Ready To Go!

As most of you know Michelle has been working full time while also going to school full time (Clemson Master’s program) and I started a second job in September (coordinator of the YMCA after-school program). As such we have been swamped with work. By the time I get home from my 11-hour day and Michelle gets home from her often 12-hour day we have no energy left for anything else. Our evenings usually consist of us on the couch for a couple of hours until it’s time to go to bed. Sadly as a result our house has taken a beating. We have had several big house-hold items to take care of in preparation for the baby as well as maintenance and house-hold projects. Well my wonderful mother-in-law and step-father-in-law drove to South Carolina last weekend and were the answer to our prayers. They deep-cleaned the whole house, installed the lights for the baby nursery, a dimmer on another light, two new smoke alarms, exterior lighting for our house, assembled all of the baby’s furniture for the nursery, installed a new toilet seat, unclogged our bathroom sinks, fixed our broken power outlet and installed a new shower head. It seriously felt like Extreme Home Makeover by the time they left. Our house is now up to par and the nursery is about 95% ready-to-go thanks to them. Tomorrow night we are having one of our friends who is a painter come over and paint a mural on one wall in the nursery and then it will be completely done!

The nursery has a slight Asian theme to it (in honor of my Japanese roots) and it looks great so far. We painted the room a sage green color and it has pink accents. The mural on the wall will be of a Japanese Cherry Blossom tree, and we switched out the main overhead light for three white Chinese hanging lanterns. We also did some decor with paper cranes and some other little touches. I will definitely post pictures of the room soon.

Our little daughter is officially full-term as of this week! She could potentially come any time (although she’s not due until Dec. 15th). We had dinner with our dula last week and I am very excited about having her along for the labor. We also took a tour of the hospital we’ll be giving birth at and the facilities are excellent. It is all starting to feel so real now!

Next post will be photos and maybe even video of the nursery!

Grace and Peace,
Kevin

Honey-Do Ya Love Me?

Week 33! Here are some quick facts. Our little daughter and her brain is developing like crazy. Pretty soon, she’ll be able to coordinate breathing with sucking and swallowing. Also, her bones are hardening, and she’s started to keep her eyes open when she’s awake. She also is the size of a honeydew melon. We are starting to be able to feel different body parts now too. We can sometimes distinguish between an arm or a head or a leg. It is getting really exciting!

The shower they threw Michelle/the baby/us last week was incredible. Our Michigan friends and family were extremely generous and blessed us so very much! They wiped out almost all of our registry! Thank you so much Michigan friends!

Grace and Peace,
Kevin

Kung Fu, Orangello and Why I Need to Shake Off Halloween

It has been a long time without a post! Sorry about that! I (Kevin) have taken a second job as the Coordinator for the local YMCA after-school program, and as such I am out of the house working 11 hours a day, 5 days a week and am still running my videography business on top of everything. So needless to say I have not had much free time. I apologize for the lack of Tiny Stiny information as of late.

First of all, everything is still going perfectly. The baby is perfectly healthy and she weighs about 4.5 pounds and is about sixteen inches tall. Michelle is convinced that she has taken up Kung Fu as her favorite hobby is kicking Michelle so hard she wakes up in pain at all hours of the night.

Since we have not officially decided on a name yet (and when we do we are keeping it a secret) much speculation has been happening amongst family members. Nobody likes to just call her “the baby” so Janelle (Michelle’s sister) calls her Orangello and Eddie (Michelle’s dad) calls her Norinda (or sometimes Nairobi). Everyone else calls her those or a variation of those three names. Michelle wouldn’t go for my proposed name of Katrina so we are at an impasse. I think I am just too in the Halloween spirit right now. I have been watching, listening to and reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Katrina Van Tassel is Ichabod’s love interest. In the last couple of weeks I have watched the Disney movie version, listened to two audio dramas of the story and read the graphic novel. So Michelle is probably right and I would probably change my mind on the name once the Halloween season is over. We have a couple of good ideas for names though and we are floating those around in our heads right now.

