Our number one concern is that baby is healthy…

Number two concern is that there is only one baby in there…

We’ve talked a lot about whether we want another boy or a girl. Each has their pros and cons, but I think we both agree a girl would be awesome… It sounds like a lot of our family is rooting for a girl too. Hopefully the baby cooperates and shows us what we need to see.

Also, here’s a recording from last month’s appointment that I forgot to post. It’s either the baby’s heartbeat or a clip from “The Hunt for Red October” sound effect reel.

I’m pretty sure my heart will be beating this fast (160 beats per minute for anyone that is curious) until tomorrow afternoon. I’ve been waiting for this appointment for a few months.

Ian will turn six months later this week and he is growing up so fast on his way there… in the past couple of weeks he’s started sitting up on his own, drinking from a sippy-cup and now he’s started this big boy laughter. He giggled and smiled a lot, but never this kind of laughing. I honestly can’t stop watching it… even when the flu had me feeling miserable this clip would make me smile.

(I recommend clicking the little arrows and the HD symbol in the bottom right of the video above to watch it full screen.)

A few people have asked what made him laugh so hard… so here’s a little glimpse of his Daddy with a Diet Mt. Dew box on his head.

Apparently I’m pretty funny looking…

Once we were all checked in and she got hooked up to the machines and they watched her contractions and baby MacGyver’s heartbeat for a while. We had nothing to do but sit around and stare at each for a while, so we got the computer out to check Facebook and email and stuff. Apparently Catholics hate photographs, because their network blocks access to Flickr. Oh well…

Things slowed down a bit, so they let Mal sleep for a few hours. Her rash feels better with cold air, so she cranked the air conditioning down to about 50 degrees… which wasn’t fun for me with no blanket.

She woke up around 5:00 this morning and the nurses gave her some drugs that sped her contractions up. She’s been doing great through everything… just like I knew she would. After going for about 10 hours through what I’m going to guess are “mild” contractions she definitely went into frowny-face territory. I go into frowny-face mode if I stub my toe, but I can’t imagine what she was going through during this whole thing. After some good backrubs and giving her a hand to squeeze she fought through the harder ones until the doctor came to put her epidural in.

Mal’s been enjoying a “delicious” liquid diet of broth and tea and ice-chips… I feel bad for her there.

Thanks to everybody for the support and messages and encouragement on Facebook and Twitter… Mal and I appreciate it more than we’ll ever be able to show. It was nice to see her smile for a second, or almost smile during hard contractions, when a new message would pop up on my phone or computer.

She’s definitely back in the land of smiley-faces for a while so I’m going to try to enjoy it before the crazy lady starts yelling profanities at me… will update after MacGyver makes his debut.

I tried telling her that I really loved beef-a-roni, but was horribly allergic to it.

I don’t think she bought it…

Unless things really get going fast it appears that little MacGyver will miss his due date… will update my Facebook and Twitter when things start to happen.

It’s a pretty diverse mix… somebody somewhere decided that classical music was a good thing for babies, so I put some random stuff I had floating around my hard drive in there. I’m a big fan of acoustic stuff, so there’s a good chunk of Dave Matthews, Coldplay, Aqualung, Teitur, Howie Day, Jack Johnson, Matt Wertz, Snow Patrol, and others. Mal listened to a lot of rap when she was younger, so I threw in a couple of songs by Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z. Mal and I both like a lot of the current top 40 stuff so there’s some Justin Timberlake, Fall Out Boy, Bush, Daughtry, Flobots, John Mayer, etc.

Mal also likes country, but I couldn’t subject my son’s ears to that twangy crap. I control the iPod, so somehow the country music got left out. He probably hears enough of it during Mal’s commute back and forth every day.

He gets excited and bounces around with Dave Matthews stuff and Jay-Z, which makes him a pretty good mix of his parents’ tastes. He also grooved around a bit when a song from my old band was playing, but Mal said he was probably trying to get away from the noise. (Thanks, dear.)

I’m excited to see how he reacts to the music out in the world…I’ll find out soon enough.

(We’ll have to hook some speakers to the iPod or keep the laptop handy since Mal is getting ready to lose her built-in iPod shelf.)

A lot of people ask us what we are naming the baby when he comes… and today I’m giving you my answer.

MacGyver.

Mallory thinks that she can veto my choice, but I think she’s crazy.

MacGyver was one of my favorite shows as a child. Actually, I just finished watching an episode on YouTube while eating my lunch at work (that’s the picture on my screen above).

It makes perfect sense to me… Not only is it a sweet Scottish name, but almost everyone knows how to pronounce it. He’d get automatic respect for being a thinker, not a fighter. He’d be resourceful with whatever he had at hand, which is very important in this economy. And, last and most important, he has his own theme song. Do I have a theme song? No. Does Mallory have her own song? No.

I’m pushing and pushing for it, but she still won’t budge. She already voted against my other picks of ChuckNorris (one word) and Mister T. Haas… how many votes does she think she gets? I’ll remember this if we have a girl down the road and she wants to pick an equally-awesome girl name like Polly Pocket Haas or Cinderella or something.

OK, so maybe I don’t get to legally name him MacGyver, whose first name on the television show is actually Angus, but I still like calling him MacGyver while he’s hanging out in the womb.

Truth is we do have a few names picked out that we like and will make the final decision after we get to see him for the first time… we also aren’t telling anyone what the picks are because we want to make the decision without any interference from third parties. Luckily people have been pretty cool about that. I honestly expected a lot of resistance from people (and just got a little from a co-worker who came in as I am writing this). No offense to anyone who thinks we’re keeping a big secret or leaving them out of the loop, we haven’t told anybody. One of my sisters asked if we thought the names were so awesome that we were scared someone was going to steal them… don’t know if I’d call the names “awesome”, especially compared with MacGyver, but who knows.

