Mom to be Super Bowl…..

Today is the big game packers vs steelers honestly it doesn’t matter to me who wins. Today to me is a great day to spend with family and friends. The highlights will be of coarse the commercials and let’s not forget the food. Oh the food….mmmmmmm meatballs, little weenies, chips and dip, hot wings and of coarse pulled pork that Alan made yesterday. The fact that I am now in my second trimester I am hungry a lot. Today is going to be all about the food and of coarse football right. 🙂

Preparing for the Superbowl

One of the first things I need to show Noodle is the art of BBQ. Ok, the FIRST thing we will teach him or her will be to love Jesus.

Side note: are we saddling this kid with a bad nickname?

I’m cooking some pulled pork today for the Superbowl party at my parents house tomorrow. I’ll also be making a fresh batch of my BBQ sauce. I’ve had a craving for it lately and this is the perfect excuse to pull the smoker out of the garage.

As soon as I figure out how to do this for a living, I’ll be a happy man.  Suddenly the Pastor’s sermon about work comes to mind.  🙂

To Noodle from Dad

Dear Noodle,

Got lots of snow recently.  Shoveling snow is hard work, but can be satisfying when it’s over.  🙂  Even using a snow blower (borrowed from the neighbors, don’t forget to thank people for favors like that) is rough when you get the amount of snow we got in the last day or two. If we don’t have a snow blower of our own by the time you are old enough to read and understand all this, remind me of this post because you’ll be helping (at least) with this job.  I will probably need to be reminded of the pain my shoulders are in, from clearing the driveway last night and the clearing of the end of the driveway this morning (with a shovel) after the city plows cleared our neighborhood during the night.  I’m very thankful that they did it though, so your mom didn’t have to drive me to work (note: 4 wheel drive is a wonderful thing).

Looking forward to meeting you, so you can help with the driveway.  I promise to wait until you’re old enough to hold a shovel.

Love Dad.

Welcome to motherhood

I love being pregnant now that I am past the nausea stage. Lots of amazing and wonderful feelings. So many changes, physical and emotional. Being that this is my first time, I just never know what each day will bring. One day I have nausea, the next I am having back pain. I have to admit when we first found out, it just didn’t feel real even though I was having all the normal symptoms fatigue, nausea, etc. When we saw the first ultrasound (the blob), even though we couldn’t see much detail, we knew the baby was there.

The next appointment I saw the real ultrasound with much more detail and it was awesome to see. Today I feel really good, no back pain and I have weekend off. Yeah! I went out to dinner with some friends from work and had great food. I’m feeling pretty full and pretty good. I am just enjoying each day and looking forward to what each day will bring and each phase of this great experience with my wonderful husband.

Welcome

The Mrs and I both realized we had a lot of things we wanted to express once we found out she was pregnant.  So this blog is our attempt at that.

I started doing exactly this on a different blog, but she decided she wanted to do it also.  So we are combining our efforts here.  The older posts are mine that I’ve moved from my old blog.

We hope you enjoy all this and get something out of it or are at least entertained.

Pictures

Saw the first ultrasound pictures of the baby.  It was all a little unorganized in my opinion.  She had multiple doctor appointments over a few days and we really didn’t know what was happening when, but we thought we did.  The first doctor appointment was for her yearly checkup and a possible heartbeat of the baby.  So, this is the one I really wanted to be there for.  So, I took a long lunch and went.  Too soon to hear the heartbeat as it turns out, but the doc rolled in the ultrasound machine and we got a shot of the baby.  Basically a blob on the screen.  Couldn’t make out details, but it was still cool.

Well, the next appointment was a few days later, but we didn’t know what this one was for.  Turns out it was to get some detailed ultrasound shots of the baby using a different “method”.  I won’t go into details, but you dads probably know what I mean.  They saw the baby.  Took measurements.  It even moved.  The kid is a ham right from the start.  🙂  I totally would have taken some time off if we’d known that’s what was going to happen.  They did get some printouts that I saw.  It would have been nice to see it all live, but seeing those pictures (and the detail) blew my mind.  Totally made my day.

Lesson for the day, ask more questions.  All this is routine for the doctors and such.  So, it’s up to me to get informed and be there for the important stuff.

From here on out, all I will need for a little moral boost is to look at those pictures.  At least until the next ultrasound in about 8 weeks.

Can’t wait.

Decisions

There are about a thousand decisions that need to be made at some point. I guess I knew there would be, but my mind keeps finding new ones each time we figure something out.

At some point in time the Mrs wants to do photography full time. She’s good at it so it makes total sense and I totally support the idea. The question is when can we handle that and how do we transition? Daycare is the biggest thing we have to deal with no matter what. If she continues working we have to pay for it and if she doesn’t we have to adjust our budget to deal with the loss of her income until her business gets going. Both of those decisions affect our ability to fund her business they way we would like. I could write all day about the various scenarios that come to mind, but that would take all day and probably wouldn’t accomplish much. For now I keep notes on the trusty iPad so I don’t forget anything. I’m bad about that sometimes.

The truth is that God will provide answers to my questions and will provide the things we need going forward. Those two things may not end up having anything to do with each other. Not to mention that it probably won’t happen as quickly as I’d like, but that’s just another part of the life long lesson on patience God has me on. But God will provide, I have no doubt about that. Sometimes I just wonder if all of the scenarios that come to my mind are part of God’s plan to help the situation or is me worrying more than I should…

The Journey Begins

Ok, so technically the journey began a few weeks ago, but that’s the only title I could think of.  I’m sure future titles will be just as cheesy so don’t worry.  As I write this we don’t know if the baby will be a boy or a girl. We are actually planning on waiting until he/she is born to find out. I think I’ve decided to continue putting thoughts about being a first time dad into this blog as I have them. Calling it “writing” is bit of a stretch. So, thoughts works for me.

I keep thinking of an episode of star trek the next generation where Wesley reaches a certain age and gets a message from his dad made when he was born. Or something like that. The dad had planned to make a bunch of them over the years so Wesley would know who he was then and not just the old guy he meets later, but died before he could. Now I’m not planning on dying early, but the idea of making messages (or blog posts in this case) along this journey of mine appeals to me.

The bummer part is that bringing up the star trek reference might label me a “trekker” for all time. In actuality I’m much more of a Star Wars geek. So there it is just to set the record straight. Although, I’ve always tried to avoid the trappings of the word geek (or nerd or whatever), but working on computers and technology for a living kind of thrusts that on you. I’m much more interesting than that.

Anyway, hopefully this will be a fun journey and an interesting read. At least for our future son or daughter.

Stay tuned.

Firsts

Found out last night that I’m going to be a Dad. Pretty cool stuff. It’s about as official as a home pregnancy test can be. Which is is pretty accurate according to the doc. She goes in this week for a blood test to confirm things. I find myself planning long term all of a sudden and thought maybe it’s time to get some thoughts down on paper. So to speak.

How do I feel? Totally geeked. We’ve been planning and praying for this for a while. As usual, God does things on his time table not mine. All part of that long term lesson on patience he’s got me on.

I do worry about being a “old” dad though. Time to get serious about getting into shape. I need to be able to kick his/her butt in backyard football when he/she is a teenager. And yes, if we have a girl she’s going to learn to play football. Her mom will take care of the girl stuff.  No gender stereotypes in my house.  🙂

Want to know the crazy part? I keep wondering when I should be passing out cigars. Is it now or when the baby is born? I’m thinking of doing it now. Be more fun that way.

Now I just have to keep all this a secret until Christmas when we spring it on everyone.  Yeah, posting it all on the internet was a good idea.  🙂  Nobody reads this anyway, right?