It Is an Odd Year

The beard is back. Yes THE beard. If you know me well enough in real life or if you've read this blog long enough, you know what the beard means.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

There is still time to guess the baby birthdate, weight and sex. But not much time. We're in the home stretch now. Julie is having contractions nearly every day now. She's tired most of the time but gets sudden bursts of energy to complete tasks like reorganizing all the children's clothing in the house (i.e. nesting). The nausea that has been absent since the first trimester has subtly returned. She claims that the baby has moved from crowding her lungs to crowding her bladder. This party could get started any day now.

Here's where the betting has trended as of this morning:

Birthdate: 9/3/09
Sex: Female (by a ratio of 5 to 3)
Weight: 7 lbs. 4 oz.

Some of you have asked what's in it for the person who wins the guessing game. I thought long and hard and I've come up with a pretty stellar selection of prizes from which the winner can choose:

Prize #1: Baby Name. That's right. I'll let you name the baby. (I still need to run this one by Julie, but I'm sure she'll be cool with it.)

Prize #2: Baby Diaper. You can have the first one (of thousands) that I'll be changing. For those of you not in the know, the first one will not be filled with poo, but rather with meconium. Some people believe this mythical substance can grant magical powers like invisibility or the ability to fly. (Not sure if you have to rub it on your face or eat it or what. You'll have to let me know how that works out.)

Prize #3: All Inclusive Two-Week Vacation. Vacation to my house that is. And all inclusive as in changing diapers and feeding babies that is. What?! That's not a prize?! Like hell it isn't. Just think how much more you'll appreciate your tranquil life after you've spent two weeks at ground zero. Money can't buy that kind of zen-like like enlightment.

Prize #4: Stuffed Rabbit. This is no ordinary stuffed bunny. This thing is four feet tall, weighs thirty pounds and has spent the last two years in a musty, unfinished basement. Ol' "Fluffy" has been gifted and re-gifted so many times that this is actually the third separate occasion that it has been in my possession. What does this have to do with the baby? Nothing, really. I just want the damned thing out of my house. If you choose this prize option, you pay shipping and handling, but the asthma inducing mold and any stray spiders are included at no extra cost.

Prize #5: My Beard. The beard is coming off once the baby is born, so what better way to celebrate your victorious prognostication than with my actual beard. It will be packaged in a genuine Ziploc storage bag and would look lovely mounted above your mantle next to your deer rack and large mouth bass.

Contest open to all legal U.S. residents (including Obama). Limit one entry per person. Not valid with any other coupons or offers. Prizes subject to change without notification. All decisions are final.

Click on this image above or the one to the right to guess the baby's birthdate, weight and sex. The "winner" will be the person with the closest guess to the actual birthdate and with the correct sex. Closest birthweight breaks any ties.

Pregnancy, Explained

I kinda threw that whole "we're pregnant" thing out there without having the time to share any of the details. Sorry about that. I'll elaborate now.

Sometimes, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they...

OK, not that kind of explained. Go talk to your parents if you need the birds and the bees talk.

Anyway. So we're pregnant with number four. And yes, we have confirmed that there's only one baby swimming around in there this time. Was this planned? Not exactly. Actually, we were pretty proactive about trying not to get pregnant. (Except for the whole [ahem] part. Obviously.) If you are looking for a good birth control method, do not ask us. Kids, let this be a lesson to you... nothing is fool proof. So we weren't planning on getting pregnant, but I in fact knew that we would soon be getting pregnant. How did I know? Because we had just decided that we would like to get pregnant again about a year from now. Every time we've decided that we want to get pregnant at some point in the future we get pregnant some time in the present. Over the holidays we had started talking about when would be a good time to try to get pregnant again and right away I knew that this inevitably meant I would soon be staring at a positive home pregnancy test. And here we are. I should also point out that when we get pregnant it also means that our cousin Chandra will also soon be pregnant. I'll be keeping a close eye on her blog in the coming months.

So where does this put us now? We're approximately 10 weeks deep so far. That puts baby number four, God willing, here some time in September. The crazy thing is that having a baby in early September means we will have our fourth child slightly before our oldest child even turns four years old. Crazy. Really crazy. If you would have asked me four years ago if I would have four children by now I would have said it was mathematically impossible. So much for my math skills.

I've made it known that I do not want to find out the sex of the baby this time around. As with most things pregnancy related (actually, now that I think about it, most things in general), my opinion has no bearing on the matter. Julie has remained suspiciously quiet on the subject. I'm not sure if that means she's agreeing or if she has her own plans and she's just ignoring me. We've tried it both ways previously. With Jameson we didn't find out. With the twins, we did. Lots of people tell us it's silly not to find out because it limits preparation time and it's no less of a surprise to find out now rather than nine months from now. I disagree. First of all, Julie and I don't begin our preparation until we're back from the hospital and don't have a suitable bed ready for him or her, anyway. We didn't even name any of our kids until a few hours before we left the hospital. Second, I think it makes the birth even more exciting not knowing if it's a son or a daughter you are about to welcome into the world. As for a preference for the sex of baby number four, I think we can honestly say we don't have one. It will be great to have another girl and give Amelia a little sister. But it would be equally cool to have a third boy tearing up the house with Jameson and Truman (and Amelia could forever be the little girl of the family). We'll be stoked with whatever we get.

So are we really out of our minds? Probably. On those nights when even an hour of sleep seems divine I wonder just how crazy are we to be having a fourth baby??? But then after work when I'm greeted at home by kisses, screams, smiles and shouts I wonder how I could possibly not want more of this. And when I see the kids together, and how much they absolutely love each other, I can't imagine prolonging the expansion of our family. So yes, we're probably crazy. But let's just pretend we mean crazy like a fox.

Announcement II

Oh, and I think I may have forgotten to mention... we're pregnant. :)

CONGRATULATIONS!

Jim and Liz have officially welcomed Shea Emerson (what a cool Irish name) into this great big world. They're going to be awesome parents. (But for the record, they have no idea what they've just gotten themselves into.)

Shea is beautiful and our little clan here is so very excited for her and her family. We all can't wait to meet her. Stop over at their site to check out their angel and congratulate them.

And toddler boys of the world with future aspirations... beware. I'm sure Jim is picking out his shotgun right now...