Just some random thoughts

As time passes in this pregnancy, I am getting more used to the idea of parenthood and having to care for a child. On the other hand, the very idea of a living thing - a person - growing inside Sarah becomes more and more strange and harder to comprehend for me. When we had the first ultrasound, Baby was just a "blob with a heart beat," as I called it - an embryo with no shape resembling a human. That's when this concept started to be strange, even creepy - something living inside of you, and I compared it to a tapeworm in one's stomach at the time. With the most recent ultrasound last week, we can now see definite human features (and one of Sarah's coworkers even commented that Baby has my nose when she saw one of the ultrasound pictures), and it's starting to do human things, like move a lot, Sarah reports often. So I feel like this child of ours is already starting to take shape, like we already know it, but because it's not born yet, we really don't - and can't - know it. When we saw with the last ultrasound the baby moving its arm like it was waving at us and even yawning, I really did feel like it was a real human being, and that excites me. But then I have to keep reminding myself that this newborn won't be like most other humans I know and that I won't be able to talk and have conversation with it when it's first born (because that's what my instinct tells me will happen) - that it will be totatally dependent on me and Sarah for everything and will basically be a helpless little thing. So there's quite a paradox here with this unborn child and experiencing the incomprehensible miracle of a new lift being created.

One of the questions I seem to be getting asked a lot lately is, "Does Sarah have any cravings for certain foods?" No, not really, but she is eating quite a bit still, and now, as the "manager" of the household, the one who does most of the food shopping and cooking, I'm more used to the way Sarah is eating us out of house and home.

Last night we had a fondue dinner at the home of one of my former coworkers from ACT. When I told her one of the possible middle names if Baby is a girl (Geneva, so she would know where she was born and have a real connection to this place), the response was, "Oh, no!" Elisabeth is a middle-aged woman originally from France but has lived in Switzerland for more than 30 years, so she's probably just as conservative and staid as the native Swiss. There are rules (whether formal, written ones - laws - or things that are just done a certain way) for everything in Switzerland, including what you can name your baby. And just because you're a foreigner living here, don't think you're exempt from this naming rule and try to name your baby something strange (like a traditional name from your own culture). If you want to do this, then you need to prove that the name is common in your culture (and your embassy apparently can assist you in presenting your case to the Swiss authorities). Don't worry - we won't name Baby something unusual or strange, but it might be something European-sounding because Baby will have roots here!