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.
It’s a Boy!
For all of you who have been placing bets on the gender of our baby, it’s time to collect. Or pay up if you’d put your money on a girl. We had an ultrasound yesterday and saw that it is a boy - no mistaking it. We also were able to see that he has four chambers in his heart, a stomach, and kidneys. All good things to have.
Next on the agenda is finding a name. That should be an interesting task. We’ve had thoughts of names in the past but we’re not decided on anything yet, so we’ll let everyone know when we’ve made our final decision. If anyone wants to submit suggestions feel free to leave us comments. I suggested to Nate on Sunday that we name our baby Pastor Scott. That way when we’re late for church we can say, “So sorry we’re late, but we had to change Pastor Scott.” That would be funny.
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.
All right Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close up
We have our first ultrasound pictures!
I know it looks like a black blob, but when we were there we could see him/her kicking and moving around. We were glad to see that
- the heart was beating strongly
- no arms were sticking out of any heads
- there was only one baby
See the whole photo set here.
UPDATE
Ashley had another ultrasound at the SCV Pregnancy Center’s new sonogram. These pictures came out better than before and are recommended if this is the type of thing that interests you.
Baby Toys 101
Nate and I have some very specific ideas about the kinds of toys that we would like our children to have. While some of this is based only on preference, some of it comes from having 700 sq.ft. in our condo and knowing that we have no place to put 3′x3′ baby gym. That’s 9 sq.ft. of precious floor space! We were walking through Target tonight and saw things like Lincoln Logs and said, “We should totally get these for the kids someday.” We also came across the battery operated dragon that roars, moves it’s head and “breathes fire” and said, “No way.” We both have a traditional view of toys and have seen dozens of kids set aside the flashy new toy and play contentedly with the box it came in. While we do appreciate the strides that mankind has made to improve early childhood development, we are confident that this can be made without the crib mounted remote control aquatic sounds simulator that we saw on the shelves tonight. So here are some examples of things that if we receive as gifts we will be returning if possible or that may find their way over to grandma and grandpas living room:
Here are some toys that we love:
Nate’s going to create a Baby Murray Gift Buying Guide Flowchart for the interested gift buyers out there. Stay tuned, it should be interesting.
Murray Baby Stats
Due Date: September 17, 2008
Current Size: Grain of Rice
Gender: Unknown (Nate thinks it’s a boy)
Hometown: Ashley’s Uterus
Habitat: A dark world punctuated by sounds of digestion
Favorite Foods: Cucumbers and Ice Cream
Hobbies: Listening to dad play the upright bass, sleeping, growing a head
Thing Most Looked Forward to After Birth: Being read to, being the final member of dad’s jazz trio, long walks on the beach
