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The trouble with delaying these updates is that the news and random thoughts just pile up, and it gets more daunting the longer you wait. However, since there are several folks who have not updated their blogs yet, and I need a high-horse from which to scold, here we go. (I refer here to a certain big sister, and best friend, who have mastered their guilt and continue through life with stale blog postings for months at a time.)

So much. Alexe is now 19 weeks pregnant. The 20th of this month we are going to find out if we have a boy or girl. We have no idea, and our preference seems to shift from week to week. I'm looking forward to the transition from "my sweetie has a little pooch belly and is acting funny" to "oh my Lord, we're having a child". Should be a hoot.

I've been away from my building project for two weeks while making a trip to Vegas for work, and then a working vacation to the NC coast with Alexe's family.

Vegas is loud and bright, and working a conference is super-draining. The kind of days when you fall into bed with a sore face from on the talking and smiling, laughing, and generally using up vast reserves of "pleasant Kagan". Nicholas came out for a short visit (in a cute little rented Prius, we had fun watching the batteries charge as we drove along), and we had a wonderful time first catching up, a necessity for a best friend I see once or twice a year if I'm lucky, and then we went out to Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam. We swam in the lake, beautiful fresh water, and then went and took a peak at the dam. Amazing. Can't say much more about it without pictures, which are trapped in my cell phone.
Oh, and it was 112 degrees in the desert.

A pleasant red eye flight back to Memphis, a 5 am arrival I will never repeat, had me back at work for two days before Alexe and I piled into the car with Dido and Shadow and headed East for 1010 miles to Join Alexe's extended maternal side of the family for a week at the beach. (I worked while there to preserve vacation for paternity leave, not the most moral building location for that sort of thing.) The rented house the 9 of us stayed in was 3.5 miles down a beach of very soft and shifting sand, a novelty that wears off surprisingly quickly and becomes stressful as all get out. Local tow trucks have a field day charging $250 to get folks going again. The mother in law and her sisters went three days before combusting, and then it was a waiting game until Sat morning when we started our 1010 mile trek home.

2 things:
1)Alexe is so much fun in a bikini at the beach. Strutting and dancing with her belly pushed out, and playing in the waves with me without moving her legs too much because she's convinced they will look like baby seals to the sharks.
2)We miss Trader Joe's. Stopped at the nearest one to our house on the way back home, in Atlanta, and packed the car so full that Shadow was surrounded in the back seat by cascading piles of Pirate's Booty, and Dido was "stuck" on my lap.

The new stairs in our building are almost done, which is very exciting. This week is the Watermelon Carnival in Water Valley, and we're looking forward to the street dance tonight.

I'm sure there's more, but I've officially posted so slackers beware.