It's been a while......

So I’m back. It’s been a while. Man, time flies, doesn’t it? Our son is now 26 weeks old! We are less than 100 days out! Susie is getting bigger and bigger. I was out of town last week for work and I swear she added three pants sizes while I was gone. My drawers might be too small for her now. And I’m officially addicted to her belly. I love feeling the baby bounce around and throw the occasional elbow at my ear when I’m in close for a listen.

One major relief new to us today is the fact that Susie passed her second glucose tolerance test! Two weeks ago she took the standard glucose tolerance test. After fasting, they took a sample of her blood, she drank a nasty sweet orange drink, and then after an hour they took another sample of blood to determine how well her body processed the sugar. The test results came back with a higher glucose number than the doctor wanted, so they scheduled her for a three-hour glucose test last week. Same procedure, but the drink was much stronger and nastier and they took samples every hour for three hours. NO FUN! Well, we found out today that she passed with flying colors, which is a huge praise to God because if she failed she would’ve had to attend a gestational diabetes class; just something extra to do and deal with. She’s a trooper. I’m so glad I’m a guy because I’m too much of a pansy to go through a pregnancy. This whole thing has given me another level of respect and admiration for my amazing wife.

We’re both finishing up our spring semester at school, which has added a little busyness to the schedule. But we still found time yesterday to set up the crib in the baby’s room!

Every little step we take makes it more and more real in my mind, and I just keep getting more and more excited. And every thing we bring in the house and set up in the baby’s room makes Chili more and more curious. Today he convinced us to let him try on one of the baby’s hats. He’s going to be a great big brother!

Since my last post we’ve also experienced another major answer to prayer. One thing we were uncertain about was childcare for our son when Susie goes back to school this fall. Well, Susie was able to meet the Baptist Student Minster on campus at IU, and he and his wife have a baby that’s about five months old. She is interested in watching our son when Susie is in class this coming year. We are so excited to have a house for the baby go to where they already have all the “baby” things, where he’ll get a lot of personal attention, where he’ll get a little baby socialization, and where he’ll remain in an atmosphere where Jesus is the center of the house. God is great, and I remain astounded at how He continues to provide for us.

I guess it’s been a while because I keep thinking of other things to update: Susie was required by IU to have their health insurance as a student. Well, we found out that this student insurance covers some of what my insurance doesn’t, which eases some of our financial load. Again, God is faithful.

So here we are, and I am again promising to be more faithful in the future to post more regularly. Thanks to those who have encouraged me to write more by saying they enjoy the blog. We’re sitting in a brand new local coffee shop near our house, and it’s the perfect atmosphere to blog. So hopefully we can carve out more time to come down here soon and I can continue to get my thoughts out. I still have a lot floating around in that empty space up there, and I can’t wait to put it in writing. Thanks for reading.

Colorado Baby Shower

A couple weekends ago Susie and I were able go to Colorado for the weekend. It was a lot of fun to get to spend time with family and friends. My buddy Matt Hall and his wife Moya are due within a week of Susie, so it was great to see them and compare pregnancy notes. We got a couple of pregnant tummy pictures, which are becoming more and more fun as the tummies get bigger and bigger.
But the real reason we went is because of the baby shower that was being held for Susie. I was completely blown away by the generosity and selflessness of the women that held this shower for Susie. I not sure but I think it’s been since I was in elementary school (or pretty much as long as I can remember); my mom has been meeting with a prayer group made up of other moms. Most of these women were moms of my friends and other kids that went to my school. These women are the most diligent prayers I know. One of these ladies (Kathy Hall, Matt’s mom, on the left), along with another lady (Jan Hogan) whose family has been a friend of ours as long as I can remember decided they wanted to throw Susie a baby shower.

When I heard that I thought it was a pretty cool idea. A lot of them have been like family to me for a long time, but I was still a little surprised, since a lot of these women don’t really know Susie personally that well. But a lot of these ladies do have a close connection with her because of their prayers for me (for a wife) and then their prayers for her since we’ve been married and through all of our adventures together.

