Buddy's Issue

Two weeks ago, as news of our baby picked up after the ultrasound we noticed a drastic change in Buddy’s behavior. We didn’t want to pin it on sibling rivalry because that would be absurd. What does a rabbit know about the life changing events around its owners?

The problem was this, Buddy would dig out all of her litter, and move her litter box away from the corner and then do her business in the corner. After a few days, no matter how many times we cleaned up and moved the box back, she would keep doing it and it started to smell.

Well, me being the logical troubleshooter I am, I started figuring out what changed in her cage/life around that time. I had run out of some old litter and switch fully to a new brand, after a few weeks of mixing half and half new and old. Could that be it? With the old brand not available at our pet store, Wal-mart, Target, grocery store, Pet Co, Pet Smart, Fleet Farm, etc it seemed we were out of luck.

So Amy suggested securing the litter box in the corner even though that meant some extra work when cleaning it. Buddy tried and tried to move the litter box for days but couldn’t, we finally got her to use it, but not before she would dig all the litter out. With no litter coverage it still smelled.

My next suggestion was maybe the baby’s ultrasound picture on the desktop of my computer was freaking her out. So I put it back to the usual blue background. That didn’t work.

We then wondered if she had a health problem (sore tooth, paw, etc) that she was trying to tell us about. We scheduled a vet appointment for tomorrow.

Miraculously, she stopped last Monday, the day we scheduled the appointment. Perhaps it was this that brought her behavioral issue to a close or perhaps it was one, unusual change that I made.

She has a lamp in the loft on a timer that provides extra light during the day. It has those low energy bulbs so as not to use too much electricity since it is on every day for 12 hours. The timer is a simple Christmas light timer so that we don’t need to worry about turning it on during the day or off at night when we are gone or asleep.

Amy had mentioned that she mainly misbehaved at night. We figured it was because we were in the bedroom and she knew she could get our attention. Which is what she does around 8:00 every Saturday and Sunday morning when she wants to be fed. She’ll bang her food dish, throw a toy around, or start playing with her bell. (Such a demanding rabbit)

Since she misbehaved at night, I wondered if she wanted a light on, so I turned on a light in the nursery so she could have a little bit more light. She was perfect that night. I then bought a photo sensing night light and put it next to her cage for the next night. That didn’t work. The next night I left the nursery light on. She was perfect.

I have since removed the timer from her lamp and she now has a lamp 24 hours a day. It’s a double bulb, so we only leave one on all the time, and have resorted to manually turning on and off the overhead light (which is also the energy saving bulbs). We have had no problems since Monday, which is also, as I mentioned the day we scheduled an appointment for her.

You’d think she would want some darkness, but at night she perches herself on top of her house in her cage in direct light of the lamp instead of hiding on the dark side of it.

We may or may not learn more at the vet this weekend, but for now it seems Buddy is content. As long as she behaves, we are content too.

Boy or Girl?

We had the final ultrasound today and thought we would show you the pictures!

We decided not to tell anyone right away and let people figure it out for themselves. (Just to make it fun!)

We never did get around to trying all the wives tales. Maybe next time. Yes, we have a name picked out, but we are not telling that either!

See if you can tell!

Sex of the Baby Part II

So apparently we did the whole pencil thing wrong. Patricia at work told me of a sure fire way to determine not just the current bun in the oven, but also how many children you will have and their birth order. We tried it on six of us at work, several times each, and it came out correct for three of them. The other three (me included) don’t have children yet so there is nothing to compare it to. As I said, we tried it several times on each of us, and it never changed. I tried it on myself when I got home three times, and it was exactly the same. I then tried it on Amy twice and it matched up with the prediction I will get to in a moment.

First, you thread a needle. Then you take your left hand and hold it out, palm up (it has to be your left because your left hand tells your future and your right hand tells your past—don’t worry, I’m not getting weird here, this is just what I was told).

Make sure your thumb and pointer finger are spread apart, because you will need to dangle the needle and dip it between them three times. Then you dangle the needle above your palm and wait. It won’t take too long and it will start to swing. Circle for a girl, straight for a boy. After it has a difined path, dip the needle between your spread out thumb and pointer finger three times again and do the process over again. Doing this over and over will give the birth order of your children. If, while the needle is dangling over your palm, it comes to a dead stop, no more children will follow.

