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Deal Lily,

Sit outside in your garage, or on your patio one night, as severe thunder storms are rolling in.

Have with you, your favourite drink.  I’ve choosen a moderately good scotch.

Set up a comfy chair in the middle of your venue and quietly watch it happen.

Play some music.  I suggest on an AM/FM radio, if something like that still exists.  The interference caused by the nearby lightening can often be interesting.  Listen to the rain hitting the ground, and the trees crying out with the rustling of their leaves.

Feel the thunder as it washes over you, and through you on the particularly close strikes.

Watch the imposing and perhaps agressive clouds marching forward.  So removed from their sunny day cousins.  They bear no particular malice, just the need to release their pent up energy in an blaze of power and sound.

Sit through the lulls and the peaks.  There are often moments of peace among the torrents.  Enjoy them for what they are.  Life in many shades.

Resist the urge to run when it seems overwhelming, and feel your heart beat as your fleeing insticts float near the surface of your conciousness, ready to strike.

Yell back at it if you like.  Yell with the trees and the clouds and throw your energy to the swirling mass.  Tonight I have chosen not to, on another night I will.  Tonight I’ll let it recharge me.

Write a letter if you are so inclined, and see what happens.  It will be different from what you would write if you were sitting inside.  It won’t likely be as rushed.

Do all this my dear, and you will know me slightly better.

I hope one day to do it together.

Love, Dad

The Highway Drive to Work
(50 minutes)

This Morning’s Scenic Drive to Work
(80 minutes)

Dear Lily,

Today is going to be a rough day, though you don’t know it yet.

For the last few months you’ve been pretty spoiled.  In order to have you sleep soundly, you’ve been sleeping with us most of the night.  This is the case because when you wake up alone, you have a tendancy to cry, wail and scream until you’re blue in the face.

We hate to hear this, as we hate it when you are upset in any way.  It tears away at us and makes us want to run and pick you up and hug you until you shut up calm down.  Personally, I also like waking up and seeing that you are there, breathing and happy.

However…It’s getting to be time that you sleep in your own bed.  If we don’t start this now, by the time you are out of your crib, you will just get up, walk to our room and demand that we let you into bed with us.  If we refuse at that point, you may start gathering weapons to convince us with.

This is behavior that just won’t do I’m afraid.  So, on the advice of our pediatrician, we are going to start the hellish process of letting you cry it out.  But please remember, we love you.  You are a persistent little lady, so I’m sure you won’t give up easily.  I fully expect 2+ hours of wailing before you put yourself to sleep.  Your mom may have to leave the house for this, and I don’t really blame her.

I seem to be able to shut off the reaction to run and hug you a little bit easier.  While your mom rocks back and forth on the bed, I am able to watch tv.  Perhaps it’s something to do with my growing up in a big family, I had to learn how to shut things out.  But it certainly won’t be easy, so please go easy on me.

So, please do enjoy the day, and tire yourself out so we can make this process easier on all of us.

It’s going to be a long weekend.

Love, Dad

Lily is now 6 months old, and with this landmark, she enters into the world of solid(ish) foods.  We started with some rice cereal to get the ball rolling, and she took to it like she’s always eaten it.  This is hardly surprising as she eats anything that comes into arms reach.

Her 6 month birthday was celebrated at Grammy’s house (Laura’s mom) and included a lovely oatmeal muffin with a candle in it.  6 months does quite warrant a cake, but we thought we should recognize the milestone somewhat.

This weekend has one more milestone.  This is the first time that mom and dad have both been sick at the same time.  Actually lily is a bit sick as well, but she see to be dealing with it better than her parental units.  It certainly is a different experience being sick when you have a little human relying on you to change, feed and entertain her.  Gone are the days of laying on the couch all day drugged to high heaven, watching b grade sci-fi flicks and horror films.  Here are the days of sucking it up, doing what must be done, and hoping she naps for 4-6 hours.

This is the entry where I say

“Wow, my little girl is growing up…It wasn’t long ago that I was feeding her with a syringe and a tube, as she sucked on my finger. Now she is close to eating anything she gets her hands on, without my help. She’s growing up so fast…and everytime I blink I’m afraid I’ll miss something. She will be 6 months old on Saturday…oy…”

Yeah, this is the entry where I say that…

P.S.

Not that this tooth has shown up, I find that I am beginning to develop a healthy fear of our once harmless child….

Well it seems perhaps that the Sadie vs Lily nemesis theory may be correct.  As this photographic evidence shows, Sadie is clearly trying to smother Lily in her dads chest.  Luckily we were there to intervene.

Lily is seen pondering this turn of events….No doubt plotting her next move.

Having plotted through the night, she has a plan, and a game face to match…It’s go time.

Always sleeping

It takes a while to reach this point at night. During the fussy hours between midnight and 6am our little bundle finds it hard to get to sleep. But eventually she gets there, and seeing her all calm and relaxed makes me so very happy. The sad part is that it’s 4:45 AM, and I really should wake her up and feed her.

