Actually
A “Photo of the Day” isn’t a terribly bad idea. Doing web pages for so long has rendered me rather stale in the photographic motivation department. Maybe it would be a good exercise for my creativity. Hmmm…
Start of an Adventure
I’ve been trying to write this in my head for the past two weeks or so. It’s really hard to talk about the experience of becoming a father without the emotional or gritty details of the process. For the medium I happen to be writing this in, a certain amount of vagueness needs to be already implied. For example, I don’t like to mention names, or places, or post pictures of certain things because you never know what sort of whacko might stumble across them. This is the same reason you wouldn’t see me post a picture of my house, with my address. Same implications. That makes it really hard when all you want to talk about is the awesome bundle of joy you’ve now brought into this world.
It really is quite the experience. Perhaps more so for us than most. We had a very long hard labor and a very long tough postpartum recovery scenario. We (and, by “we” I mean my wife with my encouragement) endured 19hrs of labor without any pain medication, which I think officially enters her into the “strongest woman ever” running, followed by an unplanned C-Section. If that wasn’t enough, complications from the surgery kept us in the hospital for an extended period of time and caused quite a bit of anxiety and panic both while we were there as well as after we returned home, nearly requiring medications for both of us. It was a long road to travel, but we can see light at the end of the tunnel and the payoff is something fantastic.
Our baby is the most amazing person I’ve ever seen, and I’m not just saying that because I’m a proud father, although I certainly am. There were quite a few times, especially in the hospital, when she had to endure some of the same hardships as her Mom, and came through it all perfectly. She’s taken to feeding perfectly. She eats, poops, sleeps and is doing so fantastic compared to her parents, it’s really a blessing.
Mom and I are having a harder time adjusting. It’s funny, but no one who has kids would warn you ahead of time about the life changing adjustments that you’re headed towards, but yet everyone goes through them. I’ve heard someone describe the first few weeks of parenthood as “functional zombie mode” and yet another as “the hardest thing you’ll ever have to endure”. Both of those don’t even begin to describe it. Perhaps no one talks about it because it is a mercifully brief period (in retrospect) and that after it’s over, the baby is sleeping through the night, interacting with you more, smiling, and that the payoff is so overwhelmingly worth it that you really do forget those first few weeks. Being in the middle of it however, I’m fully aware of exactly how hard this is.
Emotionally, I’m in a place I’ve never been before. A mixture of pure joy and instant obsessive panic. Never before have I worried about things like “breathing” or “is that the right color for poop” or “what does a sneeze mean”. I know perfectly well what a sneeze means… for me. For another human being, one I’m crucially responsible for, a sneeze might as well have signaled the onset of the black plague. Someone had to be the neurotic worrier in the relationship, and Daddy got the job.
It really is all worth it though. They say that women become mothers the minute they find out their pregnant, but that men become fathers the second they see the birth of their child. Nothing could have been more accurate. The second they brought her out of the OR and I saw her, I started balling. I was just standing there, tears pouring down my face, completely uncontrollably crying tears of such pure joy and happiness. I followed her into the nursery area while the nurses cleaned her up and swaddled her and checked all of her vitals, crying the entire time, trying to take photographs through blurred vision. Thank heavens for ‘program’ mode and auto-focus. Then into the nursery ‘warming’ area while we waited for Mom to come out of surgery. The rest of the family could join me at that point and everyone offered their congratulations and patted me on the back while I looked for some tissues. Finally Mom and baby were united and there was more crying all the way around. It was really something magical.
My wedding, for as much as I loved it, and as much as I’m proud of it as a choice I’ve made, is still pretty much a blur. The whole event has gotten a little fuzzy for me. This, the birth of my daughter, no matter how much sleep I’ve lost, will never lose it’s focus. It’s razor sharp in my mind. I can remember, vividly, the exact moment I started to love two people as much as I had loved one just a few minutes before.
I know I’ve sent most of you emails over the past couple weeks, keeping you updated via my cell phone, but I really do need to say thank-you one more time. Everyone, from friends to family to the hospital workers and our neighbors were so supportive and so helpful over the past couple weeks that I really can’t begin to thank you enough. We are truly blessed to know each and every one of you. Thank you.
If I’m rather slow in writing, you know exactly why. We’ve got our hands full, and couldn’t be any happier.
Matt out.
Been Busy
It was a crazy January around the ol’ homestead. We’re full on into crazy baby-mode. I put in some long hours getting the nursery ready but I think it’s paid off in one awesome room. Seeing as how it was a “study” that hadn’t been updated or cleaned since 1975, I had some serious work to do. The filing cabinets (of which there are 14) had been there so long they had rusted to the floor. No joke.
I first emptied out the room, much to the trash pickup guy’s alarm, filling trash bucket after bucket. That was followed by ceiling patching and painting, wall painting, ripping up the old carpet, moving (and patching) wall outlets, running new Cat5 and coax, new ceiling fan installing and finally new carpet. Phew!
After that was all the furniture being delivered, drapes hung, fabric ordering, etc. The end result is a finished and complete nursery… and some minor back pain, lol.
The last thing I have to do is rehang the closet doors (took them off to paint) and put up some cute vinyl wall stickers. We toyed with the idea of doing a mural, but if we have a 2nd, we wanted the room to be reusable, so removable wall stickers seemed like the best solution.
Other than that, we’ve been busy around the house, cleaning here and there, getting ready for baby. We’ve had our first shower and now I have about 30 baby-related gadgets to assemble: strollers, car seats, play thingys, etc. That reminds me, I probably need to stock up on batteries, lol.
