The Morgan Mantra

Half a Decade Away

2010-04-03T00:00:00.001-04:00

Five years ago today, I woke up in our new house in Augusta. My whole family came up to help Andrew and I move in and we had spent the previous days unpacking, assembling furniture, painting, and putting up chair-rail in the new house. I spent most of the previous day in the guest room with my dad, helping paint and watching him painstakingly cut chair-rail to make it fit JUST right. I made a trip to Home Depot with him to get more materials and he joked that he was glad I had the brains to go to college, because I wasn't so good with knowing my way around a hardware store. That night we ordered pizza and enjoyed it sitting on the few pieces of furniture and the floor since we didn't have a table yet. Daddy fell asleep with my then 8 year-old brother watching old movies they had picked up at Wal-Mart (we didn't have cable yet). The next morning my daddy woke up and headed home along with my youngest brother. He told my mom not to wake me...he'd see me in a couple of days when we got back home. They headed to the Waffle House, through Atlanta to pick up his paycheck, and were going to make it home in time to help Gavin work on his truck that afternoon.

I don't remember exactly what time the phone call came, but it was my youngest brother and we couldn't tell exactly what was going on but he was scared and something was wrong with Daddy. My mom and I were freaking out, but Andrew pulled it together and got us in the car and we sped to Atlanta faster than I have ever ridden before in my life. When we made it to the hospital two hours later, we faced the worst news we could have ever imagined. Daddy didn't make it...the strongest man I knew was gone and to say we were at a loss would be a major understatement. It was determined a case of Sudden Death where his heart just misfired and never restarted. My little brother thought he had fallen asleep at the wheel and was somehow able to undo his seatbelt, crawl into daddy's lap and stop not only a huge Dooley truck, but the horse trailer they were towing behind it...in 4 lanes of Atlanta traffic. Not only did he save his own life that day, but the lives of countless others on the road....at only 8 years old. God was there.

It's been 5 years and some days it feel like 20 and other days....it feels like yesterday. They say everything gets easier with time and that's not a thought I truly subscribe to. True, day to day gets easier to get through, but when it hits.....it hurts just as bad as that day. Peyton being here as helped some...I feel connected to him when she makes an expression that reminds me of him or I see her being such a "daddy's girl," like I was. But it has also brought the hurt out in new ways...it's hard to know how much he would have loved this little girl and not have him here to show her. I wonder if I will ever be able to explain to her who he was and what an amazing father he was.

He would be so proud of his family...he always was. He told each of us he loved us more times than we could ever count. He made nightly rounds to kiss us good night if we were all under one roof and morning rounds to tell us to be safe and he loved us. In the end, it was found that his heart was too big....and that makes perfect sense to me.

We wouldn't have made it this far without the strength of each other....my mom has carried us when each of us were too weak to do it ourselves. Andrew has picked me up and cheered me up more times than he ever bargained for. Gavin has taken over so many of the "man" jobs...he's my on call guy for anything car-related and he helps my mom keep the farm running at home. My youngest brother has had his fair share of struggles but is growing into a young man that my daddy would be proud to call "son." My grandparents, who have since lost their second son, have shown me that God's grace is sometimes all that will get you through...but it WILL get you through. How proud he would be.

I hate that his death has allowed me to know the grief that exists in this world, but it has changed me profoundly. I don't stress about little things nearly as much...in the big picture...not much makes my list of "important." A clean house is nothing compared to extra time spent crawling around with Peyton or cuddled up on the couch watching movies with Andrew.

On my darkest days, I remind myself how fortunate I was to know this type of love, even if just for 21 years. When I need persective, I think of my brothers who only got 17 years and 8 years and little girls who never know their fathers. I will always be thankful for my daddy and will always wish he were here. Love you Daddy.

Jimmy Ray Hamby
August 18, 1955 - April 3, 2005

Time for Photos

2010-03-19T10:09:00.004-04:00

During Andrew's week off, he picked up the camera and snapped some great shots of our sweet baby girl. I think it renewed his love for it, which hopefully means more and more awesome photos to come....in all his spare time of course ;)

She is growing so much it astounds me. She is now saying Da-da very clearly and actually recognizes Andrew as da-da. And she has a word for daisy which is hard to discern from da-da, but sounds something like daaa----zzzee. HAHA. Still holding out on ma-ma :( She loves playing patti-cake and will vigorously clap her hands whenever she hears the words. She is eating all kinds of regular food now....last night she enjoyed a grilled cheese from Zaxby's! The time change has thrown her for a loop...but a good one! She is sleeping later in the mornings which thrills me and still napping great throughout the day. Still holding strong at two teeth on the bottom. Crawling, pulling up on everything, and cruising all over the place. I doubt walking will be too far off, but I'm ok with sticking with crawling for now :) She'll be 10 months tomorrow...where has the time gone?

Our next move

2010-03-10T16:36:00.008-05:00

Since last March, on Match Day, we have been eagerly awaiting the time where we would start making concrete plans to move to Birmingham for Andrew’s Radiology residency. This intern year of General Medicine has been HARD and one of the few things that kept us going was knowing that UAB had a spot waiting for us and this year would end and Birmingham would hold new beginnings.

We started looking at houses seriously at the end of 2009. We went for our first trip after Christmas and left disappointed, discovering that it was going to be much harder to find a house we loved and would fit in that was also in our price range. I have scoured internet listings almost daily and went back for trip #2 with Andrew’s mom in February. Again, we left really discouraged about our findings and hit the internet listings hard. Andrew had a week of vacation in early March and we knew this would be our best chance to find a house and get things settled with both of us involved. We contacted our Realtor and set up showings of near 40 houses. This time we had expanded our location radius and bumped up our price point a little....fortunately we started seeing some houses we could see ourselves living in. At the end of the first day, we had narrowed down our choices to two houses we loved and could see ourselves living in. After dinner and lots of “talking it over,” we decided on one in Hoover, AL based on it’s full brick construction, fantastic location with great schools/shopping, and proximity to Andrew’s work. We went back the next morning for the last look over, took lots of video and pictures, and wrote up an offer. We headed back to Thomaston to enjoy the rest of the week and prayed that it would all work out. Late Tuesday night, we sat in my living room playing phone tag with our Realtor, trying to negotiate a price. At midnight, we were emailing signed contracts and went to bed knowing we had a great house in a great location at a fair price. We couldn’t feel more blessed.

Here are a few pictures we took:

This is the view from the outside. The house sits up on a hill and covers three lots to make up a nice sized corner lot. The driveway starts on one street and curves up and around to exit on the side street.

Front entrance. We absolutely love the beautiful wooden door.

View of living room from front door with dining room at far side.

Living room with large window looking across the street.

Dining room connecting living room and kitchen.

Beautifully re-done kitchen. I would have never chosen the wall colors, but absolutely love them.

This is the den that is connected to the kitchen. I envision this being Peyton’s play area as well as our less formal living area.

Den, again, with beautiful sliding glass doors that look out onto the patio and backyard.

Hall bath that has been completely renovated. This bath has a tub/shower combo with new tiles.

Looking out of hall bath into guest room.

Guest room.

Master. A little smaller than we are used to, but the beautiful hardwoods make up for it :)

Master with master bath.

Master bath, completely renovated as well with new tiled shower.

Office. I didn’t get a great picture of this room, but this will be Peyton’s room after a new coat of paint. It is across from the Master at the end of the hallway.

Backyard.

Shed for all of Andrew’s yard things ;)

Back patio perfect for grilling

We are super excited and can’t wait to have keys in hand. Please pray for a easy closing (end of April/early May). Next task....a job for me and daycare for Peyton!

