Another Week, A Bigger Belly

My apologies for the lack of updates lately. We've gone from thinking Brenna was going to be evicted in a short period of time to being told now that things are progressing normally and Emily will be allowed to carry to 40, maybe 41 weeks.

These were the immortal last words of her soon to be ex-doctor. Yes, I said ex-doctor. We handed over Emily's birth plans and after hearing "no, I'm not going to do that" more than a dozen times, Emily decided this doctor doesn't need to buy another country club member ship from the proceeds of her delivery.

Some other humorous comments from Dr. Know-It-All (and you typically would think the doctor would know best)

- No, we won't be doing that
- No, you have to have that
- I'm not here to support you through a labor that lasts four days
- This is not a home birth, I'm not here to be all cuddly-feely with you
- You will be asking for pain medication before it's all over

Rather self defeating for someone that's wanting to deliver as naturally as possible.

At any rate, another doctor was immediately located, one that's open to alternative birthing methods and Emily has an appointment on Friday to discuss her desired plans. More updates regarding the new doctor will be forthcoming, be sure of it!

Before I forget, one of the ladies in the birthing class that Emily and I have been going to had a little boy two days ago, and her due date was the same as Emily's! She brought him by class on her way home from the hospital, if you can believe it!

I'll be posting some more pictures of the nursery, which is nearing completion, but considering the last four or five posts have consisted of the nursery and nothing else, I give you Opus the penguin in a grass skirt.

Opus was picked up in Hawaii during a family vacation in 1989, and is a personal favorite of mine. Enjoy.

Brenna Update

Emily and I were expecting a drag out beat down conversation with her c-section happy doctor today about not letting her go past 38 weeks, but were pleasantly (?) suprised when he advised her that he wanted to wait another week before we discussed delivery options. Emily is still measuring at 38 weeks, so the baby must have shifted since last weeks measurement. The doctor advised that Brenna is still riding pretty high in the belly and hopes that she drops between now and next week's visit (Emily, get going on those jumping jacks!).

In the meantime, Emily and her mom are almost finished with the nursery, below is a near completed mural of Lilo and Stitch, and another picture of the crib and rocking chair, which I painted (a test of my patience, for sure).

Looks like Brenna may still be an October baby! More to come next week (maybe sooner).

Final Preparations


We're almost there... pictures below of our bedroom and what the nursery is looking like. Tazi made sure we didn't take his sleeping spot!

Brenna's Coming! (Sooner Than You Think)























This is probably the last "inside the mama" shot of Brenna before she arrives! Emily found out at the doctor's this past week that baby is already weighing in a tad shy of 8 pounds, and she's not going to be allowed to carry beyond 38 weeks. As of tomorrow she's at 37, you can do the math! We find out this Wednesday on what day she'll be induced (we're being told around 9/23) and from there, who knows how many Brenna photos will be plastered all over this site! Why am I shouting!?!?!?

Anywho, below are a couple of ultrasound shots of baby from mama's last visit. Her belly was measuring 39 weeks, so I guess they took these to make sure Emily wasn't smuggling an illegal immigrant in there or something (my apologies, without you our neighborhood landscaping would look atrocious).

The first shot is of baby's foot (one of them anyway, we're thinking she has two of these) and toes. The other is an under the nose, Brenna is head down (load the torpedoes!), so they couldn't get a good shot of her entire face. I briefly saw a pair of eyes, but Betty the ultrasound lady was slow on the trigger taking these shots.








<-- Look! Five toes, glad that foot isn't coming out first!












<--- Where's Waldo? Can you see
the mouth and nose? I can! And no
one had to point it out to me!










Stay tuned, lots of baby pictures will be posted under the photo link on the right side of this page.

Link to Emily's Shower - Slideshow


One of Emily's relatives put together a niftly slide show through NERO, of her baby shower.

Follow the following link and enjoy!

http://www.photoshow.net/watch/IH5sv2un

The Streets Of Bakersfield

There are other things going on here at the house besides Brenna's imminent arrival... not that my trip to Bakersfield is earth-shattering news.

The silver lining in all of this is that I left in the middle of the week, so security at the airport was a piece of cake. Matter of fact, I was the only one in line to go through the metal detectors, which is unusual for Sky Harbor. I took a flight to Burbank, to avoid LAX, into the world renowned Bob Hope airport (insert sarcasm here).

The pollution in the LA area continues to be horrible. Flying into the area, you could barely see the ground for all the smog. Traffic also was horrible on I-5 heading north out of town, and about half an hour into the mountains I spent an hour driving through smoke from a fire near Pyramid Lake.

For once I decided to leave town without my camera and am regretting not bringing it, as I've never seen so much smoke in my life. The fire was probably within a quarter mile of the interstate, you could see it creeping along one of the ridges, and helicopters were circling it, dropping slurry. The sun was setting through the smoke, casting an eerie amber glow on everything, and the lake itself looked like it was on fire. Coming back on Friday through the same area I experienced my lone Captain Obvious moment. Approaching this thick wall of black smoke, there stood a lone Smokey the Bear sign that read "Fire Danger For This Area is HIGH". I really wish I could have taken a picture of this ridiculous sign with the fire and smoke behind it.

In the end, getting there was more interesting than the destination itself. I spent a few days in Bakersfield back in June of 2000 and the only memory I took away from that trip was the a/c going out in my hotel room at 2am and me standing around in the hotel lobby with about 50 strangers in their pajamas, glaring at the front desk clerk (like he had anything to do with the apparent power outage that caused me to wake up in a pool of my own sweat). The best part about that trip in 2000 was meeting Emily on the way back to Birmingham, and I suppose that was the best part of this trip, getting home.

Baby Shower!

