Spring is here!

That's right, spring is here! One sign of the coming season is that Ellie has been trying to sneak outside more and more. As you can see in the picture below, she just loves it out there. I caught her napping in the planter on our front step. Better there than in the street! Or worse . . .


The other day, my neighbor stopped to tell me that she ran into his home and was hiding in his basement. I wish I had a picture of the look on my face when he told me that! Yikes! (To be fair, he had left his door wide open so he could listen to the music that was playing from his home stereo.)

Pecking order

It's Easter Sunday, and we're home now after a pretty good morning. We woke up and made it to church - I won't say on time - but in pretty good time. It was packed today as was expected, and we ended up taking a seat in the back corner. Jude did pretty well throughout service, but on occasion had to be taken outside to regain his composure.

I think I know how Amanda's brother-in-law Chad feels now when he's at church. I must have walked in and out of the worship room 3-5 times just to get Jude to quiet down. Needless to say, I didn't hear much of the pastor's message.

So we made it home and were ready for our typical Sunday afternoon routine. I went for a run with Pacey and Molly (the neighbor's dog) and Amanda headed for the couch with Jude for a nap. I'll give her this - she deserves every nap she can get nowadays. Sleeping two hours at a clip can't be easy, especially for someone who loves her sleep as much as my dearest.

After our run, Pacey and I took a shower and eventually made it down to the living room couch. They say there's nothing like spending time with one's familial unit. Bonding, I'm there! Pacey was begging to get up on the couch with us. With Amanda, Jude and myself already comfortable, where is she going to fit? We told her, "Sorry Pacey, baby Jude took your spot. There's no room for you Pacey!"

A few minutes went by and my wife thinks it's more important for her to take a nap on the couch than for me to sit next to her while I blog and watch the NCAA tournament. If she goes upstairs to nap, she says, she's going to wake up Jude in the process. It's too cold upstairs (under the blankets?!)

I'm thinking, "Whatever," but I say, "OK, I'm good with that." She wants to lay down on the full length couch to stretch out, so I moved the laptop and my beverage and set up over by the chair in the corner. After a while, I started to feel hungry, so I pulled some leftovers out to heat up for a quick afternoon snack.

While I'm in the kitchen, I hear Pacey get up on the couch. I'm thinking that only in the land of opposites would a man's dog have priority over his owner, but alas, I'm wrong. I've got to be at about 1000 words by now, and they say that's about what a picture is worth. See for yourself:

The Hutter chin

Because my sister asked, I'll share that so far, we think Jude has been saved from inheriting the Hutter nose. However, there's a 99% chance he has the Hutter chin. See for yourself!

He's losing on us!

Well, we visited the doctor -- nurse, actually -- today for Jude's two day appointment. We left the hospital with him weighing 6 lbs, 9 oz. At today's appointment, he weighed only 6 lbs, 5 oz. The nurse that saw us was someone we had never met before.

Without an established rapport, she came across as overly concerned and put us into a semi-panicked state. She was very concerned with Jude's weight loss and advised us to supplement formula to Jude's normal diet of breast milk. Amanda and I both took that -- like a bunch of granola-heads -- as a personal challenge. We want so badly to prove that we can make him gain weight without formula! Amanda fed Jude today every 1-2 hours.

He was feeding so often that I thought it might work better for her to not wear a shirt?! (Yeah, I probably should keep that one to myself!) Jude sure was a busy bee though today. It's almost 10 pm, and poor Jude is just worn out. I had to laugh . . .Amanda had just finished feeding him for what seemed like the 100th time today and he started hiccuping. I wasn't sure which end his noises were coming from, and so I asked her.


Amanda propped Jude up to burp him and he just looked like this drunk sailor! After being fed all through the day, there he sat . . .his hat about falling off, hiccuping, not able to sit up straight and just wanting to sleep. Poor Jude!

To our friends of faith, please pray that Jude would gain weight between now and our next appointment this coming Saturday morning. Thank you!

3/1 UPDATE: Jude made his Saturday weigh in with some to spare. He weighed in at 6 lbs., 8.8 ounces, just .2 ounces short of what his weight was when we left the hospital. Praise God!

Hey Jude!

As you can imagine, we've gotten tons of feedback on Jude's name in the three days he's been with us.

For some, his name might conger up images of Paul McCartney singing the Beatles song, "Hey Jude." That's not such a bad thing. How can a band sell 8 million copies of a song and it be bad?! I'd call it (i.e., the song) safe.

The NFL thought he was a safe bet, bringing him in for the Superbowl the year after Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction! As part of getting Amanda's vote, it also didn't hurt that Jude Law is one handsome Brit!

Back to the Beatles . . .a buddy of mine sent me this YouTube video . . .priceless, thanks Truen! If you want to sing along to the song, LyricsFreak has the lyrics.

