Well, Brendan threw us all for a loop by waiting almost a week past his due date to arrive, so nobody managed to guess closer than two days to when he was born. Not surprisingly, the time portion of the game ended up being the deciding factor, since being off by just a day meant a difference of 120 points. The average guess was off by 155 hours or 775 points.
Erica and I both guessed that the baby would be a girl and born two days before the due date, so we were completely out of the running. She scored 940 points and I scored 930 by guessing just two hours later than my wife did.
I’m sorry to say that the highest score went to my coworker, Erica Wilkinson, who scored 1825 points by guessing the baby would be born a week early, female and 8 lbs 1 oz. She guessed the right length, though, so that helped her score a little.
Coming right down to the line, another coworker, Dylan, went neck and neck with the winner, but lost out with a score of 345 points. Dylan managed to guess everything but the date exactly right, so that definitely deserves an honorable mention. Congrats to Dylan!
Finally, the winning guess breaks down as follows:
230 points for guessing April 5th at 9pm
50 points for guessing Female
15 points for guessing 8lbs 11 oz
5 points for guessing 21 inches
With a total of 300 points, my little brother Andy is the winner! Congratulations!!
Brendan James Bayless was born at 6:42 pm on April 7th, 2008. Erica’s doctor checked her this morning during her regular appointment and decided it was time to get the baby out. We arrived at the hospital at about 1:30pm and they started inducing Erica’s labor then. By about 6:30 all was ready and she pushed for just about 10 minutes. As Erica was in labor, the weather outside ranged from overcast to spits of rain to a cheery spring blizzard, but at almost the same moment Brendan entered the world, the sun broke through the clouds and flooded our delivery room with light (I’m not being poetic… it really happened!). He weighed 8 lbs 8 oz and was 20.5 inches long. He has a fuzz of reddish hair and a very happy disposition. He’s been well behaved all night. His mom is doing just fine, though her blood pressure continues to be a bit high as it was for the last couple weeks of her pregnancy. Here is our newest little addition to the family:
For those who participated in our baby guessing game, I’ll tally up the points tomorrow and let you know who won. Right now I need some sleep!
The internet is the most powerful collaboration and connection tool ever created by man. Here’s a short video talking a little about how the network is being used to connect people with each other and with ideas.
Still no baby. Erica goes completely stir crazy at about 4pm every day. We sit at home at night wondering if there is anything we can do to pass the time. And, maybe worst of all, 85% of the guesses made in our baby game have already passed. A few people did guess the 4th or 5th, though. Of course, just the fact that the date you guessed has already passed does not mean you can’t win the game, so stay tuned!
While we wait, it never hurts to watch the Allman Brothers Band for a few minutes:
Erica had a routine checkup Monday morning and after seeing slightly elevated blood pressure her doctor sent her in for some additional testing and monitoring. Once he saw the results of that he put her on bed rest till the baby is born. I heard Erica’s side of the conversation when she broke that news to her employer… it sounded like they were just thrilled.
So, Erica has been sitting still as much as possible since Monday afternoon and I have taken over most of her usual activities. Luckily this was the week when we had purposefully not scheduled much to be going on, since the baby is due next Wednesday. Still, adding her duties to my own, and adjusting my schedule to fit all the things that need to get done, had been quite a change. The main difference is that I now take Jonathan to school in the mornings and then go to work, then I pick him up when he’s done and bring him back to the office with me so I can put in my full 8 hour day. It’s only about an hour and a half difference in my arrival and departure times, but it has done a number on me. I feel like there is no time to get anything done when I get home in the evenings! It’s kind of ironic because I had been wondering lately what it would be like to work the same hours as the rest of the office. I don’t like it.
Erica has reacted well to the change, all things considered. Her mom had the latter part of the week off work already, so she has been spending the day at our house helping distract Marissa, who is on spring break this week, keeping things tidy and helping Erica get her lunches. I do breakfast and dinner. Mentally, I think Erica probably feels like she was in a big race that set records for the first 100 laps and has now slowed to a crawl for the last ten. She was already starting to get anxious to have the baby, and now suddenly she has very little to occupy her time other than navel gazing, which of course leads to thoughts of the rest of her belly and the little person who is occupying it. So we sit during the evenings talking about how much we want the baby to be here and trying to find interesting things to do that don’t involve being up off the couch or any kind of physical exertion. We’re watching a lot of movies and TV, needless to say.
