Welcome!

To baby Scott Alan Myers.

Born on 12/10/2012 at 3:39pm.  He was 6 lbs and 20 inches long at birth.  So far he's been a very sweet, easy baby.  He's a great nurser and has only cried when he's gotten his diaper changed.  I'm sore (he was born via C-section) and a little bit tired (I think I probably had about 3 cumulative hours of sleep last night) but I already can't imagine life without him.  More to come over the next few days.  

168 hours recap

The results are in (they were in two weeks ago, but I hope you'll let that slide).  Of my 168 hours, I spent:

• 42.5 hours working
• 40.5 hours asleep (gotta stock up for when the baby arrives - at least I'm going to keep telling myself that...)
• 19.5 hours doing miscellaneous things (going to the doctor, talking to my parents, writing thank you notes, reading etc.)
• 14.5 hours eating or doing food prep/clean up
• 9.75 hours exercising
• 9.75 hours watching TV (yikes)
• 9 hours commuting
• 9 hours getting ready (showering, putting on make up, drying my hair, packing up for the next day...)
• 6 hours doing internet-related things (reading blogs and working on this one)
• 5 hours doing housework (surprising exactly no one who has ever been to anyplace I've ever lived... I'm a pretty terrible housekeeper)
• 2.5 hours practicing the keyboard (1/2 hour 5 days a week)

In pie-chart form:

Take-home points:

• I was really surprised at how much cumulative time little "filler" activities like loading the dishwasher, packing my lunch, getting dressed to work out (especially when it's cold out) and going through the mail take.  If you add up all of those activities - miscellaneous, getting ready and commuting - that is what I actually spend most of my life doing.  Looking back through my time log, this wasn't wasted time; it was all stuff that needed to be done.  Maybe it could be streamlined to take less time, but I'm not sure.
• I'm very lucky in the work and (for now) the sleep department.  I'm fortunate that I have a job where I can usually leave everything behind in the evenings and on weekends, and I know once the baby is born I'm not going to see sleeping 8 hours a night again for the next 18+ years.
• I watch too much TV.  I could get worked up about it, but I guess that's a problem that will go away on its own once the baby was born.. Really, those hours just represent a couple episodes of Downton Abbey and Foyle's War, but I wish the TV and piano hours were flip flopped.  
• You can't tell from the data presented above, but I tend to be pretty productive until about 7pm after which everything falls apart.  Rather than spending the last two or so hours of my day doing something productive, that's when I find myself watching TV or reading, and it's definitely the time I'm going to have to reclaim to keep life in balance once we add the baby to the equation.     

It would be interesting to do this activity 6 months from now and see how things actually do change once the baby is born.  

38 weeks

Pumpkin!!!!

Even though I'm still getting bigger, I think the baby must have dropped at least a little bit because I'm so so so so so much more comfortable today than I was last week.  I feel like I've got a bit of lung capacity back, and my heartburn... well... it's still there, but I feel less like a fire breathing dragon.  My feelings move from being so so so so excited to finally meet the baby, to overwhelmed with the thought of becoming a parent, to disbelief that - even after all this time - I've actually got a baby growing inside me and I didn't just eat some suspect Taco Bell.

Here's a little pregnancy retrospective.

8 weeks:

To 38 weeks:

If there's radio silence on this end for a chunk of time (other than over the weekends - I don't typically post then), know that I'll post baby pictures as soon as there are baby pictures to be had.

I can't help myself

An update on yesterday's post - there are multiple royal baby twitter feeds you can follow.  Daniel's been keeping up with The Royal Foetus.  He thinks the British spelling lends an air of authority.

Anyway... the whole thing reminded me that I never finished posting the last of the pictures from our trip to London - specifically the ones from the queen's birthday parade.  You were invited to that, right?  No?  She must have made a typo in your e-mail address on the E-vite.

Although you do hear people complain about their tax dollars going to subsidize Kate Middleton's fabulous hair and Prince Harry's all-night foam parties, for the most part they seem to get into the whole Royal Family thing...

Lego Royal Family

 We went back and forth about going, but the birthday parade was actually pretty cool.  There was much marching around and playing of brass instruments and pomp and circumstance and that sort of thing.

Giant Irish wolfhound

Bagpipers

Our camera battery was dying, but I really wish we'd gotten more pictures of these guys.  It was a marching band playing while riding Clydesdales (? - I know nothing about horses).  It's hard to tell, but this is a picture of a guy playing two huge kettle/tenor drums mounted on horseback.  Behind (in front? I can't remember) was an entire mounted marching band.  Sousaphones.  Everything.  It was impressive.

And then the important part... our brush with royalty.  Kate and Pippa(?):

And the queen and Prince Philip:

Yeah, you have to take my word for it, but it was them, I swear.

For completeness, here's a few other pictures we took during our last days in London when we ventured up to Baker St.

Daniel at the Sherlock Holmes Museum:

Subway tiles at the Baker St. tube entrance that I evidently thought was worth wasting precious camera battery on.

News from the most important baby in the world

If you just can't wait 8 more months for the baby obsession to begin, Will and Kate's new baby-to-be already has its own Twitter feed.

My favorites so far are:

From what I can tell so far, the internet is just a place where people talk about me. I love it! But wait what's love? #royalbaby

The iPad mini was developed solely so I would be able to Tweet my gestation live from the womb. So, that's why that exists! #royalbaby

and

I may not have bones yet, but I'm already more important than everyone reading this. #royalbaby #sorry

I think my own baby's twitter feed would read something more like:

Stretched leg. Didn't get very far. #Chelsea's baby

Stretched leg. Didn't get very far.  #Chelsea's baby

Stretched leg. Didn't get very far.  #Chelsea's baby

Stretched leg.  Didn't get very far.  Will now try punching. #Chelsea's baby

Hiccup.  Hiccup.  Hiccup.  Hiccup.  #Chelsea's baby

Stretched leg.  Didn't get very far.  #Chelsea's baby

Christmas gifts for the mad scientist in your life

Two words: university surplus.

Know someone with a corpse they'd like to re-animate?  Give the gift of an AED training defibrillator.

Have a friend with a mind-controlling satellite they just haven't been able to get into orbit?  How about this theolodite survey scope?

For the relative who is always talking about building a new evil lair here's a nice transit scope to survey rocky islands in the South Pacific,

and a bus shelter so no one will ever suspect anything is there...

For the hobbyist who is always out in the garage tinkering with his giant robot, there's a Powermatic drill press

this thing that's just described as a "cutter"

and a "folder with right angle attachment".

If you ever wondered where the James Bond villains got all their cool stuff, now you know.

37 weeks

Full term!

Even though the baby hasn't made any indications that he's ready to come out any time soon, it's exciting to think that it really could be any time now.  I alternate between being nervous about parenthood and desperately wanting the baby to be OUT.  Today the latter is true.  My stomach and lungs feel like they are being crushed, and I feel like my abdomen is ready to explode like that scene in Alien.  And it itches.  I feel every bit as big as I look in that picture.

The fruit of the week is the winter melon.

[source]

  I don't think I've ever seen or eaten a winter melon before.  According to Wikipedia it's mainly grown in South and East Asia so either The Bump is trying to reach out to an international audience or it's running out of fruit.  I only have pumpkin, watermelon and jackfruit left to go.