Thursday, April 19, 2007

Now touch your toes to your nose!

This weekend I flew to Austin for a wonderful baby shower. Thank you to everyone who came and to all the hostesses (Kendal Esteves, Sara Hejl, Kari Schemmel, Courtney Bates, Alethea Dillman, and Sunee Conly) for your hard work!! To my regret, we didn't all get a pic together!! (I'll upload the pics that Ty's mom took soon). Anyway, the shower was so much fun and Colt will have lots of nice things when he is born. He got lots of baseball stuff (b/c I registered for most of it) so I hope he likes the sport!! Also, his Aunt Chez made him a beautiful little blanket. I had fun in Austin visiting friends and family, eating good Mexican food, and walking Town Lake. I was very sad to come back to Tampa, but it had to be done. Hopefully one day God will let us move back to Austin!!!

Also, I had my 28 week appointment on Wednesday. I had a sonogram and they showed us a 4D image. You can see Colt's little foot up by his forhead in the pic! His eyes and nose are basically in the middle of the pic. His ear is at the rightmost side of the image. So... he is in a Frank breech position right now. It's nothing really to worry about, b/c he has plenty of time and room to turn before he gets "stuck" in that position. I've looked up some exercises I can do to get him to turn on his own... so hopefully he'll cooperate. If anyone knows any tricks to get him to move, please let me know! Other than that, no big news here. We found a house to rent and will move in around May 7th... so I'm kinda just in limbo till then!

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Don't call our son a Tampon...(A Guest Author's Blog)

Yep, ever since we've moved here, we've foreseen a problem developing that could not be ignored. When we announced that we were moving out of the family-friendly confines of the Great State of Texas, right smack in the middle of Charis's 2nd trimester of our first-born, we knew that he would have to be born a Floridian. : (
As any good Texan knows, that basically repudiates you in the all important categories of ability to consume spicy foods and identify good barbecue. To boot, your state flag is unable to fly at an equal height of Old Glory.
But, "Hey," we thought, "Charis wasn't born in Texas, and she turned out to be alright." So, hope remained in spite of the sad realization.
Then, the real horror of the situation started to sink in. Not only would our son be a Floridian, but he will also be born in the city of Tampa. This begs The Question.
What do you call someone from Tampa?
Someone from Houston is a Houstonian. A man from Austin is an Austinite. But what is someone from Tampa called? Let's just say the answer seemed more than obvious.
We immediately began to search far and wide for an answer that would disconfirm what our hearts knew to be true. Yet, it seemed that every person we ran into and asked had come to the same conclusion we had. A person from Tampa was labeled a "Tampon."
Of course, they usually said it with a big smile on their faces. It was just a big joke to them. They weren't from Tampa. They were from somewhere up North. yankees. They didn't realize the years of ridicule our son would undoubtedly be subjected to on our future trips to the Great Lone Star State.
Texan 1: "Hey, kid, where ya from?
Our son: "Tampa, sir."
Texan 2: (With an incredulous look) You're a Floridian?!?!?
Our son: (Face filled with shame) "Yes , ma'am."
Texan 1: (Guffawing) " Not just that, he's a TAMPON, too!!!
All but our son: "hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahha!"
That's a pretty horrible fate for the poor little guy.
One glimmer of a chance remained. We had yet to run into a single person who advertised themselves as Tampa born, Tampa raised.
Tonight, our son was vindicated.
We showed up innocently enough to the local Ford dealership to have a small scratch on our Expedition painted since the dealer we recently bought it from had been gracious enough to say they would pay for it.
Rainier (like the Mount...seriously) was the only person left in the office. He met us at the door. Everyone else had left to try to avoid all the rush hour traffic that was gnarled out in front of the dealership. The daily grind of the traffic was further aggravated by the hostage situation a few blocks north (at a gun range...seriously). It was there, in the empty office, with the SWAT helicopters buzzing continuously overhead, that Rainier confided in us that he was born and raised here. In Tampa.
With trepidation in our voices, we asked him The Question. Initially, he gave us the same joshing smile as all the others and told us what his yankee brother called him. Our hearts sank.
And then he said the word that was like a sweet oasis in the middle of the Sahara. Tampanian. The word rang strong and true across the empty walls of the body shop.
"Tampanian," we said together with relief. Our son would never be a tampon. He might not be a Texan. He may even be a Floridian. But he will definitely be a Tampanian.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

A whole new Molly!

After Molly's great escape last week, Ty and I decided to break down and take her to dog training. We hired a company called Bark Busters, who came out to our house on Saturday for 3 hours and trained us to train Molly. IMMEDIATELY, we saw a huge change in her!! They taught us how dogs speak and their ways of communicating, so we can be the big dog in the relationship. It's funny because the main tool is that you have to growl at your dog when they are doing something wrong. It took us a bit to get used to it (and we sound funny when we are around neighbors), but it works, so who cares!? We used to have problems with Molly pulling on our walks, going upstairs and in/out doors before us, jumping up, whining, getting on the couch uninvited, etc. Well, not anymore! I really am very impressed that after one 3 hour session, she has completely changed!! Of course, we have to do our homework everyday to reinforce her new behavior, and we still have some problems when we see squirrels on our walks, but overall she has done great in the 4 days since her initial training session. If you are debating taking your dog to obedience school, I definitely can recommend Bark Busters (they are nationwide)! We did this just in time for her new baby brother to show up and she be on her best behavior!