Today Michelle is up in Michigan attending her first shower. My family up there is throwing it for her. She still has three more showers in the next couple of months besides this one! We are very blessed with such great family and friends. They are awesome!

Well today I am painting Orangello/Norinda/Nairobi/Katrina’s room so I am off for now!

Grace and Peace,
Kevin

Facts and Couvade

There is not a lot of news here at baby Stinehart headquarters but it’s been a while since our last update so I thought I should post something. So here is a post in two parts.

Part 1:
Here are a few quick facts about our girl:
Michelle feels her kicking on a daily basis but I have not been able to feel her yet.
She weighs over 1 pound.
She is over 1 foot long.
Her Lanugo (the fine hair that covers her body) is darkening which will allow it to be seen on an ultrasound.
She has eyelashes and fingernails now.
Her rapid eye movements (REM) are beginning.
She is far enough along in her development that she could have a chance at survival outside the womb.

Part 2:
Many of you have probably heard of men gaining weight during pregnancy, having sympathy pains and sympathy cravings but did you know it is considered an actual syndrome in the U.S? Here is some information about it:

Couvade syndrome is a medical/mental condition which “involves a father experiencing some of the behavior of his wife at near the time of childbirth. The term originally referred to the medieval Basque custom in which the father, during or immediately after the birth of a child, took to bed, complained of having labor pains, and was accorded the treatment usually shown women during pregnancy or after childbirth. In some extreme cases, fathers can grow a belly similar to a 7-month pregnant woman and gain approximately 25 to 30 pounds (”phantom pregnancy”). Other symptoms include and are not limited to developed cravings, suffered nausea, breast augmentation, and insomnia.

Well I am on Weight Watchers and have actually lost a good deal of weight fortunately. I also am sleeping well, feeling great and no breast augmentation here, so I guess so far I have staved off the Couvade successfully!

Grace and Peace,
Kevin

It’s a Girl!

There’s the news! Sorry it’s so late. We’ve been busy the last few days and then went to the Bob Dylan/Willie Nelson concert yesterday. So we are having a girl! And her first concert was Bob Dylan. Pretty cool. And next week she is going to be in the front section at the Coldplay concert. She doesn’t even realize how great her life is right now! Anyway, the idea that we were having a girl was told to us by every single superstition/Chinese calender/old wive’s tale. Everything said we were having a girl except my step-grandfather-in-law. The ultrasound confirmed it pretty definitively Monday. We are having a little Michelle Jr. I am so excited. Below is the ultrasound. Here are the highlights: at 1:04 you can see her big old alien head, from 1:09-1:30 she waves at us (very cute), at 2:20 you can hear her heartbeat and at 3:44 you can see that in fact she is a girl. The second half of the video is just still shots. Ok, so we are having a girl. Now to come up with a name…

Grace and Peace,
Kevin

LETS TALK ABOUT (the) SEX (of the) BABY

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Sunday is the very last day we will have to go without knowing the sex of Tiny Stiney. Monday is the second (and most exciting) ultrasound! We are nervous and full of anticipation about the news. My step-grandfather-in-law is a retired Wesleyan pastor and supposedly has a perfect track record on predicting the sex of babies and he told us it is going to be a boy. I would love to have a boy to teach baseball to, to take hiking and camping, to take to sporting events…but…I would also love a cute little girl that looks just like her mom and wears cute dresses and has cute braids and loves to have tea parties. Either way we are in for such a fun ride. I feel like Michelle and I have such a great marriage, filled with joy and fun and love and I am so excited to bring another person in on the party. I can’t wait. We’ll see you on Monday with some fairly big news

Grace and Peace,
Kevin

News

Michelle went in for her checkup last week and everything is going perfectly. The heart rate is strong and everything is developing great on Tiny Stiney. We praise God for something as basic as that because so many things can go wrong in pregnancy and we will not take any good report for granted. We did find out that the heart is beating at 155 beats per minute. The significance of that is that supposedly, if the fetal heart rate is above 140 you are expecting a girl and if the heart rate is below 140, it is supposed to be a boy. There is said to be no statistical proof to support this theory but most people believe it. So, who knows? If we’re honest Michelle is kind of wanting a boy (simply because girls turn into teenage girls) but I am sort of wanting a girl. In the words of my step-aunt-in-law, “You both want the one that will be wrapped around your finger.” I suppose that is true but we will honestly be so incredibly happy either way that it seems silly to even talk about it.

