Sweet 16 + 6

Let me first say thanks to everybody that has been checking in on this website and thanks to everybody that posted a message. It's great to see everybody so involved and it's fun for Nicole and me to see everyone so excited about what's going on. Next, let me apologize for not updating the blog as quickly as we all would hope. I'm sorry I'm starting out so slowly. It does bum me out slightly thinking that people are checking this blog only to find yesterday's news. What fun is that right? Well, lastly let me say both 1. "Get off my back" and 2. "I'm working on it!!" Only kidding. I do appreciate all the responses and interest. You guys are great.

So Thursday was Nicole's 4th doctor visit. As of Thursday (Feb. 1) she was a sweet 16 weeks and 6 days into pregnancy. We have no new sonogram pictures to post, but we did get to hear Goose's heartbeat. It is interesting to me that Goose is so small, but yet it's heartbeat was 150 beats per minute. Why so fast? 1. We've already established that we are okay with Goose sleeping (ref last post), so he's obvisously not trying to impress us, and 2. if Goose did want to go some where... where's he going to go? Goose is obviously grounded. All jokes aside, it is such a surreal feeling to me to hear it's heartbeat. Trying to or not, it did impress me and it does make me so proud of Nicole for making it happen.

I have tried to post an audio clip of Goose's heartbeat, but it was only slightly more difficult than I originally thought, so the next best thing for me to do is to describe to you how you can recreate the sound of my baby's heartbeat. Nicole and I have both decided that a baby's heartbeat sounds strikingly similar to the sound a person makes when firing a fake gun repeatedly. (i.e. in other words if you fashion your hand into a gun shape, fire off several rounds one after the other and actually make the noise of what you think a gun sounds like after each round... well, then after about the 3rd or 4th round, just when those around you are pretty sure they shouldn't be around you anymore, well it starts to sounds like a baby heartbeat. Odd... but in most cases, its true. A sidenote would be that this doesn't work if you are fake firing any of the following guns: Tommy Gun, Machine Gun, Bazookas, Howitzers, or Nerf Guns. It really must be in the same family as say the Colt 45. And also, let me add a word of caution... recreating my baby's heartbeat around an armed man or generally in the presence of a uniformed man is in no way adviseable.)

On a different note, I know it has been awhile since those outside of the metroplex have seen Nicole's increasingly large baby belly. So here's a pic for those interested. We took this a few days ago (say 16 weeks 4 days). She's starting to show more and more by the minute. The only real way to keep you guys aprised of her size would be for me to have a streaming link of her belly 24 hours a day, and well... while I tried for the betterment of everybody who reads this post, let's just say that it was a "no". I'll try to update the site with as many pictures of her belly as I can because she really is changing everyday now it seems. Goose is really making a home in there. It is such an amazing thing and it really is starting to hit home for me... we are having a baby. I can't wait.