Grace TV

Greetings all! It's Saturday night in America (and Sunday morning in Geneva) and I'm sure our peeps in Austin are throwing back suds at the Draught House, Dog & Duck, Ginger Man or Poodle Dog (well, hopefully not there). San Franciscans are probably hitting up Dragon Well, Nick's Crispy Tacos, or some such delectable place. DC wonk friends are hitting it hard at the Brickskeller (or are they? does anyone still go there?). And hopefully a bunch of seniors are ordering their fifth $4 pitcher of swill at the Palms in Lexington, VA. But here at the ranch, we have just bathed Grace for the first time, watched her spit up for the first time, thrown her into her ducky pj's, eaten some leftovers and neither of us have showered in days (just kidding. . . just a shout out to E.Large). Yeah. It's probably the most fascinating Saturday night of our lives. Eat your heart out!

But, anyway, I digest. The point is, if you're out and about at one of these establishments with momentary boredom between drink orders and you're checking your Google Reader, here's a video that pretty much sums up the Gracie birth a few days ago. Enjoy.

Hello World!

Grace Elizabeth came out to play (in an Austin snow storm!) on Tuesday Feb. 23, 2010 at just past high noon here in cowboy country (12:01 pm). She weighed 8 lbs, 4 oz and was 20.5 inches long. There's more to the story than that and we'll post some of those details later -- when we sleep more :) But for now, here is a mini-storyboard of the birth of the gal who puts the "GRA" in GRAPE JELLY!

Getting weighed right after the birth

Arriving at the post-partum room for recovery

Hanging with mommy!

Hanging with Mr. Cooper...er...daddy!

Hanging with nana!

Taking some time to "think" about the big day

Getting ready to head home at about 48 hours old

Her first ride in the car seat home!

Last Night's Lost Wrapup

What? You were expecting something else here? Oh right, the baby. Well, she's a bit shy. Today she is 8 days overdue and neither rain nor sun nor music nor walking nor (hush hush) nor gardening nor raking nor weed pulling nor acupuncture nor massage nor pressure points has convinced her to come out yet. But, yesterday's checkup showed she was doing just fine in there, is not inordinately large and is still moving well. So she gets to stay in there. Until...next Tuesday -- February 23. That's when we scheduled the induction (6am sharp) at exactly 2 weeks past the due date. So there is a line in the sand.

And speaking of sand (bam! segue), I am going to bore you with Lost details. Kelly does not like Lost and our friend was over last night to join in hating on it. And then they start asking about this person or that person or this plot line and when I answer with "smoke monster" and "no, no, the other flight that crash-landed on the island -- the Ajira flight," I get snickers and looks like "OK, whatever. Enjoy your stupid program." But I do feel I have a case for this show, especially with an English-major wife who should surely appreciate symbols and motifs and retracing plot lines. I mean sure, the acting is...what's the word?...awful. But I don't watch for the acting. I'm in it for the nerdiness.

Case in point: the numbers of Lost. My favorite element seeing as how much I like those amazing ten things that literally make our world go 'round. Lost's numbers are: 4-8-15-16-23-42. Those numbers won the lottery, were stenciled on the hatch, and were required to be typed into a Commodore 64 every 108 seconds to prevent said hatch from realeasing negative matter or some such thing (there's the sound of Kelly's eyes rolling again).


Then, the numbers come back again last night. The Jacob spirit/dude on the island apparently had designated people as "chosen ones" to take over his job well before they came to the island (sometimes as children) so that these candidates might one day watch over the island as he does/did. He assigned "chosen ones" to numbers. And wouldn't you know it? 6 of the survivors that came on the plane crash were assigned 4-8-15-16-23-42. Delicious. Even more delicious is having possessed/zombie John Locke (again from Kelly: "Really? John Locke? That's his name? Is Adam Smith there too?") last night rail against having anyone to watch over the island. We don't need anyone to watch over the island; it's just an island, he says. Flash back several seasons to when they are in the hatch and he defends (as original John Locke) punching in those numbers every 108 seconds to Jack, and Jack says they don't need to do it; it's just numbers and it's just a useless old computer with no Windows installed. But the one time Desmond (Kelly: "Who the #$%@ is Desmond?") forgot to punch in the numbers, the 6 people assigned numbers by Jacob showed up on the island because the hatch started to release all this crazy energy and magnetism and it caused the plane crash. SO, now if no one from Jacob's list of 6 candidates watches over the island (like not punching in the numbers to the Apple IIe), what will happen? Crazy things? We'll find out.

