I can't believe that came from your mouth!
BabyBelch
Welcome Cartney
Jun 20th
Cartney was born at 9:50 PM yesterday. He is a healthy baby boy weighing in at 7 lbs and 13 ounces and 22 inches long. Mom and baby are doing fine. Dad’s a frazzled mess and had to swing by the house to grab a good shower and some breakfast and some extra things for Mom.
Update!
We got home a short while ago, Thursday afternoon. And its been a flurry of activity getting settled in at home. Mom is doing great and is able to walk around rather well. The cats are quite startled and aren’t quite sure what to make of the new little interloper.
Now that I finally have a reliable internet connection, I can upload my video. Here is Cartney, just a few minutes old. And it blows my mind quite a bit that people like me upload videos of their newborn on YouTube.
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Loading ...Going to the Hospital
Jun 19th
Its time! We are off to the hospital for childbirth!
The next time I update should include some happy news and maybe even a photo or two.
For those that are wondering whether or not I have a woman screaming at me for blogging when I should be getting her to the hospital, don’t worry. I wrote this post earlier as a draft. It was only two clicks to post. Seriously.
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(1 votes, average: 6.00 out of 6) Loading ...Die Hard With Bunnies
Jun 14th
As posted earlier, we were watching Spike TV’s Guys Choice Awards. In just about every commercial break were awesome movie trailers, and the latest one for Die Hard 4 came on and I told my wife that we would probably have to see that one in the theater since I had seen all the others when they came out on the Silver Screen.
Then she reminded me that it may be hard to do with an infant. (Maybe I can sneak off and see it by myself one evening) She also told me that she has never actually seen any of the movies, which got me excited because one of the best movies of all time is the original when John McClane has to fight terrorists threatening to blow up the Nakatomi Plaza. I have it on DVD and may have to make her watch it.
But as a preview, here is Die Hard, but with Bunnies in 30 seconds.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Very Memorable Baby Shower
Jun 3rd
My wife and I are very fortunate to have such great friends and family. Yesterday was a fabulous baby shower thrown by our friends Dana and Arlene at Arlene’s home, which happens to be very close to the Fox Meadow winery high atop a Shenandoah mountain in Virginia.
It was a beautiful misty day at Fox Meadow Winery
First came a wonderful Scottish blessing on our unborn child by our dearest loved ones and friends, followed by a generous shower of gifts for the baby. We were lucky to receive everything we would need to get started with a newborn, which is a great relief to my wife, who is getting bigger by the day and is ready for birth.
One gift that was fabulous was a quilt made by my sister-in-law Suzy, based off a pattern she copied from a photo from this blog.
We saw this quilt and were blown away at the craftmanship and thoughtfulness.
She took careful notes from my nursery post here and created a wonderful quilt that our baby will be able to enjoy for years.
Closeup of the quilt’s detail.
After the shower we went to the winery for wine tasting, food and live music. Everyone had a fabulous time watching the mist play atop the mountains and snacking on cheese, olives and sausages. Old friends were reunited and friends and family really enjoyed a warm day in the mountains. At one point, my buddy Robb, who was gracious to host the baby shower, picked up a spare guitar from the paid musician at the winery and showed him how to play a couple of journey songs.
It is just so heartwarming to have such close friends that can make our baby shower so memorable. Thanks to everyone who came and we will be calling you with good news in just a few weeks!
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Bellycasting
May 26th
We are making a Belly Cast. Ingredients is one very pregnant belly, lots of plaster casting strips and whatever paint you want. And yes, its a bit messy, but it is lots of fun.
A great bellycasting site is here.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Mother’s Day Gift
May 12th
My wife is about to have our very first child, so it would have been wise to get my wife a little Trinket for her very first Mother’s Day. So I went out today and got her a Trinket.