I Heart my Mac

2010-02-25T23:07:00.003-05:00

Got a new mac this week and I'm in love with it. Finally I am able to do something with the video that has been sitting on my camera's Hard drive for the past year. Attempts on the PC were just sub-par.

Now in less than 45 minutes, I am publishing my first project, making a triumphant return to the blog. Enjoy, b/c 4 more months of intern year remain, you may not hear from me for a while.

Work Hard, Play Hard. Go Mac.

On the Move

2010-02-23T13:54:00.005-05:00

Sweet Peyton turned 9 months old this past weekend and had her 9 month check-up on Monday. She weighed in at 18lbs 8 ounces and 26inches which puts her in the 50% for weight and the 75% for height. Her doctor commented that she was long, lean and muscular. She works daily on building muscles by crawling WAY too fast and getting into WAY too many things she isn't supposed to. Just today, I have already had to utter the words "no-no" 50 gazillion times. They are well used around this house and it is evident that she knows exactly what they mean. Unfortunately, that doesn't correlate into her not doing said activity...it just results in a mischievous look when she is caught in said action. Some of her favorite activities lately are...

* crawling as fast as she can to Daisy's water bowl and splashing her hand and whatever toy she might be holding repeatedly into the water. When mommy says "no-no Peyton," she quickly splashes one more time for good measure (and to prove whose boss, I guess) and then happily trails water all the way back to me.

* crawling to the paper shredder and quickly grabbing and scattering all the papers on top all around the kitchen floor. You would think this would teach us to shred immediately instead of continually piling them on top....but you would be wrong.

* pulling up on the tv cabinet and banging her blocks against the tv in rhythm to whatever cartoon music might be on.

* feeding herself ANYTHING! she would much rather feed herself than eat off a silly spoon which results in some messy meals and some questionable finger foods.

* she is eating more and more "real" food as opposed to baby food and I love being able to share some of my favorites with her. Peaches, mandarin oranges, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, and cinnamon apples are among some of her new loves. The downside? I have to share my favorites. Haha! She may or may not have already been introduced to the true miracles of life like ice cream and frostys ;)

* The squealing has died down a little which makes for somewhat more pleasurable public experiences for us and all those around us.

Because she is so on the move, I had Andrew put our pack & play together for me to have to use during the day. Because she is sleeping so well in her crib, I didn't want to confuse her using that for a contained play area as well as her "sleeping place." She has done pretty well and it allows me to walk out of the room without fear of her destroying the house or herself. She is super cute when she is in it....

8 months

2010-01-22T13:35:00.007-05:00

I'll spare you the "I'm sorry for not keeping up the blog." Truthfully, I've been crazy busy. Between managing Peyton full-time, trying to get this house in order to be listed, looking for homes in Birmingham, traveling for continuing ed and work requirements, and trying to keep mine and Andrew's spirits up during what has become a 4 week stretch of 18+ hour work days at the hospital, I just am plum tired! But knowing that I will regret not doing more updates of Peyton and her recent accomplishments....here we go.

She has changed so much over the past two months. She is mobile now and boy is she tough to keep up with. She is still sleeping really well and her daytime naps are my few hours to catch up on laundry, cleaning, etc. Now that she can crawl wherever she wants, she will play until she gets tired and then come find me wherever I am. It is so cute to look up from whatever chore I am doing and see her little face smiling back at me. She loves eating yogurt now and she is getting very good at feeding herself puffs and yogurt bites. She would much rather have good food rather than boring old milk so I have to try hard to get her to drink up! She is still drinking from all sippy cups which has made my dish washing much easier! She also has her first tooth coming in! So exciting...we thought she was going to be toothless forever :) I'm going to do the rest in bullet style because let's be honest....I wrote this days ago and quit when I just wasn't feeling it....

*Peyton loves her new ducky tub. She will sit in there, splash her feet and play with her toys. She is super cute when she tries to "save" all her toys from the water..she can't hold them all but she sure tries!

*She loves her paci and has a recent habit of falling asleep with one in her mouth and holding another for safe measure

*She is still sleeping really well and as of the past few weeks, will actually fall asleep when I put her down without much crying. Frees up a little more time for mom :)

*She loves to squeal! Everywhere! She especially likes to do this in stores/restaurants when she sees other babies...I guess she is going to be social?

*She looks like her daddy more and more every stinkin day! People say she looks like me, but only the ones who don't know Andrew. I am trying to come to terms with this. I mean, I did carry her for 9 months have have her cut out of my stomach....:)

*Daisy loves this new stage of Peyton trying to feed herself finger foods....and it does save me a little sweeping ;)

*She can now crawl, pull up, and is starting to walk behind her push toys...which means I am burning a lot of extra calories trying to keep up with her.

*She is also very type-A...again, totally her daddy. She knows what she wants and if she can't have it..watch out! And, the frustration....goodness! Oh well, maybe the next kid will take after me!

*That's probably enough for now...and I've got to get some actual important things checked off my list today!

The Little Things

2009-12-05T16:39:00.003-05:00

Jaynah is working today and I'm home with the baby, trying to get some studying done between her naps and quiet times. Even though I haven't gotten too much productive done, we've had a great day.

The clip below just amazed me, thought I'd share.

Work Hard, Play Hard, Merry Christmas.

-A,MD

Quick update

2009-12-03T14:23:00.004-05:00

Quick update to share some pics and video with you.

Check out our awesome pics from Altmix Photography by clicking here!

And a new video of sweetie pie Peyton

Andrew had to work Thanksgiving night so we cooked ourselves a little Thanksgiving meal that day and headed home to be with family when he got off on Friday.

Our little Thanksgiving meal

The food

Everyone seems to think Peyton is really starting to look like her Daddy...what do you think? ;)

More later....Andrew's finally off night shifts and working 8-5 for about 2 weeks so we are enjoying spending a little more family time together :)

Happy Half Birthday Peyton!

2009-11-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

My sweet little girl is 6 months old today. I'm not even sure how to wrap my mind around this fact. It seems like such a short time ago that I wondered if we would ever get pregnant, and being pregnant....seems like it was just yesterday. I remember wondering every second of every day what she would look like, how she would act, and how I would ever be able to tell what she needed. 6 months later, I now know that she is more beautiful than I could have even imagined, that she has more personality than I ever expected, and somehow, I am able to tell what she needs....most times :) One day, I hope she is able to pull these words out as she holds her own sweet baby.

Dearest Peyton Anne,

You have brought a love to mine and your daddy's life that I never knew existed. You came into this world more anticipated and loved than you will ever understand (until you are a parent yourself.) In the early months, your slightest grin or yawn made us get the others' attention and while I thought that would have disappeared by now, I still find myself whispering..."look, Andrew" at your smallest accomplishments. We have watched you learn to smile, roll over, push yourself up, try new foods, sit up by yourself, squeal, and my favorite by far, laugh. There are no words to describe the feeling I get when I walk into your room in the mornings and you kick your feet and smile in delight. How can a day be bad when it starts that way?

We've had our share of hard times...I'm not one to sugar-coat things and the early months weren't easy. You hardly ever slept longer than 20 minutes during the day and no more than 3 hours at night. You were fussy after almost every feeding and breastfeeding was HARD. I felt so inadequate as your mother and always answered other people's suggestions with .."I don't know...maybe?" You cried a lot, I cried some, and Daddy tried to keep us both happy. But, slowly, we got the hang of it. Switching bottles made all the difference with your colic/gas issues and letting you cry a bit at bedtime quickly flipped on the "sleep switch." Breastfeeding turned into exclusive pumping and made a happier mother and baby.

