So we're right at about three months pregnant now (yay), and I keep looking for some tangible sign that there really is a baby in there (except, of course, for that incessant nausea), but I'm starting to think I'm imagining things. For the past two days or so, I think I can feel a sort of "knot" really low in my abdomen. But I don't know if I really feel something that wasn't there before, or if I'm just imagining it because that's the first thing my mom said she felt and that it was around 3 months.

So I decided to get Josh in on the belly poking to see what he said. He did NOT like the idea of poking around where Baby Pavel might be hanging out. I got in trouble and told to "stop it". But even he couldn't resist trying to get the first (maybe) feel of our new little one. And the verdict: inconclusive. But it's gotta be soon, right? We'll keep you informed.

Posted by Leah at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pregnancy seems to bring out all sorts of strange stupid human tricks that I never knew I had. For instance, I now have this ridiculously powerful double sneeze that I'm pretty sure could solve our energy problems if it could be harnessed. It's two sneezes, one on top of the other, without any breath or even slight pause in between. And unlike a regular sneeze, this one cannot be stifled. I'm afraid of what would happen if I tried. I had never in my life sneezed like that before I became pregnant, but now it won't go away.

And then there are the smells. Josh always said I was a super-sniffer before, but now it's just overwhelming. I can't help but smell any and everything that's been cooked in the house in the last 24 hours, the one small lemon in the fridge that just got a brown spot, the dog in the next room that just stirred, and you can forget going in any store with any hint of fragrance. Bath and Body Works almost sends me into a coma.

And potentially the most useful of all these new super-traits is the uncanny ability to detect the precise last bite of food that, if eaten, will make me sick for the rest of the evening. Unfortunately, I have not yet refined this ability to the point of detecting that bite of food before putting it in my mouth. Hopefully I'll get there soon....

Posted by Leah at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I'm starting to get a little anxious about how little we have done to prepare for little Baby Pavel. I had the revelation today that we had longer to plan for our 20 minute wedding than we have to prepare for a new life that will be completely dependent upon us. But so much of what I want to do requires knowing whether we're having a boy or a girl.

So I figured that the least I could do today would be to pick up some paint chips from Lowe's and start narrowing down the colors that we like. Easier said than done.

I noticed the man at the paint counter kept watching me, and I feel fairly certain that if I had stayed much longer, he may have moved to escort me out. Not to mention that the poor guy probably had to restock the cards after I left.
Josh was a bit overwhelmed when I got home as well. He just laughed that type of laugh that seems to ask, "you're going to narrow those down for me, right?" Of course, dear, of course.

So now I'm off to deliberate over the minute differences between glacier ice and shoreline mist, whipped plum and romantic smoke.

Posted by Leah at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It may not generate the same public fanfare that Google's IPO did (wow, I'm such a geek), but the Pavel household is all a buzz. And I hope you can feel some of the excitment! We'll now begin freely telling whomever we like - friends at work, church, casual aquiantances, the poor unsuspecting waiters and waitresses... that's just the beginning!

We had another doctor appointment today, and had an absolutely amazing time. You may have noticed the additional ultrasounds on the right - we couldn't get enough. I wanted to tell 'em, "Don't worry, we'll lock up for the night when we're ready to go. Show me how to work this thing?"

I really wish that they had a movie capture instead of the still frames; it really doesn't do it justice. We saw a very, very active child - shadow boxing, swimming, turning (it gave a stare right at the camera, either posing or challenging us for invading his *** privacy), waving appendages wildly... so much so, that I looked at Leah in awe and said, "Really? You can't FEEL that?" It's actually good she can't, of course... that CAN'T feel good. The pictures were so large and clear that their true size - right around 4 1/4 cm - eluded me. Absolutely amazing. And yet I still find it surreal. You could clearly make out eyes, nose, mouth, arms, legs... everything! Besides the activity, I was amazed at how perfectly formed this person is, and the change from our last ultrasound. I just realized how trite that sounds - but I guess it's one of those things that you really can't FULLY understand until it happens to you!

You may have also noticed that our "How pregnant are we?" counter has jumped by about a week. We were both feeling the parental pride when the doctor ascribed an advanced development for our child... "Attaboy! Way to grow!" As it turns out, we had some confusion on dating and counting... so, apparently, we are one week FURTHER along than we had supposed. I'm still the proud papa.

*** Please note: Until we know, please see all male references as the un-American gender neutral I have trouble expressing. :-)

Posted by Josh at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

OK - it seems the iPod format might not be as universally functional as I hoped. For anybody craving technical know-how, it should've played fine in QuickTime version 7, and it had the added bonus of being formatted to play in anybody's 5G iPod. I've now changed the movies to standard quicktime .mov format, slightly reducing the frame rate, quality, and size... but largely increasing their web-ability (I think I made up a word).

So go ahead and check it out! Please let me know if you have any trouble, whatsoever, on any portion of this site!

Posted by Josh at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So we are two VERY excited parents-to-be that really just want to tell everyone about baby Pavel's existence. But we're resisting it...at least until our next OB appointment, which, by the way, is in only two days (yay). But last Sunday at church, we almost let the cat out of the bag in a major kind of way.

For those of you who haven't been to our church, it's a small one, and everybody knows and is friends with everyone else. So big announcements like engagements, promotions, babies, and any other neat thing we can share are typically announced to the entire congregation. At the beginning of the service, one of the elders, Rick, who was doing the announcements that day asked one of our friends (who happened to be sitting immediately behind us) to raise her left hand. She did, revealing a beautiful engagment ring she had just received over Christmas. It was such a neat thing and everyone was really exicted and happy for her. Then, Rick, in a mostly joking way asked, "are there any more big announcements?"