As some of you know I am making a documentary about Tiny Stiney’s story of coming into the world. I filmed each of our family member’s reactions to the news and am doing interviews with Michelle and myself throughout the whole process, documenting how we are feeling, what’s been happening etc. I will continue right up until the birth. Although Michelle has made it clear that there will be no cameras in the delivery room during the actual birthing process. I can’t blame her I will then edit it all together and make a documentary for our child to be given to him/her on their 18th birthday. It’s the strangest thing doing the interviews; knowing that I am literally talking to my grown-up child and in a very real way sending video messages to the future. It’s one of those things that makes you realize just how beautiful life is and that every single moment is precious and there is nothing we can do to stop tomorrow, next week, or next year from coming. It reminds me that I need to try to live the width, length and depth of every day because each day will never come again. It’s a good reminder to have now before the baby comes because they say that time flies with your child and that one day you’re changing their diaper and the next day you’re walking them down the aisle (see my inherent assumption that it will be a girl). Life is crazy. I love it.

Grace and Peace,
Kevin

“Grandpa” Stinehart’s Reaction

My dad was not ready to be a grandpa. He thinks he is too young and the idea of being a grandpa really dates him. So his reaction of course was priceless:

Grace and Peace,
Kevin

Family’s Reactions

I will continue to post our various family members’ reactions to the news over the next couple of weeks. Since we were not trying to get pregnant at all our family was pretty shocked. It was a hard secret to keep but it sure was fun telling everybody! Today I’m posting my sister Alyssa’s reaction to the news that she is going to be an aunt. Unfortunately she’s still up in Michigan so we had to video chat rather than tell her in person, but it was still a lot better than telling her on the phone. Sorry the video doesn’t look great but that’s what you get when you’re trying to video tape a computer screen

Grace and Peace,
Kevin

First Ultrasound

Michelle informed me (Kevin) that I need to differentiate between the two of us when I write these posts. The first one I signed “Kevin and Michelle” and she didn’t like that. She said when I update I will just write about how great and exciting everything is, while when she updates she will just write about how sick she is, how exhausted “peanut” is making her and how she is ready for December 15th to be here. I went on a rant about biblical marriage and how we are “one flesh” and as such we should act as one on this blog as in life. I didn’t win her over. I even played the “B Card”! If you can’t win by using the Bible you can’t win. She disagreed with me about signing these posts but I think it has less to do with content and more to do with quality. She is a far better writer and to spare my feelings she tried to play it off as a content thing. She’s too kind but I’ve known her too long. So from now on I will sign just my name. If I forget though just check if it is well-written, uses commas and all punctuation correctly and has grace and beauty. If it does, it was not written by me

On Friday we went in for our first ultrasound. It was an amazing experience. After about ten minutes of waiting in the lobby drinking cappuccino (just me, no caffeine for her of course) they called us in. We were as giddy as we were on our wedding day. They laid Michelle down and within a minute we were viewing our baby on the giant plasma screen. It was remarkable. We were both in awe. Up until then we knew we were pregnant but it became real for us on Friday. We were able to hear the heartbeat and they measured the baby and determined that we are further along than we had previously thought. We had estimated with a gestation wheel that we were almost 12 weeks along but we were actually a good 13 weeks along. We had originally had a date of December 22nd as the due date but now it has been upped to December 15th. I thought I would post the ultrasound video here as well for those interested. Sorry about the bad audio. It’s just the sound of the machine until about the 52 second mark. At about that time you can hear the heartbeat for a little bit! Also from the 27 mark to the 32 second mark you can SEE his/her little heart beating! It is truly unreal. We’ve seen ultrasounds before but there is nothing quite like seeing your own. What an experience!

Grace and Peace,
Kevin