Monthly Archives: April 2013

Easter… 2009

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If Julia had been a college freshman when the photos I’m posting tonight were taken, she’d be finishing up final exams and getting ready for graduation now. Assuming, that is, she wasn’t held back by her crippling fear of mascots, which shows no signs of abating. In fact, she cheerfully told me she spent most of this week’s school spirit assembly about the fundraiser at the San José Giants ballpark in the school office, out of fear of Gigante, the Giants’ mascot. To be completely fair to Julia, he does look pretty creepy.

Yes, the kids had an assembly this week to fire them up for a fundraising event. Apparently, the bar for assemblies is pretty low: last week, the third, fourth and fifth graders had one get them in the right frame of mind for the CSTs—yes, they have pep rallies for standardized tests nowadays. If only we’d been so lucky back when we had to take the Iowa Tests. Instead, our teachers had to make sure they left time for students to clean the hand-cranked mimeograph machines.

Of course, none of the foregoing has anything to do with the pictures, which cover the winter and spring of 2009, with an emphasis on Easter and a day trip we took to see the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands. This short jaunt was notable for the fact that Joe dropped his water bottle—featured prominently in a couple of the photos—off the bridge and into the ocean. This loss has stuck with him, to the extent that he still mentions it when we drive over the bridge to this day. For a time, he was convinced that we could drive back and find it, not knowing that he’d made an unwitting contribution to the eighth wonder of the world.

Unforeseen Circumstances

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I mentioned something about “unforeseen circumstances,” in that last post, no? Well, as it turns out, Julie is pregnant, with a due date of around September 19. At our age, and under our circumstances, it doesn’t get much more unforeseen than that.

We found out about a month after Christmas, and morning sickness commenced more or less immediately following the positive test result. As with Julia and Joseph, Julie has been effectively overwhelmed by nausea the whole time. We are hoping it might ease up as the pregnancy progresses, but given Julie’s past experience, we’re not that optimistic. She’s been on disability for the past month-and-a-half, so we’ll see how things go when that runs out.

Things have changed a great deal since Julie was pregnant with Joe. Since Julie is well past what used to be the magic age of 35, we assumed going in that she would have to undergo amniocentesis, which poses not insignificant risks for the fetus, not to mention the fact of the giant needle. As it turns out, however, that’s no longer the case: through a combination of blood tests and ultrasounds, Julie’s doctors can learn pretty much everything they previously would have learned from amniocentesis, without all the stabbing.

One optional component of the screening is a new procedure, cell-free fetal DNA testing, that looks at DNA of the baby found floating in the mother’s blood. A small amount of blood is drawn and sent to a lab, where millions of scraps of fetal DNA are analyzed via computer. Based on the proportions of different chromosomes found in this pile of data, doctors can effectively (but not completely) rule out serious chromosomal disorders like Down Syndrome or Trisomy 18, without the risks presented by more invasive procedures.

It’s all pretty magical stuff: the Wired article linked to above estimates that as many 1,000 miscarriages of healthy babies result from amniocentesis and other procedures; many of those could be eliminated by cell-free DNA testing. The one downside is that many insurance policies, including ours, don’t cover the test. We were fortunate to be able to afford to pay for the procedure out-of-pocket.

All the tests so far have come up normal, and the ultrasounds show that everything is coming along according to plan. We’ve posted a few pictures, and hope to have a clip of the baby’s heartbeat online soon.

For the record, thanks to the DNA tests and high-resolution ultrasounds, we know the baby’s sex, but my mother wants to be kept in the dark, so we’re avoiding mentioning it here for the time being.

Christmas 2012

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Unforeseen circumstances have prevented us from posting as often as we’d resolved to at the start of the year, but here’s a token effort: pictures from the 2012 Christmas season.

The festivities started off with the annual Girl Scout Father-Daughter dance. We had never attended in the past, but Julia’s troop was hosting this year and Julie was helping with setup (along with all the other moms), so it would have been a bit anti-social not to attend, even by my high standards. The dance was Western themed, so the months and months of junior high P.E. I spent doing square dancing finally paid off, just like Mr. Lansdown always said they would.

We spent the holidays themselves in Chicago with my family, where the kids were overwhelmed by Santa’s largesse. As excited as the kids were by Christmas morning, Julie and I were equally passionate about the prospect of getting everything home. In as sure a sign that miracles do happen as I’ve ever seen, everything made it back to California in one piece, including our collective sanity.

While we were in Illinois, we had a number of adventures. In addition to spending some quality time with the Shidle and Sass families—probably more than they bargained for—we visited my grandparents and spent Christmas evening with my Uncle Jack and Aunt Mary and my cousins Nick and Caitlin. Later in the week, we saw the Chicago (well, Rosemont) version of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, starring the Rockettes. I was a little worried that it might be a bit beyond the kids’ ken, but it ended up being right up their alley.

At the tail end our trip, we paid a final visit to the Rolling Meadows Gino’s East, which is evidently being torn down to make room for a much-needed Panera. Aside from the fact that we love the pizza—in particular, I’m a fan of the sausage patty that covers the entire pie—its closure is depressing because, as Julie reminded me, it was the site of our first actual date. Yes, I took my future wife out for pizza on our first date. We also saw Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Has there ever been a more auspicious beginning?

At least our first date wasn’t at One Schaumburg Place.

More on the unforeseen circumstances in a bit.