Baby On Your Six

"So DrummerWife...it seems the tables have turned! Now I am the one who can sleep! While you, yes, you must deal with a growing baby inside your stomach who keeps you awake all night long! Soon, I shall conquer the whole world, while you struggle to gain even an hour of sleep! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" [/END EVIL MASTERMIND VOICE] Seriously though...DrummerWife ain't sleeping. She apparently spent the night on the couch last night just trying to get some relief from the indigestion and discomfort, while I slept clear through the night and didn't even realize she had left the bedroom. She's having a lot of trouble. Unfortunately, neither one of us knows if this is normal amounts of discomfort, or if DrummerWife is having extraordinary trouble with this sleeping deal. >_> Also, DrummerWife informed me that yesterday was 100 days 'till our due date. That means that today is 99 days. 99 days. We're officially in double digits, people.

I typed up a post yesterday. I tried to publish it to the webserver several times, to no avail. This morning, BAM, it uploads with no problem. Stupid technology. Anyway, last night was another rough one for DrummerWife. She's still experiencing the stomach pain, and according to the doctor she spoke with last evening, it's simply indigestion caused by her internal organs getting smashed by DrummerBaby moving up. I ran out to buy DrummerWife some Maalox last night, and that seems to help, but she's still struggling with a significant degree of pain. Here's hoping DrummerBaby settles down and leaves his mother alone. :)

DrummerWife had some wicked acid reflux all weekend. She had a little bit of trouble sleeping, and pretty much spent the last few days avoiding all the spicy or stomach-aggravating foods she could. She seemed like she was getting better yesterday, so hopefully this week's stomach-acid-friendly series of foods she's got planned will do the trick and get her back to normal. Well...as normal as she can be when she has a human being growing inside her. Also this weekend, we attended DrummerCousin's son's 1st birthday party. AND we assisted DrummerParents in the nursery at Church. It was a baby-filled weekend. Probably good practice, I guess.

I've just been made aware of http://www.littledrummerbaby.com/ . I am outraged. MY CHILD IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE DRUMMING PRODIGY. Clearly, I need to drive to Detroit, and get this kid to knock it off. :)

DrummerWife is starting to swell. And not in the "getting as a big as a house" kind of way, but in the "she's pregnant, and it's kinda warm out the last couple of days, so her wrists and ankles are all swollen up" kind of way. On top of that, she's at home this morning sporting a fantastic migraine. So, the last few days, she's had it kind of rough. As long as it doesn't interrupt or get in the way of Nerd Night, tonight. :)

Just 24 hours after we learned that DrummerBaby was healthy, and moving right along as scheduled, we learned that DrummerWife is A-OK, too. Looks like we've got a healthy, super-terrific pregnancy going on right here. So, if you see DrummerWife, pat her on the stomach, rub her belly, and tell her you heard how healthy and great everything is going. She'll love it. Trust me. ;)

That's right, folks, as of yesterday's final ultrasound, the Peanut is now a whopping pound and a half of DrummerDNA, just waiting to burst out of DrummerWife Aliens-style, and take the world by storm. Okay, so maybe he won't be "bursting forth," but he IS 1.5 lbs now. According to the doctor, he's progressing right on schedule, and by all accounts he's going to be a healthy baby boy. For fun, I figured out that if he's born at 7.5 lbs, that means he has 6 more pounds to gain. Considering he's considered full-term at 36 weeks, that gives DrummerBaby 12 more weeks to grow. That means he needs to gain 6 pounds in 12 weeks - or .5 lbs a week. Good thing DrummerWife has been craving steak the last few weeks. :)

...to everyone who helped us move in over the weekend - THANK YOU. We're in the new place, we're enjoying the new place, and we're still unpacking into the new place. As DrummerMother-in-Law stated - we have way too much clothing. I think we're going to be whittling that down, article by article, but I think everything is going to work out fine in the new place. Yay. Also, this afternoon is what will probably be our last ultrasound. The doctor at our Level II ultrasound last month wanted us to come back so they could get another (better) look at DrumnmerBaby's heart, since he wouldn't cooperate and give them a good view last time they checked the little guy. Assuming we get pictures, I'll scan 'em in and get them up here ASAP. Weeeee.

