Archive | September, 2007

At 4:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 29, the Wife shot straight up in bed.

“I think my water just broke!” she said.

I figured I should take her word for it, because if I’ve learned anything in all these years of marriage, it’s that you don’t argue with your wife:

1. at 4:30 in the morning
2. when she’s pregnant
3. when it has to do with her water

So we both got up and began our Let’s Have A Baby Today routine. We brushed teeth. We brewed coffee. We waited for Wife’s mom to come to the house to stay with Daughter so we could head for the hospital. We checked and re-checked Wife’s duffel bag to make sure we had everything we would need.

As the sun came up, we settled in to our suite at the hospital. Wife was contracting intensely and regularly. We tried to remember all the breathing stuff we studied so feverishly in the days before Daughter’s birth.

I got to work putting up large signs all around the room explaining what a “quiet birth” is and making plans for how to retaliate if anyone made noise during the first 90 seconds after delivery.

I’m kidding. I got some coffee and turned on the TV to keep Wife’s mind off of her contractions.

After a while, the anesthesia crew came in for the beloved epidural. This one went less smoothly than the first one. I sat in a chair across the room from Wife as she hugged her pillow and arched her back while they put the IV down her spine.

She yelled out in pain a handful of times. She said she felt electric shocks down her legs. It scared the heck out of me.

The difficulty of the epidural was over soon, but it didn’t fully take. The docs had to tinker with her medicines a handful of times to get it right. All the while, her labor progressed.

Every 30 minutes or so, someone would come in and check Wife. Sometimes it was a nurse, other times it was a doctor. At times it felt like they were just grabbing people off the sidewalk and sending them in to do it, because there were quite a variety of people that wound up doing the checking.

Around 11:30 a.m., the nurse said she (Wife, not the nurse) was 10 cm and ready to push. They rolled in all the carts and lights and started bringing in more people than I would have thought would be necessary. Among the faces in the crowd are:

1. the OB
2. a handful of nurses
3. the respiratory guy
4. an anesthesia guy
5. a janitor
6. the Maytag repairman

Once everyone was in place and had a good view of the action, the nurse gave the green light for Wife to start pushing.

She pushed three times and knew that one more would bring our little man into the world. The only problem was that the doc was down the hall helping another woman with her delivery.

The nurses told Wife not to push.

Wife told them that not pushing was not an option. Very quickly, the doctor rushed into the room. Wife gave one last push.

At 12:06 p.m., our 9 lb., 2 oz. little man was born. Our house hasn’t been the same since – in the best way possible.

Today, the little stinker turns two.

Happy Birthday, Buddy Boo!

I have quickly discovered that you are a very movie-fluent group.

In response to my question from yesterday, Amy correctly replied that the character “Karen” in Talladega Nights is the cougar that Ricky Bobby’s dad puts in his car to help him conquer his fears.

A cougar named Karen. That’s good stuff.

Knowing that you as a group are very well-versed in your movie lines, I don’t expect you to have much trouble with this week’s line. But we’ll see.

Here it is:

“I’m trying to use the phone!”

I think I’m on the mend.

I spent all day in bed yesterday fighting that nasty stomach bug. It was a doozy.

Wife took great care of me all day, bringing me saltines and Sprite whenever I asked. Her day got a heck of a lot more interesting yesterday afternoon, when Son woke up screaming because he had thrown up in his bed. He yakked a couple more times last night before his bedtime, but had no trouble during the night.

If I learned anything from this experience, it’s this: there’s a whole bunch of nuthin’ on TV during the day.

After a lunch of ramen noodles I watched Talladega Nights again. Here’s a trivia question for you: Who is “Karen” in Talladega Nights?

You have my eternal respect if you can answer that one.

About 9 p.m., I was able to make it downstairs to the couch to spend some time with Wife. We watched the premiers of Private Practice and the other show about Money that came on after it. I hesitate to include the title because I don’t want to pop up on those kinds of Internet searches.

Both shows were pretty good. There was nothing about either that made me say, “This show won’t make it.” Tonight we’ve got the premier of The Office, so it’ll be a good TV night.

Today I’m home at the MBI Estate to make sure I’m fully healed before I go back to work. I don’t think the folks at the office would appreciate me sharing this nastiness with them.

Remember that stomach bug that knocked the Wife and Daughter down over the weekend?

It’s definitely contagious.

I learned this morning that I’ll be fighting it today. So I’m stretched out in the bed watching TV and reading some blogs.

Here are a few things I’ve been reading lately:

The Wealth Report, a blog by Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal. Fascinating.
The Simple Dollar, by Trent Hamm. A very well-done personal finance blog.

