Blogging Facebook Posts: Part 2 (January through May)

As noted previously, Hollie and I share a lot of stories about the kids on Facebook that never make it to the blog. These are short, punchy and often very strange. And some the vast majority have pictures!

Because I am a lazy blogger, and so that we can have a record of them, here are more of those, from the end of January through May.

1/30/13 - Matt's Facebook

Yeah, she does look cute. *grumble* Princesses *grumble*

2/1/13 - Matt's Facebook

Due to her burgeoning love of Mario Van Peebles' early work, LG has named her newest stuffed animal Blue Jack Kitty. 

(Only half of this is true.)

2/7/13 - Matt's Facebook

This morning at breakfast, after Louis Armstrong's rendition of Bippity Boppity Boo popped up on a shuffled Disney mix, LG looked up from her waffle and said, "Daddy, that was a pretty good song."

2/11/13 - Matt's Facebook


LG's first time sledding in the snow. I have to say snow, because in the absence of the white stuff, I have dragged her through piles of leaves.

(Apologies for the vertical video. I hate myself a little.)

2/16/13 – Matt’s Facebook

Me: we need to make dinner for mama. What should we make?
LG: something delicious.
Matt: that's a given, but what food is delicious?
LG: hmmm... Fish, pickles, broccoli, apples, French toast, chips...

2/28/13 – Matt’s Facebook

LG, flipping through a DVD portfolio: Daddy, what's this movie?
Me: That's 'Challenge of the Superfriends.' It has Superman in it.
LG: I like Superman. He's pretty cool. And he's cute.
Me: You think Superman is cute?
LG: Yessiree!

3/5/13 - Hollie's Facebook

Our Tuesday night ride home with LG:

LG: Daddy, do you want some of my snack?

Mama: Honey, daddy lost his voice so he can't talk. He doesn't want a bite of your snack. Thank you, though.

LG: Daddy? (pause) Daddy?

Mama: Sweetie, daddy can't talk. Just tell him what you want and Mama will let you know what he says.

LG: Daddy? DADDY?!?!

Mama: He can still hear you. Don't shout. Just talk to him.

LG: DADDY CAN YOU ANSWER ME?!?!


Mama: No. He cannot. Just talk, he can hear you.


LG: DADDY?!?! DADDY?!?!


Mama: He can hear you; he just can't talk because his throat hurts.


LG: DADDY CAN YOU TALK TO ME?

Repeat for 20 minutes.

3/6/13 – Matt’s Facebook

I mentioned in this blog post that I have to rearrange the kids' room to get the crib and toddler bed properly situated. Evidently LG is already working on it.

3/10/13 – Matt’s Facebook

How to Eat Frozen Yogurt: A Visual Guide

3/27/13 – Matt’s Facebook

Dear G2,
Your due date is tomorrow. Please come soon. Your sister is getting weird.
Love,
Dad

3/30/13 – Matt’s Facebook

It's déjà vu all over again. Or Hollie's body has figured out how to clone our DNA and alter a chromosome.

4/4/13 – Matt’s Facebook

This is what we in the parenting game call "success."

4/6/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

It's hard to sleep 23 hours a day with a noisy big sister in the house. He makes it happen.

4/7/13 – Matt’s Facebook

Keeping it classy at the Griffattolo household.

4/9/13 – Matt’s Facebook

By the power of trowel, I! Have! The Power!

4/14/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

I can't shake the feeling that they are plotting against us.

4/21/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

All the cool kids are wearing skeleton PJs this season.

4/24/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

LG: G2* is saying (shouting) "I want toys!"
Mama: So he likes all the things you like?
LG: He likes rattles, milk, trees and bushes. All the things other babies like.

*she actually calls him by a super sweet nickname...

5/3/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

My daughter petitioned her preschool teachers for Show and Tell Fridays, and now it's a thing. With great power comes great responsibility.

5/7/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

So, my baby sounds like the popping noise that announces a flame spurt in the fire swamp.

5/7/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

Bob Ross would be so proud of her happy little clouds.

5/8/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

Mama, infant and toddler caught in the rain. 

Only one of us was happy about it.

5/11/13 – Matt’s Facebook

LG: "Dad, you be Superman. I'll be Wolverine."
Me: "You've made your father very proud today, little one."

5/15/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

-It's always been-"Michael's got the brains, Gob's got the charm, and Buster's got the--
-High-fastening pants?

5/15/13 – Matt’s Facebook

Hollie, LG and G2 got stuck outside in the rain for about 10 minutes last week. Guess who enjoyed it?