Ok, Ok. It's stupid. Fine. Just give me the 14 more hours required in my life to watch the remaining episodes and leave me in peace, woman!

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

It's Valentine's Day and a girl born on Valentine's Day would be so sweet, wouldn't it? Or would it? Guaranteed pink princess. Anyway, we don't really care about parsing out the meaning of her birth date -- we just want our daughter out ASAP . . . on whatever day. In the interim, we have been struggling to find things to do. The Winter Olympics have helped and have convinced us that we'll be getting a future moguls champ (although apparently we'll have to move to somewhere like Tahoe, Montana, or Vermont for such a thing to happen). We've also broken out the board games and thank goodness for that! Jason used all his tiles on one word for the first time in his illustrious Scrabble career. Yeah, yeah -- it took me 32 years to do it. But I did it! Although the omen was not so good for a soon-to-be dad. The word? "DEADBEAT." Ouch. Here's the proof:


Now Kelly is working on a crossword puzzle and we're so close. Help us out.
6 across: "Enthusiastic, as an attitude" -- we have CA _ _ O
15 across: "Starters" -- we have AT_ _ M
8 down: "Con head?" -- we have _ _ O
9 down: "Dana of comedy" -- we have _ _ NA

Gracie says she won't come out until we get this puzzle solved!

UPDATE! We got it. CANDO (Can-do attitude), ATEAM (A-Team), NEO (neo cons?), DANA (I think they had a typo and meant "Carvey of comedy")

Nesting

Well folks, no news yet. I haven't really had that proverbial rush of energy before the birth, but I have definitely been nesting. Here's some proof...

I re-organized the freezer and thought I'd shoot a pic of all of the meals we've frozen over the last several months. Lots of soup and bean dishes, pesto from all the basil we had last summer, leftover cake from the shower and even an apple pie from the holidays. My motto: you can freeze anything!


Yesterday I made a cake from scratch to celebrate Gracie's due date. Chocolate buttercream icing... mmmm.


And here are a few shots of the nursery!

We painted the letters on the canvas ourselves. Given that neither of us is much of an artist, we were pretty happy with the results.


Jason is a big fan of the decals... he did the designs on the door and the fan all by himself!

One day more . . .

. . . until the due date. Which itself is just a statistical thing. But still. Makes you excited. But then you just hurry up and wait. In the meantime, plenty of other events in the world are making us excited too -- like the Super Bowl. The MVP is the QB that used to throw deep post patterns to me as a junior & senior in high school (and laser slant routes that I dropped half the time because they came in with such velocity; yet the NFL scout magicians say he has a weak arm). And guys who couldn't pump Drew Brees's gas today made fun of him in high school for being slow, having a "roach on his face," and being a brown noser. Ha! Losers. I'm already game-planning how to make his son Grace's husband in 20-odd years. Man crush!

Magical Thinking

The season premiere of Lost is on right now, and Jason is trying to catch me up on five years of plane crashes, time travel and smoke monsters. It's really weird. I don't get it (plus the acting is really bad). But I am having an easier time than usual believing the fantastical elements. That's because I've been doing some magical thinking of my own lately. I think the end of pregnancy just does that to you.

Joan Didion wrote a really sad but excellent book a few years ago called "The Year of Magical Thinking." It was about the sudden death of her husband and how her brain played all of these crazy tricks on her after he was gone.

Although it is a different and more joyful life event, I think that the process of having a child affects your brain in a similar way. I find myself in such a strange fog lately. While my rational brain knows that a baby is about to enter our lives, I can't quite believe that it is really happening. My belly is gigantic and it feels like there is a little alien kickboxing in there most of the time, but it still doesn't feel exactly real. I guess it probably won't until there is a baby laying on my chest.

Of course, maybe this is just nature's way of preparing you for having a baby. If you knew too much, you probably wouldn't really want to go through with it. I read something to Jason recently that advised the partner that the laboring woman should have no expectation of rationality. I kind of liked that. For a normally pretty rational gal, I'm ready to lose my grip on reality, head to the land of magical thinking, and have this baby.

(By the way, my prediction is this Saturday, February 6th)