Everyone's kicked a goal!

Just a quick one tonight as it's a bit late and I've got a bit of a headache, although despite this I'm still finding it difficult to draw myself away from the computer. Addiction comes in many flavours...and this one's Geek-Toy Flavoured.

Right, the big news is that tonight, for the first time, I felt our baby kicking ! :)

For those of you who came in late, I myself am not actually having a baby. My wife is. What with her being the female of the couple, and with us being sticklers for some old fashioned traditions, we felt it best that she carry our child.

So we were sitting there just before dinner, slouched in front of Australian Idol (no, I don't watch it, I just know all their names and reckon Bobby from last night did a great version of Under The Milky Way. In no way am I at the point where I must touch the poster of the finalists precisely 24 times a day. That's way too many. I think 10 times a day is more than enough).

Mrs M yelled out to me as I was up at the fridge to come and feel our little girl, who had obviously started the night time play session. I put my hand on her tummy, expecting to not feel anything as usual, and then BOP! There was a huge kick, or punch, or headbutt or something. Really quite violent, she is. Gets it from her mother, I'm sure.

We were both pretty ecstatic with this little bit of action. Nice and assuring to get this sort of thing between visits to the obstetrician.

Ok, off to bed.

cheers,
Macca

Too much sax and violins

Howdy team,

More crappy network problems going on here. I'll try not to labour (yes, that's labour with a 'u') the point, but here's a brief rundown.

After last week's shenanigans, we again started to have telephone line weirdness on Friday. This time, the phone was okay, but the ADSL was falling out like best friends over that hot 'n flirty new girl at school. I rang our ADSL provider (Westnet) and they told me that most of their customers who are in our area, and hence are going through the Mullaloo telephone exchange, are currently disconnected. He said there was a message on his screen regarding the Mullaloo exchange, which said that Telstra had advised that it was doing some work in the exchange over the weekend. Hello...

So I rang Telstra again. God, I love Telstra. Have I made that clear so far? All I wanted was to find out from Telstra was how long could we expect the work to continue, and therefore maybe get some idea when our telephone line could expect to stop being prodded and yanked every which way.

Anyway, get this. The lady at Telstra says to me that if my problem involves ADSL through a third party, I have to raise a support issue with them, and that they have to raise a support issue with Telstra!!! What?

"But...", I spluttered, frustratingly, "the point of that step has already been accomplished! Westnet have already been notified by Telstra that there's work going on in the area. What would be the point in Westnet raising an issue with Telstra now? Can't you just tell me how long the work is expected to last? Like, today...or the whole weekend...or a month...?"

But no. For party A to find out a bit of information from party C, they may not talk directly. You may only communicate with party B, who may then find out the answer to your question from party C, and relay the information back to party A. Makes perfect logical sense.

Right, enough of that.

We saw Ben Folds the other night, playing with the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra. Pretty good, although this one was at the Concert Hall, and we saw him last year with WASO in King's Park and I thought it was better there. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure for the purists, the Concert Hall is better for hearing the strings etc in the unamplified environment, but for me it was just not loud enough. Maybe I'm going a bit deaf from listening to my Ipod at screaming levels, but I preferred the outdoor environment where they amplified all of the orchestra. But it was a great show even so, and Mrs M stayed awake the whole night because she'd had a big sleep when she got home from school (work) in the afternoon. She is quite the tired young lady at present.

We had our 23-week check up the other day too - I forgot to mention it because it was so uneventful. Everything was fine, apart from the fact that somehow we'd managed to be a week out with our appointments (it was supposed to be at 22 weeks). And the whopping great big bill, too. All obstetricians seem to have a different charging structure, and with ours you pay not very much for most of your visits, and then for the 22-week appointment you pay four figures! But it's all worth it, and we got another peek at our little girl, wriggling about in there she was too. Our obstetrician is pregnant herself, a couple of months ahead of us, so she's just about ready to stop work and have her baby. But apparently she'll be right back to work, straight away. Pretty amazing, really. Very smart cookie, she must be. Talking like Yoda today I am.

Enough for now, this is. Later, talk we will. Etc etc.

cheers,
Macca

R.I.P. Free Breakfast

It is with sadness that I bring you the news that today the world has learned of the passing of the opportunity to have free breakfast every day at my workplace. After a long bout with employees dogging out as if they'd not eaten for weeks, it was announced that the free breakfast had succumbed overnight to financial factors probably brought on by myself and a few thousand other gluttonous, fat, tie-wearing scavengers.