5/21/13 – Matt’s Facebook

And what wondrous thing could cause such joyful expressions? A blank green wall.

Boundless imagination, this one.

5/21/13 – Hollie’s Facebook

I hand my daughter a sock this afternoon and ask her to put it in the hamper.
She replies: "Sure. What's a hamper?"
Truly a testament to my homemaking skills .

There's Always Someone Cooler than You

Early in Hollie's first pregnancy, I spilled some digital ink over the subject of LG's (then unknown) gender. I went to even greater lengths once we discovered she was a girl.

But, having known for a while now that we're having a boy, I haven't really talked about what that means to me. To be fair, much of the existential hand wringing I did before LG's birth was because I didn't have any idea what being a parent was like, day to day. Turns out, you spend so much time worrying about feeding, clothing and otherwise keeping the kid alive that most of the intellectual stuff goes out the window. (Which is not to say I don't still worry about what growing up as a girl in 2013 means; I just don't write about it because of the aforementioned day-to-day raising of said girl.)

And so it goes through this pregnancy. I was so happy to find out G2 is a boy. As I told quite a few people at the time, a boy would give me a sense of balance. In the game of LIFE, I'd have a car with two blue pegs and two pink pegs. At the very least, my OCD tendencies could calm down for 5 seconds. Those somewhat bizarre feelings aside, I haven't found the time or the words to articulate all the thoughts bouncing around in my brain about what having a son means to me.

It means equal parts terror and concern for 12-to-16-year-old G2.

Because when I think about my son, I don't see him as an infant, toddler or even a grade schooler. I see him as a pre-teen and teenager. Why? Because if any one stretch of my life felt emotionally hard, it was those years.

I take it as a foregone conclusion that my children will be awkward. I was an awkward kid, and in some many ways, I'm an awkward adult. I'm slightly more aware of it now, perhaps, but no less awkward for the self-awareness. For my daughter, I don't know what that awkwardness will bring, because I was not a girl. I don't know what being the weird kid means for a girl. I'm VERY aware of what being the weird kid means for a boy.

It means getting picked on in gym class, and in the locker room.

It means having kids try to cheat off your tests, not necessarily because you're the smart one (though you may be), but because you lack the self-confidence rat them out or to tell them to stop.

It means worrying about getting a date to a dance, because how are you going muster up the strength to ask that question of someone you like?

(I'm quickly realizing that these apply equally to girls. Listen up, LG. This is for you, too.)

But however awkward he turns out, I'd like G2 to know that it really doesn't matter, because happiness and weirdness are not mutually exclusive. Those years may have been tough, by some definition, but they were filled with moments of supreme joy. Such is the manic nature of the young brain. Any given day might hold the worst things and the best things.

Besides, adolescence is going to be tough no matter who you are. The bullies in gym class? For some of them, that's as high on the food chain as they'll rise. The ones cheating off your test? They're terrified of failure in a why you'll never be.

And dates? Well, getting a date just sucks, and you have to suffer through it like we all did. Sorry.

20 Week Ultrasound: We're having a...

It wasn't that long ago that I posted about the newest addition to our family unit, but we've been living with the reality of our expanding brood for quite a bit longer. Which means we've waited almost five months to learn whether we were going to have a boy or a girl.

Yesterday morning, we found out. And now I share with you the ultrasound that revealed it to us.

Apparently we're having a Mr. Burns.

Okay, so I don't have an actual ultrasound to show you. Chances are good you've seen a million of them already, and they all look the same anyway. There's a very good reason that I've got nothing of substance to show for the two hours we spent at South Jersey Radiology this morning (and no, it's not because of the ultrasound tech who-will-not-be-named, although she did make a brief appearance).

Despite the very best efforts of a very nice tech, Little Geek 2.0 squirmed, kicked, bobbed, weaved and swam (yes, swam) out from under the wand at every opportunity. Through some quirk of biology, Hollie is pregnant with Aquaman's newest sidekick. This was not entirely unexpected, since at her last OB/GYN appointment, you could literally hear the baby "swoosh" out of the way of the doppler device they use to hear the heartbeat.

"But Matt," you may be asking, "Isn't it possible this tech (however nice) was just as incompetent as the  one you encountered last time?" I might've been inclined to agree, if I didn't watch the little bugger juke and pivot for several minutes at the end of the exam.

And the tech, whatever her skill level, actually managed to get the important information like heartbeat, face, limb and organ development, and all the rest.

