It’s A Boy!!!
It’s A Boy!!!
I had a decent-sized post written about the discovery that the child that Kiara and I are expecting will be a boy. Due to a comedy of errors on the keyboard, I’ve lost the post. Instead, I’m just going to post some pictures and get back to work. Since each photo is worth a thousand words, you can consider this post to be over 6,000 words long. Enjoy!
(You can click on each photo to see a larger version.)
Picture Frame
Kiara got me a digital picture frame for a Father’s Day/Birthday gift last night. It’s really frickin’ cool! It has 128Mb of internal memory, but it also has card slots for SD, compact flash, XD, and another type of card that I don’t recognize. It also has a mini-USB port, so you can copy files to the internal memory from your computer (but it didn’t come with a cable for this [that's ok. I had one handy.]) Lastly, it has a port where you can plug in a USB flash stick. Very cool stuff.
It has the ability to cycle through all of the photos one at a time, or it can chop the screen into quadrants, and show 4 pictures (although fairly tiny) at a time. I played with the mosaic option for a while, but I decided that I liked the one-photo-at-a-time option, so that’s the one that I’m going with. This allows me to see more details of the photos. It’s really cool. I like it!
My PDA also uses SD cards for external storage. I currently have a 256Mb SD card, and I thought that this would be a good time to upgrade the PDA card to 2Gb. I would then take the 256Mb card and put it in the frame. No dice. My PDA can’t address memory up to that large of a size. Matter of fact, when I plugged the 2Gb SD card into my PDA, it totally freaked out and crashed. I had to turn it off, wait a bit, and then turn it back on to have it reboot. Fortunately, it came up intact with all of my data. Too bad the 2GB didn’t work. Oh well.
I took the 2Gb SD card, and plugged it into the frame. The frame found it, and it was empty (of course.) Now I need to get a card reader (they’re pretty cheap) so that I can drop a ton of photos on to it. The picture frame also does AVI animations as well. I’m not sure I’ll use that feature, but the 2Gb of space on the card allows me room to experiment with that.
I went to a local computer store at lunch to pick up the SD card (it was $15 [great price!!]), and while there, I also picked up two 2Gb USB flash sticks for $15 each. I’ve been wanting to play around with being able to boot from a USB drive to test out various flavor of Linux. This will give me the chance to do that without wiping my current 4Gb USB flash drive that I use for data storage, backup of essential software, and general goodness like that.
I was also told that this store carries new Microsoft Elite Natural keyboards. They are my favorite keyboard of all time, and you can’t get them anywhere any more. I’m glad this place had them. Maybe they were found in a warehouse somewhere, and the store bought them up to sell them. I picked up two of these keyboards. I need to replace the one that I have at home because my BIOS on my laptop doesn’t like it at all. I’m getting tired of unplugging my keyboard when I (re)boot my system. Replacing that keyboard with one of these will do the trick. The second keyboard will go into storage until one of the ones that I’m using now dies a horrible death.
I also walked around most of the store while there (never been there before and had to check the place out.) If I ever build another desktop system (doubtful), I’m going to go there and pick up everything that I need to build a new system. I’ll probably never do this again, though. For my personal machines, I just love having a laptop. The freedom that it gives me to do stuff from any room in the house (or at a friend’s house) can’t be beat. As far as my server goes (which is currently a custom-built desktop tower,) I’ll probably replace it with a 1U Dell rack mountable server. Of course, I have no need to replace the server anytime soon, so that plan will wait until the time comes that the server dies a horrible ugly death.
If the digital picture frames weren’t so expensive, I’d pick up one for my office at the house, and one for Kiara to have at her office. They’re just that neat. I guess it’ll have to wait until a later date to pick up two more of them.
Kiara Is Back
It’s a two-fer!
Kiara made it back last night right on time. I managed to get to the airport 30 minutes early (I thought I was 20 minutes late, but I had the flight time wrong,) so I had plenty of time to sit and read my book (Academ’s Fury.) I was so happy to see her when she got to the airport. I had missed her from the five days she had been gone, and I was happy to have her back in my arms.
She managed to fill a huge suitcase with about 50 pounds of baby stuff while in Montana. I haven’t had a chance to crack open the suitcase to look at the goodies yet. It was about 10:15 by the time we got into the house and unloaded the car. I knew that it was going to take at least an hour to unpack the baby stuff, so I decided to put it off until tonight.
