Baby's "T minus 3 1/2 months" Christmas

We didn't expect this! Baby Voltron made out like a bandit with gifts this Christmas, and he's not even here yet!

So far, Dan and I have been very careful to not shop for the baby quite yet. On one hand, it's ongoing denial that he'll be here so soon. On the other hand, I know I will not be able to resist going crazy at the baby stores, when the time comes.

We have many friends and family memebers who have already started families and have young toddlers who are quickly growing out of the baby stages. We are surrounded by young parents who are looking for a great place to put all of the old baby stuff that they aren't using anymore, and they see our living room and garage as the perfect drop site! Since Dan and I don't really know what to be prepared for, we are both quite welcoming to the already-tested-and-proven baby gear and toys that are coming our way!

We are also blessed by other experienced and excited parents and grandparents who gave us brand new clothes, blankets and toys as Christmas gifts, and even addressed the gift tags to Voltron Burnett!

It's the most surreal experience to be carting baby toys, gear and clothing into our house. It makes Dan and I pause and realize that we really don't know what's coming at us as new parents. However, it also make it a more and more Real experience, and it is very exciting and fun to step into this new adventure of our lives!

We are so thankful for everyone's generosity so far. We are luck to have such a great support system from experienced and happy parents. We look forward to joining their ranks really soon!

Baby Room Theme

Dan has been "nesting" ever since we first discovered I was pregnant. He would love to have the baby room already painted, complete with a wall mural, and furnished with every baby accessory know to man, just like in the fancy baby furniture magazines.

Fortunately, we do have an extra room in the house that we reserved for this very purpose. Unfortunately, up until now, it has been used solely for storage for all the boxes of stuff we've accumulated over the years, that we couldn't decide where else in the house to store. We call it "The Room We Do Not Speak Of." Up until very recently, if we opened the door, all your could see is a wall of cardboard boxes. We could not enter the room or see inside.

I'll admit that most of the clutter is mine. I enjoy crafting with origami paper and beads, so I have a collection of each, along with a selection of crafting how-to books. Also, since I was in elementary school, I have enjoyed taking photographs of both people and landscapes, and I have filled boxes and boxes of pictures of people I've met and places I've been. In addition, I have always loved books and information, so I have a decent library collection of all kinds of books. Plus, I am extremely sentimental about things like Christmas cards from friends and little notes and presents people have given me, so a couple of large boxes are filled with mementos I can't bring myself to give or throw away.

Nevertheless, I have been working diligently to whittle down my collection of miscellaneous things, and slowly but surely, the room is being cleared.

As soon as the room is cleared, Dan expects to begin painting, although, yet again, Dan and I cannot agree on what color to make the room. Currently, the room is a bright garish light blue, which isn't horrible, because we are expecting the baby to be a boy. Dan excitedly anticipated the gender discovery doctor's appointment, because he had a vision that if we found out the baby was a girl, then the room would automatically be pink, but if it was a boy, then the room would be blue. Easy as that. On the other hand, I hoped that we could agree on a gender neutral color prior to finding out the gender of the baby, lke maybe a muted blue, a sage green, or a neutral color.

"No brown!" Dan insisted, referring to my suggestion of a neutral color.

"No pink!" I retorted.

A few months ago, we went up to visit Paso Robles for a friend's wedding. There, we discovered this fantastic little craft shop. As we browsed through the collections of handmade jewelry and home decor items, Dan's eyes wandered up to the ceiling, where large, brightly colored kites were suspended, as if soaring through the sky.

"We're going to have a kite hanging from the ceiling in the baby's room," Dan announced.
Although it doesn't, by itself, constitute a "baby room theme," we have agreed to figure out a way to suspend a kite (or two or three) from the ceiling in the baby's room. Perhaps that makes our theme "things that fly in the atmosphere," thus excluding stars and planets and space ships. However, then more questions arise. Does that include dragonflies and butterflies and birds? What about angels or faeries or dragons? Planes and helicopters?

We still don't know. But there will be a kite.

Banzai Tron Burnett

Ever since we announced that I was pregnant, the first question people have asked us was, "What are you going to name the baby?" The reality of actually being pregnant hadn't even sunk in to our heads, yet people were full of suggestions for names.

Now that the doctor has confirmed that it is going to be a boy, people are certain that we've named the baby already. Which we haven't. We talked it over, and we decided to keep the name, if we do happen to choose one early, a secret until the baby is born and we've officially given him the name. That way, no one can say, "Eww, why did you pick that name?" even if they really, truly don't like it. Also, the we won't have to suffer the consequences of changing our minds, in case we do.

We do have a few names that we are contemplating, but we really have this funny habit of changing our minds and making decisions at the last minute. For example, in our last house, we installed wood flooring. We were absolutely set on a light colored pecan for about a month. When we went to the flooring store to confirm our final order, we walked in the door, saw a medium colored pecan that we both loved and immediately changed our order to that color. A few years ago, our first rescue puppy was named "Twinkie" for a couple of weeks, until we brought the second one home and couldn't bear to call him "Ding-Dong," even though he kinda is one. So the names were changed to "Mocha" and "Java," after Dan's love of Starbucks coffee. Obviously, we can't go around randomly changing the name of our kid, so we'll have to think this one through carefully.

Being of the stubborn mind types, Dan and I hardly ever agree on anything. My mom came to visit us once a long time ago, and she opened the refrigerator and laughed. "Why do you have both Pepsi AND Coke?" she asked. I like Pepsi and Dan likes Coke, and neither one of us will relent and give up our favored soda and pretend to enjoy the other soda more. After my mom looked around the kitchen at our two different loaves of bread and our various selection of breakfast cereals, she stopped asking questions, but I could see her shaking her head and hear her giggling at us. Given our agreement to disagree, it's come to deciding on the temporary nickname of the baby, and, as you can imagine, it's become quite a discussion.

Dan came up with the idea that the middle name should be "Tron," not so much like the 1982 Disney movie "Tron," rather as a suffix to make the first name sound cool, powerful, and most of all, technological. We are keeping in mind that our kid will be the product of a academic book nerd and a computer techie nerd, so the only reasonable way to keep the kid from getting beat up in the schoolyard is to give him the name of a big tough robot. We're particularly fond of "Vol-Tron," especially because it's usually followed by "Defender of the Universe," at least in the minds of people who are familiar with the 80's cartoon. A friend suggested "Super Tron," another more recent comic and several international technology companies that we aren't familiar with, but the name, Super Tron Burnett, has a nice ring to it.

When I set up the blogspot site, both voltron.blogspot.com and supertron.blogspot.com were taken already. I did some research on the Internet for interesting sounding names that ended with "tron," and I happened upon this long lost Transformer named "Banzai Tron." Although I am disappointed that he was a Decepticon (one of the Bad Guys), I really liked the nod to my Japanese ethnicity plus the alliteration of "Banzai Burnett." It also reminds me of what I call my dad's hobby of working with miniature trees in containers "Banzai," even though I know it's incorrect. My dad's hobby, of course, is working with "bonsai" trees, even though many Americans mispronounce it "Banzai," which is a samurai battle cry. I call my dad's miniature tree hobby "Banzai" to annoy him, because he knows he's taught me better than that, and can't help but correct my "mispronunciation" every single time.

Dan and I haven't agreed on the temporary name quite yet, but I change between "Belly Burnett" and "Banzai Tron Burnett," and Dan uses "Vol-Tron" and "Super-Tron."