New Church?

Believe it or not, we actually attend church.... every once in awhile anyway. I'd like to say we're regular Sunday morning folks, but half the time I am working on Sunday and need to be out the door by noon, and the other half of the time I've got to drag my other two cohorts behind me (kicking and screaming the whole way). Regardless of these factors, we've had a hard time with church ever since we left Manassas. In Manassas we found a great old Episcopal church right off the bat. The people were friendly, the ministers were hilarious, and we really enjoyed going there. That being said, I still had to be the one to drag everyone out the door on Sundays. Here in Fairfax there are 3 options that I've found (relatively close by our house). We started going to one last spring and it was fine, but of course it didn't compare to our old place in Manassas. We continued to go there through the summer, but then it came to be a major burden to get everyone out the door, and so we fell off yet again. In an attempt to rekindle our churchgoing ways, I looked up the other two last night and requested that Brad make a choice, so we could visit one of them today. He picked and we went. It was fine, the people were nice. They had a great concert this morning, all live music and singing, of Vivaldi's Gloria. Yes, it was a bit long, and in Latin, but I enjoyed it immensely. I don't know that I can say the same for Brad & Josh, but they'll survive. After the service, which was just fine, I asked for Brad's reaction and his only real input was a shoulder shrug. He continues to compare everything to Manassas, and that's just not going to be equaled. We're not going to have the same two fabu ministers who were so funny and personable, we're not going to have that same "old small church" feel. These things are not necessarily bad, but it's difficult to give up and let go. We barely make it out the door to church that's 5 minutes away, so you can imagine that we'll most likely never make it to church back in Manassas (we'd have to leave 45 minutes in advance most likely). Regardless, I'm hoping to either continue going to this new place (I really like all of the kid activities they have), or to try out the other local spot some time in the near future.

Girl talk

Last week we headed over to Ultrasound Associates for what I like to refer to as the "half-way" ultrasound. The entire purpose of this trip is to see that all your kid's parts are accounted for and developing as they should (it's bad when they're missing things like a spleen, or a brain, or what have you). At this point, if they find something wrong, they can take the necessary steps to try and correct the situation in the hopes that you'll still have a happy healthy kid in another 5 months. While they're scanning around looking at parts, they also discover what flavor of kid you'll be having. You can opt in or out of this part depending on what your preference is (though I have a very difficult time understanding why anyone wouldn't want to know - even though I know several people who wanted to wait on the "surprise"). I find this to be the very most important part of the entire pregnancy process (note that I despise the entire process and can't understand why people do it over and over and over again). Once you know what you've got growing in there you can focus on a name (which is extremely important), registering for stuff (mind you, you can register whenever you want, with or without this information - I just find it easier since so many things are quite gender specific), and get people off your case (perhaps the most important thing of all).

So, we ALL went to this appointment since Josh expressed some interest in seeing the sibling to come. Once we got in the room the lady asked if we would be finding out what we were having and I said "oh yes please, that's the only reason we're here." She then asked Josh what he wanted. While he's flip flopped on this several times, he told her he'd like it to be a boy. I chimed in that I was interested in having a girl, so if she could just make sure that's what it was we'd be all set. Looking around, everything was just dandy. All the parts were accounted for and developing nicely. Heart has 4 working chambers, brain is formed and has the necessary ventricles, 2 arms, 2 legs, nice round head, very nice and intricate spine. All is fine and dandy. Finally we get to the part where she says "oh yes, that's definitely a girl." This of course made me very happy as I'm always keen to get my way. The major issue that this poses is that I have no clue what to name a girl. I don't like every name that I see (virtually), and when I do see a name that I like it's already been taken by someone I know (and I'm very against duplicating names for the most part). I didn't want to name Joshua, "Joshua," but rather wanted to go with Gavin. I'll have you know that I've only ever met two "Gavins" in my entire life - neither of which was a child. I personally know alot of Joshuas, and he's run in to plenty of them in school as well. This is what I was trying to avoid, but compromises are often necessary and so that's the concession I made. This will not happen again. Regardless, it doesn't make the naming process any easier. We'll probably keep our final name decision to ourselves until we've actually got a little person to apply it to, but perhaps, we'll make an announcement sooner - who knows.