I don’t necessarily want to write about MY family right now, although Austin is growing like crazy, as is Addie, who started to crawl last week. That’s super fun. Kim is also wonderful as ever.

I want to talk about the importance of family, with respect to someone I met this past week. He’s 42 years old, and just got married a year ago. He’s a good guy, who has already made a lot of money and had a lot of “success” in life.

We were talking the other day and he told me that he and his wife are now trying to make babies, because that’s what’s important in life. Money is nice. Friends are cool. Family is important.

Why is it important? I’m not sure I know. I just know that my family means the world to me. I can’t imagine going through life without a family. I’m sure part of the importance of the family is the joy you get from seeing your posterity grow and succeed at things. It’s awesome.

I respect this guy a tremendous amount. Right now he’s still growing his business, but he’s focusing more on his family right now, because he knows that’s what really matters in life.

Sometimes I need to focus less on my computer and my blackberry, and more on the people around me who actually care about me.

My computer doesn’t care.

Period.

I’ve been married now for almost 4 years and they have been the best 4 years of my life. It’s not that she did any one thing that makes her the best wife in the world, it’s all the little things she does for me. It’s the cooking and the cleaning and the understanding and the forgiving and the way she takes care of my kids and the way she believes in God and how she treats me, loves me, forgives me, puts up with me, does stuff with me, goes places with me, and just in general lives with me.

For my birthday this year she spent weeks making a scrapbook of pictures of me as a dad. It was awesome.
For her birthday this year I didn’t really do ANYTHING and she was ok with that.
Last weekend she agreed to go camping with me to a place where there wasn’t running water, bathrooms, or showers.
Sometimes she comes at 9:30 at night to watch me play ice hockey.
My everyday breakfasts include toast, french toast, pancakes (when I can handle eating them), cereal, biscuits and gravy, sausage and egg mcmuffins, crepes, eggs on toast, eggs with cream cheese and normal cheese and other spices mixed in, hash browns, waffles, omlettes, and just about anything else you could want to eat for breakfast (wait…no…not cracked wheat).
She handles our family finances including putting all the transactions into quicken and categorizing them.
She goes on walks with me so I can get exercise.
She does a DANG good job of raising my kids.
She lets me golf whenever I want.
She lets me work from home. She lets me work almost whenever I want.
She decorates my house beautifully.

Boy, I could go on forever with this.

Let’s just say that it suffices to say she wins the Best Wife in the World award.

Thanks Kim.

However, on a positive note, she’s really changing. She now responds to noises. If you call her name (not that she knows her name) she’ll turn her head and look at you. She fixates on stuff and just stares. The other day on a walk she was laying down in the stroller and the entire time she was straining her head back and looking upwards to try to see me pushing the stroller behind her. It was pretty cool.

She stopped pooping as much and doesn’t poop nearly as often as she used to when you take her diaper off. In fact, I don’t think she’s pooped when we took her diaper off in about 2 weeks.

Kim gave him the booger and he immediatly wiped it on the floor.

This experience made me realize that I’m missing out on lots of
opportunities to record things my kids do so I’m creating a Baby Journal
category for my blog.

I think that a lot of people don’t write a lot about when their kids were
young and they regret it when they get older. I have the perfect
opportunity to be able to record these things because of my palm and my
blog so I’m going to take advantage of it.

———-
Sent wirelessly – Sony UX50 + Ericsson T610

I was sitting in church today with Adeline on my lap and was just thinking
about what a little angel she is.

So I took a picture.

A few weeks back I wrote about how Austin has created so much joy in my
life. Well, now Adeline adds to that joy. While these pictures are of
Austin, these two kids have just brought so much happiness to my life over
the past few weeks. I’ve been so blessed with them.

What makes it even better is that I don’t hve to leave in the mornings to go
to work. Addie lays on my chest half the day while I work. It’s so great.

It’ a beautiful life.

Kim always said she wanted to have an epidural with all her babies. She didn’t see a need to go through all the pain and suffering that having a baby entails when modern medicine allows you to go through the whole process in some sort of comfort. I gotta say, I’m with her on that one. I wouldn’t want to go through all the pain if I didn’t have to. With Ausin she had an epidural and she says the she can honestly say that labor with Austin was a good, positive experience. With Adeline it was different.

