last night we went to a surprise party for Dina's uncle. great time was had - including a little bit of dancing to help the progress along. snapped this picture while we were sitting (it's the only one i got clearance to post)
valley of the sun
We're currently around 30,000 feet in the air as we head to Arizona and have a shower with the family out there. A short trip (we're back on Sunday) but filled with fun, I'm sure!
So far the kid's a good flyer!
UPDATE: thanks wordpress for delaying this post in limbo until today. sigh.
all quiet
just realized it has been almost two weeks since an update. hard to update when it's really really quiet (aside from the kid moving constantly!). we've been lucky and have had a really uncomplicated, quiet pregnancy with little to no problems. doctor appointments that are shorter then the wait to see the doctor and almost nothing to talk to her about. we rack our brains to come up with something to tell her, but usually don't have anything.
which is great. the more boring the better, is what i hear.
doctor's appointments are now every other week - our last was last thursday. our pre-birth class finishes tomorrow night and a new class (baby care) the following monday. the final class (totsaver) starts the week after that. around the house, the room is basically done (minus a few additions to come) and the last major home activity before the birth has been scheduled.
dina's got a few images to post yet, but i won't ruin the surprise.
it all started with new furniture
then the closet moved into the living room.
but the new carpet is nice. and the kids room looks good now. it's not completely done yet, so no pictures. once we get the linens and things in there (hey now the name of the store makes sense...) we'll do a proper tour.
wall to wall, mostly
UPDATE:
Done!
cartwheels & somersaults
Last couple of nights have been a little bit more challenging than the last 6.5 mos! We think Blueberry might be starting to practice to be an Olympic gymnast because I swear he's doing cartwheels and somersaults in here!! (Sometime it also feels like's he's doing the kickworm - which is something I mastered in elementary school.) I've been feeling so much more movement at night this past week and it's getting a bit more difficult to sleep through the night - I guess this is training for when he arrives! No biggie - he's totally worth it.
furnished
the furniture arrived today! from left to right we have - lifetime crib/bed (assembly required - it would be weird and useless if it was that thin), dresser (in back), glider w/ ottoman (in front, assembly also required) and drawer set. The bookcase in this picture is moving, but he'll have one in there as well.
next up. carpet. and we're just about done!
Grandparents go shopping!
More progress on Blueberry's room this weekend. Grandparents Ariza & Abuelos Chavarela ordered the furniture for Blueberry's room today! Never thought we'd be so excited about a chest of drawers, but like Philip has said often as we're getting Blueberry's room ready, aside from the growing belly and him bouncing around and hiccuping, getting his room ready does make it all seem that much more real and remind us that he'll be here so soon!! Thank you so very much to our parents for the wonderful gifts which (we hope) will last for many, many years to come: a lifetime (convertible) crib to bed (with mattress), combo unit; 6 drawer chest and glider w/ ottoman to boot!
Gifts for Blueberry, Mommy & Daddy!!
Thanks to a very generous friend, Blueberry received the cutest and softest sleepwear with little polar bear feet to keep him warm during the winter and we received our diaper bag!! The diaper bag is even cooler than what we thought, so we're very excited about it. Thank you very much to Christina and Family!! There's Daddy modeling the bag and something for Blueberry to look forward to.
6 years
We've started the arduous task of preparing the living space for the arrival of the boy. It's amazing what you accumulate when you don't need to worry about having an extra space. Sure, now and again we'd clean things up. But 12 coffee mugs? Really? Now, I'm not going to complain about having so much stuff, because it's pretty amazing how much we have, but this business about acquiring things just to have them; we've got to be better at it. So this last weekend we started. In order to make ready, we've begun consolidating and reducing. We've got to clear out a room, consolidate another and find new spaces for the things we're keeping.
These are the bags of clothes we gave away. What you're aren't seeing are the boxes of books, small appliances, and collection of pans from the previous owners we kept just in case we had a huge buffet; all of which were donated to the Salvation Army. I should have taken a picture of Dina's car, it was full.
Suffice to say, it's surprising what you can stuff in a place about 1100 square feet and never actually use.
The work continues. And the arrival approaches.
Now I'm not going to sleep again.
errata
Just a quick note. Both twitter and facebook are optional services that are not required for using or viewing this website. While integrating facebook hasn't been done yet, the integration of twitter is complete.
If you choose to use twitter as an additional service (and as I described in an earlier post) then you'll start to receive updates on your phone via text message whenever there's a post at dinaandphilip.com or news from us via twitter.
