Lifestyles of the Young + Suburban

Archive for February, 2008

I wish this weren’t so true…

With the half-eaten birthday cake for George and Abe, I figured we could continue our search for the right name by checking out US President’s names for a source of inspiration.

Inspiration quickly turned into disappointment: Grover Lincoln Manchee, Reagan Walker Manchee, Pierce Fillmore Manchee, Quincy Monroe Manchee…none of them have the right ring to it.

With the upcoming elections, I pondered momentarily with:
- Barack Manchee (a little too different)
- Mike Manchee (too alliterative)
- Hillary Manchee (just mean – the new boy named Sue?)
- John Manchee (too normal – there are already four other John presidents)

We’ll come up with something.

With 71 days until the due date, we bit the bullet this weekend and admitted that after 6-months of our house being on the market the chances of it selling and us getting out of the apartment are pretty darn slim.

Its interesting how nasty, gloomy weather can have an impact on what you do or at least what you feel like doing during the day. We chose Saturday to not do much of anything. We were awakened by a tremendous storm with what we found out was a decent amount of hail. Fortunately we parked in the covered area the night before. It seemed to rain nearly all day with convenient breaks for me to take Jackson out (Lisa conveniently was busy doing something else each time).

On Sunday, it was gorgeous out and after our (now) weekly Sunday bagel at Einstein’s, we began to sort through the closets and all the randomly placed stuff we have accumulated in the past several months. I like to think of it as pre-Spring cleaning.

We’ve got a bag of clothes and items to drop off at Goodwill, and a half dozen boxes to drop off at my parents (Mom – I hope this is ok!). Now we have a little more room in the closets, on a few shelves and in a few drawers for the little guy’s stuff.

Between the shower Melissa and Lora are throwing Lisa on Saturday and our growing list of must have’s before we come home from the hospital, we needed the room.

at the Half Price Books today:

“If I was looking for Klingon reference books, where would I look?”
-Guy wearing homemade tie-die overalls

Because its Friday and I don’t want you to think I only post about babies, houses and vacations.

This is too cool and makes me kinda wish I had done better at math, so I could be an engineer:

Little known fact: At some point (in the last 15 years) I figured out that people that went to school to be engineers didn’t all work as train engineers. I didn’t know there was that much in the railway business, but I had heard UT had a great engineering school

Yesterday was Super Tuesday and Fat Tuesday, and it was 12 Weeks to Due Date Tuesday.

We celebrated by going to Lisa’s last four-week check up. It was supposed to be a simple in and out, with a glucose test thrown into the mix (she had drink this orange syrup that was a little more syrupy than orangey). After mentioning some abdominal pain and wondering if they were the elusive, but much discussed Braxton-Hicks contractions the good doctor recommended we check things out on the sonogram.

This was good news for us, since we figured we would at least get a look or two of the little guy and make sure he was doing super. Luckily for us we went into a sonogram room that had a newer machine with 4D capabilities (after a little bit of research the 4th D is for the live motion/action, sounds like a marketing gimmick, but I digress).

This thing is cool. It was a regular sonogram and then a couple button clicks and there he is – making kissy faces, drinking amniotic fluid, blinking and moving his hands around. You really have the opportunity to see what he looks like before he makes his way in a few months. He looks pretty cute and seemed to be having a good time. Here’s a pic:

They guesstimated his weight at 2lbs 12oz, which is in the 60 percentile. The next month will give us a good indication if he is going to be a big Manchee baby or regular sized baby at birth.

Parents should read to their kids. Read to your kids starting at a young age and they will become better learners.

It seems like a no brainer to me, but as I thought more and more about this I really began to appreciate how much time my Mom and Dad read to me, with me and provided me with the opportunity to read as much as I wanted (even if it meant reading the entire Babysitter’s Club collection). We visited the library quite a bit and would always have a pretty solid library in our house that Zach, Stacy and I shared.

The early reading and the accessibility to so many books had a very positive impact on me (thanks Mom and Dad!). Even today with so much information online, I still enjoy reading a good book and have several right now that I am reading (and not all are baby books).

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was Where The Wild Things Are.

I know it is probably not the best book for a new born, but it is one book that sticks out because of the story and the amazing illustrations (I like to read, but I am still a visual learner).

So what other books do you remember from your childhood that we should make sure we have in our home library? Post a comment and share!