We got to the hospital at about 2:30 in the afternoon. They started her on a potosin drip soon thereafter. I guess with potosin they start you off with a little and then gradually increase it until it peaks at a maximum dosage and then they decrease it over time again. It’s supposed to start the uterous contracting and induce hard labor. Well…it hardly did that. At 7:00 Kim still hadn’t progressed towards labor any more than she was at 2:30 when we got to the hospital.

At 7pm they decided to call the doctor and have her come and break Kim’s water which she did. She got there at 7:15 and promptly broke her water. She also told Kim that if she wanted an epidural, she should probably not wait too long. Right then, she said she wanted one so the nurse called the anesthesiologist.

By 7:30, Kim had progressed from a 4 to a 6. (If you understand…great. If not, you will some day.) The anesthesiologist wasn’t there yet. By 7:35, she was completely effaced (a 10) and it was too late for the epidural. The anesthesiologist had missed the boat and got there too late. I guess that was also partly the doctors and nurses fault for not telling Kim to get the epidural earlier, but who was to know that she would progress so quickly.

Well, between 7:35 and 8:00, Kim endured the pains of natural labor. It was tough. Very tough. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m super proud of her for enduring that like she did. She had some rough spots, but overall she did very well.

At 8:03 the baby was out and all was better. The doctor pulled her out and threw her onto Kims stomach (where there was already a towel waiting). She cried immediatly which was a relief. The doctor then clipped off the umbilical cord and handed me a pair of scissors to cut it. I didn’t really expect that but did it anyway. It wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought it would be.

She came out, all purple and perfect. We’re so happy with her.

Like the doctor warned us, she has had some breathing problems. She has stopped breathing a few times which were very scary for us. She wasn’t gasping for air or anything, she just stopped breathing and her face turned blue. We have gotten her to start breathing again each time she’s done it and I’d guess she’s come out of it a few times on her own when we didn’t catch her when she stopped breathing.

What a joy she is.

New baby Jonas.
5 lbs 11 oz
18.5 inches
Born at 8:03 March 27, 2005 (Easter)

Another love of our lives.

I now know what the Lord is talking about (at least partly), when he talks about joy and rejoicing in your posterity.

Austin is a joy. He’s a little Angel. I don’t really know how to express in words the things I feel about him. The past few weeks he has become even more well behaved. He’s become even more obedient, even more happy and joyous than he has been his whole life. He loves me, he respects me, and he knows I’m his Dad. I love spending as much time with him as I possibly can because he just brings joy into my life. It’s sooooo wonderful….and he’s only 2! I would imagine that as he continues to grow he’ll become even more fun for me.

Last night I was thinking about what a joy he is and some of the things he does. When he gets in trouble now all I have to do to him is tell him that he’s in trouble and he immediatly stops what he’s doing and says “sorry dad.” He knows that he needs to behave himself and he’s happy to do it. He wants my approval and he’s not happy when I’m not happy with him. I think our heavenly father wants us to feel the same way about him (that’s why he gave us a conscience).

A few months ago Kim taught him to say “Lovey Dovey” because she said that he was her lovey dovey. He associated it with being HER lovey dovey, and not my lovey dovey. When I’d ask him if he was my lovey dovey, he’d say “No. Mommy’s dubby dubby.” It was very funny. I tried to teach him that he was moms lovey dovey and my lover dover, but he didn’t want very much to do with it.

Now, I’m trying to teach him that he’s my “Little Angel”, because that’s how I feel about him. He was sent to us from God to bring joy to our lives and he’s doing a dang good job of it.

I can’t wait to have another kid.

Kim and I take walks three times a week. We started doing it as a new years resolution this year so we could get exercise and since I work from home and am free to do basically what I want when I want, we’ve been really good at keeping it. The weather has helped too.

Anyway, my point with this is that I love staying at home. The other day on one of our walks it was absolutely beautiful outside so we took a longer walk and just enjoyed ourselves. I just got to spend good time with my wife and my son. I love being a ‘stay at home dad’.