Babies, Babies, Babies, and Bees

This was a baby filled weekend.

On Saturday I went to visit Anne and Charles in the hospital. Charles is one cute baby. Notice I didn't say cute and "little". That's because Anne gave birth to a giant baby. I won't post the weight because Anne might want to tell you all about it herself, and I don't want to get in trouble with a new mama. However, if you do want to see the weight, go to Christine's blog. Oh, and if you want to see pictures of this darling baby, go to Laura's blog. Anne and Charles are both doing fine.

Later that night David and I went to see Knocked Up. As you might have guessed from the title, this movie is about a woman who has an unexpected pregnancy. The movie uses crude humor, drug humor, nudity, and a constant stream of the f-bomb, and yet I loved it. The reason is that despite all the vulgarity, the movie has an overwhelming pro-life message. At every turn it reinforces that even in the most undesirable circumstances, an unborn child still deserves to live. That, and I did think the movie was pretty funny. I don't think all that pro-life stuff was just wishful thinking or reading too much in to it on my part. If any of you see it, you'll have to tell me what you thought. Don't say I didn't warn you about all the cusses though.

Then, on Sunday I finally got to meet my nephew. David and I went down to St. Vincent's with my parents and we met my brother and sister-in-law there. Leah and I went in first because only two people are allowed to see him at a time and one of those people has to be the parent. Well, I was just overwhelmed with emotion when I saw Anthony Jr. He is even smaller than I imagined and he is so precious. You can tell that he doesn't like visitors a lot because when you look in his incubator he covers his face with his little hands and starts to squirm. If you visit him for too long his heart rate will drop and that's pretty much how he lets you know that he's had enough of you. The only bad part about it is that when it happens the doctors have to come over and breath for him until his heart rate comes back up. I would love to see Anthony Jr. again and I think about him all the time, but I would hate to cause his heart rate to drop like that again. It's just that my mother wanted us to meet the baby once in case the unthinkable happens. We had to wait about an hour for the baby's heart rate to stabilize before David could go in with my brother. It's funny, but when David came back he said that the baby was bigger than he imagined, which was the exact opposite of my reaction. I describe the baby this way: Imagine a 20 fl oz water bottle with thick pens for arms and legs. That's how small he is. When we were leaving the NICU David noticed a "lactation booth", which is a room that women, well you know what it's for. Anyway, when the room is open, it has a little sign in English and in Spanish saying so. When we passed this room it in fact was open so the sign said, "Lactation Booth: Open Abra". Well, David noticed this, pointed it out and said, "lactation booth: open a bra, hahahahahahaha". My mom thought it was hilarious and even my dad cracked a smile.

After all the babies this weekend, it's not surprising that David has come down with a pretty bad case of Baby Fever. Because of my own experience, graduate school, and Leah and Anthony's experience with Anthony Jr., until recently my baby temperature has been at about 32 degrees. But since I've graduated from school, my temperature has risen to about 98.6, so I'm at normal right now. Normal. We'll see what happens, but I'll predict trying for a baby before year's end. So I know that will make some people happy.

Oh, and now for the bees. Well, most of you know how we had a bat fly in though an open window in our bedroom a couple of weeks back. If you don't, scroll down through a couple of posts and you can get the whole story. We made sure to close that window so that a bat wouldn't fly through again. But there is still a problem with the window where the screen doesn't meet the glass correctly. Normally that wouldn't be a problem because even if something flew in though the gap, it wouldn't make it through the glass when the window is closed. Or so we thought. The window was closed, but we have those old fashioned locks where when you turn the window lock it leaves a little hole. So here's what happened. A swarm of bees, a swarm, not two or three but fifty bees, flew through the gap between the outside screen and the glass, and then flew up to the little hole by the window lock, evidently waited in line and came in three at a time (because the hole is not that big) and then started swarming around the room. Luckily I was at work because if I had been home I would have done something stupid like call 911 or scream incoherently or both. But David was home. Not only was he home, he was in the bedroom reading a book! He heard a buzzing sound by the window and looked to see these bees flying in. He dropped his book, ran to the kitchen to get some ant spray because it was either that or Windex, and started spraying it at the bees. In his running shorts. That is all the clothing he had on. Running shorts. Just imagine that for a second. My husband in his running shorts spraying ant spray wildly at an obviously homicidal swarm of bees. But it worked! He killed all the bees and wasn't stung even once. I was telling my friends Kristin and Jocelyn about this, and Jocelyn said that if anything else weird happens in our apartment, don't even bother calling the landlord, just call an exorcist. I'm beginning to think she's got the right idea.