22 Weeks

Baby Connell is 10.9 inches and almost 1 pound, Mama Connell has the day off today and Papa Connell felt the baby move for the first time this week.

The right thing to do on my day off would be to clean a little and rest up for the Peterson/Grogan girls arrival and the shopping weekend ahead. The wrong thing to do and what I've been doing all morning is watching back-to-back episodes of A Baby Story. So far I've watched a home birth, a c-section and the birth of twins and have gone through half a box of kleenex. The home birth itself seemed to be OK but the mother ended up in an ambulance anyway after delivery because she was bleeding a lot more than they had anticipated. The c-section mommy went into surgery with a kicky scrunchie and bright red lipstick and was "really into pain management" (a woman after my own heart) and I can't remember much of the twin birth mostly because I was still crying from the previous episodes!

The baby has been moving around like crazy this week mostly when I'm seated at my desk at work or in the car. I can't keep my hands off my belly and love to feel the "hey you!" tap of Baby Connell. On Tuesday night Owen and I were watching the Rick Mercer report and Owen was talking to my belly basically making fun of my love of Rick Mercer - has to be the accent. Anyway, when Owen stopped talking the baby started moving. I quickly grabbed Owen's hand and placed it on my belly and.....nothing. He kept his hand there for a good 5 minutes before the baby started kicking again - Owen couldn't believe that's what he was feeling. It was a nice way to spend an evening.

According to the baby books, at this point Junior can hear our voices so we're trying to cut down on the cursing and I'm trying to remove the words "dude" and "man" from my vocabulary. From the amount of singing Owen and I do in the car, Junior is no doubt getting familiar with our voices and our odd taste in car music. On Monday night, he/she was witness to such classics as "Total Eclipse of the Heart", "The Rose" and plenty of Rush. None of this classical stuff for our little redneck - we'd rather Junior learn the guitar solo from "Fly by Night".

How I'm Feeling: A vacation day is always a good day.