Week 32...and the Bergquists too!

Thirty-two oh-so miss them when they're gone weeks have slipped past since we thought we might manage another human being in our little happy equation and now with only about eight or so weeks left...you know, give or take...we're getting a lot giddy, a whole big bunch giddy, in fact.

People we know are flipping out babies early which makes us both terrified and impatient. Aimee and Kevin had their little feller, Simon, in Ann Arbor this week so now Harmon (isn't that the bestest name ever...I mean, next to Simon) has himself a little brother now and the fine and dandy Kevin and Aimee that I met in the Hartwig offices at UM and instantly fell very much in like with back in '94 are now a stunning FOUR people, not two. That kind of multiplication baffles me. I mean, I know my reproductive and gestation times tables and all but the last time I looked they were a beautiful and fully functional "three" and before that a grin inducing "two"...now they're a holy shnikes "four" and I'm very worried about my math skills. Suddenly 32 weeks doesn't seem that far away from 40 weeks...which doesn't seem that far away from little Elli coming home for Thanksgiving from school in Ann Arbor and saying, "Mom...Dad...I'd like you to meet that boy I was telling you about. This is Simon Bergquist and I think I love him." My God...my frontal lobes are hemorrhaging.

Then before you know it little Simon has found himself a new girl, one from some random town in Southern Illinois (and who could blame him really, Elli being so hesitant to commit and all), and a not so little Elli is on the phone telling us that she's leaving for Europe and needs $2000 because she just "has to get away from here because everything reminds her of Simon." Well we can't afford that kind of nonsense and we tell her so and she goes and sells the computer that we bought her at Christmas and drops out of college to move to Australia and learn to surf...maybe meet a guy named Callum...not Jack or Eddie...Callum. #$%&, this is gonna be tough.

The good part is that June looks like a million bucks. I could manage a mirror a little better but the impending Mom looks great. We can't wait to meet the restless and fairly violent lump of kicks and stretches that's been pounding the junk outta June's belly for months now but we're both a little scared of that Bergquist heartbreak.

Michigan's at The Garden & so Daddy's gone to NY

Elli might be wondering where that big warm hand is each night. Dad's off to New York for three nights of basketball at Madison Square Garden and there'll be no big hand belly rubbing for a few days. She might wonder what happened to that deeper voice, not Mom's but that other one...the one that never shuts up. yeah, well I'm bringing it to NYC with me. It'll be back on Sunday in time for dinner at Bachan and Grandad's.

Be good little girl...and don't let Mom mess with the shovel. That snow isn't goin' anywhere and your Mom's ambition often wants it to a little too prematurely. It's a girls weekend alone while Dad's off to the Big Apple with Uncle Brad...you know, that other deep voice that talks even more than Dad does. You can tell the difference pretty easy by paying attention to the voice decibel and by how much crap comes out...Daddy's the lesser of both. I hope Uncle Brad doesn't read this 'cause he could still teach your Dad a lesson or two I'm sure.

Be good, have fun, and take care of your Mom. Dad will bring you home a big monkey... one that he'll naturally find scaling a giant NY landmark dodging airplane gunfire. What other monkey could there be?

Maybe Mom can teach you the words to "Hail to the Victors" while I'm gone? Or maybe you can just float around in amniotic fluid and do your best to hear sound? Whichever.

It's officially winter here...Boo man, boo

We woke to a blizzard of lake effect snow and well over a foot of the white stuff on the level. Crawled back in bed with June and stole some of her warmth while I pondered the certain challenges of the coming day. These days it seems as though each and every weekday is full of certain challenges. Sometimes I shrug, and other times I shake my head and sigh, either way I'm left with more questions than answers which is never good. I asked a lot of questions before and really didn't know much about anything in the first place...that's a bad combo. Needless to say it was an easy feat pulling the covers back up over my head and sticking my nose up under Junie's ear. Apparently in addition to a mind boggling level of curiosity I have a pretty cold nose.

It's officially winter 'round here, the two feet of snow in our driveway is a dead give away. June called work and snuggled up to a snow day whilst I braved the elements and slipped in to work, a good idea considering most of the kids I deal with don't get "snow days" for their problems. It'd be awfully nice if they did...for me, but more importantly for them. Mother Nature doesn't have #$%& on human nature and the hits keep comin' regardless of weather conditions. It would have been super-nice to just drift in and out of sleep with June and save myself the wet socks and daily demands.

