Many of you already know this from Facebook but I thought that I would make a post about it anyway because it is pretty big news in our family: we will be having a boy!

We went to the doctor on Thursday with Emma, Grammy, and Mimi in tow, to find out what the next little Robinson would be.  Grammy and Mimi were both fully expecting a girl, and Emma, when asked what the baby was, she responded “Gurl!”

After all the checking and measuring of the important baby stats, the technician had Kip call in the rest of the family to have the gender of the baby finally announced.  Once everyone was in the room, the Tech announced, “Well, it’s a boy.”  Her inflection showed no excitement or interest.  It sounded like she was telling us that “Well, it’s going to rain today.”  The reactions that followed though were more interesting.  Kip, according to my mother, beamed with a big goofy grin.  Mimi was so excited she teared up and exclaimed, “I know what to do with a boy!”  Grammy was all smiles, and asked me if I was ok.  (You have to understand that Kip and I really wanted another little girl, much like my sister Emily really wanted a little boy.)  I was in a state of shock and surprise for a few seconds, and then I just thought, “God is giving us a little boy, and he is healthy, moving, and going to be very precious when he gets here in less than 20 weeks.”  I was a little disappointed at first, and terrified because I figured out what to do with a baby girl with Emma, but I have no experience with little boys on an extended basis.  There are little boys in the nursery at church, but I usually let them be on their own and when they need a diaper change, I let the other worker handle that.  I am happy that we are going to have a little boy, and I am looking forward to buying him his own new wardrobe now that I know I need to have clothes for a little boy.

For those of you that have been living under a rock or don’t keep up with our lives like a stalker or super-fan, the plan as of now is to have the baby on July 19, via c-section, and name him Grayson Matthew Robinson.  No, the name isn’t a family name, it is just a name that Kip and I picked out when I was pregnant with Emma (in the event that she turned out to be a boy) and we still like it, so it will be the name of this baby.  And if you’re wondering, we are not naming him “Kip Robinson, III” because Kip says having the same name as your dad makes things too confusing. He figures maybe someday he might have a grandson named Kip. And I’m OK with that.

For those of you who don’t follow us on Facebook, I have added two new photo albums. First are pictures from Christmas/New Year’s in Newton.

And second, we have pictures of me pushing Emma around in a sled in the three inches of snow that we got here in Concord last night.  I also have a short video of me pushing Emma around in her sled. Enjoy!

I’ve never thought deeply about this topic before I had a child in the process of acquiring this mangled mess of words we call The English Language... but pronouns are hard you guys!

We sometimes ask Emma who different people in pictures are, so that she can remember the names of those family members she doesn’t see every day. When we get to a picture of Emma, we’ll say “Emma, who’s that?”

“Baby,” she’ll reply.

Then we will say “Emma, that’s you!”

At least, that’s what used to happen. After doing that for some time, if we ask Emma who is in a picture of Emma, she’ll now respond “you!!” And really, that’s our own fault. We told her that it was a picture of You, and so she learned who You was. Apparently You is a baby who looks suspiciously like Emma.

We could try to correct her by telling her it’s “me,” but won’t that get confusing when she actually does learn pronouns? She’ll wonder, “Why did mommy and daddy say that picture of me was a picture of them?” So I guess for now we’ll have to teach her “that’s Emma.” We’re also working on the whole you/me thing with finger pointing, but I’m not sure if it’s too advanced for a twenty-two month old.

Or maybe I could just try explaining that my “you” is your “me” and your “you” is my “me.” There’s nothing confusing about that, right?

So, I’ve now had two visits to the doctor since I learned that I was expecting again.  I’m coming to the end of the first trimester, and I was just curious if anyone who reads out blog knows any old wives tales as to how to figure out the gender of the baby before the ultra sound.  I want to go ahead and state that I put no faith in these hypotheses, I just enjoy hearing them, and seeing how they apply to my current situation.  I will go ahead and give you a couple of statistics from the first 13 weeks.  I have had some morning sickness, but have thus far, not thrown up.  The heart beat at the ultra sound was 168 beats/minute.  Then at the second visit when you get to hear it, the heart beat was at 160 beats/minute.  (I would like to interject here that Emma’s heart beat went from 181 beats/minute to ~165 beats/minute between the first and second doctors visits respectively.)

