want to worry so much about offending people and having them associate that with the church or getting ‘talked to’ by leaders of the church about appropriateness. I know there are a lot of religious zealots that get offended by even middle school literature, so I just would be really worried about that.
Well, last night (after saying thanks but no thanks to leading it) I went to the club and actually feel a little bad about turning it down now just because I think they were looking for someone more to organize the actual meeting times and run the actual events as opposed to picking books every time, but that’s not how they were explaining it to me. Oh well. No one could agree on a book last night, and as I was skimming a list of classics, I said casually, “I’ve never read anything by Dickens but I’d really like to” and a lot of people seemed excited about that idea, so next time we’re reading Great Expectations and I’m in charge of leading the discussion anyway. Maybe I was worrying too much, but I guess it doesn’t matter now, and I still do think it would be more fun to have a club where I wouldn’t have to be so concerned about content.
Anyway, I read The Last Lecture, which was by that guy who was dying of pancreatic cancer and gave his last lecture. It was a big viral video, so I’m assuming most people know what I’m talking about. I never had watched the video but the book is at many times word-for-word from the lecture — he repeats everything he said in the video and then adds extended anecdotes, backstory, and advice.
I didn’t feel like I got much out of the book, to tell you the truth. It was interesting in that these were his chosen last words, but they didn’t do much for me as they were all pretty cliché (which he was well aware of — he even had a section about liking clichés). I think my favorite piece of advice he repeated in his book that he’d heard from someone else was to the girls: basically, if a man is interested in you romantically you can pretty much ignore every single thing he says and just pay attention to what he does. This is definitely something I learned in my dating years but didn’t put into so many words and something I’d stress to my daughters.
The other book I finished yesterday was Middlesex, which I thought was amazingly well-written. It was a really interesting story spanning three generations, but mostly I was impressed with the narrative style. Much in the same way I felt when I read John Irving, I found myself thinking as I was reading this book, How do people write like this?? It really was very good and I’m not surprised it won the Pulitzer Prize. As far as content goes though… I’d be pretty careful who I recommend this to because it is very sexually explicit — incest, hermaphroditism, sexual experimentation, etc. So there’s your heads-up.
Now I’m starting Catch-22 over again. At one point about a year ago I had gotten about 100 pages into it and then we moved here and I just didn’t get around to picking it up before I’d forgotten everything, so I started that again last night and even though I’m only about 40 pages into it, I can see why it’s such a classic. It’s so hilarious and quirky it makes me laugh out loud, and I really can only name one other book that made me do that, and I read that book back in 5th grade and still remains one of my favorite books.
Anyone have anything good they’ve read recently or anything they’ve been meaning to pick up?
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