davejenbarnes

Click the picture to take you to the wordle page.  These are all the tags on our public photostream pictures over on flickr.  hcbcnorthwest is our church, ravelry is a yarn-knitterly-crochet haven online, and daves collection are his hot sauces.  The rest should be self explanitory.

I enjoyed an evening with other women at a friend’s house last night and by the time the evening was winding down, we were discussing various boys’ names.  David and I have settled on a girl’s name but not on the boy’s name.  We are the kind of people who would love to have the names settled before the birth but I am doubting that we will have a boy name picked, even in December.  It’s hard when you already have the two names you could possibly think of: James and Lowell…

So I thought it would be fun to post some of the suggestions we’ve gotten.  Here is a list of some of the ideas from various sources.  I think this will be fun to remember and smile about in a year.  The huge majority of these are no-go’s for one reason or another… but it’s fun to have people think for you once in awhile.  Note: this is not a list of possibilities, it’s a list of suggestions.

• Thomas (out because of Thomas the Tank Engine)
• Gordon
• Percy
• Edward
• Toby
• (all other train names from Thomas and Friends)
• Oliver
• Everett
• Emerson
• Graham
• Charles
• Jax
• Alistair
• Collin
• Dexter
• Wendell
• Gerald
• Jonathan
• Christopher (can’t use this one but it’s a great name)
• Michael (James’ middle name, already used once)
• Dennis
• Sargent
• Heath
• Christian (Jen really does like this one right now)
• All names beginning with the letter B, or having nicknames beginning in B are out
• any name ending in -den or -dan are out

All in all I think most of these are great names.  I’m wondering why boy names are so much harder to decide than girl names for us.  A lot of family names (on my side, at least) have been used over and over.  Gerald, Robert, Willliam (out because of the nicknames Bob and Bill or Billy which start with B’s)… Going on David’s side, we’ve reused Michael and Lowell.  I guess with #3, we’re less concerned about using “family” names, so opening the door to ALL names is simply overwhelming.  I guess it’s fun, too.  ☆

We have started emptying the boys’ bath water into buckets at night and then pouring the “greywater” on the mulch around the base of the trees and we are amazed at how about 5 gallons per night per tree is resulting in new growth all over both trees. I say trees, but they’re really scrawny little sticks in the ground compared to other places. I don’t feel bad at all about any environmental ramifications of doing this because we have stopped using bubble bath and bar soap on the boys in their baths and the liquid baby soap is so scant that it doesn’t even cause bubbles in the water. The trees also get sprinkler water and the occasional sprayer washdown (James got that from his Thomas videos, trains get washdowns) so we’re not concerned about killing them. I don’t know that it is saving much on our water bill at this point, but that’s not our goal. We just don’t want the trees to die and they looked very close to death when we moved in a month ago.

The lawn is not a lawn… it’s a dry patch of dirt with about 15 blades of grass. Not really 15. Actually we have about 3 patches of St. Augustine that are hanging on despite the state of the rest of the yard. It’s kind of embarrassing to post a picture of our sad little yard. Hopefully this will serve as a “before” picture and the yard will look great the next time I decide to post a picture on the blog. These aren’t getting any bath water. We do put the sprinkler on and that’s the water the lawn gets.

I just had my second prenatal visit with Roswitha at AABC.  She did most of my check-ups for the last pregnancy and it was good to see her again.  She did another quickie ultrasound since the last midwife did not take any measurements.  My fundal height was only measuring 13 cm (normally it would be around 16 cm, a centimeter for each week of the pregnancy, as a general rule of thumb) and there is still doubt about when this baby came to be. Across from ear to ear, the baby’s head is about 3.5 cm wide.  From tip of the head to tip of the butt (all bent up like little babies usually are) is 10.5 cm long.  He/she actually moved around a bit but I still didn’t feel it.  I guess what I felt earlier wasn’t the baby afterall.

Stats: no heartbeat measurement taken, so I didn’t hear it this time.  My blood pressure is 84/60 which is most likely due to not drinking enough water.  I gained 3 pounds, surprisingly.

