Sunday, February 26, 2012

Movie Night

We had our first family movie night last weekend, unless you count the times when Gareth was an infant and we watched "24" with him that is. I told Gareth we'd be watching a movie all together after we ate dinner. This might have been a mistake as he inhaled his dinner rather than chewing and swallowing in proper fashion. But it did mean that he was able to get pjs on while Ryan and I finished our dinner and did some quick cleanup. Not having a television yet, we didn't get to sit on our cushy couch. But that worked out okay since I'd decided to buy some special treats to go with our movie, which we wouldn't have let him eat on the couch. Gareth loves the fig bars from the bulk section at PCC, so I got a few of those along with some licorice (which he also likes, but it was more for me and my pregnancy-enhanced sweet tooth that I'm not doing so well at ignoring anymore). Gareth was a little iffy about the movie choice at first - "Despicable Me" - because it was something he hadn't seen before and he really wanted to watch a Cars movie. But I think it's safe to say he loved our selection as he made sure to get in two more viewings of it the next day before we sent the movie back. It was fun to watch him react to the movie and it's probably the slowest he's ever eaten a fig bar because he was so engrossed in the story. And it worked out nicely for us. Gareth went to bed a little late, but it was still only 8:30 by the time he was in bed, so there was plenty of time for us to get in some "Angel" (we finished Buffy a couple weeks ago) and "Mad Men" (like watching a train wreck in slow motion, but you can't look away) while enjoying some "dry" sodas (they're less sweet than typical soda) before we headed to bed. Unfortunately for Gareth, we also have movies on our queue that are just for us. I felt a little bad when he got the mail a couple days ago and was so excited to pull out a movie. He wasn't too upset about it being one he couldn't watch as he'd come up with the perfect solution: we just need to "keep this movie until he's a grown-up and then he can watch it too". Yeah, not going to happen. I think he'll get over it though.

Friday, February 24, 2012

What's In a Name?

So my due date is nearing, which is exciting but also a little scary. We've got plenty of clothes and anything left to do really won't take all that long. And we've both agreed we're definitely more mentally prepared for what to expect this time around, though it's been long enough since Gareth's infant days that how much I hate some of the early stuff will likely be a shock to remember, despite what I feel are very clear memories of how awful the newborn stage is. Probably the biggest thing left on my mental "to-do" list is to get our taxes done. (I will be thrilled next year to only have federal taxes to do; hooray for not state income taxes in WA!) Of course, I'm also probably forgetting a million things that we could be doing to prepare, but I'm pretty certain we've got most of the big things covered. Except for a name.

Now, we struggled with Gareth's name. It's a lot of pressure to come up with what your kid will be called for the rest of their life (unless they really hate it and opt to change it when they turn 18). Gareth is his name because in the end it's really the only thing we came up with that we both liked just fine, and we just sort of settled into it. We had absolutely no other names on the list. Okay, that's not entirely true, but none of them were serious considerations last time around. And they all got erased off of the list this time around for various reasons, usually because they're far too popular. We looked at the top 500 boys names the other day and it was discouraging to realize that there are really only 50 or so boys names and people just change the spelling (Jonathon, Johnathan, Johnathan, etc.) or use just the nickname (Tony rather than Anthony) or a version in a different language (Matteo rather than Matthew). The other problem we've run into is that Ryan works in a currently male-dominated field. Half the names I'd pulled out are names of managers at old jobs, or names of people on his team at his current job, or even names of tools they use at his current job. I told him he needs to switch to a female-dominated profession. And don't even mention a middle name. Last time around we just unthinkingly followed some family tradition and didn't have to come up with a middle name on our own that way. I'm still hoping that a middle name will come somewhat easily once we decide on a first name. But I'm starting to think this baby will be lucky if it has a name at all.