There will be a brief mourning period for the next week and a half, during which employees may still feast until they vomit, ending in a final sending-off next friday, when the last greasy bacon and egg muffin will be wolfed down and instantly regretted. A fitting tribute.

Our hearts go out, quite frequently, with the amount of congealed fat clogging up our strangled arteries. And our thoughts are with the thousands of employees worldwide, who will be forced to endure the pain of healthy muesly, yoghurt and orange juice, at home with their families, rather than spend a half an hour more at work so that they may further company profits and risk a stroke through poor nutrition.

Oh well, it was good while it lasted. May free breakfast rest in peace.

cheers,
Macca

Grumble grumble moan moan

Howdy. Apologies for the lack of updates. I haven't been deliberately ignoring my duties as blogger, I've actually been unable to post one all through the weekend because for some reason the phone line in our house has started "playing silly buggers", which is an expression in this part of the world which means what you think it means. Since Friday, you can only get the engaged signal when you ring our place, and there's no dial tone on our phones. The ADSL connection is also affected as you might guess.

So I'm writing this one in a cheeky moment at work. Shhh.

When I rang Telstra to notify them of the problem on Friday night from my mobile phone, at a charge of roughly $45 million per minute (but hey - billing only charged to the second so you only pay for what you use!), the nice man on the other end of the line proceeded to ask me what the weather was like where I was, and if it was raining, because he was still in the city and was just considering how comfortable his drive home would be that evening.

Man, was I in the mood for chatting about the weather, all the while calculating in my head that the amount my mobile phone bill grew during the extended, unnecessary breaths he took between the phrases "Hmmm...that's a shame, I was thinking of doing a spot of" and "fishing this weekend", I possibly could have bought a new house with a new phone line in it. I will seriously consider this next time.

So anyway, they're sending someone round tomorrow (Wednesday) night to have a look at our wiring and stuff.

Here's a quick rundown on our weekend. It will probably sound remarkably like our previous weekends. Friday night Mrs M fell asleep on the couch with her ever-expanding, person-filled tummy resting happily on the ottoman next to the couch. I played with my new computer and managed to set up the home recording-studio bit quite nicely. I've rambled on about my current nerddome enough lately so let's leave it there. Saturday we AGAIN went to Ikea to get the bookcase thing which we couldn't decide about last time. Mr Murphy (of Murphy's Law fame) was clearly way ahead of us though, and the white one we wanted was always going to be the one which they'd run out of. So we trundled back out, armed with about 11 of the $1 Ikea hotdogs for me to have for lunch. Unfortunately, they probably weren't worth the risk for Mrs M, what with the Listeria thing and all.

Saturday night we went round to Mrs M's Mum & Dad's place for a bit of a farewell thing for Mrs M's brother's fiance, who is moving to Sydney next week for work. They both are, actually, but she's got to go a couple of months earlier because her job there has to start right away and his job here requires a bit more notice for some reason. We had the usual pasta feast, being an Italian family, and there was way too much food as usual too. It will be nice bringing up our little girl in this environment, with warm, fun family dinners where everyone's just relaxed and the kids can run amok. Mrs M's sister has two great kids (and a third on the way), and they have a ball, running around and playing and laughing without making the slightest nuisance of themselves. If we can raise our kids to be that happy we'll be doing well.

Sunday we kept going on our massive move-the-study job in preparation for the baby's room. Made good progress but still heaps to do. Sunday night we had my brother's family over. Now those kids are...energetic...let's just put it like that. ;) Nah it was cool, they're great, except when they go straight from having greasy chips to my beautiful foosball table that my Dad and I made and put their oily mitts all over it...

Ok, the boss has just walked in so I'd better post this. Fingers crossed we get some internet access at home soon.

cheers,
Macca

Everything old is new again for the moment!

Howdy team, and apologies for the silence at this end. As I alluded to the other day, I'm stuck in Nerd Paradise right now, and thank the Lord, ma flight has been delayed!

I'm not actually anywhere other than the study, in case you're confused. It's just that I'm having such a wonderful time with my new techie toys. It's not often that Mrs Mac and I splash out with our hard-earned dollars, but what with our baby girl coming and all, it's been a time for transition and new beginnings.

