Last Monday was Ruby’s 3rd birthday. I can’t believe how she is growing!  She is such a funny little girl.  The day after her birthday, she woke up and said, “Mom, can we pretend like its still my birthday?”  Ahh… if only every day could be a party =)  And she already can’t stop asking when she will turn 4, and what kind of cake she’ll have, and what gifts she’ll get.

We also just signed a lease for a nice big three bedroom apartment in New Jersey. We’ll use one of the three bedrooms as our home office, and Ruby and Little Baby Avance will share one (I have my fingers crossed that will work out…).  The best thing about the apartment is that it has- count them- six kitchen drawers compared to our current kitchen which has one… so we are definitely movin’ on up.  Ruby is so excited about living in a place that has carpet and a swimming pool– and I’m just excited about the kitchen drawers! 

Hopefully in the midst of all the moving hoopla we’ll still be able to go strawberry and cherry picking at the end of the month.  I am obsessively craving fruit (and, let’s be honest, Ben ‘n Jerry’s ice cream) and just finished a quarter of a watermelon. I love summer.

Naming a boy, though, is no easy task.  With girls, you can choose girly girl names, or more androgynous names, and nobody bats an eye. In fact its really chic right now to name your daughter a “boyish” name– like Harrison or Avery or Emery– but there is a stigma attached to more “feminine” boy names .  That being said, I can’t stand most traditional boy names because of how rigid and “macho” they seem.  So it is definitely a task.  Ruby, on the other hand, doesn’t get what the big deal is about naming the baby.  In her mind, there are so many great names to choose from: Nemo, Spider, Baby Jaguar By-His-Side (from the Go Diego Go theme song… go figure).  I thought about (am still thinking about) choosing a Native American name to honor my grandfather’s heritage, but Lenape (Delaware) words are SO hard to pronounce– we’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime— I’m 20 weeks, or halfway there, and Baby Boy Avance weighs about 11 oz and is about the length of a banana.  He kicks wildly every day and LOVES chocolate ice cream (particularly Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food).  We can’t wait to meet him– and hopefully by then we’ll have a nice name waiting for him!

We just got back from Cincinnati where I had my first academic conference presentation– talk about nerves! But things went rather well, if uneventfully, and we also got a chance to visit the zoo and the Creation Museum in Kentucky (which should be called the Creation and Fall of Mankind Museum, but that, my friends, is another post entirely).  It was also Dru’s birthday while we were in Cincy (my new favorite word), so we pretended that the whole trip was in his honor and ate lots of ice cream to celebrate =)  Happy 35th birthday, Dru!!!

On another note, our two 10 hour car trips to and from Cincy gave me ample opportunity to learn this valuable life lesson: discussing baby names with Dru is hard work.  He has weird theories about names…. I think he believes there is only one right name out there and we must find it or the baby will be doomed to an unhappy life (kind of a romantic theory, but talk about pressure!).   He also seems to believe in love-at-first-hearing… if it doesn’t make his heart sing when he first hears it, he crosses it off the list.  And nothing seems to make his heart sing (there’s one name we both like, but I’m not sure if he LOVES it– anyway I’m keeping it secret for now).  But Ruby’s full of good ideas: first she recommended Goon and/or Goo-Goo, then she started calling  the baby Wern.  She also likes Rexy (after a dinosaur toy on the tv show Caillou), C-A-T (pronounced kuh-ah-tuh)– I have no idea where that one came from, but she’s said it on several different occasions- and she also likes random nouns like Spider, Airplane, etc. I think this is because I mentioned names like Lily and Daisy and she thought it was a game to just name random things… but then again maybe she gets it from her daddy, because he does the same thing.  Stream Avance, anyone? (You know I love you, Dru.)

Ruby has been informing strangers that there’s a baby in my belly and its going to get bigger and bigger and then come out and she’ll be a big sister.  She went through this whole spiel on a crowded elevator the other day, but thankfully I don’t think anyone else understood a word of it =)  I’m happy to see she’s getting excited about it, but frankly I don’t think she has any idea what’s in store for her!

