Naming Lil' P

One of our ongoing conversations that we have been having since before we were pregnant was what to name our future children. Dave and I both clearly remember that on one trip to visit Jessica and James we agreed on a boy name- however we can not remember the name! So when we found out that we were pregnant we started from scratch all over again.

We debated whether or not to share the baby names, but we want to be able to use the name during the pregnancy so here they are:

The Girl Name: As many of you know Dave had a little sister who passed away at a young age. We both wanted to honor her memory by using a part of her name if we had a girl. We have decided to use her middle name Claire as our first name. The middle name came about after a conversation with Jaime, who suggested Elizabeth. Once Dave spent some time researching names he found Elsbeth, which is the German (Melissa's heritage) version of Elizabeth. So there you have it if we have a girl she will be named Claire Elsbeth Gibbons.

The Boy Name: Since we can not remember the boy name that we thought up on that car ride, we had to start from scratch. We found that we had a long list of boys names, but we were grouping our favorites on the C's. After a few days we had narrowed down the list to the final three and after considering all of our criteria we settled on the Irish (Dave's heritage) name Cormac. We are still hammering out a middle name for Cormac so for now it is just Cormac Gibbons.

Sparky

In early June we went to a class to learn more about what we could do to help Sparky adjust to a new baby. As most of you know Sparky has been our baby for 3 years now and since he has a nipping problem we were worried about how he would react. The class was actually quite helpful as it gave us some pointers on what we could do now to prepare him for December. The goal is to make the changes now so that he does not associate all the changes with the baby.
After the class we acknowledged Sparky's biggest problems and how we could start to work on them:
1. When Sparky is in the car with the windows up he HATES trucks, runners, bikers, walkers, etc...and will immediately jump into the window and bark his head off. He lets nothing get in his way (including people) so we figured that this would be a BIG problem when there was a car seat in his way. One of the things that was suggested at the class was a harness for Sparky. I thought that this was a good option because it allowed him to stay up front in the car, but would limit his movement. We went to PetSmart and tried on a few harnesses before finding one that would fit Sparky. We immediately installed it and tried it out. On the way home it seemed to work well as it keep Sparky on his side of the car. However, when we got home we went to the backseat to release Sparky and found that he had already managed to get out of the harness. I didn't know whether to feel defeated with the harness or proud of our dog for figuring how to escape his trap. We're still working on what to do now...
2. Crawling babies = playmate for Sparky. We learned that Sparky likes to play with kids through several encounters with children. He loves that they like to throw him the ball over and over again. However, we did not know that when a child crawls he thinks he should get down and be in the child's face to play until our friends Barb and Andy came over with Donovan and Nellie. While he does not hurt the child it does freak them out (and us!) to have him suddenly in their face. One of the suggestions that they made during the class was to make use of a doll so Dave and I are now playing with dolls. We bought one at Target that crawls and cries and we are trying to play with it on a regular basis so that Sparky gets use it and we can work on redirection. At first he wasn't so sure, but this weekend when we had friends over and they wanted to see how he did we pulled out the doll and Sparky brought the baby doll his ball so that the doll would play with him. As silly as it sounds this seems to be working.
3. If it is a toy - it must be Sparky's. We have learned over time that Sparky thinks all toys are his. We had a baby gift at our house prior to a shower and we caught Sparky trying to remove the cute toy attached to it. He is especially drawn to anything that makes noise (squeaking toys are his favorite!!). One of the tips that they gave us in the class was to get some baby toys and to sprinkle with baby powder or rub with baby lotion. You then place them on the floor and teach him that toys that smell like baby are the baby toys and he should not play with them. Last weekend we bought a toy that was soft, played music, and squeaked. After apply baby powder to the toy we placed it on the floor and taught him (through redirection) that it was the baby's toy. Now whenever we put it down he may smell it, but ignores it.
4. The Nipping- we are suppose to be using time out to help out with this problem. However, in order to practice time outs we have to have him nip someone. Not something that we encourage so this one is going to be hard. I am hoping that if we use some of the "bringing home baby" tips that we learned that Sparky will be take ownership of the baby and protect him as he does me.