In general, I have had big issues with having dizzy spells.  I couldn’t stand up in church on Sunday without getting the creepy black tunnel vision, so I sat down during all the songs.  I’ve noticed that I get lightheaded more easily in crowds, too… hm…  I now need to tote a water bottle with me everywhere I go.  My protein intake is still not what the midwives would like it to be, so I’m adding protein supplements to my diet.  I think they’d be happy if I ate cottage cheese all day long!  (ick!)  Overall, this pregnancy is beating me up more than the last two.  I’m in the second trimester but still feel like it’s week 8 as far as being tired, dizzy, ill, and generally not-good.

We will make our ultrasound appointment sometime this week for the 13th-19th of July, and NO, we will not be “finding out” what we’re having at the ultrasound, though of course, we know we will be having a human and it will be either a boy or a girl.  Yes, we will be finding out at the birth.  No, I don’t want any girl clothes or blankets or anything “just in case,” and we won’t need anything baby-boyish for that matter, either.  We still haven’t settled on a boy name though we have ruled out any and all names ending in -dan or -den or -lyn.

I shall end with what everyone says to me, “Huh, maybe it’s a girl.”  In that case, the name debate is already settled.  ❀

Yesterday, at Grandma’s house, Lowell started standing (from nothing, the floor, no support, no help) so we know walking is not far off.  He is officially 16 months old today (Sunday, the 22nd) so we’re hoping he can start walking soon.  The pediatrician said if he’s not walking confidently by the 18 month mark, we will have to consider physical therapy.  I am sure it won’t come to that!

Holey Moley

Lowell has picked up three new words in the time span of about five minutes.  ”Up” “Blue” and “Wow!” are now an everyday part of his vocabulary.  It’s amazing.  He will imitate the vowel sounds of the words you say but in those words, he really got the consonants, too.  ”Dad-dee!” “Mom” (no mommy, just mom), arf-arf, “ba-BIAH” (bye-bye) “Hi!” and sounds like car sounds and train sounds are all already the usual Lowell words and sounds.

He is now a monkey climbing all over the couch.  Normally, he backs down off the cushions feet first but when he does go face first, he doesn’t cry for long, so we don’t make a big deal out of it.  He uses a step stool and since step stools are everywhere for James, we need to be careful about closing doors.  Since James has been potty trained for a couple of months now, we’re used to the step stools being in the bathrooms but we’re not used to Lowell using them to climb up and stand on the toilet.  That could get very dangerous very quickly.

We tried to get video of Lowell taking some steps (since we discovered on the 14th that he will “fall” towards us if we time it just right (with his mood, of course)) but I ended up with a minute and a half of him throwing a fit, so we’ll just try that later.  We know he CAN walk, it’s just a matter of him DECIDING to walk. Sorry if the sound is awfully loud. I had to use vimeo because it was too long for flickr to accept.

I am tempted to say — if you’ve ever wondered what the past sixteen months have been like, put this video on loop for a couple of hours about four times a day, every day for sixteen months and see if you don’t start to get grumpy, too — but I know some readers will send me comments about my attitude, so I’ll suffice it to say that Lowell has us figured out and knows the last thing we want to hear is, yep, you guessed it, MORE CRYING and that we’ll do just about ANYTHING to stop the crying (so he gets his way and we get some peace and quiet). We’re just now realizing how much of it is probably our own dang faults. Anyhow, here’s the video:

Here’s James and Lowell “knitting” — James kept calling the needle a beetle, and the yarn is merino/cotton blend that I will be turning into another soaker (cloth diaper cover, knitted). He ended up with some acrylic very shortly after I stopped the camera from recording and realized he just wanted to make a mess with it.

I just realized that I say “oh well” more than I should. Oh well.

We’ll get to celebrate this one next year.

Thanks for being the very best Daddy in the whole wide world.

I said it before we even started dating. Whoever marries David Barnes and has his kids is going to be the luckiest woman alive. Little did I know, I would end up in that role.

Now, as James would say, “Wanna go play cars, Daddy?”