Our first Christmas

Well, it's been a little hectic here, what with family in town for Christmas and adjusting to life with Luke! Sorry I haven't posted any new grown-up pictures of Luke until now. He's really looking quite good now - not quite so wrinkly and squashed and pirate-y. One of these days we might even manage to take a picture of him with his eyes open.

In the meantime, here he is snuggling with his blankie that my friend Alissa sent him. He's lying in a cradle that was actually made for my grandfather by his father. Luke is the 4th generation in my family to get to use the cradle!

The close-up of the leg is to show off bad-ass Luke's new tat. His dad is a Cowboys fan and my whole family swears by the Redskins, so my mom is trying to convert him early to the good side. This was a fun surprise for Marty to find during a diaper change!

Fungo Arrives!!!

Fungo has arrived and requested a new name! Luke Douglas Luft made his minor league debut at 4:50 am Monday, December 17th! He is 6 lb. 12 oz. and about 19.5 inches long. So far, he's very tired and seems much more interested in sleeping and cuddling than crying and fussing. Marty says he's a keeper so it turns out we're not going to drop him off in the woods on the way home. He's got lots of dark hair and Aunt B says he has my nose. Right after birth, his left eye was stuck shut with goop, so here he is rocking his pirate look (What's Fungo's favorite letter of the alphabet? Arrrrgh!) and a couple hours later napping with daddy. We're all feeling fine and feeling grateful for a very smooth and comparatively very short labor.

So very, very pregnant...

So, here I am with my huge belly. I know it looks like my belly button has popped. It hasn't actually - my shirt just makes it look that way. I think my shirt also makes my belly look bigger, but I think that about a lot of shirts I wear these days, so maybe the shirts aren't really the issue...

This is a cute t-shirt I got for Fungo the other day. They're fortunue cookie- style shirts. They come sealed in a little bag, so you don't know what future your baby is going to get. I was hoping for "Flamenco Dancer" but I was totally psyched when we got "Criminal Mastermind." Even though we don't know if it's a boy or girl, we know it's a diabolical genius, so it's nice to have that settled.

We did a lot of baby-room setting up today! I LOVE how the nursery is looking! The border was our first experience in putting up wallpaper. Between the two of us and my mom, we managed to get it done pretty well. Of course, it will probably peel off in about a month, but it looks super-cute for right now.

Diapers, etc.

Alright, Meg, I put these pictures up for you so you can see what the diaper covers I was telling you about look like.

We've decided that we're definitely going to try out cloth diapers. When I first started checking into them I found this great diaper service not far from our house. It seems pretty affordable compared to disposables (not that I have much to base that opinion on...) and we're really psyched about it. I wasn't quite sure how cloth diapers work so the girl that runs the service came by our house to show us the diapers and covers. It seems like there's not a whole lot more to it than disposables - you just fold the diaper and stick it inside the cover, then wrap the cover around the baby and velcro in place, just like you would with a disposable. We're signed up for 8 weeks service. Here's a link to her site if you want to read more about cloth diapers.

Fungo's First Halloween

With my belly so big, the costume options were somewhat limited. I was pretty much looking at either being a pumpkin or a sumo wrestler, but Marty suggested that I could do a pretty convincing impression of his brother Brian. So I borrowed Marty's baseball coaching outfit and here are the results. I felt very gratified when I walked by Brian's 16-year-old son and he laughed and said, "Wow, you really look like my dad."

Obviously, Marty was a pirate. He'd been growing his beard out for about two months so it would be long enough. He was quite pleased with the result. I was quite pleased the next day when he shaved the whole thing off. I mean, the beard was fine, but he honestly looked about 10 years younger the minute he shaved.

Pregnancy is still going great! I'm getting lots of kicks (all in my right side), but still feeling very comfortable and I haven't been feeling too tired yet during the third trimester. Hopefully it will keep going smoothly until the baby actually arrives! My midwife says the baby is head-down with his or her back along my left side and the feet and hands on my right side. I can definitely feel the feet and hands working overtime bumping againt my right-side ribs!

Marty's thoughts on Fungo

I would like to register at Ace Hardware. Obviously, we're going to need some things for the baby. Whereas Marcy thinks we need to buy a crib, I think the best thing is to build a "baby cage" around our guest bed. To that end, I will need a large amount of chicken wire and some more tubes of Liquid Nails. Also more staples for my staple gun. I guess the fancy route would be to go with a welding kit and welding mask, but Marcy says that seems so extravagant. I'm also thinking about registering at Ingersoll Wine and Spirits for a couple of bottles of Captain Morgan. I think we'll need those for the birth.

We have to start thinking about our future so in lieu of godparents, we have decided that if something ever happens to us, we'd like our child to be raised by wolves. (Editorial note by Marcy: No, we haven't.) So after the funeral, if someone could just drop our child off in the woods, that would be really appreciated.

In other news, I won $7 for throwing horseshoes at the Iowa State Fair. I've decided to take it up a notch and after throwing the first 1,000 shoes in my daily practice sessions, my ringer percentage is 12.1%. We also need to register for some junior horseshoes in hopes of having the first infant junior horseshoes champion on earth.

24.5 weeks...

Here I am with my belly! I think it's getting bigger every day - I can't quite imagine what it will be like in December! You can also see the color we painted the baby's bedroom in the background. It's a really nice, bright green and we put up new white blinds in the room. I also hung some window valances you can sort of see. We (I) picked out a bunch of cute stuff for the bedroom from Target, but all we've bought so far are the valances. You can see the rest of the collection at Target.com. I just thought it was really cute stuff that would be good for a girl's room or a boy's room.

19.5 weeks...

Here are pictures from our second ultrasound. This was the typical 18-22 week checkup ultrasound. Dating from this one puts us at 19 weeks, 6 days. It's amazing how much the baby's grown - it actually looks like a real baby! There were a couple other pictures, including a closeup of the face, but McB said our baby looked sort of like a dementor, so I'm not putting those ones up. I think it's so cool how you can see all the separate rib bones, arm bones, and finger bones. I guess all the milk I've been drinking is having an effect!

12 weeks...

Here are Fungo's first baby pictures! These were taken at our first ultrasound, which we had to determine gestational age. I think they determined it was 12 weeks, 4 days or something like that.

Marty is sure it's a boy because of the "obvious" boy parts (see the second pic). I tried to explain to him that that's an arm - he says, "That's just what they want you to think."