Zwanger

Melissa and I have recently had some life changing news that I haven't yet addressed in the blog. In fact, we haven't really gone out of our way to tell people and I am sure there are a few frequenters of this blog who will get the news here for the first time. I am not sure what the reason is (perhaps modesty, probably not wanting to get too ahead of ourselves), but we've held it rather close. So what is this news? Well, (deep breath) here goes:

We are having a baby.

Well, technically, Melissa is having the baby. I'm not sure what my role is. Well, I know what my original role in the entire affair was, but I'm a little foggy on what comes next. I guess that is why I am signed up for pre-natal classes starting in January. To be a bit more precise, we are 4 months along and have a due date around the 3rd week of May.

When we revealed our news to those around us, I was quite amused by the astonishment and surprise that was shown by family and friends in reaction. Apparently, we had concealed our aspirations to start a family quite well. I suppose if you look at our lifestyle, which is impossibly unique, there doesn't seem to be much room for a baby. Heck, there is barely even room for the cat. To clear all of this up, let me tell you the story of how we got to this point.

Our life has changed unbelievably since that fateful day in June 2004 when I got a phone call from a former colleague asking if I was interested in going to work in Yemen on a rotational basis. At that time, we were very much droning away in the office towers of downtown Calgary. I was quite focused on my career and trying to make the right steps to get ahead. However, we both had a nagging urge to break out and see more of the world since coming back from our 6 month backpacking trip through Australia and SE Asia in 2000. Unfortunately, doing anything meaningful with the standard 3 weeks of holidays that rookies get is just plain impossible. At that point, the only hope I had to scratch the travel itch was to take some sort of sabbatical at some point in the future. The Yemen job was the perfect situation as it entirely opened up the ability to travel and do the things we always wanted to without having sacrifice career advancement or personal finances. Up to that point, the thought of a baby just didn't register. In fact, I think we both sort of expected to go through life without kids (which isn't that uncommon for our demographic).

What my current job provided was a supercharging effect that allowed us to blast through our priority list in a great deal less time than I could have ever imagined. Once we started to knock off some of our original priorities (travel, career, financial comfort), others began to pop-up (the world just won't let you stay idle). The first was a desire to simplify our lives. When we bought our place in the Crowsnest Pass, it was intended as a getaway from the city. When we stopped to think about it, we realized that we had no reason to be in the city (once Melissa stopped working), so we loaded up the truck (like the Clampett's) and moved out of the hectic city to a very unhectic corner of Alberta. As an extension of this (and of our travelling), we have been enjoying the rewards of accumulating experiences as opposed to material items. As big a reason as any is that I absolutely love the challenge of being cheap in such a consumeristic age. It is a source of pride and I wear it as a badge of honour. Melissa is worse yet. This explains our new obsession…dumpster diving. We have more recently begun to aim at living our lives in a more planet friendly manner. I completely acknowledge that this more than a bit hypocritical as my carbon footprint is larger than the average person (due to all of the airplane rides I take). This just makes it more important for us to takes steps to reduce our affect on the planet in other ways. I'm not sermoning (if that is even a word) on these ideals, only explaining that living the way we do has brought us a great deal of happiness and satisfaction.

To sum this up more simply is to say that we have gone from quasi-yuppies to quasi-granola kids in the last few years. Along the way we have developed the urge to begin a family. I suppose this is one of our purposes in life (although not a necessity) and the idea eventually passes through every couple's collective mind. In our case, other stuff just needed to fall into place for the realization to set in.

Back to the story.

We came to the realization sort of at the same time that we wanted to go down the baby path. For me, the realization came while watching a couple of young kids playing in the water on an island off the coast of Malaysia in early 2006. This was quite early into our travelling (Melissa only quit her job a month before), so we agreed to take advantage of the ability to travel for another year or so before trying to have a baby. Like clockwork, it turned out exactly like we loosely planned. We spent the year and a half doing all the things we had ever wanted to and then found out that a baby was on the way at the most fitting time…while we were travelling in Belgium in October. The Flemish/Dutch word for pregnant is zwanger (as discovered by the pregnancy test we had to sneak off and buy in Ypres), and this was sort of an inside joke between us for the entire trip. In what is an amazing coincidence, my dad snapped this picture. Notice the sign above our heads. What are the chances?

A question I keep getting is about my continued employment in Yemen. Several people assumed that I will be pulling the plug and move back to Canada to work. Nothing could be further from our desire. Hopefully we are not underestimating things, but we are very intent to make the current situation work. It goes without saying that there are some obvious sacrifices. However, we believe that the upside of my current situation far outweighs these.

Anyways, that's the story.