And although the squirming caused her initially to express skepticism about her ability to tell us whether we were having a boy or a girl, halfway through the exam she shouted, "Ha! I know what you're having!" The excitement of pinning down a shot of the organ in question evidently was too much for her to hold in.

But she did hold it in until I got into the room. Upon which time she didn't have to say anything, because no sooner did I enter the room than our son somersaulted and flashed a spread eagle in front of the wand before kicking off one side of the womb and out of the way.

With form like that, the boy parts were kind of hard to miss.

So there you have it. Little Geek 2.0 is a boy! The rummage sale for two-years-worth of pink clothes will begin momentarily.

P.S. For the record, they suggest his weight is currently 13 oz. Given our previous experience, I estimate this places his actual weight somewhere between 2 oz and 30 lbs.

Nursery Preview

We've spent a little bit of time so far getting the nursery ready. I already clued you in on the paint choice, which I'm still pleased about.

Some folks have been asking me about a nursery theme. In our quest to create a fun nursery, we've run through a couple of ideas. And there are some really cool, really cute decorations available.

My initial plan involved a Super Mario theme, and was one of several reasons we chose the wall color we did. But then I realized how expensive the vinyl sticker sets were, and I'd probably need to get at least two sets to do it up right. Then Hollie and I started balking on the notion of putting licensed characters on the walls of the kid's room. Now, it's not like we're going to eliminate all branded apparel/toys/decorations from our kid's life, (and this is a great discussion for another time) but putting giant cartoon characters on the walls is a slippery slope we aren't willing to slide down just yet.

Next, we thought about a generic, but playful, monster theme. As far as fabric for making sheet sets goes, there are a seemingly limitless number of options, if we're so inclined. We even picked up these random stuffed monster toys at the Disney store, which were crazy on-sale. Turns out Disney has a thing called the Happy Monster Band. Did anyone else know this existed? It's actually pretty cute, and the songs aren't bad, as far as children's music goes.

But we decided that while the colors for most of these options are nice, bright, and gender neutral, monsters as an entire concept probably skews a bit too masculine. And if I'm going to go out of my way to decry pink as an option for my little girl, I probably shouldn't go all the way to the opposite side, just in case it turns out that we have a boy.

So sticking with the color palette that a lot of the monster and Nintendo stuff had, we decided to just go fun, cheery, bright and high-contrasty (it's a word, trust me.)

To that end, we got these curtains we found on our last trip to IKEA. In addition to the red and blue on the bottom 2/3 of the fabric, there are squares of dark blue, yellow, green, pink and red. A nice variety of colors, I think.

In addition to the curtains, we're going to use Wall Pops, these vinyl color blocks you can get at A.C. Moore. You'll have to wait until we're finished to get the effect on the whole room, but I think it's going to be pretty sweet.

It's a Girl! (We think)

There she is! That's my daughter! (Probably.)

Strike that. Let's go back. Day started out normally enough. When we set up the appointment, Hollie was given instructions on how the ultrasound visit was going to go down. She'd go in first, then someone would come out to get me and we'd find out the sex of the baby together.

So far, so good. We get to the radiology office about 9:45, or 15 minutes before our appointment. Fill out some paperwork, then it's time to wait, which we did. Around 10:10, Hollie's called into the exam room.

I'm pretty excited by this point. I'm figuring that in about 10 minutes or so, I'm going to find out whether the baby is a boy or girl. So I wait. And 10 minutes passes. "No biggie," I think to myself. "Whatever they needed to do, I'm sure everything is fine."

10 more minutes. "Man, this is a long wait. What are they doing in there?"

10 more minutes. And at this point, I start getting nervous. I don't know much about ultrasound, and I know less about what happens on your first ultrasound visit. But I do know that on our first doctor's visit together, the OB/GYN did an impromptu ultrasound that took no more than 3 minutes.

(Brief aside. I don't do well with not knowing what's going on. It's a personality quirk or flaw that I recognize within myself, but I do a lousy job dealing with it. Some of my angriest/most frightened/most frustrated moments have been when I'm faced with some situation where information is being withheld from me. You don't want to see me in a traffic jam with no discernible cause. It's not a pretty sight.)

10 more minutes. I'm at the 40-minute mark. My allergies have been giving me problems all day, so I'm sneezing, my eyes are itchy, and I have no idea where my wife is, or why all of this is taking so long. Is something wrong? Would someone tell me? Hollie would certainly want me back there, right?

