Weekend Update

The baby had the hiccups for the first time (that I've noticed) today. C & P had them all the time, but this baby is more still than even Gabriel was. She moves around so little and so seldom that it takes me by surprise when she does move much. I gasp with surprise now and then when she makes herself more comfortable. At the doctor last week, she seemed to be in the right position, so I hope she'll stay that way. Seems like a long time to stay in one position, though!

Yesterday the fog was amazing--on the way to church we could hardly see anything. David started getting phone calls about it at 5:30 in the morning. He said I kept hitting the bed with my foot every time he asked the operations person another question (I'm sure I just wanted it to be quiet again--my sleep is not the greatest lately between getting up in the night and heartburn). Later when we were discussing it, I remembered pounding the bed because I heard him say, "I've never heard of frozen fog", and I had just told him about it a day or two before.

Here's the picture before church
and here's how it looked when we came out!

Last night a kid at church told me, "When I have a baby, I'm going to call her Cymbaline!" (I'm guessing at the spelling.) Her mom told me she had a classmate named that. Hmmm... interesting. But not on my list.

People keep asking me about a name for the baby, but honestly, I haven't even had time to finish writing down my own short list from my book. I turned in the 3 baby name books that I had checked out from the library. One day when we were waiting for David in the car, Carmen & Gabe & I were all reading them at the same time and discussing names. I have to be careful what I say out loud because Carmen will run with just about any suggestion! She was telling people the baby was going to be named Maricela for a few days. (I like that one, Marisol--except that some Texans--not to name any names--would pronounce it like "aerosol", and I also like Maribel. But I don't like just "Mari", or "Maury", and the connotation that comes with that daytime t.v. host.)

David's family always asks about names and at Christmas they were telling stories about Irma's baby sister Evangelina in case we were interested in her for a namesake. David would consider Angelica (his mom's middle name and awfully close to mine), but what would we call her? Too close to my name. And he would consider Laura (my first name), but that is just too weird to me. I like it, but I've never used it, so it'd be weird to start now.

We watched a good movie recently on DVD and we always watch the credits, but this particular film, I guess because it was a foreign film, had lots of good names in the credits! (The movie was Joyeux Noel, the true story of a Christmas Eve truce on a battlefield during WW I.)
Oh, I also have to recommend Akeelah and the Bee which we watched for family movie night on Friday. Except for a couple of bad words, it was great, and following on our MLK day discussions, we paused the movie a few times to talk about how sometimes people act or think differently because of someone's skin color.

Gabriel resists watching anything unfamiliar--heaven forbid anything take the place of his beloved Cars--and we had to make him watch at the beginning. He kept asking, "Can I go play now?", but finally something caught his interest and he watched the rest with us, delighted.

Toward the end of the movie, Akeelah goes to Washington D.C. and he was thrilled to see shots of the places David sent postcards of two weeks ago.


"And those places are on MY MAP, Mommy!"--Gabe's postcard was a map of D.C. because he's always been interested in maps, just like his daddy--and honestly his mommy too.

Paloma saw the Washington Monument like her postcard, but David picked it for her because she still loves Goodnight Moon so much!