However, I was almost done with Academ’s Fury, and I wanted to get to the end. I did manage to do that last night, and I was in bed by 11:00. My only problem is that I need to stop reading Jim Butcher just before bed. It gives me strange dreams. I don’t remember last night’s dream with full details, but I did wake up several times during the night feeling as if I had never even fallen asleep. It was quite odd.
I can’t wait to get home from work this evening to crack open the suitcase to see what kind of goodies we got for the baby. Gonna be neat, I hope.
Kiara Is Gone
… not permanently, you freaks!
She left town yesterday morning to head to her home town for a baby shower, and to see her family and friends one last time before the baby comes. I know that makes it sound like the baby will prevent her from ever seeing them again, but that’s not how I mean it. Having a baby changes everything, and she wanted one last trip (as I did a few months back) to run around without concerns of dragging a child along.
Her flight gets her home on Sunday night, and I can’t wait to see the goodies that we get for the baby.
While she’s gone, it’s up to me to take care of all of the animals. Kiara is the primary caregiver for the animals, but that’s mainly because she gets along better with the cats than I do. I can take care of dogs all day long. They’re easy. Cats are more finicky. You give a dog food, and they eat it. Give a cat food, and they may or may not eat. Up to them. We have three cats that have a huge food drive. If you leave food out, they’ll eat it all, puke it up, and eat some more if there is any left. This means that we can’t leave food out. As a matter of fact, we have three types of cat food for the five cats. Loki gets his prescription diet. Picasso gets a particular flavor of cat food, and the other three (Divinity, Palladium, and Nikita) get the third kind.
This all means that the cats get fed at the same time. Picasso goes in a cage in Kiara’s craft room while Palladium and Nikita are left to roam the craft room while they eat. Loki gets fed in Kiara’s office, and Divinity gets fed in the office as well, but she gets put in a small cage while she eats. Kiara has no trouble at all getting all of the cats where they are supposed to go. I guess she has a certain method. Me? I have a hard time rounding up one cat, let alone five of them! I can usually manage Loki, Divinity, and Picasso. Takes some skill and timing, but I get it done. Nikita and Palladium are a different story. Nikita is timid around me (unless I’m laying down in bed), so it’s hard to get her into the craft room unless she is really hungry. Palladium has been scared of me since we first got him, so I have to lock everyone away, and then feed him wherever I happen to find him.
Once I have them all isolated and fed, they eat fairly quickly. While this is happening, I tend to the dogs. Like I said, the dogs are easy. I throw down the food, and they eat it. Sometimes Fly (our greyhound) will get finicky and not want to eat her full portion. Kiara seems to fret over this, but I don’t. If Fly’s not hungry and doesn’t want to eat, then I take what she doesn’t eat, and throw it back into the bag of dog food. No biggie.
Three more days of tending to the animals, and missing Kiara before she gets home. I hope she’s having a good time back home, but I do miss her. At least it’s only a few days before she’s back home.
First Ultrasound
We had our first ultrasound today for our baby. We were a bit off on the length of the pregnancy. We thought Kiara was 10 weeks along, when she is really only 8 weeks along. The baby is 20mm is length. That just seems so tiny for something that is going to grow up to be a full-grown adult. The changes are coming (for Kiara, my life, our family, and things in general.) They became more real today when we saw the baby in Kiara. The neatest thing was that you could see the heart beating even though it’s so tiny. That’s just amazing!!! We also heard the heart beat of the baby, and it was just amazing. 
The heart was beating at 162 beats per minute. Kiara thought that was awful fast, but I know from working with small animals that the smaller something is, the faster its heart beats. I don’t know why that happens, but I know that is the general rule (there are exceptions, like most reptiles [which our baby is not one of!])
We’re having another ultrasound in about a month to check for health issues, and then another at the 18-ish week mark to check development. We’re also going to try to find out the sex of the baby at the 18th week, so that we can start negotiating the name. That should prove interesting.
PS: The image is clickable for a larger version.
First Doctor Appointment
I met the doctor that will be delivering my baby today. He’s a nice guy that is very confident in his mannerisms. I always love that in a health professional. We often only go to doctors when something is wrong, and when they present an air of confidence, knowledge, and surety. then they tend to put us (or, at least, me) at ease.
Kiara had told me that he has big, strong hands. She wasn’t kidding! I could feel the strength in his grip when he shook my hand, but he seemed to know that he was strong and didn’t exert his full power into the grip. I like that in a man. A handshake should be firm, but not bone-crushing.
Just before that handshake, however, my first impression of him was that he looked quite a bit like George Hamilton. He has the same complexion, and almost the same face. The doctor was quite a bit bigger (mostly muscle, you could tell) and several decades younger.
