Prego Says...

My child is going to LOVE egg and cheese on English muffins! I had a hankering for Egg McMuffins early in my pregnancy, and just had a cafe-made egg and cheese muffin sandwich for breakfast this morning... And both of us are in HEAVEN!!! He's kicking around like crazy and I'm wanting another one... :) I guess I better start perfecting the art of the well-made egg sandwich over the next year or two!

Mer

Baci's New Haircut

How cute am I? Love, Baci

IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, so I was right all along - it is a little boy growing in my belly!! I told Hubby that the Chinese birth chart was wrong, and his response was "well, you're not Chinese"! That's so Sheridan...

MEANWHILE, how silly was I to think that the way I am carrying was indicative of the baby's gender?? I guess because it's my first baby, my tummy muscles are still in tact from my gymnastics days and they're holding on to fitness for their lives!!! And since the weight doesn't affect my tummy due to those muscles, it found other places to nest, like my boobs, arms, face, feet, hands, legs, and did I miss anything? Oh yeah, hair.

But back to Peanut!! Remember that episode of Sex and The City where someone reminds Miranda that she has a penis growing inside her?? That's all I could think about yesterday!! I giggled and beamed to the point that I was even annoying myself. I'M HAVING A SON!!!

I shouldn't be surprised, given that the father determines the gender and Peanut's daddy is one of 3 boys, his dad is one of 3 boys, his brother has a son, and in the entire Hall lineage, there's only ONE female (and I met her once; she was rather masculine). Do those Halls have ANY sperm with X chromosomes? Will my son have sons? That's cool with me - I love boys and men. Give me a whole house full of 'em!

A special apology to Lindsay, who I totally let down by not posting the baby's sex yesterday. I didn't know I *had* blog groupies!! I'm so excited!! Thanks for making my day... and thanks for keeping up with The Mer Show. xo

Love, Mer

Peanut's Gender

Is it going to be boy or girl??? We'll find out Tuesday at 11:00 a.m.!!!!

I've thought all along it was a boy, due to Sheridan's family's birth patterns, but due to the way I'm carrying, and how I feel... I'm starting to think it's a girl!! The Chinese birth chart says it's a girl.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I just can't wait ANY LONGER!!

I can't wait to post the news tomorrow... Stay tuned!

Mer

Our Wedding, Chapter One B (By Sheridan)

The day before our fateful trip was an interesting one. Meredith and I taking turns at the computer looking at weather.com and trying to come up with ideas of places to go instead of the Bahamas. From the weather reports, the trip looked to be a disaster. Should we reroute to Maui? Negative. Mexico? No bueno. South America? Are you serious?

After much deliberation and back and forth, we decided to go. Life is an adventure, we said, and our relationship has been an exciting one so far. If we have to get married in the chapel at the Miami Airport, at least it will be a good story for the kids.

5:00 am the cab picks us up, 5:20 we are at the airport wondering where all the people came from. It was as busy as 6 pm on a Friday night. We get on the plane to Phoenix, no problems. We thought we would be able to sleep on that leg, but we were both up, the plane was full. The next leg was Phoenix to Ft. Lauderdale, 4+ hours. Poor Meredith got stuck in the middle seat with some 300 pound guy in the window seat. He was spilling over the sides and slept the whole time. Amazing how he could sleep through all his snoring! I was lucky enough to get the aisle seat, getting my elbow banged ever time someone walked up and down, or the beverage cart was wheeled by me.

Have you flown US Air recently? Don’t. They suck. The seats are small and you have to pay for EVERYTHING!!! Want some water, 2 bucks please. Coffee! A bargain at $1.00 per cup. Meredith and I were starving so we decided to buck up and drop 10 bucks on some snacks. I wait patiently as the Stewardess wheels her cart to my isle, I get my crisp 20 ready and hold it out like I am at a bar trying to get the bartenders attention. She asks the lady across from me if she wants something and the lady goes off about how she paid extra for the exit row and someone else is there. Grrreeeaaattt!! I am starving and my pregnant fiancé is starting to nibble on the arm rest and this lady decides an hour into the flight is a good time to raise a concern??? I thought about grabbing a snack when she wasn’t looking, but changed my mind when I realized I had no exit route. So what if I could out run the Stewardess, I wasn’t about to go D.B Cooper over a sandwich. I hear pay toilets are around the corner. Anyone got change for a dollar?????

Enough about the flight. We get to Ft. Lauderdale and go to Bahama Air for our flight to the island. We go up to the counter to ask the lady working it a question and we have to show her our boarding pass to get her to look at us. What attitude!!! I thought island people were supposed to be happy. Once we showed her our boarding pass and really weren’t wasting her precious flirtation time with the baggage handler, she politely told us we could not have the exit row. Awesome!

We get on the flight, the crew is speaking island language that I can barely understand and we get to Nassau! Mission accomplished. Almost. At this point Meredith tells me that the bus drivers do not work for the hotel and we may have to wait while they try to get other people from the airport to ride the bus. Ok, I think, how long will this take. It can’t be that bad, right? We wait on the bus for half an hour!!! Is there anything worse than spending 10 hours on a plane to get to your dream vacation, only to sit on a bus for 30 minutes waiting to get to the hotel? I think not.