As such, what was the study when I started this blog a couple of weeks ago is in the process of becoming the baby's room, and what was effectively known as the "guitar room" is now the study. Rereading all of that now, it does tend to give the impression that we live this swanky lifestyle and I'm some sort of Richard Gere character, showing the Rolling Stone reporter around the east wing and oh this is the guitar room, because music is my real passion, not acting or gerbils, no, definitely music.

But we're not like that, the guitar room only took on that moniker because the most outstanding feature in this supposed bedroom belonging to an as-yet-childless couple were a few guitars, most of them pretty crappy and old really, nothing like Mr Gere's guitar collection I'm sure, although possibly safer to touch with your bare hands. "The Guitar Room" sounded better than "That Room Between The Bathroom And The One We Dump Our Clothes In, You Know, The One Where We Keep The Hand Me Down Bookshelves And The Dust".

So, getting back to the point, with the new study taking shape, it seemed like a good time to update the old computer, and with one of the main goals being to minimise the amount of stuff in our house, the minimalist Imac seemed a good choice. And I'm enjoying it immensely.

Mrs M is taking the day off tomorrow. I've been urging her to do this for a few weeks because she's realllllly tired and I think we need to look at the bigger picture with stuff like this at the moment. Getting sick due to just being run down would be crappy, especially if it might be preventable, so I think it's a good idea that she has a rest. Preferably without the excitable geek in the guitar room study yelling out every five minutes "Hey, look at how cool THIS is!"...

The last week or so our little daughter has started to move about. What started with (in Mrs M's words) some feelings like a tiny bubble has burst somewhere low on the bump, has now progressed to the point where she's feeling more definite movements. I suppose it would be a combination of the baby getting bigger, with slightly less room, and stronger and more mobile as she grows, as well as possibly the mother becoming more attuned to what it feels like and therefore "listening" for it. Anyway, it's pretty cool, and I can't wait till it gets strong enough so that I can feel it for myself when I put my hand on her tummy.

We were just saying yesterday how weird it is to think that this place, our house, which up until now has been solely the domain of us two supposed "adults", is now going to be hers too. It will be all that she knows, and where she grows up. Wow.

Damn, I can't wait to meet the little bugger.

cheers,
Macca

What a strange coincidence

Well those of you who read yesterday's post below will think this is rather ironic, but the reason this here blog entry is such a short, pathetic affair tonight is that I have just spent the entire evening setting up my gorgeous brand new Imac. Ha ha, yes, very funny it is too, given the topic of my previous rant, but it's actually true. It's sitting in front of me shining in its pristine, pure, virginal glory and oh boy, the nerdy part of me (which comprises about 99.998% of my body) is getting oh-so-inappropriately-aroused by TECHNOLOGICAL GADGETRY HEAVEN and OVERSIMPLISTIC DESIGN PRINCIPLES.

Anyway, before this gets out of control, I have to say that it's very late here and I just have to go to bed.

cheers,
Macca
P.S. Anyone who calls me iMacca in the comments will...well...you'll still be published, but rest assured that I'll press the publish link with quite some anger indeed.

You should call your daughter Apple! Geddit? Geddit?

Hiya. I'll get back to that there title in a moment. But first, how was our weekend, you ask?

Gosh, that's ever so lovely of you. Yeah, not bad. Friday night for dinner, we just got fish and chips from around the corner as is our wont on your average friday. The chips are the best chips in the world and we ate so many of them that each of my fingers is now as fat as your wrist. I'm...finding it...dfifficvult...to onmly predss...1 key atg a tiome...

Anyway we watched the 4th and 3rd last episodes of Lost from season 2 and prepared ourselves for what would surely be another huge letdown in terms of ACTUALLY GETTING SOME ANSWERS AT THE END OF THE SERIES. But obviously not enough of a letdown for us to actually not watch the next series. You know, just in case that series has all the answers.

Saturday morning I had two of the boys from the band come over to do some mixing on one of the tracks we recorded a few weeks ago. It's a slow process, especially when we stop to do a massive fried breakfast feast right in the middle of it. It was only semi-productive really, but hopefully we'll get something out there soon. We're planning to maybe release this recording as a 4-song EP, but we'll see.

Went pram shopping again on Saturday arvo. Looked at a few, and like all big purchases, the more you learn, the longer your list of "must-have" features grows. It quickly becomes impossible for one pram to have all the features. And how is it possible that some of the most popular, and hence most expensive brands can fail safety tests? Surely Gwyneth Paltrow loves her child too? Surely she wouldn't be buying anything less than safe...?

