Thanks to everyone who has congratulated us on our pregnancy. Everything is going well so far. My only complaint is that I have this eery queaziness most every morning that usually results in what pregnant women dread - puking. That being said, it's wonderful to know that I have a life growing inside me. Future heir, yo, future heir.

Mark and I upped our food budget to $75/week. We have been pretty faithful, though surely not perfect. For a couple weeks I had a lot of food aversions, so we spent a lot trying to figure out what works. I came to realize that it wasn't the food that was making me sick. The most convincing explanation of morning sickness is a deficiency of B vitamins. They, if I understand it correctly, are a huge help in making strong brains, neurons, etc. And it's not a particular B vitamin. In fact, they need each other to do their individual job. So if you don't take all of them, the ones you do take won't work properly. Examples of Bs are thiamine, niacine, B6 and B12, among others.

We are trying to get a condo in Branson. Unfortunately, the one we really wanted has some sort of breech of contract with the development their in, so we lost out. But I got an email from someone else with a place just as gorgeous as the other. It's not as big, though. I might be able to talk her down. The total price is over $2000. I can justify that if it were as big as the other, which would have come in just under that price. Since it's so much smaller, I think I will offer her $1700 -- taxes & cleaning fees included. We'll see how that goes.

We're pumped about the birth, too. It will likely take place within the first 2 weeks of November. We are planning on a completely natural, at-home birth. Before you scowl, watch The Business of Being Born. Amazing statistics. It's expose-style, filmed mainly in NYC. One incredible statistic is about 2 hospitals in New York: one has a ceasarean rate of 30%, the other of 35%. My beef is that ceasareans are not for low-risk births. If a woman ends up having surgery because she has been given an epidural and too much pitocin, the hospital is doing the mother and the baby a disservice. In talking to some of the midwives around here, I found out that the local women's hopsital has a C-section rate of 60%. I mean, seriously, why don't you just shoot me in the foot? The other local hospital's rate is at 30%. I could understand those numbers if the number of babies dying at birth in populations comprable to ours (i.e. Britain or Norway or Australia or Finland) were the same, but they're not. That many babies and mothers should not be at risk, not so much so to have to have surgery. Lo siento, amigos.

Don't even get me started on the correlation between epidurals, pitocin, vaccinations and ADD, ADHD, SIDS and autism.

names

So Mark and I have some news. We are 10 weeks pregnant. :) Yay. We have been thinking about names for a long time. About a year ago we settled on Abraham Louis for our first boy. Then we fell in love with the name Juila. So our first girl will be Julia Michele. Last week Jake was down, and he was telling us how he is going to name his daughter Jacobena. Lovely, huh? Then Mark mentioned how he wants to name our son Trajan. Trajan? Seriously, I am willing to name our dog Trajan. ...until I realized that we can call him Tray (though I am not settled on the spelling of the shortname.)! So our second boy, will be Trajan William. Then tonight we were talking, and Mark REALLY likes the name Emily. He has mentioned it before, and though I know a very lovely lady named Emily, I am just not sure I want to name our daughter Emily. Did I mention that he REALLY loves it? So we brainstormed... There is just something really neat about the combination of Abraham Louis & Trajan William, as there is a connection between Julia & Emily. They're very Victorian, and they make me think of Queen Anne's lace and peonies, both of which I love. So we're drivin' and runnin' through various family names -- Ruth, Evelyn, Susan. Really lovely, sure. But just not that zing, not perfection. Until we thought of Emily Jane. :) There you have it -- if we have twins of any combination, we have their names picked out. 1) Abraham Louis, 2) Julia Michele, 3) Trajan William, and 4) Emily Jane. This does, yes, imply that if we had our choice in the matter we would love to have a boy first. ;) G'nite.