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Did you know that pregnancy is longer than 9 months? It’s actually 9 months and 2 weeks. In the extreme cases a woman might be pregnant for a full 10 months. This was not imparted on me 9 months ago.

Tomorrow Courtney will be 5 weeks from the official due date of October 27th. At this stage doctors tell husbands to not travel, stay sober, and keep your cell phone charged. Courtney has told me a few times that she thinks she’s had the faux contractions starting. Last night after a hefty helping of Sawatdee (Which will send anyone’s nether-region into a tizzy ) Court alluded to the fact that she holds back telling me everything that she has been feeling for fear of me losing it. I thanked her for that. The two of us are completely the same when it comes to overreacting in a situation. The less I know the better.

The last month has been normal, to be honest. We’ve spent so long being so excited that now it just seems status-quo to have a baby on the way. It’s hard to explain but I think our mentality has changed from all this nesting to final acceptance. We spend our time waiting. At this point I’m so used to Courtney being pregnant that I’m not sure she’ll ever have the child.

We were pulled out of our daily haze the other night during the hospital tour. The tour showed us where to go and answered some really practical questions like “Can I drop my wife off at the emergency entrance?” and “How long does it take to get an epidorol?” As we were standing in a delivery room I realized that in a very short period Court and I will be right there having a baby.

Crazy.

I can’t say the dogs are ready for it. It may be our perception, but they seem to be acting a little bit off-center. They’re being clingy and overly demanding. I worry about them with a child in the house. The last thing I want happening is the baby swing being knocked over by a stampede of dogs. It will take some coordination I think to make sure we all can fit in the house.

We are starting to count down the weeks until Riley Adam (a.k.a. Riles or Ramrod) shows up on our doorstep. Although Courtney is due is roughly 9 weeks we’re working under the assumption that he’ll be here sooner than expected. The doctors will tell you that birthing time and ETAs are not hereditary but mothers will tell you differently. At this point we’re preparing for the earliest, hoping for the best. After spending the weekend with my 10 week-old nephew I’m quite ready to have one of my own. We’re lucky that Drew and Michelle have allow us to “cut our teeth” with babies on Avery. He’s a perfect little guy.

Other than that life has been a waiting game. Court and I spend our time pontificating on new life situations. Sometimes agreeing and sometimes not agreeing at all but both of us are excited for whatever adventure will pop up next.

Seems like I should be keeping you better informed with baby stuff. When we spend most of our days thinking, planning, and scheming for it I tend to forget that not everyone else is as entrenched with it as we are.

Court is 6 1/2 months along, or entering her 7th month, or just finishing the full 6th month. It’s all confusing, really. We tend to just tell people that we’re 25 (or is it 26?) weeks along. Things during the second trimester have been very easy. The only arguments we have are whether Courtney is having a craving or just wanting something different to eat.

We’ve gotten all the big stuff out of the way. Procured a crib, organized the baby room, and remodeled the addition so we have somewhere to play with the baby. For all intents and purposes we are ready for this whole baby thing to start.

We’ve had some lively conversations over names. We’ve now agreed on Riley Adam. Originally Riley was written off because of a family friend being named the same but it was put back in the pool a few weeks ago. My only reservation is the inevitable nickname “RAMrod” (See the movie Super Troopers for the reference). After that burns off I’m sure his actual nicknames will be along the lines of “Ri” and “Riles”, which I can tolerate. I do plan lots of “Little Man”s and “Boss” name calling. The nickname is quite important to me. It’s gotta be good.

Courtney is much, much smaller than I thought she would be at 6 1/2 months. I didn’t know what to expect or when to expect it with the whole baby growth thing. All I hear are stories of women gaining 50 to 75 pounds, on bed rest, unable to move. This pregnancy thing has been quite easy on Court. She has a little round tummy that’s quite cute. She’s not waddling yet, but the backpain does have us stopping frequently to stretch out and rub her back. The amount of bathroom breaks have increased dramtically within the last two weeks. On average, Court has to stop every 30 minutes after drinking a glass of water.

I spend most nights pushing on Court’s tummy trying to find Riley. He’s supposed to be about a pound and a half, and with Court so small, I thought it would be easy to find him in her tummy. Not so much. He’s very elusive, I guess. But every once in awhile we’re able to find a little knee, or an elbow that we can poke and prod at.

So there you have it. M2 is well on his way. He’s due to show up around October 27th.

Strollometer - I need this. It’ll tell me how fast I’m movin’ with the stroller. Frickin’ sweet.

We went stroller shopping this weekend. With all this new territory we’re trekking through, I can’t help but feel a little ill-prepared. I am constantly wondering what Drew and Michelle are doing since they are due in about a month. Take for instance strollers.

