Experiments in Life

Just to inform folks, we are now registered at Babies ‘R Us and Target.

• Babies ‘R Us Registry
• Target Registry

Welcome to your late tweens! I am so glad that you finally caught up to me. No more old lady jokes for at least another 5 months

Seriously though, we’ve been together now for about 6 years now, almost 4 of those married. Over those 6 years, Jonathan has taught me a lot about many different things. Through him, I have even learned things about myself.

So, here’s to the man in my life who means the world to me. He is my husband, my partner, my best friend, my soul mate, the one who knows me even better than myself… The list could go on and on. I appreciate all that you do for me, even if I don’t say it directly. I thought of all days to tell you this, your birthday was the best. Thank you for all that you do for me. You are loved deeply (and more with each passing day).

Happy Birthday Jonathan!

What am I contemplating exactly?

Well, maybe it’s not so much contemplating but lamenting the loss of my belly button I knew that pregnancy would cause strange things to happen to me, but I seem to be rather preoccupied with the fact that my belly button is no longer in the right place. What is worse is that it is ever so slowly becoming an outie. Not that there is anything wrong with having an outie, but I have been an innie my whole life and this experience is rather unnerving. Logically I knew it would happen eventually, but knowing it and having it happen are two completely different things.

Who knew that something as strange and insignificant as this (when compared to actually having a child grow inside me) would disturb me so much. Maybe it is my body’s way of having me deal with the stress of pregnancy, besides the TMJ Perhaps my brain knows that I can’t deal with some of the more comman issues, such as is my child healthy, will I be a good mother, what is labor going to be like, etc. Instead, my brain has chosen to focus on something small and silly; something it knows I can handle.

For whatever reason, I seem to be very fixated on the loss of my belly button as I knew it. I knew I wasn’t completely crazy when I saw an advertisement for these: Popper Stoppers. Apparently at least a few other pregnant women have contemplated their naval as well

For me, it has become an obsession. Just ask Jonathan, I ask him almost every day if it is shallower than it was the day before. Oh well, at least I am entertaining

While I’m not quite in need of the popper stoppers yet, that day is fast approaching. So, if you see around and I look deep in thought, I’m probably just contemplating my navel. And whatever you do, do not ask how the belly button thing is going or I’m liable to introduce you to the latest fashion in popper stoppers

Finally, I motivating factor for me picking up HBO sometime in the future. HBO has acquired the rights to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. They plan to turn each of the books into a season-long set of episodes. Said Martin on his site:

[The executive producers and screenwriters] impressed the hell out of me, and I’m really looking forward to working with them. They’re both bright, passionate, enthusiastic. They know the books inside and out, they get the books, and they’re committed to bringing my story to your television screens… not a vaguely similar story with the same title (ala Earthsea, or what passed for same on the Sci-Fi Channel). A Song of Ice and Fire should be in very good hands.

Winter is coming.

Here is the latest picture documenting Ashley’s pregnacy:

I believe that this picture was taken last weekend. In addition, I have finally gotten around to uploading all of our pictures from Christmas. I have a few short video clips as well that I am going to try and get uploaded. Hopefully I will be able to get them up sometime soon.

I finished cataloging the books in the master bedroom this morning. Here are the current stats:

• 252 books scanned.
• 155 books are mine (61%).
• 97 books are Ashley’s (39%).

The upstairs will be a beast. Two full-sized bookshelves full of books, plus all of Ashley’s textbooks and many of my technical books on the computer desk. As a comparison, neither of our downstairs bookshelves are full-sized — they are only half-height shelves with storage underneath.

My father has it. I have it. And… my daughter has it.

It’s finally happened…

I can’t believe it…

I have finally felt the baby move! And how strange it is

I originally thought that I felt the baby move the week of Christmas. However, I was still very unsure since it was very ‘light’ and it occurred just before drifting to sleep. After Saturday, there is no doubt in my mind that I have felt the little one squirming about. And what a squirmer he/she is!