Which segues nicely into our title.

Look. There's nothing wrong with the name Apple. I have nothing against it. If you're a celebrity, and people expect you to name your child something ridiculous just because your life revolves around being noticed andnotforonesecondwouldyouconsiderjustbeingnormalforachange
Imeanthisisyourchildslifeforf$%kssakeandyoutreatitlikejustanother
redcarpetthatyouhavetowalkdown, but then hey - that's your bag and who am I to poke it?

But for us, even though we haven't yet arrived at a name for our daughter, I think I can safely predict that Apple will not be anywhere near the top of the list. Actually, most of the fruits I think we'll probably dismiss straight away.

I bring all this up NOT just to have a random dig at Gwyneth. (Although, was it misguided revenge on her part? i.e. "God, for my whole life I've had to put up with a first name that sounds like a sneeze!! Now it's my turn! BrooahahahAHAHAH!!"). No, I'm actually commenting on the fact that when you have a surname beginning with "Mac", people automatically lose every last part of whatever sense of humour they previously had, and saaaaaayyyy.....

"Hey wait - you guys should call your daughter Apple!......Eh? Eh? Geddit? Apple Mac! Ha!"

Let it be known, here and now, for the record, that this is officially the single most unfunny thing that anyone has ever said in the history of the world. The sentence "I've just had my leg amputated by a combine harvester" is in actual fact, funnier than the Apple Mac joke, even if you are the one saying it. Do I make myself clear?

Right. Thanks for putting up with my name-rage.

cheers,
Macca

You left me standing here a long, long time ago...

The Beatles have joined us this evening as I write this post. Particularly topical given the media circus that has come to visit Paul McCartney and Heather Mills in recent days. I haven't read much of what is going on, because I'm pretty confident that this is just the sort of subject to which I'm not going to be able to get anything approaching the truth. I feel sorry for both of them, and obviously their daughter. Imagine being separated from your new baby daughter...wow, I'm not yet officially a father - well I guess I am but she's not born yet is what I'm getting at - but I can still feel this horrific ripping feeling when I think of what it would be like. Anyway, sorry to start on such a downer, it's just that I love the Beatles so much and McCartney in particular has always commanded a boatload of respect from me, and it all just seems so sad.

Right, now that ITunes has flipped over from "The Long And Winding Road" to "Two Of Us", the mood has lifted somewhat. Ahhh...and breathe...

I'm tempted to say that Paul's £800 million fortune would soothe one's emotional wounds a tad, but I suppose that would be a bit of an easy target, and it probably doesn't in reality.

Mrs Mac was forced to add to her weariness this evening when she had to go to a school dance thing at Burswood. I'm thinking that what with our current fatigue and a few things we already have scheduled in for the weekend, this is going to be one of those weekends where the house may not receive the attention it deserves, tidiness-wise. I predict that there may be a very brief, concerted effort to clean a 6 x 6 foot square of the kitchen and living room, followed by a grueling 48-hour effort to remain within the aforementioned clean square until the moment we have to leave for work on Monday morning. At this moment, eye-patches will be donned for the walk to the front door, and thus we will avoid the inconvenience of viewing any domestic disorder for the majority of the weekend. Mission accomplished for another five days. I think that when our daughter is born, she'll enjoy sleepovers in the living room.

Right, I'm off to bed.
cheers,
Ian

Hi team. Wednesday night, who woulda thunk that I'd still be blogging after a whole week? Wowsers.

Mrs M is as tired as something really tired at the moment. As I mentioned in an earlier post, she is a teacher of year ones - I guess that might translate to "first graders" in other parts of the world. They're pretty trying at the best of times, and I imagine it's even a bit more of a hard slog with a rapidly expanding baby bump, hormonal changes and all the other new experiences associated with being pregnant.

To stretch her even further, she is currently doing the role of Assistant Principal for this term. It's a fantastic opportunity, and I'm pretty gosh darned proud of her because I know she's so well respected in her school and the selection for this job is just confirmation of that. But it's also an added strain: a new role to learn, the pressure of trying to make a good impression to validate the Principal's faith in her, and extra duties involving some work at home make her quite the tired young lady. Anyway, the role will end when she goes on maternity leave at the end of this term, in about 8 weeks. After that she'll be able to get a good rest. After building us a new pagola, painting the back fence and putting in a retaining wall. I mean, all that spare time and all...

