Birthday Girl

I've been so busy being a new mom that I'd nearly forgotten that my 31st birthday is next week. Webhamster rhetorically asked me yesterday, "Your birthday's Monday, isn't it?" Oh, yeah...it is! So I called the day spa and made an appointment for a pedicure to pamper myself now that my feet are long and slender again. An hour-and-a-half is a good window to get out of the house for some independent time and not worry too much about Isabel wanting another feeding.

Baby Pics!

Baby pics added to sidebar. Thousands more to come...

Cletus Escapes!

FREE AT LAST!! FREE AT LAST!!

Isabel Star Hagan came to be at 0346 CST 19 January 2006. She weighed in at 7lbs, 5 oz with a length of 20 inches. Accomplices webhamstress and webhamster have been seen aiding and abetting her and keeping lookout while she lounges about in swaddled luxury and filthy lucre. The lucre is ony filthy after she's lounged in it for a good ten to fifteen minuts.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Cletus's big day. We are scheduled to arrive at the hospital at 8:30 a.m for the induction. This whole impending-childbirth-and-parenthood thing is still a bit abstract. Today feels like just about any other day. Maybe I'm just too fatigued to be stressed about it? I'll surely feel differently tomorrow when labor becomes a reality and we meet our baby.

I've been trying to gear up for the big event by watching back-to-back episodes of "A Baby Story" on TLC. I cry every time the baby is born and presented to the parents, and these are strangers on TV! I'm seriously doubting I'll be able to hold myself together tomorrow.

Planned parenthood

If this weekend's full moon doesn't bring Cletus, induced labor will in a few days. At today's OB appointment, the doctor told me that although the cervix is more than adequately thinned out, I'm probably not going to dilate any more (currently 2 cm) until labor. Everything appears normal and healthy with this pregnancy, so an induction is a possibility. So, barring spontaneous labor in the next few days, I will be going to the hospital on Wednesday morning. In that case, depending on the length of the labor, Cletus's birthday will be either January 18 or 19.

Vegas, Baby!

At today's OB appointment, I was 70% effaced and between one-and-a-half and two centimeters dilated! The doctor said that he would say closer to two but that characteristically stingy labor and delivery nurses would probably say 1.5. He could actually feel the top of her head. Freaky!

Doc gives me a 50/50 chance of delivering this baby before next week's appointment. Wow! I'm not a big gambler--though I do enjoy roulette when we're at a casino and I buy the occasional lottery ticket--but those are excellent odds.

WOW! I'm going to have a baby soon!

The Name Game

Cletus, Cletus, Bo, Betus
Banana-fana Fo Fetus
Me My Mo Metus
Cletus!

As we cross the days off the calendar, Webhamster and I realize that we really need to narrow that list of baby names. Honestly (pinkie swear!), until the last couple of weeks, we had about four dozen names highlighted in the girl section of the "50,001 Best Baby Names" book. I'm uncertain as to why, but it is just so much more difficult for us to choose girl names. If Cletus were a boy, we'd likely go with Kieran, a solid Irish name, as our first choice.

For girls' names, though, we've just been unable to make progress. We read and re-read the highlighted names and then wrote them on a piece of paper. We then read and re-read the handwritten versions and thought about first name-middle name combinations as well as initials. For example, what if her initials were PIH, but someday she wanted to marry someone whose surname began with a G? At least that might make her decision whether to adopt her spouse's surname easier.

Webhamster said that any name should have to pass the "Fifth Grade Boys Test," a process that would give a group of 10- to 11-year-old boys five minutes to create as many insults as they could based on the name. I can vividly remember elementary school teasing sessions from boys calling me Mistake or Mosquito when they discovered that my middle name was Mystique. I suppose it could have been worse.

At any rate, since the New Year 2006 began, we have narrowed the list to five names that we really adore and that could be used in various first-middle name combinations. The plan is to go to the hospital armed with that list and give Cletus the name that seems to best suit her when we meet her. Of course, a divine stroke of inspiration could overwhelm us when she is born, sending those names out with the bathwater in favor of another baby girl name.