Shower #2, Now I Need to Clean

Last night we had the first baby shower where males are present. Our friends Joy and Ben opened up their home to several friends and we had dinner and drinks, and for a few minutes we opened presents while everyone watched.
We got a couple of interesting "swadding" wraps. Sort of like a baby sleep jail. Apparently you wrap the baby up real tight with these cloths, then they sleep, unable to move anything. Sounds great to me!
We also received quote a few great books. I'm going to read those today. Sure, they're baby books, but they looked interesting enough for me. One was about Wild Things, and one was about Curious George, and I love both of those topics in general.
I'm sure once baby Para is born everything will fall into it's place, but right now I have to admit that we have way more stuff than house and garage. So, today I'm going out to the garage to throw stuff away, clean, and organize so we can take more stuff that is in the house and put it out there.
Have a great Saturday.

SO.....

We've had exactly one baby shower. AND already we're in need of a bigger house, and another car.

Awesome.

I can't even write any more on this subject right now. I have to go put several of my favorite belongings on the front porch for the Vietnam Vets to pick up so there will be room for baby furniture.

Gifts!

I love getting gifts for the baby. Courtney posted a few good ones.

My favorite gifts so far are:

Baby Crib and Changing Table - I was going to find this one on Craigslist, so I feel very lucky to have such a nice bed and changing table for little Para. I was a bit astonished at what Cribs cost. One at Rolly's, a baby store near our house, cost $2000. I hope it guarantees full nights of sleep for everyone in the house. Ours did NOT cost $2000. We could have bought 4 cribs and 4 changing tables for $2000. But still, having new ones, and having them match, is really nice.

Elvis Onesie - This requires no explanation if you have a brain. Elvis is the King. Whether we have a boy or girl, I will have them in this thing all the time. Rocking it, of course. It's a hand me down from Angela at work, and I will have a hard time returning it when Para outgrows this little piece of Heaven.

Everybody's Growing

I've noticed that quite a lot of couples who are going to have a baby use "we" do describe the pregnancy.

"We're pregnant."
"We're going to have a drug-free birthing process."
"We're going to breast feed."

Well, I don't use "we." I'm well aware that Courtney is going to be the only one pushing, getting up to breast feed (if she chooses to do so) and if she wants drugs during birth, I'm all for it. I wouldn't try and pass a kidney stone without some drogas, so I certainly don't expect her to pass a child the size of a cantaloupe without Dr. Feelgood.

BUT, I have also noticed there is some "we" in pregnancy. We were sleeping a ton, and not we're not. We have to up twice a night to pee. Well, I didn't know I had to pee, but since she's getting up and I wake up, I find out I have to pee. We also are very hungry, even 30 minutes after a meal.

This hungry thing is all new. What, do I have a tapeworm? She's the one with the parasite inside of her. I have nothing aiding me in the consumption of this extra meal (or two) per day. And so for the longest time I did the part of a good husband and just ate along with her, happily telling her how cute she was as her belly began to grow. Then, last Monday I went to the Y to work out. That morning I had noticed I was having a *really* hard time getting into my pants. I was just shy of 200 lbs. 200 lbs! That's 50lbs over the weight at which I graduated college 10 years ago. Holy crap! It's 25 lbs over the weight I was, oh say... 6 months ago.

So, although it may not be the more popular decision at this point in "our" pregnancy, I'm cutting out the extra meals, and losing back down to my normal weight. I mean, 200lbs is just ridiculous, and I can't afford all new pants AND a bupivacaine injection on delivery day.

Courtney Has The BEST Students

We've been talking about daycare, Courtney staying home from school with the baby, and all that jazz. Someone had given me some info that daycare is like 800 million dollars per week. So, I decided that was plainly ridiculous and made a few calls around the Dash. Daycare is about $150 per week. Now that's doable. So, I emailed Courtney to let her know the good news that she could keep working if she so chose (because a teacher makes approximately $3 more dollars than that per week after taxes, buying pencils for everyone in class, and buying uniforms), and I got a response that basically said "I'm applying for a job bagging groceries."

Courtney came home looking like she had participated in the Tet Offensive.

I lost our digital camera, so I'm going to have to give you an approximate visual:



I asked "What happened at the work place today?" Were the kids just bad?

She replied "No, they were just normal."

To which I replied "Normal means bad?"

To which she replied "They just get up and walk in and out of the room, talk outloud all the time. Take each other's stuff and play keep away, wrestle in the middle of the floor, and then sometimes, it gets worse."

WHAT? In school? During class? I had some classes with the common folk in seventh grade, and none of this happened. Kids were crazy, sure. But they weren't this level of disrespectful. We would have been smacked around like a ping pong ball.