Through all the hard times, I would stumble out of bed muttering to myself something about needing more sleep, pick you up and you instantly calmed down and after eating would smile and coo at me. I would head back to bed smiling knowing it was all worth it...until the next time you woke of course :) I believe that God allows babies to smile so early because sometimes it is all that get us mothers through those nights.

Staying home with you has made me the happiest person in the world. Again, not every day is perfect, but overall I would trade nothing for the precious time to spend with you. You start my day off with a smile and end it snuggled on my chest. There are nights where I feel like I could hold you all night and not get tired of looking at the content look on your face.

Your daddy and I love you so very much and your arrival has brought us closer than ever. Each new stage you go through leaves us wondering in amazement at the miracle God has allowed us to raise. I pray that we will have the wisdom, strength, and knowledge to raise you as He would desire. We love you so very much and look forward to watching you grow into a sweet little girl, a beautiful young lady, and a confident woman.

Love,
Mama

Morgan Hoe-down

2009-11-11T08:33:00.007-05:00

For the past seven or so years, Andrew's parents have thrown a "Hoe-down" at their place. Everyone heads down to the barn to enjoy a night of bluegrass music, barbecue, ribs, and Brunswick stew. We look forward to this event every year to see family, relax, and enjoy the farm during the beautiful fall weather. Fortunately this year, it fell during Andrew's night call rotations. While it has proven to be a very taxing schedule during the week, he does get weekends off which is so nice....so we headed to T-town last Friday after he go off and spent the weekend enjoying time with our families. We are so blessed to have our families live within 5 miles of each other...makes it easy to see everyone as often as possible! Last year, most people were just finding out we were expecting a baby, so everyone was excited to see little Peyton! Here's a few pics of the weekend....

Peyton and I

Aunt Kitty from California and Peyton

Andrew, his brother Ben, and Paw Paw Bass

Andrew and Peyton

Peyton's "Barbeque"

Andrew and Paw Paw Bass

Photos overdue.....

2009-10-26T19:42:00.003-04:00

So Jaynah mentioned a few posts ago that I had a good schedule LAST month, being September and had time to get the camera out. Well she promised, and finally I'm delivering some of my favorite photos from the month. Enjoy.

ICU almost over.

Hope you enjoyed these as much as I'm enjoying our little lady, but I know there is no way that is possible.

STTN

2009-10-25T13:54:00.009-04:00

STTN: no, it's not the acronym for the latest reality show, but it is an acronym that most mothers of infants will recognize. It is letters you run across with tired eyes and unwashed hair as you GOOGLE: infant....sleep....night. Sleeping Through The Night.

I first ran across it when Peyton was about 6 weeks old...and there were mothers who said their babies had been sleeping through the night since 2 weeks old! What?!!? Obviously something was wrong with my child. She came home from the hospital sleeping 4 hour stretches at a time which seemed great. Until that lasted FOREVER and four hours turned into three and then to an hour and a half. You just can't function as a normal member of society with that kind of sleep record. At her two month check-up, I mentioned it to the doctor who recommended a book for me to read. Read?!?! Honestly, did he know I had gotten up that morning at 4:00am just so I could have a shower for that day? I dismissed it as normal for her age and decided that she would surely start STTN soon.

Everyone has a different milestone that they believe babies start sleeping better.....6 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks....10 lbs, 12lbs, 15lbs......drinking 6ozs...7ozs...8ozs.....eating cereal, drinking cereal. Peyton passed all these milestones and yet, still not sleeping good at night. At her four month check up, I mentioned it to the doctor again and again, he recommended the book. Ok, at this point...whatever...I'll read it.

WOW...it made so much sense! It described my child perfectly and laid out a game plan. Basically it suggested the "let them cry" method. Well, we had already tried that to no avail, but it had been awhile and the book suggested 4 months was a good time to let babies learn to soothe themselves. It made me feel better by explaining how important sleep was to babies and how important establishing good sleep habits now would be in the future. So, we decided to give it a go. She cried for about 10 minutes when she woke up the first time, about 8 minutes the second time, and about 10 minutes the third time. The next night? She woke up once and cried for 5 minutes. The next? She woke up once for about 3 minutes. Of course, it took me several nights of going in her room after she fell quiet to make sure she was alive, to realize that she was OK. This might actually work.

For about two weeks now, I have been the mother to a different child: she goes to bed around 8 or 8:30 and sleeps pretty much 12 hours straight. She still wakes up every now and then and I hear her on the monitor, but there is hardly ever any more screaming...just small sounds as she gets herself back to sleep. She is a happier baby all the time and when she is fussy, it's usually because something's wrong...not just fussy all the time like before. I feel like a new woman and I have discovered an even deeper love for her now that I have re-entered the world of well-restedness. The book has "game-plans" for all ages so I intend to keep it around for teething, terrible twos, and every other milestone that might affect the sleep of this family! Crazy long post about a small subject, but a very important subject for new moms and babies! Here's a few updated pictures to reward your commitment to this blog :)

UPDATE: sorry, I forgot to include the name of the book! "Healthy Sleeping Habits, Happy Child" by Dr. Marc Weissbluth

She loves to eat! Wonder where she gets that from?!?!?

She loves playing on her tummy and now that she has learned to turn back to front, I can hardly keep her on her back anymore

We started baby food and have conquered carrots and green beans so far...she loves carrots..still deciding about those green beans. And she sure is messy!

She loves doing baby push-ups and is getting so strong!

We went to Atlanta on Friday where "Aunt Les" and "Aunt Doris" helped find Peyton a very fashionable outfit for our upcoming Altmix shoot....hope you are as excited as I am! Until next time....

Videos

2009-10-24T14:19:00.002-04:00

A couple of videos for your viewing pleasure...

Peyton LOVES talking to herself...so cute!

She also LOVES Daisy...as you can tell, Daisy is still deciding what she thinks about this little one :)

Mothers sleep lighter

2009-10-19T09:51:00.002-04:00

Peyton and I made is home safely last night. Lots of blogging to catch up on, but I thought I would share a quick story with you.

I'm sure all mothers out there, especially the new ones, know that sleeping soundly through the night hardly happens anymore. At approximately 1:20am this morning, a loud beeping sounds throughout our house. I jump out of bed, yell "Andrew, FIRE" and proceed immediately to Peyton's room. I'm pretty sure I didn't breathe again until I got to her room and found her sleeping soundly in her crib. At that point I realized that the heat had come on for the first time and that yucky smell/smoke was in the air. Apparently the smoke detector had picked up on that. In the meantime, Andrew has stumbled out of bed and is walking around in a daze in his boxers. We make it back to bed and he promptly states..."man, I didn't know those baby monitors had built in fire alarms." WOW. I quickly explain that it was not the monitors...it was our SMOKE DETECTORS. Geez. He falls quickly back asleep while I get up several more times to check on Peyton and allow my heart to reach a regular pace. It's a good thing he doesn't have to wake from slumber to treat patients...oh wait..what happens on call night?!?! I hope somewhere between his call room and the patients room, his head clears and he remembers how to run a code! :) All joking aside, I decided this is the origin of "mommy brain." We mothers never even make it to this deep sleep that seems like a thing of the past! All's well that ends well...no fire and we now know the smoke detectors work which will make all the firemen in my family proud.

