The new baby's name

When I was preggers with the Isaac, it really didn't take us too long to figure out what his name should be. For those of you not in the know, "Isaac" was Michael's great-grandfather on his dad's side, whom he actually knew quite well, while "Thomas" is a popular boy name on my dad's side (i.e., my dad, my bro both have it as their middle name, though it goes even farther than that). No brainer. The trouble was that Isaac kept his little "package" cleverly hidden from view on each and every ultrasound we had, so we were constantly guessing. "Oh, oh, I think I see a boy pa....oh wait, that's the umbilical cord." We heard that more than once from a "trained" ultrasound technician. However, we were given an educated guess from our professional ultrasound guy at 16 weeks that Isaac was an Isaac and not a Lauren or Jill or what have you. But then, as they must train them to do in prenatal ultrasound school, said technician is like, "but I'm not 100% sure." What does that mean? Are you just guessing? Or lying? Or placating some really insistent parents? In case you couldn't tell already, we are NOT the kind who prefer to be surprised by the gender of our baby. We must KNOW, and know NOW.

Poor Isaac was the recipient of a lot of green and yellow and orange baby clothes when he was in the womb. Little did I, an inexperienced mom, know how incredibly important it is to color-code one's baby. But we did finally find out about Isaac and his equipment. Three weeks prior to his world premiere, my OB whipped out the ultrasound just for fun. The very first image we got to see was of the most enormous testicles in the history of the world. And so here he is, our little Isaac, possessor of a quality set of frank and beans.

Obviously, though, before we knew he was an Isaac, he required a name. One can't simply refer to him as "baby" or "fetus" or some other cutesy over-used name such as "peanut". No, your fetus must have a memorable, catchy name, one which your spouse and you can toss around unfettered on instant messenger. Pre-Isaac was known as Starvin' Marvin, a fitting name for an entity that can rouse me on innumerable occasions from the dead of sleep at 3:00 in the morning and force me to have a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. Dada thought of this name, as he is without a doubt the more creative one (yes, it is certainly true). And, true to form, I requested a new and glorious nickname for fetus #2 from Dada, and he came through like a champ.

Our fetus shall henceforth be known as Uterus Barnacle. We call him/her U.B. for short.

Odds and Ends

My defense is in two weeks, so this will probably be my last blog until just before we pack up and move. As such, I thought I'd throw in a few cute pictures taken recently:

A trip to Mickey-D's for lunch:



Isaac desperately wants his dump truck to be a ride-on toy:



Isaac has morphed into a professional climber:





And there's the dancing. Oh my. It really cannot be described, except to say that my baby LOVES to dance. We have documented it in three movies:
1) Dancing with caterpillar. Isaac has this Alphabet Pal toy, a LeapFrog bit, that Great-grandma and -grandpa Ross gave him for Christmas. It has consistently been one of his faves because it plays all kinds of songs, so much so that Dada has dubbed it the Music Maggot (sorry, Grandma). Of course, songs = dancing. And recently he has learned to pull it behind him, making this video all the cooler.

2) Groovin' with Dada. Here, Dada shows off his guitar prowess and Isaac headbangs along. To Hank Williams, Sr. We'll work on that.

3) Dancing to R&B. TiVO hooks us up with "New Music from Best Buy", which means that we can use our TiVO to play all kinds of music we wouldn't normally have. Given our boy's love of the dance, and a massive void left by the departure of Claudia, Dada has instilled a new routine in our evening -- Family Dance Party. We turn on the TiVO music and we all groove together. This has inspired Isaac to new heights (literally) -- here, he shows off some club-worthy moves from a table-vantage point.

On the preggo front, there is some morning sickness (but no puking), a little worse than what I had with Isaac. There is some sleepiness, but nothing that can't be handled with several weekend naps. There is some cramping, which would be worrisome except for the fact that I went to the ER when I had the same with Isaac, and it turned out to be butkus. But by far the worst part of it all is, starting yesterday, the never-ending HUNGER. I am now eating, no kidding, 7 meals a day. I think Embryo O'Neal is trying to tell me to fatten up LIKE NOW HO-BAG. If I am not constantly shoving pretzels/cookies/ice cream/bacon in my face, I feel queasy. It makes meal-time with Isaac actually quite difficult -- I used to just eat his leftovers, which seemed like so much, but now require that I top them off with a dozen donuts, a box of EasyMac, and a root beer float [I am only partially kidding]. I can't believe this teenage-boy-style eating crap is starting so early, but my hypothesis is that this new parasite is telling me I probably need to gain 5 pounds, since I am 5 pounds less what I was when I got knocked up with Isaac. Other than the eating stuff, and the occasional freak-out in the realm of "how am I going to handle a helpless baby and a 2-year-old at the same time", everything is fine. Juuuuuuuuuuuuust fine. I am constantly amazed by the insane beauty, good behavior, and generally mellow nature of my first-born, and pray to anything possible that his sibling will be exactly like him.