So we talked about it some more and the problem is in the rules. You can't beat these kids anymore! You can just send them home. Boy, if I was the principal around there we wouldn't have a discipline problem. There wouldn't be but about 6 kids left in class: the ones who want to learn.

My take away from all of this was two things:
1) The parent has to teach the discipline, so I guess I'll be teaching little Para to sit up and act right.
2) It's time to let the school administrators start beating kids in school again. If you don't spank the kids, this will happen:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5c9_1235188814

Cashier, Ditch Digger, Whatever

I have to admit I get the same responses as Courtney when I tell people we're not finding out the sex of our baby, the color of the baby's room, and the fact we wouldn't dress our child in exclusively pink or blue even if we did know the sex: utter disbelief.

But honestly, dressing a little girl in pink all the time is silly. It's a baby, not an Easter Egg. I give two examples for your review:

1) Pink Baby

2)Non-pink Baby

Baby 2 is way more fun. Everybody knows it.

We also get quite a lot of flack for not having the ultrasound tech tell us what the sex of the baby is going to be. Well, see above. If everyone knew we were having a girl, we'd have 368 pink outfits, 48 pink blankets, and a room full of pink toys, in an ORANGE room. That would be just super, now wouldn't it?

Lastly, I would like to give my wife a little advice when people seem flabbergasted by her decision to not eat everything in sight and gain 80 lbs, or to have an Orange room, or not find out the sex of the parasite. I'll give it in scene format:

Scenario One, You're Not finding Out?

Cashier, Ditchdigger, etc: "What are ye havin?"

Courtney: "A baby"

Cashier, Ditchdigger, etc: "I mean a boy or a girl."

Courtney: "Don't know, it's not out yet."

Cashier, Ditchdigger, etc: "Well, you can find out before hand!"

Courtney: "We decided to be suprised, maybe a sack of money will fall out instead! Wouldn't that be a great suprise?!"

Cashier, Ditchdigger, etc: "I couldn't imagine not finding out..."

Courtney:"Yes, but then again you work a cash register/shovel all day, I'm betting there are TONS of things you couldn't imagine."

Scenario Two, You're Too Skinny!

Cashier, Ditchdigger, etc: "How far along are you?"

Courtney: "I was almost checked out and headed home"

Cashier, Ditchdigger, etc: "I mean with the baby."

Courtney: "Oh, 24 weeks."

Cashier, Ditchdigger, etc: "What, you're WAY too skinny, you need to eat."

Courtney: "Well, I sent some pictures in and I've been hoping Victoria's Secret will call me next week for their catalogue. When they call I don't want to be all, you know... fat."

We Have A Layette! We Have a Layette!

Well, I think we have a layette. Honestly, I have no idea. I do know that last week we took a little trip after work over to BabiesR'Expensive and registered for a bunch of things. And I do mean a bunch. Two hours of my life are gone and I cannot have them back. I may actually be dumber after this experience. Hard to believe, I know.

We started off by going to the Baby Registry counter and getting all "set up." That's what the chubby lady behind the counter said she was gonna do: Get us all "set up." Getting set up takes no less than 30 minutes, 29.8 of which she's just steady talking. This is not my style. I do the talking, you do the listening Precious. She told us about everything in the store. Showed us magazines with pictures of things... that are in the store. She showed us how to work the bar code scanner. For five minutes. Seriously? Grocery store workers use these things, I think we've pretty much got it. Point, bleep, spend someone else's money.

Finally, I just got up and left mid-sentence. I couldn't take it anymore. I figures I'd go check out the cups with the baby names on them for inspiration. I'm now liking "Crystal" if it's a girl. I'm hoping everyone in school will call her "Charity" or "Tiffany" for short.

We finally wrestled the scanner/bleeper out of Precious' hands and went to work. We got: A little chair a baby can sit in, another chair that the baby lays in and stops crying, a chair a baby eats in, a chair a baby rides in in the car, a chair you push a baby around in, another one for pushing a baby around, and then finally we got a chair to bathe the baby in. Obviously having a baby requires a lot of chairs. I had no idea. Hopefully the baby will walk someday, but I'm doubting it will need to with all the chairs we're going to have.

We also registered for clothes. I think this is a layette. For a while I thought a layette was something french babies used to fight with. But now I understand I little better.... as long as a little better = zero. But either way, we bleeped lots of unisex clothes. Orange, blue, yellow, green, brown, BLACK AND GOLD. Later I found out we registered for mostly boy clothes. Come to find out girls clothes are all pink and frilly. Retarded. We won't be getting any of those, even if we do have a girl. If we wanted to have Nellie Oleson we'd just rent the DVDs.

When it was all said and done we closed the store down that night. My life is really changing. I'm going from closing Finnegan's Wake and Opera House down to closing down BabiesRExpensive. So be it.