Lil Ariza Monster

We went to dinner last Friday night with our good friends Ian and Melissa. Little did we know that Melissa and I would be wearing the same dress. Definitely not inconspicuous either, red stripes stand out. Little did we know they would also be announcing to us that night that Melissa is 3 months pregnant!! We are so excited for them. It will be nice to have someone to go through my last trimester of pregnancy with.

Congratulations Ian and Melissa! Your kid is gonna be awesome!

-Kaci

preggers and matching

So we haven’t posted in a while but we promise it wasn’t our fault. About a week and a half ago lightning struck our house. It blew up a few things including our sprinklers system and and fried our cable for a bit. Then we got back online only to be taken off a couple days later. Hopefully we can get back on track this week.

Here is a little update of what’s going been going on. We gave the baby room a fresh coat of paint. Ricky created some amazingly cute monsters that are ready to be painted. Jeremy loaned us a projector to help us draw on the walls and Kaci picked up a few things from Ikea for the nursery.

I have been working through my list of things that need to be done around the house. Which got quite a bit longer when the lighting struck. I kicked it off by installing a new garage door opener this weekend.

Kaci has another doctors visit today. She get’s to drink some kind of gross liquid that helps determine if she has gestational diabetes. It’s just a routine test. I don’t know how this stuff works. Sounds like voodoo to me.

To make up for our lack of posts watch this video celebration of our little monster.

Daniel and I had a very exciting event last night. We finally saw my belly move from the lil monster’s kicking. It isn’t super strong but there is no denying it. He is definitely making himself known inside my lil belly.

I ran across this link via my friend Peter. I have heard of this kind of thing before. The idea is you give your child a camera and let him or her run free snapping photos as they see fit. The result is pretty awesome. I’m not sure if it’s simply their height that gives them a unique perspective and interesting framing or if it’s just that as a child everything has a mystery and wonder about it. Whatever the case I can’t wait to try this in a few years.

I had an art teacher that once said that as children we knew how to draw correctly. We would draw people with two arms, two legs, five fingers and so on. We would draw it just as we saw it from our point of view. And then slowly as we became adults people conditioned us that it was incorrect. And now as creative adults, we are trying to get back to that child-like point of view. I think there is some truth in that idea and this child’s photos seem to support that.

Ok if i thought picking a stroller was going to be difficult, well I was wrong. Now we are on to the even more daunting task of choosing a name for our boy. From the start I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. First of all I like way too many names, and second Daniel hates most names. He’s say things like, “Change one letter of that and think of what it sounds like.” Of course it turns out to sound like a dirty word. So here we are at week 25 and still only really both like 1 name. I guess atleast we’ve agreed upon one name. And who knows maybe that will be the one.

Since we know some very opinionated people we’ve decided that the name will be kept under wraps till we’ve had our little boy. That opens the can of worms for everyone to give out what they think is the best name. I’ve already had people tell me what they think the entire name of my baby should be. And our church small group has sweetly decided to all call our baby Pablo, and this was done even before they knew it was a boy. Some of the names people throw out are just funny and some people are totally serious. I guess it is all in good fun and people are just trying to help us out.

I know come October 23rd we will have a name and it will be perfect. So I’m just going to sit back and let the names roll in.

Yesterday I went to Disney for my brother Tim’s 21st birthday. Which is weird that my youngest brother can drink beer now by the way. While experiencing the parks and riding some pretty intense rides I started to take note of some of the kids on these rides. I was surprised at some of the young ones on the scariest of rides. On tower of terror there was the tiniest little girl. The free fall didn’t even seem to phase her. Then on Mission space there was a little boy who is apparently a born astronaut. If you don’t know this is a ride that simulates a shuttle lift off into space. It’s pretty intense. Enough so that there are barf bags on the ride. This kid had no fear. He just wanted to be the pilot. I hope my kid is brave like that. I never was. Hopefully Kaci and I can foster that confidence and bravery. Not so he can ride the scary rides so much but so he can take the stands that need to be taken and make the tough choices in life. Maybe that’s a little deep since he’s not hear yet but I think about these things more and more now.

This past 4th of July weekend Kaci and took what will probably be our last babyless trip. We drove up to Savannah, Ga and stayed in a cool old Inn called the East Bay Inn. It was nice to get away and relax a bit. The staff at the Inn seemed to take a liking to Kaci and even made sure she was able to find the fried chicken she so desired.

We did make an effort to eat at Paula Deen’s restaurant but the line was on both sides of the street. And after speaking with some locals they didn’t seem to think it was best place in town anyway. But we still managed to eat pretty well… and I think our baby ate well too.

So we saw fireworks, ate good food, took a tour of the historical district, did a lot of walking and hopefully gained a little bit of culture to pass on to our little one.

Last night our friend Ricardo came by for a little brainstorm session. He was kind enough to volunteer to help us paint some sweet monsters on the walls. I don’t want to divulge too many of our secrets but let’s just say there will be monsters a plenty. Hopefully our little monster will dig it.

Yesterday we went to the doctor for Kaci’s 24 week check up. The doctor said everything looked good and our last ultrasound looked completely normal. So thank goodness for all that.

But there is something else that I need to share with you. In the doctor’s office there is photos all over the walls. Photos of families and babies she has delivered. We even saw a few we knew. One in particular was a little off putting. Right next to the exam table. The area where the doctor may need to inspect your business is a photo of Isaac Hunter. That’s right… There is a photo of our pastor on the wall. So as the doctor is putting on her rubber glove, Isaac is there winking “hello”.