#011 Tennis Anyone?

Hmm... 11pm and I'm up late again. I'd like to say "as usual," but I've actually been getting to sleep at reasonable hours lately. Unsure why, especially with a one month old baby in the house.

Actually, I do know why. My wife loves me. She also has better ears than I do. I can honestly admit that my mind has finally registered the new sound in my house and the manly instinct of "tuning out" sounds has been engaged. I'm unsure why men have this ability; I think it must be a survival technique. I tune out the crying baby because acknowledging it means I have to react to it. In all actuality, I wish I did hear our baby crying so I could help out. Unfortunately, my wife quiets him down before I even notice he's moved.

Now that's love.

I wonder if it's still love if she's rocking the baby to sleep while shooting the "evil eye" glances at her sleeping husband. Hmm... I wonder. ;-)

Tennis Anyone?

Tonight, my son was involved in his first ever tennis tournament. We were all quite excited because we finally get to see what all the clinics and Freshman tennis have done to help improve his game. Plus, my son is normally one of the better players at the clinic, so I could finally see him dominating at the sport.

Woo hoo for Esaiah.

We get to the tennis center, and I see who Esaiah is pitted up against. Ah, I've seen this boy play. He is not one of the better players in the clinic. This one should be a no brainer for Esaiah. It will be a good warmup for him. I know I sound like I'm bragging, because I am. I originally thought the tournament would pit players from all clinics in a fight to the finish, but the tournament only covered players in the same skill level. Esaiah was currently one clinic below his skill level, so I felt pretty confident this was going to be an easy tournament for him.

Of course, I could be wrong. I've been wrong before.

As we wait for all the players to arrive, it becomes pretty evident to the tournament coach that some players who signed up for the tournament are not going to make it. To solve this problem, she turns the tournament into a round robin. Every player plays every player, and the player with the most wins is declared the overall winner. Each game consists of six sets and you had to play 4 rounds.

So I guess that means Esaiah will have 24 wins, right?

Not exactly.

After the change-up was made, the roster changed. Esaiah's first victim was a sweet little girl named Paige. Poor little Paige. I hope the devastation will not be too bad.

They all go out the courts to warm up, and Esaiah is on fire! Yes! He is going to dominate this tournament! He warms up with Taylor, who is a pretty good player, but he' s no Esaiah! During the warmups, Esaiah is getting some great shots against Taylor, so I couldn't wait until they played one another. After a few more warm-up shots, the tournament begins.

This is when my wife calls.

"Honey, come pick me and the boys up. We want to watch Esaiah play too."

"Uh, the games are just starting."

"Okay, so hurry up and get here so we don't miss too much."

Ugh! I race home to pick them up. When we return, we find that Esaiah has already finished the first round against Paige. I talk to Paige's mom to discover the score was 4-2.

How did that happen?

How did Paige get any matches? I inquire a little more and discover that Paige legitimately won the first match, but then Esaiah won the next four. He felt bad for Paige, so he let her win the last match. That's my Esaiah... always a gentleman.

I just wish he wouldn't be one during a tournament!!!

Now he's playing Taylor. Taylor and Esaiah are two of the more advanced players in the clinic, so this should be a good match. I get over to the match just in time to discover the score is 2-0. Esaiah has 0.

What?

How can this be? I look over at Esaiah with my "What in the world is going on look" on my face, and he sheepishly shrugs his shoulders.

"I'm tired Dad. I think I warmed up too much."

Oh great!

Now I'm panicking. If Taylor wins two more, the match is basically over. I start to watch the game more intently and notice that Esaiah continually returns the ball to Taylor's forehand. When he does that, Taylor almost always returned it. However, Esaiah would occassionally return it to Taylor's backhand, and Taylor almost never returned these shots. I tried to whisper this finding to Esaiah without causing an uproar amongst the parents (we are not allowed to help out), but Esaiah kept looking at me and saying "What Dad!? I can't hear you!"

Can't hear me? What are you talking about Esaiah? I'm not talking. Oh, hello other parents! How are we all doing tonight?

**muffled voice** hit it to his backhand Esaiah.

"What did you say Dad?"

"Err, I wanted to give you both a big hand. Great job kids!"

**muffled voice** backhand!

"What?"

Argh!

So, I stood there and watched as Taylor won the next two matches. Esaiah eventually won the last two and the score was 4-2. After this, we broke for dinner, and I took another look at the scoreboards. Wait a second! The winner is based on overall matches one, not the players that were beaten! Esaiah still has a chance!

Taylor: 10; Esaiah: 6

They play the next round. Esaiah dominates this round. Taylor does pretty good himself.

Taylor: 14; Esaiah: 12

In the next round, Esaiah had a bye, so we watched Taylor play Paige. In order for Esaiah to have a chance of tying Taylor for the championship, Paige needed to win 2 games and Esaiah would have to sweep the final game.

Taylor: 5; Paige: 1

Argh! The championship is lost! How could Esaiah do this to me!?! Oh well, at least he'll get runner up. Both of these get a trophy. runner up isn't so bad, right? This is especially true when you consider that both trophies look exactly the same. There may be something different in the inscription, but I can always scratch that out later.

After all, a trophy is a trophy.

Sometime during all this, I happened to notice another player: Joliel. She wasn't in any of the clinics Esaiah signed up for, but she had a cannon for a serve! I watched her play the other kids, and realized she was actually going to be a force to be reckoned with! I went back to the scoreboards to compare the Taylor v. Esaiah score against the Taylor v. Joliel score:

Taylor: 4, Esaiah: 2
Taylor: 4, Joliel: 2

Beautiful. She is actually going to be some competition. I checked her points to see where she stood in the tournament:

Esaiah: 12, Joliel: 11

Are you kidding me? This is the game to watch! In tennis, you have to win the match by 2, so whoever wins the game against Esaiah and Joliel will win the runner-up trophy. I tell this to Esaiah. He was not very happy to hear this news. Now he really needed to work hard to win this last match. I asked him how he felt about being a gentleman in the beginning. He glared at me.

I guess he didn't think I was that funny.

The final match was the best game I watched all night. Joliel continued to serve up a killer serve, but Esaiah was ready for it. For the first time all night, I saw him playing his "A" game. He was playing to win. Shot after shot, he continued to pummel the ball across the net. Joliel would not go down without a fight, but in the end, Esaiah would win the set. 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, 4-0, 5-0... Esaiah continued relentlessly. Finally, Joliel managed to come out with a victory in the final set, but the match was still 5-1 in Esaiah's favor. The final tally?

Esaiah: 17, Joliel: 12

My son won his first trophy in tennis. I am so proud. I know pride is not healthy, but I can't help it. He worked his butt off and earned that trophy.

It will look so nice on my desk at work.

Until next time...

#010 But It's a Dry... Cold?

Okay, so I tell everyone to sign up to blogsite so you can get all my posts, and then I stop writing. What the heck is wrong with me?

But it’s a dry…. Cold?
Yesterday, it was cold. The temperature dipped to 38 degrees in the morning, which means winter has officially arrived in Arizona.

In the ten years I’ve lived here, I’ve noticed something about Arizona weather. There are basically two seasons: Unbelievably Hot, and Cold. We have that Unbelievably Hot Season where the heat is so strong all the buildings appear to be moving from the heat emanating from the asphalt. We also have the Cold Season when the weather is so cold you wonder if you still live in the desert. In other states, there is a transition time known as spring and fall that separates the extreme heat from the extreme cold.

In Arizona… not so much.

I think our “fall” lasted about 2 weeks. Even then, it was still pretty hot in the day. The nights were nice, the days I could do without.

Now it is just cold.

We learned how cold it was because of our air conditioner. It is cold at night, thus requiring heat, but it is warm in the daytime, thus requiring the air conditioner. We decided to not use our air conditioner or our heat. This meant our house was about 90 degrees in the daytime, and nearing 70 degrees at night.

We have a temperature threshold in our house. We normally keep our house at around 83-85 degrees. I know for nearly everyone else in the world, this is too hot, but for my family it feels great. We love to be warm. We hate to be cold. We don’t get many visitors to our house. When we do, they complain about the heat. We don’t know what they’re talking about.

We love to be warm.

When the temperature is this hot, 80 degrees becomes cold. It becomes “blanket” weather. Again, many people will not be able to fathom throwing a blanket over them in 80 degree temperature, but we break out the goose down comforter.

Did I mention we love to be warm?

Now that you know how warm we need to be, you can easily understand why 70 degrees makes us feel like icicles are forming on our eyebrows. You can understand why the mere thought of coming out of the goose down comforter and turning on the shower is a horrible thought. Even worse, turning off the shower and getting exposed to this frigid temperature wet. For normal people, imagine your house is about 40 degrees. Ugh!

We need to turn on the heat. One problem though; we can’t.

As it turns out, we recently had an issue where our air handler was leaking. The air handler is conveniently located in a tiny crawlspace above my boy’s bedroom. This leak resulted in the boys room raining water down onto their mattresses. Luckily for us, one of our boys still has occasional accidents where he can’t make it to the bathroom, so we’ve have to defend his mattress from that. We also took the extra precaution of protecting his older brother’s mattress too. All of this paid off in huge dividends when the rain came. Sure, we had to wash all the sheets, along with the “pee-guard,” but the mattresses were saved! Yeah for the parents! We planned ahead.

But, I digress.

In repairing our air handler, a lot of particles were generated. According to our A/C guy, this meant we would need to call him back in the winter, prior to turning on the heat, so he could clean out the “furnace” portion of the air handler. If we didn’t do this, the particles generated could become a fire hazard… right above my kid’s bed.

Anyone wondering why he didn’t just fix the problem right then and there? Yeah, me too.

So now it’s cold, and we can’t turn on the heater. This lasts for a couple of days, because in a house filled with boys, it is very hard to find time to do anything. My wife finally takes care of it, and we can finally experience the joy of waking up to a warm house.

Warm… and dry.

Anyone who lives in Arizona knows that the air handlers do a great job of sucking any conceivable amount of moisture out of the air. You know how people living in Arizona will always claim “it’s a dry heat?” Well, this also translates to dry air. Have you ever gone to sleep in dry air? You tend to wake up with bloody noses. Well, my kids do anyway.

Now we enter the bloody nose season. Nathan is by far the bloodiest of my children. He used to scare baby sitters and anyone who watched him because he would wake up with a face full of blood. When we took our trip to Thailand last year, the flight attendants thought something was wrong when his face was full of blood, and his clothes were stained with it as well. They were probably more concerned when they saw that his parents really weren’t that concerned.

Hey, you get used to it.

So the “bloody season” is upon us again. Now we have yet another reason to wash the sheets. I honestly think the accidents happen because this particular kid likes the concept of clean sheets every evening.

Move to a hotel.

I bought a couple of air humidifiers in the hopes of reducing the blood portion of this equation. I sure hope it works.

Today, the temperature wasn’t nearly as cold as yesterday, but it’s still cold. Living in Arizona will naturally make you a wimp to the cold. For all those who make fun of us sun worshippers, I challenge you to visit me in July. We’ll see who’s whining then. But until then, it is time to unpack the sweaters, pull out the jackets, crank up the heat, and fight over the flannel blankets. After all, we like to be warm.

Until next time…

#009 Goodbye Uncle Butch

If you are a common reader of mine, you will have most likely realized that I am an individual who tends to make lemonade out of the lemons of life. It is far easier for me to deal with the realities of bad situations by making them funny or humorous. After all, if you don’t do that, than you can be left with a pretty depressing reality. Who in the world would want that? Hence my humor.

However, not all of life is funny and humorous.

Goodbye, Uncle Butch
A couple of days ago, I received a call from my wife. She was in tears. She just got off the phone will a family member to discover that an Uncle had passed away. These are the situations that I have no humor for. All I can do is feel for the family he left behind. Death is a horrible thing to have deal with, and I have no “light” way of looking at this. I almost thought not to write anything about it, but then I would be leaving some pretty major things out of the story of our life. Sometimes you have to write about the bad times too. Whether serious or humorous, writing is my way of releasing it.

My wife has gone to Mississippi to be at the funeral. Her Uncle’s death is yet another reminder that her continued excuses for not seeing her family down there have to stop. It is has been nearly 13 years since her last visit. She has a couple of grandparents that may not survive for much longer, so she has decided that she can no longer put it off. The funeral is tomorrow (well, I guess it’s today since its past 1am right now).

My wife left this morning with Gabriel. For all of you who share a concern for a 14-day old baby traveling in a plane, we can all pray together for his safety. So far, they are both fine. My wife called every step of the way, so I know they are safe in Jackson now. As long as you are praying, I ask that you also pray for my wife. I cannot imagine the flood of emotions that she is going through. I know she’s a strong woman, but there is only so much a person can handle. It is very difficult for me to see her go because it means I can’t be there to help her out when she needs it. I know she’ll have lots of family to take care of them, but it’s not the same. She is also much more susceptible to viruses right now, since a large portion of her antibodies are being passed onto our son. If anything, we should be praying heavily for her health.

Life can be interesting at times. We are so blessed to have been given this gift from God, but then Satan fires right back by taking a life before it’s time. This is a very hard topic to write about. I suffered the same fate when my wife handed me the sympathy card and asked me to sign it. How do you possibly find the words to deal with a death? For one thing, it is extremely difficult to write to a part of the family I have yet to meet. I mean, what can I really say that will be helpful? I know there really aren’t any words now, but I sincerely hope what I did pick out will mean something later on down the road.

I attended a leadership conference recently, and something was said at that conference that has continually stuck in my mind. This situation has reminded me of it once again. The speaker asked us to write the story of our children’s future. Where did we see them going? What were they going to do? Who were they going to be? Next, he said to write that same story, only this time take yourself out of the story. Why? Because you aren’t taking care of yourself. You wake up everyday and think “it’s my body, I’ll feed it whatever I want. After all, I’m only hurting myself, right? I’ll smoke, I’ll drink, I’ll do whatever makes me happy. After all, it’s only me I’m hurting…” As you write this story, think about the major milestones of your children’s lives that you will not be part of: first loves, high school graduation, acceptance into college, first house, marriage, successes and failures… all without their father.

Those words blew me away. It’s one of those situations where you hear that and then realize life has to change. I can no longer live so carefree anymore. After all, I now have four boys whose stories would be far different stories if I were no longer part of the story. I don’t like that story.

Not at all.

I don’t mean to turn this conversation and make it sound as though it’s all about me. I definitely do not feel that way. I’m just writing out loud. That’s something else you should all know about me. When you read my writing, it is like you are having a conversation with me. Yep. You can’t get a word in edgewise now either. **wink**

The “Story of My Kid’s Life” makes me think about the survivors of this Uncle I never knew. How will the rest of their stories look now that he will no longer be a part of them? Is this the turning point in their lives where they do better because they want him to be so proud of them as he looks down on them from above? Or will it make them turn the other way, and allow their anger to harden their hearts, turn them away from God, and start them down a path of misery and disparity? Either way, I’m sure they both would want the story written differently.

I know I would.

Wow… I didn’t think I was going to write to this much. Guess I better start finding the words to end this particular blog.

I ask you all to prayerfully consider my family in your prayers. If you are wondering what/whom to pray about, pray that my wife and son return to Arizona on Monday night healthy and virus free. Pray for Jackie and Jay, the son and daughter of the deceased. Pray for his Mom, who has to deal with the pain of burying her own son. And especially pray for any family member who chooses to use this horrible incident as a means to pull away from their beliefs. I can only imagine the pain and anger this causes.

Okay, I think I’ve said all I can say. I write this today for a very good reason. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you are loved by Livonia and I. The best way to deal with hard times is to involve your loved ones. I remember a time in my life when you would never see me doing something like this. Personal issues are to be kept internal, where they can fester and tear at the very fabric of your being. That’s the way I used to think. It is only now that I realize the more transparent a person is, the stronger that person is.

Consider yourselves part of the solution. We love you all. A common question is “what can I can do to help?” We are so blessed that this question is common amongst our close friends. Yes, there is. Continue to be the person you are, and the person we have always loved you to be, and then do what your heart tells you to do. It will be exactly what we needed, and at exactly the time we needed it to occur.

I sincerely hope the next post will find us all in much lighter spirits.

Until next time…

#008 Run Forrest... Run!

Here we are again... 2am and my son has awakened us. My wife's confidence in me is growing, as now she actually asked me to get up and get the baby. This is a much longer way from where we were with Christian and Nathan. You see, I was asked to get Christian when he was a baby... but I was only asked once. I walked into his room, half asleep, picked him up, and then "sleepwalked" back into our room. As I walked into our room, I wavered back and forth and my wife thought for sure that I would drop him. She flew out of bed and picked him out my arms. I fell back into the bed and was into a hard sleep within a few seconds of my head hitting the pillow.

She never asked me to get the baby again. I joke with people that I did that on purpose so I could get some sleep, but was I really joking?

Now do you see why I made the statement about her confidence growing? Of course, it probably doesn't hurt that the crib is currently in our bedroom, so the sleepwalking distance has been dramatically reduced. So, I pick him up, perform the ritualistic changing of the garb, dispose of the remains, and deposit my son next to my resting wife.

And I'm wide awake once again. Time to write.

Run Forrest... Run

I am learning that there is a whole lot to this "Super Husband/Dad" activity. It can be quite demanding. Monday was a great example of that.

On Monday, I awoke to a very bad feeling. I had many symptoms of a possible illness. This had me quite worried, as I do not want to get anyone in my house sick. I went into work, attended some morning meetings, took care of a few things, and headed back home to finish the day telecommuting. In the midst of my telecommuting, I realized that I would have to figure out what to do for dinner.

Last Sunday, the leader of the Small Group my wife and I attend asked me how things were going, and asked how the dinners were going. I told him having dinners provided every night was such an incredible blessing, and we really enjoyed it. He then asked me if we needed to continue receiving dinners next week.

"Need" is such a strong word. My gut reaction was to say "Yes, and for the rest of the year," but I decided that I couldn't be greedy and told him that we were fine. I mean, we shouldn't be too selfish, right? At some point, we need to stand on our own two feet, right?

Why, oh why, would I do something like that?

So now it's Monday. Day one of "dinners created by Roger." By now, all the leftover food from the dinners provided last week was eaten up, so I truly had to figure something out.

I'm not a bad cook when I need to cook. I just don't enjoy cooking. My wife is actually one of those people that truly enjoys cooking. God has gifted her with an ability to create something out of nothing. She is the MacGyver of the kitchen. I recall a time when my friend Jon and his wife Kathy lived with us for a short period of time. Kathy made a comment to me that when she opened our pantry, she never found food. All she found were various items that could "become" food, but no food.

I wholeheartedly agree.

But like I said before, I can cook. I just can't cook like my wife. I have to know what I'm making, and then get all the ingredients for it and make it. I cannot open my pantry and decide to "create" something. It must be something I have created in a past life of a previous dinner.

Monday night was going to be "chicken fried rice" night. What did we have at home to make this? Pretty much nothing, except for the rice. I think it is now time to visit the supermarket. If it were my wife, she would have taken the baking soda, the canola oil, and the penne pasta and made a London broil. Can't be done you say? You haven't seen my wife cook.

Unfortunately, I am cooking.

I take my youngest son Nathan with me. He just got out of school and I didn't want him bothering my wife. We get to the supermarket and I see all this pent up energy exploding all over the aisles. Where these kids get it, I'll never know. As I watch him walking all throughout the store, touching seemingly everything imaginable (did you have to put your finger on every banana?), I think about how nice it would be to have that kind of energy. How cool would that be? Imagine having the energy of a child at the age of an adult.

Wow.

We get the food and head back home. My illness begins to take over, and I start feeling a bit rundown. I try to ignore it, and start chopping up the vegetables, dicing the chicken, and cutting the bacon up into little tiny pieces. Yes, I put bacon in my fried rice. Interesting concept, right? Something my Filipino mother taught me when I was younger. Trust me, it tastes great.

After all this standing and chopping, I am too rundown to continue. I sit down on the couch, and this turns into laying down on the couch, which then turns to me falling asleep. My wife wakes me up about 10 minutes later and asks if she needs to finish dinner.

Of course not! I'm "Super husband/Dad," right? I do my best impression of popping up like a daisy, waver back and forth because I got up too fast, and head to the kitchen. An hour later, I am putting the finishing touches on dinner, and we sit down to eat.

Here's where the "Run Forrest... Run" comes in.

Monday night is a busy night for me. My oldest son has tennis practice from 6-7pm, and I also have a meeting with Thailand from 6 until "sometime." In this meeting, I manage all the data between Thailand and Chandler, and need to make sure both sites have the information they need to conduct it effectively. I also scribe the minutes of the meeting, and use inputs of team members throughout the day to get the metrics of the meeting input into the minutes prior to the start of the meeting. I usually don't get all this information until the end of the working day on Monday, so I will usually start working on this at 5pm while I'm still in the office. The hour prior to the 6pm meeting is normally enough time to finish everything I need to finish in time for the meeting.

It is 5pm now. We haven't started eating dinner yet. Esaiah needs to get to his practice, I need to get to the office, we need to eat dinner. We have one vehicle.

Cue the "Mission Impossible" theme music...

I serve up dinner, and Esaiah and I ingest major amounts of food in record time. I'm sure that will settle well for him just before practice, right? I head toward Esaiah's practice, which just happens to be the opposite direction of my office. The closer I get to this practice, the further I am from getting to the office. I drop him off at 5:35pm and race (keeping within the posted speed limits of course) to work. I get to the office, laptop in tow, and rush down to the video conference room so I can begin the work of setting up the room, downloading all the files, updating the metrics, and getting prepared.

The door to the video conference room is locked.

Argh! This is not a day for this to occur. I turn around and go back to the lobby to inform the guard that I need the door unlocked. Another guard is called, and I wait outside the conference room as patiently as I can for the guard to arrive. Finally, after what seems to be a lifetime of waiting, he arrives.

I say lifetime, but that's not really true. It only seemed like that as I counted the seconds away:

1... where is this guy? I have so much to do and so little time to do it
2... I feel like the white rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland." Gotta go, gotta go...
3... hmm... I never noticed how brown the outside of this door is
4... Yep, the door is still locked. It's locked even after I jiggle the handle
5... Jiggling the handle a third time has not changed my situation
6... Where the heck is the guard? Come one!

Finally, I get inside, turn on the video conference equipment, download the files, and bootup my laptop. I open up the minutes and begin work on transferring the metric data to it.

It is 5:57pm.

Run Forrest... Run!

Now do you get it?

Until next time...

#007 Feeding Time

Yeah, it's 2:30 in the morning, and once again, I'm writing. About an hour ago, I heard some rumblings next to me. I turned over to see my wife with Gabriel. I asked her "do you want any help?"

"Yes honey. He needs changed and fed. I'll down and warm up a bottle if you can change him now." She quickly turns over the kid to me and heads downstairs. Hmm...

Well, that was a first. When I say "first," I mean it was the first time I've been awake enough help and my wife has been exhausted enough to accept my offer. This must be a good sign!

I'm not sure what it is about this child, but neither of us are getting frustrated by him yet. I mean, sure it's only been a week and a half, but we still do not get irritated at him when he is this needy this late at night.

It kind of reminds me of a joke I heard about a guy that moved from the sun belt to the snow belt. I would paste it into this blog, but it's a bit to racy, so I'll do the honor of paraphrasing it.

In the beginning, he marveled at the snowfall. He and his wife enjoyed cocktails while watching the flakes fall, and awoke the next morning to a beautiful white blanket covering their lawn and driveway. Later that morning, he spent some time experiencing the joy of shoveling the snow out of his driveway for the first time in years. He talked about how the snowplow driver came by after he finished shoveling, and deposited even more snow on his driveway. He loved it!

However...

As time went on and snow continued to fall, he patience grew less and less. Before long, he grew tired of the "white death" falling from the sky and was going to kill the snowplow driver if he ever saw him.

I certainly hope that doesn't happen here.

So, I get up, change his diaper (whew!) and settle into his feeding. After finishing 3 oz of breast milk, he's looking a bit lucid, so I lay him into his bed. I put the blanket around him and then hear the sound of "snow" coming out of his caboose.

Time to change him again. Oh great. It's a blizzard. Where's my snowshovel?

As I'm changing him, I notice he's not crying or fussing at all. This is normally a good sign, because it means he's content. However, after I finish, I notice his eyes are pretty open. He's looking around, quite alert, ready for the day. It's 2am.

Lovely.

Realizing sleep is not an option anymore, I decide to join my wife downstairs. She was downstairs working on replenishing his supply, and at the same time watching a little TV. I sit down with her and play with my son, all the while thinking "I need to be up in a few hours... why are you awake now?" We decide to feed him again. He eats another couple of ounces, and now he really is lethargic. I think we are making some headway now. I pick him up an it's everything he can do to keep his head from flopping to one side or the other. I put his head on my shoulder to burp him, and then lean him against my hand to try to burp him again. He finally lets one loose, but the whole time I'm doing this, his eyes are closed. Oh yeah, he's out for the count.

Yes!

The only problem is that now I'm awake. Hence, this blog. I'm getting a bit tired now, so I think I'll sign off. But before I go, I thought I'd be one of the first to wish my brother a "Happy 35th Birthday." My how time flies.

Hmm... I can go to bed now, at 3:20am, or stay up and watch "Tremors."

Zzzz....

Until next time...

#006: Labor and Delivery

As promised, here’s “the rest of the story.”

Okay, so where did we leave off? If I recall correctly, we had just gotten checked into the labor and delivery room, right? Okay, so let’s talk about labor and delivery, from the perspective of an expectant father.

October 27, 8:30am: We finally get ourselves settled into the labor and delivery room, and I get to work on my “setup.” Out comes the iPod with the portable speakers. I take my nice flannel blanket out and set it aside. I put my camcorder next the TV and my digital cameras (two of them) next to it. Why do I have two? My digital camera seemed to develop picturitis during one of our vacations and decided to turn all my pictures into something resembling Van Gogh’s “starry night.” Great artwork, but lacking in clarity. Interestingly enough, the problem simply “went away” a couple months later, but intuition told me that good things like that don’t go away for long. To account for this, I also packed my son’s camera.

I put on my sweater to keep warm and then I took out my munchies and prepared to enjoy a light snack. My wife looked at me with a look that doesn’t say “you’re doing everything right.”

I think the munchies was a bit too far. I sheepishly put them back into the bag. I think this is one of those times when you need to endure the hunger right along with your wife.

The nurse comes back with a ball for my wife to sit on. Does anyone know of this ball? Apparently, it is much better than laying on the bed, and helps to take the edge off the contractions. Hey man, whatever helps. Livonia rolled around on that and was feeling much better.

We continued to check her dilation, but only seemed to be advancing one centimeter per hour. At this rate, we’ll be here forever! I look longingly at my food, and my wife relents and tells me to eat something. I pick up the first item she bought for me: beef jerky. I open it up and the smell is too strong for her, so I put it back. I grab the next thing she bought for me: sunflower seeds, the in shell. In retrospect, there is probably no other food more annoying to watch someone eat than sunflower seeds in the shell. As I throw handful after handful into my mouth, and then spit the shells into a cup, she looks at me with a look not too dissimilar from the one she gave me earlier.

October 27, 11:30am: By this time, I had taken several pictures, and decided to start taking pictures of Livonia with the clock in the picture. I thought it would be neat to see the time of the picture. I took a look at the picture, and all I could see was “starry night.”

Curse you Van Gogh!

So, my camera is dead. I look at some of the other pictures taken, including the one taken of my wife and I by the nurse, and have all been “starry nighterized.” I now have to figure out how to use my son’s camera.

My wife’s contractions were getting pretty strong now. Plus, they were coming much faster. What seemed to help the contractions was for me to lean over her so she could grab the back of neck and pull against it. This is when I learned that my wife is very strong, and I am very weak. As she pulled against me, I felt pain in the back of my legs, and felt my arm trying to buckle as I gripped the side bar. After the contraction subsided, I would go to sit down and give my legs a rest while I rubbed the back of my neck. However, the contractions were too close together. As soon as I sat down, she would ask me to come back. She continued to pull, and I continued to wonder the point in time where my neck would break. She asked me if I was okay, and so my answer, of course, was “honey, I’m fine. Let’s just worry about you for now.”

Each time I sat down, I would throw another handful of seeds into my mouth, and each time she would call me back up, I would try to crack just one more seed before leaning over her. This is when I learned that when a women in labor requests your presence, it doesn’t mean “when you have a moment.” It means “RIGHT NOW!!!”

I am sometimes amazed at how patient my wife can be with me. However, at that time I was amazed at how tasty sunflower seeds were.

Side Note: When we delivered Nathan 6 years ago, the hospital had a really nice bar across the bed that Livonia pulled against. It worked out beautifully. It was exactly what she needed. This bar has since been removed from the bed, so I got to be the replacement. Judging from the strength of her pulling, my guess is they weren’t removed by the hospital. They were removed by expectant mothers who were pulling so hard against them that they bent them into wet noodles.

That’s what I’m guessing.

October 27, 12:30pm: Things are heating up now! We are only dilated 8-9cm, but Livonia cannot wait any longer. She needs to push. She tells the nurse that she needs to push and the nurse tells her she can’t push. She needs to wait for the doctor. She tells her to breathe.

Breathe?

So, my wife starts breathing. As she’s breathing, she tells the nurse that she really needs to push. The nurse tells her again, she can’t push, she needs to wait for the doctor. I stand there, waiting for the hammer to fall. My wife continues to breathe, and tells me to breathe with her. What does she mean by that?

History Lesson: I have had two babies with my wife, and this was now my third child with her. In the previous pregnancies, I never learned how to breathe. I asked about Lamaze classes when we were pregnant with Christian (her second; my first), but my wife assured me that she knew what to do already. After all, it wasn’t like Christian was her first child.

So now we are at baby number 3, and I need to breathe. In my nervousness, I laugh because I don’t know what to do. Health tip: Never laugh when a women in labor asks you to do something. Okay, I need to breathe. I don’t know how to do this, so I tend to match whatever she’s doing. Apparently, if I breathe, it helps her keep her focus. So I breathe. I notice she starts to breathe faster, so I start to breathe faster. Okay, so now she’s breathing even faster. I breathe a little faster. Wow, this is making me a bit light headed.

I wonder what it’s doing to her?

Sure enough, she’s starting to hyperventilate. As this is occurring, I realized that maybe I shouldn’t have changed my breathing. She cups her hands over her mouth to stop hyperventilating, and the doctor finally arrives. Good thing too, because now I’m feeling a bit light headed.

October 27, 12:49pm: Okay, this time is merely an estimate, but judging from how quickly things happened, I think I’m pretty close. The doctor comes to break her water. Not sure exactly what happened there. All I know is I’m very thankful he told me to “turn my head.” As she made her first push, the doctor noticed Gabriel’s heartbeat was slowing down, and it wasn’t picking up. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his body and was squeezing him. He mentioned this to Livonia, and that’s all it took.

She pushed again and Gabriel’s head crowned. He asked her to wait a second so he could fix the cord, but her push was so strong that Gabriel made his way into the world. Amazing!

I have to tell you something. It doesn’t matter that I’ve now seen this miracle of birth three times. Every time I see it, I cannot help but start tearing up. I can’t explain it. There is such a rush of emotions at the site of his little head; it is all I can do to hold them all in.

After some suction and a quick examination, the doctor set me up to cut the cord. Gabriel came out just as perfect as could be. You all know this information already, but I need to put it here as my document of record:

Name: Gabriel Lee Winkles
Born: October 27, 2005, @12:51pm
Weight: 7lbs, 13oz
Length: 21 inches
Location: Chandler Regional Medical Center, Labor and Delivery Room 7
Hospital Room: 220

I think that about covers the delivery. Next, I’ll tell you all about our lovely accommodations and what sleeping in a chair/ottoman/chair feels like.

Until next time…