I have been pulling the night shift with Lily lately because Laura is not blessed with the gift of sleep.

The gift of sleep is the ability to lay down, close your eyes and pretty much fall asleep instantly regardless of the time of day or environmental factors.  As such I have been able to get a fair bit more sleep than her.  So at night, when Little boo is being grumpy, I like to take her all the way downstairs to the basement so when she cries, Laura can sleep through it.

Current Music: Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life Disk 2 – Easy Goin’ Evening

Late at night, sometimes lily goes on secret undercover missions, as a beachcomber.

We took lily to the pumpkin patch yesterday.  Actually it was local farm that has a corm maze, and fresh produce.  Upon arrival we found thousands of pumpkin’s on the ground and thought it would make for some nice colourful photo ops

Lily is doing very well…the signs of her earlier jaundice are retreating, and she is awake and happy during the days.  (Awake and grumpy during the nights)

I’m really liking the Rockabye Baby tunes we’ve been grooving on lately.  A lot of popular music sounds better in lullaby form.

Current Music:  Rockabye Baby! – Under the Bridge

We’re excited because her partner in crime Sadie is coming over to play today.  Sadie is 3 or 4 months older I think.  I’m secretly hoping that they are each other’s nemesis, and that mischief ensues.

What else is new?   Our camera died a couple of days ago, and that just won’t do so we had to go out and get another. 

We picket up a Canon Power Shot A560 because of a fairly decent price and is quite similar to our now deceased camera.

I can’t imagine being without a camera to catch ever last moment of our little stink’s life so I can gush with pride and show everyone how damned cute she is.  Seriously, she has me laughing out loud almost hourly. 

Often times these laugh out loud moments are her moments of comedic timing genius when it comes to a big fart.  Yeah…Laura and I still laugh at the potty humour, even after 32 years of life.  The rest comes from the drunken looks she gives us when just waking up, or after a good feeding.  I call it milk drunk, and it’s better than any joke you’ll ever hear.

I never thought this would turn into a baby blog, but I can’t imagine what else I would be writing about now because she is such an all encompassing part of my life now.

Another weird side effect of being a new parent that both Laura and I have noticed is the empathy we experience when we hear or see other children in trouble.  I think we were watching ER the other night and there was a baby who was caught in a crystal meth lab explosion.  Watching it, neither of us looked at the other because we thought we would get made fun of.  We were both  tearing up hearing the baby scream, and thinking of how we would hate to see our Lily pad in such a situation. 

It happened to me again watching one of those "Most amazing videos" shows.  (Probably on Fox) Before I would have thought of the clips with babies in jeopardy as sad, and disturbing.  Now however, a whole new level of emotion is reached and I want to reach out and hold Lily as close as possible and shield her from the awful dangerous world forever. 

It’s a beautiful thing, and I just can’t say it enough.  I can’t imagine life before parenthood, and it’s only been a week.

Both my girls are asleep, and I’m sitting here, so tired I’ve lost all sense of time. Tired, but I have no desire to sleep now. Basking in the peace and beauty of watching my girls rest from their busy couple of days.
I feel like I have to keep watch. Its not even like a choice. Its just what I instinctually must do, and emotionally want to.
I may not be making much sense, as I try to put into words this thing called fatherhood.

So it begins. At about 2:45 am laura’s water broke and we calmly made our way to the hospital.
They determined she was a keeper and we are now just playing the waiting game.
Contractions are 10 minutes apart. 1cm dilation. It may be a long day.
Will post as I can…
We’re going to be parents.
Probably today.
Wow.

8:50 – contrations are under 5 minutes. Some induction drip. Laura is doing well, and has now requested an epidural. I don’t blame her at all. It looks not terribly fun. At least now we are in our room. A nice enough room.

12:10 – 8cm. The epidural was a godsend. Per laura it makes for a very “civilised birthing experience”. We’ll see how she feels after the pushing starts. Nurse predicts, early afternoon. I’m extatic, yet reserved.

Born 3:45pm, saturday september 29
Lily is here.
8lbs 9oz
100% adoreable

Honestly, I’m likely not going to have a daily blog post stating that Lily hasn’t shown her face yet…but well, that is still the case.

Actually the reason for this post is that I am playing with the Windows Live Writer, a desktop application from Microsoft designed for managing and updating your weblog.  (Got this link via Lucky7)

I will have to play with it some, but it was very easy to set up.  After an install all it asked was the url of the site and the login and from there it automatically determined that I was using WordPress and configured itself accordingly.  I have no issues with setting things up manually but I certainly understand that others may be a bit dumbstruck things like this.  I do have to give the developers credit in the User friendly department.

It is worth an extended look I think.  Sometimes the ease of a desktop application is a bit nicer that dealing with a web interface.  Don’t get me wrong, the WordPress web interface is quite capable and overall, very good, certain things are just more efficient off web.

