Preggy Pants

Well, each week brings us closer to meeting our little guy. We're both extremely excited to start our lives with Will. It's been an interesting process, getting mentally ready for the changes that are coming (very soon), but it's been an important one too. I have always been excited to be a Daddy, but I think recently I started to feel ready, and that's a big shift. Or maybe not. I've never done this before!

Will is growing rapidly, and wiggling all over. Sometimes he gets the hiccups and you can see Whitney's shirt moving every couple of seconds. Sometimes he turns over and you can see Whitney's tummy do a sort of wave-like motion. Sometimes his foot gets up near her ribs and you can literally feel his foot if you press your hand against her side. He tends to move it away pretty quickly. Maybe he's ticklish.

This weekend we have two long childbirth classes at the hospital, which I know we'll both really benefit from. I admit that I haven't done a lot of studying about what goes on at the hospital, but apparently there's some screaming, some crying, and lots of goo. The more I do read about it enlightens me as I become better acquainted with a key idea: Mommies have to do all of the hard work. If anyone has suggestions about how to be a good "hospital hubby", I'm all ears.

Here are some pictures we took last weekend:



We had fun at the Cleveland Zoo on Saturday:





Apparently we also live in a zoo, because the road that winds around behind our apartment is constantly producing deer for our viewing enjoyment. Sometimes we'll see six or seven at a time, with babies and everything. I stopped on the side of the road and watched this one for about five minutes. When I talked to it, its tail moved around, so either it liked me or it had a fly on its butt.



Whitney told me she'd seen a beaver a couple times, and yesterday we saw...something. We noticed it didn't have a beaver's tail, so we decided maybe it was a woodchuck, although we didn't really know what a woodchuck was supposed to look like. We looked it up later, and sure enough, a woodchuck it was. That made me think: How much wood could a woodchuck, ah crap, nevermind. A question for you though: Are woodchucks and groundhogs the same animals? I would have said no, but look it up:



Finally, a couple weeks ago, Mom and Dad came down to Cleveland to visit us in our new abode. We had a great time, especially at Malley's, an ice cream parlor and chocolate shop right around the corner from us.



Dad helped me put the stroller together. How do we look? All we need now is a little buddy to go with it. Talk to you all soon.
-Johnathan