It’s been almost 11 months since I last posted on here. What a lazy bum I am. The only really big news since then is that Erica is pregnant. She’s actually been pregnant for almost 8 months now. To be precise, tomorrow is 35 weeks. That makes her due date the 2nd of April. Naturally, my Mom is pushing for the baby to arrive two days early to coincide with her birthday. I’m sure Erica wouldn’t mind an early birth either. She’s been having all the same pregnancy related troubles that she experienced with Jonathan and Marissa, including fatigue, back pain, muscle soreness and trouble sleeping. This time, though, she has developed moderate carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists and that has been a real pain for her to get used to. I bought her CTS braces for both hands and she wears those at night. They help her sleep well because they don’t allow her hands to get into positions that would aggravate the symptoms. Hopefully the CTS will go away once the baby comes.
Since we already have a son and a daughter we decided that this time we’d have a bit of a surprise by not finding out the baby’s gender when we had the 20 week ultrasound. We already have names picked out for either contingency and we have plenty of boy and girl themed clothing from the other kids, so we’re now eagerly looking forward to the moment we get to meet our new little one.
If you’d like to join in the anticipation, you can play a little baby guessing game here. I’ll leave that form up till the Ides of March then we’ll close the guessing and once the baby is born I’ll tally the results and see who wins. Good Luck!
I spotted a new chinese place in Provo (about 240 N University Avenue) a few weeks ago and tried to get my wife to go there with me. Neither of us had ever eaten hot pot before and after looking at the menu (which was mostly in Chinese!) she was a little hesitant so we went somewhere else that night. When it came time to decide what I was going to get my mom for her birthday I figured I’d take her out to lunch and that would be the place. Mom shares my sense of adventure when it come to trying new food. She said it sounded good so we went yesterday. We did the hot pot instead of ordering off their menu, which I plan on trying next time, or maybe for some takeout at some point. For the uninitiated, Chinese hot pot is a traditional meal which consists of a pot of broth kept at a high simmer, to which you add tidbits of meat, seafood and veggies and let them simmer till done the way you like. You then remove them with a ladle or slotted spoon and eat them with rice. I guess this traditional dish grew out of the need to keep dwellings warm before the advent of electricity combined with a need for a relatively cheap but still nutritious meal.
To begin, they brought us an appetizer: a small bowl of spicy roasted peanuts, another small bowl containg carrot shreds dressed in a sort of spicy, sour sauce and sesame and hot dipping sauces. The peanuts were excellent and the carrots very tasty and something I had never had before. After a couple bites of those, they brought out our pot of broth. Mom asked for the miso broth and I got a spicy chili one. They brought it in a divided heavy steel pot and put it on an electric hotplate in the center of our table. Off we went to load up a plate with tidbits. The options included shrimp, mussels, fish balls, beef meatballs, thincut beef, chicken and pork, a couple types of mushrooms, tofu, zucchini, a couple types of cabbage, a couple types of rice noodles, broccoli, cauliflower, sprouts and, among other delicacies, something we later discovered was tofu skin. We both thought it must be some sort of animal flesh but we couldn’t figure out what (I was thinking something from Fear Factor), but Mom finally asked. I think my favorite items cooked in my spicy broth were the beef strips (simmering for just about 60 seconds seemed to equate to medium doneness) and the zucchini and broccoli, but it was all delicious. Mom loved the shrimp and mussels, but she is much more into seafood than I am.
The service was impeccable. The staff (I assume they are husband and wife) checked on us several times during our meal. The decor was a nice cross of both lavish and understated. Since we didn’t look at a menu beforehand I didn’t know exactly what to expect when the bill came at the end of the meal. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the lunch for two of us (we both left with very full bellies!) came to less than $20. That is a ridiculously small amount for such a unique and delicious (and plentiful) dining experience. I’ll definitely by going back to Four Seasons Hot Pot and Dumplings in the near future.
A tax return is what you send to the government by April 15th of each year. What they send back to you, if you were dumb enough to let them hold your money all year without paying you any interest on it, is called a tax refund. I can’t believe how often I hear the term tax return used to indicate the speaker’s enthusiasm for a fat check they are supposed to get in the mail. I’ve even seen advertisements this year promising to educate you on ways to increase the size of your tax return. Of course, the only way to increase the size of what you send to the government is fill out more forms than you are required to and mail them all to the IRS, which will just increase how much you have to pay to send it. Duh.