Trinket is a medium haired tuxedo kitten who is very affectionate, brave in her exploration of her new surroundings, and friendly enough to get along with the current feline resident, Rogue. She also has six toes! Just like the Key West cats of Ernest Hemingway, this kitten looks like she has opposable thumbs. I think her feet look like a chameleon’s feet, especially when she walks.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Pregnancy Really Is Funny
Apr 16th
I have been telling everyone that they need to see the new ABC show “Notes From the Underbelly” because it is a hilarious and eerily accurate depiction of the madcap adventures of pregnancy. And this show seems to cover it all- the decision of have a child, the trying, the success, the fearful realization that life is going to change- to the cravings, the hunger, the nesting, the weird pregnant couples who give too much advice, and yes, the mood swings.
My pregnant wife was watching it and was laughing so hard she had to pee twice during the first episode. Now thanks to on demand websites and awesome software plugins, you can watch the episodes online with amazing clarity. Click here to watch the first episode of “Notes From the Underbelly.” You may have to install the video stream code to watch it.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Another Reason to Stay a Chevy Man
Apr 11th
With my family getting bigger soon, I will be needing something bigger than my two-seater Chevy SSR. I had tossed around the idea of looking at the Ford lineup. I’m glad this article came out to prevent me from making THAT mistake. I’ve been a happy Chevy owner for 8 years now, and as far as I know, the CEO of GM doesn’t go around joking about killing the President. So I’ll stick with Chevy.
From Reuters here:
Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally is no longer laughing about his suggestion that he saved President Bush’s life during a recent White House visit.
The No. 2 U.S. automaker on Tuesday apologized after Mulally said his claim of intervening to prevent U.S. President George W. Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of an experimental Ford vehicle had been meant as a joke.
Ford said Mulally never expected the story he told journalists in New York last week would be taken seriously.
The CEO found himself in an embarrassing situation when the story was featured on blogs and even in mainstream media like the Financial Times, which said “he may have saved the incumbent of the Oval Office from blowing himself up.”
Recounting the meeting at the White House on March 28, Mulally said he noticed the president appeared to be ready to plug the power cord into the wrong outlet of a rechargeable vehicle that also runs on hydrogen.
“I violated all protocols. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front,” Mulally told reporters last Wednesday.
“I wanted to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen,” he said to roars of laughter from the media, before adding: “This is all off the record, right?”
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...4D Ultrasound Shots
Apr 4th
We went to get a 4D ultrasound of the baby today. A 4D Ultrasound is just like a regular one, but internal software renders the objects detected as having a skin-like coating. The results are pretty remarkable. First up is his little hand.
The baby really did not want to be photographed today. He hid behind his hands most of the time. The medical technician, named Tatyana, was really pressing the wand hard to get these next shots.
My wife was not really happy about getting this one done. It was way to early in the morning, the technician was too rough with her, the baby was kicking pretty hard, and the free procedure was mostly for fun.
As we were leaving and getting into the car, my wife told me, “I may not have gone to medical school for eight years like she did, but I could easily tell her that she was doing it wrong!”
So BURN! Take that, Tatyana, and don’t forget to pay your student loans.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Nursery Update- New Furniture
Mar 15th
The baby furniture arrived! We got the furniture from a really great store called Baby 2 Teen. The furniture will grow with our child from a crib, to child bed, to a twin bed. And though we still have about three months until the baby comes, we couldn’t wait to see what the finished nursery was going to look like. We had worked too long and too hard at rearranging the whole house in order to get the nursery painted and put together, so we put the bedding on the crib and finished decorating.
My wife suspended the stuffed sea turtle from the ceiling using fishing line. We also got a fabulous hutch to go along with our changing table/dresser.
Just a couple of closeup details below of what is on the hutch and the turtle over the power outlet. We got a bunch of these little turtles really cheap at Michaels Arts and Crafts and painted them to match the rest of the nursery.
And for some reason, this child already has lots of stuffed animals. And all of them either giggle, purr or laugh. We tossed them into a white netting suspended from the ceiling.
And the white teddy bear is a Belch.com bear, of course.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Finished Painting the Nursery
Mar 10th
Okay, it may be a little early, but we have now finished the painting of the nursery. This entailed putting some hand-painted turtles on the walls, fixing some drips, dribbles and similar issues. We expect the furniture to arrive on Saturday. This is just one of the walls. The others are similar, but this is the only one with two turtles.
Yeah, the turtles look like they are flying or something, but we think its cool. I’ll update again next week once the furniture is in place.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...My Family Got Bigger Today
Mar 9th
I am an uncle again today. My brother and his wife gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby boy. Tristan is 8 pounds 6 ounces and twenty inches long. And mom is doing great.
Just three and a half more months for me and my wife until our baby comes!
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Nursery Update
Mar 5th
We have been working on the nursery all week. I know I had written earlier that I wanted to do a Pirate theme, ala Peter Pan and the Pirates. But that was before we found out that there simply aren’t any nursery bedding that was based on Peter Pan.
But my wife is a huge fan of Sea Turtles. We even went to a turtle farm in the Grand Caymans on our honeymoon. We found a great sea turtle nursery bedding set and decided to paint the nursery to match it. The quilt shows the colors and turtles below.
So after getting the chair rails in and painted, we painted the walls. It was a cornflower blue below the chair rail, a lime yellow above, with turquoise waves hand painted springing from the top of the chair rail.
We also replaced all of the outlet covers and the light switch cover.
We also found an adorable giant stuffed sea turtle at a local toy store in Arlington. We brought it home and plan on hanging it from the ceiling to provide a cool 3-D offset for the rest of the room.
Next we will hand-paint turtles on the walls, along with some scattered starfish to match the crib sheets and comforter. We also have some really cute wooden turtles that we plan on hanging on the walls as well. I will provide more photos as we near completion.
Now if we can just get our furniture delivered….
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Working on the Nursery
Feb 25th
We have been getting the nursery ready for painting today. This involved installing chair railing around the nursery. The cutting was done with a mitre box and some shims to hold the railing in place.
My wife did an awesome job with the wood filler and putty to make the joints in the corners look smooth. We also used caulking along the edges to make it look like it was part of the wall.
To finish it off, we used white semi-gloss spray paint. Now that it is dried, we are going to tape it off and paint.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...It’s a Boy!
Jan 29th
We got back from the 20 week radiology appointment this afternoon after an extended ultrasound. The great news is that it’s a boy! According to the ultrasound, the fetus has all of its fingers and toes, and the heart looks normal and strong. Bone size and structure is good and everything looks healthy.
We have already ordered our furniture for the nursery, which is white painted wood crib and changing table with attached hutch. The crib is designed to grow with the child and can convert into a twin bed which should serve his needs into his teens.
This also means that we can now pick out our colors for the nursery. We want to paint a mural along the wall. I wanted pirates, and the Missus wanted faeries, so we decided on Peter Pan which will give us both pirates and Tinkerbell and her friends. We plan on coming up with a view of the ocean and a Pirate ship or three, along with a view of the Lost Boys’ hideout in Neverland.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Nesting Makes You Tired
Jan 16th
I spent most of the weekend working in the basement changing the old art room into the new guest bedroom. This mostly involved shuffling a lot of the old art supplies into the new space and taping and painting the guest room. We chose a vibrant semi-gloss yellow for the walls on the theory that a dark space with no windows should be bright. Is it bright? Well, its definitely Yellow.
The next hard part was wrestling a queen-size bed and boxsprings down two flights of winding stairs. I had to take one door off its hinges and most of the pictures off of the walls to keep them from getting smashed. And there was considerable shoving and pushing to force the boxsprings around some tight corners. Then came the two dressers, which was merely awkward to move down, but it was made all the more difficult by having a kitten dash constantly between my legs in what I’m sure was a brilliant display of speed and agility.
Mad props to our friend Kristen who talked me out of taking apart the box springs to help them fit downstairs and for helping push when they got stuck.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Holiday Home Improvements
Jan 2nd
Posting has been particularly light because I have spent much of my long holiday weekend working in my basement. It is the first phase of creating a nursery for Baby Belcher.
