Image via WikipediaYippee! Last night my email spit forth an e-ticket confirmation to let me know Fuller and I are booked on a flight from Chattanooga all the way to Wichita Falls, Texas in November.

I’m excited because we get to visit my parents and see their new digs and town. From what I understand the town has a water tower, and that’s about it, so I’m sure to have a picture of it to share.

But on top of that, Fuller will get to see his grandparents in their new home and understand why going to Ohio isn’t an option right now. When I got back from Orlando, I gave Fuller a toy airport set and he said he wanted to fly to Ohio to see Veija. I thought it was cute, but had to explain Veija lives in Texas now, with Grandpa Fred. The concept of moving, especially across state lines, is totally foreign to Fuller, and hopefully this will help cement my mom’s location in Fuller’s brain.

Also, he will get to fly on two planes to get there, so righ there his trip is already an A plus.

Technorati Tags: family travel, Texas

Tomorrow is an exciting day for the family, since we will all troop into the doctor’s office together and see the ultrasound. We told Fuller we are going to see the baby on TV and his prompt reply was, “Is tomorrow February?” So glad he remembers what month the baby is expected.

He was a little upset we won’t have the baby to take home, but I explained the baby has to grow more before it can come home.

Fuller’s prediction (as of 9 a.m. today) is he will get a sister. Two days ago he was shouting “I don’t know!” when I asked him if he was going to have a brother or a sister*. I’m currently thinking it is a boy, based on recent dreams I have had. And Damon has predicted, reluctantly, we are having a girl.

Since the ebay auction will determine who gets to know for a month, I’m thinking we will have to wait until October to see who is right.

*While we plan on letting Fuller see the ultrasound, we don’t plan on letting him know if it is a boy or girl because we know he would probably tell. So, don’t go thinking you can bribe him later.

We are pleased to see our ebay auction is going strong, and are wondering if the winner will actually share the blessed information or will keep it for a month. Of course, the winner could still be you, if you wanted to get in on the action. The price is holding steady at $85.33, which could buy us some pretty nice cloth diapers or go toward the car seat baby number two needs.

I know most pregnant bloggers have a guessing contest for her readers to choose boy or girl, but I guess I’m not most pregnant bloggers.

Technorati Tags: ebay, pregnancy

A few months ago, Fuller was “helping” me do some grocery shopping. While we were in the baking aisle, he spied the marshmallows and told me we needed some.

My response to Fuller was it wasn’t cool enough to build a fire outside with Daddy. Simply put, it wasn’t Marshmallow Season. While the humor was lost on my son, the guy in the aisle doing inventory thought it was a side-splitting response.

Last night we opened the 2008 Marshmallow Season in our backyard. It has been consistently cool during the evenings to think about building a fire and finally last night we took the time to do it.

I had planned for last night last weekend when I took a bag of unopened marshmallows from the unused Izeahunt buckets. Then when I did the grocery shopping on Tuesday I found the other ingredients- chocolate and graham crackers.

Damon is a very serious marshmallow roaster. He figures out the best location to twirl his stick and get the marshmallow perfectly golden. He tried to help Fuller do the same, but he was too interested in the “shock-o-laht” and if he was going to eat some.

I wasn’t prepared for the lack of understanding on Fuller’s part when it came to s’mores. Apparently last year we just gave him all the pieces separately. I insisted he eat them together, in the sandwich variety. Fortunately, he figured out how to do it and enjoyed it.

Not sure if we will do it again tonight (Damon has to go into the office to watch LSU vs. Auburn), but I’m sure we will be enjoying Marshmallow Season quite often these evenings.

Technorati Tags: s’mores, firepit, marshmallows, Fall

Now that I have most of my materials, I set about actually making the costume. The first part is the belt. You’ll notice in the pictures, Cap’s WW2 outfit has a lot of ammo pouches and little compartments. I decided to limit the number of pouches to 5 for practicality’s sake. Also, I opted to leave out the suspender strap and pouches ’cause I think they would make it harder for Fuller to get the shield on and off his back.

In the flickr album, you can see how I cut out the pouch pieces, sewed them together, and added closures and belt loops. Then, I sewed a belt out of the duffel bag’s strap and added the cool narrow leather belt buckle assembly from the backpack. I even took the time to sew in the existing holes in the belt leather. It was painstaking, manually advancing the sewing machine needle, but I’m not going for second best dad ever. All-in-all the belt look pretty good and is adjustable, ta boot. This means Fuller (or heck, even I) could use it for some other costume as he gets older.

