Misc. Update
I finished up my grapefruits with time to spare. I even bought a few more that I found on sale at Whole Foods. I was slightly surprised that the ones from Costco were much more flavorful than the ones from Whole Foods. I’m currently out of grapefruits and am going through citrus withdrawals. I’m been taking hits of orange juice to get me through.
I’ve started watching Law and Order. I’ve been watching the original episodes from the early 90’s and like them a lot. Today I started watching Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Liking it too.
Also, I love that it’s supposed to rain this weekend. It’s one of my favorite things.
Happy Birthday Grammie
We recorded this for my (Nate’s) grandmother’s 80th birthday, but we decided it was good material for the blog.
(Keep an eye on Jacob, you may have to watch it twice.)
Happy Birthday Grammie from Nate Murray on Vimeo.
christmas time is here
Have I ever mentioned that I love Christmas? Well, I do. I absolutely adore it. I think I got it from my mom, and it could also be that it’s just a very lovable holiday. This year however, I feel behind in my Christmasing. It’s like it’s just coming too fast and I can’t catch up. I’m not in the Christmas spirit yet and it’s not because I don’t want to be. I’ve been listening to Christmas music in the car to help get me there. I stare at the Christmas lights that people have put up and think, “YAY! It’s Christmas time!” So I don’t know where the disconnect is this year. Usually by this time in our house I’ve decked our hall and hung our stockings with care. This year, I’m just happy if I’ve vacuumed the hall and run the stockings through the laundry.
So this weekend I’m making a conscious effort to get us ready for Christmas. I’m up early this saturday morning so I can clean the floors, the first step in getting the Christmas spirit in this house. That might not make sense, but trust me… there’s no way to feel Christmasy with this many dust bunnies around. I’m hoping that tonight we go Christmas tree shopping which is one of my favorite holiday activities and then over the next week I’ve planned some baking, some decorating and some holiday shopping. Like most things in life right now, I’m expecting this to take quite a bit longer than the time I’ve allotted, but at least it’s a plan. Christmas eve is fast approaching and since it’s my favorite day of the year I want to be ready for it.
Maybe I’ll put on Charlie Brown Christmas while I mop. That should help.
Sleepless in Valencia
From that title I bet you’re expecting a blog post about how my newborn son is keeping me awake all night. Well, you’d be wrong. Nate and Jacob are sleeping soundly in the other room, and here I am. Wide awake at 2am, kept up by thoughts of what to get people for Christmas, how I need to make a meal plan for the next week, how I’m going to have to juggle Jacob’s feedings tomorrow morning so he sleeps through my Dr.’s appointment, where I should get a haircut and what style I should get, how the car needs washed, reminding myself to send the property tax check this week and the list goes on. You’d think from living with a 6 week old baby my body would spontaneously fall asleep the moment he goes down for the night. Sadly, tonight that is not the case.
Well, I guess I should go back to bed and try to get some sleep. Only 4 more hours till it’s time to get up and get myself and the baby ready to head out to San Gabriel for my Dr.’s appointment.
And if any of you have suggestions of a place where I can get my haircut around here, I’m looking. Also any opinions on what hairstyle I should go for would be welcomed as well.
Just 4 Basic Needs
So we’re home and adjusting. Things are going really well. Jacob is growing fast. He had his first Dr’s appointment on Tues. and as of that afternoon he’d gained 11oz. and grown an inch since birth. Not too bad for the first 9 days of life. Made me glad that I didn’t go over my due date or I would have been giving birth to a much larger baby.
Last night we put him to bed at 10:30pm and he slept until 4:00am and then slept until 7:00am when I woke him up. We’re finding that he’s a very low maintenance baby. If his basic needs are taken care of, he’s content to lay in his pack n’ play by the window and just hang out. It’s taken us the last 12 days to figure out what his basic needs are however. Poor Jacob suffered through an entire night until Nate and I learned that he likes to be warm… Go figure.
So now we know he likes to be
1. fed
2. dry
3. burped
4. warm.
If those criteria are met he’s happy as a monkey in a monkey tree. But let me tell you, getting all 4 of those needs met at the same time can be quite challenging. If he’s fed, then he needs burped, then he needs to be changed and has most likely leaked pee onto his clothes, so we have to change him head to toe, then he gets cold and starts crying which gives him the hick-ups, which makes him need to burp. Five diapers and three outfits later you get all that fixed, and then it’s time for him to eat again.