4 months old

2009-10-01T10:49:00.008-04:00

Peyton turned 4 months a couple of weeks ago and boy has she grown up. She keeps me on my toes with new accomplishments each day. She is smiling so much and laughs when her daddy is being silly. She has successfully turned tummy to back and most recently back to tummy. It is so sweet to look at her face when she does it...she is so proud! She is trying so hard to be a big girl and doesn't like to lay around anymore. She sits up in her Bumbo to play with toys and she is learning to love her new Exersaucer that she can stand up in. We went in for her 4 month check-up and shots and she weighed in at a hefty 15lbs 5ozs which puts her in the 80%. She grew quite a few inches and is now 25" and in the 75%. She loves eating her rice cereal and I have to keep her from trying to feed herself and shoving the spoon down her throat in the process. She loves holding her bottle herself and we have transitioned to using the sippy cup when it is time for juice. She still hasn't been the best sleeper so we started a new routine after talking to the pediatrician and the past few nights have gone much better. Hopefully before long, we will have day and night sleep conquered. Bath time has become especially fun now that Peyton loves to kick her feet and splash mommy & daddy...she finds this HILARIOUS. Andrew took some great pictures over the past month which he promises a return to the blog to post....in the meantime, a few from mommy's mediocre skills.

Holding her bottle

Sitting tall in her Bumbo seat

Enjoying her new Exersaucer

During the flood of Atlanta, my friends Doris and Leslie escaped the torrential downpours of the ATL for the hot humidity of Augusta and their first glance of Peyton's nursery. Doris was bummed to not be performing surgery, but Peyton and I so enjoyed their visit!

Don't ask what Peyton was doing here...pretty sure it was something influenced by "Aunt Doris."

We love taking evening walks and last night was the first time Peyton needed a little jacket

Bath time is also known as play time

Today marks the end of Andrew's elective/vacation month and he headed out early this morning for his first day in the ICU. Overnight call every 4th night won't be fun, but hopefully it won't be as bad as August. Peyton and I are looking forward to hitting the road again to visit friends and family to keep us from going crazy in this house.

San Diego

2009-09-21T11:02:00.019-04:00

Part of what made September so exciting for us was Andrew's week of vacation. We decided to cash in our miles and take a much-needed vacation. We narrowed it down to a few options and decided on San Diego because of the activities available and the fact that neither of us had been there. My mom happily agreed to keep Peyton and with Daisy boarded, we were off. We flew out on Saturday morning and stayed until late Wednesday night. We had such a great time...I'll let the pictures tell most of the story:

We landed, got our rental car, checked into the hotel, and headed straight to the beach for my first view of the Pacific.

We couldn't be in San Diego without visiting the zoo.

We saw lots of great animals and Andrew enjoyed reading/listening to EVERY single fact about each one :)

I was a good sport and also took a tour of the USS Midway with Andrew, the history buff. He had a great time and we learned some interesting stuff.

The ship had a great view of the bay area:

While walking around one day, we saw people on Segways being given a tour....we decided that would be an awesome way to see the city and ride Segways for the first time.

It was so much fun; we loved it! Of course, ever-cautious me had a slightly longer learning curve than the others, but once I got comfortable even I enjoyed it!

Andrew was brave enough to take pictures/video while riding the Segway, whereas I was just holding on tight!

We were a little disappointed with SeaWorld as a whole, but the Shamu show never disappoints...such beautiful creatures.

After enjoying breakfast and lunch (and lots of sweet tea!) at Matt's Chickfila in San Diego, we picked him up for a drive up the coast to visit new Californians Sean and Erin. We missed their going away party in Atlanta, so we had a little welcome party at Laguna Beach.

A new love of mine...the Pazookie!

The whole group:

Us enjoying the beach and the beautiful sunset

And finally, brunch at the Hash House before we left...recommended by Matt and Jessica....so good!

We had such a great time...thanks so much to Gran Jan for taking such good care of little Peyton while we were gone - we were counting down the days to get our hands on this little girl!

Daddy's Girl

2009-09-01T13:04:00.006-04:00

Andrew is done with the medical wards for a few months!! yay! He is doing an elective this month and will be doing different rotations from 8-12 each day and attending lecture from 4-5. With a week of vacation thrown in, this month promises to be one of the best of intern year. We are super excited. October and November won't be near as nice, but hopefully they won't be as bad as the past two months.

Even though her daddy hasn't been around as much as he would have liked, Peyton is still a Daddy's girl at heart. Here are a few pictures from a rainy day when Andrew got home early.

How precious are they?

She loves to stand up these days: no more cradling her in our arms :(

Holding tight!

Yes, he does

Mommy does too!

Stay at Home Mommy

2009-08-27T10:39:00.004-04:00

I was never one of those women who thought their life work would be raising kids. Sure, I wanted a family and I knew my kids would be the most important thing in my life, but I always wanted a career. I was raised by two working parents and I feel like I turned out OK, so it never bothered me to think about placing my children in daycare or hiring a sitter. I was smart, determined, and had a hard-earned degree. I started out wanting to be the best Occupational Therapist there was and 40 hour work weeks sounded just fine to me. We started talking about children and decided it would be a good idea that one of us have a paying gig before we had another mouth to feed (see, I told you we were smart!) When we finally got pregnant, I still believed that I would be ready to go back to work. I mean how busy can a little baby keep you really? Surely I would be bored out of my mind. Somewhere on the road to getting pregnant, dealing with a complicated pregnancy, and finally having my beautiful baby girl in my arms.....I changed. I no longer woke up excited about work, I woke up excited about what new things my little girl would do today. I no longer craved feeling needed by my patients; my baby needed me and that was enough. It isn't always easy to see in the short-term, but I can always look back and see how God knows better in the long run. Maybe it took us awhile to get pregnant because He knew that I wouldn't be ready to go back to work when 12 weeks had come and gone. Maybe He knew that financially I would have had to if we had gotten pregnant on our time line. Maybe He knew that Andrew's time at home would be few and far between, and Peyton coming in May allowed an entire month for our little family to be together before we entered this storm known as intern year. Maybe He knew that I wouldn't be able to work full-time and come home to another full-time job without a lot of help. Who am I kidding? Of course He knew, it was me that didn't.

So here we are....I am a stay at home mommy. Don't worry, I am still working weekends to bring home a little extra cash (most people don't realize that new docs don't make very much along with their horrible hours) and keep my skills up, but during the week, I am keeping our precious little girl. We are incredibly blessed to be able to manage this financially so early in our lives and we never take that for granted. Sure, we would be sitting pretty if we had my salary too, but some things are worth sacrificing for. Our move to Birmingham next year will probably demand that I return to work, but for now I am concentrating on this precious year to spend with Peyton.

I realize that staying at home isn't for everyone and certainly isn't an option for all those that desire it, but for me it has been such a blessing. I love waking up to Peyton's sweet smiles and I love being able to do all the little things with her that wouldn't fit into a 8-5 schedule. I love being able to have lunch dates with other mommies and friends and I love being able to travel home to visit with our families. I know I probably drive others crazy with the amount of pictures I take and force upon them, but it is so exciting for me to watch her grow before my very eyes. Each day brings a new accomplishment and before I know it, she will be walking, talking, driving, graduating, and leaving us behind to pursue her own dreams. Until then, I'm just taking it one smile at a time :)

Camera Learning

2009-08-19T11:16:00.009-04:00

First off, a huge thank-you to Andrew for straightening up the header of the blog. I'm sure some of you thought it was just my creative design...but no, I could not figure out the HTML to get it straight. Although I would like to go ahead and drop in that me and my awesome friend, Doris, did once win a computer programming award in high school. So, people, the knowledge is there.....I just have to dig deep to find it! :)

As you all know by now, my dear husband is INCREDIBLY busy these days and during some of mine and Peyton's free time, I decided to steal his nice camera and play photographer. Here are some of the images I got. I was pretty proud so hopefully you won't think they are too bad. For my professional photog friends out there....just humor me and tell me they are good! ;) I have always felt like I had the "eye" but being patient enough to learn about all the settings and such is not my strong point.