Jonathan was playing on the laptop and I was cross stitching Sat. afternoon. All the while, we were listening to music being piped through the stereo from Jon’s new ipod and ipod dock. We listened to a variety of music for most of the afternoon, and that is when it happened. I believe we were listening to some hard driving rock when I started to feel something. At first I wasn’t sure if it was the baby or not. But then it kept happening over and over, so much so that I knew it wasn’t some random body thing going on. The baby quitened down and took a nap after the rock was over, but then started squirming again later. I don’t remember what we were listening to then. I do know that the baby showed no preference for the arias we listened to later that evening Who knows, maybe we have a little musician in the works

Now I’ve been feeling the baby off and on since then and it has been weird. Granted, I’ve had 20 weeks to get use to the idea of a baby growing inside me, but it is very different to know that and to know that. It is definitely becoming more real to me as I continue to feel the movements our unborn child is making. It’s quite miraculous. Jonathan now gets an even bigger kick out of trying to wake the baby up by poking and jiggling my belly. One day, the kid is going to kick him

I can’t wait for Jonathan to be able to feel the baby move as well. I think there will be some magical bonding moments for the three of us when that day comes.

I really feel that I should talk about something insightful, about what it means to me to feel the baby moving for the first time. But I am at a loss for words. I simply cannot get over the amazement and wonder of what I am feeling, both emotionally and physically. Perhaps in a few days I will be able to better put my emotions into words, but until then I’ll be quietly waiting for little Tater Tot to move somemore.

Squirm away little one

For those of you who have not heard, I am doing fine, with one execption. I think I have some sort of pregnancy induced TMJ. It started right after Christmas. Of course, I did not know what it was then and it wasn’t all that painful in the beginning. Now the pain is a different story. I never would have believed how painful TMJ could be. I’ve never had a problem before now. I think it’s more than just coincidence that I am having problems now. Is this my punishment for skipping the morning sickness? Ugh, I can think of a million things I’d rather do than have TMJ. Oh well, I’ll get over it eventually. I just hope it doesn’t take another 20 weeks or so. Luckily my physical therapists have been trying to help me out with the pain. They’ve been massaging the outside and inside of my mouth trying to get everything to relax a little. I must say, that is a little weird. It’s like going to the dentist, only the person in your mouth doesn’t have any sharp pointy instruments and in a way, wants to cause you pain. No pain no gain, right? Anyway, last week was definitely very interesting at therapy.

I go to see my doctor on Wed. and I will have her look at it then. Maybe she can help out somehow. The jaw pain isn’t so bad, it’s the ear pain that is killing me. My ear hurts constantly and feels like a really bad earache. Unfortunately, we are pretty sure that is isn’t an infection, which means there is no easy fix for this. Looks like I’ll be working through some pain management skills early. This is defintely one physiology and anatomy lesson I will never forget, and hope to never have to repeat.

TMJ is a hard way to learn just how interconnected everything is. Before, I never thought about how my neck problems could affect my ear. I have learned so much about my body since I started physical therapy. Some of it is pretty scary. But I will not bore you with the details here. I realize that not everyone shares my love of biology

Much like Misty, I started cataloging all of Ashley and my books into Delicious Library. So far, I have processed the bookshelf in our dining room. Here is the breakdown so far:

• 170 books scanned.
• 95 books are mine.
• 75 books are Ashley’s.

Today, I did not care to start scanning books again — that is an arduous task. Perhaps later tonight I will start on our bedroom. Instead, I started playing around with the export capabilities of Delicious Library with the ultimate goal of getting our library linked as a page off of the site. Basically, Delicious Library exports the entire library as a tab-separated file with the field names as the first line and each following line containing the information for one scanned in item. While that file could be linked off of the site, it would not be very pretty. So, I wrote a small python script to munge the data into XML so that an XSL file could generate a web page from the data. That is working fairly well so far.

I have also found that Delicious Library stores all of its data as XML. So, I am considering just writing some code to transform that file into one containing only the data I am interested in. Either way, expect a new link off of the sidebar soon containing our library contents.