I’m having a hard time with my SCH.  Its been two weeks now since my first big scare; the bleeding cleared up for a while but has picked up again. Every day –even on good days– its the first and last thing I think about: what is going on inside my body right now?   Will this baby be OK?  This baby couldn’t be more loved or wanted, and that makes it so hard to face the unknown.  Its a good thing that I’m in the second trimester, I’ve heard, because SCHs that end in miscarriage usually do so earlier in the pregnancy…  And maybe I’ll know more after our Level II ultrasound at the end of the month (a more indepth ultrasound might be able to pinpoint the clot, which my obstetrician couldn’t do, and thus tell us something about the severity of the condition).  But in the meantime its hard not to rush off to the OB’s office every time I see a little blood, and request an ultrasound to make sure all’s right with our little baby (my doctor specificially said not to come in unless the bleeding was substantially worse or more painful).  I’m honestly pretty fearful about getting bad news at that big ultrasound, which makes the time between now and then pretty unbearable.

But not every moment is full of that kind of heavy anxiety, so I’ll end with a happier story.  We have been keeping this pregnancy a “secret” from Ruby because we were concerned that she wouldn’t understand the concept of a baby arriving so far in the future and I didn’t want to stress her out about it.  But after our last (emergency) ultrasound, I brought home a profile picture of the baby and posted it on the fridge so I could look at it everyday and be encouraged.  Ruby looks at it every day too, and she’s commented more than once that it looks like the pics she’s seen of herself in utero, but we told her it was a picture of “mommy’s belly” and she seemed pretty content with that. Dru wanted to wait a little longer to tell her– he was envisioning a scenario at the park or somewhere where he could point out siblings and talk to Ruby about what it would be like with one of her own.  That sounded nice to me too, but I don’t like keeping secrets (especially good ones) so I bugged and bugged Dru to let me go ahead and tell Ruby about the baby.  He finally acquiesced (or did he? I can’t remember. Maybe I just went ahead with it…)

Ruby was finishing up her dinner, and I went and got the video camera and the ultrasound photo.  While she ate her peas, I recorded a little interview with Ruby where I asked her about the picture and what she thought it might be (she said it is mommy’s belly).  Dru asked her about when she was in my belly— was she tiny, medium sized, or huge?  She said she was tiny– and I told her that the picture is of a tiny baby, too.  She started to get concerned.  We talked more about it and finally I just told her there’s a baby in my stomach, and its going to grow bigger and bigger and bigger until finally it comes out, just like she did.  It would be a little brother, or a little sister.  She looked at me, and looked at my belly, then grabbed a handful of peas and shoved them in her mouth and said, “I like peas!”  That was her way of subtly changing the subject, I guess. 

After I turned off the camera, the news settled in and she seemed more excited– she declared that it will be a brother (we’ll see!) and offered to give him some of her Flintstones vitamins (which is a really big deal, because she thinks they’re candy and they are her absolute favorite thing in the world).  Its nice that Ruby knows.  Yesterday I bought her a Big Sister tee to celebrate. 

Little Baby Avance, you are wanted and loved!!! Be safe.

My sister Emily reminded me that I haven’t updated this blog in a while.  I have good excuses!  First, it was Christmastime and that was a fun but busy time for us.  But then, I was feeling quite a bit under the weather and didn’t feel like updating.  When the “under the weather” feelings didn’t go away, I realized… its morning sickness!  That’s right…. we’re pregnant!  Here’s a snapshot of Baby Avance #2 two weeks ago at our first obstetrician appointment:

We are 10 weeks along now, and I know that’s a bit early to start spreading the news.  But its been a bit difficult being so far away from family and friends during this time, so it was important to let everyone know so others can share our joy.

Our due date is September13, 2010!

My Christmas break begins officially whenever I have my last two finals written– one is 75% done but the other is only about 10% done, so I should have them totally finished in two weeks– once I’m done, school doesn’t start back up until the week of January 13.  On a different note, my submission to the Journal of Religion and Society was accepted and should be published in the Spring!  Its an open-access online journal, so I’ll post a link when its up.

1.) Yesterday I asked Ruby if she remembered when she was a tiny baby in my tummy. She said, “Yep.”  I asked if she remembered swimming around in there. She said, “Yep, I had on my swimsuit!”

2.) Last night after Ruby’s bath (before she was dressed) she suddenly got a terrified look on her face and said, “I need to go wet!”  I asked if she wanted to go to the bathroom, and she said yes– then used her little potty!  This is a big deal so we had lots of celebrations, and then I said, “Wow, you’re really growing up!” She said, “Yep, I gonna be a woman!”

3.) Since the long-gone days of Ruby identifying herself as Mister Noodle, she has adopted several personas. The most recent is Boots (from Dora the Explorer).  Ruby identifies herself as Baby Boots, me as Mama Dora, and Dru as Daddy Diego.  The other day I asked her what her name was and, without hesitation, she said, “Ruby Anneliese Avance Anneliese Boots.”  Now that is a cool name.