Halftime

Tomorrow marks 140 days to go in Ying's pregnancy. So far it's been smooth sailing through calm waters. Ying did have a few months of nausea but that's all gone now. We've sold our condo and will take possession of our new house in two weeks. We've got a number of brave volunteers set to help us move so things should go well. We'll then have four full months to settle in and get ready for the baby. TBI gave us the wonderful Xmas gift of a stroller/car seat combo, Ying's mom is rapidly buying up baby clothes and my mom's starting with a rocking chair. We're still not ready to be parents but I hear everyone is nervous before their first. But the coolest thing is that we're starting to feel the baby kick! I felt it myself for the first time just four days ago. The ultrasounds were good but to feel the baby thumping away inside Ying's belly is the ultimate.

I should also be a little lighter when the baby arrives. At work, Jon, Dale and Victor decided that they needed to lose a little weight. Greg and I found out and asked to join in. The person who loses the smallest percentage of their original body-weight by 18 May has to chip in $100 for a nice group lunch. The rest chip in $75, $50, $25 and nothing based on their order of finish. At the official weigh-in, Dale was the low man at 84 kg while Victor crushed the scale at just over 124 kg; even after we made him take a pile of change and his cell phone out his pockets. Of course, the weigh-in was after a big lunch, fully clothed and, for me, there was the need to take a bathroom break. I came in second-lightest at just under 90 kg; which I find very embarrassing. I know I've bulked up a little in the past while but that's ridiculous! I hope my soon-to-be new commute which involves nearly two hours of biking a day will help. My goal is to get back to my high school weight of 75 kg. I've got some work ahead of me.

It's probably a...

Just got back from having Ying's 18 week ultrasound done. We're pleased to report that everything's fine. We again saw two arms, two legs and five fingers on each hand. The new 3D technique is not recommended by us at this stage because our baby looks like something off the X-Files. Luckily, there's still lots of development to go 'cause I don't think even the mother would love this face as it appeared on the 3D ultrasound. Our baby currently weighs in at 232 g or half a pound. We didn't see the length but the heart rate was 141 bpm and we could see it pumping away. And now for the news most people are interested in. According to what we didn't see on the ultrasound, we think we're having a girl. We'll have to wait another 155 days (±2 weeks or so) to know for sure.

We're open to name suggestions at this point as well. We'll go into the hospital with a baby name book just incase it's a boy. We've only thought of one girl's name so far: Julie. It comes from next year being the Year of the Pig in China. In Chinese, pig is 猪, spelled "zhu" in pinyin and pronounced like "ju" in English. We're probably going to pick another character with the same pronunciation, 珠, which means "pearl" or "treasure." Then we'll use the character 丽, which means "beautiful" and is pronounced like "li." Of course, it's still early so we might change our mind on the name or what characters to use for her Chinese name.

174 days to go

We started late but here's Ying's belly after 15 weeks. She did start out much thinner but her pants are starting to get a little tight now.

We're getting everything in order for our new family. Our condo has sold and we've almost finalized buying a new home. We're pressuring her parents to get their passports and we'll try and have them come to Canada for a little while when the baby is born. It's our first baby so we're welcoming any parenting help.

Ying's at Mark's Work Wearhouse right now and getting tons of hours since they're understaffed going into the holidays. My work is going great and I'm looking forward to two weeks of celebrating Xmas. So far, there are three company parties lined up which is three more than I attended last year. Oh! There's also a little fiesta for our last Spanish class of the year.

We're unable to head to Edmonton for Xmas because Ying will be working so much over the holidays but we'll relax around here. Mom should be happy next Xmas. Her household population might skyrocket from one to seven which would include her two seven month-old grandchildren. Hmm, I wonder if she'll do double-duty on the free baby-sitting so the rest of us could have a night out...

Mental Aerobics

Two weeks ago, Ying and I learned that my sister will be having her first baby and is due two days after us. Since then, we've also learned that my cousin, Julie, will be having her first baby early in May.

I must have had a little too much time to think while walking to work 'cause I've realized the following: if my sister delivers her baby in England on 1 June at around 2:00 in the morning and Ying delivers on 31 May at 22:00 here in Cowtown, Les' baby will be three hours older yet a whole day younger than ours. I'll leave that as an exercise for the class to figure out. It's the same logic as saying I would be a day older if I was born in B.C. since I was born two minutes after midnight in Alberta.

Huh? Wha?

We started with Spanish courses at work today. We have a lot of clients down in Colombia who come up to visit us sometimes and Rob and Jon were recently down there at a conference. This marks the sixth language in which I've had formal instruction. Obviously, I have some command of the English language. En école j'ai étude la français. Ich studierte Deutsch an der Uni. Ik leerde een weinig Nederlands. 我的普通话不好。 Hoy yo habla español. I'm not even being geeky and counting "languages" like C, Objective-C, HTML and Python that I know varying degrees of. I do have a need for all these languages. My wife is Chinese. My job deals with lots of Spanish-speaking clients. My dad's side of the family is Dutch but, each morning when I visit them, they usually ask me, "which language would you like to speak today?" I try to keep in contact with a friend in Germany but I don't do a really good job because shorter e-mails are taking longer to write these days. An old, artistic friend and his family are French and I also have a Chinese friend who's learning French because he works for a French company which sends him to Paris on occasion. Oh well, I think it's good to be worldly.

Something to report

You start a blog thinking it'd be good for practising your writing and sharing your thoughts with the world. It doesn't take long to realize that you're either too busy or lazy to write more often and that your life really isn't worth writing about. For those devote few of you who are still reading, there is something worth reporting: Ying's almost seven weeks pregnant! I do realize that anyone who's reading this probably knows this news. If not, sorry that I've left you out of the loop. I'll see what I can do about updating Ying's condition here. So far, there's only a bit of nausea that goes away with a good walk.

Sports photography

Week and a bit into the new job and I'm enjoying myself immensely. Everyone around the office seems to be very happy working together and hanging out together. I feel I'm picking up the foundations of what I'll be doing quite well and it'll be great to build on that and be able to contribute technically to what's going on. I might even get more time for programming.

Away from work there's little going on. Ergo, I've remained fairly lazy and unfocused. I had hoped to do some cyclocross racing but I don't think that's a good idea. I get 20 minutes of riding in a day when the weather is nice and an hour of walking when the weather is poor. The only time I raise my heart rate during my ride is on the way home when I have two climbs; one up three levels of a parkade and the other up the hill behind Sunnyside. 45 minutes with a heart rate exceeding 170 bpm is probably not good for me and hasn't been done by me since last cyclocross season. I could probably get myself talked into the two races in Edmonton over Thanksgiving by Marg except for the cost of a licence for such a short time. I'll probably just exercise my new camera and take some pictures at the races around Calgary and the Thanksgiving races in Edmonton. Ying and her friends are interested in indoor rock climbing so I think I'll be doing that soon. It's supposed to snow on Thursday but skiing will have to wait a few more months.