You can see all of them as well as other pics I snap here

Weekend Off

2009-08-11T10:40:00.012-04:00

During intern year, having an entire weekend off is like winning the lottery. On this rotation, Andrew gets 2 weekends off which is so nice; unforunately these are his only days off so he has to work for 2 straight weeks between them. This past weekend was his first break longer than 24 hours, so we headed to Thomaston to let our families reunite with Andrew. haha. They almost didn't recognize him I'm pretty sure. We drove in late Friday night and spend most of the day Saturday hanging around the farm and checking out the latest addition, an apartment above the barn. That's pretty cool huh? We took a break to run over to Gran Jan's to swim and Peyton actually got in the water this time. She spent most of her time on mine or Andrew's shoulder but she seemed to not mind it. Unforunately, I manned the video camera and Andrew had the still camera so all the pictures are of me and Peyton. Oh well, one day when I figure out how to get our videos off the camera for startes and into some type of viewable format and onto this website...you can see Andrew and Peyton swimming. Until then, it's just me...sorry.

"I'm Tired!"

This is how Peyton spent the rest of the swim...doesn't she look comfy?"

When Peyton and I are home, I try hard to take lots of pictures because it seems like she changes daily lately. These are just a few I snapped recently.

She loves to laugh

But she can be serious too.

I took this one because I realized she was getting as long as the changing table. This next one was taken days after she was born...not exactly the same view, but still a huge difference.

When she's happy, she loves to just lay and talk to you.

Peyton will be 12 wks tomorrow (wed) and she is just growing beyond my wildest expectations. Yesterday we went shopping with my mom and put her in stroller without her infant seat...she loved being able to see what was going on and she talked to us the whole time. I'll leave you with this cute face....so sweet!

On a side note, I decided at the last minute to hang out with my mom this week while Andrew works and we left Peyton with my mom overnight so that she didn't have to endure six hours in the car as I took Andrew back to Augusta. It was so hard to leave her, even knowing she was in great hands, but it was great practice for our trip next month...Andrew has a week off and we are headed to San Diego!! Plane tickets booked and we are excited!

New Look

2009-08-05T07:47:00.011-04:00

Since I am now the "blog master," I decided the blog needed to be somewhat more visually appealing. I am still tinkering around with it and have to redo the picture at the top, but this is nice for now I think.

The posts have been few and far between lately because Peyton and I have been doing a lot of traveling. Andrew was finishing up his first rotation and pulling some major long days/nights along with some overnights and Peyton was not letting me get much rest so we went to T-town for a little while to get some help from the grandmothers :) While we were there we stayed busy attending an old friend's baby shower, my mom's retirement reception (yep, she's a retired Grandmother! She's heading to nursing school in a few weeks), a family wedding, several birthday celebrations, and lunch with my best friend. Never a dull moment with this mama and baby!

For a couple of weeks, I was having a really hard time getting Peyton on any type of schedule. It kind of blew my mind because up until then she had been doing so well! But she had a mind of her own and it did not include sleep for mom! Thankfully, we are on the upswing now and after a few helpful hints from the doc and some rest at home courtesy of "Gran Jan" we have had several really good days at home. Peyton's naps have become longer which allows me time to do the all important things like eating, going to the bathroom, and preparing the next bottle. On glorious occasions when all these things get done, I might do a load of laundry or think about dinner ;)

My little girl is 11 weeks old today and I'm already seeing how fast she is growing up. Last week she weighed 12lbs 10ozs and was in the 90% for weight. After laughing at my face, the doctor assured me this was completely normal for breastfed babies. Phew! She's smiling so much now and starting to laugh every now and then. She absolutely loves watching tv (she gets this from dad) and don't worry...I make her watch educational shows! The other night she was watching her favorite show Caillou on PBS and Andrew made the mistake of trying to change the channel....he learned his lesson fast! You think I kid, but just come see for yourself. When I don't have my child parked in front of the tv (come on people, I promise it is no more than 30 mins a day :), she loves tummy time or sitting in her bumbo while I read to her. She has also really started enjoying bath time so we try and do that as often as possible. We also usually have at least one outing a day to keep mom from going crazy; I'm trying hard to make these normal errands or just walks around the neighborhood instead of heading straight to the mall (which will send me straight back to a full-time job if I don't watch out ;).

Here's some pictures for your enjoyment:

Peyton and I before Stephanie's baby shower

Bath time! Look at that chubby tummy!

Just chillin at Mimzy and Pop-pop's

Pop-pop likes when I am awake and smiling :)

Naptime! Daddy and his girls

Daisy wants in on the Bumbo action

"Uncle" Cal gets to meet Peyton when he leaves NYC to make it to Brooke's wedding

A little blurry, but look at those eyes! She's always on the go so I think I am going to have to get out the big guns camera to keep up with her!

Until next time.....

Things I've Learned

2009-08-04T19:22:00.003-04:00

Things I've learned about being a parent:
1) All those things you said you would never do....you will.
2) You no longer matter...seriously. This child comes first no matter what and that's surprisingly ok with you.
3) In the middle of the night when you are frustrated beyond belief that you are not asleep....a single smile makes you not mind if you never sleep again.
4) You do what works...if that is allowing your child to watch tv so that you can shower...your child watches tv.
5) No one cares what you look like anymore...as long as your child is cute, you don't have to dress to impress ;)
6) Everyone has an opinion...the only one that matters is yours.
7) Your daily conversations almost always mention poo.
8) It is a requirement that you take as many pictures possible and force them on as many people as possible ;)
9) It is a big change for your marriage but so rewarding to look at your child and know that she is half you/half him for better or worse!
10) Even if I have to do more laundry b/c the diapers are becoming too small....I will not waste free diapers!

Portraits

2009-07-17T22:36:00.006-04:00

As mentioned in previous posts, Andrew is extremely busy these days. Besides being the resident blogger around here, he is also the photographer. He has taken some really nice pictures of Peyton, but he hasn't had time to sit down and give them the editing that they deserve and require to print, post, etc. Along with that, I have neglected to nail down our friends Matt & Kate to take some of their awesome photos of our family (don't worry, this WILL happen). We are so in love with our Maternity Pics from these guys, we won't let Peyton get past her first year without some Altmix love :) With all that said, I wanted some nice pics of Peyton and I knew the grandmothers would love me to show up with hundreds of prints for them to choose from. So....I bit the bullet and chose a cute outfit, took her to one of those mall places, and ta-da.....we have billions of pictures of our little pumpkin. She did great...she has lots of practice as a print model courtesy of dad and I think the photos turned out great for what they were. So, here ya go - little miss priss!!

Look at those pouty lips...she gets those from mom :)

You know that's cute!!

"Mommy, don't drop me!!"

And, after my wardrobe change ;)

It's Friday night, I'm up late with a sleepless little girl letting the swing put her to sleep. Andrew's expecting a short day tomorrow, so maybe the next post will be about the fun things we got into over the weekend.

