Lately Kim has been soliciting advice from many of her female friends, family, and coworkers who have kids. She is asking them what items they couldn’t live without when starting to raise a child. The response has been great so far, with lots of advice ranging from strollers, car-seats, and furniture all the way to toys, playpens, and even nursing supplies. While some of this has been really interesting to me, especially the stroller and toys, I can’t help but wonder if there are some items that the moms are missing from their lists. What items do dads find necessary for raising children? With few friends having kids of their own, I’m forced to rely on the wisdom of the Internet.

Now that I am past the “danger zone” of the first trimester, I’m really getting excited about this baby!  Ed and I have started planning the baby’s room.  We need to get the basement finished so we can move the essential parts of the office down there, then we’ll change the office into the guest room and our current guest room will become the baby’s room.    We are hoping for lots of visitors, so we want to keep the guest room.

We have also started thinking of names.  For boys we’ve decided on Edwad (to keep the Edward family name) and for girl’s we’ve decided on Myrtle (after the famous PigFest singer, MER).  Wad and Mer, what do you think?

Just kidding.  We are thinking of going with Edward John III, but we need a good nickname.  How about EJ or Trey?  We are desperately lacking in girl’s names.  I like Alex, Gabe and Sam.  But Ed’s not sold on any of those.  Any suggestions?

Ed’s been bugging me to start writing a blog for the baby and I’ve resisted for three months, only because I haven’t had many positive things to say about the first three months of pregnancy.  Now that the end of the first trimester is in sight, I’m feeling better about putting my thoughts online. 

We went to my 12 week doctor’s appointment yesterday and everything is going well.  The doctor did say I need avoid certain activities for a couple weeks.  Her examples were running and biking (I didn’t mention that I biked to work not too long ago and not running is going to send me over the edge.)  But, she did grant me the permission to walk.  Good thing since I didn’t wheel my way into the doctor’s office!

I’ve been trying to follow the doctor’s orders and “take it easy”, but instead I’ve found myself completely bored and this is only the second day!  Any ideas of relaxing activities that last more than 15 minutes?  I have found an outdoor pool nearby where I can swim laps.  If the doctor asks, I don’t know how to swim.  That way she won’t tell me not to swim.

Here are even more ultrasound photos showing great detail of the baby.  The amount of growth when compared to the last ultrasound is amazing, especially in only eighteen days.

Here are more photos of the baby from the second ultrasound session on June 10, 2010.

Here is a photo from the first ultrasound on May 24, 2010.