Saturday, July 22, 2006
E is for . / . _ . / . . / _ . _ .
My wife, Becky, had her first of two baby showers today. She's just over six months along, and Eric* is starting to kick visibly, meaning that I don't even have to put my hand on Becky's tummy to know that he's kicking. But I do anyway because feeling him kick is so exciting. I think he's even starting to learn his name!! Yes, that's right, he spells his first initial in Morse code almost every time I put my hand there. I say "almost every time" because all the other times, he skips straight to "i". Now, for those of you who never had a fascination with codes and ciphers when they were in elementary school, have never joined the military, or are for some other reason unfamiliar with Morse code, the letter "E" (E is for Eric) is one dot ( . ), and the letter, "i" (I is for Eric), is two dots ( .. ).
We met up with her parents, her brother, and her brother's fiance for breakfast. Then we all drove over to her cousin's place where the shower was so we could drop off the women and get to doing our guy thing. For those wondering why we didn't stay for the baby shower: it's because we're men, and real men do not attend baby showers. We do, however, do ice-bag-runs for baby showers, which we accomplished just before leaving the ladies behind and getting on with our guy thing.
There was no specific guy thing planned, though some of us had some ideas. One idea was to go rent a couple of boats and go out on the water somewhere. I don't even remember where. Another was to go to Six Flags. The other was to go back to my place and play games. I love to play games--no, not gin rummy or dominoes, I'm talking about social interaction games that can easily become hillarious, like Balderdash, Loaded Questions, and True Colors. I also enjoy more strategic interaction games like Spy Alley and Risk 2210 AD. Well, we threw the ideas around. The amusement park idea was out because my brother-in-law is a roller coaster fearing scaredy-cat (but more relevently because his very-up-in-age grandpa was along and for his heart's sake needed to do something not physically exciting). Going to a lake and playing games were both activities that didn't sound like fun to a majority of the group, so we ended up deciding on option (d): none of the above. We headed out to the nearby IMAX theater that we were able to verify the location of with a quick phone call placed back to the girls at the shower. Once there, we saw that Superman was the only movie playing on IMAX. This didn't blow my mind, because I'd seen the same thing in the area that my wife and I were house shopping, but seeing a real-live movie was something that Becky's grandpa was uncomfortable with (he prefers "true" things like documentaries, gossip about Niklor, etc.). So, our much-anticipated guys-only event involved all of looking at the movie titles at the theater and grabbing a bite to eat. Oh, and we all used the men's room. No, ladies, we didn't turn that part into a social event. I told you, we're men.
After the big event, we considered moving on to option (b): games. Only, the shower was only three hours long and we wouldn't have time to do much before we had to come back and pick up our ladies. We timed it just right. As soon as we arrived, many of the girls were just leaving. There was some left-over cake, so we tried some. It was minty. I wish I'd've known that before I tried a piece. I didn't finish the piece of cake, but I did finish the cupcake that her cousin offered me later, which had no mintiness. So, after we guys had loaded up her parents' van with all the opened gifts (okay, the ladies helped by compacting most the gifts into the plastic drawer-chest that she got) and everyone except the close family members of Becky's cousin had gone, we watched Becky's cousin feed her baby some baby food, and then I got to practice changing the baby's diaper as part of a diaper-changing lesson I had requested earlier, which Becky's cousin was eager and willing to give. That was the first diaper I had ever changed. It had velcro, so the only hard part was getting a hold of her legs while she was trying to hold them herself (and squirming around as I was assured my baby won't do for the first few months). I enjoyed the experience and was thankful for the opportunity to get some supervised practice in before my wife and I are on our own.
In other news: The house that went off the market the day before we went house shopping a couple weekends ago is back on the market, and if it remains that way for at least a week, it is to be the first house I look at next weekend when I return to the area fully equipped to make an offer. Yee-haw!
* No, I'm not really going to keep calling him Ichabod; that was just a joke. His name is Eric! I'm proud of my little boy and I'm happy to proclaim his name to all.
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