Five Boys Happy Home

HAPPY THANKSGIVING WEEK! We had a fine feast with a whole clan of Tressell's and Sudar's and now Christensens ! It was a super fun time and a HUGE and delicious feast. I am pretty sure both Shrimpy and I had a whole plate of food! This is week 22- the end of Month Five. According to What to Expect, Shrimpy weighs about one POUND. No more ounces for us! Also he's about 8 inches long - it says "the size of a small doll" but this one will cry and eat and everything! Right now he practices grabbing, he can sense light through his eyelids, and he can hear womb sounds, and sounds from the environment - like Dad reading to us at night! I have been feeling OK this week. Sometimes my back hurts, but that's all part of the fun. And here's the usual : Cravings: Stuffing. I mean, it is Thanksgiving, right? Stuffing is my favorite! Weird Stuff: At the DMV we were getting our new license plates and we wanted to get the Veteran plates. According ...

What a grin Tiberius has today!!! And what's not to be excited about! Last night Scott felt Shripmy karate chop me in the gut. He's a feisty little ball of fury! Scott had been reading out loud to us. Maybe that's what got him excited. :) According to What to Expect , this week Shrimpy is about 7 inches long and 11 oz! What a whopper! Mmmm, a whopper sounds good right now...I digress. It also says that there is evidence Shrimpy can taste what I have been eating via the amniotic fluid he is swallowing to vamp up his GI tract. Time for the broccoli and spinach I guess! It also says his skeleton is starting to calcify (it has been mostly cartilage to date). I have been feeling pretty good. We are having a good weekend. Some of it will be cleaning up for guests. Some of it will be celebrating our 1st anniversary! Woo Hoo! It goes by really fast. Here's the usual: Cravings : Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Well, cheese, really.

And so it begins. The Choosing of the Name . We do have a handy book, The Baby name Wizzard , to help us out, with popularity/use charts, meanings, nicknames, and "brother and sister" names. It also has a section of names by "style" Here for example is one of the "charted" names: Adonis : Peaked at #829 in 2003 Style : Fanciful, Mythological Nicknames : Don Sister Names : Venus, Electra, Artemis, Oceana, Isis Brother Names : Apollo, Achilles, Morpheus, Orion, Ceaser Adonis sounds as cool as can be, but it's a gamble. If he's anything but a perfect physical specimin, the name, symbolic of male beauty, could be a burden Funny, huh? I think I prefer Achilles. Or, you could choose from the Porch Sitters List : Maynard Odell Or, the Surfer Sixties List : Stoney Dwayne Or, maybe, just maybe , the Guys and Dolls List : Vito Carmine These books, while useful, do crack me up more often than not. Any of these seem like keepers?

Well, it looks like the votes were 11 for GIRL and 10 for BOY.   The bad news is this is not a democracy, this is genetics! The good news is we have a winner! The Christensen's have a namesake heir!   It's a boy! The tech pointed out her clue for us...Nice view of the his bottom, eh? :) The left side is his hand!  Hopefully you are on your way to doing well in the gene pool.  But fear not, if you chose girl, there are still lots of other things to vote on later!  The odds are all 50-50-90 anyway. (For those who haven't heard 50-50-90, it means you had a 50% chance for either answer, and a 90% chance to be wrong if you guess. Not accurate, but it's a joke we all used in the Navy when we forgot an answer) Everything looked great to the ultrasound tech. She was very excited she could see so much of him, and that he was pretty cooperative (he was really squirmy).  That was a long ultrasound - almost one hour!  I had no idea all the cool stuff they could see.  They looked a...

You know, I remember learning in math class, that you can keep cutting something in half, and in theory, never get to the end.  Hopefully, this situation will not be at all theoretical, but only practical! Scott thought it would be funny to use the tape measure.  Something about being a foot wide... :)  So far things are good this month!  According to What to Expect , baby is about the size of a cantaloupe (6.5 in) and about 10 oz.   I have been feeling OK - the fatigue is kind of annoying, but oh well.  I had a cold, but that's almost gone now.  So far so good! Cravings : I craved Sonic this week when I came home from school on Monday.  Aversions : I don't think it tastes nasty, but juice still gives me nausea. :( Odd Pregnancy Stuff : This week I had a total fog-out.  We were saying grace and instead of saying the real Sing of the Cross, I said, "One, Two, Three, Four."  Not sure where that came from, but we had a good laugh!