I have heard a few crazy theories so far:

1. Since I haven’t thrown up, it must be a boy.  (This I have a hard time believing since Elysabeth had a boy when I had Emma, and she was sick the whole way through her pregnancy.  And Anna never threw up when she was pregnant with Abigail.)

2. The heart beat started low so it must be a boy.  (I had hear that heart beats between 160 and 180 beats/minute are girls, and heart beats between 140 and 160 beats/minute are boys. Again, the baby’s heart beat falls very close to the middle range that makes it hard to tell.)

3. I have heard a tale that holding the mother’s-to-be wedding ring over her belly, and seeing which way it swings will tell you what it will be, but I don’t remember all the specifics of this wives tale.

Please feel free to share the crazy and not so crazy theories and tales, I look forward to reading them all!!!

I got a fancy new DSLR camera for Christmas, and got a chance to try it out while spending Christmas at Myrtle Beach with Stephanie’s family. I got a ton of pictures, but I have only put up 113 of them.

The camera also records video in HD (720p 30fps or 1080p 20fps). The video below is one I recorded at 720p, though here it’s displayed at only 360p (which I think is equivalent to YouTube’s “HQ” setting). I would have trimmed the video more, but my recent upgrade to Windows 7 left me very surprised to find that Windows Movie Maker has been removed. Supposedly it has been replaced by Windows Live Movie Maker, a completely different program that lacks a lot of features that were in the Vista version of Movie Maker. I guess I need to install Premiere or something. I haven’t needed it in the past for what little video editing I do for this site, and I’ve been doing pretty well at using only legally-acquired software for a while. Oh well.

Tonight Emma went trick-or-treating for the first time. (Technically this is her second Halloween, but last year she couldn’t even walk yet, so we didn’t dress her up.)  She had a blast!  You can see her duck costume here.  She didn’t have any problem with wearing it, and even got lots of extra candy from everyone who thought she was so cute.  She walked quite a long ways too, all the way down our street and back!  And she was good about knocking on the door, saying “trick or treat!”, and saying “thank you” after they gave her candy.

Of course, these things don’t come naturally.  We had to practice saying “trick or treat” first!  The video below shows a little bit of that process.  (We were practicing with toys instead of candy.)

I have a whole new slew of pictures and video for you to partake of.  I doubled the size of our Summer fun 2009 photo album by adding more random pictures from the summer, starting with Emma in her kiddie pool.

I also added a new album of photos from Labor Day weekend at Williamsburg/Jamestown/Yorktown, totaling fifty-three photos in all.

As for video, I’ll warn you that there is quite a lot here.  Seven and a half minutes of video, if you put it all together.  The last one, alone, is over four minutes.  I group them together for those of you who don’t care about these things.  For those of you who enjoy them, well that just means more to enjoy.

First up is a short clip Stephanie recorded one day of Emma wearing her slippers and playing with a hat.

Next, we have a video of Emma playing the “Where’s Emma?” game behind the curtains at our condo in Williamsburg.  She’s been playing some variation of this game for quite some time, but this is the first time we were fortunate enough to catch it on video.

Next is a video of Emma’s various animal sounds.  She knows more than we got to.  Stephanie walked into the room partway through, and of course Emma found running to her much more interesting than reciting animal sounds with daddy.  From there, Stephanie grabs the camera to record Emma bringing me a book to read with her.

And lastly we have a video that may be surprising to some of you who know how non-athletic I am, but I’m actually trying to teach Emma how to play soccer in this one.  She’s actually quite talented for a seventeen-month-old, I’d say!

It’s time again for some new pictures and videos of Emma.  I added two new albums to the photos page.  First, Emma’s second first-birthday party.  That’s right, Emma got to celebrate her first birthday twice—once with family and then again with friends.  And second, we have a set of photos from our recent trip to Myrtle Beach, which we took in the last week before I started my new job.

Beyond that, I have four new videos for you.  Here is a video from a month and a half ago, showing Emma climbing the stairs.  We happened to catch her descending the stairs properly for the first time while we were recording this video.  Nowadays she can go all the way down the stairs with no problem.

Next, we have a series of scenes in which Stephanie and I try to get Emma to play the drums in Guitar Hero.  We had some success, but I think Stephanie and me end up playing the drums more than Emma does!