Thursday. At this time tomorrow, DrummerWife and I will be panicking, doing last minute packing, taking all of the clothing that isn't moving with us to the clothing drop-off up the street, and generally preparing to move. As of last night, everything valuable, breakable, and beloved in our home is packed up and ready to move. And just to make the whole moving experience complete, our resident jackass-next-door fired up his stereo and had a redneck dance party until 1:15am last night. We just couldn't move out of there without one last late-night yokel dance jamboree, now could we?

Why, I believe it is. The crappy little apartment is looking more and more empty. Everything is down off the walls, and we're living amongst boxes, dodging and weaving our way around the cardboard menace. The only thing that is left to "pack" is the remains of the kitchen and my oh-so-important video game systems. And then we can kick back and relax until it rains on Friday and Saturday, and we try to move in it. Huzzah.

It's crunch-time, folks. We've packed, we've laundricized. We've cleaned. We've organized. And now, it all comes down to this weekend. Months ago, when we signed the rental agreement, it felt like this week was so far away that it would never arrive. And now, it's here. And we've only got 4 more days to get ready for the move. Such fun. Now, I know we're hardly the first people to move in history, and we certainly won't be the last. But man, moving sucks . DrummerWife has already declared that she is going to make sure that she's pregnant every time we move, since it makes the process so easy for her. To which I replied that we're never moving again, in that case. I don't think she appreciated that too much. On top of the move, Easter is this weekend, and the annual Spring DrummerFamily-a-thon begins at about 4:00pm Friday afternoon. For those of you unfamiliar with DrummerFamily-a-thons, they're very much like Red Lobster's Lobst...

So, DrummerWife and I were going through our kitchen last night, packing up non-essentials and the like. We got to our meager wine rack/liquor "stand." I'm not a big drinker - I enjoy a beer or two, I'll have a stiffer drink occasionally, but I wouldn't call myself even an amateur drinker. DrummerWife is pregnant, as we all know, so it's not like she's partaking any time soon. As such, we had 2 bottles of champagne (1 a wedding gift we never got around to imbibing, the other a leftover from a New Year's party, 2 Jan. 1st's ago, I think), 2 bottles of wine, a half bottle of this orange-flavored Smirnoff, and a half bottle of this evil Outer Banks vodka we bought on vacation last September that were just going to sit there. Knowing that we couldn't transport the vodkas and likely not pass them off on anyone else, we poured them down the drain. The one wine bottle was chilled (like, for the last 6 months >_>), so that got opened and drained,...

It's Wednesday. We haven't packed a thing, or pushed through any of the laundry since last Thursday. I think we burnt ourselves out last week, then we went out Amish Country for the weekend to visit the DrummerIn-Laws, and then we took Monday off of packing. Last night was Bible Study. That brings us to tonight. Which means that we're going to be in bad shape tonight. We still have the remainder of the living room, the kitchen, and our bedroom left to pack. And we only have until the 13th/14th to pack. I'll admit...I'm lazy. I hate packing, I hate sitting there (or standing there) and wrapping up something in paper, and placing it in a box, and then repeating that process about 4000 times. But we're running out of time, and it's got to get done. I just keep reminding myself that there's a brand new condo apartment waiting for us at the end of all of this mess.

