Category Archives: Baby

Happy Mother’s Day!

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Happy Mother’s Day to the two moms and one soon to be mom in my life: Ellie, Dianne, and Becky!

This morning I was paged for work and had to run in to the office at 6 a.m., but on the way back, I picked up some of Becky’s favorite stuff from [Dunkin Donuts](http://www.dunkindonuts.com/) and brought it home as a first Mother’s Day gift for her. 🙂

Becky’s parents and brother came over to our apartment for a Mother’s Day lunch. We hung out, talked about a lot of baby stuff, and had some delicious food, including steak, corn on the cob, garlic fries from [Trader Joe’s](http://www.traderjoes.com/), and brownies. Yum! Ken bravely did the grilling outside in the rain, as seen below:

ppp|Grilling!|ppp

Here’s the mom-to-be and her mom!

ppp|Moms!|ppp

There are also a few more photos from [the day](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/events/2006/mothers_day/).

Although I couldn’t spend Mother’s Day with my own mom, I did give her a call, and I also passed the phone around so that she could chat with the other moms in the room. 🙂 All in all it was a very good day!

Stuff in, Stuff out

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Over the past several months, we’ve done a lot of purging of various unneeded items from our apartment. At the same time, we’ve acquired a pretty good amount of stuff, and I think we’ve probably maintained equilibrium. Here’s a record of things that we have gotten rid of either by selling on [Craigslist](http://boston.craigslist.org/) or giving away on [Freecycle](http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreecycleNorthShore/), along with things we have acquired.

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A Splurge

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Have you ever been shopping with me? If so you’ll know first hand that I am not an impulse shopper. I will pick up a shirt and carry it with me for 25 minutes only to put it back as I leave the store. Buying a pack of gum often requires a pro/con list. I just hate to part with my hard earned/hard saved money.

So it should be no surprise to anyone that it took me three visits to Stride Rite to convince me to purchase these:

ppp|Turtle Shoes

Turtle Shoes

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I fell in love with them as soon as I saw them. So turtley! So cute! So different from any other baby shoes I’d ever seen! But I put off buying them. Of course I did.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped back in and looked at them again. I wasn’t intending to buy them, so when I flipped them over and saw that they were on sale I barely noticed. But later that weekend I was kicking myself for not getting them. Mall stores are notorious for putting things on sale and then discontinuing them, never to been seen again. I was afraid that these cute shoes would disappear!

Today I bit the bullet and went and bought them. I can’t get the thought of BabyWood’s little turtle feet off my mind! There are a couple other pics here; scroll down.

SAHM

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Tomorrow is Becky’s last official day of work at the [Otis House](http://www.historicnewengland.org/visit/homes/otis.htm), which also makes it her last day of work outside of the home, at least for the forseeable future. Our plan is for Becky to stay home and be the mom she wants to be, and for me to continue working at [CBD](http://www.christianbook.com/) and be the best dad I can be. We’re both very excited about this, because it’s something we’ve been planning for a while, and it’s what Becky has wanted to do for the longest time. We both know there will be challenges, but I know that we will overcome them, with the help of God, each other, our family and friends. Thanks to everyone out there who has been in touch with us in the past few months. We are looking forward to sharing our joy with you!

Sunny Inside Saturday

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It’s a sunny, warm Saturday, so we’re spending it outside, right? Not today.

Today, we spent some time organizing and decluttering in the apartment. Since our ‘office’ has been converted to a nursery, there is a lot of stuff that has made its way out into our living room, and some other stuff that still needs to be taken out of the nursery. There is also a lot of extra junk in our apartment in general, and we’ve been in the process of getting rid of it for the past few months. Today we got rid of some extra books by donating them to the library. I cleaned out the drawers in my computer desk. I also fixed the drawer underneath our crib so that it slides in and out nicely, and Becky put away some more baby gear in said drawer.

One glaring issue with the furniture that we moved into our living room was that the “Manager’s Chair” I used for my computer desk was much too bulky for the tight walkway the computer desk is now located in. So today we went to [IKEA](http://www.ikea.com/) and bought a [STEFANO](http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?topcategoryId=15600&catalogId=10103&storeId=12&productId=48222&langId=-1&parentCats=15600*15877*15879) swivel chair. It’s much less cushy than the big leather manager’s chair, but it is still quite comfortable, and most importantly it can easily slide under the desk to allow easy access past the desk:

ppp|With the big chair

With the big chair

|ppp

ppp|With the little chair

With the little chair

|ppp

Much nicer, eh? It was even worse when I was actually sitting in the big chair… Becky could barely get past! By the way, here’s what my computer desk layout looks like now:

ppp|Computer Desk Layout|ppp

It’s a bit crowded, but still very usable, and, most importantly, ergonomically correct.

