Textbook

Here's a little update on the pregnancy, for those of you still hanging around to read this blog! I hit the 32 week mark yesterday. Time is going so fast! I cant believe that in just 7 weeks I'll have her in my arms. For those of you doing the math, you are correct, that would put me at 39 weeks. We are being induced on June 5th for a lot of reasons not worth mentioning here. We are very excited about that decision, and yes, we've heard all the warnings and precautions from all concerned parties (*ahem* Mom!).

Yesterday I also had an appointment with my OB. At my check-up I was told that my pregnancy couldnt be more "textbook". I've been hearing that a lot from them, but I guess that's a good thing. The last thing we want is a big surprise, right?
- My tummy is measuring exactly 32cm (which is perfect since the cm's are supposed to correspond to number of weeks along I am)
- I'm average in weight gain
- Baby girl's heart rate (138) is right where it should be, too.

I've been so lucky to not have to deal with any swelling yet, so I can still wear all my rings! I'm also still sporting heels to work every day. My only complaint is that I hate sleeping on my sides, which is now the only option I have left. I would even settle for some time on my back, but she is heavy enough now that I cant breathe in that position. Ok, one more complaint - she is still breech, and she is lodged up under my right rib cage. It's getting pretty sore, and even feels bruised at times. My OB told me that 96% of babies move into the birthing position by 36 weeks, so maybe this complaint will be resolved soon!

That's about it for now. Stay tuned for some pictures and more updates later!

Best First Time Dad Gift Ever

As a soon-to-be-dad (roughly 7 weeks to go!), Kristin's Aunt Susan decided to properly equip me for my first-ever diaper changing experience.  This has to be the coolest shower gift for a first-time dad.  

For those male friends of mine who are soon-to-be-dad's, don't worry - I've got you covered. Yours will be in the mail shortly. HazMat suits are getting to be kind of expensive, so this will definitely come in handy. 

The picture's pretty small, so I'll list off a few of the cool features:

1. Safety goggles (apparently infants can blow at any moment, so better safe than sorry), a clothespin for my nose, and tongs to transport the nuclear fallout dirty diaper to the diaper genie. 
2. Boudreaux's Butt Paste, which besides having an awesome name is apparently the best thing in the world for diaper rash, and it's only the best for my little girl!
3. Pink Pacifier to distract my little girl during the procedure
4. Yes, those are Stanley brand rubber gloves.  Much more manly than the ones that say "Palmolive" on them.

From what Dave tells me, the color and consistency of poo will soon be normal dinnertable topics, so I'll keep you posted on how the kit performs under fire. 

She's still a girl!

Last Thursday we had a chance to get some more 3D pictures of baby Barnett. It was so cool to see her little face, and get a glimpse of what we'll see in 9 weeks (I know, single digits now!). We got to learn alot about her from just the short 15 minute sonogram. The first thing we learned is that she is currently breech. She has until about 35 weeks to decide to make her way into the correct position, or I'm in danger of having to get a C-section. I REALLY dont want that, so we're praying she'll go ahead and move on her own. We also learned that she is still a girl! We were pretty confident already, but that "what if" kept me from opening any of her bedding until I got confirmation.


If you look close in the picture above you'll notice that she has a foot up by her forehead. She pretty much leaves both feet up there while she sleeps. I guess she enjoys being folded in half. We were also told that she has chubby little hands!

At one point during the sonogram she suddenly opened her eyes, and it scared me a little. I never thought I'd see those big eyes that day! It's almost like she was looking directly at the camera!


Finally, our favorite picture is one where she definitely showed her little additude. We apparently upset her with all the movement so she scrunched up her little nose and stuck out her bottom lip and glared at us the best she could. lol. She looks just like Frank when he's cranky. :) Enjoy the photos!

ok, FINE!

I've had some rather demanding requests for some belly photos (*ahem* Margaret!), so I've decided to post a couple just to please the people. I'm still getting used to the pregnant form that I'm taking on, so I have a hard time seeing myself this size. lol. I hope this will satisfy everyone's curiosity who don't see me too often. No fat jokes! :) Also, please disregard Alex's demon eyes. I'm not sure why his eyes always turn out blue in pictures - maybe he is trying to match my top here. He does look stoic, though, doesn't he?

