Pressure

Now that we have a child on the way, the pressure is on for me to finish school. To me, this is an obvious (and a little unnerving) thing, but the reminders seem to arrive in a continuous fashion. Seminary professors that we attend church with chide "well, you really have to finish now!" Friends ask me how things are going, how much longer I have, and so on. Colleagues ask about the progress of my research. The answers to such suggestions and inquiries are, respectively, "yes, I know!", "two years" (the answer is always two years), and "it's going, how about yours?" Trust me, there's no shortage of reasons to be motivated to finish ... turning said reasons into real motivation, however, is one of the struggles in graduate school. Having a child on the way, however, is probably among the best (i.e., most persuasive) reasons.

Piled Higher and Deeper is a great web comic with an incredible amount of insight into what graduate student life is like. It's written by a former graduate student at Stanford (former, meaning he graduated), and the comic, in my opinion, effectively captures the graduate student sub-culture. If you would like to laugh at the challenges we poor (literally, figuratively-- take your pick) graduate students face, you should check it out.

Back on the subject of motivation, here's today's comic:

Yes, the pressure is on!

Ordained as an Elder

This past weekend was a whirlwind! First the ultra sound, then finishing registering, and then on Sunday I was ordained as an elder in the PC(USA)! I am so excited to be an elder because it means that I can administer communion. I plan to be ordained as a minister of word and sacrament eventually as well which will mean that I will be able to consecrate the elements. For now, I am very excited to be able to administer the bread and the wine (er...grape juice). It also means that I will be a member of the session, the group of people that governs the congregation. We will make all of the big decisions that a single church congregation needs to make. I am really looking forward to finding out what that's like. At the same time, I realize what a big responsibility that is and I do not take it lightly. I think that being an elder will allow me to use most of my gifts to their fullest potential. I'm very excited! One decision I will need to make is which committee I will co-chair, or chair. I am debating between two, Worship or Mission. I will continue to pray and think about it until the 24th when we will decide which committees we will serve on.

So, here are two theological questions for you all.
1) I took communion a couple of weeks ago and will continue to eat the bread and wine during the pregnancy. Does this mean that Micah has also already taken communion? My inclination is to say yes, but I'm not sure. If the answer is yes, then there's a host of other follow up questions I have...but I won't ask them now. ;-)
2) I was ordained today...was Micah ordained as an elder, too?! I'm inclined to say no. Joan and John (I think rightly) pointed out that he did not take the vows I took. ... But I suppose he did lay his hands on me...hehe. Pregnancy is weird.

Feeling the Baby

I felt Micah move today for the first time! Well, actually, it's the second time. I felt him, like, a month ago, but nothing since. Today some friends, Tim and Matt, came over to talk about teaching at the Cambodian Methodist Bible School (more on this later...so much has happened!) and when they got up to leave I stood up with them and that's when Micah fluttered around on my left side! Woo!

Presenting Micah Odden Meyer

We had our routine ultrasound today, and we're very proud to introduce to you for the first time ever our little baby BOY, Micah Odden Meyer (head to the right, facing the top of the picture)!

Just so you don't strain yourself looking, none of the pictures I've posted give away the fact that they are pictures of a boy. Don't worry though-- it was pretty obvious, and Sarina and I knew what we were looking at before the technician formally announced it for us.

It's amazing how different it is, thinking concretely about having a boy compared with thinking abstractly about having a child. All of a sudden, we can consider the baby's personality and desires ... along with the various trouble he might get himself into. Of course, right now he doesn't look capable of much trouble at all! According to our ultrasound technician, at 18 weeks he's about 10 inches long and weighs about 6 ounces.

Our ultrasound technician didn't say much, but did say that everything looked fine. Micah is healthy (legs and arms enough for the little boy he is, among other things) and active. It was so cool to be able to see him move! For most of the procedure, he had his right hand in front of his face (he must have been thinking really hard about something) and would occasionally move it up and down, or turn his head and look at the ultrasound probe. In this picture we've caught him doing just that. As you can tell, Micah has four fingers on his right hand (from another angle you can see his thumb), and his face is to the right (turned toward us a little bit). If you squint just right you can see his nasal bone and two eyes.

Micah also (thankfully) has two legs, and plenty of toes. You can see both bones of his right leg; they are horizontal in the picture, starting with his knee on the right and ending with both feet, crossed, on the left. The little white dots on the left are the bones in his toes(!!!).

I promised 3-d pictures too, and I have one for you. At 18(.3, ha ha) weeks, apparently, babies are still so small and skinny that the 3-d imaging doesn't work out too well, but our technician humored us and I think it turned out just fine.

In this picture, Micah's head is toward the top. He's facing to the right of the image, and you can make out his right eye, his right arm (with his hand in front of his face) and the tiny crease of his mouth! The big blob on the left is the placenta, and to the bottom right you can see one of Micah's legs sticking out from underneath it.

We were given a DVD recording of part of the session, and if I can manage it I'll rip and post a little video of his heart beating. We also caught a little bit of mouth action too-- we have some footage of Micah "sucking" or "swallowing," and you can see (in 2-d) his jaw move. So cute! If I can work out how to export the video so that it's small enough that I can host it online, I'll do so.

It's so exciting to see our little baby boy all formed and moving. We are excited to be able to feel him! Apparently, Sarina should be able to feel him sometime between 20-24 weeks and I will be able to feel him a month after that. Once he starts moving we'll be able to tell something about his personality: will he be an active or mellow little boy?

Even though to the rest of you he probably looks like a generic baby, he is so cute to us! I insist that he has a Meyer nose, but Sarina is not convinced that there's any evidence for that. hehehehe We'll find out for sure around July 11, 2007. (They adjusted our due date by one day.)

As I always say to the belly...Hellooooooo Micah!

Registries

We are registered at:
Target
Burlington Coat Factory

Brett and I finished up our registries on Thursday and Saturday. Our Moms graciously helped us out by going and registering for us in January. They loved every minute of it and we are so grateful for the help because we were both overwhelmed with all the baby stuff and didn't know what to pick out. Plus, we're both very busy and would have had to make many more trips than we did if our Moms hadn't helped. With their help all we had to do was add a few things and decide if we liked their choices (which, for the most part, we did). Thanks to Eleanor and Nancy!

On Saturday, we decided to buy a little outfit to celebrate finding out the gender of the baby. We bought this cute little overalls outfit. We keep it hanging on the mirror in our bedroom as a little reminder of who's to come. I can't believe that a person that is a mixture of me and Brett will one day wear that. I also can't believe that this little person is currently inside me moving his little arms and legs and rolling over. I'm sure when he gets some muscles I'll constantly be reminded that he's there. ;-) One day he's going to call me Mama and hug my legs...but by that time he'll be too big for this outfit. Hmm... When he's wearing this he'll hang out on his back with his arms a legs in the air. I hope he has a baby belly laugh. ;-)

I was thinking the other day about Micah learning to talk. My Dad didn't talk until he was 2 and then he spoke in full sentences. Brett and I both babbled and spoke incoherently from an early age, saying random words here and there. I wonder what Micah will do.

It's a ...

We had our ultrasound today and we're having a BOY! More details and pictures to come.