jonathanhickman.com

People like babies

Wow. I’ve never had so much conversation on my blog on one day.

Keep it coming!

How do you know you’ve got the right name?

How’d you come up with the final choice for your baby names?

Making a list of names I like is easy (relatively). But actually writing it down on the birth certificate seems huge.

Any advice on how to know when you’ve got the right name?

My wife rocks!

This is what she just said to me:

I’m serious. I’ve decided to let you name the baby.

We both like

• Charlotte
• Georgia
• Clara
• Annabel
• Catherine
• Emma

… I hereby turn the decision over to her father. You will always be able to tell her you chose her special name. I do hope I can have input on the middle name, but go for it on the first name!

And I will not be changing my mind on this. It’s your call and I will happily accept it.

In just three years

It’s funny to me how life changes. Just two years ago, I wasn’t considering having children. I didn’t even know any children. The first of my friends had a young son, but they don’t live near me, and I have yet to see them since their baby was born.

But now, in 2007, I am surrounded by kids: I’ve got three great step children, and I have two nieces, and I I spend a considerable amount of time with one of them.

And this time next year, I will have a baby girl of my own.

In just three years.

I kinda like the name Charlotte….

So I guess everyone has already heard our news. Yep, we’re having a girl!

I’m still very much in shock. We weren’t supposed to find out until Monday morning, and I was trying not to get too excited yet; that’s still a few days away. Even when we heard this morning that they were about to do an ultrasound, I didn’t expect much. And then the lady said, in a rather matter-of-fact manner, “well, you’re having a girl.” Katie was so excited she had the phone to her ear before she left the room (not true, but close) and making plans for whom else to call, all the while telling me how excited they’d be.

It’s something else, knowing she’s a girl. For one thing, no more awkward she/he’ness.  And now we can focus on girl names, which is good considering how few boy names I like.

Personally, I’m vying for Charlotte. Clara was my favorite until this morning, when Katie said “a lot of people pronounce Clara with an “ah” sound, as in Clahra.

Charlotte Anderson Hickman. I like it. And I’ve only got another five months to convince Kate.

Liquid soap is not my friend.

For the past five or six years, I haven’t been able to use any liquid soaps or lotions on my hands. It’s a huge annoyance, because it’s hard to keep your hands healthy in the winter and clean all year round without liquid soap and hand lotion!

Today, I slipped up and washed my hands with some Dial handsoap. Ignoring the allergy problem, I’m still amazed people use this stuff. And not because of the mostly worthless and possibly dangerous anti-bacterial ingredients, either.

No, it’s the alcohol. My hands, unaccustomed to such stuff, are now dry and uncomfortably taut. It’s unbelievable. They couldn’t've planned a better way to sell lotion. I guess your skin must somehow become accustomed to this stuff so you don’t notice it anymore after a while, but I can’t imagine it’s not bad for you.

Now if only I could use hand lotion.

It’s telling me something if I could just listen

You know how some people say they their arthritic knee is hurting, so they know it’s about to rain? Or maybe it’s about to snow, they can feel it in their feet or something?

I broke my wrist in high school. I was doing something stupid, and the story is pretty boring - typical of big things like that, where you would’ve been screwed if you lived a hundred or two hundred years ago.

And my wrist hurts.

It hasn’t really bothered me in a while, but every now and then it hurts so bad I can hardly move it, and I certainly can’t depend on it to carry anything or to lean on.

It’s weird, and I don’t understand it. And I always wonder what it’s telling me. Is it about to rain? Is the barometer dropping? Or maybe it’s some extrasensory thing, and it’s telling me something more important. Maybe my wrist can tell me when the stock market is about to drop or I’m about to get a raise or Timmy fell down a well.

No beer or ice cream

My stomach still hasn’t recovered completely from the sickness last weekend. It’s really frustrating. Today I saw my niece get sick at the office, and my stomach is still hurting from being sick last week. My dad, not as strong as he used to be because of diabetes, is still feeling quite bad (he, my sister-in-law, and I all got sick at the same time).

Anyway, I’m hanging out watching some Colbert tonight, and Katie suggested I take up beer brewing this spring. But I haven’t had a drink in a week. My stomach still isn’t up for it.

Or ice cream, either.

I’m ready to be back to normal.

Ups and downs

My niece, who works with us two days a week, was sick on arrival this morning. Her mother hoped it would pass, and it did for about four hours.

Cleaning up after sick children - not to mention how bad you feel when you can’t make them well - is probably the number one thing that amazes me about parents.

That’s the down. The up was the twenty month old child walking out the door to go home and saying “see ya!”

I’m a nothin’ man

Some people are good with faces but not names. Some people are good with names and not faces. Some people are good with voices.

Why am I so bad at all three?

Question for insomniacs

I did not start this week out well.

I hoped after a weekend of being sick that I would feel a lot better this morning. Well, my stomach feels a lot better, but not the rest of me. I simply could not convince myself to go to sleep last night. I got in bed at 10:30, and at one I was still frustratingly awake. I usually get up around 6.

And I got yet another reminder of how patient my parents were. The kids were cranky this morning, too. They spent last week in Florida and had to get up early this morning to go to school. Here I was operating on four to five hours of sleep after a weekend of being sick, and they were cranky after getting a good night’s sleep following a week at the beach. Oh well.

Back getting back to my question, this is what I’m wondering: if you have trouble getting to sleep, do you get up and do something else for a while? Watch some tv? Surf the ‘net?

I kept thinking I should do something like that, but I couldn’t bring myself to get up. I always fear I will be awake watching tv at the moment I would’ve fallen asleep if I’d just stayed in bed.

Any thoughts?