36 Weeks and 4 days

36 Weeks and 4 days

Christine is now 36 weeks and 4 days pregnant!  We just had our Doctors appointment with Dr. Amaru and all is looking great.  Christine is dilated 2 centimeters and is 60 percent effaced.  She has been having mini contractions (feels like cramping) in addition to her Braxton Hicks (which is a tightening of the stomach).  Both of these are great signs and are getting her body ready to bring baby Nei La into the world!  On a side note…doesn’t it seem like I know what I am talking about!  (

Our normal Obstetrician, Dr. Tocce is moving to Colorado tomorrow, so Dr. Amaru and Barbieri are our two primary obstetricians for the birth.  It just depends on who is on call the day Christine goes into labor. Both are very nice.  Dr. Amaru said she would be surprised if Christine makes it to her due date.  She thinks Nei La is ready to come out!  I tend to agree with her.  I think she is going to be born on June 11th.

I also found out some potential great news today.  I may be able to take off a full 6 weeks of work to be with Christine after Nie La is born. I’ll be talking to my boss this Friday to see if it will be feasible.  I would completely enjoy this time to be able to experience fatherhood with minimal work stress. I’ll let you all know what my boss’s decision is.

I purchased a Network Camera (which is basically a Web Cam, but potentially better) that I will be testing in the next week or so.  It will allow all of our friends and family to “look in” on our baby via any web browser (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Opera).  Hopefully it works well and the picture is clear.  Stay tuned.

We also posted a bunch of pictures on www.flickr.com and if you haven’t joined, go do it so you can see our pictures!  I sent a number of invites out to friends and family, so if you didn’t get one, or didn’t know it was me (Arvant) then send me an e-mail and I’ll resend the invite.  If you already have a Yahoo ID, you can use that to sign into Flick since Yahoo owns them.

Last weekend was pretty crazy.  Christine and I walked all over Chelsea on Saturday trying to find a new couch.  We ended up finding a great one at Jennifer Convertibles.  It is a Queen size pull out couch with a deluxe mattress. So..if you want to visit, help out, or just crash with us over the next year, you will be able to sleep in comfort!  It won’t arrive for four weeks, so I’ll post pictures when it gets here.  Some of you may be shocked at the color.  If you know me, I typically like to stick with the neutrals, but not this time!!!

On Sunday, Christine’s friend/schoolmate Stephanie and her partner Maureen came to visit us.  Sara, Christine, and I loaded up Celia and Sadie and visited Grand Central Station and then on to Central Park.  It was a gorgeous day and it was great to be outside.  On a nice day, central park is crazy.  I took pictures that I will post on Flickr.

Oh, and an amazing bit of news on Christine’s doctorate progress….  Her dissertation was signed off on by two of the three supervisors and we expect the third sign off this week.  Essentially, that means she is DONE and will graduate with her doctoral degree in Psychology this October 14th, 2006.  It has been an amazing journey for her and I am extremely proud of all that she has accomplished.  She is truly an amazing, beautiful, caring, compassionate woman and I am very lucky to have found her!

Take Care

Flickr Picture Link

Good Morning, The one thing both Christine and I don't like about Blogger is the difficulty in adding photos to the blog. It takes too much finagling to get them to appear correctly. Because of this, we have created a link on our page (look on the right side of the screen under "Links"). If you click on that, it will take you to www.Flickr.com. Flickr is a picture sharing sight similar to "Hello" but it is easier to use and to set up. Flickr is also owned by Yahoo so if you have a Yahoo ID and Password, you can use that to log into Flickr. Flickr also provides the user with the ability to make their pictures public or private. We have chosen to make the pictures private and only viewable by friends and family. We are starting to invite users via e-mail, but if you want to see them, please send Christine or I an e-mail and we'll hook you up! We'll still continue to post pictures on our blog, but post more pics on Flickr. Have a great Saturday. Neal Currently there are only pictures of our Doggies up on the Flickr site, but stay tuned!

In Memoriam

Neal’s Grandma Millie passed away April 14^th, 2006 at 95 years of age. She was an amazing woman and our whole family will miss her immensely. We know that she is at peace and is watching over all of her clan from Heaven. All of her four children, nine of her ten Grandchildren (Robin wasn’t able to fly due to being 38 weeks pregnant), and many great grandchildren, friends and family gathered to celebrate her life. It was truly an amazing sight. The service was heart wrenching and awe inspiring. My cousins, Chad and Tyler, performed two beautiful songs to Grandma one last time. I can’t thank Chad and Tyler enough for making the service such a wonderful memory.

