No baby for you .... 1 year

The Sivitz household may now be more appropriately named the Sivitz garden. A whole lotta growing is going on.

The beard is still growing:

Sarah is growing:

Claire is growing too, but for what should be obvious reasons we don't actually have any pictures of her yet. Even the garden is growing. With 7 consecutive days of 70 degree weather we've fast forgotten that this is the dead of winter. I've heard that its gotten so cold in the Midwestern United States that even water is freezing. I mean imagine if someone took a bucket of water and put it in your freezer. That is what happens OUTSIDE! I keep hearing these news stories about all these poor people in the Midwest who are having to pay huge heating bills because of the recent cold streak, but has anyone really stopped to think about the fact that you don't have to turn on your freezer when its that cold outside. I mean, come on people, if you aren't smart enough to live somewhere that doesn't get so cold, at least figure out how to take advantage of it. Take your Ice cream, frozen meat, snowballs you've saved from last year and put them outside. Then turn off your freezer and sit back and wait until you get your next electric bill. Sure, you might be shocked that you have to fork over $400 for a single months bill but at least its not $401. And besides, consider the fact that as you are running out the door and trying not to be late for work, at least you won't have to run back inside to get that frozen entree for lunch....

Anyway, on to more serious matters. The birth of my sweet baby Claire. As you can tell by the pictures above, we still haven't met her. Just when I was about to give up hope, I came up with this brilliant idea while eating some wonderful blueberry and chocolate multi grain pancakes that Sarah had whipped up on Saturday morning. I said to myself, if the baby isn't going to come on my terms, perhaps she would come at the most inconvenient time. So I took out my hammer and I started tearing down one of the walls in the house.

I consider this my first declaration of war with my daughter. If she is going to stubbornly sit in the womb and leach off of all my wife's nutrients, well I'm going to ignore her and start a new house project. I even went so far as to put a nine month pregnant womb to work helping me on the drywall.

When that didn't work, I took Sarah out for some spicy Mexican, but that turned out not to work either since we went to the not so authentic Chevy's. I think the combination of the crazy singing waiters and the quite scary looking "El Machino" scared her back into the womb for another couple of weeks. The last crazy idea we had for the day was playing basketball. Aside from shooting some hoops, Sarah successfully made both left and right handed layups and the baby still refused to come out. Although she is still yet a fetus, I've already determined that Claire is going to be quite a stubborn child.