• travel

    Hurricane Katrina

    I don’t have many pictures from my trip to New Orleans in 2003 but I have a lot of pictures in my heart. I’ll always remember what it was like to walk down the broken sidewalks in the French Quarter. The dusty dark little antique and thrift shops that I ducked into to buy old postcards… the scary voodoo shop, the boys on the street who beat their drums for money. I feel lucky to have visited. It will never be the same. My heart goes out to those people who call that old place home.

  • preg-nuts

    It’s a Girl!

    We didn’t realize how much Toby wanted a boy until the ultrasound technician announced that she was 99% sure our baby was a girl. We were so excited, watching every little blurb of movement on the monitor with wide eyes. Look at those hands! Look at that belly! And then when the moment of decision arrived…it was like the wind just blew right out of Toby’s sails. I could almost hear him deflate.

    He just sunk down in his chair and said nothing. I didn’t know what to think. It was as if it was my birthday and I was opening a really pretty present with super cool fancy wrapping and then when I held up my gift to show Toby, it was like I was holding up a vacuum cleaner bag or an old shoe or something. It really bummed me out. In fact, it’s still bumming me out and I totally wanted a girl all along!

    Not to worry though, Toby wanted a girl too. He’s definitely going to love his little girl like no other, it’s just that he just wanted a boy first. He feels like he’s playing the lottery and if he could just win a boy first then the rest would be easy. Now with our odds, we’re thinking we might have to have eight more kids before we pop out a boy.

    I’m actually happy about it. I love girls. I’m most happy because that means we can name her the girl name we’ve picked out. I love our girl name! It’s so perfect. I was worried that if we didn’t use it right away, somebody else might snatch it up. And don’t get me started on boy names. Ugh! Toby has his heart set on a boy name that I just can’t stand. I mean I really really can’t stand it. It conjures up images of idiots. But I can’t think of a better one so I was going to have to default to his choice.

    So even though today is a little bit of a downer, cheers to my little baby girl who will be the most adorable baby ever! I mean, look at that profile! And she’s got shoulders too!