Bedknobs, Broomsticks & other Implements of Destruction

Turning toward the home stretch this week. Getting ready for X-mas insanity/fun and then onto the New Year, where we will be celebrating in DC again.

For those of you who don't know, last year we said our vows again at the Catholic church we attend (gotta keep those priests happy). We did this on December 30th (my parents' anniversary), and then spent the next few days in DC together. The best part was a James Bond themed NY Eve party at the hotel. It was awesome. 10 different rooms with different themes from some of the more memorable Bond movies, and 2 Bonds (one looked like an older Sean Connery, the other looked like Pierce Brosnan). Great fun.

This year, we're going to take Greg with us. This will be one of his "big" presents. We're going to stay the night and then hit all the big landmarks. Should be a good time as long as the weather holds out.

This will also be the last trip of any kind for some while (and the last for a VERY long time without needing a stroller, diaper bag, change of clothes (or six), bottles, formula, pacifier & various assortments of ointments and powders, not to mention a baby!)

So bring on the holidays! And have a blessed Christmas and New Year!

Loooong time to Wait

I'm really sorry. We're in full blown pregnancy preparations right now and it's been tough to sit and think about all the craziness to generate a coherent post. But here I am now, so be prepared for a long one. :)

We had the baby shower on the 29th of November. Our Thanksgiving weekend was thankfully mild in the traveling and hectic-family-seeing-department, so the party itself was still a lot of fun to put together and run.

We started off with the Pledge of Allegiance (if you forget, it was a school theme, so I was playing it to the hilt!) and announcements. For those of you who missed them, they are as follows;

• Our friends Tom and Nellie Hewitt will be the God-Parents.


• The baby is due (for those who didn't know) late February


• Due to a New Jersey mandate to crack down on the spread of H1N1 (Swine Flu Baby!), no one under the age of 17 will be allowed into a hospital. The only people who are exempt are a pregnant mother or the father of the baby. Needless to say, Greg (who is 13) is severely bummed .


• Please check the registry if you plan on getting anything for the baby for x-mas or afterwards. Still LOTS of stuff on there.

And finally, probably the most significant announcement since we found out we were having a girl;

Our little baby's name will be Victoria Rose Spalding. Nicknames we like are Tori, Via (my personal favorite) & Vikki (only if the other two are soooo painful to use that you can't help yourself, but if you do, two Ks please :p ).

There was much debate and suggestions emailed, texted, smoke-signaled back and forth, but we feel this is the perfect name for our little one and we are very excited to meet her soon!

So, on with the rest of the shower! Here's a pic of the cake!

Very cute birth sweater with matching knit cap and booties! The best part is we had the colors match the blanket my grandmother (soon to be 89 years old) knitted for us. As for the rest of the food, we had sloppy-joes, mac and cheese made by my Aunt Mary (very delish), Ants-On-A-Log (for those of you who don't know, that's celery with peanut butter in the middle and then raisins dotted on top) which was a surprise hit, and PB&J for the kids. We brought cookie cutters and made doggie, butterfly & various other animal shapes out of the sandwiches. My 5 year old niece Marissa acted as human vacuum cleaner for the scraps. :p

After that, it was on to the games! We had a word find and we played a game to measure the size of Bea's belly (36 1/4 inches, which Barbara's father guessed exactly! and her mom came in second at 36", funny that). We also handed out Old Maid cards to everyone at the beginning of the program. When we asked, everyone flipped their cards over. Whoever had the Old Maid (there were 4 of them in all) got to come up to the front and play a game of old maid. We made them wear the silliest looking hats (made by Bea's mom Debbie) and while they were playing, everyone else played an Old Wives' Tale Trivia where they had to guess if the Old Wives' Tale meant you were having a boy or a girl. Barbara's grandmother won that one (go figure, the oldest person in the room knew the old wives' tales the best). Barbara's cousin Nikki won the Old Maid hand and won a nice little jewelry box shaped like a pin cushion (a lot nicer than it may sound).

After all the festivities it was time to play Baby Bingo as Barbara opened the gifts! Lots of gifts, lots of laughs and in general, everyone had a great time! I'm so grateful to all the help I got from Nellie, my mom and sister, Bea's mom, Aunt Brenda, Aunt Mary and the host of people who helped set up that day.

And a special thanks to my two helpers, Greg and Lexi (Nellie's daughter) for helping hand out all the paper I was throwing at people and collecting them when they were done. They were oh so helpful with the little ones too (which was no mean feat as there were about 10 or 12 ranging from 5 down to 1!)

