The stork came early… And tried to eat me

So with all this baby talk going on lately imagine my interest last Friday as a large wood stork came to the front door of my office and proceeded to attack it. I don't mean "walk into it out of confusion". I mean repeatedly try to injure the front glass door by biting and trying to impale. One of my coworkers chased it off, but it came back for round two. Oddly enough, Jonny was able to get rid of it by trying to feed it a fried plaintain from the cuban place down the street. Apparently this bird has a thing against fried fruit.

Given the rather violent nature of these birds I'm wondering how they ever got the reputation for delivering babies? They're mean and ugly and decidedly non-parental in nature. Needless to say I'm glad Danielle is taking this job into her own hands, as I don't trust this beast anywhere near my child. Danielle and I looked it up today and apparently these things are pretty closely related to vultures (which eat the dead). Figures.

First Belly Photo

A few nights ago I noticed that my belly was really starting to grow. So Cliff grabbed the camera and took our first belly shot at 8 weeks, 4 days. To other people it may not look like a big deal, but it was really exciting for me to actually be able to see for the first time a change in my shape. I already have a pair of pants that don't fit anymore, although that could be due to the fact that I've been loving food a whole lot more, ha ha.

We have an appointment scheduled for next week at which time we'll be able to hear the baby's heart beat and get a due date. It seems like time has been crawling these past few weeks as we've been anticipating this appointment. Now, it's only 10 days away!

I have been feeling great too. No morning sickness or any weird cravings, I've just been very tired. Oh, and my memory has been horrible. Like a couple of weeks ago when I went to Publix with the intention of buying Sprite. I sat in the grocery aisle looking at the difference in prices between Sprite and Publix Lemon-Lime soda. For some reason, it took me a very long time to work the prices out in my head and when I finally did, I walked away without even picking up the sprite I was there to get in the first place. Then there was the wine incident. I bought alcohol removed wine since I can't have the real stuff and poured myself a glass before sitting down to watch a movie with Cliff. As I was sipping on it I suddenly freaked out, almost spilling it on myself as I thought, "Oh my goodness!! What am I doing?!?! I can't have wine!!!"... completely forgetting about the fact that I had specifically bought the alcohol removed wine for that purpose. Since then there have been several other instances, but of course, I can't remember them.

Tonight Cliff bought me a special gift that I am VERY excited about. He told me a while ago that there was something he really wanted to buy for me and then a few days ago mentioned he had purchased it. It came in today and I just about started crying when he had me open it. It was a flip video camera. Always thinking ahead, Cliff thought it would be a good idea for me to have the little video camera to keep with me at all times so that we can catch all the important things on video. He mentioned video taping the baby's heartbeat at my next appointment and of course footage of the little one once they're born. And all the stuff Cliff might like to see (although he doesn't necessarily want to be present for) like shopping for baby stuff with our moms. I love my husband and his great big heart! =)

Looking Towards Life With Kids - Camping?

So in thinking about becoming a parent I rememberd that I once told Jonny I'd stumbled on ParentHacks.com which had parenting tips. At the time this wasn't much interest to me but I figured I may as well look it up again and see what it was all about. One of the first things I saw was a link to tips on camping with kids. "Cool", says I, "lets check this out".

Since it'll be a while till we have "kids" and we've got the whole "baby" stage to go through first, I picked up on one set of tips for "10 Tips for tent camping with a baby/toddler". Although it's nothing overly revolutionary (granted, I'd never think of some of them), it's reassuring to think that Danielle and I will still be doing a lot the things we love if we make the time to do them. We'll just get to have someone else along with us and carry lots... lots... of additional junk with us. OK so maybe the appalachian trail will need to wait a few years, but we may as well get him/her used to bugs as early as possible.

Only a week and a half?

Sitting down to write a first post I just asked Danielle when "the doctor visit" was.  I was thinking it was two and a half, maybe three weeks ago.  We've had so many conversations... looked at furniture... gotten lab results... seen doctors... told parents... heck, we even bought our first box of diapers (Pampers.  A nice bog box of 100).

Turns out it was only nine short days ago that Danielle went to get her regular thyroid blood work done and a day later that we got a "congratulations" phone call from the doc letting us know that we had our very own little micro-human on the way.  Only nine days?  When she looked at her calendar we were both kind of shocked.  It feels like with this much going on it just had to be longer than that.

Danielle's sister gave us this little stuffed bunny / rattle thing that before I'd never have let into my house and now I somehow kind of think is cute.  My mother in law gave us a little Gap sweatshirt.  I'm sure my mother is all set for gift giving as well.  Danielle has been looking at furniture and clothing, reading "mommy" type books, etc...  What about me?  I don't know anything about this "dad" stuff yet, so I just do what I know how to do... set up a small collection of websites to keep the family informed.  Sure, it may be slightly geeky, but it's love just the same.  I can't wait to figure out a name so I can try to grab the .com.