When you're done singing along, you might be interested to know that in Hebrew, the name Jude means praised, or "he shall be praised." The Greek version of the name is Judas -- we didn't name our child Judas. But Jude is referred to as Judas in this Bible verse (or this), which gives us insight that Jude was probably a half-brother to Jesus.

There's also a very good study aid at BlueLetterBible.org on the book of Jude. I actually haven't read the book for a long time, so writing this post has given me some motivation to dig in and learn what Jude has to say about false teachers of the day and what that means for us today.

I write all of this to try and deepen the meaning of his name, but in the end, we chose it because we thought it was a cool name, it didn't bring up images of horrible former students, and it has a historical biblical connotation. This child was the answer to prayers of ours and many of our friends and family for over 3 years.

Because of having to wait to meet him, we've grown in maturity and have a deepened understanding of what it means to be his parents. For this, we praise Him! More on that in a future post . . .

That's what we're paying the nurses for!

Amanda and I wanted to bond with little Jude his first night in this world. As she told me later, she had just fed Jude and laid down to sleep with him on her chest. After some time, she started to smell his diaper. Ever heard of meconium (see right)?!

So it's like 3 in the morning or something like that, and I'm over in the pull-out chair/couch thing getting some decent Zzz's and I woke me to Amanda sitting up in bed with Jude trying to change his diaper. I don't even remember if she was asking for help or if it was Jude crying or something else.

If anyone knows me, I can fall asleep in less time than it takes someone to tie their shoe, and I sleep so deep I miss most evening thunderstorms. I was like, what are you waking me up for? And why are you changing his diaper?! That's what we're paying the hospital for!!! If' we're going to do it this way, let's go home!

Our friends had warned us that being in the hospital would be a refuge for soon-to-be sleep-deprived parents. In the moment, my guess is that she was a big frustrated with me . After laboring all night Friday night, she was already sleep-deprived.

Did I mention that I'm one astute fella? We did have a pretty good laugh about it this morning though . . .

Surprise . . .Happy Valentine's Day!

After Tuesday night's practice run, I was a little worried that my little surprise wouldn't work. Well not to worry . . .it worked exactly as planned!

Look at that picture of her . . .isn't she the most beautiful 9-month pregnant woman you've seen?! Thursday was Valentine's Day, and after Amanda got me last year, I couldn't resist repaying the favor.

Last year, Amanda went in together with some girlfriends and surprised me and two of my co-workers (Scott and Rob) with a singing barbershop quartet. Imagine 3 guys standing next to each other being serenaded by four old-timers. Yep, and not to just one song, but two!

This year, Amanda's third hour class was able to witness first-hand the depths of our love. They were happy to partake -- and skip out on their planned quiz. I hope they thank me this Tuesday when I come in to wrap up week 3 of our Junior Achievement curriculum.

On a side note, you can't beat the price on this hot deal. The price tag includes two songs, a rose, a box chocolate and photos of the event with your significant other in full surprise mode -- which is priceless!

Our practice run!

We don't know what labor looks like. What first-time couple would? We had been saying all along that we'd like to labor at home until Amanda gets into active labor. After our experience Wednesday morning, I almost thought we missed our shot!

Amanda woke me up at like 12:30 am with a strong contraction that had been lasting for an hour and counting. I hadn't really gone to sleep yet. (With her not getting good sleep at night, she's been going to bed early and I've been staying up late.)

So around 1 am, she called the Ask-A-Nurse hotline to find out if what she was experiencing was anything to be concerned with. In today's world of liability-conscious companies, they wouldn't give out any real answers. Instead, they transferred her twice, made her call back and -- when she got a hold of someone that was ready to do their job, we were told that we should go to the hospital . . .so there we stayed all night long. Well, sort of.

We got there and, after hooking her up to a bunch of machines, they told us that she might be in early labor. Amanda's strong/long contraction had subsided by this time, and we both had the feeling that we might be going through the motions of false labor. Her contractions were at irregular intervals between 3 and 6 minutes apart. The nurse told us that we could go into active labor and have this baby today, or that it might be another 2 weeks.

The nurse put a call into our doctor, who advised that we should probably stay over until morning (around 7 am). We only live 7 blocks from the hospital, and with only a recliner available, I thought it'd be easier to get some sleep at home.

They told us she'd be there until at least 7 am, but my phone rang at 5 am with Amanda on the other end saying she was being released and was ready to come home (there went my sleep!). So I drove the 3 minute commute and picked her up. Needless to say, neither of us went to work yesterday!

On a happy note, at least we were able to get a practice run in. Now, we know what the routine is. Amanda's vowed not to go to the hospital until she's in active labor! They wouldn't let her have anything but crackers and water -- and she probably would have been limited to ice chips if she had been any further along (water breaking, etc.)!