Nesting

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Hi folks! Welcome to my second day as a “stay at home mom” 🙂

This past weekend we made some huge strides getting ready for BabyWood. My parents came over and we did a ton of cleaning and organizing and moving of furniture. Our office/sewing room has sucessfully been transformed into a nursery/guest room; and our living room is now much more of a multi-purpose room than it ever has been before!

ppp|Proud Papa to Be

Peter and the Crib

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That is not to say, however, that we’re done. There is still a TON of stuff that has yet to find a permanent home. And my energy level fluctuates…so getting stuff done comes in waves.

More pics from the day can be found here.

On the Today Show today they had a segment on gDiapers. Peter and I have been considering these since we heard about them several months ago. It is interesting to see that they have made the mainstream media! The basic premise is that instead of washing soiled cloth diapers or tossing disposables you remove a flushable liner and flush it away. That sounds better to me than sending plastic to sit in a dump for the next 500 years!

The consensus on the Today segment (with two test families) was that the idea was good, but they were more bothersome to use. Now, I’ve changed a ton of diapers in my day, though none of them were on my own kids. I don’t want to make naive statements before our own kiddo comes home, but I think that a little bother with a diaper change may be worth saving the Earth… we’ll see.

Daddy Shower

On Saturday, [Jeremy](http://thebiggspicture.org/) came down to Beverly to throw me what I’ll call a “Daddy Shower”. It was just me and Jeremy, but we had a good time. We went out for breakfast at Michelle’s Place, a restaurant a few blocks away from our apartment. I’d never been there before, but it’s a place that I’ve heard about from [Art](http://kizoku.blogspot.com/) and [James](http://drjames.blogspot.com/), who live fairly close to the restaurant. The breakfast was pretty good… not as good as [Parker’s Maple Barn](http://www.parkersmaplebarn.com/) or the [Red Cottage](http://www.redcottagerestaurant.com/), but still very good. (Incidentally, James happened to be there when we arrived. :-))

In addition to breakfast, Jeremy gave me a gift bag with some stuff for the baby from him and Angela, but geared towards Daddy, in the spirit of the [Geeky Onesies](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/craftiness/geeky_onesies/). There was a bib hand-stitched by Angela with “Live Long and Feed Me” in the classic Star Trek font, a bunch of diapers custom labeled with funny sayings, a book of fun games to play with the baby, and a “Baby Geek” picture frame. Fun stuff. 🙂

Showered with Love

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The first weekend in April I was honored to attend a baby shower thrown for me by my Auntie Susie.

It was a wonderful day. The weather cooperated and it was a sunny, warm Sunday. There were tons of delicious goodies and the house was full of fantastic people.

Our apartment is now full of sweet little baby things. Green frogs and yellow duckies were the order of the day. Our little baby is now blessed with lots of summer outfits, blankets, brightly colored toys, a pack-n-play, crib, stroller, baby back pack, and tons and tons of bath products (some of which I’d like to use myself!). It has been so fun going through all the gifts and they just make us more excited about bringing this baby home.

I’d like to say, however, that even without a single gift to unwrap this shower would have been perfect. I am constantly surprised and honored by how loved Peter and I are… and now the baby is. There are so many people in our lives that love and support us, and having so many of them in one room is almost overwhelming. Our baby is so fortunate to be anticipated by all of our family and friends.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us thus far. We can’t wait for BabyWood to meet each and every one of you!

[all of the pictures from the day are found here]

BabyWood Update

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All the baby news you’ve been waiting for; and some you could probably live without!

As of this week I’ve been officially upgraded from the “once a month” Doctor’s appointment club to the “every two weeks” club. That’s exciting. Luckily my appointments take all of 15 minutes. I usually spend more time checking in and making my next appointment than I spend with the doctor.

And I’m okay with that. Everything is going along just swimmingly. I love hearing the heartbeat every time I’m there. I love hearing the nurses and the doctor proclaim “perfect” whenever they ‘do something’… like take my weight, measure my belly, hear the heartbeat, etc. It is comforting to know that things are going well, with little effort on my part.

The baby has been dancing up a storm in its own little uterine night club. It’s great that Peter can feel it from the outside, but most of the time I’ll say “oh! feel this!” and at that very instant the baby will freeze. My mom always says that kids will make a liar out of you every time. I guess this baby’s just getting a head start. “No, Peter. I promise there was dancing just a second ago! Really!”

We started our childbirth classes at the hospital this week as well. It is a six week course, once a week. There are 7 other moms and their partners in the class with us. The first night was, I think, a little awkward for everyone involved, but I suspect as time goes on it will get better. Most are in our age bracket, so I think once we get to know each other it will be much more comfortable.

Over all I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve gone headlong into the third trimester, and although I’m pretty tired most of the time, I still have plenty of energy when I need it. The walk to the train and to work (and back again) seems to take longer every week but I’m glad for the exercize.

Phew! That’s probably more than you wanted to know. If not, there’s the Baby FAQs off to the left there and you can always leave a comment!