Saturday, June 25, 2011

Deep Thoughts

You know your life is great when the first words you hear when you wake up in the morning are "I love you."

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

It's A Boy!

After what seemed like a flash to me but I'm sure a long road to my sister in law, I now have a nephew!

Little Samuel Thomas was born on June 14 at 6:06pm after 24 hours of labor. Though there was a long build up, I still managed to be late. I left work just as they were taking Christine in for a C-section, but between a stop at a florist, that was, of course, closed and traffic, the big announcement had already happened by the time I arrived.

I wanted to be surprised, though, and hear it from Matt whether the baby was a boy or a girl. Andrew met me in the lobby of the hospital and went into the little shop with me so I could get flowers. I picked out an arrangement and when I brought it to the counter, I asked if I could add a balloon. The lady asked if the baby was a boy or a girl. I told her I didn't know yet. The other employee started sifting through the balloon selection. "I don't know if we have any ambidextrous ones," she called over her shoulder. "They all either say boy or girl."

Andrew and I looked at each other and had to immediately look away to make sure we didn't burst into giggles. I said we could skip the balloons and paid for the flowers.

We went up and I heard from Matt that it was a boy and heard from my mom all the other details.



They had already taken Sam to the nursery so we went down to look at him while Christine finished in recovery. My first glimpses of my nephew were wonderful, but after the first few minutes, we started to hear a woman in labor down the hall. It was not like what you see portrayed in movies or on TV. It was much, much worse. A nurse actually walked by and said "I'm sorry if you guys haven't had kids yet, it's not always like this."

I tried to block it out and concentrate on Sam's little toes and the way he kept pushing his tongue against his bottom lip. It would work until I'd hear "GEEEETTTTT IIIITTTTTTT OOOOUUUUUTTTT UUGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!"

Shortly afterwards, they brought Sam and Christine to her room so she could nurse him and after a while, we got to go in and see Christine and hold the baby. Between having a perfect little baby in my arms and the door closed to outside noise, I was able to forget the horrific shrieks I'd heard and enjoy meeting my nephew...and relishing the knowledge that the most difficult thing I'd gone through to get to hold a baby in my arms was sit through Blue Route traffic.

Monday, June 6, 2011

How Can I Have S'more When I Haven't Had Any Yet?

In the latest episode of "I'm how old?", I burnt my lip tonight. How? By trying to scrape (with my teeth) the leftover bit of melted marshmallow off of the metal fork that I'd just held over an open flame to make a s'more.