Sometimes, your back hurts so much . . .

. . .you just have to lay flat on the floor. Ever felt that way? That's what happened here!

Of course, Pacey and Molly (our neighbor's lab) didn't waste the opportunity.

Wanna get away?

Today was my first day back at work after a 2 week winter break. As I was walking down the hallway sporting my bigger belly, some of my former students stopped me to ask a question. I heard them ask, "What did you do?"...referring to my growing my belly. I quickly and cutely responded by saying "What do you think I did?" Then they said, "No, When are your due?" Oh my gosh...was I embarrassed! The worst thing about it was that these girls were not the only ones who were engaged in the conversation, but there was a group of boys interested in what we were talking about as well. I felt like I was in a Southwest Airlines commercial and I was waiting for a voice to come over the loud speaker that said, "Wanna get away?!"

Coming soon: Our baby!

BabyCenter.com says our baby now weighs 3.75 pounds and is gaining at the rate of 1/2 pound every week. We're at 32 weeks now and are due on February 25th.

Wow! It's finally staring to feel real. I got out of bed last night at 11:45 pm and ordered a crib off of Baby Center, thinking their free shipping coupon might expire on 12/31! Wal*Mart was out of stock and Target -- well, their return policy plain sucks! Why not just order the thing and get it over with . . .

What worries me more is that our pregnant friends are all going 3-5 weeks early. The little one might be here in as soon as 3 weeks. Did I say wow?!

Our baby room currently consists of a combination jogging and regular stroller, a dresser that doubles as a changing table and an almost empty closet that has some yellow and green odds and ends clothes in it. Yikes!

As Linda would say, we better "hop to it, frog legs!"

I'm a runner

Just so we're clear on this, I'm the guy you've driven past, merrily running around town when it's like 20 below zero out. I don't know why God wired me that way, but I'm a runner through and through.

I'll grant you this: it does get hard to motivate myself to run when it's bone chilling cold outside. I almost always find a way to get myself out to do it.

The times I most dread going for a run are (1) approx. 2 days after it snows and (2) right after a hard rain. Here's why. With the snow, I normally run on the Constitution Trail (or here or here), and it's way too easy to get sprained ankles from running on hard, crusty, icy and uneven ground.

After a hard rain, I just don't like to run on all of the worms that have crawled onto the pavement to avoid drowning. Yep, it's true.

White Elephant Gift Exchange Rules

We had a blast doing a white elephant gift exchange with our friends last Christmas. Here are the rules we went by. Read them before you try them, and feel free to modify or use them however you wish. Thanks Pete and Janet! My in-laws loved it this year!

1. Pick a gift with red wrapping
2. Pick a gift, but do not open it
3. Pick the largest gift
4. Pick a gift, but sing a Christmas carol before opening
5. Pick a gift, but do not open it
6. Pick a gift and drop it before opening
7. Shake 2 gifts and choose 1
8. Pick a person/gift that hasn't been opened and have them open it. (wait until opened) You have the option to steal.
9. Pick any open gift in the room
10. Pick a gift, but do not open it
11. Pick the smallest gift
    
12. Pick the most uniquely wrapped gift
13. Pick you own gift
14. Have 2 unopened gifts trade, you get the third gift
15. Have 2 opened gifts trade
16. Pick a gift
17. Say something nice about 3 people here, then pick a gift
    
18. Choose 4 people here and give them the gift that best fits them
19. Pick a gift for someone and take theirs

* Any time a wearable gift is opened, everyone with an opened gift must rotate one to the left.

It's pool time!

Today's the big day! Pacey is almost 6 months old and we're off to the Dog Days celebration at the local pool. For the past few years, they've held a fund raiser for the local Humane Society. After the last week of pool season and before they empty and clean the pool, they invite local residents to bring their dogs in for a swim.

Violating the law

The leash law, that is. Pacey and I got a ticket at [redacted] Park this morning for violating the local leash ordinance. It was just before 9 am. The weather was about 40 degrees and raining, and there wasn't a soul in the park besides me and another lady walking her dog.

Apparently, dogs have to be on leash in all city parks. Even when you're the only one in the park. Even when your dog is a harmless puppy.

As the Park Police officer was writing the ticket, he shared with us a story about how some dog rushed up to a stroller and the mother called the city to complain. Apparently, the city is on the lookout again for leash law violators. I got a $50 ticket. Yikes!

What was slightly satisfying is that Pacey, our 5-month old Vizsla (who still hasn't lost her baby teeth) sat in a perfect sit the whole while the officer wrote the ticket. Who would write a ticket for having a 5-month old puppy off of their leash?!

It was all I could do to hold back the thoughts in my head. I live a mile or so from the park and my garage and my wife's car have both been broken into this summer. While he was writing the ticket, I asked him, "Do you know anything about catching thieves?"