April Showers Bring May Flowers......

......... and February showers bring April babies.



That's right, Joan is in her 3rd trimester, more commonly known in the non-medical fields as "Shower Season."

Shower Season is when all of the females in Mom-to-Be's life gather and sit in a circle, wearing their cutest outfits, usually with blue or pink accents. (depending on the baby's junk)

On one end of the circle is Mommy, flanked by assistants, who is handed a seemingly endless stream of decorative gift bags, often costing half as much as their contents.

Mommy then has the duty, and pleasure, of searching through whole forests worth of tissue paper for such goodies as high-tech temperature sensing rubber duckies, Boudreaux's Butt Paste, and newborn onesies not big enough to blow your nose with.
(for those who don't know about Boudreaux's Butt Paste, I didn't make it up, Google it)

Mommy then takes home plates full of cake and miniaturized food so that Mommy and Daddy both have to exercise more (or at all).

Joan's first shower was hosted by the wonderful ladies of Rabalais, Hanna, and Hebert at the home of all around wonder-employee/independent contractor, Connie. From what I hear, Connie has many duties at RHH headquarters, but the most important, to me, is answering the phone. Connie is wise enough to know that when someone calls and asks for something crazy like "The Belly" or "The Prego Princess," it isn't a prank call, it's just me calling for my wife.

One shower down, two to go.

Thanks Y'all.

and to finish things off, here's a pic of Joan with our moms, her maternal g-ma, and my paternal g-ma. Take note that, at 5' 2", Joan is the tallest .



Sorry that the pic is blurry. But you know what else is blurry?
"I think Bigfoot is blurry. That's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault: Bigfoot is blurry. And that's extra-scary to me, because there's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside."*

just had to throw that in.

*mitch hedberg (1968-2005)

First Cousins

There are two cousins in this picture.


No, Joan and Liz aren't related (that would be weird for Paul), but the babies so radically distorting their midsections are cousins.
Paul (Joan's brother) and Liz are due pretty much any day now with a little girl.

The Darbys (Lynn and Larry)are going to go from 0 to 2 grandkids in a matter of 2 months. They need to pick their grandparent names soon.

We're pretty excited that our kid will get to have a cousin close to his age, like we both had growing up. We never really expected our kids to have many cousins due to the fact that our parents took the more modern approach with kids instead of, like their parents, breeding to staff small plantations.

Liz will stay in Lafayette for a while after the birth, instead of heading back home to the state crapital. Hopefully Joan will have a chance to go do some observation and practice some of the basics of baby care that I won't be doing. That's what moms are for ;)

Double L

To quote the great poet Troy Richard, "We must be the chosen ones, down in Lafayette."

We are thankful in so many ways for being born here and being able to come back.
What really made us appreciate Lafayette was living in Baton Rouge for 3 years. Lafayette is superior in so many ways. First, we have much better food (Prejean's, Coyote Blues, etc.) and much better music (Blue Moon Saloon,'nuf said).
Second, and most important, we're not the home of LSU.

But, I must acknowledge that Baton Rouge has one upped us in a few ways. BR has a great parks system with lots of nature trails, great for dog walking, and a pretty well developed mountain bike trail system. Lafayette has nothing in that regard.

We also found out that BR has an exponentially superior Babies R Us. They have so much stuff that we don't have in our little puny store. At least we have a store now, but I see no reason that Lafayette couldn't support a full size unit.

All of that is basically to lead to me pointing out something really cool that I saw there. I happened to come across a cd made by Baby Rock Records.

The company takes the music of various rock bands and remakes the songs with lullaby instrumentation.

I, of course, couldn't help myself and had to pick up the Tool disc.


I also picked up the No Doubt disc because it seemed pretty cheery and nice. I'll probably go back later to snap up the Nirvana and NIN discs. Their website is www.babyrockrecords.com (sorry can't get the text to work as a link) and they have plenty more.

Now the kid will have have cool tunes from the get go. I'm going to program his mind right from the start. Scary, huh?

A Horse with No Name

The nursery got a new piece of furniture, and it's the best kind, rideable furniture.
Yesterday, my parents gave us a rocking horse that my Mom just couldn't pass up.



The reason she couldn't pass it up is simple. Most of you don't know it, but my Mom has an addiction. That addiction is buying toys for small children that make noises that have the potential to become irritating to the adults in the vicinity.
So far she has mostly abused Aunt Sangee up in Connecticut, but now she has a new outlet.
We don't mind though. She put up with the sound of me for 18 years, and I've been told by many people, usually people I call friends, that is quite an annoying sound.

The rocking horse makes whatever a horse noise is called and wags its tail while shaking its head. (and in reality, it's not very loud, or very annoying)

It'll be really cool for our little guy, but, unsurprisingly, Jimmy is not its biggest fan.(It is a good bit bigger than him)

Now we just need a name for the horse. As if naming a kid wasn't enough.