July 4th

2009-07-14T15:02:00.010-04:00

So my friend Courtney over at Always Room for Moore is making me look bad by getting her July 4th pics up already and her little girl is only 3 weeks old. Guess I better get moving huh? :)

Since Andrew was on call during the weekend of the 4th(which requires him to stay at the hospital), Peyton and I decided to head to Thomaston and spend the holiday with family. We just relaxed with my mom since both the boys were out of town and rode over to the big city of Manchester for fireworks with the Etheridge side of the family. We had a great time...Peyton loved (slept through) the fireworks and Mommy ate the complete carnival diet consisting of funnel cake, ice cream, and hot dogs...if only they had been selling cotton candy! I'm pretty sure this was the first 4th I have spent away from Andrew in like 10 years so he was definitely missed.....

Peyton of course had about 10 4th outfits...we made it through 2!

Precious watermelon outfit with matching sunhat

Flag dress that Gran bought me....and my cute headband!

Peyton and Mommy

Peyton, Mommy, and Great-Granma (my mom's mother)

Peyton and her Great-Pawpaw (my dad's dad) They are such early birds, I was still in bed and Peyton still had on her PJs

Peyton and her Great-Grandma (my dad's mom). She is absolutely in love with this little one! :)

Andrew's pitiful view of the fireworks :(

Happy 4th! (a little late)

Pictures!

2009-07-13T08:58:00.010-04:00

Not a lot to update you on this post so it will be mostly pictures (of Peyton, how did you guess?!?). Andrew has started work and it is pretty hardcore as both of us anticipated. He leaves early in the mornings (6ish) and gets home late at night (9ish on average) most nights. He gets one day off each week (usually a random day, not a Sat/Sun like normal people) and we spend that day just enjoying our whole family being here. Peyton and I are getting a schedule down and I have been able to fit a shower in most days ;) We are trying hard to cook dinner as well and are making progress there too. There are definitely still days that require Andrew to grab fast food on the way home from work, but that will probably be a trend for awhile. I love to cook, but doing it with a baby who only allows me 15 minute intervals is quite challenging. And the cleaning up, I can always do without. Ok, enough rambling...here's the pictures.

Andrew will probably kill me for this one, but this is what he looks like after being at the hospital from 6am on Friday to 2pm on Saturday :)

The rest are of you guessed it Peyton! Who can blame me when she is so freaking cute?!?! This is her newest outfit from BabyGap (my favorite!) and the pants are capris! how adorable!

Hanging out in the nursery: in her crib

Isn't that a pretty face?!!?

In my favorite rocker

Pretty pose. Already working on her modeling skills :)

Enjoying her bouncy seat

And, finally one of her cute smiles!

Does life get better than that?!!? I think not.

6 weeks

2009-07-01T09:33:00.012-04:00

So, my sweet baby girl is 6 weeks old today. It seems like just yesterday I was nine months pregnant eagerly awaiting her arrival. She is growing like crazy and a part of me just wants to scream "slow down!" Yet, I know that this is how life goes and I just try to hold on to every detail of these sweet moments. Peyton will now look straight at us as if she knows exactly who mommy and daddy are and at occasional glorious moments, she will break into a full face smile in response to whatever crazy antics we can come up with. She is a sweet baby and has been the equivalent of a world traveler for her first 6 weeks. We have made multiple trips to our hometown to visit with family and several trips to the lakehouse to enjoy the summer weather. She has done great...as long as we plan driving around her feedings, she does great in the car. She and I are slowly adjusting to not having Andrew around as much; I have taken over the night feedings so that he can get a good night's rest before handling peoples' lives (yes, the world has me to thank ;). We are also learning to become quick "day buddies."

Her schedule is now pretty much eating around 9:30pm and sleeping until 2-3am which gives mommy an hour or so to get things ready for the next day and then several hours of sleep at a time. Peyton is like her mommy in that she is not a morning person. After her 5-6am feeding, she is perfectly fine with crawling (ok, being placed) in the bed beside mommy and sleeping until the 8-9am feeding. She doesn't usually nap much during the morning so a lot of our time is spent together in the rocker! In the afternoons, Peyton will take a nice long nap in the swing and mommy can get things done or we run errands which she is great at :) When she is completely content, she will just stare up at us and coo...Andrew likes to call her his "gossip girl".

So, there is Peyton's six week update. We are going to try to do video clips every 4 weeks, but I know it will be nice to have these details written down for future enjoyment (sorry if it is boring for you readers). The creative writer has a new job (and it's a paying gig...woohoo!). I won't be returning to work full-time; if I work at all it will be 1-2 days a week so I am looking forward to spending these sweet years with Peyton.

Andrew started work today as Dr. Andrew Morgan so say a quick prayer that all goes well and hopefully the day won't unravel as MCG days are famous for ;)

I'll leave you with a few photos from the past few weeks to reward you for reading this boring post!

Father's Day at the lake

My cute little bathing suit (just for fun...she didn't actually get in; maybe next year!)

Cuddling with mommy :)

Cuddling with daddy (they were both not into this photo shoot...can you tell!?!)

Cute even when I'm fussing

Greenjackets game with Andrew's new co-workers

Sweet Peyton

I made Andrew pose for his first day of medical school so of course I had to have his first day as a real doctor too!

Disclaimer for all photos: I'm sure I have not edited them correctly so please blame me, not my dear husband, for poor photo quality! Until next time.....

Daddy

2009-06-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

So this is my (Jaynah's) first entry to The Morgan Mantra. Andrew has been on me for awhile to contribute to our blog and I have resisted mainly because I am neither the writer or communicator that my husband is. However, I felt that this was an appropriate time to make an appearance due to subject matter and the fact that Andrew is about to become very busy but that will not stop our many fans (ie, our mothers ;) from wanting the blog updated. With that warning out of the way....here we go:

The term "daddy" has always held special meaning for me. I don't know at what point a father or "dad" becomes "daddy" and most likely this is entirely a southern term, but in my family it is just what dads are called. From the earliest age of remembrance there was a saying that stuck out to me regarding fathers. It was printed on a frame that sat in our living room. It was a wooden frame that had a picture of me and my dad on one side and the other stated: "Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a daddy." Now as a little girl I didn't understand that not everyone had fathers like mine, but I was smart enough to know that mine was special enough to be called daddy. My daddy was one of those men that you could only know a small part of him from looking at him. He was a big man, strong and quiet to most that approached him. However, to those of us who were lucky enought to be close to him...he was so much more. I was the firstborn and I was his little girl from day 1. My mom laughingly tells the story of how up until the day I was born, my dad would say..."Hamby's don't have girls" and how surprised he was when I arrived on that day. It didn't take him long to adjust....I was "Daddy's little girl from that day on." I remember so many things about my daddy that I could share (and take up hours of your time to read) but I will simply say that my daddy loved me in a way that gave me confidence. He never let a day go by without telling me he loved me at least once (usually many more). He never let even the simpliest right decision made by me go by without telling me he was proud of me, and he told me often that I could do or be whatever I wanted. I always remember the worst part of being punished by my daddy was the dissapointment in his eyes. Don't think my dad did all these things himself....my mom is an amazing woman who has taught me more than I can ever say, but there is something about a daddy/daughter relationship that defines how a girl sees herself. For me, he made sure that I saw myself as beautiful, confident, and unstoppable. For that, I will always be grateful.

