Hey, kid! You've got placenta on your face.

We'll get back to ancient history (Christmas Trip part 2) later. Since Heather had complications with John's birth, the doctors are keeping a closer eye on this one. Because of that, we were in for our second full ultrasound (and Heather has had a lot of "mini" ultrasounds too).

First, we'll share an image from the first one (whoops, we forgot to post this picture 3 months ago):



Now, we'll share the cool pictures from this time. First, you'll be pleased to know that his profile still looks a lot like a baby's (Do any baby's ultrasound profiles look different?). In fact, it looks a lot better in this image than the last... What a difference 12 weeks makes.



Then we caught the baby with his hand to his face. I said he was picking his nose. Heather thought he was sucking his fingers. The technician thought it was on his cheek. (I think Heather and the technician (a female) don't know little boys very well.)



Then, it seems that technology really improved in the past 12 weeks! We got some really cool 3d images. I can explain how it's really a reconstruction from 3d data using the marching cubes algorithm... Just ask me.



In the above picture, you can make out eyes, nose, mouth, fingers (near chin), and placenta on his face (the entire left side of the image).

In the 3d world, you can see where the kid's hand ended up the next time he went for his face.



I still think he was picking his nose the first time.

Christmas Vacation in LA (part 1)

Sadly, I got sick on Christmas Eve. This would have been sad enough, except that the next day, we had to be up at 4AM to catch a flight to Los Angeles. Fortunately for the sanity of all involved, John really enjoyed watching Wall-E. He watched it on the flight out to LA, and then at least once each morning the entire week we were in LA. Since Heather got sick as soon as we got there, and Grammy was sick (different bug) too, we were all grateful for the quiet mornings. Thanks Wall-E.



There were also other fun things to do while we were at Grammy's house that kept John happy while costing us less energy. One of the more exciting was Grammy's "ball room". Grammy drained the jacuzzi some time back, and started filling it with balls. John had a blast in them. I think it's genetic: When a dorm room went empty while during my freshman year, I attempted to convince the RA (older student in charge of keeping us freshman from doing anything stupid) that we should fill the room with balls and make it a play room for all. Sadly, it was part of his job description to keep us from doing such things.

(Quick note on the following images: I spent a long time creating an animating GIF for this. Sadly, it seems that it only works sometimes. The first image below is the first part of the animation. The second one is the last image. If you want to see the animation, click on the second image and watch it that time. It looks like this only works _once_ due to stupid caching behavior of images in web browsers. If you want more technical details, call me and I can bore you to death.)




We also spent one late afternoon at a kid's paradise. This is a store-like place in a strip mall that is full of things for kids to play with: A series of tunnels to climb through, a ball bin (but John already had one of those at Grammy's house), a bunch of reconfigurable kid-sized building blocks (as in 2-4 feet tall), a bouncy castle with a slide, etc.

We were still feeling rather sick, so we didn't get a ton of images, but these were two of the better ones. First, we have John going down the slide from the castle. You will note that he is wearing a blue shirt with a red cape: Those are his Superman pajamas.



Next, we have me teaching John how to play air hockey. He did pretty well for a four-year-old. The 8-ish-year-old kid beat him, though...

Christmas Morning

We always leave our stockings out for Santa next to our beds before going to sleep on Christmas Eve. Since we were going to travel on Christmas day this year, John wrote a letter to Santa asking him to bring our presents and stocking stuffers a day early. Santa obliged. So, these things happened first thing December 24.

(Quick apology: I remembered to bring the camera up to our room before going to bed so that I would get a video first thing. Sadly, I forgot to charge the battery. So this first video gets cut off before John finishes describing the contents of his stocking...)



Even though John describes them as "Easter Eggs", Santa wasn't confused about which holiday this was: Silly putty always comes in the little plastic containers that split in the middle (the same as those plastic Easter eggs for candy).

(BTW, the "hard thing" that he mentions when the video cuts out was an apple.)

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Realizing my mistake, I plugged in our camera's battery immediately to start recharging. I then had to stall John some so that the battery could get some life in it. So, we talked about the silly putty and what it can do. He enjoyed taking the letters off of pages in books.

After around 15 minutes, we decided it was time to go downstairs and open presents. John told us about downstairs:

John: "There was lots and lots and lots of presents down down there!"

Jeremy: "Did you already look?"

John (matter of factly): "Yup."

It was a bit sad not to be able to see his face when he first saw the presents, but we still had a good time opening presents.

John's favorite present that morning (by far) was a marble track. I had spent several hours the evening before putting it together -- but I'm sure it was nothing compared to my father putting together 5 bicycles on Christmas Eve once. Plus it was worth it to watch him being _so_ excited.



If the lighting had been better (and higher resolution video), you could see his eyes following each marble as it rolled across each part of the track. The incredible thing about it was that he actually laid on the ground staring at it for half an hour at a time multiple times during that day. Here's a shot of one of those times:



We had a pretty quiet afternoon. John played some with his toys. Jeremy and John watched Wall-E. (Jeremy's first time. It wasn't his last -- see our next post on vacation in LA.) That evening, at the Mudrick's house, we made a gingerbread house (log cabin style). If anyone requests, I'll look up a picture of that and add it later (hint: You can add comments to posts below).