Heh heh. Just kidding, wifeykins.

I might just add that as I write this I'm listening to the band Tarkio, who were the former band of Colin Meloy, now lead singer and writer for the Decemberists. If you're into beautifully constructed songs and haven't heard the Decemberists...oh words fail me. Tarkio was pretty brilliant too.

Ok, what else....oh I had two incredibly boring meetings today. One of them doesn't bear describing. The other one: we've just built a 'pilot' release of a new website. It's called a pilot for the same reason a sit-com has a pilot, i.e. so the stakeholders can look at it before it's in general release and decide if there's any drastic changes needed, or indeed if the whole thing can go live to the general public at all. It was made clear in all of the official documentation between the customer and us consultants that the pilot release would be completely devoid of any customised look and feel - it would be a "bare bones" site just showing the functionality, and the more visually appealing look and feel would be part of the next release. Got it so far? So, a few weeks ago we released the pilot and handed it over to a representative of the customer, who will test the site on behalf of them and sign off if it meets the specification. During the handover, we constantly reminded this person of the agreement that NO LOOK AND FEEL CUSTOMISATION IS PART OF THIS RELEASE. We could tell it didn't really sink in.

So we got his testing results document last week, and it was predictably full of "failures" where he expected it to look better, or for some text on the screen to read differently. Which part of NO LOOK AND.... do you not understand?!? How difficult is that to understand? Anyway, today's meeting was about how we would respond to the customer. I realise we must be professional and respond nicely to them. I just thought my suggestion to my boss that a simple two-word response would suffice could have been given more consideration.

Funny I don't seem to be any closer to that pay rise. Weird hey?

Righto, that's it from me.
cheers,
Macca

Well then. Thanks for joining us.

Here's a rundown on my weekend.

Friday night: being the craaaaaaazy funsters that we are, Mrs M and myself came home and cooked a roast chicken. Yeah, I know. Zany wacky individuals we are, combining to make a team that spells m-a-y-h-e-m !!! Anyway, after that, continuing with the hijinks, Mrs M fell asleep on the couch straight away and I shot some bad guys on the Xbox.

Saturday we went to Ikea and tried to move one step closer to getting the baby's room ready. The room in question is currently the study. The study has a whopping great big desk which will not be moving into the new study, which is currently the "guitar room". The big desk will find itself a new home somewhere. Not sure where yet - we've given it a few weeks notice and asked it to look for new owners, suggested it search the classifieds for like-minded furniture ("Medium-size filing cabinet seeks heavy-set desk for supporting relationship. I wanna be on you." etc etc). Anyway, so we were looking for a smaller, more compact workstationy thing, preferably with a single Swedish name like ÅRSTID, KLIPPAN, or SNÖT. So Ikea was the natural choice.

We came away happy, having chosen the cheaper and smaller of the two options. I think it's a good move because whilst we think we have a lot of crap now, I am led to believe that the spare space will soon fill up with untold bountiful treasure chests full of worthless and expensive one-use baby crap.

Had a quick look at some prams on the way home. We're only just beginning to look at them. Everyone's got an opinion and we're listening to them all at the moment, so if you've had a good or bad experience with any, please feel free to give us your two cents via the comment link below.

Saturday night we went to our friends' place, our friends being Mr and Mrs S. They have two extremely cute little kids, the eldest being nearly 3. He was very keen to show us his new train and did not blink once while the special visitor, Mrs M, read him a couple of stories. A few wines (for all but me missus) and a few laughs with some good friends. Nice. Mr and Mrs S have been building their house for over 3 years - don't ask - and for the last few months have been living in the one completed part of the house, the garage. It's not as bad as it sounds as they've set it up very nicely with a little mezzanine master bedroom and everything necessarily well organised. Still, it would be a trial with 2 kids under the age of 3 and it's a credit to their resolve that, at the time of writing, they've not yet killed each other.

Sunday, reasonably lazy, Mrs M off to breakfast with a friend while yours truly had a nice sleep in. Then I put together our Ikea goodies from the day before. Lots of frustrated groans and shouts of "F$&#ing cables!" were probably heard from behind the desk as I tried to make it all neat. In the end obviously it's all just shoved back there out of site in a big mess. Serenity now...

