Category: Family

The Mothers I’ve Had

Two days ago, on Mother’s day, I spent a bit of time thinking about the Mothers in my life and how they’ve affected me.  I’m not sure if it was because it way A2’s first Mother’s day or if it was because Mother’s day church meetings always involve multiple people getting up and crying about how awesome their mothers were.  Either way, the day led me to reflect on the women I’ve known best who are mothers.

Continue reading The Mothers I’ve Had

And then there were THREE…

When last I left you, we were three weeks until our due date, and I had cancelled an important work trip to be at home with my beautiful, nesting wife.  Let me just say, I am glad I stayed home.  Not because the baby came (he didn’t), but because he DID come the following Wednesday (March 2, 2011 @ 4:14am), and we felt ready.  (Well, mostly ready).

So let me back up and tell the story.

Continue reading And then there were THREE…

T Minus 3 Weeks

Folks, we are 18 days away from the due date of WEJr, and things are starting to get crazy around the WhiteEyebrows household as we get ready for the big moment.

Kicking it all off, the nesting instinct decided to go into full gear on Monday.  The lady in our birthing class had mentioned that your wife would become a “crazy lady” some time before the baby came – that getting ready would suddenly become an emergency.  I just kind of laughed inside – “not A2 – she’s like the coolest lady on the planet.”  Well, just like clockwork – she was right.  The two emotions of “holy crap, this baby could come any time” and “holy crap, we’re totally not ready yet” hit at the same exact day – Monday.

Perfect — it was just in time to conflict with a work trip I had planned to California.  To make a story short, the trip was cancelled and we’ve been working our cans off all week getting everything ready for WEJr to come so that we could try to alleviate the second half of the anxiety.

Also, it turned out as a nice marital learning moment.  This is just one of those things you do; sometimes we have to pass up what the right/best thing to do is for what your spouse happens to need at that time.  I am blessed to have one of the least needy, most independent spouses on the planet – so I don’t have to do this very often – so I wasn’t too hard to make an exception of what I needed to do for what she needed me for – as unrealistic and hormonal as that need was.

Plus, I informed her that I now have a huge chip to cash in at a later time… 🙂

So… back to that nesting list then…

Tonight I’ll be prepping the nursery for paint and tomorrow we’ll be painting.

There is some last minute shopping to be done – as well as this terrible concept of a “push present” that I now have to figure out.  (Whoever gave A2 that “Hot Moms” book needs to be shot.)  (I know, I know, it’s cute – but you all know that gift giving isn’t one of my “love languages”)

We’ve got all the bags packed, and are almost ready to go to the hospital at any time.

We’ve met with one pediatrician close by the house, and we’re meeting another near the hospital we’ll be delivering at.  We like them both, so it will probably come down to what location we decide will be most convenient.

We posted an ad for a nanny on Care.com.  We’ve had lots of responses but haven’t really earnestly started responding or interviewing.  I’ve kind of felt like we could do that after the baby comes anyway – we will have 3 months to figure out exactly what we’re doing in that department.  I guess we’re both still hoping that the perfect thing will just pop up – maybe someone we know and trust refers someone who we will feel comfortable with.  We’ve basically ruled out using anyone from our family or Church congregation – because you have to be able to hire someone you can fire as well and I would hate for relationships to sour over it.  So… we continue to look.  We do have a backup plan, though, so not feeling too much anxiety over this.

As far as a status report on A2 – she has started battling the swelling in the last two weeks.  Every night her feet and ankles are a mess – and every morning she can barely move her hands.  We’re just elevating and keeping the fluids moving.  She’s being a trooper, though, and a great unintended consequence is that she gets to wear jeans and tennis shoes to work every day now – Doctors orders!

For those who’ve been asking for a belly picture – I think she’s going to pass on that request.  Sorry… 🙂  I will, however, post pictures of our painted nursery this weekend, though!

Oh – and one more thing.  The Christmas tree is still on the floor of the living room.  Just to see how long we can stand to leave it there… (so far I’m winning)

Christmas Vacation Part 1

Our Christmas has been a bit different this year, but has been great!  A2 and I decided to come out west to see and spend time with the family!  While this is great, it isn’t exactly the quiet, home-based Christmas we enjoyed last year, with the surprise white Christmas and enjoying our first quiet Christmas married.

This year, to try to preserve a bit of our-family-ness we decided to spend Christmas eve with just us, then come join other family on Christmas day.  We went with Ben to McCormick and Schmick’s for Christmas Eve dinner.  I enjoyed a Texas redfish, Ben had the sea scallops, and A2 enjoyed plate envy as her parmesan crusted tilapia left wanting.  Other than that, it was a fantastic meal!