Well then.  It’s tho official due date and still no baby in hand. 

I honestly don’t know what she’s waiting for.  Perhaps she already has in mind to drive her parents nuts   Or maybe I have scared her enough to stay inside with my singing and such…..

How could someone not be impatient…How I ask you?

I’m still at work.  Laura is at home resting in bed per doctors orders.  I am taking time off effective the moment labour starts as we want to maximize the effectiveness of my days off so I can be of the most help to the new mom, and spend some good quaity time oooing and awing over Lily.  I already dread the idea of coming back to work afterwards and leaving my ladies behind. 

 I had more but lost my train of thought due to work interruption.  (Work cramps my style, man…)

Everyone send som labour vibes to Laura by the way…I want some baby action….

We’ve officially crossed the threshold into Less-Than-A-Week territory.  This assuming of course that Lily keeps to our schedule

Both her mom and I tend to be the type to show up early to any given event when possible so I am hoping Lily follows suit.  According to the date I entered into my blackberry about 8 months ago, she is actually due to show up on the 23rd, 3 days earlier than the so called “experts” predict.

I want her to show up early.  I’m impatient.  When someone has a gift for me, I want it now.  Forget wrapping it, don’t wait for my birthday, if it’s available now, that’s when I want it.  It’s really the same thing.

As an aside…I would also greatly enjoy a couple of weeks away from my job.  I retyped that last sentence that originally said “a couple of weeks away from work“  I have no such delusions.  The work will most certainly be hard and take some getting used to.  I’ve seen my friends and co-workers with new kids.  They look very tired…but very fulfilled.  Back to the impatience…I am impatient to feel that.

We’re also rapidly approaching our first wedding anniversary.  I may end up being overshadowed by Lily’s arrival, but we should do something to mark the occasion.  I’m not sure what though.   Must give some thought to that.

c’mon c’mon c’mon….The wait is driving your Pappy nuts…

I keep trying to entice her with stories of all the cool things she will see when she comes out.  Like colour, and ceiling fans, and me, and mom, and bugs, and grandparents, and well…anything really…she hasn’t seen a whole heck of a lot…so It’s all pretty impressive.  So far she hasn’t taken the bait, but I get the feeling she’s curious.

c’mon c’mon c’mon…. 

While I am sure Laura will complain more about the lump in her stomach, I just have to say…the looming due date of my daughter is starting to make for a big lump of butterflies in my stomach at times.

I feel like I am already starting to enter a dream state waiting for this monumental  event.  Things are beginning to get surreal.  The thought that a little life will be depending on me gets stronger every time she pushes on my hand as I place it on Laura’s stomach.

I do tend to love these huge life changing events.  But this one…this one seems bigger than everything up to now.

So I’ve been incommunicado for some time….A combination of busy and uninspired.  But mostly busy because I’ve had a few things to write about if I wanted too….

Summary:

• New Car, A 2007 Chevrolet Optra LS. Our first new car ever…it’s good times…and man…0% interest is just too good to be true….  This will be Lily’s ride….
• We now have a fully assembled Crib and dresser set for Lily’s freshly painted room.  we are almost baby ready…almost…
• Speaking of baby ready, we are taking a set of pre/post natal classes.  Learning much about labour and baby care.  Some things I wish I didn’t see there…but I guess I should know all about it so I’m not surprised in the delivery room.
• Work work work…busy busy busy….Bell canada makes my life hell….
• I’ve been back playing Everquest 2 again.  I figured I should get my gaming in now before all my time is taken by parenting.
• Last weekend Troy and Firda brought over their Wii…Good times.  I think I need to buy one for Lily.
• This weekend we are going to Niagara on the Lake for Laura and I’s last weekend as DINK’s.  (Dual Income No Kids)  We’re staying at an Inn and will surely spoil ourselves, because in about 6 more weeks, it’s all about spoiling Lilbo….
• I finally read Ringworld…good book if you like the Sci-Fi thing.  Except for the made up swear the author uses…Tanj!  I hate that word.
• We also now have a baby car seat and stroller.  We are become parents, and have the gear to prove it!
• Laura has only 3 short weeks of work left…She’s understandably excited…

That’s the last couple of months in a nutshell…Joy!

[flv:/videos/lilyh.flv 480 320]

[flv:/videos/lilyweb.flv 480 320]

So I really expected that we were going to have a boy, but here we go…it’s a trip to girltown. I’m very excited. I didn’t want a boy over a girl, or the other way around, I just had myself convinced it was a boy for some reason.

I really can’t wait to meet her. (It’s a strange adjustment to be saying her)

I hope I can convince my little sweetheart that it’s great to be a girl, but that she shouldn’t be afraid to get dirty, and play with bugs…(and be a nerd)

Wow…I’m still a bit in shock. I can’t wait to spoil her, and sing to her, and play with her, and teach her things, and spin in circles with her, and bounce off the walls with her, and and and…I can’t wait to be her dad.