I knew these women were generous and thoughtful and caring and happy for us as an expectant couple, but I was completely unprepared for what they had in store for Susie. Baby showers are about the coolest things for expectant dads, because we completely rake in the goods and we don’t even have to show up. I went snowboarding at Eldora with my dad that day and had a great father/son time (I can’t wait to share times like this with my son) (and I had some time to myself to take pictures of the scenery as my dad was off the run somewhere to the right watering a tree). But, like I said, I had no clue how much raking in Susie and I were going to be doing that day.

These women treated Susie like a daughter and went completely over the top in generosity with their gifts. We are truly blessed to have friends like that. When you look in the newspaper or just listen to conversations during everyday life, you tend to mostly hear stories about bad things happening and people doing bad things in the world around us. A deed like this isn’t going to make any newspaper front page, but it deserves to be recognized for what it is: a selfless act by a group of selfless women that will be remembered for a lifetime. These ladies spent days preparing a party for Susie with absolutely nothing in it for them. They gave of themselves without expecting anything in return. So a BIG THANK YOU to Kathy and Jan, and all the other women that made have made Susie a part of your family through your prayers, support and selflessness. People like you are too few and far between. You are the kind of person that I try to be.

PS - My sister Amy and her husband Paul got us the onesie with no right arm hole I had requested so our son can learn to be a lefty. Haha. Now we just have to work on that curveball.

Stall Seat

I’m sorry, I have to share this picture with you (thank everything holy for camera phones). Here’s the setting: I’m in Nashville and I’ve got a little time to kill before I meet up with some friends to see Mike Doughty play at the Exit/In. So I head to the Whole Foods at the Hill Center, which is an upscale shopping area in southwest Nashville (Susie and I really miss having a Whole Foods/Wild Oats-type grocery store to go to on a regular basis). This Whole Foods is huge, it’s two stories and has a grill, a cooking school, and a coffee bar with free Wi-Fi (which I still can’t seem to connect to); it’s like a Six Flags over Organic Foods.

So upon arrival I go to relieve myself. I don’t know if I noticed this because with Susie being pregnant I’m noticing kid and baby things more often, or if I noticed this because it was so over the top. I look at the side of the stall and there’s a car seat bolted to the wall. Now, I can see this being useful if you have to actually tie your kid down to keep them from running off – we had a dog named Coco once that was like that. But can you imagine being the poor kid in that seat? “Here you go little Johnny, now just sit here and watch your dad drop a deuce.” Crazy. Does anyone else find this extremely funny/weird/scary/etc? That poor kid is suddenly thinking, “Man, if I’d only agreed to stand quietly by myself outside the stall instead of making Dad chase me through the store, especially after he had that big burrito for lunch.”

I am not my own

I’ve been feeling very weak and vulnerable for the last few days. I’ve had a fever with a cough, nausea, aches, congestion and sleeplessness since Friday; I haven’t set foot outside our house since I got home from work Friday afternoon. I hate being sick. I like to think I can set my own schedule based on my own priorities and when I’m laid up for a few days it’s humbling. As the clouds start to lift it feels like I’ve just stepped out of a painful and foggy time warp that I entered about Friday at lunchtime. I feel like a wimp and a hypocrite for taking Theraflu and Tylenol after going well over three years without any prescription or OTC medications. I’m sick of lying around and feeling worthless to the world. There were a number of things I didn’t get to do last weekend that I wanted to do. I didn’t get to go to the doctor with Susie today. Susie’s mom and dad were in town this weekend helping out around the house and I didn’t pay them any attention or give them any appreciation for their help. I guess that’s a whole paragraph to say that I’ve been spending too much time focusing on myself and feeling sorry for myself.

