Next Round for Baby Names

Alright, so after spending several hours on the computer looking at our list of baby boy names, we've finally gotten it down to our final four. Of course this was only after cutting two names, then looking online and adding two new names, and then finally cutting two other names. You've gotta love our decision-making process! Ha! Probably the most complicated way of choosing a baby name.

The list is as follows (in no particular order):

Name	Origin	Meaning
Chase	English	The hunter
Silas	Latin	Of the forest
Kai	Finnish/Hawaiian	Rejoice/Ocean
Keegan	Gaelic	Son of Fire

We could really use some help narrowing down our list. Jason's top choice is Silas with Kai and Keegan in the middle, and Chase at the bottom. And of course to complicate matters, my top choice is Chase with Kai and Keegan in the middle and Silas at the bottom. Good thing we've got another 11 weeks to figure this out. As it stands now, we'd have to throw the names in a hat and pull or allow the nurse to name our baby! Of course, in my opinion, this means that we're going to have a baby girl since we've spent so many hours on this topic. Jason, of course, disagrees! :)

Getting the Nursery Ready - The Final Frontier

The moment that you have all been waiting for is finally here, the final installation in the "Getting the Nursery Ready Saga"!  Now, I know you were all expecting it later this summer, but we were able to cut a few corners and get it all ready by the middle of May instead.  Yesterday we got the word that both the crib and the dresser were ready for pickup from Babies 'R Us.  Now before I go on any further I have to give a big thank you (otherwise known as a "shout out" to our younger generation) to both sets of Baby Pistachio's grandparents.  It was because of their thoughtfulness and generosity that we were able to purchase both the crib and dresser well before Baby Pistachio makes an official appearance.  So now on to the story...

As you may or may not know Amy drives a Nissan Sentra and I drive a Honda Accord, neither of which is even remotely close to being able to haul either of these two gigantic pieces of furniture from the store.  So we called Amy's supervisor Beth (who supervises Amy so she can get her license to practice social work in the near future) who had offered up a bigger vehicle and her husband Mike to help us out.  Now there had apparently been a slight miscommunication between Amy and I as I was under the impression that they had a pickup truck and apparently they only had a station wagon.  They were still pretty sure that it would work so we went with it.  Now, upon arriving at the store we then met our store associate "helper" who was this short lady of about 60 who informed us that she had been doing this for 20 years and there was no way either of these boxes were fitting in a station wagon.  Well, with the four of us being "newbies" in this furniture moving business, we decided to give it a shot anyway.  Now I won't lie, getting the dresser in was a squeeze and a half.  I again was misinformed and thought that the dresser would require assembly, but instead they just padded the fully assembled dresser which made for a gigantic box.  We had just enough room in the back seat, but it got temporarily stuck on the wheel wells which made us sweat a bit, but nothing that a little jamming and shoving couldn't fix.  The crib came in this thin square box (disassembled) so we just stuck that on the hood (with a bit of rope of course) and hit the road.  Once we got to our place Mike and I got the lovely job of carrying these things up our very steep and narrow stairs.  I gotta admit, it wasn't a whole lot of fun, especially when the dresser box could barely make the turn to get into the baby room (I had a flashback to our move-in day just about a year ago when my dad and I thought we could get a couch up the stairs and proceeded to jam a hole into the ceiling with it instead).  After doing this I realized how ridiculous my original idea was (though it would have made for a very entertaining blog).  My original plan was to just rent a truck on my own and carry the boxes by myself.  Makes perfect sense that someone can just pick up a dresser by themselves and carry it up a flight of stairs.  And sadly I just finished my master's degree, I guess it takes a while for that college education to pay it's dividends.

Now came the part I had really been dreading: assembling the crib.  I've heard plenty of horror stories about this lovely task, but again my uneducated brain thought it should be no problem for me to attempt on my own.  Obviously I wouldn't do what those other stupid people did...

Well, I have to say that it actually was pretty easy.  I think they must have made some crazy good improvements to the crib building process because it was harder to get the thing out of the box than it was to put it together (actually getting the dresser out of the box was the hardest part).  So after about 2 hours (half of which was devoted to trash cleanup) we now are the proud owners of a fully assembled crib and dresser/changing table!! Amy took up her usual position as supervisor during this process and did a fantastic job as well! No injuries and completed in record time, so I guess now she can put herself up for an award or something:)

So thus ends the "Getting the Nursery Ready" saga.  But you may want to wait until all the credits roll, there may just be a hint of a 4th installment sometime in the future... you just never know.

12 weeks and counting...