April 3, 2005, I lost my dadddy. Many of you know the story, many I'm sure don't, but the main point is that it was sudden, completely unexpected, and devastating to my entire family. It was a month before my wedding day and a time that was supposed to be the happiest of my life suddenly became the hardest I could ever imagine. I don't bring this up to talk about the sad things, but to say that it defined another major relationship in my life...the one with my future husband. Andrew and I started dating in high school and we went through the typical struggles that any two people together that long go through....trouble with friends, jealousy of other girls/guys, communication difficulties, the transition to college, etc. I never imagined spending my life with anyone but Andrew and when he asked me to marry him, I couldn't have been happier. Neither of us imagined the loss of my daddy or how it would affect us, but it showed me a side of my husband that I will forever be thankful for. I often wonder what those first few months of marriage would have been like without the loss hanging over us. Andrew was given a huge duty of being there for me; there were many days that I would burst into tears at the smallest things and he often found me crouched in some part of our house crying my eyes out. He never once got mad, he never once gave me a look that said get over it, he always just held me and told me he was there for me. Never have I been so sure of our relationship that during those times.

If you read this blog, you know our pregnancy story; We wanted kids, we had a plan, our plan didn't work. If you are a woman wanting a baby and it doesn't happen it's not easy. It feels unfair every time you hear of someone becoming pregnant and every baby you see brings you to the brink of tears. It wasn't easy for me but once again, my husband was up to the challenge. He never made me feel it was my fault and he never let me believe we wouldn't end up with a baby. Once again, you know the story....it finally happened for us and we began the best journey of our life. He was there for me during the early weeks of sickness, he was there when we were faced with our baby having a genetic disease, he was there when every visit to the specialist presented another "slight problem." I went to the doctor at least once a week almost the entire pregancy and even though he was still finishing up med school, Andrew was at every one. I love being a mom; it is a joy I could have never imagined but my favorite part is watching my husband become a daddy. Every time I look at my daughter I am so thankful for her father. I smile when I catch them both asleep with little smiles on their faces and when nothing else will calm her down, laying on daddy's chest will. I can't wait for Andrew to experience all the things that daddies and daughters do and I am so thankful that he was in my life long enough to see my relationship with my dad and realize how much a father defines a daughter's life. I have no doubt he will be a hands-on dad; he already is. He doesn't blink an eye when a diaper needs changing, a bottle needs to be given, or a heavy carseat needs to be lifted. He has walked Peyton at night more times than I can count and when we are both exhausted, he sends me to bed saying "I'll take this shift." He's about to become very busy but I have complete confidence in knowing every free moment will be spent loving his little girl (and the dog, with hopefully a little left over for mom!) I can't wait to see what the future holds for our family and I pray that Peyton will realize what a treasure she has in her daddy. I pray that the two of them will share all the things I missed sharing with my daddy....walking down the aisle, college graduation, the birth of her own children, and the birth of her children's children.

Daddy, I miss you more than words can describe and I wish more than anything you were here to hold your sweet granddaughter. I know you would be a better grandfather than you were a father which is hard to imagine :)

Andrew, you are the love of my life and I have only fallen deeper in love with you over the past few weeks. You are an amazing father and I look forward to experiencing the joys of raising this little girl with you. Happy First Father's Day. I love you.

Videos Pt. II

2009-05-29T15:13:00.002-04:00

K, so I'm having fun with these videos, enjoy.

MILK COMA, or at least the transition toward a milk coma.

Peyton hates getting dressed, HATES IT. I am hoping deep down that this means she will hate shopping for clothes, shoes and the dreaded PURSES. I'll probably have no such luck, but this is a funny thing she has done a few times. We put a little blanket around her while we are changing diapers and getting her clothes ready to put on. This seems to keep her from going ballistic, but not always. One thing that has worked everytime is when she hooks her little arms under the blanket and pulls it over her head. Then its lights out, and so is the crying until we're done.

Don't worry folks, we are always standing right there and when we put her to bed or nap, we make sure that she can't do this and possibly suffocate. Just a weird little thing she does.

Have a great day.

Andrew

Video extravaganza

2009-05-27T19:36:00.003-04:00

Well, Peyton is one week old today and we've had a great week at that. We've been home about 4 days and every night has gotten a little bit better. Peyton is feeding really well (breast) and now that she is getting good meals, she sleeps really well between feeds.

I'm gonna post some pictures soon, but I wanted to share these two videos which I really enjoyed this week.

The first is a clip I shot about 5 minutes after Peyton was born. Jaynah had the C-section and after the baby was born, I had to accompany the nurse to the recovery room so that she could get the baby all cleaned up, put a tag on the baby, a tag on me so there would be no switch-a-roo, as well as get the baby's weight and measurements, etc. The cool thing was that someone had taken all the stuff the nurse needed out of the recovery room and so while she went and gathered everything, Peyton and I had several minutes, just to ourselves, to get introduced.

*I had been up for over 36 hours straight and so my days were confused. Peyton was born on 5/20/09.

Next, my brother had been following Twitter since we'd gotten to the hospital, and decided that I needed some support since we hadn't made it to the "birthing class" prior to Peyton's arrival. He put together 3 videos of tips for a successful delivery and sent them to my phone. Probably the funniest thing I've ever seen besides SNL's DIAB, and ML.

Thanks brother. He and his wife also totally surprised us showing up to the hospital right after the baby was born. He'd originally fed me lies about he had to work yada, yada, which was totally fine, however we were so excited to see them.

More to come, hope everyone is well, and thank you again for all of your love, gifts, support, prayers, and encouragement, not only during the birth, but throughout the whole pregnancy.

THANK YOU!

Loving it.

Andrew

Always Count to 10...

2009-05-21T07:00:00.005-04:00

I was in the tenth grade, finally not a freshman any more, thank goodness, and it was football season. I had decided not to play football after ninth grade because the football program and soccer program hated each other at Upson-Lee. The football coach told me I would not be allowed to play both because of Spring football practice (two weeks in the middle of Soccer season, mandatory) and so I had to choose. I said, "That's fine, soccer it is," and steam began to rise from the little mustached man's ears. Don't worry, he'd get his revenge, but that's another story entirely.

I mention the above story because that was the beginning. That decision put me on a path of good fortune that I still reap the bounty of daily.

So, yes, football season. I found myself in the stands with my buddies to help cheer on our Black Knights. I was having a great time, wishing perhaps an iota that I was down on the field, but okay with the fact that all my friends were there and we were having a blast. Halftime rolled around and out comes the marching band. We, think nothing of it and decided to take a trip to the concession stand, but I realized how crowded it would be up there, and I'd never seen my brother perform (clarinet), so I decided to stick around. I find my brother, looking good, looking good, flag corps, dance-line, majore........

LIGHTNING BOLT...LIGHT-BULB

Who is that??? The beginning....

Fast forward a few weeks and I had found out her name, she was a freshman, and she had been dating a good friend of mine. He was a guy I'd played soccer with since I was 8 years old and things seemed good with them. Oh well, I thought.

A few months later, she and soccer boy had broken up, Joy!, but quickly she had started dating another of my best friends that I'd been in school with since kindergarten. I still hadn't even met her, blast!!

A bit later, my friend dating mystery girl gave me a call and said he wanted to hang out, go over to someone's house, eat, watch a movie or something. I said it sounded good, but I'd have to drive (since we were going out of the county, Dad's rules). He said that was fine, but that he was bringing mystery girl, so I could just follow them. I should have known something was fishy at that point, but I was excited I was going to meet mystery girl. We went out to her house, where my friend was greeted by mystery mother, and her dog, Bear. I should have known when her mother kept squinting, pointing, and asking, "Who is that out there, who else drove up with you, what kind of car is that, do I know him?" but again, I was just excited to meet mystery girl, finally so my judgement was clouded.

