Sean's Home!!!!

Sean got back from China on Monday afternoon. It's his last trip until after the baby is born. He has some great pictures of his trip which we will post later. But we are all very happy that he is home!!!!

Game 1: The littlest Sox fan

Marisa and baby watched Game 1 with soon-to-be-Uncle Michael. The Sox won 13-1 with some help from their big bats as well as the Rockies' bullpen.














Baby Raymond was very excited, particularly when the Sox came up to bat. This is a picture of what I think he looked like during the game. He definitely takes after his dad!

Sox vs Rox World Series Ticket Adventure

With Sean coming back from China in time for "Game 5 (if necessary)" of the World Series, Marisa and belly spent 2 hours on Monday trying to get tickets from the Rockies' website before it was officially announced that their servers had crashed ("due to an external, malicious attack" or so they say).

So, here were are, 24 hours later, waiting again to try to get tickets. The only difference this time is that the Rockies' website is overwhelmed by people who want to buy the tickets only to sell them on Ebay for 10x face value. It is quite obvious that the Rockies are novices at this post-season tickets sales thing!

But, even if we don't get tickets, we will have fun introducing the littlest Raymond to baseball in utero. Besides, Sean will probably be incredibly jet-lagged when he returns and it will probably be less stressful on Baby Raymond if Marisa is lying on the couch while screaming at the TV instead of jumping up and down at the stadium. Not to mention that he won't have to see his father get beat up by all the bandwagon Rockies fans when he walks into the stadium in his Sox Nation attire.

UPDATE: Well, we didn't get tickets but we are still excited to trash talk with all our friends who have jumped on the Rockies bandwagon. So bring it!

Baby's Heart Beat at 28 weeks

We had our 28 week check-up today and got to hear the litle one's heart beat again. Just like his little feet, this little boy's heart was kicking! We made a recording of the heart beat to share...

Baby Raymond's Heart Beat October 15, 2007

Kisses and kicks!
Sean, Marisa, and Baby

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

October 15th is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.

While we are very excited about the baby boy growing inside Marisa's belly right now and what the future holds for all of us, we will never forget the pregnancy we lost last year. It's amazing that something that was so small and that we only knew about for a few short weeks could have had such an impact on our lives.

So, we just wanted to take a moment today to celebrate and remember our little Fusion. We would not be who we are or where we are today if you hadn't been in our lives.

NLDS 2007

As many of you know, October was often a volatile time during the early years of Sean and Marisa's relationship (see Wikipedia, "Baseball Postseason" for any of the years between 1996 and 2004). But things are a bit different now that we live in a National League town. Here's a picture of Marisa and belly at Game 3 of the 2007 NLDS at Coors Field - the day the Rockies swept the Phillies to clinch the division. GO ROCKIES!

Note: The Rockies are 2-0 when Baby Raymond is in the stands! He must be good luck!

Growth of the belly

Just a little update to show you the current size of Marisa's belly. This photo was taken last weekend (Sep 30 or so) by Yol when she was in town.

More later -- baby is hungry...

Marisa & Sean

Welcome to new blog (UPDATED)

Hello to the millions of people who will probably read this blog! (Or, at the very least, hello to our parents who we hope are reading this). We started this blog to post pictures and our thoughts as our family grows.

Here's a picture when it was just the 2 of us...

Now, Marisa's belly is growing and we have a wee one on the way! Baby Boy Raymond (aka BBR or Tomato or Balthazar) is entering the third trimester of his growth in Marisa's belly. Though we haven't seen him on ultrasound for almost 2 months, we can tell that he is there by the frequent belly-jiggling kicks.

Here are our earliest pictures of Tomato - before we knew he was a boy:

9 weeks: The head is on the right. If you look closely, you can see arm buds! This ultrasound was the one that set our due date as January 4th! 13 weeks: From our first trimester screen. The baby was sleeping during the entire appointment and refused to wake up so the techs could take the measurements they needed! He finally moved after more than 30 minutes when he felt like it. Marisa's reaction: "This baby DEFINITELY takes after Sean!"

After showing this picture to Marisa's brother, Michael said he could tell the baby was a boy. What do you think?

And, here is the last picture we have of the little guy. It was taken at 19 weeks. Marisa thinks he looks a little monkey-esque. Sean, however, thinks that he is simply preparing for a career as a tromboner or perhaps a male model (he seems to be in the process of perfecting his imitation of Derek Zoolander's Blue Steel look).
This is also the appointment where we learned Tomato's gender. We can tell it's a "he" because we saw his penis, aka the "distinctive turtle sign", on the ultrasound. (We won't post that picture because we don't want to be censored.)

Anyhow, that's all for now. We will post more as we post more.

kisses and kicks,
Marisa and Sean and Baby