Heartbeat

Today we had our second appointment and the main purpose was to check the heart beat. So after some brief time discussing lovely things like pinched nerves we moved on to the good stuff. Dr. Gibson was able to find the heart beat quickly and it was at a steady 150. However, Lil'P had no intentions of staying still and made Dr. Gibson work for the heartbeat. If you believe in old wives' tales the heartbeat would be telling us that this was a girl. We will have to wait until August 4th for our ultrasound to confirm the gender (if Lil'P cooperates!).

To make the day even better- when we got home we had a package from the Borish Family that contained Lil'P's first Red Sox outfit!!!!! He/She is now officially ready to become part of Red Sox Nation.

The Nursery

About a month ago we set out to look at a crib that we thought we liked based on reviews and the look. When we arrived at the store we had a lovely yet slightly overbearing woman assist us in finding the crib, looking at the colors available, etc. We both loved it so when we were told that there was a sale and that the cribs were taking 14 weeks to arrive we jumped on the deal. Apparently we are suckers because the crib arrived in just 4 short weeks. On Monday we made the mistake of listening to our messages (which we never do in a timely manner) and heard Lou from the store calling to tell us come on down! Well for those that know me I need to go rightthen because I need instant gratification. We made arrangements for Dave's Father to go with us since they have the van and spent the next hour moving all of the office furniture into the master retreat room. I am still impressed with all that we got done in that time and for how many times Dave moved furniture around the room until it was where we both wanted it.Then it was off to the furniture store with 2 cars as Lou said it would NOT fit in one. He was right. The man who packed our car was a FABULOUS packer and made everything fit when it truly looked as if it shouldn't without breaking a thing.

We then ventured home and with the assistance of John managed to get all of the pieces into the house (I did help by carrying in the extremely light weight foam mattress that feels as comfortable as a rock).

John and Dave then spent the next few hours setting up the crib and taking it apart when we realized that when they said RIGHT and LEFT they meant the other right and left. But, we managed to get it all together and I only requested that we move the furniture around once.

We also added in the bookcase that my grandfather made for my room in Dix Hall and will add in a comfy chair to complete the room....well and maybe some paint. We thought we had 10 more weeks so we have paint samples on the wall, but are still debating between subtle hues of yellow.

December 29, 2009

Our first doctor's appointment seemed to take forever to come. Since I was being monitored for an ectopic pregnancy we had regular contact with my doctor's office throughout the first few weeks of the pregnancy which was nice and reassuring, but we were counting down the days to the first ultrasound. I wanted the proof that there really was a baby and that it was where it was supposed to be. Mostly I needed the reassurance so that I could sleep, because my mind refused to turn off at night as I went through the list of things that could be going wrong at any minute.

At 8 weeks 2 days we headed into Kaiser to meet with Joan, our NP. She was great and answered all of our questions without making us feel stupid. I particularly liked her because she took my side in the caffeine debate that I was having with Dave. It is the one habit that I cannot kick, but I have cut down to a bare minimum. Once all the talking was over we were able to move onto the ultrasound and see Lil' P (our gender neutral name for the baby at this point). I cannot begin to describe how it felt to see a baby moving around on the screen. I thought that it would be old hat for me since I have witnessed so many for work, but it was completely different. I think that it is fair to say that it was one of the more emotional times for both of us. The ultrasound was also able to confirm that our due date was in fact December 29, 2009. We left with reassurance, a due date and some great pictures.

We're Pregnant!

We're Pregnant!!

Even with a planned pregnancy I think those might be the two scariest and exciting words there are for any couple. We found out that we were pregnant in April. Melissa and Sparky had a whole day to adjust to the news before surprising Dave with the news when he returned from a weekend of mountain biking in Moab. It was hard to believe the news so we double checked the next day and then had the "official testing" done at the doctor's office a couple of times the next week to rule out an ectopic pregnancy. We were bursting with the news, but weren't ready to share it with others quite yet. I think that we were both surprised with how hard it was to keep it a secret, when you have something so exciting you normally want to share it right away. We broke down earlier than expected and shared the news with Dave's family over Memorial Day and sent my family a Mother's/Father's gift announcement. Both of the families are quite excited and are eagerly awaiting a little grandbaby!