We asked him all sorts of questions about how to proceed with the pregnancy, and when I should come to appointments and such. He was very clear in his answers and very honest with us. That was also appreciated.
There is a history of Downs Syndrome (1 cousin) on Kiara’s side, so that is a concern for us. We’re going to get an ultrasound done next Wednesday to get a firm date on how far along Kiara is. This will allow the doctor to schedule an ultrasound between the 12th and 13th week to check for signs of Downs Syndrome. It has something to do with some measurements in the spacing between the neck bones and the folds of skin on the neck. There are also some blood tests that go along with it. The results of the ultrasound and the blood work are plugged into a computer, and it spits out a probability of Downs Syndrome being a possibility. If the probability is low, then we continue on normally. If it’s high, then we may do an amniocentesis to do further testing. Even if the tests tell us that our child will have Downs Syndrome, we’ll have the baby. It just means more challenges after the birth.
Enough doom and gloom. I’m getting down a little just typing this out. I’m sure that everything will work out in the end.
I was also there during the “woman exam,” and, no, I didn’t watch! I don’t think I want to be there for another one. Poor Kiara squirmed and grimaced the whole time. It hurt me to watch her in pain. I could barely stand it. Kiara has told me that this doctor is the gentlest and best that she’s ever been to. I couldn’t image the pain and suffering that a careless doctor can cause if this guy is one of the best!
Of course, when it comes time for labor, I hope that I handle it better than I did the exam. We’ll have to wait until November to find out.
Random Thoughts
Here are a few random thoughts that have popped in my head since Sunday morning:
Will we be having twins? They run in Kiara’s family, and I found out from my mom when I told her about the baby that her mom had twins (that died in infancy) and that my great-grandmother was a set of triplets. I didn’t know any of this before. I guess we’ll find out in the 6-8 week mark.
Maybe it’s the darker side of my psyche, but I hope nothing bad happens to Kiara during the whole process. While I want a child, I don’t want to “trade” Kiara for a newborn. If something happens, I’ll deal with it, but giving birth to a child is no small feat. I worry about these things.
Will I have a son or a daughter? I’m hoping for a son, but I’ll be just as happy with a daughter. I’m thinking that it will most likely be a son. My grandfather is 1 of 5 sons. My dad is 1 of 2 sons. My dad has 3 sons. My genetics seems to have a strong leaning towards boys. I guess we’ll find out around the 20th week.
Will my child have genetic problems? I’ll love any child that I have, but, like any parent, I hope for a healthy, happy, intelligent, caring, and wonderful child. If something less-than-perfect happens, I’ll adjust, and I’ll love the child just as if they were “perfect.” Then again, maybe that will be God’s vision of perfect for my child. We’ll have to find out.
I’d like to raise my child with some religious grounding. I’m not talking a Bible-thumping, God-fearing, Christ-is-all type religion. I want them to know that there is a God, that Jesus can be a source of wisdom, learning, love, and guidance. My child will get all of the science, evolution teachings, and other stuff like that in school. I want them to know and love God. That means finding a church, getting them baptized, and actually going on a regular basis. I’m hoping to find a small church. I don’t want to go to some big church that is more like a corporation than a House of God. I don’t have any religious friends, so I don’t have anyone to ask. I guess I’ll have to start “shopping around.”
Speaking of school, I think I want to home-school. We’re still years away from figuring that out, but it’s something to think about.
Will I raise a child that cures cancer?
Will I raise the next Ted Bundy?
Maybe my child will be the first human to step foot on Mars?
Names. Names. Names. We’ll need to know the sex as soon as possible. Every time we’ve gotten a new pet, it’s taken a few weeks to come up with a name. We can’t do that with a baby. I’d like to pick a name that means something to us. Like “Denise” as a middle name if it’s a girl after my little sister. If it’s a boy, I’d like “Luveal” to be his middle name after my grandfather. It’s something that we’ll have to work out. We’ll have about 20 weeks to figure out the name once we know the sex of the baby.
The due date is November 21st. Will we have snow around that time? Will we be able to get to the hospital when it comes time for the baby? We’ll have “Big Red” (a 1999 Chevy Suburban) by that time, so we’ll be able to handle most snowstorms unless it’s really bad.
Will my child be good at sports? Will he/she want to try?
I want to teach them chess, but I’m not going to push it on them. Maybe they’ll want to play and learn from me.
What kind of hobbies will my child have? Will I have the financial security to support them in all of their endeavors like my grandparents supported me through all of my “I’d like to try that” moments?
