Get Ready to Welcome...

...the next Sen... Boy! Yes, most people guessed it correctly. We are having a boy! We ended up going in a week early for the ultrasound (for reasons of convenience) and got to see the little fella. Not unlike his sister, he kept two arms in front of his face for most of the time, and so we couldn't really get any good 3-D pictures. Here's one that at least shows some facial features. Everything looked well - heart, brain, spinal cord. There's a VHS tape that we got of the whole procedure, and I will try to digitize it so everyone has a chance to see it.

The reason why we went in a week early was because I had taken a day off to go for my citizenship interview. Ok, so some people claim that I am more "American" than most Americans my age, but that still doesn't mean that I get to stand in the 'Citizens Only' line during customs inspection. My main reason for applying for citizenship is primarily ease of travel. With international travel at least once a year, it's a pain to get visas. Bypassing that in itself is worth the price of admission. My interview lasted all of 4.5 minutes. Since we found ourselves downtown with lots of time to spare, we called in to the doctor's office to see if they could take us in without an appointment. They said come on in.

In the waiting room there was another couple who had come for scan, and we struck up a conversation with them. Wow. What a story. This is their first child, and their fifth scan. She had gotten pregnant through IV fertilization. When you get pregnant like that, they monitor you very closely. Apparently, her hormone levels stopped rising in her third week. By the sixth week, they still hadn't risen to the expected levels. The doctor at the clinic started talking about getting a DNC (an abortion) because by now the child would have been severely under-developed. Plus, they couldn't find any sign of life. They said that the doctor pretty much insisted on a DNC because he said that in his entire career he didn't know of any case that had survived. This couple went through the entire grieving process of losing a child. Then a few days before the scheduled DNC they went in for a check, and the technician gave a little shriek. She had found a heartbeat! To make a long story short, this couple ditched that clinic and found their way to the doctor that we go to for our ultrasounds. He examined them in their eight week, and said that everything looked fine and normal, and he had no idea why a D&C was being recommended. Can you believe it? This is one amazing example of the craziness of an abortion-happy culture.

In other news, my Windows Vista DVD arrived. I pretty much hate it. It looks glitzy, for sure, but there are functionalities and features that were there in Windows XP that have been either stripped off, or are currently not available. It took four installs of the operating system to get a stable computer.

And finally, some pictures of the every lovable Priya...

Hanging out at the library

Rawr! I can bite your head off...

Escaping the storm

Being in Minnesota last week helped me escape the brunt of the big snow storm that we had. But not without me shoveling snow at 5 in the morning just so I could get the car out of the garage to make it to the airport. Who wants the fun life of traveling for business? I think I did do three round-trips on American to get a free ticket. I will know if it shows up in the mail.

Our ultrasound was put off by a week, so it will be two more weeks before we know what we're having. I guess the popular game now is to have people guess what the sex is. So any guesses? If you do two comments with one sex in each, you are guaranteed a win. As usual, we are much closer to a girl's name than we are to a boy's.

Cowgirl Priya. Giddy up.

A new nephew: Trace Bryan Lee Reay (born to Tish's brother Shane and Paula)

A sucker for suckers

Grease monkey with a cheese stick.

A Week of Solitary

This week I will be heading back to Minneapolis. Tish wanted to take advantage of my time away and visit her family in Michigan. But to make it worthwhile, she left on Monday. I won't be heading out till Wednesday. What that means is that I will have one whole week with my two girls. It feels really strange to walk around the house and have no one there. Everywhere I see Priya's stuff, and I half expect her to pop up around the next corner.

We're supposed to get a big snow storm tomorrow, and I'm not looking forward to the drive. It's times like these that I like being out of town. At least I can escape the commute.

Tish is coming along well. She is starting to show, which now makes it all the more real to me. In a couple of weeks we will have our second ultra-sound. We are going back to the same doctor did it for Priya. It's going to be a 3-D ultrasound, and we hope to find out what we're having then. As before, we are closer to a girl's name than a boy's. By the way, here is Priya's 21 week picture. See any similarities?

Priya has been down with a virus for the last week or so. She doesn't have any fever, but has been suffering from diarrhea. It's good to have a nurse in the house.

Bundled up in her $1 blanket

You can't find me - I am Invisible Woman

An interlude

Man.. Am I tired. Anyone who thinks that a life on the road is easy is quite mistaken. I flew out to LA Monday and went straight into a series of presentations. I didn't get back from dinner till 10 that night. This morning I was eating breakfast at 7. Then it was presentations till 1, lunch, and then a delayed flight to Seattle. It's close to midnight now, and I just got into the hotel for the night. More meetings tomorrow, and then a flight back to Chicago. 5,500 miles in less than three days.

On a different note, I wonder how many of you have noticed that now when you click to my blog, the address in the address bar no longer reads bipinsen.blogspot.com. In a fit of impulse buying, I purchased a domain name from Google for ten bucks, and now I am the proud owner of bipinsen.com! My blog is now hosted on http://www.bipinsen.com. A slight case of vanity.