Popcorn and Popsicles

...that's the answer to the most common question I get lately - "Got any cravings yet?" Only one of those two is truly interesting because I've always loved popcorn. To be clear - I love movie theatre popcorn. Nothing else quite measures up. In fact, I've been known to make the crazy request of Frank to get me some on his way home from work. I feel so bad for him walking into the movies to get popcorn and then walking right back out to his car. He must get some strange looks. I have the best husband ever. Popsicles are a new thing, though. I was very specific in my request here as well. For some reason I remember those popsicles that come in the plastic tube thing - you cut the top off and squeeze it up. Apparantly they are called otter pops. Frank spent a long time in the frozen foods isle trying to find them, but with no luck. My mother-in-law got wind of the missing popsicles and got online to solve the problem. She ordered me 15 POUNDS of otter pops. lol. I think I'm set until my kids are in kindegarten. Thanks, Jackie!

Sorry for the absense of posting lately. I expected to have alot more to say during the pregnancy, but I'm at a loss for interesting updates. Here are the basics..

Im a little over 24 weeks along - just 3 short weeks till I hit the 3rd trimester, and I can't wait!! Time has been going by pretty quickly, which I didn't expect. After my next monthly OB appointment I will start seeing my doctor every two weeks! It's hard to believe I'm almost at that stage.

The second most common thing I've heard during my pregnancy is "you don't even look pregnant!" - that's all started to change this week, though. It seems like baby girl is growing at a very rapid pace now. Some mornings I get up and look in the mirror and I'm startled by how big my tummy is getting. It's fun to finally see some progress and get out of the "I just look fat" stage. In fact, the lady at Starbucks asked me when I was due today which means that it's finally obvious that I'm pregnant!

I started feeling little kicks from baby girl on my birthday (Dec. 29th), and she has continued getting stronger. Now I feel her turn over and move from one side of my tummy to the other. She's pretty active, but she saves most of her energy for right when I go to bed. Frank likes to feel her move and kick, too which isnt hard now. The smile and look on his face is priceless. Some nights I wake up to feel him touching my belly - he says he's just "checking on his little girl". I melt every time he says that. :)

We have officially decided on a name for her, but it's still a secret. We had looked at names so many times before we found out we were having a little girl, and we would come up with a short list of names that we liked but it never failed that just days later we wouldn't like any of them. This time, I think we've got one that will stick. It's been almost a month and we still love it.

The month of March is going to be very busy for us. We plan to buy (and assemble) the baby furniture, paint, and decorate the nursery, re-design the closet for baby clothes, have a garage sale and register. So much to do! Don't get me wrong, I LOVE projects. The part I hate is getting Frank on board. He's a great helper, but I think I stress him out some. I'll try to curb my enthusiasm a little and work on my marketing skills when describing these things to him. It's all about how you frame it, right?

Anyway, all this to say that I'm having a great time being pregnant - now that I'm past the sickness part. I'll be sure to post pictures of the nursery and other events for those of you few and faithful who still check in here from time to time. Until then...

IT'S A GIRL!!

Today we had another sonogram and found out what our little baby is - it's a girl!

Now, I'm not going to lie and say I wasn't kind kind of hoping just a little bit that we were having a little boy. Besides the whole father-son things (you know: camping, sports, rough-housing, shooting guns, getting dirty doing yardwork and then tromping it through Kristin's clean house), I have to admit - part of it was that the idea of a pretty little girl scares me to death.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm really excited! I see pictures of Kevin having a picnic with his little girl, or I read about Josh getting guided tours from his, or watch Chris with his little princess. Tonight we had dinner with a pastor from our church, and watched his little girl put on a Disney princess dress and twirl for us. And I'm totally looking forward to my little girl standing on my feet while we dance.

But I'm scared.

I'm scared because she's already got me wrapped around her tiny little finger.

We spent less than an hour in a dark room watching the 3-D sonogram on a big TV (see her little hands in the sonogram pic!). There were two couches and I was all over both of them and about every inch of the floor in between them. I was so excited to see my little girl - but the TV screen was as close as I could get, and I just couldn't sit still watching her.

I'm scared because she's going to grow up and she's going to be beautiful. I know this because her Mama is beautiful. How do you tell your darling little girl no? I have a hard time sticking to the rules when my dog looks cute, and Kristin has a whole bag of cute faces she can pull out to make me do strange things like stop by a movie theater to pick her up some popcorn (it's apparently much better than normal stuff, and yes, this was before she was pregnant). I'm going to be a total pushover for my pretty little girl, I think.