Last night, we went and saw Ben Elton at the concert hall. Brilliant show, as usual, from someone who we pretty much call a home-town boy these days. Poor old Mrs M fell asleep a bit, as is her wont in her pregnant state, but it was the second late night in a row for us.

Righto, that's about it. I hope your weekend was as madcap as that.
cheers,
Macca

In my spare time, I am an internationally reknowned rock star.

This is actually mostly true. Well. When I say mostly true, I'm counting the words...and...yes... see there are 11 words there and the first 6 of them are quite true indeed. In my spare time I most certainly "am". I don't cease to exist in my spare time. It's mainly the other 5 words ("an internationally reknowned rock star") which aren't, in the true sense of the word 'true', true.

But I do try to be a rock star. You can check it all out for yourself if you must. I am the lead singer in an original band called CrashPod. That link is to our website, which I must say is in need of a bit of a spruce up. Don't worry, when I'm finished slopping my bloggy gruel into your hungry mouths, I'll have a go at cleaning up the site and maybe updating one or two things. We've just finished recording 4 new songs which are easily the best thing we've done yet, way better than the ones you can download on the site currently, and while we decide what to do with it all, just at the moment we're in a forced hiatus.

See, we're not so much your drug-takin', booze-swillin', groupie-fraternisin', hotel-room-trashin', television-throwin', bat-head-bitin' kind of band.

We're more your tea-drinkin', comfortable-pants-wearin', wife-cuddlin', mortgage-havin', baby-makin' kind of band. Which is good, because in our younger days, boy did we raise some hell. Sorry - language - boy did we raise some heck.

Anyway, this all leads us to the events of this evening. Mrs M and I went and visited our friends with the new baby. Remember I told you the story of all the baby girls, including our own, yesterday? Well, anyway, my friend Mr E, who plays in my band, is the father of this most recent arrival, hence the band's hiatus. See how I linked it all back to babies? Seamless wasn't it? This won't happen every time.

Our friends looked as happy as Larry. For those of you unfamiliar with this Australian expression, they looked as happy as a pig in s**t. If ever there was a pig named Larry, in s**t, as it were, he would be very happy indeed. I get deep sometimes.

Their baby girl was predictably cute. They seemed like they were getting the hang of some things, and still learning some others. They looked nervous and excited and desperate to start this great adventure, to get past this training wheels stage whilst taking in every moment. In short, my missus and I both thought they looked exactly like what we'll be like in a few months time.

It can't come quick enough for us now, but we'll have to settle down and live our lives and prepare ourselves as best we can. Life at the moment is a torrid mix of practicalities and that gorgeous butterflies feeling you get in your stomach when you think about something great.

cheers,
Macca

Monday was a pretty cool day. We found out just what's swimming around inside Mrs Mac's tummy. We bucked convention and actually found out the sex of our unborn baby.

I work for a large multinational software company in the city of Perth, Western Australia. I'm a software engineer. Mrs Mac is a primary school teacher at a private school a bit closer to our home in the northern suburbs of Perth. These are details which are not particularly going anywhere at this point, but it just seemed strange saying "My wife picked me up from work at 10:30am..." when there was no actual context. Like I say, it'll all become clear over time.

For the second monday morning in a row, I got to work and got a text message on my phone delivering happy news from friends announcing the birth of brand new baby girls. Note that they weren't the same friends two weeks in a row. You would have read about that somewhere if that were the case. Anyway, so two different couples we know had baby girls a week apart. When I got in the car having been picked up by Mrs Mac, the regularity of our friends' babies at the moment, and in particular the fact that so many of our friends have had baby girls in the past year or two, set our thoughts racing and we were just desperate to find out.

I guess to be completely honest, although like most new parents we have the attitude that as long as our baby is healthy, then we're happy etc, we've both said we were leaning towards a tiny wee girl if we absolutely had to have a preference. The fact that we told each other that we had a feeling it was a little boy in there may have been just a mental covering of all bases, and we'd acknowledged this fact to each other too - bottom line, we had no idea and were desperate to find out.

Most couples these days seem to not want to find out the sex of their child until it's born. No disrespect to anyone in this situation who has this particular view, but for us we decided that there was no point in actively deciding to not know just about the only thing you can know at this point. Mrs M also has the opinion that it probably brings the father into the situation a bit more closely (because the mother has a natural closeness to the situation due to obvious physical factors), and I appreciate this.