If you don't want to use twitter or facebook or any of those services, no problem! Just keep coming back here to check in and find out what's up with Dina, Philip and Blueberry.
Thanks again for visiting.
all a-twitter
In what can only be described as a uniquely 21st century problem, I've been spending a fair amount of time puzzling out the best way to set up a notification system for the birth of Blueberry. While, making phone calls is fine in an old fashioned, quaint kind of way, it's not very efficient. The impetus for setting up this domain name and its various incarnations (beginning with our wedding), was to bridge the communication gap that comes from having family and friends all over the world. Right now there are family/friends reading this in the US, Mexico, Colombia, England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland - those are the ones I'm sure of, but I have no doubt there are more. Phone calls and email are slow, delayed, time consuming, and repetitive (I doubt anyone is 'excited' the dozenth time they say, he's born! - maybe not, but I'd rather be holding my kid then talking to everyone on the phone!).
I know, back in the day, that's the way it was and we were happy!
But, it isn't that day, and we don't have to be happy doing it that way. There are solutions that are faster, more efficient at distributing the information and easier to use. So that is what we're going to do.
This blog provides us with a fantastic means of keeping all of you, the most important people we know, abreast of what's going on with our growing, soon-to-be, bouncing baby boy. But it's up to you to check up on us, read the RSS feed or (GASP!) actually visit the site.
I've got a better way - if you want more information as it happens. We're going to leverage this blog, SMS and Twitter.
(As an aside, I just had a vision of me, 40 years from now, reviewing archived posts from this blog with my son, and trying to explain to him how this was all state-of-the-art before he was born. And him laughing at my quaint history lesson - 'Oh dad, you and your Twitter talk! And what the hell! Blueberry?')
So here's the deal. If you desire more notification of posts from this blog, and periodic updates as things happen like 'Oh! The baby kicked - we saw it!' or the mundane 'Shuffling through Babys-r-us as we register for this kid. Still looking for the home theater receivers' or the celebratory 'he's here!' - delivered to your phone, this is how it can happen.
First, ensure that receiving SMS (texting) is not a problem for your phone and you won't get dinged if you get too many messages. I can't guarantee how many messages we'll be sending out, but wireless carriers are a bit predatory about this stuff, so make sure you have enough. Seriously. Don't come to us with a $2000 text messaging bill because we got a little bit crazy about how cute the socks were. Seriously. Check your plan before you do this.
Register with Twitter. Now, before you say anything, hold on. One. You don't have to actually post anything on the twitter (as I like to call it). Two. You're not required to make your twitter feed public - you can protect it and only people you allow in can see your feed if you actually post anything. And three. You can in fact, register, get your username, setup your phone to receive messages, and follow us and never do anything with it again. (There's a lot of really good stuff and information you can find with Twitter - check it out. Just make sure you don't send everything to your phone!)
Once you register for Twitter, configure your settings: protect your tweets if you want (if you don't plan on actually tweeting, protect it anyway), setup your mobile phone and verify it to Twitter so you can receive text messages and activate updates, and finally, do any other settings activity you want - upload a picture, design your home page - whatever.
Now, while your logged in to Twitter, visit this link http://twitter.com/dinaandphilip. Click the follow button underneath our image and then to really make this thing work, click on 'Device updates off'. In the resulting yellow box that opens up, turn on device updates. Assuming you've set up your phone settings correctly, this means every time there's an update on our twitter feed, you'll get a text of it. And, since I've set up the blog to notify twitter of new posts, you'll find out about that too. Near instantaneously. I hear flying cars are right around the corner. Really. It'll be like the Jetsons.
(Should you desire that getting information about the kid from this blog, its twitter feed, or from Philip's facebook (slightly delayed), you can thoroughly saturate yourself our news by adding Philip's twitter feed at http://twitter.com/oski or Dina's feed (if she ever uses it) at http://twitter.com/oskiette)
Remember, you're under no obligation to go through all this. But, if you're interested it joining the never-wait-for-news-and-information-generation and want to know what's up with this kid and his parents, dive in!
I'll be troubleshooting the setup for a bit still - working out all the kinks - but the whole system (the blog, feeding the twitter and back) should be solid very soon. You may see a few stray tweets that don't mean anything.
Questions? Email me at philip@dinaandphilip.com, direct message via twitter @oski, text me, hit me up on IM, send me a Facebook email, or give me an old fashioned phone call (if I don't answer I'm checking on the flying cars).