Well, the painting is finally finished!  We have done Step 4, Blue Sky and Step 5, Trim.  The blinds came in and we will put those up next, and then for now fill it in as a guest room.  We don't have a lot of the furniture yet.  At any rate the crib will be in our room for a while.  So we will have a place for folks to stay for the holidays still.   Next I will be working on the wall decorations, and finding a place for the stuff in the closet. :)

Happy week 19 - almost halfway there.  It goes by a bit faster than I expected it to.  Things, they are a'changin'.  I am not nauseated too often anymore (which is good), but I have a pretty constant "stretchy" feeling - sometimes itchy, sometimes tight, always noticeable!  According to What to Expect ,  Shrimpy is a whopping 6 inches long and a whole half a pound! I however have gained more  than half a pound.  He is about the size of a mango. "A mango dipped in cheese, actually."  Shrimpy is covered in a protective cheese-like substance to protect sensitive skin.  Shrimp in cheese.  Speaking of which, here is a tasty looking recipe for a dish using both Shrimp and Cheese: Shrimp Enchiladas with Mole Cravings :  Well, earlier this week I put Heinz 57 sauce on my baked sweet potato. Scott thought that was strange. Aversions : None, really Funny Stuff :  Scott voted for the sweet potato incident.  And he thinks I look like Steamboat Willie from the belly down...

Well, that being said, I guess I'm undecided... Last night I had two very strange (and I can only blame hormones) dreams.  One in which we were having a boy.  In this dream I had one of those 4-D ultrasounds and then had to have some sort of procedure done...and it ended.  In the other one we had a girl. She was bigger and had quite a belly! And it seemed like everything in our entire apartment ( that's what it was in the dream) was PINK PINK PINK.  Very odd.  Oh well.  I guess that means I am excited either way! The countdown continues to G-day (gender day).  Looks like the votes are close.  Who will be correct?  I guess I don't even have a hunch in my dreams!

Well,  this weekend we accomplished Steps 2 and 3 of Nursery Renovation . Step 2, primer did not take too long at all. We did that on Saturday. Step 3, Color #1 we did Sunday morning because of Daylight Savings Time and how early we woke up... :(  Later this week or weekend we will do Step 4, Color #2 and Step 5, Trim. Then we will just have to work on decorating and furniture.  We think it already looks better.   It is supposed to be grass going to the horizon.  Plus they say visual detail should be crib level or so. The sky is not painted on yet. That is Step 4. Have a great day!

Shrimpy is getting bigger every minute! This week, according to What to Expect , he is continuing to master his breathing exercises: yawning and hiccuping! Also, Shrimpy's finger- and toe-prints are forming. This makes Shrimpy especially unique! I still cannot tell if I have felt Shrimpy move or not. Nothing too obvious yet. I have been feeling OK. A little tired still. Some dizziness when I forget not to stand up quickly! I also have a cold this week. YUCK. But it's not the worst cold I've ever had and I'll get through it. (Thank you preschoolers for that kind gift). Less than two weeks until we find out Shrimpy's gender! Here is the usual stuff: Cravings : Cheese Aversions : School (ha ha ha) Weirdness : A little more absentminded. "No more than me," says Scott. Very sweet of him to say! Yes, I did post this really early. Darn Daylight Savings Time. It was supposed to be 6:30 when I woke up!

The nursery renovation is underway! Step one is almost complete: Removing the painted over wallpaper border! I will add a photo soon. Should be a dramatic change. It actually went really swiftly with the little hand-held teeth gadget. Steam the paper and it comes right off, then steam the glue paper and IT comes right off, then wash the glue off the wall with water. Way easier than we thought it would be. Next comes primer. Or maybe we should keep it lavender with a white stripe.