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).

doctor's office

Had our next doctor appointment today. Dina's off doing something medical while I wait patiently. These chairs seem vaguely midieval in nature, don't you think?

Also, Blueberry and mom are doing awesome!

structurally speaking

A little behind the scenes tour for you about what's changed. Prior to this version of the website, I was using iWeb to generate the blog and the photo/video pages. From an ease of use point of view, it was drop dead easy and made updating the site relatively quick. However, it suffered from a number of deficiencies with regard to how it handled blogging. It's not extensible, adding comments required a different setup, getting Dina on here to post was nearly impossible and posting remotely, was impossible.

So, I decided to do what I had originally done, which is use WordPress to run the blog portion. So that's what you're seeing here now. Comments are available (you'll have to register, that just helps us keep out spam and whatnot - I know it's password protected, but go with it), Dina and I can both post and I have the ability to post from the iPhone at the doctor's office, for example.

Photos and videos galleries will still be generated by iWeb, though. Handling the number of photos and videos we've been posting, and will be posting, is handled much easier through that, then via WordPress. At least for now. To be honest, there's a number of ways to change that and use WordPress, but for now, I'm leaving it as is. As such, there'll probably be some broken links moving back and forth until I figure it all out - and there's definitely some dissonance in the look/feel of the two sites; but you'll still be able to see all the images, so it's worth it right now.

All in all, the advantages outweigh the awkwardness of the system for a while - as we go on, it may change, until then, enjoy your blueberry updates!

UPDATE: One of the things I forgot to check prior to pulling down the old site was the status of RSS feed. I'm reasonably sure the old RSS feed is no longer valid - either way please make sure you update the link for the RSS feed if your using it. The link can be found at the bottom of the page.

more presents

Blueberry received another gift (all of which his parents are most grateful!). A cousin from Mexico gave him this awesome bear themed jumper.

Now if I could only convince everyone that he’ll need a receiver (compliant with HDMI 1.4 of course) and a blu-ray player (with support for the most recent standard profiles, or a PS3 if unsure) in order for the home theater system to be fully compliant for his education and entertainment needs.

It’s true. A fully functional home theater that supports the state-of-the-art video and audio standards is recommended by doctors everywhere. You can look it up. Google it.

It’s true. A fully functional home theater that supports the state-of-the-art video and audio standards is recommended by doctors everywhere. You can look it up. Google it.

Stay tuned for more information and thanks for checking in on Blueberry!

clothes!

Today, Blueberry received some clothes! Grandma Ariza gave him a couple cute little jumpers (i think that’s the word). I’m sure he’ll look adorable in these (especially as he travels to their house!).

Now we just need to get moving on registration, nursery, etc...

Also I updated the photos with the full set of scans from Monday. See Blueberry in all his glories soundwave-ness here!

it's a ...

So today we had our 5 month full body scan (the baby’s body, not Dina’s). Last night Dina remarked that she was nervous, and anxious, in a Christmas kind of way - excitedly waiting to find out! But first, something had to go horribly wrong. A whole circuit in the kitchen decided now was a good time to stop working and consequently, our refrigerator turned off. Thinking quickly, Philip unplugged everything (there was a most awesome sizzling sound coming from the panel, the kind that screams danger is imminent) and left to go pick up Dina and head to the doctor’s office.

The picture above is Dina waiting patiently while we stared at the cool technology around us and pondered why they would even put a Dell inside a medical office. I mean it didn’t even get used (like you’d expect anything else from a Dell).

The doctor came in and quickly got to work. All business and techie (in a medical way) the doctor didn’t quite exude personality, but she clearly knew what she was doing. Waving the magic wand (transducer, the technical term, she told us) we started seeing Blueberry for real.

Of course the kid looked good. I mean who doesn’t look good when rendered in ultrasonic waves?

The doctor preceded to poke, push and move the “transducer” around Dina’s belly, showing us different parts of the baby and Blueberry’s weight (a healthy 13 ounces); here’s the head, there’s the brain (big and smart!), here’s the heart (it was pumping correctly), there’s the spinal cord, all the hands, feet and limbs are in their places (and moving again!) and finally there’s this shot:

(arrow added by the doctor for quick identification)

It’s a boy!

So now we now know. Definitely, the doctor added (we think she actually said 100%)! Four months from now we’ll greet our new baby boy. Pretty darn exciting.

And in case your wondering, Dad swapped the circuit breaker in the panel and the refrigerator and all outlets are working again. He’s feeling especially manly right about now. So we’re going to go and kill us some meat or something (is there a tofu animal?).

So

today we had our 5 month full body scan (the baby’s body, not Dina’s). Last night Dina remarked that she was nervous, and anxious, in a Christmas kind of way - excitedly waiting to find out!

But first, something had to go horribly wrong. A whole circuit in the kitchen decided now was a good time to stop working and consequently, our refrigerator turned off. Thinking quickly, Philip unplugged everything (there was a most awesome sizzling sound coming from the panel, the kind that screams danger is imminent) and left to go pick up Dina and head to the doctor’s office.

The picture above is Dina waiting patiently while we stared at the cool technology around us and pondered why they would even put a Dell inside a medical office. I mean it didn’t even get used (like you’d expect anything else from a Dell).

The doctor came in and quickly got to work. All business and techie (in a medical way) the doctor didn’t quite exude personality, but she clearly knew what she was doing. Waving the magic wand (transducer, the technical term, she told us) we started seeing Blueberry for real.

tomorrow!

Tomorrow we have a big dr’s appointment! We’ll have the full ultrasound scan, which means we’ll find out if it’s going to be a boy or a girl!

In other news, Mom and Blueberry continue to do fine. They both did quite well at the heat and ‘rough’ living this past weekend, while camping.

