Let the Shopping Begin

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Yes. We plan on finding out the sex of the baby at the next Dr. appointment, March 3rd.

And yes, we will let everyone know once we know.

Yes. We already have names picked out. In fact, we settled on baby names years before we ever settled on having a baby.

And no, we aren't telling anyone what the names are (just yet).

Friday morning I was back at the office at 3:45am. After work, the wife and our friends staying with us packed up the Dawg and some belongings and headed to Oceanside. We have a wedding to attend in Orange County on Saturday so we thought we would spend Friday and Saturday night with friends in Oceanside and cut down the driving to and from the wedding.

On Saturday, our Seattle friends wanted to meet up with some family members for lunch in Old Towne Orange before the wedding so we dropped them off at the restaraunt and decided to get some lunch ourselves.

If you have never been to Old Towne Orange, you should really stop by the next time you are in the area. It is like being transported to the set of "It's a Wonderful Life". The whole town square has been preserved the way it looked decades ago.

The wife and I decided to eat outdoors at a place called The Filling Station. The restaraunt actually used to be a gas station and they preserved enough of the "filling station feel" that you recognized what it used to be.

We sat down at a sunny table and heaved great sighs. It had been 7 days since we had discovered we were pregnant but because of my work schedule, our social schedule and house guests, this was the first time the wife and I had some extended time alone to discuss it.

Because the wife's job employs less than 5 people and because she has been with them less than a year, many of the usual maternity rules do not apply. She loves her job and adores her boss and so she resolved to break the news to him when she goes to work on Tuesday.

Over the course of the next seven months or so, she and her boss will put their heads together and come up with a creative solution for maternity leave and beyond that is best for all concerned.

I confessed to my wife that I am in a near state of panic over the health of the baby. Being a father doesn't scare me, raising a child does not intimidate me - it's this period of time during pregnancy that I have little or no control over that is driving me off my nut!

The wife did her best to calm me down and then suggested we go shopping for the baby. When I told her that I didn't want to buy anything for the baby until I was convinced it was ok because I didn't want to "jinx anything" she gave me a look that said "Get a hold of yourself".

We walked around Old Towne Orange and found a baby boutique called Two Little Monkey's.

The wife wanted to buy an armful of soft cuddly things but I stood firm on "one item only". So we bought two.



I have a great many ill-informed opinions on what we should or should not be buying for the baby at this point but that is the subject for another post.

The wedding on Saturday was wonderful. There is nothing like seeing two wonderfully nice people gettin' hitched.

Now that the pregnancy is official, the wife is making peace with the changes her body is going through. Before this past week, the wife was a beautiful pregnant lady who didn't know she was pregnant and so was trying to dress like a beautiful not-pregnant lady (which can create a certain amount of stress).

The wedding was the first time I really noticed her intentionally dressing like a beautiful pregnant lady. The difference was striking.

There was an open bar and I went with my standard Makers Mark on the rocks while the wife forgoed her usual gin and tonic for a soda water with lime. Word sort of leaked out amongst the friends that the wife was pregnant and we joked that there was probably someone at the wedding aghast at watching my pregant wife knocking back what looked like G&T's all night.