Thanks to a pretty good sale at Target and some good coupons we’ve been holding onto for just the right moment, we got our first diapers tonight. By my calculations these two 40-packs should last one to two hours so please, mail us more coupons!!!
I was driving after work today to pick up Steph and as I often do when nobody else is on the car, I was singing at the top of my lungs. I’ve been thinking about the things I want to give my daughter and chief among them is a love of music. Music has touched my life deeply, both in my appreciation for playing it, and in my appreciation to listening to it. It has relieved me when stressed, inspired me and taught me. I fancy myself a strong man, but to this day there’s a song that will me cry like a baby and there’s also a song that still makes me believe I can do anything, 10 years after the day I first heard it. I won’t divulge into the nature/nurture argument here but when I was in second grade I decided I wanted to be in band. My parents nurtured that desire and I spent the next ten years learning how to read and play music, and eventually how to think and feel music.
To that end, as I was driving and shouting at the top of my lungs, I thought it would be good to pick up the old guitar and play and sing for the ‘lil squirt. You know, as a way of imparting music to her early on and also as a way of bonding with her. And then it hit me, the bonding thing. All this time I’ve been so focussed on the birth, on meeting her, on the first days, that I have barely dreamt of the mundane things that will define the first chapter of my fatherhood. The milestones are important, and thus they have gotten all of the attention. But the mundane things, like watching her sleep, holding her, smelling her, singing to her, teaching her and learning from her, will be what amaze me every minute I am with her and I’m at a loss to describe how excited I am.
I think a lot of people in my situation would feel, justifiably so, a certain amount of fear for something so big and unknown being so close to the horizon. And while it’s certainly true that from time to time I get a little lost in the enormity of it all, I find that the closer it gets, the happier I am. Today it hit me like a ton of bricks: it’s close, and I am thrilled.
A special nod to Hootie and the Blowfish, who’s words inspired this post.
First week of the third trimester, and here’s where the real growth begins!
Here are some photos of everyone’s favorite belly, along with a glimpse of the nursery that is coming along nicely, though there is still plenty of work to be done.
It seems a little odd to me that at this point we don’t even know how to change a diaper (well, I don’t at least) and we’re already having to chose a pediatrician. We’re so focussed on the present, and of course the impending birth (tomorrow is the 100 days to go mark) that the future, even the immediately after birth future feels to be chapters away in this little book we’re writing.
Nevertheless these doctor types like to have their ducks in a row well ahead of time so our OB/GYN pretty much said, after a couple of warnings, that next time we see her we better have a name to put down on that line that’s been sitting blank.
So this morning we went and “interviewed” a pediatric group that our dear friends Justin and Ali suggested to us. Ali is a nurse in pediatric oncology and one of the doctors she works with has a wife that is in this pediatric group. Ali’s recommendation carries a lot of weight and her’s and Justin’s review was nothing less than gleaming. I’ll spare the nitty gritty but let’s just say the praise was entirely warranted. I’m no expert on the matter but I couldn’t imagine wanting more from a practice. They do a lot of things that are no longer orthodox, like spending a full 30 minutes with every office visit, regardless of how long the matter at hand requires. Many practices will spend no more than 10 minutes with a patient and try to keep it lower than that even. They also make themselves available 24/7 by openly sharing their personal contact info when appropriate, and are part of a true all hours sort of network of pediatricians so we’re no more than a phone call and a drive away from seeing a real pediatrician 24/7/365, and at office visit rates, not ER rates. They also do a lot of other things that simply show that they care about their patients and their patients parents and these days, unfortunately, care is one of the hardest to come by commodities in the health industry.
Plus they gave me a daddy goodie bag with a backpack diaper bag (not a bad one to be honest), a changing pad, a blanket, a book (for the baby, “Goodnight Moon”) and a free can of baby gold (a.k.a. formula). Door prizes never hurt.
We met with one of the nurse practicianers for about 40 minutes and the room we were in was one of the “teen” rooms. She was explaining how in each room, which are broken up by the age group of the patients, they have different sets of literature. In the baby rooms they have pamphlets about breast feeding and getting your baby to sleep and stuff. In the teen room they had ones about cocaine, extasy, and STDs. It got me thinking about how much the challenges a teenager faces has changed in the 10 or so short years since Steph and I were that age and makes me wonder what things our daughter will find on that wall when she’s 13. I hope it’s not worse, and I can even dream about it being better, but it reminds me, albeit a little before the fact, that I have a lot to do to raise this little girl right and give her the tools my parents gave me so that she can face those challenges, whatever they may be, and smile as they fly by her.
Here are the latest round of belly shots with a special week 25 “show me some skin” photo. Enjoy!
So we’ve ordered the crib and dresser and we are just waiting on the phone call for delivery. We also found a local boutique that carries the same lady bug line as our nursery and we ordered the accessories that we could not get at Babies R Us. Now we are just waiting for everything to come in so we can finish working on the Nursery. We’ve gotten several cute outfits and are slowly working on getting things together. Starting in October we are going to be taking our educational classes to get ready for the big event. This month we have to find our pediatrician and do the glucose test to see if I have gestational diabetes. We’ve cleaned the old office out and it’s ready for the furniture and accessories to make it into Linnea’s new room.
Most may say we are crazy, but we also started trying to get the dogs (Emma) used to a baby. Our friends Juts and Ali welecomed Linnea’s best friend Lexi into the world August 12th. We are going to get a tape of her crying to get them used to the sound of a baby crying for those times that our Linnea isn’t so happy. We have a teddy bear in the bassinet that we’ve been treating like a baby and we bring it around with us to get them used to us taking something in and out of the bed and not jumping while we are holding our “baby”. Emma seems to be doing very well with it and seems curious and those of you that know Amme she is too hyper and out of it to know anything is going on different from any other day.
So we skipped a week as we were really busy, but here is where we are now. Hope you enjoy this weeks belly shot.