..."The only things you have to do in life are pay taxes and die." Well, I've got half that down. I've always gotten a tax return. Always. Yesterday I learned that for the first time ever, I owe the IRS money this year. Something about not withholding enough money on my W-4 for 2005. Yeah. It makes me sad. Anyway, the good news, is that the move is upon us in less than 2 weeks now. Soon, we'll have a dishwasher. Central A/C. A HUGE living room. It's only a few days away. And, on top of that - today is Opening Day. The first day of baseball season. And the circle of life is completed. Seriously though, I'm looking forward to the first opening day I can sit down down my son, and watch the first pitch of the Phillies season. Not to wax overly poetic about it, but I think it's going to be a really special experience. Of course, with my luck, my kid'll hate baseball and want to watch professional soccer. As a side project with this blog, I think I'l...

We've been packing (or in the process of packing) for what seems like an eternity now. The move officially takes place April 14th-15th, so we're just over 2 weeks away from it now. We've been putting stuff into boxes and wrapping it with packing paper for a few days now, and I think every other box we fill we're making "FRAGILE." Frankly, I didn't know we had that much stuff, period. But apparently, not only do we have a ton of crap, most of it is dangerously breakable. And I'm not just talking about my G1 Optimus Prime, 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime, and Voltron action figures that I wrapped up last night. Or my ceramic lawn gnome. We apparently actually own valuable crap. Who knew?

Olives. Green olives. And vanilla ice cream. Yes, folks, I believe DrummerWife had her first official bizarre craving last night. At about 10pm, as we're both just about wound down for the evening, DrummerWife proclaimed that she could really go for some green olives. And then...she added that some ice cream would go really well with it, too. Then, she got up, and got herself some green olives. I didn't even know we had green olives. But apparently, we did. She ate a plate full of them. Then, before we went to bed, she had a couple more. And then she had an epiphany as we lay in bed...the perfect snack...the pinnacle of quick-meal food consumption...green olives, pickles, and milk. ... ... I'm scared.

...sharing a fast-moving stomach bug. DrummerWife and I both spent the day at home yesterday with a particularly nasty stomach bug. She had the couch, I had the chair, and we didn't do much of anything short of, well...let's not go there. I'm doing better today, except for feeling like I went 12 rounds with a prize-fighter and lost. DrummerWife seemed to be doing OK this morning, so here's hoping she's doing better than I am - because that means our little Peanut (or Aaron Christopher, as we're leaning towards at the moment) is doing well, too.

BEHOLD THE DRUMMERBABY. (click photos to enlarge them) This is the DrummerBaby Profile. As you can see, the little tyke is already sporting Mom's nose. (It's the little nubby thing sticking up in the center of the picture.) This is just a really cool picture of DrummerBaby's spine. It's obviously the long, spiney thing running just about the length of the photo. This particular photo depicts DrummerBaby doing what I like to call the "rockfist." You can clearly see him with his arm primed to pump his little baby-sized fist into the air, perhaps in tribute to some tiny little rock band he hears inside DrummerWife's uterus. Or perhaps he has a tiny, uteran iPod that none of us can see. The world may never know.

. . . . . . . . . It's... . . . ...a boy. Yep. A boy. As the technician put it yesterday afternoon - "There is the scrotum. Penis." [Insert digital arrow into photograph] Scrotum. Penis." I have to admit, I thought it was a boy all along. But I really wouldn't have cared either way. I just wanted a healthy baby. And we've got a healthy, active baby boy bouncing around inside of DrummerWife. He's got ten toes, ten fingers, DrummerWife's nose ( really , we saw it on an ultrasound profile photo - it looks just like DrummerWife's nose), and despite my musings on the topic - no tail. I'd like to thank our mothers for joining us yesterday - it would have been a cool experience just with DrummerWife and I, but having the two of you along made it extra special. Ultrasound scans to come tonight. :)

Today is the date of the Level II Ultrasound. The technician will be going over DrummerBaby in extensive detail - fingers, toes, heart, you-name-it. It should be a pretty exciting time for DrummerWife and myself - and also for DrummerMother and DrummerMotherInLaw who will be joining us. Also...if all goes according to plan...we should have a gender this afternoon. Cross your fingers. :)