The Littlest Penguin

countdown

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 | baby, family | 2 Comments

Well, we’re just under the three week mark and I have to say things have started to get darned uncomfy. I mean, they’ve been uncomfortable for a while, but wow. I’m pretty sure I can make out where his head, shoulders, and rump are – and he’s heavy. Rolling over in bed is a little like feeling boccie balls move around in your innards, and William made the mistake of laughing at my attempt to get off the couch the other day.

That said, everything seems to be going smoothly. I still need to find and buy the little guy a dresser / changing table and his name is still up in the air, but other than that we’re mostly ready for him. I think. I have a prenatal visit with the pediatrician this coming week, and a tour of the hospital’s birthing center. Lisa and Paul gifted us (well, the baby really) with the ViaCord service and we should be getting everything we need from there soon.

In non-baby news I called Granma today. She recently bought a laptop so she can email, but being well into her 80s and having never touched a computer before, her learning curve is pretty steep. She’s just now figured out how to log in to Gmail. But today was also the 7th anniversary of Grandpa’s death and we all like to call and make sure she’s doing alright. Mom and Dad took her out to dinner tonight as well. Its our little way of commemorating him, I guess. Today would also have been his birthday. He’s interred at Arlington, so hopefully next year I can make the trip to his mausoleum and leave flowers. At the risk of getting mushy, he really was the best Grandpa I could have hoped for, and I’m sometimes sad that William and my son will never get the pleasure of knowing or being spoiled by him like I was. I think he would really have liked William.

Month of roadtrips

Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | Playgrounders, baby, family, travel | 2 Comments

You know, for someone who is no longer working a 40 hour job plus choir, committees, and gaming, I’ve been really lax on this goshdarned thing. Which is kind of sad, because late June and July were pretty interesting.

The last weekend of June was the Third Annual “Southeast Trogland” Giant in the Playground Meetup. The group was smaller than last year, but the number seemed to work better. Less chaos, less drama, more fun. Of course, I wasn’t technically a “local” anymore; I carpooled with Zeb and Alarra. (It was the last week of school at the JDC and William had to work.) All in all a great time, and I got to meet a few new GiTP forumites. Which is all the more interesting considering I haven’t really done more than peek at the forums in a year. But Playgrounders are almost always fun, no matter how you meet them. Zeb, Alarra, and Ceika are relatively close to me here in VA, but I haven’t gotten together with them yet. Zeb and Alarra are brand new parents, and I’ve only got 4 more weeks to go, so maybe once baby chaos settles down we can hang out. There’s even a mini-meetup in the works for October.

For July 4 we drove over to Smith Mountain Lake, VA, to spend about a week at William’s grandparents’ house. Apparently the area has become a popular place to build vacation houses since Nana and Granddad built their retirement home on the lake years ago, but they still manage to have a nice peaceful house under the trees. It was my first time meeting them, so I was nervous, but they’re really delightful. They met during the Second World War – he was in the US military and she the British. They wrote letters back and forth for a long while and eventually she came over and they married. And now they’re possibly the cutest little old couple I’ve ever met. Sadly we couldn’t see the fireworks from their house, but we did watch the Washington, DC, display on TV. (Not quite the same, I know, but it had to do.)

The following weekend we drove up to William’s mom’s for a baby shower. Nana and Granddad were there, and so were Lisa and her family. We spent one morning at Hershey’s Chocolate World. The whole place is really nothing more than a tourist trap designed to give you a sugar high and make you want to buy chocolate, but with the kids it was fun and I got to buy some t-shirts for my parents. Jan had tons of really wonderful food and we went to a nice, casual restaurant for the shower. The guys stayed through lunch and some of the silly shower games. Colin even won the game where you guess how round I am. After that I was on my own in a room full of barely-familiar women, but it was fun.

The weekend of July 18th we flew down to Florida for another baby shower hosted by Aunt Rue. It was good to see all the aunts and cousins down there again, even if it was kind of brief. Rue gave a great shower. Amy, Gibson and Alyce flew down, and we got to spend some time with William’s friend Mike and my old friends the Eastlicks.  William also got to meet my grandma for the first time, as well as my Uncle Rick and cousin Cookie. A few of my aunts were disappointed that he didn’t go to the shower, but we’re hoping to go down again at Christmas, so they’ll get to meet then. We don’t want to overwhelm the poor guy; my family is much larger than his.

And that’s pretty much all the travel I’m allowed until the little dude is here. The Florida trip kind of pushed my “no-fly” cutoff, but since my TN doctors never told me what that cutoff was and I had to make plans, oh well. (I had trouble with that office. Don’t get me started.) Four more weeks and hopefully I will no longer have indigestion that keeps me up and blogging until 1am.