A pink hamper and pee targets

We decided it was time to start the baby registry for Andrea's shower. Sounds simple enough, yea right! First, Walmart, USA Baby, Target, Baby Depot or Babies R US? Ok, settled in on Babies R US. We walk in and meet with the registry specialist lady. We fill out several forms get a list of things that they think we need and a Star Trek phaser looking thing that I get to shoot things in the store with. We are then set loose on the store. I figured my firefighting training would pay off here as I have been trained on how to search and clear a large building and this time I was doing it without wearing 60 pounds of gear. I started off on a left sided search and rescue pattern which quickly brought me to toys. Great, the girls don't need any toys yet, they are infants, they cry sleep, eat and poop. Oh wait, that is cute, oh Jeffrey look at this, they definitely need 2 of these. This may take a bit longer than I thought. We will come back to toys later. Off to crib mattresses. I guess we need to pick a crib first, we will come back here later also. Next blankets, this one has got to be easy. Nope, if you thought that a blanket was a blanket then you are an idiot. Do we need adjustable, fleece, receiving, wearable, micro fleece, adjustable micro fleece or some thing called a super blanket. We have no idea, we better come back to these later. Next was a clothes hamper, finally something easy. There were only 3 styles and once we picked the style we had only 5 different colors to work through. I am proud to say that after only 45 short minutes a decision was made. We now will be the proud owners of a "kids line folding pink clothes hamper". We have been in the store now for an hour and we have one thing on the registry. The registry lady told us we should pick about 300 things. You do the math. At this rate we only have 225 more hours to go. Living on the high of our recent hamper victory I decided we should go take on the biggest ticket items and get them out of the way. How hard could it be to pick a crib? Yet again I am quickly defeated. For those of you that did not know it cribs are now "convertible" This means that they transform somehow magically from a crib to a toddler bed to a full size bed. While this seems convenient and is a financially sound concept it does not work for us. The girls will need to share a room as long as we are in this house and the room is not big enough for 2 full beds. Ok, how about a convertible crib that magically transforms from a crib to a toddler bed to a twin bed. Nope, no one has been smart enough to invent that one yet. We can send a man to the moon but a crib that turns into a smaller bed is way too much to ask. At this point we abandoned the list they gave us and just started shooting. Neighbor kid Noah seems to like this pacifier, great get 4, saw one of them at the mall once, great get 2 and so on. As we were passing the potty training area I saw these things that you put in the toilet for little boys to aim at. How cool, I suddenly wish I was having a boy so I could get these. Wait, I am a boy, on the list it went. Andrea said I could use the practise. We then decided that we needed help from an expert so I called Darci a mother of a 2 year old and scheduled a meeting for her to come with us and tell us what we really needed. We were ready to be done for the day anyways. I took one more quick run around the store and scanned everything I saw that was pink and said "I love daddy" and we were out of there. Next week we are going back to try again but I sit here at least knowing that if nothing else at least we have one hell of a nice pink hamper!

I could not wait

I called the ultrasound people yesterday and told them that I could not wait until next Wednesday to find out the sexes of the twins. We got our appointment bumped up to this morning. It looks like I have a future of watching dumb shows like Dancing with the Stars, leaving the toilet seat down when I am done and playing "Pretty Pretty Princess". I have two girls on the way.

Cost of twins

A recently released government report says that it takes $221,000 to raise a child from birth to 18yrs old. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090804/ap_on_re_us/us_fea_parenting_cost

Does anyone have $442,000 laying around that they do not need?

America has voted

After 1000's of votes the results are in. Ok, really only 24 votes. And the winner is- one boy and one girl.

1 of each- 54%

2 boys- 33%

2 girls- 12%

The real results will be next Wednesday at the next ultrasound. Stay tuned for the big announcement Aug 12th.

Then and now-

Hunting, fishing, ATV riding, camping, 4 wheeling, these are all the things I loved to do in the past. I always looked forward to the Cabelas catalog coming in the mail. It was full of everything you could need for any of the previously listed activities. I would sit and go through it page by page looking for the next thing that I had to have. This week the new one came out and I found myself setting it aside and looking through the latest edition of American Baby and the weekly flyer from Babies R Us. On TV I would watch all my favorites, MASH, police and fire fighter shows, Mythbusters, you know, manly shows. Now Bringing home baby and a Baby story are on more than anything. It used to be that I was not afraid to go into a burning building or climb into a mangled car to rescue someone and now I am terrified that I will buy the wrong kind of mattress for the crib. We would look forward to traveling, cruises, Orlando, Vegas for months. Now I can't wait to see the next ultrasound and do the expecting parent tour at Magee. I am not saying I am turning into a girl, I still stand to pee but I am a bit concerned about the direction things are going. I may need to go buy something manly to even things out. I wonder if Babies R Us has camouflage bibs?

I hate NY!

Andrea and I have been trying to get a few trips in before the big day. She went to Florida last week with her family and this weekend we headed for NYC. I have always wanted to take a trip on a train and she has always wanted to go to New York City. So we did both. We left from Pgh at 7:20am Saturday morning and arrived in NYC at 5pm. We checked into the Hotel Pennsylvania which was across the street from Penn Station. After seeing our room we wanted to get out of it as soon as possible. $200 does not get you much in Manhattan. We walked about 9 blocks to Times Square where we had dinner and got on a bus tour at 7:30 for 2 hours cruising around NYC. Our guide was not from this country and I am fairly sure he was making things up as we went. After the tour we walked back towards our hotel. We stopped at a pizza shop for a piece of authentic NYC pizza. After getting into a short argument with the shop owner we took our pizza and ate it outside. I was amazed at how big and crowded the city was on a Saturday night. We headed back to our hotel and went to sleep. The next morning we got up, took a walk around and found a K Mart store. Only Andrea would find a K Mart in NYC and shop there. We went for some breakfast at McDonalds. We are in one of the food meccas of the world and all she wanted was a bacon egg and cheese biscuit. At 10:50 we left headed for the burgh. There were about 15 stops each way between Pgh and NYC. The train was very comfortable and we had a great time on it. Took a bunch of naps, talked about what the baby names will be and even got woken up twice by a drunk guy. I was able to control myself each time and not cause a scene but I told Andrea that the next time he came through the car on the way to the bar singing and waking everyone up I was going to have a talk with him. Luckily, he must have passed out because we never saw him again. We got back to Pgh at 8pm and headed home. It was a short, busy trip that we really enjoyed but I never have to go back to NYC again. Way to big, crowded, expensive and full of obnoxious people. No new news on the babies front. She has been feeling pretty good with the exception of some heart burn and the need for lots of naps. 17 days till the next ultrasound.

Half way there.

Andrea got back last night from a trip to Orlando with her family. I can tell she is starting to be in mommy mode because the whole time she was there every time I talked to her all she could do is talk about her little niece Lillian. She sent me about 40 pictures of her over the few days she was there. She said she even changed a diaper. I was shocked to see her last night after only 5 days she looks more pregnant than when she left. The belly is large and in charge. She is back to her starting weight. She is eating better, has not puked in weeks and is only taking the nausea pills occasionally. Her new thing is heart burn. It has been bad at times. Tomorrow starts week 18 so based on an expected 35-36 week pregnancy for twins we are 1/2 way there. We are still 3 weeks away from the next ultrasound where we will probably be able to tell if they are boys, girls or both. If you have not voted yet on what you think they will be go to the link listed the blog from last week below this one. I got the furniture cleared out of the babies room and ready for cribs, changing tables, etc.