A Question of Balance

I happened upon some older posts on niblet and spent the last 40 minutes reading through them.  I have to admit, I am, or at least was, a rather witty and funny writer.  That certain polish, I think, has been lost since I’ve lost considerable time and interest in posting on a regular basis.  It may have to do with the addition of 2 more boys too, I can’t say for sure.

It is a bit of a weird moment in time for us as it seems we’re repeating our 4 year cycle.  We had 4 years of medical school and didn’t know where we’d be for residency, but it all worked out in the end and our house sold and we moved back to Indiana.  Now I sit and wait while Angie fills me in on details of what is happening at Exit 10 (a new hospital St Vincent is building in NE Indianapolis) and wonder where we’ll be heading a year from now.

Certainly we should know more within the next 6 months and we even may know more before the week is out, but for now, there are a lot of unknowns.  To add to that she is considering a fellowship in Omaha, Nebraska and that seems to be the icing on the yet to be delivered cake.  History has shown things have generally worked well for us, so we’ll just have to wait a bit longer and see what comes to fruition.

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Leap Day

It is 65 degrees on Leap Day.  Will had swim and gym today (where we swim for an hour and play for an hour before school starts) and we were eating and playing outside.  I had on long sleeves and I was hot.  What a strange winter this has been.  No real snow fall the whole year and it seems like every 3 weeks we get into the 50′s.  It is nice to have a baby not get a chapped face from the winter air though.

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Da?

Much like Leo said Daddy endlessly for everything he saw, felt, and needed, Finn has taken to “da” has his word of choice.  Much like Leo also, he used to say more.  He could work out ‘ank for Hank, mama for mom, and dada for dad.  He is also walking and that makes him the earliest walker for us, so far.  Unlike Will and Leo, he didn’t stand up one day and take 5-6 steps.  He first kind of turned and accidentally took a step.  Then there was a step because I put him down and he got mad and wanted to come to me again.  Then there were a few steps between the chairs and the coffee table.  Soon he was taking 5-6 steps and today he walked from our large window back into the white room where the threshold finally brought him down.  So after weeks of steps and missteps, I finally got his walking on camera, not his first steps, but close enough.

Angie and I went down to Columbus to meet with a group that wants her to work for them.  We had a great dinner and the group was pretty interesting.  It will be interesting to look back on this when she has decided.  Both groups in Columbus are offering a lot of incentives to sign a contract, so while it is tempting, we’re trying to stay patient and make a good decision.  Having worked a job that I didn’t really enjoy for a few years, I can understand her wanting to get it right and unlike a job at a large corporation, you can’t move to something different in two years and be with all new people.

Will is past the half way point in school.  The year has really gone by quick and it will be even stranger when he goes to school full day.  Even now, when he goes to a friend’s house it seems a little strange to not have him around.  Leo settles down dramatically without Will around and becomes much more reserved.  Having Leo and Finn around reminds me of when we first moved here, but it is just on the cusp of my memory and I don’t remember much of the details.  Certain things will trigger the memories and I will look back on some photos and remember Will had fat hands too.

It will be strange owning a house again and feeling like I need to do the maintenance.  On the other hand, it will be nice to finally own a house again have the freedom to do what you like and know that your situation isn’t something temporary.  When we bought the house in St Paul, we knew it was temporary and we updated things for us, but also to help sell the place.  We rented down here to not have to deal with that situation again, but we also just kind of live with things as we know its temporary (like our landscaping).  So while it will not be too exciting to spend weekends pulling weeds and planting a garden, it will be nice to know what work we do we’ll be able to enjoy for as many years as we choose.

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Phone test

Ooh. Testing a post from my phone.

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Off to School

We’re coming to the end of the first week of school for Will.  He’s only gone for 3 hours in the afternoon, so we don’t get much of a change to miss him before we’re back to pick him up.  In fact, the most stressful part of the whole thing is the pick up.  They have everyone that is picking up load into the parking lot and then they shut the gates so no more cars can come enter.  At that point, they release the kids and everyone loads into the cars and then we all wait to be released.  It isn’t too bad, but when Finn gets worked up, a 5 minute wait to exit can become stressful.

Will is rather independent and hasn’t ever had much trouble adjusting to new things.  A few weeks ago he attended Lego Camp with kids he’d never met and just strolled into the room like he’d done it a million times before.  Kindergarten was much the same.  In fact, as I waited a few moments to see if Angie would be able to make his first drop off he turned to me and said “Okay Dad, you can leave.”  He only seems to mind going someplace after school because he thinks everyone will ask him about his uniform.

If possible, Leo has turned into a bigger goof ball.  He is talking a lot more, longer sentences and bigger words, and his volume has increased with his vocabulary.  Trying to get Leo to quiet down in the car while Finn is sleeping is like trying to get Will to not watch TV when its on.  Its basically impossible.