And this afternoon as I was thinking about this, I kept coming back to these verses in my mind: I Corinthians 6:19-20 “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” We’re doing a study about sex, dating, and relationships on Wednesday nights with our youth. This is a verse that I’ve been bringing up week after week. But how much have I been taking it to heart as I wallow in my self-pity? I am not my own. That means giving up control, which is hard to do, which is what I’ve been wrestling with this weekend. It’s also hard to do as Susie and I look forward to the birth of our son.

This last Wednesday night we had an outstanding guest speaker at youth named Kaleb Carter. One point he made that kept sticking with me (at least the one that relates to my post) is that Susie is not mine. Susie is God’s; I just get the most enviable job of taking care of her and loving her the best I can while we’re on this earth together. If someone lends me their Ferrari, I’m not going to trash it and return it to them all crashed up and scarred. How much better than a Ferrari is Susie, and how much more worth does she hold to me and to God? And this only makes sense: if I myself am not my own, how can I call Susie my own?

So if I’m not my own, and Susie is not my own, then the child inside of her is definitely not my own. What a commission that last sentence holds for Susie and I! I can’t wait to see what this baby looks like; what features it takes from me and what features it takes from mom. But I understand the stark responsibility in front of me, which I guess is why my nervousness comes into play at times, and why I fear for the safety and well being of this child. It was hard not going to the doctor’s office today. I couldn’t wait to hear the report from Susie and was absolutely relieved to hear that the doctor is very pleased with both her and the baby’s progress.

But more than fear of something going wrong with the baby’s health, I’m fearful of my selfishness getting in the way of my responsibility to our (God’s) child. I don’t see any worse way to fail as a father, and a weekend like this has brought me face to face with that selfishness that I need to root out. So for that I’m thankful, and as the clouds start to lift and I start thinking about moving back toward life’s everyday tasks, I ask God that I would be worthy of the child He’s giving us to care for. I am not my own.

It's a........

Well, I haven't been posting a lot lately, and it's mostly been pictures. The substance hasn't been there, and I'll get back to that as soon as I can; there's still a lot swirling around upstairs. I want to post more right now, but we're headed out the door to play at a church tonight; I just wanted to get some pictures up and share the great news.

We showed up and the technician plopped the Doppler down into the dollop of jelly on Susie's tummy. I wasn't even five seconds later that she froze the screen and there, plain as could be, was the evidence. "It's a boy!" There was no way to debate that fact. The next 20 minutes or so were exhilarating and emotional, getting to see his little heart beat through all four chambers, watching him move his arms and legs around, and just being amazed at the wonderful design of our Creator. I was amazed at the clarity and resolution of the pictures, and I've posted them below (except for the evidence of gender, this IS a family blog). :)

Enjoy!

Say Cheese!

Sometimes Chili's upper lip gets hung up on his lower eye-teeth, and we think it looks HIGH-larious. Well, we just noticed that in one of the tummy pictures, when he wasn't yelling "I'm going to be a big brother!" he was saying "Cheese!" when his lip got hung up on those teeth. And since his lips are puffed out his front teeth are showing and it looks like a big grin. Great picture. He's a Chili Cheese Dog!

Pictures!

Susie was sixteen weeks yesterday. She joined the pregnant yak club (her words, not mine) last weekend while up in Bloomington. I was a little disappointed in Chili because I've showed him how to hold her hair back just in case I couldn't be there, but according to Susie he just stood there and watched. Bad dog!

Ok, I promised pictures a few weeks back and am finally delivering on that promise. Here are a few tummy pictures of Susie. Chili just had to be part of the picture process. You should have heard him. He was yelling “I’m going to be a big brother!” over and over. I was lucky enough to get a picture of him while he was yelling. You can also see a picture of our Bible study's pregnant Cingular bars. Susie is kind of out in the country, Shannon is getting towards a big city, and Nicole is standing right underneath a cell phone tower. In fact, Nicole is so close to the tower, she may lose her coverage this week.