Making progress!

There's a lot of signs of progress within the family.

Lil' Genghis, the doctor says, has finally flipped. Not gone nuts -- we have no proof of that, not yet -- but flipped upside down, out of breech position, meaning she's ready to make the big run.

Lil' Genghis doesn't appear quite ripe just yet, though, and will likely stay on the vine a bit longer than we had been led to expect. Lotta confusion with the doctor, who now predicts something like March 12-March 16. She's been full-term since Sunday, so whenever she goes for it, she should be just fine.

Other signs of progress in the family are more academic.

Aunt Claudinha, the brave young woman who lived for a while alone with a big Rottweiler named Thor, has translated her love of animals into a veterinary degree. She's now one of three doctors in that immediate chunk of family, following Uncle Eddie and their dad. We had a nice picture of her from a yearbook kinda deal, but it sorta got misplaced on the way to turning our bedroom into part nursery.

dad, five months late, received his latest degree in the mail: a M.A. in B.S. ... er ... a master's in journalism.

Last, but not least, Aunt Becky's sister, Jenny, graduates this Thursday from Quartermaster school, not long after making lieutenant and getting an MBA. That's preparation for her deployment to Tal Afar, which sounds like a scenic vacation spot but ... isn't.

Best wishes to the graduates!

Sleep

"Get your sleep now," mom's coworkers tell her. "You'd better sleep now, because you're not going to get any," Uncle Ted tells dad.

We're trying. mom can't be in a position for more than about ... 90 minutes ... 60 minutes ... 30 minutes ... 20 seconds without feeling uncomfortable. Last night, dad came home from work after nearly 12 hours away, without a real break, and followed mom to watch TV ... in bed ... at 8:30 p.m. He woke up in his work clothes around midnight, with mom telling him the dogs were going to explode. Too tired for a shower, passed out again (in more appropriate clothing), woke up, found a coin underneath him that he'd slept on all night, used the bathroom, found another coin adhered to his back from the entire night, hopped in the shower, discovered a huge bruise on the inside of his arm that he couldn't remember.

Sleep now? Are you guys kidding? This gets worse? =)

On a not unrelated note, dad met two ladies yesterday for work, and one was embarrassed about the behavior of her dogs. He wasn't surprised. When he showed them the video of boydog and girldog fighting, she wasn't surprised. It seems the sheer power of bad-dog-i-ness transcends all lines.

So, speaking of sleepiness, dad wound up recommending she try a coffee press to get the strength she wanted. Turns out that same day mom was buying another coffee machine for Grandma Maria to survive when she visits.

Sleep? Yeah, right. =)

Primo ... primo!

Great news from the baby front!

Lil' Genghis is now scheduled to get a primo primo. Primo, of course, is the Portuguese word for cousin. She's gonna have a cousin because Aunt Cristina announced today she's going to be a mom, with Uncle Robinho!

The little guy -- or girl -- is due at the end of October, which gives us all plenty of time to get used to the idea of Lil' Genghis having a nice play buddy when we visit for Christmas.

The news came as mom and dad were thinking more about being parents, and were celebrating their wedding anniversary. Now we have to think about being aunts and uncles, too. =)

For what it's worth, Aunt Cristina is also known as Piu, which is the Brazilian name for Tweety Bird. So here, for lack of anything better, we can only offer artists' conceptions of how Aunt Cristina's pregnancy might progress:

Educated and diagnosed

We finished our fourth class this past weekend, learning more about caring for Lil' Genghis, including CPR classes. Do you know when you do CPR you're supposed to compress the chest 1/2 to 1/3 of the way to the floor? Yowza. That part of it was a bit scary, and mom seemed overwhelmed. dad thinks, much like a Springfield M1A with 18 rounds of API-T 7.62mm NATO, it's something that's good to have around but certainly hope you never have to use it. That said, we're getting CPR certificates but not the rifle. Damn. Maybe dad can get it when she's ready to date.

All of that said, we highly highly highly recommend these types of classes. All told, we took classes in childbirthing, breastfeeding, infant care and CPR/safety. We highly highly highly recommend them.

In other news:
Some years ago, America changed its rules so prescription drugs could be directly advertised to consumers. The idea is that a consumer, better educated through the advertising, can better ask the doctor for help. So there's this new drug out there, Avodart, which seems likely to help mom with the problems she's been having lately. Let's take a look:

	Frequent urge to urinate
	Getting up to urinate two or more times a night
	Difficulty emptying your bladder
	Urination stops and starts
	Urinary symptoms that get in the way of your daily life

According to this, mom really needs to talk to her doctor about an enlarged prostate.

Ain't science great?

She dropped the baby

Ladies and gentlemen, it's official: mom dropped the baby.

Lil' Genghis seems to have gotten engaged. Yeah, dad didn't even know she was dating!

So, things are moving, but we're not quite sure if this applies just yet:

We may be lost, but we're making good time

We're not quite sure if she's pointing the right way, which, to most people, would be exactly the wrong way. If not, she might still have time and room to flip. Meanwhile, we'll be flipping out.

We still need to take, download and process the before-and-after photos, just to show how much mom's belly has changed in the last day or two. However, we do have some artist depictions suggesting how much mom's basic form has changed.

Before:



After:


A few more weeks and we'll have a new St. Pete!

Preparations

mom has been sleeping maybe an hour and a half at a clip, which might just be nature's way of getting her ready for Lil' Genghis' feedings. Nature seems to have a lot of tricks like that, few of which are particularly friendly to the mother.

