Brian Chimes In

For those of you who have noticed that we started a baby blog, you might have begun to wonder, "What's Brian think about all of this?" Well, it may not happen often, but I've seized the controls for right now and can tell you what the last 15 1/2 weeks have been like from my perspective.

Brynne's willingness to eat fast food/junk food has been an absolute delight! I've never eaten healthier than the 4 years that we've been married, so early on when Brynne requested we drive to McDonalds at 9:00 at night for some french fries, I knew I was in for a 9 month health-holiday. Now don't get me wrong--I embrace the idea of eating healthy and I fully plan on promoting to our children the idea of making healthy eating choices. In fact, it was for this very reason that I agreed to have dinner at Eat'n Park when Brynne had a craving for a salad bar (does that even count as a craving?) For those of you not from the Pennsylvania area, Eat'n Park is like a Friendly's or a Perkins, and I knew we were in for a treat when we pulled into the parking lot and all of the handicap spaces were full. Going inside confirmed that none of the other patrons were even within 40 years of us. And when an old lady broke wind while browsing at the salad bar and was too old to even realize she had just done it and the two old people sitting at the booth right behind her when it happened never even flinched, I couldn't help but bury my head into my menu and thank Brynne from the bottom of my heart for being pregnant and for allowing us to deviate from our normal dinner routine.

Our friend Colleen recently gave us a Panera gift card with a generous balance on it (thanks again, Colleen!). She lived with us for a while last summer and knows full well how much Brynne enjoys Panera. It didn't take long before we scrapped plans to make dinner one night and decided to go to Panera. Wouldn't you know it, we got there and we bumped into our good friends who promptly announced to us for the first time that she's expecting! She said that she didn't feel well but that Panera sounded good to her, which is also Brynne's exact story. Needless to say, we've been to Panera 3 times in the last 3 weeks. It's even to the point where our friends Jared and Kim offered to buy her Maggie Moo's ice cream, and she passed it up for Panera's chicken noodle soup and a garden salad. I find this all very entertaining and the best part is that I still have 5 months more of this.