Let me just tell you that the next 30-45 seconds were absolutely agonizing! Josh and I shot each other a look as to say "should we?!?" We both knew that we wanted to tell sooooo badly, but had agreed to wait. So under our breath, back and forth very quickly, we kept asking each other, "well, should we?" "I don't know. What do you think?" "I want to, do you want to?" "Yeah, let's do it. But wait, should we?"

It went back and forth like this for what felt like an eternity. But finally at least Josh got some rational sense about him, and said that it wouldn't be right to do it right after Michelle had announced her engagement. And he was right. We would never want to do anything to take away from her big news, what-so-ever. So, we narrowly missed spontaneously blabbing to the entire church. And I'm so glad now that we didn't, because there are so many people that we want to tell in person ourselves, before the mass announcement. And though we may not get a chance to tell them all personally, the more the better:) And besides, it will be a lot more fun if we can get Rick to do us an announcement favor in about a week ;)

Posted by Leah at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't believe that I'm actually going to share this story...but here it is anyway.

I went to get my hair cut today. While sitting in the chair, the lady cutting my hair started making all the usual small talk (which I'm not a real fan of anyway). She got to the standard "you have any kids?" I replied, "not yet" being careful not to insinuate that there were any on the way. And what's the next thing out of her mouth? "Are you pregnant?" I couldn't believe it. And here I was hit with a dilemma: I didn't want to lie and say no, but I wasn't really sure I wanted to talk to a total stranger about it right now either. And besides, isn't the rule that you NEVER ask a woman if she's pregnant unless you have the undeniable assurance of a baby being born there and then?

Anyway, I decided to tell her that I was, and then came the knock-out blow. "Well, I looked at you and thought so, but sometimes you can't really tell. How many months are you?" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I sat there is stunned silence. Do I just answer her question with "9 weeks" , or do I reply with the blunt truth that I'm neither far enough along to measure in months or to be showing enough that she can tell I'm pregnant, and that suspicious bulge she apparently noticed as I entered the store was there before the baby was?!? I decided not to throw a flaming progesterone ball at her and simply answered her question. But I'm definitely motivated to spend some quality time with Mr. Treadmill this evening.

And P.S. For those of you sweet dears out there who I know are going to comment on this entry and say, "oh, it was just that pregnancy glow she was noticing".....baloney. But thanks anyway. Your brownie points have been added to your tally. :)

Posted by Leah at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

And for all those of you who are going to have to write down the website or bookmark it in your favorites because you will never, ever be able to remember qwertyp.net, (why couldn't we pick something nice and easy like "JoshandLeah.com", right?) here's the Reader's Digest version of it's origin:

Back in college, before Josh and I started dating, I started receiving emails from an anonymous secret admirer who signed each letter "QwertyP". In actuality, the person behind these emails was not a secret to me: I knew it was Josh. But I decided to have some fun, and mess with his head a bit, all the while not letting on that I knew who was behind the emails. So, as a tribute to our relationship's beginning, it has been adopted as our web address.

There were other domain names in the running, but we were never going to agree on any of them. So qwertyp was the one we were both the most okay with, and it stuck. Here are some of the other runners up:

• breakingthemonotony.com - This is from another I guess what you would call an inside joke, referring to how when, all other things being equal, we want to choose the option that's more unusual and adventurous.
• deepuntodeep.com - From the scripture, but it just didn't seem all encompassing enough for a web site we might have for who knows how long.
• joshandleah.com - But what's the fun in that?
• the3pavels.com - But what if we have another baby one day, and we are no longer three?

Posted by Leah at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We told all of our families over Christmas. It took a good bit of driving, but it was well worth it. Our first stop was in West Virginia with the Lites family.

(1.49 MB movie, Quicktime required - Right click and "Save link/target")

I love Teresa's face here. It was easy to see the exact frame when she understood what our gift was. We packaged up the baby's first ultrasound in a frame and gave it to them after all the other gifts had been opened. An instant classic was also Dad's reaction - "I'm going to be a grandaddy!" And though we didn't notice it until we reviewed the tape, Aunt Katie has one of the sweetest reactions: "Leah's having a baby?" Watch in slo-mo for more fun with the tissue paper throw.

(1.60 MB movie, Quicktime required - Right click and "Save link/target")

Next stop was Lawrenceville, GA to tell the Whitworths. What made this "tell" a lot of fun was the initial disbelief. Mom caught on quite quickly what was going on, but needed to clarify that this was actually REALLY her new grandbaby we were showing her! The moment when it finally sunk it was all the much sweeter.

(2.09 MB movie, Quicktime required - Right click and "Save link/target")

Then, onto McDonough. You may notice some duplicates in the video - we had no way of knowing it beforehand, but the Lites also made the trek from West Virginia to McDonough to be with Leah's grandparents for Christmas. Forgive the chop-shop job, but I had to include one of my favorite parts: the thumbs up and "Nice" from Nicholas.

(2.11 MB movie, Quicktime required - Right click and "Save link/target")

This one, perhaps, requires the most explanation. A few years back, my sister introduced our family to "Mad Gab", and this led to much hilarity and persistent joking, mainly around "hesa crazee mahn". If you've never played the game, you should give it a shot. Anyway, when my sister told us that she was pregnant with Luke, she used the same approach as we had so far (see here). So, we wanted to do something different. I forged a MadGab card, and you can see how it all played out (har har).

Since that was the most complex maneuver, it also had the most potential for failure. So, again, I apologize to everyone involved for our odd insistence that we play Mad Gab, and for all the worried and dirty looks we shot when you were examining our new camera, bought and configured for that very moment. :-)

Posted by Josh at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)