On this, the second night in the last three that I have spent watching my husband watch a televised Texas A&M basketball game, (and bear in mind that the third evening of those three was reserved for the Super Bowl) Dan and I had the following conversation. Dan remarked on the fact that the Texas A&M basketball coach is not married.

Me: Yeah, he doesn't have time to have a life, that's why he's not married.
Him: He's really dedicated to the game. It's probably better that he's not married. At least he's not ignoring his wife or something.
Me: Maybe they should make all Aggies stay single so that they can give their whole attention to being Aggies.
Dan: (Silence.)

Yes, it is a full time job being an Aggie. And being married to one, for that matter. if the Aggies keep up their winning streak, I may never see the front of my husband's face again, just the side of his head as he turns his face toward the glow of our plasma television.

Maybe I will take up knitting to pass the time. I think Dan would really like a giant burnt orange University of Texas sweater, don't you?

Moments from tonight's Pioneer Clubs class, where Dan and I are referred to as Mr. Dan and Ms. Haley.

Ms. Haley (bending over 3-year-old Chloe, who suddenly appears to be chewing gum): "Chloe, what is that purple thing in your mouth?"
Chloe (pulling the object out of her mouth and pondering it.) "Um, I don't know."
Ms. Haley: "Well then spit it out!"
Chloe: "Yeah."

Mr. Dan: "OK guys, we're going to use glue now, but don't use too much or you'll glue your paper to the table. Seriously. Easy on the glue."

Ten minutes later, said by Eliana, age 2, I think: "Mr. Dan, don't take the glue away from me!"

They do looooove to glue things.

Oh my poor readers. February has been a sad month on the blog, hasn’t it. I’m sorry. February, as a month, has always kind of drained my inspiration and focus, and this month has been no exception. There’s plenty going on. I just don’t have the will to write about it. I'm too busy trying to stay warm.

I’ve decided that instead of stringing you along, making you think that perhaps I might get it together enough to post something any day now, I’m going to take a declared blog hiatus starting today. Not a long one, not any longer than some of the longer gaps between posts that I’ve had lately. Ten days. Come back on Monday, February 26, when I promise you a new post, and a good one, with pictures, and links. I'm doing some interesting stuff between now and then, including going to New York City for the first time in my life, so I am sure I'll have plenty to say when I get back. I won't be any warmer, but I expect to have good pictures of myself freezing and perpetuating the notion of tourists as complete idiots. I'm going to be lucky if I can take a cab without screwing it up. But once I get there, my friend Leigh will be able to herd me around.

In the meantime, a note. The Missing Mississippi webmaster (Dan the Great) is pondering a redesign of the blog and a possible switch to Wordpress as opposed to Movable Type. This is more of a distant goal than an immediate one, but I wondered: Has anyone out there in blogland made that switch, and what have you though about Wordpress? Also, were we to do a redesign on the blog, are there any features you would want to see?

One of the things we’re most anxious to resolve is the thing where the blog seems to just eat the comments that you leave. What’s happened is that in the process of tightening up security so that we don’t get so much spam, we’ve set a filter that seems to trap nearly everything. Or, it makes you think it’s rejecting your comment, and then it posts it 5 or 10 times. We know it’s happening and we’re sorry.

One of my goals is to finally get a good blogroll going so that when I’m being lazy about blogging, you can go visit other, more interesting people I know. But again, is there anything you want that we might be able to include? And does anyone have any great graphics ideas for me? I’m not the most creative person, visually, but I want to do something nice looking, so help me think about it. All design ideas featuring fireworks or firearms will be immediately disqualified. But maybe we could work a piece of okra into the new logo.

Come back on February 26.

Lately I've been thinking about how the big moments in life seem to take a long time to arrive, but when they do, they happen fast. Usually in 30 seconds or less. For example:

It took about 30 seconds for Dan to ask me to marry him. Dan is not a beat-around-the-bush kind of guy, and I was ready to say yes. It was a quick conversation, but it meant that we were engaged, and that changed everything.

It takes about 30 seconds to repeat your wedding vows, if you're going with the traditional, to have and to hold, until death do us part version, as we did. But once you've said those few little words, you've committed yourself to a whole new life.

And, as I recently learned, it also takes about 30 seconds to find out what a $7 pregnancy test you bought at the grocery store has to tell you about the rest of your life.

In our case, a few days after Christmas, one of those tests told me that we are going to have a baby! I'm about 13 weeks pregnant now, and our first child should arrive sometime around September 3. We're ecstatic, and so happy to share the news.

It's funny, the ways in which this little piece of information changes your life from the second you know it. Even if you just think about something simple, like food. In the first few weeks, I strove to be the world's most balanced, healthy eater, diligently getting my quota of milk, lots of water, and three solid meals a day. Then around week 6 the morning sickness kicked in and I readjusted my goals to "Eat something, anything, other than cereal and a vitamin at least once every day and keep it down." Now as I'm getting into my second trimester and the nausea is blessedly subsiding, my restated goal seems to be "Try every fruit known to man." Apparently, the baby likes fruit. Especially oranges. This is weird in that I have never particularly cared for oranges, and suddenly I am buying them by the crate. It's like some form of insanity. I look at myself, standing in the supermarket line with a basket almost entirely composed of fruit products, and I think "This kid is running my life already." But I don't really mind.

It's probably natural that we talk about the baby all the time, but seriously, we talk about the baby All. The. Time. The bad news is that this probably makes us really boring to be around. The good news is that it gives us plenty of opportunity to pray for our child, which is something we do every day now. If you're willing, join us in praying for Baby Wachdorf, (who Dan refers to as "Little Mo" for some reason best known to himself) and pray for us as well. If thinking about being a parent has convinced me of anything, it's that we don't know what we're doing. So we're counting on a lot of wisdom and love being granted to us for this baby, who we already love so much. The one thing we know for sure is that our lives have changed again. And that is just grand.

Here, to start us off on what I am sure will be a whole new photo documentary project titled something like "How Haley Got to be the Size a House" is the first pregnant photo for the blog. This is me and my dear friend, Leigh, who I visited in New York last week along with my friend Autumn.(More on this trip soon.) Leigh is about six months pregnant, and so has a much more impressive baby belly than I do. Mine just looks like I've been going to Krispy Kreme too much. But in any case, here we are, showing off our babies.

So welcome back to the blog, people. Strap yourselves in. It's going to be an interesting six months.