Going International...

If you google Waitingforzia, this is one of the links that pops up:

http://ja-jp.facebook.com/pages/waitingforzia/137494552977721

So this one's for you folks:
如果你是一塊衛生紙，然後用來擦拭某人的鼻子，你要考慮自己幸運，對不對?

And why is zebrahead so popular over there?

Second Most Disturbing Thing I Have Ever Seen (to date)

So today was appointment #4.  Very boring, which is a good thing.  No ultrasound, but we did get to hear the heartbeat again.  The heartbeat is a lot faster than I expected, but completely normal.  Given the precision and rhythm of the beat, I'm no longer entirely sure it is my child.  But anyway, while waiting for the doctor I saw a lovely little chart of concentric circles.... which was fine until I realized what it was.  Ten centimeters.... holy hell!

I sort of don't believe ten centimeters is possible, but I REALLY don't want to find out. 

(most disturbing thing I have ever seen?  Easily 6th grade health class, where we had to watch the "Miracle of Life".  Our normal teacher was smarter than we gave her credit for, as she was conveniently absent the day this film was to be shown.  So this poor substitute teacher got to come in out of the blue and "supervise" while a bunch of twelve year old were subjected to the unedited "beauty" that is natural childbirth.  The sub just went to the back of the room and pretended to read a magazine, not even attempting to quiet our shrieks of shock and horror, so it was pretty much a free for all the whole time.  So right after the birth scene, a certain kid, let's just call him "Frankie P", went up to the VCR and hit the rewind button.  So we all had to witness a video of child birth, then immediately a video of child birth IN REVERSE.  Watching the doctor shove that baby into that poor lady, even if she was 10 centimeters, easily the worst thing I have ever seen).

Anniversary

Happy "1 year without gluten" anniversary to the twins!

Much like I gave my niece her first Dr. Pepper and package of fun dip, thus cementing my status as "favorite person ever", I think I will win the love of Zia by giving her her first piece of bread after 9+ months of no gluten.

But anyway, nice job girls, your dedication is impressive.

Class

In an effort to ease us into not having any free time, Rachel has signed us up for a slew of classes to prepare us for the baby.  These classes take up just about every waking hour over the next few months.  It's not that I don't want to go to any of these classes being offered, it's just that I don't want to go to ALL of the classes being offered.  And while I understand the concept of moral support, I'm just not sure there is much for me to do at "The Joy of Breastfeeding" other than make inappropriate comments and get myself in trouble.

 

I'm also hesitant to go because I really don't think they will be able to teach me much (aside for the joy that is breastfeeding of course.)  I have changed a handful of diapers in my day, including my niece's world record 4 stomach-turning #2's in 7 minutes a year ago.  I've feed babies, burped babies, etc. etc.  I'm not an expert by any means, don't get me wrong.  But I just fear that the classes will be as absurd as all of the baby books I pretend to read while I wait for Rachel to fall asleep before I go back to Rolling Stone.   From what I have skimmed, all you need to do if you are pregnant to ensure a healthy baby is 1) consume your metric body weight in folic acid twice a day 2) stop drinking and smoking crack and 3) make your husband do more around the house. 

 

Since Rachel has been tired quite a bit from pregnancy, I've been trying to help around the house more.  And believe it or not, I actually knew that smoking crack was bad for developing babies before skimming the books.  So without any prior training, I already knew 2 of the 3 things that you need to know to ensure a healthy baby.  That being the case, what are these classes going to be able to teach me? Oh, you're not supposed to put your child in the dishwasher?  Thank god you told me!!!!

 

Maternity Pants

Belly bands, you worked wonders for, oh, I don't know, about 2 weeks, but now it's time to bring out the heavy artillery.  That's right, we've now graduated into maternity pants!  I think they should market maternity pants to fat guys as well.  Nothing worse than seeing a fat guy with his pants belted up under his giant belly, with gut hanging all over the place.  No one wants to see that.  So maternity pants for guys.  (This message brought to you by Rex Ryan and the New York Jets).

And since I have nothing interesting to say, I'll just pass along a brief exchange with Rachel:

Me: You can't just go to bed at 6 pm when we have people over... you're pregnant, not rude.
Rachel: I'm both!

So there you go, pregnant AND rude.  Lucky me!

Spilling the Beans

To say Rachel had a bit of a "baby fever" is like saying Michael Jackson had a bit of the "crazy".  Because of this, she took about a million pregnancy tests.  EPT's record third quarter sales are pretty much the result of Rachel peeing on so many sticks.  Because she was taking tests often, we knew she was pregnant approximately 11 seconds after conception (which was ironically the same amount of time conception took, but that's not really a story for a family blog). 
                                                                                                           

Pretty much all of the pregnancy books recommend waiting until the end of the first trimester (Spanish for "three mesters") before telling people you are pregnant.  Since Rachel knew was pregnant so early in the process, we had to wait a little longer than most couples to tell everyone, which got to be difficult.  We found out Nov 9, so we had to get through the Thanksgiving holidays without spilling the beans, which was unfortunate because there tends to be a lot of drinking events during this time of the year.  This put Rachel, like countless pregnant broads before her, in the un-enviable position of not only being sober around a bunch of drunk people, but also of having to lie to her friends.  This works out ok for a little while, but eventually your friends start to get suspicious.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

