Our Crib

This afternoon Baby Daddy got to demonstrate his man skills once again by putting together Baby Hunt's crib (and by man skills I mean using a screwdriver). It arrived last Sunday and had been sitting unopened in our living room for a week. Baby Daddy drug it upstairs, we did some rearranging - which was all planned out to scale on grid paper (if you didn't believe me last time when I told you how nerdy we were, you now will)

- and dug everything out of the box. I took up my position of instruction-reader and we were off.

Step One: Remove crib from box

It was much easier than I was expecting, even though we covered up the letters identifying some pieces early on. Here's a few man-skills action shots:

Less than an hour later, we had a place for Baby Hunt to sleep, and slightly less room to move around. Here is where Baby Hunt will be lying his cute little diapered hiney in August:

We're down to 14 weeks until his due date, and his arrival is becoming more real and tangible each day. His carseat is sitting in our living room along with a tub of small items I've slowly picked up over the past few months - seriously, who could say no to tiny hats and hippo socks? . . . not this Baby Mamma.

Now I just hope it fits through the door when we move next year.

A Gauntlet has Been Thrown ;)

If you have frequented this blog since its inception,* you saw that on the first post we had discussed a pair of John Deere booties for Baby Hunt (along with a new toy for Izzers) that I found the last time I was in Moline for work.

While I may now work for the company made famous by fancy plows and leaping deers, I have not always been a full fledged 'supporter' of the Green and Yellow. Yes, my mother's family is big into John Deere, and discussing tractors besides John Deere is considered blasphemous in Bonnie's family (you may get away with some Allis Chalmers talk, but otherwise, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out ;) ). However, my dad's family has a much more pertinent red streak in it when it comes to tractors, and I grew up driving IH and Case. It wasn't until I was getting green from John Deere that I started collecting Green and Yellow items.

This leads me to the 'gauntlet'. A couple of weeks ago, my parents came to pick up Izzers (they make great dog sitters, by the way). Before coming here, they stopped at Blain's Farm and Fleet. From there, Mom and Dad came bearing a gift for Baby Hunt (modeled with Izzers, of course):


Let the fighting for Baby Hunt's allegiance begin. . .

*If you haven't, what are you waiting for? Start at the beginning, it's not that much reading.

Bragging . . .

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post so that I can brag about my new niece.

Baby Hunt's cousin, Miss Annabanana, (yep, I call her that, and yes, I'm the only one that does so - her actual, adorable, name is Annabelle) was born on Friday morning. She has the most adorable little nose in the world and loves to be held by Aunt Bonnie! I am loving being a new aunt :)

BTW - I so hope I have a labor experience like my sister had. She got to the hospital at 11:15, was completely surprised to hear she was having contractions every 2-4 minutes, and Miss Annabanana was born at 4:40. Yep, I was at the hospital at 7:20 and left at 8:30, thirteen hours later. And yes, I was there for nearly seven hours the next day! She is just too sweet to leave.

24 Week Update

Alright, alright - I hear you all. Before I'm tracked down by a mob with baby-bump-capturing-cameras, I will post a picture.

Baby Hunt is definitely growing and moving - I swear our son is a little ninja. I can feel him move from outside, but every time Mitchell tries to catch him, he stops.

I had my twenty-four week appointment today and we are still doing well. His heartbeat is 148 bpm and I am measuring right on track. In four weeks I get to drink the lovely sugar-drink-of-death that I will so try to not throw up (I had a similar test done in a college physiology lab and nearly lost it - I still won't eat honey), and then I graduate to biweekly appointments.

My Maury Povich* Moment

AKA How I Found Out I had Become Baby Daddy.

As Bonnie had pointed out in "Breaking the News," she found out she was pregnant on the first Saturday in December. This was a fairly lazy Saturday, and I was still in bed when Bonnie had 'completed' her test.** Not only was she able to do this, but she was able to take Izzers out for her morning needs. Speaking of Izzers, I was awoken by Bonnie trying to position her with a red envelope that said 'Daddy.' Excited, and frankly, scared out of my mind (in a good way), I opened up the card:


After reading the card, I turned to Bonnie, and being the eloquent man that I am, said, "No shit." Yep, I'm that classy.

We then proceeded to 'document the evidence***, and as they say, the rest is history.

*No, I did not have to get on a stage and wait with 7 other men while Bonnie explained teary eyed to Maury that she knew it had to be one of these eight guys that was the baby daddy because, well, she had already been on the show twice before with the other dozen men she had been cheating on her boyfriend with in the thirty days before she found out she was pregnant.

**Bonnie getting up before me should have tipped me off, or Bonnie getting up before 10 AM for that matter.

***Who do I think I am, Gil Grissom, for using that phrase to describe taking pictures of pregnancy tests?

What we've learned in April . . .

It is not even the middle of April and we've already learned a few useful pieces of knowledge this month.

1. We pack WAY too much shit. Going to our parents for Easter, we took a suitcase full of our clothes, a separate bag full of necessities (toothbrushes, lotion, hair dryer, etc.), a bag for Izzers' stuff, Izzers' kennel, a small bag full of books, to-do lists, ultrasound pictures, etc., and a cooler. In case you are wondering, our parents live an hour away from us, and fifteen minutes from the other. That weekend we both decided we were not going to be hauling an infant and infant's things on top of it all, so we've made a goal to downsize in the next few months.