I wish that I had more interesting info to write about, but truthfully we’ve been sucked into baby world for the past two weeks and are just now gradually starting to resume bits and pieces of normal life. I guess that next week will be the true test though. Last week Nate was home all week, this week my sister Erin is here, but next week it’s just me and the kid. Thankfully the week after that my mom is coming and all will be right with the world again. She has that effect on me.
Time to Get the Birthing Ball Rolling
Things around here are going well. Today I’m 38 weeks pregnant, and feeling it. We’re all set and ready for the baby to come. We have the crib, the car seat, the clothes, a diaper bag, and a place to put it all. Now if we only had the baby around to actually start using it.
We finished up our birthing classes and really enjoyed them. There were some interesting people in the classes with us. There was only one couple whose names we learned. Maria and Orlando. They were a very sweet older couple who were having their first child. There were also the couples that we didn’t know but stereotyped.
- There was the Mail Order Bride couple: a young Asian woman who didn’t speak much english, and the American husband who looked to be in his fifties and said that he had a 21 year old child from a previous marriage.
- There was the Big Ankles couple: the name pretty much sums them up. The poor mother-to-be had ankles the same size as her upper leg. Pregnancy swelling seemed to have hit her quite hard.
- There was the Teengage Mother couple: we’re not exactly sure how old this couple was, the girl still had braces and her mother attended each class with them.
- There was one couple who was very tall. The husband was just a very very large man, and when the wife started asking questions about birthing balls, our friend Maria kept repeating that if she bought one, she would need to buy a very large ball to accommodate her height. Nate and I laughed at how many times Maria emphasized to this girl that she would need to buy the largest size available.
- Another couple I felt sorry for the woman for being married to such a jerk. There wasn’t anything completely terrible about him, he was just steadily sarcastic and made those, “I can’t wait for her to get over the pregnancy hormones and stop having those annoying mood swings” comments. I don’t know the woman, maybe she wasn’t a walk in the park, but still.
- There was a single girl who always had my heart during “couples exercises” when she didn’t have anyone to couple up with.
- Then there was one couple in particular who seemed to not differentiate their behavior between a public setting and the privacy of ones own living room. The husband was frequently seen rubbing the mothers belly in a slow petting way, and she would put her hand up her own shirt, or down the front of her pants to rub her belly, or feel the baby’s movements. There’s just something shockingly inappropriate about seeing a very pregnant woman feel her own body underneath her clothing. So weird.
Other than that we’ve just been hanging out. Today we went swimming and had dinner with the Spanglers. On Sat. Nate discovered the wonder that is Wii Fit at his parents house. This Thur. and Fri. Nate is taking off work and we’re looking forward to having a nice long weekend of relaxing before the baby comes - if he’s not here by then.
We’re kind of skeptical that I’ll make it to my due date, but I’m not sure how much of that is based on actual evidence and how much is wishful thinking. Yesterday I ate a big salad with balsamic vinegar on it, which is supposed to encourage labor and even if it doesn’t work, it’s still good to fill up on leafy greens.
I think as the big day nears we’ll also be taking some long evening walks to keep the baby headed in the right direction. Hopefully we’ll spot Sprinkles, the neighborhood skunk while we’re out. We’ll be sure to keep our distance.
Jr. Park Rangers
This weekend we went camping with some of our friends. Ashley and Gary worked very hard to earn their Jr. Ranger Badge (left). I’ll post an edited video of the whole trip in a few days. For now, see below for a great video of their inauguration.
Ashley at 5 months
This is a great little picture of Ash in our room at Piedmont Baptist College in NC for Stephanie’s wedding on May 10th, 2008. Ashley is 5 months along! We’ll have more pictures and videos when we return.
Powdered Drano and Pee
The other day a friend of ours told me about an old wives tale for finding out the gender of your baby. We’re planning on finding out the gender, but when I heard the test I laughed and told Nate that we should do it so we could post about it on the blog…so here’s the post.
The test is that you get powdered Drano and mix it with the urine of the pregnant woman in question, and the gender of the baby is determined by the color of the mixture. Warm colors like red, yellow, orange and brown indicate a boy and cool colors such as blue, green or purple indicate a girl.
