The Number Field

Yesterday morning, all of a sudden, Jenny grabbed my hand and put it on her tummy. After a couple of seconds, I felt a little of what she was feeling--a little dimpling movement, just once or twice. Sunflower was definitely kicking around, and we could feel it. This was the first time that I felt her, even though Jenny has had some other moments, and we had already seen her moving on the ultrasound. I should post some more of those videos.

As an aside, please don't touch the belly of any pregnant woman unless invited! We've been warned that as it becomes more noticeable that Jenny's pregnant, random people will want to touch her stomach. We're thinking about having her work on some tummy defense maneuvers.

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We have a third member of our family that I haven't yet mentioned--our cat Jewel. Jenny has had Jewel since she was a tiny kitten abandoned in a bush outside the house of Jenny's father. She was meowing then, and continues to be a very vocal cat.

We're not sure how Jewel will react to the new addition to our family, since she really likes to be an only kitty. Also, we've heard from friends that before their first child's birth, their cat was the center of their world. Afterwards, it was just an animal in the house. I've promised that I will continue to play with Jewel, but we know that things will change.

We've always had a good time anthropomorphizing Jewel. Consider the following dialogue:

Jewel: Meow. Meow meow.
Jenny: Mark, Jewel just said that we should have fed her before we left, since we knew we were going to be out late.
Mark: Well, Jewel, we didn't think we would be out quite this late.

And so forth.

We're really looking forward Sunflower's arrival, so that she and Jewel can have whole conversations, as imagined and voiced by us.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post , Jenny wanted to find a better placeholder name. I'm not sure what to call this--it's neither a nom de plume nor a nom de guerre , and I don't want to call it an alias or moniker. We don't plan for it to carry over into nickname status once the baby is born.

I asked my brother Luke, and he suggested Sunflower. Jenny liked it, so that's what I'll be using. You might notice a previous post where I already gave it a try.

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The sonogram technician measured our baby's heartbeat as part of the exam. In this short video, you can hear it--the rate is 145.

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We're starting to get new additions to the home as we get ready for our little one. (Jenny told me that she doesn't like "Baby Girl" as a placeholder for the real name, so I'm taking suggestions.) Last night, Jenny went visiting teaching, and one of the sisters that she visits had a pile of books and a present for the baby. It's a very soft lamb doll, and it includes an audio player with a variety of soothing sounds–whales in the ocean, heartbeats, etc.–to help put the baby (or Jenny) to sleep. We love it!

You can't see the second new addition, but it also makes its presence known in the picture, because it is taking the picture. I've wanted a fancy camera for a while, and found a good deal on a Canon Digital Rebel XT. I'm pretty excited about it, and hope that I'll learn how to use it to take good pictures before February.

Finally, on a related note. Several weeks ago, we received a mysterious package containing a Willow Tree figurine of a father and mother holding a baby. We received it before news of the pregnancy was widespread, and all of the people we've asked about it deny being the sender. We can't figure out who the anonymous gift-giver was, and would really like to thank them. Since they must know us pretty well, I think that they'll find this blog eventually. So if this is our only opportunity: thank you for the beautiful present! And if the gift wasn't meant to be anonymous, please let us know, because we'd like to thank you for real.

Photo linked from flickr .

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It seems that everyone knows someone who was told they were having a boy, but ended up with a girl. Or the other way around. Typically, these statements are accompanied by detailed descriptions of how the happy parents had already painted the nursery pink and acquired a wardrobe to last until the child's fifth or sixth birthday, at least. However, I don't personally know anyone who has had this happen–it's always a friend's sister, or a distant cousin, or something like that. Not that it doesn't happen, but there must be other factors that prevent an accurate prediction, and it's not very polite to ask the person telling the story if they could dig a little deeper.

In any case, we asked our ultrasound technician how accurate her prediction would be. She told us that when she first started out, she was offended by that question, but as time has gone along, she understood that people were asking because of all the horror stories, not because they doubted her. She claimed a 100% accuracy rate, and said "If you can't tell, then you must just not be looking. It's pretty obvious, if you take your time" (or something to that effect). She backed up her words with some pretty convincing ultrasound evidence, and we have the photographic proof. We're confident in the prediction.

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Hi, it's Mark. The default title for this post is an inside joke for computer programmers: whenever you learn a new computer language, in order to get just a little bit of a feel for the syntax and structure of the language, your first program is just supposed to print "Hello World" on the screen. This is my first attempt at blogging, so it's very appropriate.

Here's a look at someone who isn't quite ready to say "Hello world!" yet, but we're starting to say hello to her:

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