I find it remarkable that funerals can be such bittersweet events. We were all heart broken seeing Grandma leave us, but at the same time we knew that is what she wanted. It was great to have the family gather since it becomes more and more difficult for all of us to get together. Almost 15 years ago, my brother, sister, and I were in Grandma’s kitchen finishing one of her world famous fried chicken dinners and she said to us.. “I don’t want you to be sad at my funeral, I want you to celebrate and have a party.” Those words stuck in my head because she was always such an amazing fighter through all of the hard times that she had. She never gave up and always was around to help out those in need. Her mind was sharp all the way until about a month before she passed. Although, it was impossible to not be sad, we all did our best to celebrate her life. Looking around at all of the amazing, loving, and caring people that she created brought us all closer together. The one regret that I have is that she was not able to meet three Great Grandchildren that are on their way into the world and would have enjoyed meeting her. My cousin Robin and Kay Lynn join Christine in the adventure of pregnancy and Grandma has great grandbabies due May, June, and early July.

Grandma Mille, Thank you for all that you have given us. We are truly blessed to have had you as the Matriarch of the family. Your love through all of these years has meant the world to us all. We will miss you. We love you Grandma and please help keep our family safe.

May 8, 2006 Blog Update

I just got home from Chicago and in the immortal words of Harry Carey… “HOLY COWWWWWWW!” it’s been a long time since we updated this Blog! There have been many adventures, changes, happy times, and sad times since we last wrote to you all.

Spring in New York

Sara and Christine had the opportunity to visit the Cherry Blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens last weekend. Absolutely beautiful!! Who says fall in New York is the best season?

Baby Happenings

Names: we have a list of names that are possibilities. These include (in no particular order): Lauren, Alysse (Elise), Madeline, Sienna, Grace, Samantha, and Marissa (sorry guys, but we have taken out OLIVE). In the meantime, I wanted to call her something other than “baby.” Our friends called their little one Bug before he was born. One evening, I was watching Christine’s stomach and feeling the baby move around. It was an amazing feeling and even more amazing seeing Christine’s stomach “bump” to the moves. It completely reminded me of the classic movie Alien. Of course, I would never want to call our yet to be born child an Alien, so I suggested we use the anagram of Alien which is Nei La (pronounced Nigh La). Thus, our/my pet name for our little one is Nei La. For those of you who keep calling her Olive….stop it! She is going to get a complex! :)

Nei La is doing great and Mommy is getting bigger and bigger. Christine is now at 34 weeks this Friday. She is slowing down a bit, with bending over becoming more problematic. Nei La is very active about 9:30pm every night. I get to feel her moving around which is an amazing experience. She had the hiccups for the first time last week. At first we thought she was rhythmically pounding away fro

m the inside saying “let me out!” but then figured it was just hiccups. We have also been piping in music to her while she is in Christine’s tummy. I bought a pair of wireless Sennheiser headphones and hooked it up to our IPOD. Now Nei La is able to sway to easy listening of Norah Jones, hip hop to Sean Paul, and dance to The Postal Service. We are soooooo excited.

We finished our Lamaze classes last Thursday and had an opportunity to tour Mt. Sinai’s delivery area. I’m very glad that we had the experience of being in the hospital room and seeing all of the equipment. For those of you who know me well, I have a tendency to just pass out at the sight of hospital equipment, wounds, or sometime just from friends telling me stories about a traumatic experience! Yes, I know, it’s not a very manly thing, but oh, well as Tony Soprano says “what a ya gonna do.”

The Baby Shower!

We have to start off by saying a most heart felt thank you to Diana, Brad, Bradly, Carol, and Sue for helping to organize, host, cater, and entertain the over 40 guest at our Baby Shower! Diana did a remarkable job with the invitations and coordinating with Brad

and Bradly to have all of the guests arrive safely in Hudson, Wisconsin. Thank you Mom and Mom for catering the food from Cossettas. Yummy!!!!