Now we get to the afore-mentioned beach trip.  Nothing particularly special about this video, it’s just Emma wandering around on the beach for fifty-nine seconds.  Enjoy!

And to finish this off, we have another demonstration of Emma’s musical inclinations.  We never taught her to dance, but we found that whenever fast music would come on during TV shows or video games, Emma would start dancing.  So I tried to capture it on video, and I was mostly successful.

It’s hard to believe it, but Emma turned a year old on Sunday.  She is now walking like a pro.  There are two new photo albums available: miscellaneous photos of Emma over the last three months, and Emma’s first birthday party.

And if that’s not enough, I’ve got three videos for you.  The first one shows Emma’s progress in learning to walk over the past few months.

Next, we have Emma’s first experience with birthday cake.  She didn’t like it very much!  I’m sure that’ll change over time.

And lastly, we have a video of Emma opening presents.  She got practice at this last Christmas, but now she’s really good at it!

Emma is just growing and growing!  I guess that is what babies do.  To think that in just over a month she will be one year old.  My little baby won’t be a baby much longer!  I just thought that I would take a moment to update everyone on all the amazing things Emma can do now.

Watching Little Einsteins
Almost everyday since Emma was around four or five months, we would watch Little Einsteins on the Disney channel.  At the beginning of every episode, the characters on the show pat their laps to help Rocket blast off.  Today was the first time that Emma patted along with them!!  It was so exciting to see her patting along and then saying a word after they said “Blast off”!  She’s been clapping at the end of the episodes during the curtain call for about a month, but it was really exciting to see her patting with the team.

Sign Language
Kip and I have been trying to teach Emma how to communicate with us using sign language.  She is really good at “good job” which is clapping her hands.  But lately she has also picked up “all done” when she is finished eating and every now and then she’ll sign “please” when she wants you to pick her up.  (More often though she raises her arms and looks up at you when she wants to be picked up.)  She also will wave “hi” sometimes when you say hi to her.  She waves to herself for “hi” and sometimes away from herself for “bye”.  Kip also taught her how to give “high five”.  I mean, who doesn’t want a ten month old giving them five.  Next we’re going to work on “pound it” (the fist bump).

Story Time
Every night Kip reads Emma her bed time stories, and he always ends with “Good Night Moon”.  When he goes through the story and the picture is the full room view, he always points at the things that the bunny is saying good night to.  Emma has picked up that habit as well.  She always points to the red balloon first and the picture of the cow jumping over the moon second.  Then she will point at random things in the room, but it is still really cute.

Fuzz on the Floor
Emma is a pro at finding any and everything that is on the floor.  I can vacuum the living room, and within five minutes of her being back in the room she can find a single piece of fuzz that might have been missed by the vacuum.  She used to immediately stick the fuzz in her mouth, but I have been trying to teach her to bring it to me instead.  This way she learns to pick up and bring things to mommy.  It is very helpful.  We do still have to have the occational mouth check to make sure she isn’t chewing on something she should not be chewing on.

Walking?
Emma has mastered crawling and is well on her way to understanding the mechanics of walking upright.  She has actually already learned how to climb the stairs.  I found her up three steps one day when I was headed back downstairs from taking something up to her room!  Of course, we’re making sure she doesn’t get near the stairs again, they’re just too dangerous for her right now.  She can walk around all the furniture in the house and pull herself up on just about anything, including the smooth walls.  She loves to play “chase me around the house”.  We’re trying to reset her boundaries.  She likes to hold onto your hands and walk around the house.  That lets her have more freedom than being confined to the furniture and the walls, but she still isn’t motivated enough to try taking a few steps on her own.  I’m not sure if I’m ready for my baby to walk away from me yet.

Shutting Doors
Emma has also learned that the doors are a lot of fun to play with.  You can bang on them, swing them back and forth, and push them closed.  She especially likes to shut the doors on you while you are doing something in the room.  Then she realizes that she can’t play with the door anymore and gets upset.  It is really funny when she crawls around the room and goes to the laundry room door and bangs on it while saying, “dadadada”.

So those are the really big accomplishments we’ve made in the last few months.  I’m sure we’ll let everybody know how her first birthday goes.  Be sure and check out the pictures (there aren’t new ones, but the old ones are still super cute)!