I bet my child will need braces. I needed braces, as did Kiara, and so did my father. I’m not worried about the cost, but kids can be cruel, and the jokes can be endless.
Speaking of the cruelty of children… Will my child be kind and generous or mean and spiteful? I’m going to do my best to instill in them a desire to help others, but I have this slight fear of failure. Maybe this fear of failure will help drive me to do the right things when necessary.
Godparents. Do we need godparents? What are godparents? How do we pick them? How do we ask them?
What happens to my child if both Kiara and I are killed before they are able to grow to adulthood? I assume we’ll set something up in our wills, but how do we pick the new guardians? How do we ask them? How do we pick one couple over another without hurting anyone’s feelings?
Speaking of a will, I guess it’s a good time to get one in order.
Saving money. We’ll need to save money for all sorts of things. I’m going to quit smoking for good. That will save me about $15 a week. I’m going to take that $15 a week, and put it in a jug for the child. What will I spend it on? Not really sure, but it will be there for them when they need it. It’s not enough for a college education, but it might be enough for a used car by the time they turn 16.
Will they share the love of animals that Kiara and I have? I hope so because the child is going to be stuck with sharing space with lots of cats and a few dogs. I’m sure that they’ll do just fine with them.
Aunts and Uncles. Kiara is an only child, and I only have three brothers left back in Texas. Our baby is really not going to know his/her uncles too well, but there is going to be a huge support team of friends here in town. I grew up around tons of friends of my mom and dad. I knew that they were not blood relatives, but they were like aunts and uncles to me. Our baby is going to have the same. I thought about listing everyone here, but I knew I would miss some people. I’m just looking forward to my child falling in love with all of the people in my life just like I love them.
How many cavities will they have as a child? I had my fair share, but I hope that their teeth are not going to be as bad as mine.
How many times will they run away from home? How far will they go before they decide to come back? Will I know about it?
What about sneaking out at night? I did it. I’m sure Kiara did it. Most people that I know did it. I know that they’ll do it, but I hope that they don’t get into too much trouble or danger while roaming the night.
What will they laugh at first?
What will be their first word?
I now have even more reason to live a good life, and I hope that they can be proud of me as their father. I’ll always love them, but I also want them to live a life that lets me brag about them to my friends until my friends get tired of hearing about my children.
How tall will they be?
What color will their hair be?
Will they look like me or Kiara?
What will their birthmark be? Where will it be?
What will they do for a living?
Will they go to college?
What kind of grades will they get? Will they take some weird math that they need help with, but it’s over my head on how to do it? Will I have to go back to school in order to properly help with homework?
If I have a son, will he want to run around, play sports, do Boy Scouts, and be active? Or will he want to sit in front of the TV and veg out?
Speaking of TV, it will not be the babysitter in our house.
As soon as we figure out the name, I need to get a domain name, and an email address setup for the baby. I’d like to email him/her my thoughts on him/her as he/she grows up. I think it would be interesting for him/her to read when he/she gets old enough.
If I have a daughter, will she also be active in the world? Will I be invited to participate in stuff like the Girl Scouts? I’d hate to be excluded from something as fun as that just because I’m the dad.
I enjoyed acting quite a bit when I was younger. Will they share this joy with me? Will they want to go to movies with me and enjoy them as much as I do? Of course, I’ll have to be more discerning about what movies I go to if I have a child with me. Most of them will probably be cartoons.
Speaking of cartoons, I guess I’ll have to get over my aversion to animation and start loving the world of computer and hand-drawn movies. I guess Kiara will now get her wish to start collecting Disney movies. I just hope that they continue their habit of re-releasing classic cartoons, so that our child can enjoy them. Maybe I’ll actually get to see the end of Bambi in the future without falling asleep. (I’ve seen Bambi about 5 times, and I’ve never made it to the end. I have no idea how it ends.)
Will Kiara’s folks (who are about retirement age) want to move to Colorado to be near their grandchild? I’m not sure how I feel about this. Sure, the extra help would be nice, and I like them well enough. I’m not sure I could handle seeing them every-other-day, though. If this does happen, I’ll adjust to it. Lots of changes in my life are coming, and this is just a small one.
How old should my child be when I have the sex talk? The drug talk? The talk about how to avoid certain people?
There is evil in the world. I want my child to be able to recognize it when they see it, and avoid it if possible. I have a friend from back in Texas that was not raised with this ability or skill. He’s been taken advantage of many times, and I feel sorry for him for this lack of his education. I hope to avoid this with my child, but I don’t want them to be paranoid, frightful of the world, or overly cautious. They need to love to live life without fear, but it needs to be tempered with a good dose of wariness.
