Baby's First Heartbeat!

148 glorious beats per minute! Seven weeks and 2 days into our pregnancy. It's 1.1 cm big!!!

The Journey Continues ....

Nicole and I are now starting our sixth year of trying to have a baby. Luckily for us, the company I work for has a great insurance plan which enabled us to really start trying five years ago. Unluckily for us, something just isn't working. This year we've decided to try artificial insemination. Even though the insurance is great when it comes to having a baby, it doesn't cover anything related to fertility issues. I figure we're pushing $10,000 spent over the past five years so far and that includes the insemination fee. I know in the end it's going to be worth it if it works. Getting there is the hard part.

Back From the Dead

I'm back. For now. I always start these blogs, get bored with them or move on to myspace of facebook and just forget about them. This time, I'm going to try and keep this one active just because I want the whole world to know about my life with Nicole because I know they're soooo interested in our life. Until then, here is a picture of Nicole in an all too familiar pose on our recent trip out to Cali to visit her mom and stepdad.

My Immediate Family

This is my family at my youngest brother Tim's wedding. Ain't they just the cutest things ya ever did feast yer eyes on? Tim's new wife's name (and my new sister-in-law!) is Shelley. We're keeping her.

Signs Nicole and I Are Aging

She carries a pill box and I now have two prescriptions I take every night – plus nasal spray in the morning.

We enjoy driving around looking at other peoples’ landscaping.

I can’t sleep past 9 and she can’t sleep past noon.

We watch A&E more than MTV.

Getting over a long night out takes a long day in instead of a few hours.

She falls asleep hugging a heating pad instead of a bottle.

Our friends have kids who are teenagers.

Both of our cars have four doors.

Nicole acts like she’s my mother.

We watch what we eat instead of eating what we want.

We know what a gold finch looks like.

If we buy a boat, it will be a pontoon.

My Mother, My Sanity, My Wife's Toilet and My iPod

I consider myself a pretty technically savvy person. While I’m not a tech geek or anything, I know how to reset my ipod every time it freezes up on me. I now have programmed one remote to handle my whole entertainment system and turn everything on that I need at the push of a button. I can zoom around Windows Explorer and the endless files and folders on my computer like I’m deep among the clothes racks at Old Navy trying to keep up with my wife and I know which handle to turn to keep my her toilet from overflowing because I threw wadded up paper towels in it (yes, this happened last night and Nicole was actually impressed at how fast I moved when she screamed “my toilet’s about to overflow!”). So you can imagine my consternation when last night, after three hours of formatting then loading songs then syncing then formatting again then rearranging mp3 files then reloading then formatting then syncing and so on and so on and so on, I finally had loaded my mom’s latest mp3 player with the songs she wanted. I had no idea which songs actually uploaded to her player and how I even got them on there but there were songs I recognized on there and the player was working. Never mind that the ear buds wouldn’t have fit in Goliath’s ears or that you had to push three different buttons 17 times to adjust the volume or that she paid $50 for it (most likely at Aldi’s where you can buy two week old bread for a quarter) when I probably couldn’t have sold it at a garage sale for $10. It was transmitting sound and that was literally music to my ears. About the easiest aspect of the whole process was naming the mp3 player which I promptly labeled “Mom’s cheap crap”. My iPod took about five minutes to set up and Nicole’s took about two minutes. Remember how good I am with Windows Explorer? The iTunes music store is a stroll through strawberry fields compared to Explorer. So guess what my mother is getting as a gift out of the blue and as a gift to my sanity? Yes, an iPod. Now it’s up to my brothers (one who swears it’s all about the marketing – he owns one – and the other who is anti-iPod) to determine how nice the one she gets is going to be. I’m aiming for a refurbished 2 GB nano if they chip in with some money. If not, she gets a refurbished shuffle. Either way, I get my sanity back and the price will be well worth it.

Baby Making Update

The quest for a child continues. It’s now nearing three and a half years since Nicole and I started trying to have a baby and sometimes you can’t help but ask yourself if it’s all worth it. Month after month of trying, getting tested, taking pills, paying lab bills and stressing out while you wait starts to grind on you. At this point, I think Nicole’s the only reason we’re still trying. I think it’s more a “woman” thing that keeps her going. I’m ambivalent to the situation. On one hand, I would love to have a baby with Nicole. It would be a representation of the two of us and how much we mean to each other. It would be something we created together – our own blood. On the other hand, it’s not something that I need. I know how I feel about Nicole and how she feels about me and people see that in the way we treat each other every day. While I would love to have a baby with Nicole, I also wouldn’t mind adopting. It’s a viable option that we’ve both talked about recently and will probably start looking at a little more seriously if nothing happens by late summer. And who knows - maybe if we adopt, it’ll take the pressure off having our own baby and Nicole will get pregnant. It’s in God’s hands at this point. Only He can tell what the future holds for the two of us.