Man, I don’t know what’s going on in there but it must be pretty exciting. Last night the little guy started kicking so hard I could see it through my shirt! Talk about freaky!
He pounded away at the inside of my belly and I started giggling as I tried to visualize what was going on in there. Just for fun, I tried singing a little song
Your sweet and shining eyes
are like the stars over Laredo
like meat and potatoes
to me
in my sweet dreams we are
in a bar and it’s my birthday
and we’re having salty margaritas
with Fernando

Okay, maybe not a typical lullaby, but it seemed to do the trick. He settled down immediately, but as soon as I stopped singing, he started up again. Bam! Pow! Bop!

He kept it up for the hour before I fell asleep, and every time I woke up through the night it seemed like he was still at it. Today he’s calm as long as I’m moving around but if I sit down for a few minutes, there we go again. Maybe it’s just boring in there, so he’s having some kind of one-man party.

1. Between Islamic Jihadists, the media’s latest “tonight: we’ll take you into the mind of a serial killer” kick, and realizing that there are people out there who run sites like this, I have to say it’s a scary time to be bringing someone into the world.

2. Last night I had a dream that we had the baby and lots of people were here and we were all in the kitchen (which right away tells you it was a dream because our kitchen is only like 2′x2′). It was time to feed the baby, and Kevin wanted to try it. So I made a bottle and gave it to him — only I turned around and saw Kevin trying to feed the baby a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! The ensuing argument went something like:
ME: What are you doing?
KEVIN: I’m feeding the baby.
ME: He can’t have a peanut butter sandwich!
KEVIN: Aw, come on. It’s good for you. There’s not too much jelly.
ME: But he can’t digest it. He’s too little. (Now starting to doubt self. Maybe he can…)
KEVIN: Well, give me the bottle so he can wash it down.
ME: Mouse, NO! Bad dog!
Mouse had climbed up on a chair at the table to jealousy steal the sandwich.

3. My mom is so cool! She sent the baby a postcard!
http://www.petermax.com/postcard/view.php?view=1&id=1035588100.6454

4. I’m weak! I want cable TV! Even though all we had was the $13 a month package, for months now we’ve been so proud of ourselves for canceling cable the day I became self employed.
“We’re so frugal!” we told ourselves “We’re so great!”
But, see, the thing is, they didn’t actually turn it off. We tried to tell them, but they didn’t care. We stopped getting bills but kept getting good reception and a couple of extra channels.

Well, a few days ago they finally shut it off. At first I shrugged. I’m above needing such material things. I’m frugal! But 24 hours later, when it was time for some show to come on, I crumbled. Now I not only want to go back to the $13/month “good reception” package, but am pathetically tempted to sign up for the $30/month satellite thing. I want TLC! I want the discovery channel! I want HGTV! (I still say they should offer a “Nerd Package” which includes Sci-fi, TLC, Discovery, Animal Planet, etc.)

So much for being frugal.

5. Snidely Frugal would be a great name for a villain in a children’s book.

***YOUR HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS***
1. To see a picture of my current belly, you can go to my user profile and click on pictures. That reminds me, I think I also had a dream that the doctor yelled at me because I wasn’t gaining weight fast enough… I wonder what that means. I better go to Krispy Kreme just to be safe.

2. If you haven’t made name suggestions yet, please do!

3. Unrelated to babies: take this quiz… it’s the world’s smallest political quiz. Let me know your results!
http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html

4. I’m officially growing my hair out. The goal is pigtails this summer, which with the help of prenatal vitamins might actually be possible. Everyone think growingly thoughts for me!

Okay, enough procrastinating. Back to work.

It’s a big responsibility. When we got Mouse his name was Rocky. He begged us to change it, and we took the task of figuring out his real name very seriously. There were names I liked that didn’t suit him at all, and lots of clever names that commented on his appearance but didn’t really give the full effect of his uh, unique personality. We spent days throwing different names at him. I don’t know who came up with Mouse, but once it was out there we realized that, sadly, it was his name.

And now with the little parasito we’re trying to guess what his name is before we’ve even met him. It’s weird. How are you supposed to do that?

So we’re officially requesting help!
Please tell me your all-time favorite boys’ names!
If we pick a name that you suggest you will win … a baby boy! OK, maybe not, but the prize will be pretty darn cool.

General guidelines and problems so far
I like unusual, vaguely foreign-sounding names, and Kevin likes more traditional names, but nothing too popular. We both like the idea of naming him after old-timey scientists, but finding one that’s a nice-sounding name that people can pronounce and spell is quite a challenge. Copernicus and Archemedes are interesting names, but let’s face it, the poor kid’s going to be weird enough as it is.

My mom is all superstitious about naming babies after fictional characters who meet some unfortunate end, so Old Yeller and Algernon are out. And Kevin’s mom randomly decides that certain names sound “like a black person’s name”. This from a woman who wanted to name her son D’wayne.

Then there’s the whole issue of our last name being damn near a word, so we have to be careful about that. Somewhere in Texas, there really is a Barney Ard. I’m not kidding.

Rules and legal stuff
Contest is void where prohibited. Probably Utah.
Submit as many names as you like, although uploading “The big book of baby names” will be considered cheating.
No fair suggesting names that you know we’re already considering.
Try and refrain from submitting hilarious plays on our last name — I promise you we’ve heard them all.

Thanks, everyone!

Last night I was awake at 4am, listening to the rain and composing a journal entry in my head, but I was somewhere between too tired to open my laptop to post anything and too awake to forget it and go to sleep.

Lately I’m not sleeping well… too many things on my mind, too many creaks and crackles in the house without the whir of the fan (our ac/heater is broken), and too many babies in my stomach to really get comfortable. I roll over on my back, and searing heartburn creeps up my throat. I roll on my right side and feel slightly queasy and a little guilty because you’re supposed to sleep on your left side to give the baby the best blood circulation or something. So I roll on my left side and fall asleep until something wakes me up… a noise, a bad dream, an urgent need to pee. When I wake up I realize that my shoulder and neck hurt from sleeping flat on that side. Usually by around 6am I’m all settled into an elaborate system of pillows that allows me to sleep a little propped up, somewhere between my left side and my stomach.
Luckily Kevin is a sound sleeper who is willing to accept whatever pillows this process leaves him.

This was supposed to be a post about baby names. Shows what I know. Maybe I can get that in before dinner, but no promises.

The heater is broken so I had to stay home all day while I waited for the guy to come out and fix it. I wasn’t in the mood to work much and with Monday deadlines it was easy to justify taking a day to do things besides work, like so: I have three whole days to get all of my work done and there are definitely no flaws in my plan to put things off until later in the weekend.

So I spent all day cleaning the bejeezus out of everything. It was fun, believe it or not. I think Pico de Gallo liked it too because he was squirming around a lot today. I don’t ever exercise, so he takes what he can get from me in that respect.

Kevin came home from work around six and we cooked a delicious dinner. I ate an embarrassing amount of food. Hey, Pico and I burned some serious calories running around cleaning all day!

The heater guy finally showed up and said it’ll be Monday before he can get the part to fix our heater. Brrrrrrr. It’s only in the 60s, though, so not too bad. I’m carrying my own personal heat generator right now so I’m actually fine but Kevin is at this very moment taking a hot bath to try and warm up.

A good day. I’m a good, solid kind of tired. I bet I’ll sleep very soundly tonight in our chilly (but clean) house.