In other news, Mom and Blueberry continue to do fine. They both did quite well at the heat and ‘rough’ living this past weekend, while camping.

Just so we’re all clear - there wasn’t a pregnant women drinking a beer in this picture, she’s just holding the bottle for me. Yes, it’s true. I was drinking two beers. When it’s 105 outside, you’d drink two as well! Unless, you’re pregnant, then you drink water or Hawaiian Punch.

Check back tomorrow for the news!

appointment, the 3rd

Mom and Blueberry are doing excellent, says the doctor. Blueberry’s heartbeat is a staggering 140/minute (normal) and Mom is doing awesome on the weight. Next appointment is July 27 for the baby scan!

Jacques the Peacock

Over the weekend Blueberry received her/his second toy! Matt and Jee-Hee gave us Jacques the Peacock. A most awesome brightly colored, texturized, sound making bird - all the good stuff to stimulate baby.

You can find more info about the company that makes these toys and why they’re full of colors, textures and sounds (that’s a big hint if you’re reading this) at: http://www.learningcurve.com/lamaze?locale=en_US&icid=flashNav.

Mom is doing well and we’re looking forward to our next appointment on Wednesday.

Over the weekend Blueberry received her/his second toy! Matt and Jee-Hee gave us Jacques the Peacock. A most awesome brightly colored, texturized, sound making bird - all the good stuff to stimulate baby.

You can find more info about the company that makes these toys and why they’re full of colors, textures and sounds (that’s a big hint if you’re reading this) at: Lamaze.

Mom is doing well and we’re looking forward to our next appointment on Wednesday.

gifts

Over the weekend, Blueberry’s Aunt Suzi gave her/him its first clothing - a brand spanking new sixmonthsie (that seems made up, but i’m going with it), with the most appropriate of messages:

Daddy also received his first pre-Father’s Father’s Day gifts, a couple of books on preparation. Good reading and important information for the soon-to-be father!

“The New Dad’s Survival Guide” a fun, enjoyable read about preparing to be a dad and “Dad’s Pregnant Too” a detail (like really detailed) handbook for getting ready! Already through one, but I’ll be spending the next couple odays getting through the next.

Over the weekend, Blueberry’s Aunt Suzi gave her/him its first clothing - a brand spanking new sixmonthsie (that seems made up, but i’m going with it), with the most appropriate of messages.

Daddy also received his first pre-Father’s Father’s Day gifts, a couple of books on preparation. Good reading and important information for the soon-to-be father!

“The New Dad’s Survival Guide” a fun, enjoyable read about preparing to be a dad and “Dad’s Pregnant Too” a detail (like really detailed) handbook for getting ready! Already through one, but I’ll be spending the next couple of days getting through the next.

the reveal!

I’ve been meaning to post this sooner, but I wanted to have the site somewhat finished up before I did it. So without further ado - video of the big reveal to the family! [quicktime]http://dinaandphilip.com/site/wp-content/video/blueberryrevealed.m4v[/quicktime]

2nd appointment

Today little blueberry (quite a bit larger now, I’m sure) is 13 weeks and five days along. And we had our second doctor appointment. An easy, quick appointment - but we did hear the heart! Pretty darn cool. And true to form, the kid was kicking as was evident by the loud knocks we could here.

We’ve been really lucky with a calm first trimester - little or no nausea and with two exceptions, no sickness at all. Meanwhile, we’ve entered the beginnings of some of the abdominal aches and pains, but nothing we can’t handle!

Our next appointment is scheduled for July 8.Today little blueberry (quite a bit larger now, I’m sure) is 13 weeks and five days along. And we had our second doctor appointment. An easy, quick appointment - but we did hear the heart! Pretty darn cool. And true to form, the kid was kicking as was evident by the loud knocks we could here.

Today little blueberry (quite a bit larger now, I’m sure) is 13 weeks and five days along. And we had our second doctor appointment. An easy, quick appointment - but we did hear the heart! Pretty darn cool. And true to form, the kid was kicking as was evident by the loud knocks we could here.

We’ve been really lucky with a calm first trimester - little or no nausea and with two exceptions, no sickness at all. Meanwhile, we’ve entered the beginnings of some of the abdominal aches and pains, but nothing we can’t handle!

Our next appointment is scheduled for July 8.

first photos!

We had our first appointment for the kid we’re affectionately calling ‘blueberry’ - since we found out it was about that size. Imagine our surprise when we discovered we were off by about two weeks!

Doctor reported the kid looked awesome as s/he swung their arms and legs wildly about, somewhat like a crazed dancer.

We had our first ultrasound and received the first photos which I’ve posted here.

Next checkup, June 9.

We also received our first baby gifts! Nicky visited us from Arizona bearing gifts from the Fee family. We received three books, Goodnight Moon, Peter Rabbit’s Peekaboo! and Colors. All of which have been recommended by Connor, a voracious reader whose taste for books is top notch! They were accompanied by our first stuffed animal - a cute lion, ROWR!

We had our first appointment for the kid we’re affectionately calling ‘blueberry’ - since we found out it was about that size. Imagine our surprise when we discovered we were off by about two weeks!

Doctor reported the kid looked awesome as s/he swung their arms and legs wildly about, somewhat like a crazed dancer.

We had our first ultrasound and received the first photos which I’ve posted here.

Next checkup, June 9.

We also received our first baby gifts! Nicky visited us from Arizona bearing gifts from the Fee family. We received three books, Goodnight Moon, Peter Rabbit’s Peekaboo! and Colors.

All of which have been recommended by Connor, a voracious reader whose taste for books is top notch! They were accompanied by our first stuffed animal - a cute lion, ROWR!