Wow. Last week there was the first shut-out of a middle name suggestion. Allen was just really, really unpopular for whatever reason (I really didn't like it either... it happens to have unfortunate connotations here at my new office). Anyway, go ahead and vote for your favorite(s) this week. Only three more weeks of new names and then the bracket narrows to the next round, which will go faster since you've already seen all the names at least once.
This weekend we took what will probably be our last airplane trip for a couple of months to visit my parents and attend the beautiful wedding of family friend Rebecca Willens to Adam Walker (who seems like a really nice guy considering we've met him, like, once and he still invited us to his wedding). The Monster kicked a bit on the plane (mostly on take-off and landing), but any abnormalities could easily have been a function of Stef's lingering cold rather than internal pressure fluctuations or the Monster's sudden realization that he was miles above the ground. We also had the opportunity to raid my parents' stash of kids' books while we were in town, so soon the Monster's library will triple or quadruple in size.
The Tummy Monster is growing rapidly now (mostly due to Snickers bars and Bryer's chocolate ice cream). This week he weighs about half a pound more than he did last week (about 2.5 pounds total) and is a tad over 15 inches long from head to heel. The Monster's muscles and lungs are continuing to mature, and his head is getting bigger to accommodate his growing brain (HIS GROWING BRAAAAAAIIIINNNN!!!!!) — which is busy developing billions of neurons (which he will eventually destroy in his teenage rebellion years). Every day, about 200 milligrams of calcium is deposited in the Monster's skeleton, which is now hardening. Of course, Stef takes Calcium supplements, so I'm hoping the Monster's skeleton will be super-hard, like a super hero. With this rapid growth, it's no surprise that his nutritional needs are reaching their peak during this trimester, which explains why Stef is ravenous pretty much all the time, but that still isn't easy to get used to.
Text adapted from Baby Center.
One of these days I'll get Stef to actually post to this blog, but in the meantime, I thought I'd let everyone know the latest slew of Doctors' appointments have confirmed that that the Monster is doing fine, and so is Stef (who, as you can tell by the picture on the side, has gotten much bigger in the past few weeks), and there aren't going to be any RH antibodies or something which is good news now and if we have another kid later.
Also, Stef said she was "shot in the butt with Rogaine" during her last visit, but that doesn't make sense to me at all. Now that we're in the third trimester she's going to be going to the Doctor biweekly, so expect more health updates as the Monster's eviction date comes closer.
As some of you may already know, we have a baby registry (here), and are slowly putting together a nursery for Xander (before and after pictures will come post-shower). And we think we're doing a pretty good job, even on days when I am pretty sure I broke the electricity. Our theme is BOOKS, because Stef and I love to read, and odds are good the Monster will, too. And, sure, we've got the bedding and all the various prefab decorations that go with the bedding, but we also wanted to add some personal touches to the nursery.
To that end, we went to the library and checked out some children's books to scan, and I spent some of last week and weekend scanning and cleaning up the images to print out and frame up in the nursery, even going so far as to tweak some of the colors in the images to fit the colors of our nursery. I then created a website so we could kinda' sorta' see what those images would look like on our nicely painted new walls before printing them out. Here's that site, if you're curious to see those images for yourself. Unfortunately, the internet doesn't do "dark brown" very well, so you'll have to use your imagination with the frames. Additionally, there may be some more tweaking of images if they need it. But overall, this was, we think, a nice way to incorporate our love of books with the prefab design of the bedding set we selected.
It's Tuesday, so that means another middle name poll. Last week "Evan" got a record number of responses. I'm not sure if that's because you liked it, or because you could suddenly choose multiple middle names each poll. The link below will show you the "bracket" we've got going on, in case you're curious about what's next or the results from previous polls.
CONGRATULATIONS to Jim and Eileen on the birth of their second baby girl, Delamie Jane! Hope she's as adorable as Brenna!
By this week, the Tummy Monster weighs a little over 2 pounds (or, as Stef says "more than two giant bags of M&Ms") and measures almost 15 inches from the top of his head to his heels. The Monster can open and close his eyes, which now sport lashes. This movement is more of a reflexive blink than a deliberate opening and closing, but it won't be long before he's batting those beauties at us.
Meanwhile, Stef went from very little eating in the first trimester, to eating normally in the second, to eating pretty much every hour or two during the third trimester. There have even been days when she's woken up in the middle of the night and eaten, and then gone back to sleep. It's crazy. Whoever invented Ensure, though, is a life-saver. The Monster is going to be huge!
Text adapted from Baby Center.
As you may have noticed already, there's a new poll for middle names today, and if you participate you'll also notice that you can now vote for multiple names at the same time. Good luck with that.
