Well, ladies and gentlemen, lads and lasses, I've been given the final clearance to drop the bomb! It's something that we've suspected for some time, but now have official photographic* evidence. That's right, possibly the worst kept secret of the decade: We are, once again, expecting a baby! Yeah, I don't think anybody reading this is really surprised, but I felt the need to be theatrical anyway. Here's the answers to the most common questions that come up when we tell people the news:
- The due date is May 23rd.
- Yes, we planned to get pregnant again, just not quite so soon. We were actually planning to shoot for having the next one when Asher was about 18 months old; as it is, he'll be about 14 months.
- Yes, we do know how this keeps happening, and were fully prepared for the possibility that it might. For the record: If you are ever told that breast feeding is an effective form of birth control for at least six months, don't bank on it - we got about five months out of that. And Asher was 100% breast fed, right up until Denine's milk dried up all-of-a-sudden (clue #2 that she was preggers, though I can't remember what clue #1 was at present...)
It's hard to believe that, about fourteen months ago, Asher looked just like this. Think about that the next time you start to say "they grow up so fast"...
In other news:
We just got our van back from the shop for the third time in a month. I failed to mention the first time (which happened before my last post) because it's not really that eventful to put my twelve-year-old van in the shop. That time it was the starter that needed replacing, plus a few other general maintenance things that I had the mechanic do while it was there. We'd had it back a week or two when the brakes started hemorrhaging fluid, and by Halloween weekend it was leaking so badly that refilling the reservoir didn't even help. Which would have been bad enough on it's own, but this was also the weekend before we had to leave for our trip to Austin. So we had to arrange a rush job to get that fixed, which ended up requiring a new master brake cylinder. Then, during our trip, the van starts overheating (unfortunately not a rare occurrence) and eventually red-lines on Sunday, right before we need to head home. We managed to make it back to town by not running the air conditioner excessively and topping off the radiator when we stopped, and Denine limped it along until we could get it in the shop on Tuesday. The diagnosis this time was a cracked radiator, although thankfully they didn't find anything else wrong after they replaced it (well, nothing with the coolant system, at least); I was fully expecting the thermostat and/or O2 sensor to be baked. I did say that the van overheating is not a rare occurrence, right? All said, I've dumped about $2000 into the van in the last month, which on the one hand I really hate to do because it feels like throwing good money after bad, but on the other is less than a new(er) minivan would cost me. There's a couple of other things that have been found wrong with it throughout this experience, which have the potential to turn into major repairs if they decide to go SNAFU on me. Here's hoping/praying that it survives without any more major repairs until we can finish paying off debt (and having babies!) and we can afford a new(er) one.
Speaking of Halloween, it was a typical Bailey Family Hallow's Eve Weekend. Which is to say "fairly hectic." The costumes this year were a Camp Half-Blood camper (from the Percy Jackson books) for Jamie, a monarch butterfly fairy for Ren (provided by Gramma), and a homemade Tigger onesie for Asher. In other words, we went relatively cheap and low-effort this year; I think Denine was due after the hard work she put in on their Jedi and Star Killer costumes last year. We had our church's Fall Festival the Saturday before Halloween, during which Denine manned the van for Trunk-or-Treating, while I ran around with the kids. Most of the time was actually spent standing in line so the kids could play in these giant inflatable plastic balls that they got inside of and rolled around in a pool; I've got footage on my iPod, but I'm still working on getting it accessible from here. On Halloween proper, we went over to my brother and sis-in-law's house to Trick-or-Treat as usual, and were joined by a couple of families from their neighborhood that we're getting to know, one of which is the family of a friend of my nephew, the other of which is that family's new neighbors that moved here recently and have a daughter about Ren's age. I always have fun Trick-or-Treating, but it really stinks when it's on a work night. We seriously need to get something passed to make Halloween a national holiday and have it moved to the last Friday in October. Contact your elected official!
The whole brood
Bouncin' is what Tiggers do best!
The balls that we stood in line fooooor-EEEEEH-verrrrr for
As mentioned above, we had or weekend in Austin with Denine's parents, brother, and sis-in-law to celebrate my father-in-law's 60th birthday this past weekend. We drove up Friday, and Saturday we all went to Hamilton Pool, which is pretty freaking cool. For lunch we headed out to the Oasis on Lake Travis, a restaurant built on the cliffs above the lake that has a killer view. We then poked around the shops in the complex, a mixture of gift shops, antiques, and what I suppose would be artisan galleries; some art, but also handmade goods. Apparently the owner of Oasis is building up the complex around it into an art scene; I highly recommend checking it out if you're in the area and are into that kind of thing, it's pretty cool. Sunday the plan was to just kick around Austin a little before we had to head home. Denine's mom wanted to buy her a book, and we were on the way to Barnes and Noble when the van decided to overheat. So, we made it to B'n'N, took everyone else back to the hotel, and booked it home. Not the best ending, but hey, whatchya gonna do? Exclude the car overheating on Sunday, it was a really fun time, and was the first weekend Denine and I have had sans-kiddos since.....2007, I believe.
I think that's about it. Denine is down with doing regular belly bump pics again this time around, so I should be posting more regularly, at least for the next several months. We did the first one of those around thirteen weeks last time, so I'm shooting to start around the same time again. Plus, that should be just about time for a Thanksgiving post. We got most of the Christmas shopping done for the kids today, so I guess we're officially in holiday mode now. Geez, it seems like we just did this. Except with one less child. And we'll have one more the next time. *sigh*
*Yeah, I know, that's not really a photograph, but "sonographic evidence" just didn't sound right. Although, "ultrasonic evidence" would've sounded pretty cool...
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