Leo hasn’t quite learned to take a little criticism yet.  Usually when I ask him not to do something or I say no to something he asks, I get the whiny, fussy face.  At least around me, he has learned to hold back the big sob, but he cuts loose around Angie because he knows he can play her guilt.  On the whole though, he reminds me a lot of Will at that age, into firetrucks, police cars, airplanes, sharks, cars, tigers, lions, and books.  I am not sure what I will do if I ever have a girl.

Finn is basically crawling, and basically talking, and basically ready to eat food.  He moves around so much on the floor when I put him down, I swear Will is helping him.  I think has learned to roll so quickly, you don’t notice it unless you are watching him.  He can also push with his feet and more or less push himself a few inches forward at a time.  I have a feeling he will be extremely eager to explore when he gets up on his knees in the next few months.

A few times Finn has managed to copy a “hi,” but mostly he likes to copy screams.  You can see him think about it, trying to get his lips and tongue to work together correctly, and eek out a little shriek.  Mostly though, Finn smiles.  Big smiles.  Kick your legs kind of smiles.  Sometimes it is impossible to change his diaper because he gets so excited about it.

For the sake of prosperity, I have to mention whenever and wherever I go with the boys, someone will always say, “you’ve got your hands full.”  Usually I have Finn’s car seat hooked in one arm, hold Leo’s hand with the other and telling Will to stay with me and stop running ahead.  Its one of those things that doesn’t bother you, but it seems like a trip to Target isn’t complete without hearing it from someone.

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3 Carseats in a VW Jetta

Well my first few weeks in my new job have gone fast. I got promoted from 2 boys to 3, so someone in corporate must have thought I was ready for the extra responsibility. Somehow along the way, I managed to convince Angie to drive the big, broken truck to work and let me keep the Jetta. Its amazing, how much easier it is to get the boys in and out of the Jetta vs the truck, but the truck offers a little more room side to side. In the Jetta they are crammed in there, but Will and Leo can climb in by themselves and Will can at least put his seat belt on himself too. In the truck I basically have to load them one at a time, move seats around to get in the back, etc.

Finn is starting to smile more each day, but it also means he can cry harder, louder, and longer too. I think he is a little unsure of what to make of me. On one hand I feed him and play with him and in the next instant I am yelling at the two older boys to stop whacking each other in the face with pillows. I think it is a bit Jekyll and Hyde for him and leads to confusion. In fact, there is all kinds of confusion. Will cries when Leo gets in trouble, Finn cries when Will or Leo gets in trouble, but Leo only cries if he is in trouble. Suffice it to say, there is a lot of crying going on now days.

Finn is also not the best traveler in the car. He can make it about 3 lights before a complete meltdown occurs. I am not sure why he hates it that much and he never seems to mind it as much when Angie is in the car, but it kind of discourages me from doing anything. Yesterday’s big outing was to get gas, stop at the post office, and grab lunch. Luckily, Will and Leo are happy to chase each other around for hours at a time.

I’ve finally completed something out in the shop. I’ve been kicking around a large vise for some time. Since the rain finally let up this past Memorial day weekend, I pulled the parts out, wire wheeled them, and got some paint on them. Now I just need to figure out how to mount it. IMG_0073 It looks rather stately I think.

I am still working on the bunk beds for the boys. I was making great progress right up until Angie went back to work. Now that I am bouncing Finn all day or changing diapers all day, I am really tired at 10pm. So the few hours that I am use to working at night are pretty much gone. We’re also waking up about an hour earlier than normal too.

From early Feb, I am down 12 pounds, from last year I am down 17. Official weight this morning is 179.5. I’d show the chart that I start tracking with, but it is kind of silly. I’ve only ridden 116 miles since Feb too. In my defense though, it has been rain cats and dogs a lot and we had some cold weather up until a few weeks ago.

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Transitions

Well, it has been 3 weeks since Finn was born which means Angie is almost half way through her leave. I am ever so slightly nervous for her to go back to work as I am just now realizing I will have to give Finn his bottles all day. I told Will and Leo things are going to get real Spartan around here when Mom goes back to work.

I’ve undertaken a big effort to move all the photos off the old Gallery system I’ve been using for years. Gallery has just become too big and too much of a hassle to update and I was sick of finding little errors everywhere. I’ve moved a few of the albums, but the vast majority are still in transition. Eventually they will all be done though and then I can move on to other things like updating the current theme on the site. For years I’ve used the Blix theme, but it has become really outdated. Now I am just using the default wordpress theme which seems to be fine. Its much better than the old default, so I will probably just change out the top image. It was probably time to change that anyway since I have 3 boys now and not just Will.

