Growing fingers!

If you check out the "widget" on the upper left side of our blog, you will see a calendar countdown for each week of the baby's growth. Each Wednesday, we wait to check to see what is happening in Maren's belly - not wanting to spoil the mystery by skipping ahead! This week, week 8, we found out that the baby is growing fingers and toes! Can you believe it?! Maren told Michael this was a pretty important event in one's life. For example, one might have a really important day interviewing for a new job, going to their brother's wedding, or maybe even giving a speech to foreign dignitaries! But nothing compares in importance and capability as being able to grow fingers!

Go little baby!

One Surprised Grandma!

Isn't it great Michael had the camera on him and ready? (We happened to be shooting our cousin's wedding reception.) These expressions cannot be replicated! This grandma had to wait a loooong time (only 8 years) for her firstborn son to give her a grandbaby, but as the t-shirt states, it was "worth the wait." Needless to day, grandma was just a wee bit excited.

To summarize:

Time it takes for Maren & Michael to take the plunge and decide to have a baby: 8 years.

Time it takes for baby to enter the outside world: 9 months.

Time it takes for grandma to spread baby news throughout entire room of 350 people: 39 seconds.

blueberry

How big is a blueberry? About as big as our 7-week child right now! She or he has a heart and even fingers and will grow to the whopping size of a puffed popcorn by next week.

The reality of having a baby is still abstract for me at this point, in case you didn't figure that out from the above comparisons to food. The baby (technically called an "embryo" by the guys in white, but who wants to call their kid that? blueberry is much better) is playing hide and seek inside a belly, and I can only use my imagination to get closer to it. I look at web images of these in-utero beings and with the inter-stellar lighting and dark backgrounds they look like they're floating somewhere in outer space. And right now it feels like s/he is in outerspace. I cannot see it, hear it, smell it, or hold it. Abstract. Yet it's only a few inches away from my fingers, locked inside its own private cabana, lounging in a pool.

Although, while driving with Maren to Santa Barbara recently, some bozo began tailgating us and a protective parental instinct suddenly kicked in; i quickly 'signaled' bozo to back off since i now had a wife with child in the car!

Nothing abstract about that.