And, Brad and Bradly, thank you soooooo much for opening your home to us vagrants that have no permanent house in Minneapolis anymore. Your hospitality and warmth made it feel like we were still at home and never left. You provided such a great atmosphere for everyone to gather and catch up on happenings. Thank you Bradly for making such wonderful Vegetable and Fruit pizzas! And thank you Diana for the yummy byerlie’s cake. Everyone loved it! Also, thank you Craig for supplying much of the liquor! We were sorry that Carrie couldn’t join us, but understand her prior commitments.

Thank you everyone for the amazing gifts. Baby Nei La will definitely appreciate them (not to mention her parents!).

The Visitors

It has been a whirlwind of visitors over the past few months. Christine and I had visitors from Colorado, Boston, California, Georgia and Minneapolis. Sara had visitors from Minnesota and too many other places to list.

Marion & Val

Neal’s Uncle Marion and Aunt Val visited and took us to see Beauty and The Beast. We had great seats and the show was very good. One of the highlights of the show was when we were able to go backstage. Marion’s daughter Paula lives in New York and has connections in the Broadway industry. The costume designer that maintains the Beauty and the Beast costumes also helped Paula with a play that she produced. It was interesting seeing the nuances of how a play operates. The costumes were surprisingly made of vinyl in some instances with lots of beads. They look beautiful on stage, but not so great close up!

It was a wonderful visit with Marion and Val, and Christine and I wanted to thank you for the wonderful time. Uncle Marion, you have been a tremendous support for our family through all of these years and we love you for that. Thank you Marion. You are in our thoughts and prayers constantly.

Darin

Darin, our friend from California, came to visit in January when Christine flew to Minneapolis to attend Darin’s wife’s Jen’s baby shower. Darin and I had a mellow weekend. We ended up spending quite a bit of time in the Boars Head bar, which is directly across the street from our apartment. They have all kinds of beers on tap and also have a wide selection of scotches. I am not a scotch drinker, but Darin enjoyed a few.

We also ventured to Williamsburg on a recommendation from the bartender at Boars Head. We ended up finding a very unique bar featuring Brazilian music. Darin introduced me to a coconut flavored alcoholic beverage with Guarana powder in it. Guarana is a Brazilian plant that is one of the ingredients in Red Bull! Needless to say we had a good time and were pretty peppy the entire night!

Brian

My friend Brian from Atlanta paid us a visit in February, as he was in the area for work and ended up staying for the weekend. This was when we had the big snowstorm (over Christine’s birthday), which almost stranded him. We had a total of 24 inches of snow in Central Park. This was also the first time Sadie and Celia were forced to wear their winter booties ~

Dick & Susan

Christine’s Dad and stepmother visited from Boston in March. It was great seeing them. Highlights include eating at a vegan restaurant, going to the “Top of the Rock” observatory in Rockefeller center, and just spending time with them. The “Rock” had spectacular views of Central Park and the Empire State Building. It also has an observatory that is outside but it was a bit too cold to spend much time out there. In the summer, it would be beautiful. The vegan restaurant was pretty good. I can’t remember the name, so Christine will have to help me out on that.

Brad, Bradly, Carrie, Karen, Terry, Stephanie, and Maureen

The Minnesota School of Professional Psychology field trip (Brad, Karen, and Stephanie) along with Bradley, Carrie, Terry, and Maureen also visited us in March. Field trips included Greenwich Village, the promenade, central park carriage rides, lots of eating , and great time had by all. The group went to the Broadway play Lestat, which is based on Anne Rice’s books about vampires. The music was written by Elton John. Going to the show, we were all excited about the possibilities. Who wouldn’t like vampires, music, costumes, and more!!!! Unfortunately, it was three and a half hours we can never get back from our lives. It was HORRIBLE! I was completely disappointed and would not recommend the play to anyone. The story line was poor, the music was so so, and the acting was blah. Ugh!

The Dogs

Sadie and Celia are still doing well. We have all been watching Ultimate Fighting on Spike TV each week and it seems that Sadie has taken that show to heart. When the dogs break out in spontaneous fights (usually over a bone or because they are jealous) I always encourage one or the other to “get the back”. For those of you who watch UFC you will know what I am talking about. However, the other week, Sadie “got the back” a little too aggressively and tore off a junk of Celia’s ear!!!! Poor Celia had blood everywhere. She had to wear a bandaid for about three days until we were sure the scab wouldn’t break. They have since made up, but I’m not sure if Sara will ever forgive Sadie (or me) for encouraging the UFC behavior! She’ll always have the memory of her time in New York when she looks at Celia’s ear! L