In other site related stuff, I think I am going to start posting more on my ww’ing projects. Its really the only interesting thing I do anymore. Right now I am building bunk beds for Will and Leo. This year I’ve finished my Windsor chair, a train table for Will, a book shelf for a friend and refinished an old dresser I pulled out of Nelson’s shop. After all that finishing work, I was ready to make some sawdust again.

I’ve had the poplar for the beds since November. The boards were 12′ long and made such a big stack, I couldn’t get anything done in the shop with them there. So I put them in my bedroom… I was amazed I got away with it this long. At any rate, I planned to just build one bed. Then I cut up what I needed and found that I had plenty of lumber for two beds and probably a ladder and guard rail for bunks. At the time, it seemed easier to just build both the beds at the same time so I could make sure they were the same size and actually worked when stacked. It does mean there is twice as much lumber to mill, twice as many joints to cut, twice as many boards to sand, etc. Luckily the beds are pretty simple, so the sanding and finishing should go pretty fast.

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You know what they say about 3rd babies

Do you? Because I really didn’t. But throughout this pregnancy, I heard the phrase time and time again. When I’d ask “whatever do you mean?” I got a similar response from all. 3rd babies are unpredictable. But I brushed that aside knowing that after 2 beautiful births, there was no mystery about how things would go down. I knew my labors started in the 39th week with spaced contractions at night followed by more powerful labor by morning and nice natural vaginal births without the ruckus of pitocin or epidurals. So when Jon and I sat down to watch a movie at 39+4 weeks gestation (“Love and Other Drugs” for those of you who like details) and I started having little contractions I thought, yep, right on track. A few more contractions (which Jon insists were augmented by seeing Jake Gyllenhaal’s tushie on screen)…I alerted the team. Which consists of my sister, Lisa (she hasn’t missed a delivery yet which is impressive considering we lived 500+ miles apart for the first 2 babies). The credits began to role at 10:30 pm and I thought I’d head to bed and see what became of things as I got some rest when I felt, hmm, something different. I believe my exact words were , “What the f***?” and I don’t curse for no good reason. I started to stand up and whooooosh – fluid spilled down my legs. Jon’s eyeballs began to bulge at this point and I stated the obvious…”my water broke!” Jon threw me a towel and I stood up again to a whooooooooosh and a soaked towel. By this time our former nanny had arrived to hold down the fort so we could go have a baby and she saw me streak across the living room with fluid soaking my PJs.

I went into the bathroom and a horrible thought hit me (for those of you who are not obstetricians, be thankful…It is a blessing AND a major curse to have lived on Labor and Delivery)…”this fluid is gushing out so fast and I’m dilated enough that the cord is going to prolapse!” So I immediately plopped myself down on the bathroom floor and even considered hoisting my hips in the air to try to keep the fluid from spilling out. It was no use. Fluid was going all over the bathroom floor. Clear fluid, thank goodness (again, obstetrician’s nightmare is to rupture at home and see sticky green meconium). So I yelled at Jon again to bring me a THIRD set of pants and another towel and some pads and a trash bag for the car seat. Another obstetrician’s fear (ok, this is EVERYone’s fear) is delivering in the car so I then became panicked that we just needed to get the heck out of dodge and make it to the safety net that is Community North. It’s not just that delivering in the car would be awful. It’s that my husband won’t even change a baby’s diaper if the umbilical cord stump is still attached – I could imagine him screaming for me to just not push as we fly down the road…or passing out right as the baby began to crown. I love my husband, but I had no faith in his ability to deliver me if it came to that. So we drove 85 miles/hour while I listened to the baby’s heartbeat with a doppler I borrowed from work (I promise, I will return it) because, again, I have seen too many bad things and I’ve got a mild case of OCD.

Anyway, we arrived safely at the hospital and I was escorted directly to a room. The triage nurse informed me I got to skip Go because “your doctor said YOU would KNOW if you are ruptured.” Ahh, yes, and so will everyone else if they just glance at my pants which were beginning to reveal the evidence. We got to our fantastic room (if you haven’t been in that hospital, it’s like entering a fancy hotel) and I got changed, sat down and closed my eyes. I tried to pretend I WAS in a fancy hotel for a minute just to calm myself down. This just wasn’t how I had planned it! I’m usually cool as a cucumber in labor, but this time I was thinking “where is that stinking nurse so she can hook me up to all the monitors and make sure this baby is doing ok without any fluid?!!!” She arrived, a lovely blonde named Jessica, and she did her thing and I pretended to be calm, but she knew the minute the blood pressure cuff read 147/93 that I it was a farce. My fears became even more evident when she said “baby looks great so you can get off these monitors and walk around” and I said, “nah, I think I’ll just sit here.” Again, I’m usually a stickler about letting me have mobility in labor but I was sorta frozen in fear of the umbilical cord getting squished with each contraction as I happily bounced on a labor ball. So I stayed in bed and told Jon and Lisa to get some rest. My contractions were picking up speed but I knew delivery wasn’t imminent.