So we got some powdered Drano (who knew that even existed), and mixed it in a small bowl with some of my urine. The mixture immediately started to smoke and give off these horrible fumes. It was sputtering and fizzing and Nate was saying, “Ashley! Don’t breathe that!!” We took the bowl outside and opened all the doors and windows, turned on the fans and waited for the lightheadedness to go away. After a few minutes we took a look at the mixture and the color was a brownish-greenish color. So we’ve conclusively decided that we’re having a boy… or a girl.
As a side note, we’d like to add that the test really should never be done since you are in essence mixing bleach and ammonia which is a toxic combination (pdf). So leave it to the professionals - like us.
We didn’t really want to post a picture of the test on the blog because let’s face it, that’s just gross. So here’s a picture of my growing belly (17 weeks) instead.
Ashley’s Birthday
This weekend was Ashley’s Birthday. I decided to take her to San Diego. We usually like to stay at the Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Blvd., but because we’re on one income we opted for the Good Nite Inn, San Diego.
There’s a photo booth we really love at the Balboa Park Museum of Photographic Arts. We visited the booth last year and we’re trying to make it a tradition.
Halloween Memories
Nate:
When I was a kid the towns in our area would each host trick-or-treating on a different night of halloween week. Each night my parents would drive us around to whichever town was having it’s trick-or-treat night and we would fill a pillow case with candy. By the end of halloween week we had enough candy to last us until Easter, the next big candy holiday. By the time Easter came around I would be down to the dregs - butterscotch and tootsie rolls, but at least it was candy.
Ashley:
We didn’t celebrate Halloween and not once growing up did I go trick-or-treating. To this day I have not been trick-or-treating. The day after Halloween we would walk through the neighborhood and pick up the candy that had fallen out of the other kids bags. Usually this consisted of Laffy Taffys, Now and Laters, and if we were lucky a miniature candy bar - a snickers maybe that had fallen in the shade and had not been melted by the sun yet. I would walk around with the front of my shirt turned up to make a little pocket and would use that to hold the candy. We tried to get out there pretty early the next morning before the candy on the sidewalks got stepped on.
Quite the adventure
Today we had quite an adventure! It is our last day in hawaii so we tried to make it a good one. There is a great snorkeling spot right near captain cooks monument (Its where he died if you are wondering). Its such a great spot that the locals want to restrict access to it so that it does not becone overrun with "causual tourists".
Now that ash and i have spent some time on the island, we think this is a good idea. For instance, there is a very popular snorkeling spot on alii drive in kona (referred to as "snorkel beach"). This reef is easily accessable to anyone and it seems like pretty much every tourist and sight seer come to snorkel at this reef. The problem with this is that its very shallow so everyone steps on the coral, sun screen gets on (and kills) the coral and if a wave comes a long you’ll land on the coral and break it etc. Because its so popular the reef is dying and there’s not that much beauty left. There’s still some, but its nothing compared to our two other favorite snorkeling spots. Needless to say, no one wants any of the snorkeling spots to end up like this one.
In an attempt to keep the massive crowds away from captain cook no maintained roads lead there. So a popular way to get there is by a mile kayak ride and that is how ash and i intended to get there.
We rented a double kayak at "kona boys" and strapped it to the top of our jeep. After arriving at the boat ramp we loaded up our gear and put in the seats to the kayak. A gentleman kindly informed us that we put the seats facong the wrong way and we were about to kayak "backwards" (whoops).
The kayak trip was a hoot. The bay is often used as a place of rest and nursery for a pod of spinner dolphins. I hoped we would see some but we did not. When we arrived at the monument i promptly stepped on a bee which stung my foot. We put on our snorkel gear, trief to avoid stepping on the purple sea urchins, and jumped into the ocean.
I have to say, that ashley was being very courageous during this time. After our first snorkel trip the last thing i thought we would be doing was kayaking our into the ocean to jump in with the fish. Earlier in the trip she was nearly in tears for being within a yard of a puffer fish and now she was dragging me along into schools of them. I thinks shes finally over her fear of fish.
The ocean was warm, the coral beautiful, and the fish fishy. We swam and took pictures and admired God’s beautiful creation of the coral reef.
As we kayaked back i announced that we were not leaving until i spotted a dolphin (or we reached the other side). We reached the other side first, so i guess ill just have something to look forward to for the next trip to paradise.