Finishing the belt, I turned my attention to the mask. The mask in the comics is made of leather. I have some vinyl, but I couldn’t bring myself to make Fuller wear a hot, sweaty vinyl mask. So, I opted to make the mask out white denim and dye it red. The choice of a red mask (over, say, a brown one) is purely a cost issue (I have red dye… I don’t have brown dye). And, there are versions of this costume where Caps sports a red mask too.

I needed a pattern. But, where does one get a superhero mask pattern? The answer is, “you make one.” So, I wrapped Fuller’s head in plastic wrap and stuck pieces of tape to the plastic until I had a pleasing mask shape. Then, I took the tape mask off, cut it into halves, selected the better half, and cut it into pieces that could be laid flat. Using those, I cut out the fabric I needed and proceeded to sew a pretty nice mask. Most of the mask is unlined, but I did add few touches like a lined and interfaced nose guard, and piping around the eye holes.

Originally, one eye hole was too big, so I had to re-sew it. Then, I noticed Fuller had trouble seeing straight ahead in it since the gap between the eyes was too wide. So, I had to cut into the well-sewn piping, enlarge the holes, and attach some new piping. Pressing the seams inside the eye holes was a challenge that I never completely mastered, so I ended up just hot-gluing them down.

Overall, I’m very pleased. I’d say it’s easily among the top 5 custom-made Captain America masks for a 3-year-old in the world. The next step will be the red dye, then attaching a chin strap to keep the mask from wiggling around on his head.

When I was pregnant with Fuller, I was unprepared for the questions many people would have about our choices as parents. The one that bugged me the most was “are you going to find out if it is a boy or girl?” It bugged me because at the time our answer was “I’m not sure.”

When the pregnancy began, Damon didn’t want to know and I did. I decided to let Damon decide. If he didn’t want to know, then we wouldn’t find out. And this really bothered many people, specifically some family members. Some family members even told us if we didn’t find out, then we should have the doctor write it down and seal it in an envelope to send to the family member. Then he/she would know, and we wouldn’t.

This angered me (or it could have been hormones), because really, it is only our business if we decide to find out the sex of our baby. Other people should just live with our decision. To me, it was up there with circumcision, breastfeeding, and diapering. We are the parents, we get to make the decisions.

On the day of the actual ultrasound, Damon decided he did want to find out. And Fuller, he decided to be uncooperative. We had several ultrasounds during the pregnancy and we were unsuccessful in determining the gender.

This led to frustration from others. We got accused of knowing and not telling several times. (Just because I wear a pink dress or blouse to my baby shower does not mean I know I’m having a girl!) Someone accused my doctor of not being very good.

When Fuller was born, it was such a surprise to me how nice of a surprise it was find out he was a boy seconds after he arrived. We all had to wait the almost 40 weeks and nothing awful happened. No one died because they didn’t know if our kid was a boy or girl before he arrived. It wasn’t horrible to have to return any gender specific stuff we had (which really wasn’t a lot).

Well, we are thrilled to be expecting our second child in February. I have been grinning and bearing it when people ask if we are going to find out the baby’s sex. And just like last time, I tell them “I don’t know.” Because this time, I don’t care and Damon does. It was a nice surprise last time and I thought maybe we could be surprised again. But, Damon really wants to know, even after I expressed my discomfort with with what I’m sure we’ll have to deal with (from family) on the day of the ultrasound.

And that is when my husband’s brilliance kicked in.

Next Tuesday, September 23rd, we will have the ultrasound and hopefully find out the sex of our baby. But, we are not going to tell anyone except the winner of this ebay auction.

If you win the auction, then you will be the first and only other person to know if we are having a boy or a girl. You can decide what you want to do with this information… because we will not tell another soul for a whole month. If you win the auction and decide to tell others, then it is your right. If you win the auction and decide to savor it for thirty days, then it is your right. We will keep our lips (and blogs) zipped!

Please note: this isn’t about the money. (it isn’t? – dword) Any money from this auction will be used to buy baby stuff and/ or start his/ her college fund. This auction is about our power (bwah-ha-ha!) and hoping people will understand we are the parents and this is our decision. Maybe I have some residual anger from my pregnancy with Fuller. But mainly we thought it would be fun. For us at least.

If no one bids, then we will still hold on to the information for one month. In the event that next Tuesday’s ultrasound is like the ones we had with Fuller, then the winner of the auction will be the first one we call after the baby is born. If we do find out the gender at a later date, the winner will be the first to know.

Groups of people are welcome to get together to bid… but we will only tell the winning ebay account the baby’s sex.

Serious bids only, please!

Technorati Tags: ebay, baby’s sex, pregnancy, family issues