We went home and to bed early, setting the alarms for a 4am departure Christmas morning.  We got up and out the door by 5, with Ben taking us to catch our 6:30am flights to Vegas.  We arrived, and as we got to the rental car facility (around 8am pacific time), we passed a man who had clearly been out playing santa all night.  He had a long white beard and hair, and was wearing a red t-shirt, trousers, and boots – and clearly exhausted from being out all night.  I had to bite my tongue to not say “You’ve had a busy night, huh…” – instead I just shot him an understanding smile.

When we got to the rental parking lot, we were disappointed to find the lot empty of the car class we had pricelined for 50% off!  The attendant promised they’d have a car up soon, so we waited and along she came…

A Cadillac DTS.

This was a nice car – don’t get me wrong – but it was also a bit of a granny car.  The plusses were that it was whisper quiet on the inside (a far cry from my Civic) and just glid down the pavement.  It was a nice ride!  The minuses – too much wood glued to the dashboard, and more of a loose suspension.

We hopped on the freeway to St George and made it to my parent’s house at 11am Mountain time.  They had just finished opening up their presents and had cleaned up breakfast – only my parents and my little brother – so we gave the presents we had brought, and then went to my brother’s house to watch his girls open some presents.

Mom had made some fabric ‘quiet books’ for the younger nieces this year, and she spilled the beans that she also made one for our little bun in the oven.  We were quite thrilled.

We enjoyed a great Christmas afternoon dinner with Tio and his family, and puzzled and played games into the evening.  I was introduced to a new game called Blockus while we were there that I soon became family champ on.  Must be those ‘spatial reasoning’ skills shining through…

Monday, we did our obligatory run to Cafe Rio for lunch (yum!), then got on the road back to Vegas to meet up with A2’s family.  Her parents reserved several suites at the Wyndham a year in advance so we could all get together in the week between Christmas and New Years.  It all worked out like we planned, and everyone was able to make it in!  Hooray!

Monday night, we just stayed in, had dinner together, and caught up with everyone; enjoying the two new kids we hadn’t even met yet in the family.

Tuesday we decided to venture out.  GG and I were dead set on a visit to Hoover Dam.

It was a beautiful day, and we thought we couldn’t go wrong.  GG lived in Boulder City in the 1950’s, so she was familiar with the community and everything that went into the construction of the dam.  After a morning full of “dam” jokes, we ventured toward the dam.  The 30-45 minute drive turned into a 2:30 minute drive to the dam.  The dam traffic was horrible, the dam roads were packed, and all the dam tourists were itching (as were we) to just get there.  Good thing we had our sweet ride to enjoy the entire way there!

On the way, we lost half of our family entourage.  The ones with kids just couldn’t take the traffic and waiting, and bailed (for the better).

We finally made it to the dam, but couldn’t find parking to save our lives!  We drove all the way across the dam, then flipped a U turn and came back.  By the time we had made it back, they had reopened the parking garage for more cars.  We got in and found a great parking spot (thanks to GG’s handicap sticker).  By the time we got down the dam, all visions of going on the dam extended tour flew out the window.  We were all tired, hungry, and irritable, and yet the last thing we wanted to do was get back into that car.  So we decided to do the visitor’s center and observation deck and forego the tour.

Smart choice.

Half of the group got through security, but then *someone* had to have brought three of the prohibited items: a pocket knife, a fork, and a granola bar.  *NO DAM FOR YOU*  He had to run back to the parking lot to deposit his bag of terrorist paraphernalia so we could get to the dam visitors center.

At this point, even I, the most committed of the dam visitors, was beginning to falter.  Would I ever be able to successfully consume the dam experience?

We ran through the visitors center and then up to the overlook, got a few photos and a little info on the dam, then called it quits.  Getting back to the car we screamed in unison “get us the hell out of this dam!”

We sped back to Boulder City where we enjoyed a visit to the A&W drive in, with the freshly brewed root beer on tap.  YUMMMMM!  Best part of the day, bar none!

On our way back to Vegas we got to try out the handling on the DTS as well.  As we sped through traffic, a pink super-jeep stopped on a dime in front of us, and I had to quickly respond by merging into the other lane.  Though we all wet our pants, we made it out alive.

Today (Wednesday) we re-tried doing something together as a family; we loaded up the cars and went to the Mandalay Bay’s Shark exhibit.  This time we were successful!  We all enjoyed the aquarium, in spite of a few meltdowns along the way.  It was similar to the Dallas Aquarium (though a bit smaller).  Proving you always meet someone from St George when you’re in Vegas, I ran into the Reids from my parent’s neighborhood in the exhibit.  (I can’t go anywhere in these western United States!)

After the promised trip to McDonalds was complete and the incapable front-of-house staff at McDonalds had messed up our simple order, we came back to the resort and took it easy for a few hours.  I’ve been playing chauffer to those who wanted to go to The Strip or run an errand, but other than that we’ve been just doing a puzzle and staring at each other.

Three more days of vacation bliss to go!