10 more minutes. An hour and 15 minutes since we arrived at the office. I haven't seen Hollie in nearly an hour. No news doesn't feel like good news, and I'm starting to freak out (silently of course). I realize logically there's no reason to be worried, but I've also learned that reason flies out the window when it comes to your first kid. I start to get up to ask someone how long this is supposed to take when someone finally comes down the hall and asks if Matt would like to come back. Sigh of relief, and I follow the ultrasound tech back to the exam room.

Hollie is laying on an exam table next to the ultrasound machine. She doesn't look terribly comfortable, but she seems happy to see me. The tech tells me where to stand so we can both see the monitor. Then she starts prodding away with the ultrasound wand.

First thing I see is the head. Big, giant head. Turns out, everything on the screen is blown up. Baby is, in fact, not the size of a watermelon. Everything is blurry, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that we're looking at a brain. This likely marks the only time I will ever see the inside of my kid's head.

The technician moves across Hollie's abdomen, because apparently the baby is in the transverse position (and had moved since the earlier part of the exam that I was left out of.) Next we zoom in on the heart. I know nothing about pre-natal heart function, but this looked pretty good. Valves opening and closing in a rhythmic fashion; seems about right.

I see the spine, and we're moving down to the feet. I should mention that up to this point, the tech has said very little, and is quite brusque. At one point she even implies that a C-section will absolutely be necessary, because of how the baby is positioned. Scuse me, but the baby has shifted positions in the hour we've been here. I think sometime in the next 20 weeks, it'll move again.

Then she stops. "Is there anything else you'd like to see?" she asks. Is this a serious question? Umm. Yes. Could I get a closeup of the lungs? Come on! How bout the thing everyone wants to know? Boy or girl, please!

It's at this point that I start to think that the tech is stalling, ill-trained, or just plain dumb. I say the obvious: We want to know the sex. She hems and haws a bit more, and finally says that she hasn't been able to get a good angle, which is likely why she hasn't brought it up yet. Admittedly, the baby isn't exactly cooperating, but we're certainly not the only people who've ever dealt with that.

So she squirms around a bit, finds an angle where we can see the baby's butt and feet, but the kid has one leg outstretched and the other pulled up close to the groin. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was preparing a crane kick. I don't blame the kid. If someone had been poking at me for the better part of an hour, I'd be busting out the big guns, too.

So to make a long story short, we don't see a penis, but we do see the tell-tale three lines, albeit faintly. The ultrasound tech, in her infinite wisdom, says, "I want to say it's a girl, but I won't say 100% sure."

So there you have it, folks. We're having a girl. Probably.

Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls

In less than three days time, I will find out whether we're going to have a girl or a boy. I realize that by writing these words, I'm invoking Murphy's Law, and our child will inevitably turn his/her back to the ultrasound wand, and we'll have to wait even longer to found out.

When I try to put into words exactly why it is I'm so excited to find out the sex of our child, I find I'm at a loss. It's something of a cliché to say that knowing this one piece of information will somehow make it all seem more real. I look at my wife's pregnant belly, more pronounced every day, and I gotta be honest, it feels pretty real right now. When folks ask, "Don't you want to be surprised at the birth?" my general response is, "I'm pretty sure I'm going to find a lot about birth surprising; I don't need any more surprise."

More than a few people have asked me whether we want a boy or a girl. And ever since we started planning this, we've sort of been hoping/assuming we'd have a boy. I think it's largely because we have two nieces, and we figure the odds are in favor of a boy for us. A boy would just be something different. A grandSON and nephew instead of another granddaughter or niece. But if you had asked me when I was a kid whether I hoped to have a son or a daughter, I'd have answered daughter in a heartbeat. I grew up with two brothers. Been there, done that, and tired of it.

But here we are. A few days from knowing, one way or the other, and what I find really interesting is that there is no wrong answer here. All the daydreaming about a son I've done over the last few months -- what comics I'm going to read to him, when the appropriate age is for the introduction of Star Wars, whether he'll like Legos or Lincoln Logs -- and if the ultrasound reveals a baby girl in there, I won't feel even a twinge of disappointment. Part of it that is because I've realized that there's no reason my daughter won't love comics and Star Wars and building blocks just as much as any son. Part of it is that we've come up with some awesome girl names that I'm really excited about. And part of it is that in the end, it doesn't matter. That baby doesn't know it yet, but I love it.

Also, I painted the nursery a kickin' shade of green. Completely gender neutral, but sweeeeeeet! And it's called Alien Green. The color was practically made with my kid in mind.