The upstairs guest bedroom is going to be the nursery. But in order to change that room into a nursery, the furniture must be moved to the basement spare bedroom.
But the basement spare bedroom is the Art Room. So the Art Room needs to be moved to the basement family room. And in order to move all of the Art Room stuff, which includes paints, clay, beads and other stuff, I had to create a workspace, and preferably something sturdier than the card table we were using before.
So I bought and assembled some base cabinets and topped them with a solid countertop. (pictured above.) Its pretty nifty, has room for storage, and is a great height for either standing or sitting on a tall stool or chair. We can now move the rest of the supplies from the Art Room to the new workspace. When we get a few extra bucks, we will also install some hanging cabinets and more corner shelving.
Now we have an empty Art Room that we are going to spackle and paint to turn it into the new Guest Bedroom.
As an aside, it should be noted that I shopped both Home Depot and Lowes to plan and build this project. Lowes had everything I needed at great prices. Home Depot had very little in the way of base cabinets and no counters in stock. I will likely be using Lowes for the rest of the nursery projects.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Baby Gene Chop Shopping
Dec 28th
I doubt that this is a true story, or that Doctors would go along with a patient’s request for this, but it does pose an interesting ethical question. Should a parent that is disabled be allowed to genetically engineer a disabled child? Should you be allowed to request a dwarf? A deaf child? If homosexuality is truly a genetic function, how about a gay baby?
From the Washington Times here:
CHICAGO — The power to create “perfect” designer babies looms over the world of prenatal testing.
But what if doctors started doing the opposite?
Creating made-to-order babies with genetic defects would seem to be an ethical minefield, but to some parents with disabilities — say, deafness or dwarfism — it just means making babies like them.
And a recent survey of U.S. clinics that offer embryo screening suggests it’s already happening.
Three percent, or four clinics surveyed, said they have provided the costly, complicated procedure to help families create children with a disability.
Some doctors have denounced the practice, others question whether it’s true. Blogs are abuzz with the news, with armchair critics saying the phenomenon, if real, is taking the concept of designer babies way too far.
But the survey also has led to a debate about the definition of “normal” and inspires a glimpse into deaf and dwarf cultures where many people do not consider themselves disabled.
I think that parents who insist on creating handicapped children may not be mentally or emotionally fit to be a parent. They should be referred to a counselor by their doctor to deal with their own prejudices.
And remember, if they can identify the genes to make people a dwarf, or deaf, or gay, or color blind, then humanity is one step closer to a eugenics program in which undesirable genetic types are removed from the populace. The same people that would want to create a disabled baby are, in my opinion, on the same level ethically as anyone that would do genetic testing to weed out those traits in the human gene pool.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Baby’s Heartbeat
Dec 7th
We had a prenatal appointment today. My wife had a clean bill of health regarding bloodwork and fitness and the baby’s heartbeat sounded good, and according to the Doctor, right on target for this stage of development.
Even though I knew what to expect, hearing my own baby’s heartbeat for the first time was still a little stunning and an exciting moment for the both of us.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...A Man’s Diaper Bag
Dec 5th
Made from used tires and hemp. With metal studs and brads and a utility light. I guess after the kid gets bigger it could be used as a tool bag.
From Reuters here:
A U.S. handbag manufacturer is trying to make changing diapers a bit more macho — with a baby bag made from truck and tractor tire inner tubes.
Richmond, Virginia based Passchal has designed a “Dad’s baby bag” made from recycled inner tubes, trimmed with hemp, and fitted with a battery operated light to help locate that soother somewhere at the bottom of the bag.
Ken Kobrick, owner of Passchal, said the “Dad’s baby bag,” priced at about $175, was the latest in a line of bags that his company made from used truck and tractor tire inner tubes.
Way too much for a diaper bag. You could get a leather one for half this price or a denim one for even less. But its nice to see that manufacturers are now thinking of us guys when it comes to making these things.
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