I’ve been laboring over our stroller choice for about a month. There are two schools of thought when it comes to strollers these days: 1. Buy a travel system that includes a stroller and a car carrier (which snaps onto the stroller when not in the car) or 2. Buy the car carrier and stroller separately. Option 2 tends to be significantly more expensive than the first option. So I got to wondering what is better about getting separate pieces. Will I need them to be separate? Which option is better in the long run? I got so bad that I couldn’t stand to even think about it. I would freak out in the stroller isle at Target and run away.

We ended up at Babies ‘R’ Us on a whim Friday night. We started shopping for strollers seriously that night. We started poking and prodding them, collapsing them, carrying them, etc…just to make sure we knew what they would feel like. Another couple had shown up and was doing the same thing. Unlike us though, they seemed pretty obsessed with a single kind, the Metrolite by Graco. After I noticed the depthness of their prodding I started to wonder what was so great about the Metrolite. Court started watching their research too. Soon, we were wondering if we should be looking at the Metrolite. Curious, we waited for them to finish with it so we could take a look.

A half hour passed and the couple continued to poke at the Metrolite. We grew tired of waiting and moved on to the furniture department. We walked the rest of the store looking at all the other fun stuff we needed. I kept an eye on them, though. I really wanted to look at the stroller.

Finally fed up waiting for them, Court and I trudged back over. By now the couple had 3 other strollers out and were poking at all of them. They had everything from your run-of-the-mill stroller up to the Rolls Royces out, running around the isles. While they weren’t looking Court test-drove the Metrolite. We decided it was exactly what we wanted. It was light, all-in-one, and snappy-lookin’ to boot. We grabbed it and ran…well, we grabbed one of the boxes and ran.

I couldn’t help but feel like I hadn’t done enough research. We had looked at them before, done some price comparison shopping, did our online research, yet we were not spending hours making sure it was perfect. Was I being a good parent? Was I being as good as them? I don’t know.

On Saturday we were over at my parents house for Michelle’s baby shower. Drew and Michelle had received the same stroller, just in another color, that we had purchased on Friday. I was relieved. If it’s good enough for their kid, it’s good enough for ours.

A little relief came yesterday after the ultrasound found only one baby in the hopper. I’m not saying two wouldn’t have been fun and all. One will do just fine.

And now I give you, our first pictures of M2:

A side profile.

A straight on shot of his face:

As usual, the pictures look like an odd alien life form. What we didn’t expect to see during the ultrasound was M2 beboppin’ around. You could see his heart pounding, you could push on Court’s stomach and see him waddle around. I told Courtney later that I swore I saw him give me the finger.

Well, it’s officical, Courtney and I will be parents. And this time I’m not talking about yet-another-dog. We’re gonna have a kid. Courtney had her first appointment this morning. I tagged along because I wanted to get some of my questions answered too (like — how does one go about procuring the appropriate type of carseat). We’ve known for about a month but chose to wait until she was 10 weeks along to go in.

Our first surprise was when Courtney first scheduled the appointment. She called the local clinic and was told that she would see a midwife instead of a doctor. All we kept picturing were the painful water-births on A Baby Story. They assured us that if we really wanted to, we could see a doctor, but most people choose to stay with a midwife after meeting them.

We spent about an hour meeting with a midwife, Lois. She went over our family history and did a great job at making us feel comfortable. The first question out of our mouths during the Q&A portion of the visit (just prior to the exam portion of the visit) was “What about epidurals?” Lois calmed our fears and promised no crazy natural water births if that’s not what we wanted.

As I was leaving (Court had to stay for the exam and there was no need for me to “help” out with that) we mentioned to Lois that twins sort of run in Courtney’s family. They occur every other generation…and Courtney’s family is due for a set. Lois told us that they can check for twins around 16 weeks or if they feel the woman is larger than average for her progression. I left and headed to work.

Court called me inbetween exams. “Did you hear the heart beat?!” she exclaimed. She had left me a message on my cell while I was in a meeting. Our baby’s first heart beat was at the end of the message. “What? No, I listened to the beginning of the message but then deleted it.” Curses, I’m already missing out on child…grumble.

Courtney also called to tell me she’s going in for an ultrasound tomorrow. She told me that they think she’s a little “big” for 10 weeks.

Drew and Michelle are pregnant too. Michelle is due in the June timeframe. Over dinner one evening Drew laughed and told me that he had to do at least ONE thing first in our lives since he’s the younger brother. I declared that while we are not able to have the first kid, we’d top him by having two. The proclamation might just turn out to be true.

Who needs kids when you have a pack of dogs. Meet the newest addition to the Motylinski clan, Anabelle, Drew and Michelle’s new puppy. That brings the family dog total to 5, the same number as there are people.