Aside from the wet socks and all that snow, what's new? Hmmfph, plenty I'm sure...Let's see...

Aunt Netta is shipping off to Vancouver this weekend with almost nil notice in order to check out the possibility of a transfer to wetter (is that even a word?) climes and a new opportunity with North Sails. Tough decision time for Aunt Netta, but a humongously (that we're certain is not a word) cool enterprise.

Apparently Uncle Ian is officially a "hunter" now...as in he kills things with guns...and the weirdest part, he was out shooting partridges last week way up there in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere...that's like a Cow sitting down to a nice steak dinner...figuratively.

June's preggers belly is suddenly expanding exponentially. It's getting in the way of shoe tying, dish washing, and a wild assortment of other stuff. She's not frustrated but instead tends to get amused by the phenomenon...What a cool kitten.

I'm off to NYC this weekend for three consecutive nights of basketball, Madison Square Garden and some brotherly support.

Today marks the official two month mark to Elli's due date...yikes!

Oh...and did we mention that winter is here? Just in time for June to barely fit into any warm coat she owns. She's always had a bit of a knack for awkward timing.

Gerry and Mihoko..fine.

Grandma Cathy...fine.

All is well in Elli's almost world...well, except for that whole "two feet of snow" garbage, and it kinda would have been nice to have gotten all those leaves in the yard raked up before the dump, but really, whatcha gonna do? Elli doesn't care. I'm sure it's quite warm inside Mummy right now. The Netta - Vancouver thing might be a tiny issue for the little girl but probably more so for the impending Mom, June, and the already existing Mom, Mihoko...Elli's got two more months before she officially has an opinion about anything.

What to do when you're not doing anything

Somewhere between the darkened bedroom and the shower this morning I decided that I couldn't bare another day of, well, anything...so I dug down deep and discovered that I was indeed sick, arguably so, but who's putting up any kind of decent argument in the shower?

I crawled back into bed with my oh-so preggers wife and pooched all of her hard earned warmth and fell back asleep. I notified the proper authorities of course, and I wasn't entirely full of dung. I was indeed feeling less than capable of accomplishing anything good especially considering the tasks at hand today, well, everyday...so I ditched the working world for a less stressful, more leisurely ( or liesurely if you want to be creative about it) day of hanging out with my wife and unborn child.

I woke to Mihoko (the definitive Mom aside from your very own) at the house which is always a nice thing to wake up to and I watched mother and daughter interact to a quiet soundtrack in my head. What was playing? Mostly "Here Comes The Sun" by George Harrison but I'm sure I drifted into "Today's the Day" by Aimee Mann before I hit the shower. June had the day off (Remembrance Day...sigh and upward glance...big thanks to you fellas...wink) it was a mother/daughter day. They had plans of hitting the town and buying all of the sweaters in all of the stores before any of the other cold and shivering people got to them. It was a good plan except for the giant gaping hole that it left a truant moi to linger at home...ponder our grandfathers sacrifices and poodle around on the 'puter.

That's how we now have The Elli Blog...bugger took all day...well, a ginormous chunk of the day.

Dunno where June heard the name Elli but she loved it the instant she heard it...Emi fell off the table pretty quickly ( it wasn't sticking anyway) and BLAM, we needed a new blog. Elli sounds an awful lot like Ella only different and for some reason not as much of a pronunciation hassle for some people and so there you have it...Elli.

I'd like to say done with a satisfied tone in my voice but I'll hesitate...for good reason.

Just to make this whole post worth your while I'll offer up my Top 10 musical distractions from the day that never was...you know, for the betterment of civilization and my basement.