There’s a substantial contrast between the content on these two blogs. The Wealth Report covers the lives of the super-rich. The Simple Dollar focuses on the fundamentals of personal finance for the rest of us.

Give ‘em both a look. It’s good reading.

An extremely intelligent and witty blogger I know put up a short item about the band Nickelback the other day.

I’ve wanted to rant about how much Nickelback gets played on XM channels 26 and 30 for a while. But I haven’t because I know how unique a person’s taste in music is. And I also have to stay true to the fact that I’m one of those “If you don’t like what’s on, change the channel!” kind of guys.

Primarily though, I didn’t want to offend any of my readers who might be huge Nickelback fans.

And then I realized that your typical die-hard Nickelback fan probably isn’t spending days trolling the daddy blogs.

Your typical Nickelback fan is sitting in English class texting her friend about what she’s going to wear to the dance on Fridat night.

So I think I can safely say THE NICKELBACK HAS GOT TO STOP! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP! STOP STOP STOP! without offending my core audience.

I am happy to report that Daughter’s stomach rot has released her from its vomitous grips.

Turns out it was just a 12-hour, 14 throw-up bug. That’s not to say she’s not still wearing the pajamas she wore on Friday when she was sick.

Or that we’ve turned Noggin off for even a moment this weekend. She played the “I’m still sick” card all day yesterday, and we obliged. Puking 14 times earns you a weekend pass in our house.

She’s back on her feet today, except now Wife has caught the stomach funk. She’s been on bed rest all day.

And in a strange twist of coincidence, our Blockbuster online service sent us The Painted Veil, which stars Edward Norton as a doctor who travels to a small village in China to treat a cholera epidemic.

Can you catch cholera from a movie?

You kids are good.

I thought this week’s Movie Line Friday would be a little tougher than it turned out to be. Everyone did great with their guesses.

The comment from Anonymous was right: my Dad was Goose back in ‘Nam. He was a navigator in the back of a fighter jet flying missions from an aircraft carrier.

I have to hand this week’s Movie Line Friday award to Katie, who pretty much owned the contest with this comment:

Top Gun – but it’s not the same without the hand gesture Tom Cruise adds.
“You were in a 4G, INVERTED dive with a MiG28?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“You’re the one.”
Classic.

Well played, Katie. I’ll think twice before trying another line from a Tom Cruise movie.

Tune in next week for more Movie Line Friday!

Let me tell you just how much class I have.

First, a few seemingly unrelated facts:

1) Wife bought a table for our foyer this afternoon. I drove the Odyssey to the store to pick it up.

2) Wife and I usually have our car stereos set to the local Christian music station.

3) Wife and I thought tonight would be a nice night to sit outside and have a glass of wine after the kids are in bed.

String those three facts together and you get this:

This afternoon, I walked out of a liquor store toting a brown bag with a bottle of wine in it, climbed into a minivan, and sang along to Chris Tomlin’s “Holy is the Lord” as I pulled out of the parking lot.

Nice, eh?

Maybe someone can explain this to me.

Our pediatrician called in a prescription for phenergan for Daughter just in case all the vomiting didn’t stop tonight.

Wife sped off to pick up the order, only to find out that our neighborhood pharmacy couldn’t compound it into gel, which is the preferred method of application. I’m sure this had nothing to do with the fact that Wife arrived about five minutes before closing. On a Friday.

So our neighborhood pharmacy sent the scrip over to another hometown pharmacy. When Wife pulled out the flex card to pay, the pharmacist told her he had some problems running our insurance.

Turns out they had the info from my previous employer. Wife gave him our new insurance info.

After checking our insurance info, the pharmacist said, “You know what? I’m just going to give you our best price on this. I’m just going to charge you $16.”

We like low prices, so that worked for us.

“Besides,” he added, “if I filed it with your insurance carrier it would cost you $45.”

In case you didn’t pick up on that, here’s the situation:

We paid $16 for Daughters prescription. If our insurance had paid for it, we would have paid $45.

Unbelievable.

I was all excited to tell you that for the first time in nearly two months, Wife and I have absolutely nothing on the calendar this weekend.

No weddings. No funerals. No birthday parties. No baptisms. No golf tournaments. No helping friends move. No travel. No nuthin’.

But at 3:30 this afternoon, I learned that we do have plans for the weekend: taking care of a sick preschooler.

Daughter has caught the vomits. She’s been going at it all afternoon. Twelve times since 2:30 this afternoon.

Is there anything more pitiful than a puky 3 year old?