Biking to VPs

So I think I'm going to try and bike to VIPs tomorrow morning for our Men's Breakfast. Typically I would just drive, but I though I would ride this time. After Google told me to take Armour to Kinzie, I redirected it to avoid Armour, and then modified it to cut through a park and part of Olivet. I'm thinking it shouldn't be be too hard, as it takes me about 10 minutes to ride to work. And it's going to he 6:30am on a Saturday.

Because I love Google, I created a map for you of the route I'll be riding tomorrow. The red line is the route I'll take, and the blue line is the route Google gave me. You can click on the pins to see what they are.

View Larger Map

Home Birth

This may be news to you, but we've decided to have a home birth. It's going to be attended by a MidwifeWhat is a nurse midwife? allnursingschools.com, her assistant, and a DoulaWikipedia entry for Doula. A few years back we considered having a home birth, but we were told it was illegal in IL. It wasn't until recently that we discovered that it wasn't, and that started the ball rolling. (The AMA might actually want it to be illegalAs stated in the AMA Resolution #205, but hopefully they will not prevail.) We have received a great response from the people we've told so far, and we appreciate that. You have been really supportive, thanks!

For those of you who are skeptical, you would be pleased to know that the largest study of homebirths attended by Certified Professional Midwives, as published in the British Medical Journal, has found that homebirth is safe for low risk women and involves far fewer interventions than similar births in hospitals.Quoted from the Family Midwifery Service According to Amie's medical records her current pregnancy is low risk, and the midwife said we looked to be perfect for a home birth.

Please feel free to talk to us about the decision, and ask questions about the home birth. We are learning a lot! You should see the reading material we are getting from our midwife and doula!

Don't feel free to share negative comments or experiences (especially to Amie.) We've done our research and the facts show that an assisted home birth is completely safe, and any horror stories will only make Amie more tense and apprehensive during labor (It is well known that a variety of psychological factors can influence people's health and interfere with medical treatment. In obstetrics, levels of anxiety have been found to predict obstetric complications.Taken from a prospective study in midwifery practices in the Netherlands.) I may be preaching to the choir on this one, but I thought I'd throw that out there for you. :D

Also, you can search for your own information, or you can look at some notes that I put together here.

Ice Cream Celebration

Dairy Queen trip

Lately we have been very successful at potty training Noah, and for the last two nights Noah has stayed dry all night! Yesterday when he was dry for the first time, we decided to take him out for ice cream to celebrate. Noah was pretty excited and Dolly was sure appreciative about it as well. We took them to Dairy Queen across from ONU, and Josh happened to be driving by and stopped to say hi. If you don't know, Noah loves Josh. And he was pretty excited about him showing up. Take a look at our video:

Ice Cream Trip from David Giove on Vimeo.

In other news: Today is Noah's Birthday! We woke up early (before the alarm went off at 6:30am) and I made Noah and Frencesca some cinnamon oatmeal pancakes for breakfast. Usually when I do this the pancakes never actually hit a plate, they come right off the frying pan and into a belly. Needless to say, they devour pancakes. Later today Grandma is coming to spend time with the birthday boy, and hand out presents tonight. I'm looking forward to it, and I'll have videos/photos of it to share later for sure. Check back soon!

Noah find the polish

Noah found the polish

So Amie called me today and asked me, "Do we have a camera here?" Which typically means, Noah got into something, and it's pretty photo worthy. Sure enough, the next thing she says is, "Do you know what your son did?"

As you can see, if you haven't clicked on the photos already, Noah got into the nail polish. He sees mom doing it enough that he decided to give it a whirl. Don't even try explaining to him that he doesn't use mom's polish, nevermind that pretties are for girls only. While we have to struggle to get Frencesca to keep her pretty headbands on, Noah will quickly take them and wear them all day if we let him. What a silly boy. :\

Frencesca gets camera time

Usually we put one child to bed first, and after about 30 minutes we put down the second. Staggering their bedtimes has worked well with the problem of them playing in bed together at night. This particular night I had Frencesca up later, and we were playing around in the living room. She really loves watching herself in the camera, which you might notice she's looking at the viewfinder. She's a pretty precious little girl, check out the video!

Camera time with Dolly from David Giove on Vimeo.

Potty Training

Today I got a call from Noah, which was similar to one I got last week. He told me:

I pooped in the potty daddy!

I couldn't help but express my enthusiasm for our little man. For the last two weeks Noah has been wearing big boy undies and peeing in the potty. He's had his good and bad times, but he is really getting the hang of it. Not only is he excited and actively working towards a diaper free life, Frencesca is excited as well. Just today we put her in her new big girl undies in hopes that she will follow in big brothers footsteps. She loves the cat undies at the moment, and she'll sit in the potty for candy. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Potty Announcement from David Giove on Vimeo.

Ultrasound Photos

Ultrasound Photos

I am finally getting these ultrasound photos up here from our visit three weeks ago. This would have been the time to find out what the gender was of our baby, but we didn't! We want to be surprised about this one. I would have liked being surprised about the others, but Amy agreed this time because we have clothes and such for both a boy and a girl. So she feels aptly prepared. I also managed to sneak in our little video camera and took some bootleg shots of the ultrasound in progress. I'll upload those soon so you can see our little person squiggling around in Amy. :)