Simply Amazing

Yesterday (Tuesday), Emily and I got to hear our child's hearbeat for the first time. It was truly a remarkable experience. The doctor handed me a little contraption that looked a lot like a child's microphone/cassette-player set. He squeezed a little bit of gel on Emily's abdomen and then I put the wand/microphone from the doppler machine on the gel and voila! It was incredible to hear that little heart beating. If you pointed the wand in one direction, you could hear Emily's relatively loud and slow pulse (about 80 bpm), while in the opposite direction the baby's heart raced away at 160 bpm! The baby's pulse was also fainter than Emily's, but it was especially fun to point the wand in a 3rd direction and get to hear both at the same time. The book says that at this point in the pregnancy, the baby's ears aren't very developed, so I imagine that about all the baby can hear is mommy's heartbeat. I'm more excited every day.

By the Pricking of my Thumbs

It's late Sunday night and for some reason I can't sleep.

On Saturday night, Emily and I went to see Macbeth at the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park (my anniversary gift from her). It was a fun experience for both of us. It is an open air theater, so it got a little cool at the end, but fortunately we had brought a blanket.

I really enjoyed the play. I like Shakespeare in general, and though I much prefer King Lear to Macbeth, the production was very well done and it's nice not thinking about all the symbols and themes that are so important in Lear. Macbeth is about ambition, unnatural crime, and madness, with a touch of the supernatural thrown in. It's pretty straightforward for a great tragedy.

One of the Gospel Doctrine teachers had a baby this week, which means I got to substitute on late notice. I used to enjoy teaching, but I think that was mostly because standing in front of everyone satisfied some vain ambition. Well, either that ambition is gone or I've realized that I'm not a good enough teacher to gratify my pride in that fashion because I no longer enjoy it. Now I only teach because I feel bad trying to thrust this responsibility on anyone else at the last minute.

Today, Graton Gathright was called to be in the Elders' Quorum presidency in our ward. That means that of the set of people that were Sunday School teachers when I became SS president in May, only Liz Findlay and Valerie Gathright remain and Liz is on sick leave until well after she delivers her twins. I guess when you have such great people as teachers, you have to expect that the other auxilliaries are going to try to steal them away. For some reason, I find filling teaching positions to be one of the most difficult parts of this calling. I just want to make sure we have the best teachers possible.

I made a lot of progress on my homepage this week. Feel free to look at it by following the link in the sidebar to the right. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

I am happy to announce that Emily is feeling much better. The cold she had earlier this week is gone, but it sure wiped her out. We're excited to visit the doctor on Tuesday where we expect to hear the baby's heartbeat.