(quick side story, my favorite part about this time of our pregnancy was the time Rachel couldn't think of an excuse why she was not going out, so Sarah just told everyone that Rachel is lame, and her friends all blindly accepted that as the truth without suspicion.  Don't worry Rachel, no one suspects anything, they just think you are a loser!)                         
                                                                                                                                        

And really ladies, although you may think you are fooling people by drinking cranberry juice and pretending there is vodka in there, you really aren't fooling anyone. Why do you think all of your cheap friends were suddenly offering to buy you drinks? The problem is once the suspicion has been cast, people will go out of their way to get you to admit that you're pregnant. So I came up with what I thought was a pretty good system for avoiding the suspicion of pregnancy.  Pretty simple, just tell people the mother-to-be is on anti-biotics for an embarrassing personal problem.  "Thanks, really, I'm sure she'd love to do a grape bomb, but she can't.  Yeah, antibiotics.... killer UTI infection. Raging.  Festering actually.  Yeah, awful.  Her doctor actually threw up a little when he saw it."  
                                                                                                                

Hey, at least the questions will stop...  Just be sure to get agreement from your wife before you start this approach.  Lesson learned.
                                                                                                                  

Anyway, we're both glad we could finally spill the beans! The number of times I almost slipped was staggering, but Rachel had made it clear that if I told anymore before it was time, little Zia would be growing up without a baby daddy.
                                                                                                        

Next Dr. appointment has been postponed until Wednesday, as the Doctor had a scheduling conflict (I told you he was cocky!). 

The Rule of 7

It's hard to believe, but I actually have learned something.  I've learned that I have some strange disease where I always say stupid things.  It stinks because I don't even mean 95% of what I say.  Yet time and time again I am blurting out dumb jokes, mean comments, or inappropriate stories.  I can't stop it.  And the worst part is that I think everyone knows this about me.  Yet I'll find myself time and time again shocked that someone believed something I said.  (Like the time I convinced Jess that someone habitually poops the bed after drinking wine...)

I have found a way to temper this though, and it's called the "rule of 7".  Basically, I just need to not verbalize the first 7 things that come to mind at any point in time.  The rule of 7 has really kept me out of some sticky situations, although it's not perfect.  The one downfall of the rule of 7 is explaining the awkward silence while I am staring off into space and moving my lips slightly like a trout out of water while mentally crossing off thoughts 1- 7.  But sometimes its better for people to think you are a little slow mentally then to have to explain why you just asked the doctor if you can have an epidural too.
 
So when Rachel woke me up to tell me that she was pregnant, I definitely needed to employ the rule of 7.  But in the interest of fairness, here was the first 7 things that were skipped (and remember, I don't even mean any of these things):

Rachel: I'm pregnant
Me (mentally): 
1) We better have a lot of sex now before you get too fat
2) Awesome, designated driver for 9 months!
3) Are you sure it's yours?
4) So while you're pregnant, your boobs are going to get bigger, right?
5) Oh man, if it's a girl she better not start dating until she's 30.  In fact, let's try and make her a lesbian.  You buy an Indigo Girls cd and I'll sign her up for softball
6) It's a really good thing I went to Amsterdam last year, because my fun is over!
7) This would be a much more romantic moment if we both didn't have morning breath.

8) (verbally) "wow, sorry I haven't said anything for a while, I'm just so happy I can't put it into words."

The rule of 7.  Learn it.  Live it.  Love it.

Not the first of what is already, and will undoubtedly be, a long list of things I shouldn't have said.

So I thought I had a brilliant idea last night.  "Rachel, you know how guys have a bachelor party before they get married because their lives are about to change so significantly?  Well, since Pat, Drew and I  are all going to become dads around the same time, we should get to have a pre-becoming a dad party type of thing... and the best part us, we all have a designated driver!  What do you think?"

Week 12ish Update

Pregnancy week 12 is going well.  We have gotten the "going to bed early" thing more than down pat at this point, so from that respect the kid won't be that much of a shock.  What is a shock is the cost of day care.  As my one friend said, "I didn't realize I could afford a vacation home in Florida, then I had to start paying day care."  For as much as it is going to cost us, I'm not going to feel bad when baby pukes on the day care people.  In fact, I may encourage it. 

I'm also still a little creeped out by the whole doctor's visits things.  For example, the first time we were there, the doc needed to examine Rachel.  He whips out this big chunk of metal that looked like a 98% scale model of the jaws of life and started blindly probing at Rachel's um.... delicate parts.  That was weird enough, but what was really perplexing me was that there was a female nurse in the office specifically to watch the examination to make sure the doctor didn't assault Rachel.  This was a) a good thing as it protected Rachel b) a sad commentary on the state of the world that such a precaution was necessary and c) really made me wonder what counts as assault, as blinding stuffing large angular pieces of metal into my wife was A-OK.

I like the doctor as much as I can like anyone who does what he does to Rachel, although as I said before, he is a bit cocky.  No surprises I guess, if almost every woman I met took off her underpants within 15 minutes of meeting me, I might have a bit of a swagger myself.

So we go back at the end of January.  In the meantime, we are keeping on keeping on.  Although I will say that the exercises they suggest for pregnant women in all the books are not hard at all.  Really, lay on your side and lift your leg 10 times.... really?  That's it? It's like the WNBA of exercise regiments.  I mean, maybe at month 8 or 9 that could be hard, but at week 12 it's just embarrassing!