Well… I haven’t told anybody, and I’m guessing Mallory hasn’t… I suppose her entire office could know before I do. Either way… our friends, family and internet stalkers will know the name soon enough. He’ll be making his appearance any time now.

We had a bit of a false alarm early Tuesday morning… I prefer to think of it as a test run. Mal was having some contractions that were pretty regular and steady, so we called the hospital and they suggested I bring her in so they could monitor everything. We packed our bags. I put the baby seat out in the car. I grabbed a computer and a couple cameras.

We hit the road for Champaign and I had to fight every urge to floor it the whole way. Traffic is pretty light at 3:45 in the morning so we ended up having a pretty easy trip.

Wouldn’t you know it, everything pretty much stopped as soon as we got her up into the room. First he wouldn’t let us see his face in the ultrasound and now he pulls a late-night fire drill. I’m not sure which one of us gave him the stubborn trait, but I think it rhymes with MALLORY.

That adrenaline rush wore off pretty quick and my body suddenly realized I had only slept for an hour and still had to drive us back home. Ugh… Luckily I work semi-well with little sleep and we made it home just fine.

Since that morning every phone call gets my heart-rate going. Hopefully he doesn’t give us any more false alarms… We’re ready to meet him.

On the plus side, we have our bags packed and ready to roll now… I know the quickest route to the hospital from home… and even better, all of our paperwork is on file at the hospital, so we don’t have to worry about doing that when it’s time for the real deal.

Purple dinosaur seen at an auction for a closing daycare Monday, June 8, 2009, in Decatur, Ill. — Testing out the ability and speed in posting photos from my phone to our blog in preparation for little MacGyver’s appearance.

UPDATE/ ADDITION: I’m used to working under deadline pressure, it’s kind of what I do every day… so I have a goal of getting a photo and/or video from my phone to Flickr and this blog in less than 10 minutes. Of course this all depends on how smooth the delivery is… Mal and the baby come first, so if there are any kind of problems I’m throwing the phone in my pocket and doing whatever I can to help.

So anyway… if all goes well the internet will be introduced to the baby in under ten minutes.

We made huge progress on the nursery over the past few days. I was starting to think it would never get done, but it is now (mostly) up and running and functional.

The room started out off-white with stained-wood trim. I pulled all of the trim, doors and baseboards out… sanded them down to bare wood… painted it white and put it back in.

We also got some help a few weeks ago painting a few rooms in the house, including the nursery. Mal and I picked out a yellow color for the top of the room and a khaki color for the bottom.

Mal wanted a chair rail, so I put one in… I’m surprised at how much of a difference it makes with the whole room.

I put the crib together and moved the dresser and chair into place tonight… we’re still waiting on a nightstand/table that we ordered to arrive and I’m also going to build a little bookcase. We’re going to take the next couple of weeks to put some finishing touches on the room and add some more decor. So this isn’t a completed nursery, but just getting this stuff done is a huge weight off of my shoulders. I was starting to get stressed about everything.

Here are some more views of the room…

The general idea for our son’s room involves jungle animals, so there are plenty of stuffed giraffes, elephants, monkeys, etc…

Our bedding is freaking cute. At least I think so…

Night-light…

A guy that works with Mallory’s dad made this rocking horse for us… Quite possibly the coolest rocking horse I have ever seen.

This little chair used to belong to my dad when he was a kid… this teddy bear will keep it warm for now until baby is big enough to sit in it.

We will be adding stuff to the room as we get it ready, so expect more pictures before baby makes his appearance.

You can see all of the photos in the nursery set on my Flickr page…

We got to have another ultrasound at the doctor’s office today… and I learned a few new things about our son-on-the-way.

First, it’s definitely a boy. The little blobs and squiggles were supposed to mean something before, but seeing his manhood in 4D imaging helped ease any fear of having a little surprise in the delivery room.

Second, while he gets his manhood from me, he definitely gets his stubborn camera shy personality from his mother. We had the chance to do the fancy 4D imaging so we could see his face clearly and he hid behind his arms and hands the whole time.

He better shake that trait fast… because as some of you may have noticed, I like to take pictures. Lots of pictures. Having the camera-shy wife is bad enough, I won’t know what to do if my kid gets freaked out.

Mal is starting to wear out a little faster than normal. I keep telling her to toughen up, but apparently she has a book that says carrying a human inside of her body is hard work. I’m totally joking about that… I’ve been trying to make her life as easy as I possibly can. Hopefully I’m helping her out at least a little bit. We’re trying to find a good balance where she can still do things around the house to feel productive and still be able to relax and take care of herself.

He’s starting to run out of room inside the womb motel, so he’s kicking less and pushing/ stretching out more. I’ve been able to feel his tiny hiccups a couple times in the past few weeks… pretty crazy stuff that makes it feel a little more real.

Everything seems to be going as smoothly as pregnancy can be. All of the measurements look good, all of the ultrasound images look good. Hopefully we keep going like this all the way through.

Baby’s spine looks pretty good…

He definitely has my feet… I’m worried that Mal might have more problems squeezing his feet out than his head.

Stubborn little kid wouldn’t show us a clear view of his face. All we could make out was his nose and a tiny part of an eyelid… the thing looks pretty crazy with all of the extra blobs, but his hands and arms gave the computer problems.

He was smooshed up like he was preparing for an audition with Cirque du Soleil, so we were able to get a good view of his foot and tiny little fingers.

And finally, in case there was any doubt… the manhood. He won’t show us his face, but he’s pretty comfortable flashing this stuff around.

All of the baby-related photos (ultrasound, belly photos, etc.) are up on my Flickr page.

We go back in two weeks for another checkup…