Dear Jocelyn

Dear Jocelyn,

I wanted you to know how wonderful your father is and how lucky we are that he is the man in our lives. On Friday night, while I was calling him to complain about the rental truck company's customer service, he was sitting in traffic (not complaining) driving home to Manchester with a bouquet of red roses from my favorite florist and a bottle of my favorite champagne. He was showing me, in the many different ways that he often does, that he loves and appreciates me. He is a romantic, that father of yours. He could not be more excited about the prospect of being a father to his little "peanut", which he nicknamed you months ago. And this blog was entirely his idea and creation.

I envision our life with your father to be full of love and pleasant surprises, such as Friday night. And one of my strongest desires is to create a home that is warm, loving and inviting to family, friends and most importantly, to you and your father.

You Can't Go Home Again

So after a long, drama-filled week, we closed on our new place in Wellesley today. In a nutshell, we found out on Wednesday that the town had just published a new set of zoning regulations which (we thought) would prevent us from building a house big enough for 3 adults and 2-3 kids. We then spent hours on the phone with the builder, his attorney, our attorney and our mortgage broker. As of Wednesday night, we had decided that Wellesley was just not going to work for us, so we were not going to go through with the closing, forfeit our $30K deposit, and start from scratch on the real estate search, while continuing to suffer through the daily commute from Manchester to Boston.

Then on Thursday morning, Julie went down and spoke at length with the head of the Wellesley Planning Board, the publishers of the new regulations, and learned there were wrinkles to the regulations that had not been apparent to us earlier. We then concluded that we could build a house big enough for all of us. This was obviously a big relief, but also added to the emotional roller coaster of the week overall.

We closed this morning and are now the proud owners of a 1,273 square foot Cape that Julie has affectionately dubbed "The Trailer." Unless we sell the Manchester house soon, it is in all likelihood the house in which Jocelyn will be born. Quite an adventure, this real estate stuff.

Driving in to work this morning, I kept wondering what type of person she will be - what type of innate qualities she will have.

Will she be an extrovert or hang back in the crowd? Will she seek thrills and excitement, or calm and serenity? Will she have to be asked to be kind and gentle, or will that come naturally?

Will she be outwardly feminine or more of a tomboy? What type of people will interest her?

Will she be passionate, and if so, what will be her passion? Will she be more scientist or philosopher (or neither, or both)? Will she gravitate toward the arts, or will we not be able to pry the ball out of her hand?

So many questions. Can't wait to get to know her.

Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Jocelyn Isabelle Gesner. I am a Sagittarius (assuming Mom delivers on time) who's into kickboxing and water gymnastics (just ask Mom). I have two sisters, Sam and Teddy, who seem awfully curious about what's going on with Mom's belly these days. I plan on growing up in Wellesley, if Mom and Dad can ever sell the house in Manchester.

I had a chance to say hello to Mom and Dad today at our third ultrasound appointment (see my glamour shots below), which went OK except that one of the technicians was pushing me around a little bit. (She was trying to determine whether I need to be delivered by C-section. Luckily, we heard that all systems seem to be go for a normal delivery in December.) She kept poking me with that wand, and I took the opportunity to practice my kickboxing skills on her hand, earning some admiration from Dad.

Oh, and Mom and Dad learned that it's OK now to paint my bedroom pink...the technician seemed much more certain of this today than in previous visits. Glad we got that settled.

All this conversation is tiring me out. I think I'll take a nap...