Today marks the beginning of the 3rd trimester (week 28 and 12 weeks left until the due date of August 10th)!! Neither Jason nor I can believe how quickly Pistachio's due date is approaching! It seems like just yesterday that I was beginning to develop a little baby bump and now here we are rounding the last corner. Last week, we had our 27 week glucose test and doctor's appointment. Lil Pistachio is doing great! Another clean bill of health! Pistachio's heart is beating strong at 140 beats a minute and my weight appears to be satisfying the doctors. Thankfully, the glucose testing came back normal, so I don't have to go back and chug another water bottle of icky flat orange soda tasting glucose liquid and then have my blood drawn every hour for three hours. My poor LCSW supervisor, Beth, had the unfortunate experience of this and she did not recommend it! Thankfully, I only had to chug one bottle of the glucose fluid and have blood drawn only once after waiting in the waiting room for an hour. Our next doctor's appointment is scheduled for June 2nd and then from there we're looking at doctor's appointments every 1-2 weeks. During Jason's graduation weekend (27 weeks), Pistachio's paternal grandmom took some baby bump pictures. Here are some of my favorites!!

 

Daddy's Graduation

At the 27 week point, Daddy graduated from the University of Connecticut's Civil Engineering Graduate Program!! Thankfully the sun came out long enough to give us time to take some pre-graduation photos, before the rain clouds came through. The ceremony was held in UCONN's Gampel Pavillion (basketball stadium) with several other graduate schools. It was a nice ceremony lasting approximately 1 1/2 hours. Unfortunately for daddy, UCONN's graduation ceremony wasn't too personal as his name was not read aloud or even scrolled on the projection screens. Despite this fact, we got to watch daddy walk across the stadium to receive his diploma...yay daddy!! We're super proud of you! Of course now, this means that daddy has just one more personal degree/license than mommy does...boo! Just wait, in one more year and a LCSW test later, mommy will again tie daddy for number of degrees! Congratulations, Jason!! We're proud of you!! Go Huskies!!

Beach Babymoon

To celebrate our 6th year wedding anniversary (May 28th) and to cherish our togetherness time, Jason and I planned a babymoon vacation to Wilmington, NC over Easter week/weekend. The timing worked out perfectly as I was in desperate need of a break from my job (one more day with my kids and their chaos and I would have snapped), Jason was needing a break from thesis writing, and I was at the end of my 2nd trimester with our lil Pistachio (meaning that I was feeling great). We also snuck in before severe thunderstorms and tornadoes hit the east coast, causing complications with flights. I couldn't have asked for a better babymoon than the one we had. Our first day was a chilly rain-out day, so we toured the Fort Fisher aquarium. But the next three days were beautiful, warm, and a sunny 70-80 degrees! We spent two days on the Carolina Beach sunning and enjoying the ocean breeze. The other day, we spent touring Wilmington. Our condo was beach front, so every morning we enjoyed cereal on the balcony, watching the surfers catch some waves, and enjoying the sun and warmth. Afterwards, we'd play a board game on the balcony before heading down to the beach. On our 2nd beach day, Jason and I dared ourselves to get in the Atlantic Ocean since it was hot enough outside to warm us up after our frigid dip. Let's just say that the Atlantic is still VERY COLD in late-April even if you are in North Carolina. But the experience definitely made us laugh and made for some very fun photos!

Wilmington was a quaint little city. We had a wonderful lunch at a restaurant that allowed us to eat on a private balcony, overlooking the Cape Fear River. After lunch, we took a "bunny" tour (horse drawn carriage in which the horses were dressed up as bunnies for Easter) around the town. We also decided to take a Boat Ride/Ferry along the Cape Fear River, all the while enjoying the sights of the town. Some shopping followed the river tour, although we had to search high and low for some ice cream (the main store was sold out!). Walking around the town and enjoying the sights was the perfect way to split up our beach days.

And what would a great babymoon be like without desserts! Upon a recommendation from my in-laws, we made almost nightly runs to Pop's, a local dessert place, that served not only ice cream for Jason but also sno-balls for me! What a treat, since finding sno-balls in Connecticut seems to be a bit of a chore (who would have guessed?!).

So thanks to our babymoon, Baby Pistachio has now been on several airplanes, has taken a dip in the Atlantic Ocean, has experienced a cartwheel at 25 weeks (Jason convinced me that I could still do this, the form wasn't pretty and I won't be doing it again), has heard the ocean waves, and has collected his/her first seashells! What an amazingly, beautiful vacation and special way to celebrate not only our anniversary but also our babymoon!