Meanwhile, we got the crib set up last weekend. mom says she's already ordered a Geoffrey Giraffe print or some such for the wall. dad has another idea, one that offers the high-contrast, vivid colors that babies can best perceive; when the little lady grows older, of course, she could understand other messages of this artwork. It would also give her greater appreciation of boydog and girldog and reinforce the ideas of friendship, cooperation and sharing. Don't you, dear reader, agree this could be a better piece of art for the nursery?


On an unrelated note, another relative may be searching for room-appropriate furnishings. Aunt Melissa just got new digs, where she'll almost certainly be hoping that Uncle Rodrigo finally figures out the right way to hang toilet paper (see comment, at bottom). If he can't figure it out, perhaps he can buy her this little accessory and keep the manufacturer's photo handy:

If not, perhaps, sharing in the joy of her new home, he can read her some lovely sonnets to acquaint her with the new home. If that doesn't work, there's always spam haiku:

SPAM in the toilet. Should I flush, or fish it out? It's hard to decide.

Pudgy baby?

dad herein offers his prediction: Lil' Genghis is gonna be pudgy. Yeah, OK, mom has gestational diabetes, which ups the ante, and her family has been known to have pudgy babies in general. But, still, there's this nature vs. nurture thing going on. From our hospital's guidebook:

Infant Nutrition
What can I eat while breastfeeding, continued

Some foods such as garlic, onions, and mint have been found to change the odor and flavor of breast milk. Researchers studying garlic in breast milk found peak levels in the milk two hours after the mother ate garlic. When the garlic levels were high, babies suckled more vigorously and took in more milk. These researchers speculate that we teach breastfeeding babies about family food preferences by exposing them to a variety of flavors in the breast milk.

A good chunk of mom's family is Italian, of course, and one of her favorite sayings is, simply:

I have garlic and I'm not afraid to use it!

This is a woman who buys the minced garlic in like a quart/liter jar, which never seems to last very long. Yeah. Lil' Genghis is going to be awfully hungry. =)

Babies suck

mom and dad spent the morning at a breastfeeding class, part of their continuing effort to get all edumacated n stuff.

One true highlight: Many women suffer from a swelling of the breasts when excess milk makes them swell. Maternity wards in Australia and New Zealand stock cabbage for their patients because that's supposed to help. Then the true quote:

If cabbage seems weird to you, try frozen peas.

This, we couldn't have guessed. (Frozen peas are good for reducing swelling, possibly better than the blue ice packs, we were told.)

We also learned that babies suck. Babies well and truly suck. Babies suck so badly, in fact, that sucking comes second only to breathing.

You can have a baby suck down dinner, then offer baby a bottle and baby will just keep on sucking. Sucking is more important than eating. Babies just, well, suck.

In the early stages of development, of course, it's hard to tell if your Genghis is going to be a world leader or a worldly loser. Perhaps parents, unsure of their true ability to brag about potential, must walk around and say, "Wow! My baby really, really sucks!"

We'll find out soon enough.

EDIT: The swelling comes from excess milk, not water. Try not to rely on this blog for facts too much, though the bit about flourescent green puke was true.

Irony is where you find it

We got Lil' Genghis started on her political education at an early age, with a subscription to pinko The Nation magazine, which promptly sold her name to a million junk-mail lists.

dad was waiting until her birth to share with you the best pieces of mail that's come in her name, but today, something arrived, that seems unlikely to be topped before her birth.

Disclaimer: This isn't a political blog. We're not trying to turn it into one. This is about our daughter and the ironies of her life already. dad hopes our readers can see the irony in here, with this kind of mail going to an unborn girl. Again, irony, unborn child. We're not advocating anything here. We just think any reasonable, intelligent person -- which should be mostly all the family and friends here, except for Uncle Rodrigo -- should be able to appreciate the irony of this kind of mail going to an unborn girl.

The best piece of mail prior to today from John McCain, an often-tortured man who mailed our daughter just after advocating torture after turning his back on his own attempts to ban torture outright.

But, today, the mailman brought the whopper.

Dear Genghis ...

Personal and private childbearing decisions belong to a woman and whomever she chooses to consult -- her family, her doctor, her faith -- no one else should interfere, especially not politicians. It's her life, her body, her choice.

There's even a pretend-personal note written from the pro-choice folks to our unborn daughter:

When family goes bad ... (2)

mom and dad shared a sweet, tender moment with Lil' Genghis this evening.

There mom was, out of the shower, still in the bathroom, calling dad over.

Hey, look over my shoulder here.

Do you see that? Do you see how big my belly has gotten?

Did you see my belly move? Our little girl is kicking me!

Dad made the appropriate observations, which were truly touching. Then, because he never misses a chance to scuttle a sentimental moment, offered his own comment:

Hey! What's that weird thing on your foot?

Enter brief moment of panic.

Yep. Four years of dating, three years of marriage, and we still got it.

When family goes bad ...

... watch out!

Some of boydog's cousins are on the prowl, and Atlanta's suburbs are on the alert.

Dozens of people have tried to corral two Shih Tzus in a Cobb County condo complex for several weeks, wooing them with fried eggs, dog treats and squeaky toys. The latest efforts to capture the homeless canines ended Tuesday — alas — with blurs of fur darting into the woods yet again.

"People have suggested dropping nets from trees or shooting them with a tranquilizer gun, but that would blow the fur right off of them," joked Robert Quigley, a Cobb County spokesman.

Please note these are distant cousins, of course. boydog is not known for his hunting or athletic abilities, nor street sense.