About 3:30 in the morning I decided that sitting in a dark room with 2 sleeping people with hard contractions every 5 minutes was not working for me. I tried to wake up Jon but he was conked OUT. So I sat in miserable dark silence for awhile longer until my nurse came back in. I had her check my cervix and wake up Jon – I was 5-6cm. Baby looked good. All was well.

From there it becomes a bit more blurred. I remember getting up to use the bathroom, sitting back down and BLLLEECHK, vomiting. The nurse murmured “just transitioning” and I nodded in agreement thinking now THIS is my usual. In fact, I told her I’d need a bucket along the way because God knows labor just wouldn’t be as fun without retching. I believe it was somewhere around 6am at this point. The nurse checked me and said I was 8cm. She called my doc who was sleeping in the hospital to be readily available, and here is where things got a little, well, overwhelming. She checked me, said I was more like 7cm and that baby seemed to be OP (“sunny-side up” which sounds nice but is the bain of all laboring women’s existence). She put me in a Texas Roll (again, sounds nice and yummy but all it means is I had to lay all twisted on one side to see if he would fix his position) and sat with me for a good 20 minutes during which time I only had 3 contractions. Horrible, gut-wrenching, someone is trying to rip my uterus out of me contractions. I knew what was coming and as she said the words, the wind left my sail. “You need pitocin.” What?! You think I want these contractions MORE OFTEN? But I knew she had a point. My baby was getting a nice break between contractions which allowed his little punk head to keep turning back to OP instead of slamming it into the right position and holding it there as he made his voyage through my pelvis. And that is when I said something that I think Jon thought I would never, ever say…”If I’m getting pit, I’m getting an epidural.” Jon, in all his cuteness, tried to keep the old Angie alive and said, “wait, what would a midwife have you do?” (since I’d delivered our other boys with midwives, we’ve learned that they are masters of getting you through without the big E). I think I said, “they wouldn’t start pit and they’d make me walk. But I don’t care.”

Cue Mike, CNA extraordinaire. He was lightening fast and gave me the perfect light dose of numbing bliss. After 10 minutes I felt like a million bucks again. And baby didn’t seem to mind the change at first but a few minutes thereafter, the horse hoof pace of his heartbeat became a lazy snail pace. Funny thing is, I didn’t panic about it. I rolled myself over and waited patiently for it to come back up. At the same time I said, “I think I feel his head moving around really low” – like “push me out!” low. The nurse checked and I just had a lip of cervix left. She hadn’t even had time to start the pitocin (yay for me! my body DOES know what it is doing!). They called my doc back in the room, put my feet up in stirrups and I pushed with 2 contractions before I saw the beautiful little boy who is resting on my belly now as I type. The coolest thing was being so aware and comfortable as I pushed him out – I could feel his head crowning but it didn’t hurt. I reached down and touched his head thinking “darn it, if I’ve suckered myself into an epidural, I’m going to ENJOY it!” I then felt his little shoulders (thank god again, shoulders can be an OB nightmare) make their way out and he was placed on my chest. I held his skinny-fingered hand and giggled at his angry face. I saw his tufts of hair – brown maybe – and looked into his dark eyes. And at that moment, I realized that I didn’t care at all that he had thrown off my unwritten birth plan. After all, he’s a 3rd baby…and you know what they say about 3rd babies!!

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The Day of Days

Edit: Finn Matthew Martin, born 7:41 am, 8 lbs, 2 oz, 21-3/4″.

Water broke at 10:30 yesterday after watching Love and Other Drugs. Boy #3 should be coming soon.

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Reset

Well boy #3 is on the way and I figured with the holidays and all, it is probably time to get another post up. Angie is due in late March and her sister will be delivering the first girl on that side in something like 17 years. My brother, on the other hand, is well on his way to having twin girls, which will bring him to a total of 3 girls and a boy.

Leo’s speech has taken off in recent weeks and he seems to add 2-3 words a day. He certainly understands more than he can speak and sometimes he gets to talking so much I am not sure he even knows what he is saying. He is in love with Hank and almost any other animal that will tolerate his abuse.

Will is still Will. Smarter than the average bear and ready for kindergarten already. We got the elf on the shelf for him this year and I am not so sure he really believes it, but he does enjoy looking for it every morning. His Christmas list is about a mile long, but luckily he is young enough he won’t remember any of it come Christmas morning.

Angie is half way through her 2nd year of residency and already feels like she is about to pop from the pregnancy. I think she forgets how much bigger she will get in the last trimester, but I don’t try and remind her.

That’s all for now. I need to do some clean up on the site since everything changed over. I am planning to go back to posting once a week too.

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