Can YOU guess the Word of the Day?

Susie is nine weeks along today. I really have never measured time in weeks, but I’m finding that’s the way to do it when you’re expecting. I’m also finding that this blog will be harder to keep up now that I’m back in the swing of things at work. I’m sure once school starts up for the spring semester it will be even tougher, but I’m going to try and post as often as I can.

I promised pictures, but haven't delivered on that promise yet. So for now you'll have to enjoy the next best thing: As you can see on the right side of the blog, I’ve added a Baby Gronseth widget. You can’t see our actual baby, but I bet if I could install a window on Susie's lower belly and shine a Mag light up close, that’s exactly what you'd see. If you click on the title, where it says “I’m 9 Weeks Pregnant,” it takes you to the page where the widget originated and it’s full of fun and facts. I found it amusing that one of the first things they mention on week 9 is that my baby already has a tiny anus. I mean, come on, of all the things they could have let me know right off the bat, and that’s what they chose. I guess I’m glad to hear it doesn’t already have a huge anus, but that’s more like endnote material in my opinion. I wonder if I am the only person that’s read that sentence and then went to the rotating model of the baby and looked for said tiny anus as the rear end rotated by. Ok, enough about anuses (is anuses the plural of anus? anusi? anese? nevermind). I’m sure diaper duty will afford me plenty of opportunity to see this kid’s anus after it’s born.

Over Christmas break I had a couple of those “am I really ready for this?” moments. The second of those moments occurred on the plane flight home. It was a pretty small plane, and we were delayed after boarding due to some mechanical issues with one of the engines (a better thing to figure out while on the ground than in the air if you ask me). I think every row had at least one child under the age of two in it. It was cold outside so they had the plane’s heater cranked, making it extremely stuffy and cramped. The babies’ scream boxes were set at super-turbo; you could barely hear the pilot when he would update us over the plane’s PA system. Once we got in air I think we plowed through every cloud between Memphis and Evansville, which (believe it or not) didn’t help all those babies sleep. So the screaming continued until we deplaned in Evansville. I guess sometimes I have this cherubic vision in my head of a baby and it takes something like this to make me remember that there will be times of screaming, and not all of those times will occur between 6 AM and 10 PM.

The first “am I ready for this?” moment happened when Susie and I went out to eat one night in Baton Rouge. We went to Ruffino’s which is a super great date place. It’s the Italian restaurant we went to on our first Valentine’s Day together. There was a table near us with a couple of families and a total of four or five kids. These kids were all over the place and were pretty disruptive. Did I mention that it wasn’t McDonald’s, but rather a fine dining establishment? The parents weren’t paying them much attention, so the kids were completely out of control in my opinion. Susie and I looked at each other and vowed that our kid would never be allowed to act like that. But I wonder... will this baby inside of Susie turn out to be an angel or a hellion? Believe me, I’m going to do my best to raise this kid the best I possibly can, but I can think of numerous examples of kids raised in good homes by attentive loving parents that were not what I would consider angelic. And on the other side of the coin I can point to model citizens that developed out of terrible childhood situations. So what’s the magic formula? I don’t know, and I guess that’s where I have to remember to swallow the twinge of worry that I feel sometimes and trust in God for wisdom. I do know, though, that when he or she gets here, I’m going to love on it and spend as much time with it as I can, no matter how big or tiny its anus is.