What other questions will I have? I suppose they’ll come to me when they come.
Father-To-Be
Kiara woke me up Sunday morning to tell me that she had some news. I don’t wake up quickly, so I was still groggy. Even in my groggy state, my eyes immediately focused on the home pregnancy test that she had in her hand. I knew that she had taken a few here and there over the years, and she never mentioned any of them to me. I knew that the only reason she would be telling me about this one is because it turned out positive!
It was the third one that she had taken, and they had all come out positive. We haven’t gotten to a doctor yet to confirm it, but I just couldn’t sit on this news until next Monday when Kiara has the first doctor’s appointment. I hope I’m not jumping the gun with this announcement.
After Kiara woke me up Sunday, I had to run some errands in town. While I was in town, Kiara asked me to pick up Your Pregnancy Week by Week, and I happened to spot Your Pregnancy for the Father-to-Be while in the baby section, and I picked it up. When I picked up the book and looked at it, that’s when it hit me: I’m going to be a dad. I can’t say that I totally lost it while standing there in Barnes and Noble, but I did start to cry. Not tears of anger, fear, or sadness, but tears of pure joy.
This is something that I’ve been wanting for several years now. Deep down, I’ve always wanted to be a dad, but there were a good number of years that I could barely take care of myself, let alone a child. In the past five years or so, my life has been stable enough that I thought that starting a family would be a good thing to do. We didn’t plan for a child, but that does not mean that the upcoming baby is not wanted. He/She is very wanted, very desired, and will be very loved.
The next nine months will be a crash course on the next stage of my life, but I’m looking forward to it. The father-to-be book is about 250 pages long, and just yesterday I managed to get to about page 100. I’m going to work on it the rest of the week, and I’m going to try to finish it up by the end of the week. What comes after that will be a great mystery, but I’m going to try to take this a week (a day??) at a time to see what life brings me.
To Do List
Here are a few things that I would like to do before I die. They’re not in any particular order…
1) Go skydiving. Looks like a rush, and I would love to try it at least once.
2) Get a book published. Ever since I was in my early teens, I’ve wanted my name on the byline of a book. I’m not sure why I want to get published, but it’s an urge that is there. I don’t care if it’s a technical book, a role playing book, or a fiction novel. I have the skills to do any one (or all three!) of those. It’s just a matter of honing my skills to the point where they are good enough to be published, and actually finding the time to get something finished. Someday…
3) Go back to Europe. I would love to spend a week or two in Europe just traveling around and looking at the sights. Kiara has never been to Europe, so I would love to take her there someday.
4) Track down an old friend of mine. Last I heard from him was around 1999, and he was joining a seminary school with the intention of becoming a Catholic priest. His eventual goals were to become a Franscician Monk, and tend to people in prison. I’m not sure if he ever met his goal or not. Shortly after talking to him when he was going to enter seminary school, he dropped off the face of the planet. I’ve tried to get in touch with him a few times, but I’ve always failed to actually talk to him.
5) Get a tattoo. Kiara will only let me get one that is “meaningful.” My idea of getting Tux (The Linux penguin mascot) is not “meaningful” enough, so I’ve decided to do a portrait of my sister on my arm. As you probably know, I lost her to a drunk driver 9 years ago. I think getting her portrait on my arm should qualify as “meaningful.”
6) Graduate college. I want to get at least a Bachelor’s degree. Maybe even a Masters. I already have all of the skills necessary to do my job, so this is more of a personal goal than a professional goal. Either way, it’ll be good to get that piece of paper in my hands. While I’m at it, I’m going to try to win The Lady Ada Lovelace Award for Outstanding Achievement in Computer Information Systems, Computer Networking, Computer Science. Yeah. It’s a long title. It goes to the person in the graduating class in CIS, CN, or CS that has the highest GPA. My current GPA is 3.778 (Damn College Algebra and Philosophy killed me), but I hope that I can pull it up over the course of the next 2 years to earn the award. We’ll see how it goes.
7) Have a child. What better way is there to ensure that part of you continues to exist in the world? I would love to have a son or daughter to teach, rear, love, and watch grow. Sure, they’ll make mistakes, and I’ll be there to pick them up when they do mess up and put them back on their feet. I’ll also be there to hold their hand when they need it, or lift them up on my shoulders in celebration of their accomplishments. This is probably the most important one to me on this list.
There are probably a few more things that I would like to do before I die, but I’ve got to get back to what I was doing before I started to post.