Every time it was done to me, by different people it came out the same. Every time I did it to Amy it came out the same. 2 kids, first a girl, and then a boy.

So, if you are keeping track, so far we have 2 methods that say it will be a girl, and one method that says it will be a boy this time.

We'll see which methods are right hopefully this September and let you know.

Sex of the Baby

The sex of the baby is determined at conception, but doesn’t show until the fetus is 10 weeks old (which is said to be the 12th week of pregnancy—don’t ask about the math. A trimester is 12 weeks since it is 3 months long, but a pregnancy lasts 40 weeks. What happens to the other 4 weeks? Math is irrelevant). We'll be sure to keep the results of the ultra sound a secret, but we don't mind sharing the results of the sometimes unorthodox methods of determining the sex of the child before it is born. We have no definite answer.

According to Labor of Love dot Com (http://www.laboroflove.com) the Chinese birth calendar determines the sex of the baby by taking the age the mother will be when she gives birth (27) and the month the child was conceived (April). With these facts, the Chinese birth calendar says it will be a boy. However, there was one site (out of three that we checked) says it will be a girl. Majority rules, so we have 1 point for a boy, 0 for a girl.

A gal at work told me of a Columbian tradition. You place a knife and spoon under each end of a pillow without the mother knowing which end has which utensil. The mother then sits on the edge of one of the ends. If she sits on the spoon end, it is a girl. The knife end, a boy. Amy sat on the spoon end. (Boy 1, Girl 1)We tried the threaded needle and pencil. If it swings up and down, it is a boy, around in a circle a girl. After settling for a while it went around in a circle. (Boy 1, Girl 2) But then it swung up and down. (Boy 2, Girl 1). We tried it again, both times with the same result, therefore: Boy 1, Girl 1.

So, the results are inconclusive. We will have to Google up some methods and report back to you later.

What have we been doing?

Well, I am still working at UST and Amy has the summer off from her school. She has been working on her paper for her grad program, and I am not taking a class this summer for mine. I will start my grad classes in the fall. I am signed up for one week night class and one Sat. class that meets one Saturday every two weeks.

I'm keeping busy by working at STEPS camp again this summer at the university. I teach Web design two days each week for four weeks to groups of girls entering the 7th grade.

I decided to pass on the 3M tournament this year because I am so busy and the summer filled up fast. I am saddened by that. Maybe next year.

We have the main walls of the nusery painted and are starting to stick on non-permanent decals around the top of two walls. We are going with a jungle theme. Amy and I already bought a few toy animals that we will put up on a shelf above the closet as a decoration. The baby will be able to play with them later in live, like when he/she reaches 30 years old.

There have been lots of adjustments to our house. First of all, I lost my beloved home office. The computers are now moved out to different corners of the house. Amy and I are no longer to work/play on the computers side by side. We do have a wireless network. Now, ours was secure, and still is, but I suggest to anyone who has a wireless network CHANGE DEFAUT SETTINGS and be ULTRA PARANOID about security. Our settings worked for 2 years, but when we expanded our network bad things happened. We are now secure again, but I had to resort to a 64 character password. (Don't worry, only the computer needs the password, we don't have to enter it in every time).

Our printer is now even wireless on the network that way we don't rely on one computer having to be on before we print from another computer. Getting the right device for that was a challenge too, but we are pretty much finished moving the computers, hooking up to the network and resecuring it.

It's A Baby!

Well, the news is out we are expecting a bundle of joy in January after the new year. We found out a few weeks after Easter and made the wide spread annoucement when Amy hit 13 weeks. We will have the chance to find out the sex of the baby in September, we don't know if we will inquire or if we will just wait to be surprised. We have heard both good and bad stories of either the doctor being right or wong.

For the first baby, I don't mind if it is a boy or a girl. I'd love to have at least one of each, but don't feel presure to have one before the other. If we had two boys or two girls already, and another was on the way, then yes, I would feel pressure. But I don't want to fill this entry with a whole lot of ifs.

So I really suck at updating the web site and keeping my blog up to date. No excuses and no promises, but I hope to provide more info about happenings later this summer and make it easier for me to keep up.

Merry Christmas!

We haven't had time to put a whole bunch of our usual Christmas stuff up here like pictures and the letter. Both Amy and Chad are in graduate programs and with their full time jobs this Web site has been put aside.Merry Christmas, From: Chad, Amy, and Buddy.