2. 40 weeks is a really short time. Granted, the first 2-3 really don't count. We currently have 17 weeks until Baby Hunt is due, and pretty much have each week mapped out on my giant 'Baby Hunt Prep' To-Do list. Oh, yes, it exists.

3. If you have been reading between the lines, you may have heard mention of Isabelle once - or twice - or fifty times. She is a big part of our lives, and we think others have taken notice. Take, for example, the last three baby items we have received:

A paw-printed baby blanket, paw-printed booties, and an adorable puppy themed children's book. These were from three different people! I guess it's pretty obvious that we love our Izzers.

4. As evidenced by the above photo, I greatly need to update my picture-taking abilities in the next few weeks. This may entail a new camera and some photo editing software. I am pretty sure Baby Hunt will be the most handsome little boy you have all ever seen (I may be a little biased), and bad pictures just won't do. Again, I'm vain like that. If anyone has any camera or software recommendations for a beginner, please let me know!

The Indoctrination of Baby Hunt

If you hang out with me for an extended period of time, you come to realize that I pay entirely too much attention to sports.* A sampling of bookmarked websites on my computer reinforces this theory. A sampling:

www.espn.com
www.si.com
hardballtalk.nbcsports.com
profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com
cfn.scout.com
www.nationalfootballpost.com

This doesn't even include the local stuff I look at daily, the fantasy aspects, or any team sites, which leads me to the purpose of this post: what sports and which teams I'm going to try (some with Baby Mama's help) to convince Baby Hunt to become a fan of.

Sports:
There are three sports that I follow religiously**: college football, professional football (yes I am listing them as two different sports), and professional baseball. I don't really care about college basketball until March, and care about professional basketball as much as I have a chance of playing the sport. I enjoy watching hockey, but I don't know squat about the sport, and I can get into soccer about once every two years (Euro and World Cups).

Professional Football:
I'll start with the one that is not supported by both parents in the Hunt house. Bonnie's never gotten into pro football. She has never had a favorite pro football team, and as long as we've been together, she's always had her fill of football after gorging on college football on Saturdays. (Unlike me, I can always loosen my belt for more football). Since the mid 90's (after I was naive/stupid/young enough to want to cheer for the Buffalo Bills while they were making the NFC East look amazing four years straight) I've been a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. It hasn't been the most productive decade plus of fandom (the good teams always defecated over themselves in the postseason, or they have been just plain bad), I haven't always been a die hard fan, and they are currently terrible, but they are a Midwest team that have had success in the past, and the fan base seems to be as supportive as they come, even when the team is bad.

Professional Baseball
Infamous fan bases leads me to the team I've cheered for whenever I've followed baseball,*** the Chicago Cubs. I am probably going to have to apologize to Baby Hunt every time the Cubbies do something to increase their World Series drought (102 years and counting), but I enjoy the Cubs history (good and (mostly) bad). Honestly, part of me wants to celebrate the inevitable (a man can dream) World Series victory with my family. And yes, that does mean I suckered, . . . I mean let the team's play convince. . . , Bonnie into being a Cubs fan. Well, at least as long as Mike Fontenot plays for them (that's another story. . .)

College Football:
This leads me to the final in my triumvirate of sport obsessions, I mean hobbies. . . college football. College football has been the sport that I've followed the most in my lifetime, the one I've committed the most funds to, the one I'll spend hours watching, the one that is dripping in the IV currently stuck into my right arm . . . you get the idea. I'm the guy who would watch a college football game from 25 years ago, involving teams/players I have no emotional attachment to, because it's on TV (I'm looking at you ESPN Classic and BTN).

When it comes to my favorite College Football team (and collegiate athletic in general) it will come as no surprise to a lot of you, and as a traitorous shock to some of you. For those of you who know me, I graduated from Iowa State University in 2007 with a BS in Materials Engineering. And while most people are loyal to their Alma Mater when it comes to collegiate athletics, I am not one of those people. I was a University of Iowa fan long before I decided to be an engineer, and my sport loyalties post college (as with during college) reflect that. Now, I don't wish physical harm to all things cardinal and gold as to most Hawkeye fans do, but Bonnie and I will be cheering for the Black and Gold, and we intend to raise Baby Hunt the same way. To illustrate this, and to sum up this post as I have gotten quite wordy it appears, below we have our wonderful Izzers(sporting an Iowa Hawkeye collar that is pretty much impossible to see with her fur) showing off an outfit Bonnie and I purchased the last time we were in Iowa City.



*The irony here is that I am absolutely terrible at anything needing athletic ability, one thing that I hope my child does not inherit from me.

** If by religiously I mean I try to consume information about them as if I were King Henry the VIII and the sports had ovaries. Or for a more local flavor, if I were Izzers and sports were peanut butter covered Ritzes.

***After the last baseball strike, I had a tough time giving a rip about baseball (with the exception of who had the better steroids, I mean home run swing, in 1998) until I was living in Chicago for an internship with Motorola in 2006, and had lots of free time, and cable, to watch baseball.