If you find the talk of baby related activities slightly boring, my apologies, there’s not really all that much more that I did this month. I could mention Call of Duty if that makes you feel better, lol. Or tell you that I saw Black Swan and it was pretty good. That’s about it. It’s all baby, 24/7. I’m tired already!
Can’t wait though, I’m getting really excited. It’s going to be an awesome February!
Matt out
Happy Holidays
Well, since they’re now over, I can safely ask how everyone’s holidays went. Ours were pretty uneventful, which is a nice change. The last couple have been pretty crazy with traveling or some sort of emergencies and disasters. We decided to take it easy and keep everything low-key since our big excitement for the year will be happening in about two months. So, instead of hitting the parties and social events, I worked on the baby’s room while the wife did copious amounts of baking. I got a pretty nice Kindle as a present and I’ve been enjoying it very much. I’ve already read about half a novel on it. Mostly, I really enjoy the exceptionally long battery life. It’s estimated at 30 days per charge, which is incredible. I do need to find a case for it however. I was really wanting this one made by Moleskine, but apparently they’re discontinued and not made to fit my 3rd gen Kindle anyway.
As I mentioned before, I did a lot of work on the nursery over the break. It originally contained 12 (twelve!) large double drawer file cabinets with book cases on top of those cabinets. I’ll give you a minute to visualize what that looked like. It’s nearly all empty with the exception of a large computer desk in the corner dating back to the 50’s (completely solid steel, 500lbs at least) which I can’t move on my own and a fire safe that’s equally heavy. With the help of my father-in-law we managed to move out the rest, patch some holes in the sheet-rock and install a new ceiling fan. We’ll be painting this week and then new carpet goes in next week. On the up side, in the closet for the room, I did find a neat collection of old antique cameras which I instantly claimed as my own. There’s a little bit of everything in there. Kodak Brownies, Polaroid Land Cameras, old rangefinders from companies long out of business, all sorts of cool stuff. They’ll make a nice display somewhere, either in my game room or at work in my office. Did I mention I’m getting an office?
Anyway, I hope everyone had a good holiday, I hope you got exactly what you wanted and got to spend some time with your loved ones. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas everyone!
Birthday Year in Review
So, another year, another birthday. 2010 has been quite the blur. When it started we weren’t pregnant yet, my mother-in-law was still doing somewhat ok, I was making significantly less money at work, I hadn’t taken a vacation in 5 years (a trip somewhere fun, not family visits) and none of our friends had babies yet. 12 months later and everything’s changed. We’re having a baby, 4 friends had babies, we took an awesome trip to Savannah, I got a raise and a promotion at work, I finished a huge project and launched a huge corporate website, and I’ve done a ton of side-jobs and saved enough for my own camera gear (7D here I come). A lot has changed.
I have to admit though, 30 doesn’t really feel like 30. Then again, the last 5 years or so didn’t really feel like themselves either. I still feel like I’m 22, in college, wondering what Nagle and Jason are doing this weekend and if we can get in a game of ultimate frisbee. Or I feel like I’m 18, and I should be driving around NH with the guys in the car, blasting techno from the stereo and wondering when the next LAN party is.
I do have to say that out of all three decades, this one has been my favorite so far. It includes all of my married life, college experiences, moving to Texas and getting settled and into great job. I have great friends, great family, lots of adventures. I really have enjoyed myself, as my waist line can attest to.
So, instead of looking back on my year and lamenting about how I’m another year older, I can honestly say that this time I’m looking forward and I’m excited about where I’m heading. I’m also glad that I’ve kept this website up. I know it’s updates are infrequent when benchmarked against my daily, near hourly updates from college, but I think the substance of the message has improved greatly over the years. I like the ability to write and express what I’m thinking and to share that with other. Whether anyone else appreciates the candor with which I do it is a subject of constant debate, but it’s continued existence is none-the-less a testimony to my belief that they do.
With that I’d like to thank you. All of you. I thank you for your years of putting up with me, humoring me, laughing with me, at me, or about me, and for always being there when I need you. Without you, well, I’d just be talking to myself.
I can’t believe 30 years has already gone by. It seems like a blur. It’s hard to believe that at least 1/3 of my life has already been lived. It’s also hard to fathom that the next 1/3 will be all about raising someone else. It seems like I just started to figure out what this world was all about, and now I get to pass that on to my little one. It’s scary, exciting, confusing and awesome, all at the same time.
Thanks guys. Thanks for everything. It’s been a great 30 years, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of it turns out.
Happy Birthday to me!
Matt out.
Self-Aggrandizing
By definition, a blog is fairly self-aggrandizing. In this instance however, it might serve a purpose. Obviously, with a baby on the way, my thoughts are turning more and more towards “daddy” type of activities. That includes getting excited about “stuff” for the baby. Do you have any idea how much “stuff” a baby requires. I had no idea. I really didn’t. I figured it was mostly diapers and bottles. That doesn’t even really scratch the surface. Apparently it’s also tradition to create gift registries for said “stuff”, and, you know me, if there is one thing I enjoy, it’s scanning bar-codes (I know, bad joke).
So, I present to you, with the understanding that you are in no way under any obligation to actually purchase anything for my little one, our two registries for our baby. I’ll also put these in the sidebar as a widget, perhaps even including a “doomsday countdown timer” or something, lol.
Recent Comments