From Dad

Dear Son,
We are so excited about your upcoming birth. We’ve been planning for your arrival for 9 months - praying for you, speaking to you, talking with friends and family about you, getting the house ready, and in the past month, receiving gracious gifts from friends that will help us care for you. We’ve done all of this because we love you very much.

When you finally get here, one of the ways that I want to love you is to take great care in getting to know you. As your father, I want you to know from the very beginning that I want to help you develop your strengths and to deal effectively with your vulnerabilities. I don’t know what those are yet, and I suspect that you don’t either. But what is important is that your mother and I will try as best we can to have an open mind about you and to let you be who you are at the same time that we model for you what we think is a loving and compassionate way of being in the world.

So let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. You know from my earlier blog entries that I’m a big sports fan, and it may be that you are too, and that we share that together, and it may be that you don’t like sports. If you don’t like sports, I’m going to learn to like whatever you like. So that means that one day your mother and I may be attending the quiz bowl, or the ballet, or the debate meet, or the gay pride parade, but the point is that whatever it is that you are interested in, we will try to support and learn to love. And we will try, as best we can, to steer your interests in a way that contributes to the greater good. So all of this is to say that I’ve been thinking quite a bit about you and am very excited about beginning our relationship.

I love you very much,
Your father, Rhett

The Princess Diaries

Hi Kiddo,
I titled this the way I did because I really have been trying to follow doctor’s orders and “be a princess.” I just suck at it. There’s too much to do and too little time. Also, I’m BORED!! I’m not good at stillness. I’m constitutionally ill-equipped to occupy the same spot in space for more than about a half hour. That said, everyone recommends getting all the sleep we can now, and I’ve been doing pretty well at that.

Things out here in the world really are good. Your dad has been nesting like crazy. He took all kinds of stuff to the give-away pile at the dump. He even took a big chest and a TV stand, and a monster-huge TV I’ve been hoping we could get rid of. (Your dad agreed to that, but he’s been really busy and I can’t lift it.) Yesterday, he vacuumed and scoured dishes, and made our home lovely for Andee and Dylan (our doula and newfound friend and her husband, who we also like a lot). I found it difficult to stay pinned to the couch yesterday, and since I was feeling fine, I justified a dash out for groceries. I hope that didn’t stress you out in there; but my intentions were good. I needed the groceries to prepare dinner for Andee and Dylan to come over, and it was a very low sodium dinner, which I understand is good for blood pressure. I still feel fine and haven’t swelled up or anything, so I’m pretty sure you were okay with it. You rolled around a lot and have been pretty active today, so I suspect you’re not under any stress.

Today was really fantastic for another reason, too. Today our friends Elisabeth, Laurea, and Laurie from church threw the three of us a really lovely baby shower. If you grow up finding that you love lemon bars, today is why. Laurea made amazing lemon bars and I am hooked. They sent the extras home with us and I’ve been snacking on them for several hours. The time we spent with friends was especially wonderful because lately I’ve been especially aware of what a leap it is to have a baby. We’ve taken several classes about how to be good and responsible parents, but we’ve never done anything like parenting before, and it’s really important. We don’t want to screw it up. Being with everyone today made me feel really secure; after all, with a support system around like the one we have, how wrong could things really go? You aren’t even born and so many people love you. I don’t know exactly when you’re going to be ready to be here, but I’m increasingly confident that the world is ready for you. We look forward to seeing you whenever you get here.

Love, Mom