Finally, we get to the hotel! I can finally say Mission Accomplished!!! We, we have to check in. The Bahamas is a little different. Employees walk around the hotel flirting with each other, calling each other “Baby”, “Sweetie”…no sexual harassment laws there. So we are meeting with the “check in lady”, getting our map, all our documents, our wedding binder (in between her taking personal calls)…at this point all I want is the room key and directions to the free bar.

We get our room keys, the bags will be brought up, and we are on our way to the room. Our room is in a building on the other side of the compound so we walk around the two pools and oooh and awww them. We can’t wait to get the vacation started!

We make it to the room and there is the fully stocked bar!! We have arrived. I ask Meredith one more time, “we can drink this stuff, right? It’s free?”

“Yes, baby, it is free”. Awesome!! Where’s the ice?????

Bump Watch

Well, I'm 19 weeks now and things are really progressing. The baby is moving like crazy, and I feel the movements constantly... We're definitely having an active one! I think the baby must like tomatoes, because when I've had tomato soup this week and spaghetti and meat sauce, I felt TONS of movement! I also had a bit of caffeine today, and the kid was dancing, dancing, dancing! I guess s/he's getting ready for the Madonna concert soon... haha

Meanwhile, here's a recent picture of the baby bump. It's started poking out, but you can't see so much in this photo. I think the next time we photograph the belly, it's really going to look different - it's growing pretty rapidly (yay!) and I'm starting to pack on pounds (ugh).

So that's the baby update. Next week we'll find out the sex, so stay tuned for that huge news!!

Love, Mer

Our Wedding, Chapter One

So right before we left for our weddingmoon to The Bahamas, I accepted a job to start with Cisco as a recruiting consultant, and went into the trip feeling relaxed because I crossed a huge burden off my personal to do list - FIND JOB- so now I could GET MARRIED! I had a week or so to take my time preparing for the wedding and picking up last-minute things that I had hadn't found yet, like bridal jewelry and “resort wear” outfits for Sheridan (those aren’t supposed to be last-minute items, but for me, they were). And it gave me some time to switch gears and start preparing for our amazing week!!

Unfortunately, it also gave me time to obsess about the impending Hurricane/ Tropical Storm Hanna and watch The Weather Channel obsessively to see if it was going to ruin our wedding! Was it going to hit Nassau, avoid it, and was it going to be a storm or hurricane? Crap!!!

The day before we left, we realized that Hanna was indeed going to hit Nassau almost directly, and debated on whether or not to cancel - we bought trip insurance just in case my pregnancy didn't cooperate with our trip - but decided that we were going to take our chances, go get married, and make the most of it, no matter what came our way!!

The night before we left, we did last-minute packing, bought snacks for our long journey, and dropped the doggie off at Pet Villa for the week. He didn't even look back at me - he hit the front door, ran for his favorite caretaker, John, jumped in his lap, and that was that... I would imagine it's like dropping your kid off at daycare and the kid not being particularly upset that you're leaving them. Guess I might want to get used to that idea! But Baci did leave us a little surprise when we got home - we found a dog cookie in Sheridan's suitcase as we were wrapping up his packing. He does love us, after all!!! Yay!

The next day, we got up at 4:00 a.m. for our 6:15 a.m. flight to Phoenix, and couldn't believe how busy the airport was! We got out safely, flew through Phoenix to get to Fort Lauderdale (most miserable flight of my life - I sat next to a fat, hairy, snoring beast on one side, and my broad-shouldered beau on the other, in the smallest seat imaginable, for 4.5 hours!!!), and eventually got to Nassau after a long 9 hour journey!

We arrived to Nassau and I could tell that Sheridan was thinking "where on earth has this woman brought me?" because looking around, downtown Nassau is pretty poor. They drive on the left side of the road and everything's on "island time", meaning everything takes FOREVER, including our shuttle from the airport to the hotel... it's like another planet! I assured Sheridan that it was going to be a fabulous resort and I could tell he was a little skeptical... (and I got a little nervous!) Not to mention, it was starting to get *pretty* windy…

We finally arrived to Sandals around 8:00 p.m. and had a lovely VIP check-in, checked into our room, and got ready for our first night in the resort. We got dressed and hit our first restaurant, Kimono's, the hibachi-style restaurant, and sat with 2 other honeymooning couples, both from the East Coast. We instantly hit it off with our new buddies Matt and Tonya from Washington State… great people!! We all felt a little bit weird about leaving right after our fabulous dinner without paying, but I guess that’s the beautiful part of all-inclusive packages!

After dinner, and after a couple of drinks at the bar (and a junkanoo parade through the bar - junkanoo is a Bahamian cultural tradition, like Mardi Gras for The Bahamas), it was time to call it a night and get some rest. We were looking forward to seeing what this adventure would bring us!

Just Married!

Well folks, we did it!!! We're MARRIED!!! As in FOREVER! Wow! :)

Tales from the Caribbean and corresponding photos are forthcoming. I started my new job today and have a busy week planned, but I plan to start documenting the greatest week of The Mer Show EVER very soon... stay tuned!

Love, Mer