Emily's baby shower was today, about 70 people showed, and although I was not on hand for most of the festivities, it sounds like it was a resounding success. We're now within a month of the due date, I think Emily mentioned she's in the 36th week now. Lots yet to be done around the house, now that I'm back from my trip to Bakersfield, hopefully we can get things squared away during these coming weekends.

Brenna Update!

Mom is still doing well, she's visiting her doctor weekly now, only 4-5 weeks away!

Lots of progress was made this weekend on the Lilo and Stitch mural, and the glider rocker that's going in the room has been painted.

I've been off work since last Thursday, and have one day to work tomorrow before I go to Bakersfield to visit a customer the rest of the week. Not the best time to go on a trip with Emily so close, but we'll hope that Brenna will wait for Daddy before she decides to come out!

I did a lot of work in the yard, trimming our Chinese Elm in the front yard back, and general clean up in the back. We had a nice half inch of rain a few nights back, which was nice, and supposedly more is on the way from what's left of Hurricane John.

That's it for now!

Tom

More Photos Posted

I've uploaded some pictures from our trip to Hawaii back in October of last year with Emily's parents. More to come, go take a look under the photos link to the right.

More Work On Brenna's Room


Below are some pictures from this past weekend, mostly Emily toiling away on her mural. More colors added, she's getting there!

Brenna's Room and Other Assorted Oddities


Let me first start by saying it rained this morning. Glorious, glorious rain. It wasn't much, less than half an inch, but it started around 7 this morning and didn't clear off until noon-ish. It's 92 as I write this, which is a gift from God for this time of year. More about my assorted activities in the rain on the Hoes blog.

I've finally uploaded (or is it downloaded) some pictures off the digital from this past weekend, to give everyone (and by that I mean the 1 or 2 people that might be coming by this site periodically) an idea of how Brenna's room is shaping up.

Obviously the first picture here is me, caught focusing on the task at hand. Those leaves look a lot better than they appear in this picture, Emily has since finished the finer points of filling in the greens, and has outlined them with black magic marker.


Here is the crib area, that huge banana leaf thing will be hanging over from the wall someplace safe. There will also be a glider-rocker kind of thing off to the right of this picture, which Emily's mom, Becky, is re-covering.

Below in the next picture, is Becky sewing the window covering do-thingy (nevermind, you know what I'm talking about).




And for those of you who are too lazy to scroll down on this blog to see the last picture of Emily's ever enlarging belly, the final picture is her from a few days ago, nearing 33 weeks (I think, I'd ask her, but she's still at work putting the church bulletin together).

In other pregnancy news, we've failed to schedule a tour of the hospital Emily will be giving birth at, nor have we packed a bag for the trip, but perhaps we're just being optimistic that Brenna will be right on time and not a day early. I think we'll get these things together this upcoming weekend, especially before I have to go to Bakersfield right after Labor Day for a short (unnecessary) business trip.

Update On Brenna's Room

Emily and her mom spent the better part of today working on the mural of Lilo & Stitch in Brenna's room, while Emily's dad sanded a glider/rocker in preparation for painting. I spent the better part of the day working in hell... er, the garage, sorting the remaining boxes there, in an attempt to make room for our cars in there (what a novel concept).

New Photos From Thanksgiving Available

Better late than never, I suppose. I have uploaded pictures from our trip to Las Vegas last November, to visit Aunt Sue, Uncle Tom, Melanie, Darrick, Christine, etc. You'll find these pictures off to the right in the Photos section. As ZZ Top once said (in some song long ago), enjoy and get it on.

Photos Link Added

Thanks to cousin Melanie's guidance, I've put my 3rd grade HTML knowledge to use and have added a link (to the right) to more photos of us. Don't go running there just yet (I know the temptation is just overwhelming), unless you're looking for a severe letdown... there are two whopping pictures stored so far, and you can see both of those here. At any rate, without any further confusion, check that link from time to time, especially when Brenna arrives in October!

Tom

Mesmorized Canines

Two more members of the TEBOT team, Tazi and Orson put on their pitiful faces (can't you tell they're been starved within an inch of their lives) to trick Emily out of part (or all of) her lunch.

RIP Honda Pilot

Last week we traded our 04 Honda Pilot for the 00 Honda Passport pictured here. The Passport is a one owner car (before us), and it shows, everything is in near perfect condition... except the tires. Well, the tires are all new, but one is a mismatch (go figure), and the card shimmies like nobody's business on the highway, a bit of a pain in the ass. At any rate, certain conditions at my workplace forced us to downsize to an older, higher mileage car, and we're crossing our fingers that this won't turn into a money pit of sorts.

Emily nearing 32 weeks

Brenna's Almost Here!

Here's our first attempt at posting a picture here, Emily at 32 weeks, Brenna is due on 10/7. Emily and her mom are working on the baby's room tomorrow, and every weekend until time I suspect. I'll post a picture here of their progress soon.

Tom

Tom's Blog Site Created - Metal School

Just an FYI, you'll find a link in the right margin to my blog site. There's absolutely nothing there at the moment, but soon... Like all of my other login IDs on the net, the name of my blog site is from a song by an excellent Austin band called Spoon (you'll find a like for their website below Metal School).

- Random thoughts/rants
- Family
- Music
- Landscaping (everyone's favorite, I'm sure)

More to come (as time permits).

Origins of "TEBOT"

For those of you keeping score at home:

Tom
Emily
Brenna (due October 7th)
Orson (our foul smelling 100lb dog)
Tazi (our not so foul smelling 140 lb dog)

Ground Control To Major Tom

Welcome as we journey into the unknown here. Both Emily and I have posted a few blogs via MySpace, but I thought it would be nice to have a place that we can both share... so here we are. God help us and my meager HTML skills.

Tom