It went really well, and I will have no problem letting someone else take the next child's baby shower!! :p

Eventually I'll get some more pics up. And tomorrow I'll post the new updates as they've come up in the last half a month.

Burning the midnight oil

We are keeping busy working all sorts of hours (me in Project Management training and Bea getting ready for a big audit), so late nights seem to be the norm this week. But I didn't manage to get the extended baby gate installed in the playroom (formerly the den). It looks good I guess. Has a swing gate and everything. I'll have to take a pic to show what it looks like. Of course it hasn't been baby tested yet, so we'll see how it holds up once little ones are throwing themselves at it. :p

Just one more project done. Hopefully doing all this stuff now will save us the trouble of having to do it once the baby comes and we can focus on baby issues rather than house setup issues. We're only mostly not baby safe at the moment. ;)

Official Info

So I've finally got the invites out. For those of you who haven't seen them yet, here it is.



I left out a /few/ tiny details, so here they are in case you're wondering.

• RSVP by November 20th
• RSVP email and phone go to me...Mark...the father......
• THE REGISTRY IS AT BABIES 'R US!!! I totally whiffed on this one. Apparantly it's pretty important.
• Barbara's maiden name is Ackley. (This is really just for long lost relatives who didn't know she was even married, in which case they probably don't even know about this blog, but heck, I figure some info is better than no info at all, right?!)

Hopefully this clarifies some things. And if it doesn't, then wait until the next post!

Huzzah!!!

Sorry for the long lay off between posts. I got assigned to a new group for a month or so, so I'm driving about 3 hours and putting about 130 miles a day on the odometer. Fun. But it should be over soon, so that'll be helpful.

BUT, I couldn't put this off any longer. We finally got our second ultrasound and we are going to have a Little Baby Girl!! (we're only mostly ecstatic). Greg was there with us and we all shared in the moment. Very awesome. I've also managed to get the images scanned! Go me! I pay bills /and/ blog! I must be doing something right. So enjoy. I'll post again soon, I promise....

9 Weeks



20 Weeks

Baby Shower Date Set

It's official. Mark it in your calendars and make it if you can.

When: Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 2:00pm

Where: St. Joseph's on the Brandywine Church Hall
10 Old Church Road
Greenville, DE 19807
(302) 658-7017
http://www.stjosephonthebrandywine.org/

Details: The theme will revolve around early schooling, so the food, entertainment and other festivities will revolve around school classes and we will follow a typical "school day" schedule (don't worry, it'll be fun, trust me.......)

What to bring: A reading book (be creative, ie: in different languages, baby block type books, learning books or old favorites, anything will do and the bringer of the best book will get a prize!)

Many games and prizes will be had while giving Barbara a little attention along the way. Hopefully with the Thanksgiving holiday the same weekend some folks who couldn't normally make it may be in town (though we understand completely if you'll be OUT of town for the same reason).

If any more details are needed, let me know and I'll post them. You can search for any posts related to the shower on this site by doing a search in the "search blog" section with the words "baby shower"

Week 15

Currently Barbara and Greg are (hopefully) relaxing down in Bethany beach, soaking up the last of the summer sun before school takes the boy away and the fall steals the light of day.

Bea seems to be doing much better. Her energy is up markedly from a few weeks ago and she can make it through the day without having to crash for a nap (if by day you mean crashing at 7pm is a late night. :) ) Still a few weeks away from the next doctor appointment, but baby seems to be doing fine with dictating the terms of it's agreement with mommy's body.

In other news, Greg and I went out for his first real golf outing yesterday. Just a 9 hole course at the resort they're staying at this week, but perfect for a beginner. He did a great job (considering it's his first live action on the course) and we had some fun. In typical teenage form, the highlight of his round is that he almost hit a car on the last hole. God love 'em.

Week 13

So we're through the 1st trimester (somewhat officially). Bea is still feeling kind of tired (ok, very tired) and the normal ups and downs in her stomach haven't completely subsided, but we're hopeful the end to that is near.

In related news, we met the midwife yesterday for the first time. Very nice lady (very short, Barbara feels tall now). We went through all the rigamarole about family history (apparantly dad's isn't that important right now, which is fine by me what with the high cholesterol and all) and we listened to the baby's heart beat. It took some doing, the little rascal kept moving on her, but we eventually found the hummingbird zooming away in there at 160 beats a minute. Very cool.

All seems well so far. I'm going to try and scan the first Ultrasound from last month so I can post it in the next few days (Baby's first picture!!)

Yes, we're excited.