How Is Babby Formed?
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1722 hrs
Most of you know by now that Morah is pregnant. And for those of you who don't know, guess what! Morah is pregnant!
The image above is of our babby, which is currently about 15 weeks along (about 12 weeks when this ultrasound was taken).
Everyone asks the same questions, so I'll try to answer as many of them as I can remember here.
When did you find out? We found out right before our anniversary by way of a home pregnancy test. This was confirmed about 3 weeks later by a doctor.
When is the baby due? Early June.
Were you trying? For how long? Yes, we were trying. It's kind of funny, actually, we decided to use science to help us right out of the gate, so once Morah went off of birth control, we were still careful to use other methods of contraception while Morah tracked her cycle. She also used a basal body thermometer, which helped us know when the best chances of conception might be. Armed with all this knowledge, the very first time we actually tried (that is to say, had unprotected sex for the purposes of procreation), it worked.
Do you know the sex? Are you going to find out? We don't know yet, but considering how much planning went into making the kid, do you really think we'd wait to find out?
Which do you prefer, a girl or a boy? Ultimately, we want both a boy and a girl, so don't have too much of a preference this time. That said, I'm leaning toward boy, simply because I'm the only "Brown" male capable of passing on the name within the bloodline.
Have you picked out names? What are they? I'm the fourth Thomas in a line, and I want to follow family tradition, so Thomas for a boy (his middle name would be Christopher). We talked about a lot of different names for a girl, and I suggested Tamsen. Morah preferred the spelling "Tamsyn," which follows a family tradition of hers (and that tradition is psychotic spelling of names by randomly changing certain vowels to "y." Just kidding, honey). Tamsyn's middle name would be Morah, after my wife's grandmother and namesake.
There's actually a funny story with the names. Thomas was always a given, but when we settled on Tamsyn, we thought, "gee, we don't know much about this name. Let's look into it." When we did, we discovered that Tamsyn is a variant of Thomasina, the female version of Thomas. Crap! We accidentally named both of our kids Thomas! Then I realized that Thomas means twin, and twins run in both of our families. We thought it would be appropriately ironic if Morah became pregnant with twins, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Are you excited? Hell yeah, we're excited!
I think that about does it for the questions. I've added a couple of baby registry links to the sidebar, just below my wish lists. (*nudge-nudge* *wink-wink*)
RIP: Lucille ''Bunny'' Brown
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 0928 hrs
The last time I saw my Grandma Brown alive was in June of this year. Morah and I were back in Honolulu for my ten year high school reunion, and I knew there was a good chance it would be the last time I would get to see her. I'm sad to say that I was right, as she passed away on the morning of November 8th.
The funeral was held on a Monday morning; a simple and beautiful service that I think my grandmother would have enjoyed. Although the circumstances were sad, the Brown family was happy to be reunited for the first time in over ten years. Family and friends came together to remember the life of a woman that had deeply impacted us all.
The rest of the day was spent with family. We ate good food, enjoyed an afternoon at the beach, and rested after an emotionally taxing morning that left us all physically drained. We had dinner together, and afterward bid each other farewell, promising not to let another ten years pass until we see each other again.
Bunny, as everyone called her - so nicknamed because of her "cotton top" of blonde hair - was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a while back and had been in a slow, steady decline. When Morah and I got engaged in 2004, she had trouble remembering who I was. At our wedding in 2006 she was barely ambulatory, and it was clear that although she knew she was at a wedding, she didn't know that I was her grandson. The past year had been particularly hard on her. She had been able to sit upright when I saw her in June, but she spent her last couple of months in bed.
Watching her body deteriorate wasn't as painful as watching her mind fail her. Each time we saw her it was clear that she knew she was supposed to recognize us, but didn't. What hurt the most wasn't that she had forgotten who I was, but the clearly embarrassed look on her face as she feigned recognition - the child-like hope that she wouldn't be caught in her lie.
Perhaps the hardest moment for me came back in June. I dreaded seeing her because I had heard about her state from my parents, and I didn't want my last memory of her to be one so sad. Luckily, Morah was with me, as was a close family friend, Judy. We visited in the early afternoon and she slept most of the time. When she was awake, she didn't pretend to know who we were, even after her partner, Mike, told her that I was her grandson. As hard as it was to see her like that, I think that made it easier at the same time. I can't really explain why. Maybe that didn't actually make it easier; perhaps I just felt like it was because the whole experience wasn't as bad as I had built it up to be in my mind. Mike and Judy talked the whole time we were there, and grandma slept in her wheelchair for most of the time.
Just before we left, I took her hand, told her that I loved her, and said my good-byes. Morah and Judy did too, and it was then that Bunny had a moment of clarity. She looked up at us, blinked a few times, and then smiled and laughed. Her laugh. The laugh that told me she was still in there. I had tried so hard not to cry, and although I managed not to up until that point, once she laughed, I lost it. Even now I'm crying as I write this. In that brief moment, I got to see my grandmother one last time. I got to thank her for twenty-eight years of happy memories, life lessons, and love.
Today my grandmother's ashes are housed in a beautiful koa wood box, inurned in a niche in an open air columbarium, forever facing Diamond Head.