Isaac + fountains = photo magic

We often visit the U-Village for our now near-daily Starbucks quotient (trying to get in all the Starbucks we can before we move to Starbucks-deficient Delaware. Think they'll have three Starbucks in the same shopping center there? I doubt it!) One potential pitfall of the U-Village, now that the weather is getting warmer, is the almost magnetic attraction of Isaac to the baby-sized wall-of-water-style fountains there. Observe the realization of the power of the splash:








It's getting now to where we literally have to visit the Gap before we go home to buy him dry clothes. Shucky-darn!

The O'Neals (and a Novicki) visit

Grandpa and Grandma and Nate did more stuff than just get soaked for Dada's graduation. Nate introduced Isaac to the wonders of GameBoy and cartoons:



Nate, Grandpa, and Isaac loved playing outside together:



Ingenious Grandpa invents a smarter way to power the Baby Luge (that's his belt):



And what would a trip to Seattle be without paying homage to the Space Needle?

Bye-bye, dear Claudia

Isaac's best friend Claudia moved to Australia a weekend ago. This is a cause for much sadness in our house on many levels. Isaac is sad because she was really a great gal and showed him how to do all kinds of things like dance to country music, enjoy chocolate sultanas, push babies in strollers, and run. He still visits her door every day and knocks, like he expects her to still be there. Before you pull out your hankie, this is a bit of a strange belief on his part because whenever Claudia was home her door was always open, literally. Claudia's leaving is, however, probably harder on Dada and myself than Isaac. For one, how fabulous is it for your kid to practically entertain himself for nearly two hours and exhaust himself chasing his buddy around such that he actually sleeps as the "like a baby" phrase intends? But the worst is that we were just getting to know, and be thick as thieves with, Claudia's mom and dad, who were two awesome people. We wish their family the best of luck as they brave the winter down under, and hope they get to see Claudia's grandmas and grandpas more often. In tribute to our dear Claudia, a final photo essay:

Claudia took to me a little towards the end, and usually insisted on having my keys so she could attach them, janitor-style, to her britches, just like me:



And she always shared the snack-du-jour with her best-buddy Isaac. Here, she introduces him to the wonder of Ruffles:



Claudia's Dad, Neil, shares a scandalous story about moonshine he heard on CMT:



Claudia's family's goodbye dinner -- we all went out to eat together:

Dada's Graduation

What seems like many moons ago now, Grandma & Grandpa O'Neal and our nephew Nate visited Seattle to see Dada in his goofy doctoral garb walk across the stage in Husky Stadium. In typical Seattle fashion, it rained nearly the whole time. Isaac did his part, helping Grandpa hold the umbrella on the walk there:



Grandma was so proud of her baby -- she found his name in the program and beamed:



We were a little afraid of how Isaac would take sitting still for 2-3 hours, but he turned out to be quite a trooper. The key: lots and lots of balloons that people would inadvertently let loose for him to track in the sky, super-loud music in the beginning of the ceremony, and lots of clapping (which naturally means he must stop whatever he's doing and clap along):



In atypical Seattle fashion, the graduation drizzle quickly turned into a veritable monsoon. We decided that this wasn't so much raining on our and Dada's parade (pun fully intended), but that it was a testament to the process of earning a Ph.D. itself that we would stick it out through such adverse circumstances to acheive our goal of seeing Dada on the HuskyTron (as blogged in brief below). We met somewhere a little drier to take pictures of Dada in his ridiculous doctoral garb. Yes, it is purple velvet (think "Dr. Pimp"). Here's a rare shot of myself and Dada:



Dada with Nate:



And Dada with his parents and snoozing offspring: