Ten Years

Today's an emotional day for us. We're moving out of the house we've lived in for ten years, four and a half months. It's the longest period of time in my life that I've ever lived in one place.

Mikey was only ten months old when we moved into this house in East Tulsa in February of 2001. Cathy had wanted to live in this area since she was a little girl and much of it was brand new; 30 years later it wasn't quite as new and sparkly, but we loved it anyway. We've celebrated many important events in this house: we made a baby and celebrated a birth. We've celebrated many birthdays, including the first birthdays of both of our children. Ten Christmases and ten Easters. Ten anniversaries. Four full-time jobs for myself, not counting the flurry of short consulting gigs during the second year we lived here, when I had been laid off by an ailing company right after the dot-com bust + the WTC attacks. Four deaths of people we were very close to happened while we lived in this house, and two more of relatives who were much-loved but a little more distant. Lots of potty training. Five years of Cub Scouts. Three years of Christian School in two different schools, two years of home schooling and one year of public school. Several seasons of soccer. Brutal heat and crazy amounts of snow. Out of electricity once (or was it twice?) for a week or two at a time because of ice. Two different churches. Two different dogs and two pet frogs. Three different cars. Lots of movies and music. Lots of laughing, lots of crying. Lots of friends.

It's been a good run. I'm looking forward to the next ten years in Bixby!

New Baby for the Trac*'s!

Last night we got a call that Cathy's lifelong friend Tracie was having her baby by emergency C-section. By the time we got to the hospital, the drama was over and her husband (Tracy) was in the nursery room with the new baby, who is not named Tracie or Tracy:



They've been trying for a LONG time to have this baby, and he's a real answer to prayer. Congratulations, guys!!!

Solid food!

In all the ruckus about Cub Scout camp last week, I almost missed mentioning a momentous occasion in Hannah's life... her first time eating solid food! The above picture is Cathy feeding Hannah her first official meal of yummy baby oatmeal!

Baby Fest 2008

"Tomorrow," I said. Yeah, right.

Anyway, so the day after Winter Jam we went to the Baby Fest & Family Expo at the UMAC. One of our main reasons for going was that they were having a "cutest baby" contest, and we were POSITIVE that we have the cutest baby! (Several hundred... thousand? ...other people were convinced otherwise!) We got there and got in line for the contest, and Hannah looked like she looks here. In fact, she looked basically that way until we woke her up for the judging, at which time she spit up on Daddy and then gave the judges her grouchy-face. A few of the judges tried to cheer her up... a couple of them gave her a grouchy-face back! Fine, Ms. Simon Cowell, just BE that way!! Anyway, seeing as how it was the cutest baby contest and not the sleepiest or crabbiest baby contest, we didn't bother to hang around for the announcement of the winners. We did walk around the hall, though... it was the regular "baby expo" kind of stuff. There were portrait studios and brainy toy stores and clothes resale shops, the whole nine yards. Even Babies Я Us was there, with the weirdest baby swing I've ever seen. (Yes, I agree that I'm awesome for getting that backwards "R" on there.) So we walked around and saw everything, Hannah sleeping the whole time and Mikey complaining for part of it... until he saw the giant blowup obstacle course from the place that wants to rent you a Jupiter Jump for your kid's birthday. So he coursed and coursed, and all was right with the world.

Cathy and I entered every door prize we saw... and just about every table had one. And we actually BOTH won something! Cathy won tickets to the Blue Man Group concert on Mikey's birthday (so if he wants to go, it'll be a mommy and Mikey birthday date and Daddy will get to spend the evening with Hannah), and I won a $75 gift basket from Babies Я Us!

(Incidentally... I snapped the above picture afterward as we were waiting in line to get some refreshments at the concession stand.)

Winter Jam 2008

Last Friday we went to Winter Jam at the Mabee Center. It's the third Winter Jam we've been at, and the second one at Mabee Center. This year it had the distinction of being the only time I've ever seen Mabee Center full to capacity. There couldn't have been more than 100 seats in the whole place, floor to ceiling including the area directly behind the stage, without people in them. I know they turned people away... don't know HOW MANY they turned away, though.

We got there before the doors opened at 6:00 for the 7:00 concert... I don't remember exactly when we showed up, but it must have been something like 5:30pm. We had already had a big afternoon because Hannah had an appointment with a specialist about her squeaking; our doctor recommended that we go ahead and take her to the specialist just to make sure it wasn't something that would cause problems later (she has to go in and have a scope put up her nose next week to check it out... I'm sure I'll blog that when it happens. Should be nicely traumatic for everyone involved! )

Anyway, we were there between 5 and 6, and there were already three lines that stretched all the way across the parking lot! We wound up between the auditorium and the Praying Hands, almost on the grass. It was crazy!

So they opened the doors sometime around 6pm (I don't know exactly when because we were so far from the doors that I couldn't have seen 'em without a telescope!) and we eventually made it in shortly before the show started. We got seats actually to the side and a little to the rear of the stage, right over the vocalists' right shoulders and in the nosebleed seats. By the way... one reason that this event packs people in is because the price is only $10 at the door, which is an insane bargain because there are SO MANY groups on the program! We heard Mandisa, NewSong, Skillet, BarlowGirl, and MercyMe (what was this, the CamelCase tour or what?) for thirty bucks for the three of us. That's INCREDIBLE. And honestly, this year there wasn't a group I wouldn't pay full price to hear a concert from just them! (Well, I'm not that much of a MercyMe fan, but they're a big draw anyway, so they count.)

Mandisa was awesome. She sang 3-4 songs, all of the ones we wanted to hear (I believe she did "Only The World" and "Shackes" and "God Speaking" and... that may have been it) and was just excellent. I have to say, Mandisa is probably the best thing to ever come out of American Idol, and I say that as someone who really likes Kelly Clarkson and Ruben Studdard and George Huff and even Daughtry. Mandisa sings songs about life being really hard, sometimes almost to the level of hopeless, but he voice is so hopeful that you can't help but be cheered up, even when she's singing stuff like "Been a hard one, been a bad one, been a tough one, been a sad one/It's been one of those days that keeps chipping away at my heart/Nothing new here, It's what I do here/Its a stereotypical day in the life/I'm surrounded by all of the pain and the strife..."

So Mandisa was awesome. I believe NewSong performed next... for a group that I couldn't have named one single song of theirs, they sure sang a lot of songs I knew. When they sang the chorus of "Arise, My Love" I could feel the presence of God so strongly... it was awesome. But there were some boys sitting behind us that had one thing on their mind. Every once in a while one of them would say, in his adolescent my-voice-has-almost-changed croak, "Skillet!"

Whispers In The Dark lyricsAnd so it was: Skillet. They ROCKED! They were my favorite of the night. They even had a couple of towers of fire that went off every time they sang the word "NO!" in "Whispers in the Dark" The flame went from the stage nearly to the roof, and every time it fired we could feel it where we were, up in the top seats. ROCK AND ROOOOOOL!

Don't let me forget... we got to hear one song from new group Connersvine (I believe it was "Live For You") although Hunter Smith from the Indianapolis Colts wasn't there because his wife had just had a baby so it was technically only 1/2 of Connersvine, but oh well. It's a nice song.

BarlowGirl was good as always... very loud, and it's great for teenage and tween girls to see young ladies publicly living out their faith. Of course, once or twice behind us I heard "Skillet! " but you know... give the boys a break. They wanted more Skillet.

Cathy went for snacks and Mikey fell asleep during BarlowGirl. The teenage girl sitting next to us (not someone we knew) was laughing that Mikey could sleep during "Average Girl" (AKA "No more dating, I'm just waiting..."), but I wasn't surprised. My brother fell asleep at the wheel once as a teenager listening to Whitecross. It can happen.

So we left a few songs into MercyMe. Mikey was really tired, and there was another reason but I've been sworn to secrecy. Mwa ha ha! Suffice it to say that something was missing and we left the concert to go find it. hehe

Besides... who can hold a candle to: "Skillet! "?

Tomorrow (or thereabouts): our adventures the next day at the Baby Fest & Family Expo!

Another Cold Front, Another Sleepless Night

Another weather front is coming through today. Or, more specifically, it started coming through last night and is slowly moving in this morning. And, sort of like last time we had a front, Hannah was crabby about eating in her middle-of-the-night feedings. At midnight-thirty I was awakened by her grumbling, but when I got up and tried to give her a bottle, she cried louder with the bottle in her mouth than with no bottle! Finally after trying for about a half hour, I gave up and took her back into our room in her bassinet, where she grumbled and grouched for a few minutes until Cathy woke up and told me that Hannah had been doing the same thing to her at midnight! Which meant that I was up less than an hour later. Anyway, Cathy apparently took care of things after that, and Hannah slept most of the night, because I woke up at 4am and gave her a bottle, which she took with no problem at all. But whatever Cathy did with the baby must have either been shaking the bed a lot (read: my poor wife up and down all night) or noisy enough to keep me from really resting that well. I woke up feeling like the spiders that Garfield is always smashing.

Mikey's Early Months

"Way back in the dark ages of the year 2000, we had a child named Mikey. Back in those days, you whippersnappers, photo-sharing sites were few and far between and they were not free, and blogging sites were scarcer than hen's teeth. When you got home from walking uphill in seven feet of snow, you sat down with a cup of hot cocoa that you milked fresh yourself from your chocolate cow, and you made your own darn Web site! Without templates or anything!"

Anyway... in the midst of those dark years, I made a mini-site to display pictures of Mikey, and I thought I'd let anyone visiting this blog know about it. Here it is.

Ice Storm Cleanup Continues

It's been almost two months since last December's devastating ice storm, and around town there are still piles of tree branches (and in some cases, bigger things like trunks!) all over the sides of the road. The City of Tulsa has been having a really slow time getting them picked up, although they have pledged to make a total of three trips through each neighborhood, I understand, and make sure everything gets picked up. Well, because of the whole having a new baby thing, plus, it being wintertime, ever since then it's either been dark when I've been at home (shorter days in the wintertime), or I've been dog-tired in the daytime because of staying up to feed the baby at all hours.

Anyway, this afternoon after the Men's breakfast at Grace, it was a beautiful day and I was outside anyway, so I dragged the limbs that have been littering my backyard ever since the ice storm out to the curb. As soon as I got finished I looked down the street, and what should I see but the cleanup trucks coming down the street! I'll bet my little pile of twigs wasn't there more than 45 minutes total. It almost looks like they may have gotten to our house and then called it a day, though, because the street past us is still piled with branches. It's a shame, too, because that's the way I have to walk to get to the bus; with piles of branches sometimes covering the sidewalk, and in the dark just before sunrise, it can be pretty hazardous if you check out mentally and don't look where you're going. I'll sure be glad when they get that cleared out so I can safely walk on the sidewalk again.

Sleep is slowly returning (sometimes)

Hannah has, for some weeks now, been eating pretty regularly every two hours. That means that Cathy and I have been dividing up the night... she gives the baby a bottle before midnight, I do it after. Makes for some sleepyheaded mornings, for sure! But none as bad as Monday night, when Hannah decided to try out another strategy... instead of eating a whole bottle of about 3-4 ounces and then sleeping for an hour and a half, she would snack on like a quarter-ounce and then fell asleep for ONE hour! Needless to say, I was pretty wiped out Tuesday, but Tuesday night she was back to her normal schedule and last night she actually slept even longer between feedings, so I think I'm feeling more rested this morning than I have in quite a while.

Note that I didn't say I feel rested... I said I feel more rested than I have in a while. Big difference there. :)

Snow is on the way today... I have the digital camera and I'm going to see if I can get some pictures taken. It's supposed to be 4-8 inches in the Tulsa Metro.

Hannah Spends Time With Mommy And Daddy

Hannah Spends Time With Mommy And Daddy
A story in pictures.

Sometimes Hannah likes to spend time with Daddy. See how attentive she is to him!

She likes to be in Daddy's lap. Daddy doesn't really watch Channel 8 that much; somebody gave him the shirt.

Daddy likes to lay Hannah down on his legs so they can look at each other.

"But," Daddy says, "I don't think she's looking at me!"

What Hannah likes to look at.

"Hannah, don't you want to look at Daddy?"

Hannah has found something more interesting to look at.

Someone else has shown up.

Surprise... it's Mama!

"I don't understand," says Daddy. "What's Mama got that I ain't got??"

Holy Knitting

Hannah's "first baby picture"

After Mikey was born, we waited a couple of years to have another... circumstances of our life intruded and he was probably five years old before we felt like we could go ahead and start trying for another child. Unfortunately, things didn't go as smoothly for us as we could have hoped... we had several early-term miscarriages and we even consulted with a couple of fertility doctors, who prescribed treatments that are expensive and that were not covered by our insurance. Each time we got pregnant, Cathy got so excited that she would begin to tell people within a week or two after home-testing positive, only to be later disappointed when the pregnancy terminated. I tried to convince her to keep it under her hat for a month or so until we were sure that the pregnancy was going to "take," but she couldn't help it... she kept letting it get out, and then we would have to explain what had happened to people.

Ultimately we left it in God's hands, and finally a pregnancy happened that went well. After a month or so even I was comfortable enough to "go public" with it, and we told all of our friends in our church choir, in the church children's department where Mikey goes to his classes and where we volunteer, family members, everybody. It was very exciting! Cathy was experiencing morning sickness, which is generally considered a good sign of a strong pregnancy, so we were really excited but we still asked Sunday school friends and other friends to pray for things to go smoothly. I remember one Sunday morning Cathy had stayed home from church, I believe because of the queasiness, and we were praying for her in Sunday school. One woman who sometimes has visions when she is praying said out loud to me, "I just see God making something like a cloth, kind of weaving a piece of cloth." OK, I thought, isn't THAT random. But I trust this woman and I believe she hears from God, so when I got home I told Cathy what she had said. When she heard it, Cathy got a sort of stricken look on her face, and said to me "All morning I've been thinking of the verse where it says that God knits us together in our mother's womb."

In a book I am reading, Philip Yancey repeats a quote from Albert Einstein that "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." I haven't been able to uncover evidence that A.E. actually did say that, but I suppose there is probably some truth in it. I don't think that this was coincidence; I consider it one of the clearest words of prophecy I've ever experienced in my life. It encouraged us a great deal about that pregnancy.

The pregnancy which, a few weeks later, spontaneously ended in miscarriage.

So how do you handle something like that? We felt strongly that we had heard from God, and yet what He had said to us appeared to have not come to pass. We were of course devastated once again, but we continued to believe that God was working in our best interests. And we continued to wonder about that prophetic word which had not happened.

Within months, we were pregnant again. This pregnancy carried to term (well, not technically to term, but you know that story already) and sweet little Hannah was the result. Are we sad about the miscarriages? Yes. Does that lessen our happiness and thankfulness for Hannah? Definitely not!

So what about that word of prophecy?

The cap is crocheted, not knitted, but you get the idea.

Well... it seems like a lot of times with prophecy, what you think it means is not always what it does mean. I think when God brought that Scripture passage to our memory, we thought what He was saying was that the pregnancy that was happening at that time was the one that was going to carry through to birth. In retrospect, I think what God was saying though His Word was that He was in control. When the baby came along, it would be because He had "knit" her for us, not because we had done anything right or wrong. God's provision is not something we demand, and it's not something we get because we prayed right. We pray and ask; the Word tells us that is what we should do. But ultimately God knows best how to provide for His children, and he answers prayers in His way.

Squeeky Baby

Hannah squeaks when she breathes. She doesn't do it to express herself; at certain times she just squeaks with every breath. We saw Dr. Ross yesterday for a regular well-baby visit, and he said she's moving plenty of air so it's not a problem for her and likely never will be. Not an asthma thing or anything like that. We talked about laryngomalacia, which I had found out about via the Web, and he confirmed that it might be that... and it will probably clear up on its own. So for now, we just pretty much enjoy the harmless squeaky sounds she makes. Usually she sounds a lot like Wheezy the penguin from Toy Story 2, but almost every time she makes a sound it sounds like something different to me. Like, for example:

• Cleaning a window with a squeegee
• Writing on a whiteboard
• Squealing tires before a bad car crash
• A rusty porch swing
• Playing with your straw in your cup lid at McDonald's

Brother Love

This blurry picture was taken when Hannah was less than 24 hours old... that's her big brother Mikey there, giving her a big smooch. Sometimes pictures are so terrible they're almost unpresentable, but so wonderful that you can't hit the "delete" button. :)

When we found out we were going to have a baby, Mikey was very excited. Heck, after several miscarriages (we had maybe three or four extremely early-term miscarriages between Mikey and Hannah) we were all pretty charged up when it became clear that this one was going to make it all the way to delivery! Many months ago we asked Mikey whether he wanted a sister or brother, and in typical Mikey fashion, at first without really thinking about it, he gave the "perfect" answer: "It doesn't matter to me, as long as the baby is healthy." Weeks later, that had mysteriously changed to "a brother!" which was not a problem until we found out through ultrasound that we were indeed going to have a sister. Ultrasound pictures are never 100% conclusive, but Hannah was nice enough to give us a viewpoint that made us probably 97-98% positive that it was a girl. Mikey refused to be convinced, and I'm pretty sure he started praying that the baby was a boy. We did explain to him that the baby was already what it was going to be and we can't change that by praying any more than we could pray a baby girl that has already been born into being a boy, but that didn't seem to have any effect at first.

Eventually, though, Mikey came around, and he became very excited about having a baby sister. Now that Hannah is finally here, our biggest problem is getting Mikey to give her room to breathe! He's always giving her a smooch, or holding her hand, or touching her little tootsies. I've had to resort to saying "Mikey, are you touching the grownup who is holding Hannah? Then you are TOO CLOSE!" and he backs off a little.

But I think we prefer the little inconvenience of Mikey being underfoot because he wants to be around Hannah, to the big inconvenience if he hated and resented her. I think the two of them are likely to be very close throughout their lives, which is awesome. :)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Cathy and I haven't been getting very regular sleep lately. This is of course not unexpected when there's a new baby in the house, but that doesn't make it easier. Last night we had one of those typical nights which consists of alternating sounds of adult snoring (about one hour) and baby cries (about five minutes), punctuated by about twenty or thirty minutes of a bleary-eyed grown-up holding a baby in one arm and a bottle with the other hand. One particular time, she was crying and crying and I knew she had just been changed and eaten, and the Gloworm just wasn't doing the trick (not even in MUSIC mode!) so I wound up getting up and rocking her to sleep in the glide rocker. Cathy's been so pooped that she slept through that entire episode. I hope all the wee-hour fussing isn't waking up Mikey... I'd hate for this to affect his schoolwork when school starts back up in a week or two. If we're really lucky, maybe Hannah will be sleeping through the night by that time (knock wood, and perform many other good luck gestures).

We're home!

December 16, 2007. At 7am we arrived at the hospital, ready to induce labor on our baby. Cathy had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes (high blood sugar during pregnancy; it generally goes away after delivery) and that is known to cause the baby to grow bigger inside the mother than usual, and if you let the baby go to full term and it's too big, the labor will be hard or you might even wind up delivering via C-section. It was basically the same scenario when we had Mikey seven and a half years ago... big baby, decided to induce, even the 7am appointment at the hospital. The outcome was pretty different, although both times we wound up with beautiful babies!

So around 9:15am we had been admitted and started a pitocin IV. Pitocin is a hormone that can be used to encourage the woman's body to begin to have contractions. Some friends showed up to keep us company, but the contractions did not show up... until 11am when everybody left the room to let Cathy go to sleep. As soon as everybody was outside, the contractions started up and we were off to the races!

Well... ALMOST. Turns out that pitocin-induced contractions are good, but they're not quite the same as "real" contractions that are initiated by your actual body. But they are still painful, and by about 12:15 Cathy was ready for some Stadol. (Actually, she wanted her epidural, but the nurse advised against it, and it turns out that it was for a good reason... but I'm getting ahead of myself.) By about 1:30 the Stadol had worn off by Cathy decided to tough it out until 2, when the nurse gave her another dose. So by the 2-hour rule, that would have worn off by 4 at the latest, but Cathy wouldn't take another dose... she wanted to wait for the epidural! (The Stadol made her a little loopy and she didn't like it.)

The nurse recommended that she work with a labor ball and do some walking laps of her room, so we did that and by about 6 she had gone into "real" labor. That's why it's a good thing we didn't do the epidural earlier... she wouldn't have been able to walk (an epidural basically kills all feeling from the waist down). So at about 6 she took the epidural. During good active labor you can expect to dilate at a rate of about 1cm per hour. At 6 she was at 5cm, at 7 she was at 6cm, and at 8 she was at 7cm, but then by 9 she took a leap and had become fully dilated (10cm), so they called Dr. Ross to come on down to deliver the baby.

And at 9:36pm, Hannah was born! Cathy only had to push through about maybe 6-7 contractions, maybe 10-15 minutes of pushing total, which is an unusually easy time considering that Hannah was 9 pounds, 2 ounces (which is pretty big at birth!) and Mikey had been smaller but took so long that Cathy ran out of steam and had had to agree to vacuum extraction. This time there was no vacuum and no running out of steam. Hannah came right on out and everything was awesome!

At least it was right at first. Shortly after I cut the cord and they put Hannah on the little examination cart, they discovered that she had sucked a little fluid into her lungs and needed to be watched overnight. Cathy got to hold her for just a minute or two and the doctor explained the situation, and they whisked her off to a special part of the nursery area that they call the "Special Care Nursery". They wanted to keep an eye on Hannah overnight and make sure she was breathing properly. So Hannah was whisked and I whisked with her, and the 8-10 family and friends outside the birth room only got the quickest glimpse of her on the way out. It broke my heart... Mikey was so excited, he wanted to go to Special Care Nursery too and look at her. They wouldn't let him, but he did get to see through a window, and one of the nurses took a snapshot of her for him to take home for the night. Hannah stuck her tongue out in the picture. Take THAT, big brother!!

So they put her head under a little oxygen hood for the night. They moved us to our recovery room, and we got them to put a camera over her bassinet for us so we could watch her on the TV in our room. A little after midnight we went to sleep. At 4 they woke us to take Cathy's vital signs, and I noticed that the oxygen hood had been removed from her head... a good sign, I assumed. At 6am we woke up again to the sound of static on the TV speakers... our camera feed was gone! I assumed that this was also a good sign; they don't do the cameras in the regular nursery, only Special Care. We called the nursery to get the four one one, and turns out they were giving her a bath, but the nurse reassured me that we would likely get her in our room in the morning, and that's what we got!

We had lots of family members and friends to see us on Sunday and Monday... we loved every minute of it! It sure tuckered us out, though, and we were a little glad that we didn't have any visitors on Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon about 3 or 4 they checked us out, and by late afternoon we were home!

So, we've had a number of nearly sleepless nights since Hannah's birth. Cathy has stressed a little bit about breast feeding... our first night in the hospital with her we had one marathon feeding session that must have lasted at least two hours, maybe more. Tonight it's nearly 1am and I'm staying up because Hannah has developed Hyperbilirubinemia (also called jaundice) and she has to be kept under a special blue light all of the time except when she is eating or getting changed until the jaundice clears up (the light helps the body break down the excess bilirubin; the build-up is fairly common in newborns and is nutrition-related). In about ten minutes I'm going to change Hannah's diaper and feed her, put her back under the light (which looks like a baby tanning bed) and maybe doze off in the living room where she is... at 3 Cathy will get up and do the same while I go to bed for a little while. So we're going to take turns with this thing and if the tech who delivered the light bed is right, we may only have to do this for less than 24 hours.

What a blessing she is. I don't care if I have to stay up all night for the rest of my life; I'm so happy and thankful to God that my family has increased from 3 of us to 4!

(If you want to see Hannah's baby pictures, you can find them in the Web Nursery under Tulsa's SouthCrest hospital for Dec. 16, 2007. If you don't know the password, email me and I'll let you know.)

New Baby Tomorrow

Seven and a half years after we had our first child, and tomorrow we are inducing to have the second one. We're inducing this time too, so we won't have the omigosh my water broke on the floor in Wal-Mart we have to get to the hospital NOW!!! thing going on. And it does give us the opportunity to get a night's sleep first... as if anyone could SLEEP knowing you're having a BABY the next day! :)

We went to the Christmas production at our church tonight, and it was very nice. Of course, if we hadn't been scheduled to induce at 7am on Sunday morning on the same Sunday as our production...! Thank you so much Dr. Ross! hehe we would have sung in the choir tonight. We could have done it tonight for the Saturday performance but not the Sunday ones so we decided to bow out this year. We just went for moral support. We were glad we did! Cathy cried any time anyone said Jesus was a "baby" or Joseph was the "father" or Mary was the "mother"... it was almost Pavlovian. :)