Anyway, we got to the place where we were having the scan. The 20-week scan is what they call a 4-D scan. I'm not exactly sure what the fourth dimension is in this respect, so if you do, let me know. Three dimensions was enough anyway, and it was fantastic to see the little bugger moving around so much.

The staff at the scan place are amazing. The main guy is Dr Anthony Murphy, although there are other staff who seem to do a lot of the legwork. Both times we've been there (12 weeks and now at 20 weeks), the scan has been actually performed by someone else, and these other staff have been excellent. Clearly very smart cookies, all of them. Dr Murphy comes in part the way through the scan and gives his opinion too. He has a fantastic bedside (or scan-table-side) manner - very friendly and knowledgeable.

The lady (I think her name was Michelle) performing the scan this time was checking out everything for us. They checked the brain, heart and other body parts for size and function, as well as looked for conditions which might show up at this stage like spina bifida, club foot, cleft palate, and a few others. We told Michelle that we wanted to know the sex, and she had a bit of a look early on, but our baby wasn't cooperating. Getting all shy for the cameras, it was.

Then a bit later in the scan, she just oh-so-casually goes "Oh, okay, there's a better look. And....yep...it's a little girl". The comment seemed to come out of nowhere and it just caught both of us so much by surprise! It was weird: as soon as she said it, this huge wave of emotion came over both Mrs M and me, and we got a bit teary with the overwhelming happiness just for a second. Looking back, I reckon it would have been exactly the same reaction had the announcement been the other way, because it was just such a huge jump in what we knew about our baby. It now had a semblance of a personality to us, and I think it was that which caused the sudden emotion. A baby girl. We could stop saying 'it' and start saying 'she'. Even now as I write this two days later, we can't stop grinning.

Just one more note about the skill of the people doing the scan. Dr Murphy walked in most of the way through the scan, and I reckon he must have been in the room for about 2 seconds, had a brief look at the screen, and says "Oh, a baby girl. Congratulations". How he could tell in that time is beyond me. It gives you a nice warm feeling knowing that this sort of expertise is looking after your wife and child.

We got a few pictures, both 2-D and 3-D, of the scan. There was only really one good 3-D shot, because our uncooperative daughter wouldn't turn and face the camera in any of the others. We have given her time-out for this, which she will serve immediately following her birth. If you don't do it, they'll never learn. The good 3-D pic is above. Don't concern yourselves with the umbilical cord being close to her neck, it's absolutely nothing to worry about and completely normal at this stage.

We got out to the car and couldn't stop hugging each other and smiling. It was quite something. We rang my parents and they were stoked, having two grandsons but no granddaughters until now.

Anyway, that was Monday. I'll keep you up to date.
cheers,
Macca

What's this all about then?

Hi. I'm Macca. My missus is...um...Mrs Macca. For the moment we'll just call ourselves that, what with all the stalkers and such that we're likely to encounter in blog-land, I thought it best that we start off a bit more restrictive, name-wise.

So, what's this here blog all about then?

Well, Mrs Macca is, as of today, 20 weeks and 4 days pregnant with our first child. We are more than a tad excited about this, and as we begin the second half of our 9-month journey to parenthood, I find myself wanting to write about stuff.

What stuff? And what's the name Beyond Baby Blog all about?

I'm glad you asked, though please, one question at a time. I guess I wanted to write about our experiences with the pregnancy, the joys and the excitement we are feeling as well as the concerns and worries we naturally have as we prepare for this most shocking change to our life. So that's the baby part of the name. The beyond part is twofold:

- I intend to keep the blog going not only for the next 20 weeks, but further into the future as we meet and embrace our new little family-member (so it's beyond just this short period).

- My posts will probably only partially touch on this part of our lives (see so it's beyond just the baby. Genius innit?). Obviously we're still living, working, and tackling all that this entails. There are other things I feel the need to write about, and these will include music, art and beauty. Sometimes I will also get very silly indeed and write nonsensical malarkey. Sometimes I will end a sentence with the word custard.

Hopefully you'll stick around and have a read. Feel free to comment on whatever you like. As this is my first post, I'm not that au fait with the whole moderation and comments bit of the blog, but I'll work it out.

Anyway that's enough of an intro. More details of who we are and what we do will be uncovered in my posts.

cheers,
Macca