good times.

Not those good times, the good times we are having now that Jen is getting out of the “sick” phase of being pregnant. The 2nd trimester really is a blessing after suffering her way through the first one. She is feeling tons better, and is getting her energy back. But dont be fooled by our good fortune, Jen still says she has no intention of going through this again. And you know what? ive looked into her eyes and i believe she is serious. If i want baby after this one, she tells me ive got two choices: adoption or kidnapping.

going green = losing green!

As if the stresses of becoming a parent arent enough, weve been reading a lot lately about “going green” in regard to the baby. You start reading about all the things that can harm your baby, and after a while you start wondering if anything is good for your baby. So we looked into some organic cotton clothes for the baby: 1 organic cotton onesie, $24.95. Yeah, thats practical, because we all know how slowly babies grow. 1 pair of organic cotton baby socks? $7.95. THATS FOR ONE PAIR OF INFANT SOCKS. Thats like 4 dollars each. And environmentalists wonder why more people dont go green. I dont mean to go off on a rant here, but I saw Ed Begley Jr. on The Dennis Miller Show about 10 years ago, complaining about how few people drove hybrid vehicles. Dennis told him “want people to buy hybrids? stop making them look like hybrids. Start making them look like Porsches and they will sell like hot cakes.” To me its similar with environmentally friends baby items. Want parents to buy them? Try and price them so that parents can buy them.

dance, baby!

its important that i let everyone know right upfront, this isnt jen. I stumbled across (and by “stumbled” i mean i did a search for pregnant dancing on you tube) and found these today. Theyre catchy. i dont know how or why, but they are. As a matter of fact, I almost titled this post “the coolest, creepiest, most bizarre, awesomest, oddly intriguing, i cant believe im watching this, but then i again i cant believe someone filmed these, videos ever.” But i thought “dance, baby!” sounded wittier. This chick does have mad skills, though. holla.

poor jen…

Heres a transcript of a conversation jen had recently:

random person: “do you have any names in mind yet?”

jen: “we thought about the name Noah, but John thinks it sounds too meek.”

random person: “really? thats my husbands name.”

jen: “oh.”

the corner of wall st. and sesame st.

Because its never too early to start thinking of the high cost of college, the folks over at oneshare.com offer real framed stock certificates for babies. This got me curious, so i did some checking: One share of johnson and johnson,  purchased on my birthday, august of 1974 would have cost $99.12. That 1 share would now be 46 shares due to stock splits and dividends over the years and be worth approx. $3046.47 today. Not too bad. I can just imagine our child playing with its friends at school: “Want to play house?” “Nah, how about we play flip this house instead, and use the profits to buy other undervalued imaginary houses in this area?”

DNA evidence exonerates video, mp3 taken into custody

So i was thinking today of random things that our baby will never know, things like:

MTV used to play nothing but music videos.

BetaMax was better than VHS, even though VHS won the format war.

Cassette tapes were good only if you were old enough to compare them to 8 tracks.

Dial up internet.

Pac Man fever.

That after spending 20 years in prison for killing the radio star, new DNA evidence shows  that Video was innocent. it was its cousin, Mp3.

parenting: the 2nd oldest pyramid scheme

When we were trying to have kids, our friends who already had them were elated, telling us what great parents we would be, how much we would enjoy it, how our children would play together, how much having a baby enriched their lives and brought them closer together, etc, etc. Now that we are expecting, when we talk to those same friends and we hear their children screaming in the background, all they can say is “This is what you have to look forward to. Good luck.” I cant help but feel that someone got one over on us. I imagine we feel the same way people did when they got their first Amway sales kit in the mail. And just like our friends with kids, the Amway people probably went on and on, telling them what great sales people they would be, how much they would enjoy it, and how selling Amway enriched their lives and brought them closer together. But instead of 4 cases of shampoo sitting our closet, we will soon have a baby. We cant wait to be parents,  but im still savvy enough to know that the sales pitch has changed.

these people must have 2 dogs and a baby

For those of you following along at home, youve probably noticed that so far our baby blog has been mostly about 2 things: Jen is sick, or Jen is eating. Well, i hate to jinx our good fortune, but today was the 3rd day in a row that Jen was feeling “pretty good.” So good in fact, she was able to ride in the car for an hour to visit our parents for the weekend. They were glad to see us, and we were of course very happy to see them. I cant imagine what its going to be like to travel after we have the baby. Even now, when we spend the nite out of town we have my clothes, her clothes, 2 dog taxis, 2 dogs, and all the trinkets and supplies that go along with having a dog. Mini van? maybe… charter bus? more than likely.

baby steps

So we had a HUGE milestone tonight. Jen actually felt good enough to go out for a little while after i got home from work. This was literally like the 2nd time we have gotten to do that in the last 2 months. And we went to……. the mall. Hey, its not much, but we felt like a couple of foreign exchange students at a shopping mall for the first time.

Its crazy how pregnant women and people with kids really seem to stick out when you are expecting. And when you look up and see a happy little storybook family walking towards you, all color coordinated and such, you start to think to yourself, “wow thats how we will be.” Then you look over and see another set of parents with a kid that has all the energy of a spider monkey on PCP, and you think to yourself, “what have we gotten ourselves into?”  When we got home, i Googled “happy parents‘ and got 31.5 million hits, then i Googled ‘tired parents‘ and only got about 2.5 million hits, so it looks like we are going to be happy more than we are going to be tired. Numbers dont lie. I can live with that.

cant be funny all the time

Im not feeling especially witty this morning, so i am going to cheat and let this picture to do the talking for me. We cant all be Larry the Cable Guy.