And having a pretty little girl brings all sorts of other problems, too. There's a song out right now that I find particularly amusing called, "Cleaning This Gun." The chorus goes like this:

Come on in boy, sit on down
And tell me 'bout yourself
So you like my daughter, do you now
Yeah we think she's something else
She's her daddy's girl and her mama's world
She deserves respect, that's what she'll get, ain't it son
Now y'all run along and have some fun
I'll see you when you get back
Bet I'll be up all night
Still cleaning this gun

I'm scared because I know she'll keep me up more nights than I want to think about (I have a bad feeling my prayer life is about to reach a whole new level). I'm scared because one day some guy's going to come along and take her away. I remember when I asked Kristin's Dad if I could marry his daughter - and I remember that I was scared to death to do that because I had at least a vague idea of what I was asking him to let me have.

My little princess is only officially 20 weeks old - and I already love her more than I can explain. After all, I only know her from a picture on a TV screen and a tiny little thump on Kristin's belly when my little girl kicks (which she does a lot lately). And it's amazing how much more real just knowing which pronoun to use makes all this.

I'm quite certain I have no idea of the emotional rollercoaster my little girl is about to take me on. I have a feeling I'll look back and see life to this point being a little bit one-dimensional. I think a whole bunch of color is about to flood my little black-and-white world.

Rooster's

I went and got a much needed haircut this past week.

Such events are usually pretty routine. I am a guy, after all, and there's just not much exciting anyone does with my hair. I actually prefer it that way.

However, this past week I splurged a little, and visited a place in McKinney almost totally because of the experience it advertised.

Declare Your Men-dependence

That's their tagline. I was intrigued - at least in part because it sounded like something Stephen would say, and Stephen rarely allows himself to be associated with low-quality experiences. Stephen also takes his hair more seriously than any guy I know, which definitely added some subliminal credibility to this "Rooster's" place.

The biggest draw, though, was that they use a straight-razor and hot shaving soap on your neck and around your ears. There was a place in Albuquerque that used to do this - a couple old guys in a shop adorned with faded black-and-white photos of famous athletes and venues, and which always smelled of that hot shaving soap. It was a true barber shop - no "product" lining the windows and no glamour shots on the walls. Just some old Sports Illustrateds and a couple Field and Stream magazines. Since then, I've been willing to settle for the "unisex salon" because the price was the part of the haircut that I was most interested in, and because it's so hard to find an actual barber shop, much less one where the barber uses a straight-razor.

Rooster's was not cheap - $24 is about twice what I usually pay. Inflation's been a beast on the ol' "two bits" I guess. But I fell for the tag line and the memory of that barber shop in Albuquerque, and made my appointment.

Oh wow was I glad I did.

The environment was very man-friendly, to say the least. There's no "product" sitting around or celebrity gossip magazines in the waiting area. Just lots of dark wood, some sports and hunting magazines... and a massive plasma tv permanently tuned to ESPN. In place of outdated glamor shots, they had a few large mounted heads of elk and moose. Yeah, they knew their target audience, I'd say.

Yvonne took me to my chair, sat me down, and after some brief introductory questions (a haircut as simple as mine shouldn't take much explanation), she quietly proceeded to give me one of the better haircuts I've had in a while - which was a good start. As she tucked the towel in the collar of my shirt and lathered up the back of my neck, I smiled a little - this was what I'd come for, and in this all-important skill, Yvonne was a surgeon. Too good, in fact. I was a little disappointed when she finished so quickly. I wanted to savor the experience, and the sandalwood aftershave was small consolation.

But that's actually when it got really good.

She leaned that awesome leather chair back (picture the ideal post-Thanksgiving position for falling into a tryptophan-induced coma while watching football) and then covered my face with hot towels. I had read that a hairwashing was included, but I was expecting the kind of perfunctory rinse that simply keeps those little hairs from falling on your keyboard when you get back to work. This was nothing like that.

I want to say Yvonne used some kind of scrubber to massage my scalp, but that gives the wrong mental image. When Kristin and I were on our honeymoon, she discovered I'd never had a true massage before, and signed me up. The incense was subtle, the soft music was relaxing - pretty much what you'd expect. But before we got to the backrub part, the masseuse warned me that she was about to "exfoliate" me. I had no idea what it meant to be "exfoliated" and was a little concerned that there was any foliage on me to "ex" - but I went along because I thought this was normal. There was nothing normal about it. The nice lady took industrial-grade sandpaper and scraped the top three layers of skin off my legs and back. So when I refer to what Yvonne used as a "scrubber," don't think of something you'd "exfoliate" with. Whatever she used (I still have no idea - remember, my face was happily hidden under a mound of steaming, moist towels), I was just about as relaxed as I can remember being in some time.

When a haircut is remarkable for me, that's generally not a good thing. This was clearly a happy exception. If this is what "declaring my men-dependence" feels like, I may be making such a declaration more frequently.


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