1. If 6 was 9 by Jimi Hendrix - I can't figure out why I never paid any attention to that song?
2. VIC Radio is Ithaca College's student run radio station. It streams live on the net and it's better than band aids.
3. Most of The Time by Bob Dylan - This one slipped completely under my radar and I'm ashamed of myself.
4. I Gotta Move by Ben Kweller - The song makes me want to be sitting in the San Clemente sun.
5. Simple Kind of Life - by No Doubt - I'm not embarrassed to say that I like this song...a lot.
6. Bruises by Cruiserweight - They've got this Feist thing going on and they're refreshingly not Feist.
7. I'd Go The Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric - I loves me some Monkees but this is the only version
8. The Wedding Present by El Rey - There isn't a single song titled 'The Wedding Present' on the entire CD
9. Cavity by Stew - The founder of The Negro Problem is an award winning Off-Broadway dude now...heavy
10. All the Young Dudes by Mott the Hopple - I think I played this song 237 times today.

One almost classy family...kinda sorta

Emi was restless yesterday, and we were bored so while friends got together and did something that sounded completely uninteresting for the price tag we decided to classy our lives up a little and slip on down to the city (Detroit) and spend much more extravagantly...and by extravagantly we mean "more bang for the buck." If there's anything we'd like to get good at around here, I mean aside from parenting, it's spending our loot more efficiently and with a better return on our investments. So before morning faded into lunch we were booked into the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with a pre-indulgence indulgence of dinner at The Whitney. Shrug...anything worth doing is worth doing right I guess.

Before our grilled cheeses (is that even a word?) had been digested we were setting out fancy duds and downloading concertos and symphonies and generally bubbling around a home more used to Saturdays filled with the Grateful Dead than all those dead composers. It was our first time to the symphony...all of us...June, myself, and Emi...and since Emi can now hear things pretty damn good we were extra excited at the prospect of perhaps planting the seeds for a future prodigy right there in June's belly. All those stringed instruments and acoustics filtering out perfection for little almost Emi's quickly developing ears. We even held a vague hope that perhaps one of us could beat the odds and somehow morph into a prodigy of sorts ourselves...somewhat late blooming, of course, but a prodigy nevertheless. By the way...spell prodigy wrong and you'll end up here which seems kind of funny, you know, in an ebonics kind of way...

Anyway...the most incredible part of the story remains to be told. Mister Brian (that's me) has himself two tickets to see his most favorite of bands on the planet at the moment, Kings of Leon, at The Fillmore just down the street from all this fanciness and classy-ficationing. Yes indeed, he did, and boyo sold them so that little almost Emi (or Ella, or Elli or I don't know...it seems we're wavering) could go and soak up all those genius vibes. Well, that and he thought it'd be a pretty kick ass way to score huge super giant extra bonus points with his wife in order to firmly cement in her mind the notion that he may very well be the coolest dude and eventual Dad ever (Sorry, that was too easy to just slip in there without prior restraint). So now the evening is beginning to take on epic proportions AND the whole family...all 2.5 of us...get to look pretty nice too.

We should speed this up a little...reservations at The Whitney...valet parking...coolest restaurant ever...scallops...mushrooms flown in from France...2003 Terra D'Or Pino Grigio...risotto...$15 martini in the 3rd floor Ghost Lounge( which officially makes the bar tab $30 for a glass of wine and a martini)...bathroom bigger than our first three apartments and with the best paper towels ever ... Blah blah blah... Max Fisher Theater...treated like regular royalty...kick ass view...musicians tuning as goose bumps raise...lights down...HOLY #$%&!...blah blah blah...the coolest night of my life.

Any night that includes crazy mushrooms (summer truffles) flown in from France along with Seared Nantucket Bay Scallops and Creamy Aged Gouda Grits with Sauce Perigueux has GOT to be good. Chuck in two of the most beloved composers of all-time and you're starting to slip past the point of no return. Baiba Skride does the solo thing in Mozart's uber-elegant Violin Concerto No. 3 and then the way-in-demand conductor Jankowski goes and leads a beyond captivating performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 and we're supposed to just swallow the whole thing as a regular, run-of-the-mill evening? Uhh, nope.

I guess I'll catch Kings of Leon later, and regardless of whether little Emi, Ella or otherwise turns into any kind of prodigy or not this was one night worth remembering forever and ever...kinda like that Happy Days episode where the Fonz jumps all those busses.

Then we came home...ate popcorn, drank Stella (me, not the preggers girl) and watched SNL. The funny part? Kings of Leon were the musical guests. Can you say synchronicity? We can...it's sometimes hard to spell though.