We got to our destination, and it was just four of us, not a group of people like had been alluded to earlier. We had some food and some laughs, then we turned on the movie: '8 Seconds'....seen it, he dies in the end. Then finally everything came together: this was a SET-UP! Mystery girl and kindergarten friend were trying to set me up with mystery girl's best friend! I played along, but knew that I was there because I had gotten to meet mystery girl, and she was funny, good looking, smart, and sarcastic...oh the humanity!

I didn't see mystery girl, or mystery girl's best friend again for a while, winter was changing into spring and that meant soccer was in full swing. I had heard through the grapevine that kindergarten friend and mystery girl had broken up, Joy! Unfortunately, another of my best friends, the hopeless romantic, was head over heels for her, and they had been hanging out some, blast! Soccer became my focus, and it felt good to be out there again (having missed most of my freshman year with a fractured vertabrae in my low back, now healed up).

Turns out, that since I'd decided not to play football that year, mustached man, in a moment of evil wouldn't allow me to take weightlifting (which had previously been marked in ink on my schedule for my 9-12 years by the athletic dept.) I was told to leave, that I was now in regular PE, and to go enjoy my badminton and tiddliwinks. This was fine by me, I had a buddy in PE right then, we'd have some fun, destroy the volleyball competition, it was no big deal.

A few days into my PE exile, I saw a beam of light walk and sit in the bleachers. It was Mystery girl! She had her 'health' class (actually a classroom class taught by PE coaches) at the same time that I had PE and whenever they finished assignments early, they were allowed to go hang out in the gym until the bell rang. I got excited, but I was generally a shy guy, especially around girls, and especially moreso around girls I liked. So I took my time, pulled the 'accidental throw of the frisbee near her' and her friends so that I'd have an excuse to interact. Gradually (over weeks) I worked up to a, "Hey girls, how's it going?", then to a, "Man I'm tired, I need to rest. What are you girls doing in health class right now?"

This went on for weeks and weeks and finally, I was comfortable saying I was friends with mystery girl. We then began to chat every so often on ICQ (I-seek-you). Anyone remember that? During one of these chats, she invited me to a pool party at her house she was having to kick off the beginning of summer. I went, and it was fun, but still no definite sparks. I had to finally work up the courage to ask her out, something casual, I thought.

She said yes, and it was set, after her spring dance recital, we would go and grab a bite to eat with some friends, then I'd take her home, it was a school-night after all. Finally, we were in the car, alone, together, riding around our small town and I was dreaming the whole time of what could be. We ate, I took her home, met her folks, said hey to Bear and then went home. We chatted that night on ICQ until our parents kicked us off. Before we had to turn off the dial-up 56K, we settled that we would go out again, our first real date.

I picked her up, visited with her family, we went and grabbed a bite to eat at the local drive-in, rented a movie and headed back to my place. (Our town has a one-screen, roaring '20's era theatre that at that point in time was at risk of collapsing mid-show). The movie we rented: The Faculty, absolutely the worst movie I've seen, ever, and we both chuckled about how bad it actually was.

At some point during the movie, toward the end, I gathered the courage and said,

"Hey, what are we doing right now?"

"Uhh...watching a movie.." (characteristically sarcastic while knowing exactly what I'm asking)

"You know, I mean, are we 'friends', are we 'talking', are we 'dating'?"

"I don't know, what do you think we are doing?" (again avoiding the obvious, driving me nuts)

"Well, I hope we are dating."

"Well, you haven't asked me..."

"Well, then, will you go out with me?"

"Sure, I'm having a pretty good time."

That was May 21, 1999, 10 years ago today, and since that time it has been the single best thing that I've done. If I only knew then what I'd be writing today, I wouldn't have believed it and I have the little red-faced mustached man to thank for it. Thank you, Senor Mustache.

Thank you mystery girl, Jaynah Hamby Morgan, for the best 10 years of my life.

Love,

Andrew

*The photo at the top is the first photo taken of Jaynah and I together at some point during that Spring of '99 while hanging out in the gym bleachers.

Click here to browse my Flickr albums that I put together before our wedding of our adventures together to that point.

A Blessed Day

2009-05-20T14:02:00.000-04:00

Our little girl is here! Had C section but mom and baby are great. 7 lbs. 14 oz. Much more to come.

Thanlk you to all for prayers and Praise the Lord for this miracle!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Just add baby and stir.....

2009-05-20T07:00:00.010-04:00

It has been a labor of pure love, and one that Jaynah and I have really enjoyed doing together. I don't like to think of myself as a girly man, but I guess if there is a little girl on the way, I'd better find some in there quick. Honestly it has been fun working together with Jaynah to design, shop, install and arrange all of the things needed to properly welcome a baby into our home.

I realize, even if Jaynah doesn't, that by the time the blessed child is old enough to realize how awesome her room is, she is going to want to plaster the walls with purple sequined feather boas of 'Hello Kitty' or something of the sort. This is for us more than for the baby, and for the past several weeks if we can't find one another, or Daisy, for that matter, we just take a stroll back to the nursery.

Daisy is either lying on the new, soft, rug, or under the crib. Jaynah can usually be found opening and rearranging drawers incessantly until she gets them just so. I prefer to just go, stand, twirl, smirk, and nod in approval and excitement.

The last piece finally arrived and the nursery is officially complete. The chair and ottoman will certainly be a favorite place for us at all hours over the next several months.

Daisy, not sure if she is allowed on the new furniture. She is. Until baby arrives.

Also new is artwork on the walls, all made as gifts. We told my mom of our monkey ambitions and she said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of it."

These turned out awesome.

My mom had been planning to paint this picture for years for a grandchild. She was like a kid in a candy store with her painting studio all set up.

This was a total surprise for Jaynah, my mom made this name sign as well. I got to help with this one, cutting to size and routing the edges of the white board. Cool thing is the monkeys and trees are removable when the little one wants to be a bit more sophisticated.

Clothes hamper. For completeness' sake.

I definitely saw this at the store and threw it in the buggy while Jaynah wasn't looking. She didn't put up much of a fight but made some smart comment about being wrapped already or something.

I hate to admit publicly, but I wore a dress home from the hospital. And it's hanging on that door-knob in the picture. The bib was a gift from Jaynah's mom and has Peyton's initials on it.

The pMa picture over the dresser was painted for us by an old high school classmate of mine who works with Jaynah's mom.

Almost here. If you are reading this, then we are probably at the hospital, maybe pushing, because I am speaking to you from the past. I had to give you something to read while we are busy.

Work Hard, Play Hard. PUSH HARD!

Ready for the Little Lady

2009-05-19T18:55:00.000-04:00

We just got here and got all checked in, answered a million questions and saw the Dr. Started the cervical softening meds tonight and will start contraction induction meds tomorrow about 5:30 a.m. and so hopefully tomorrow will be the big day. (Depending on how much of the Hamby 'stubborn' genes she gets.) ;)

Updates will be posted to FB and Twitter and will hopefully post some pictures here pretty quickly after.

Thank you everyone for all your love, support and well wishes. Keep Jaynah and the wee bairn in your prayers over the next few days.

Andrew
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I Heart Faces

2009-05-18T21:01:00.005-04:00

So this is my first entry into the I Heart Faces weekly challenge. I was introduced to the site by my friend Becca at The Stanley Clan and am excited by all the fine work there. With a new little one nearly here, a new lens in the mail today, I'm sure that I'll be enjoying the site a lot more.

This week's challenge is for participants to submit their best/favorite face shot EVER for a book that the website founders are putting together. I don't know if this is the best face shot I've ever taken, but when I read the challenge today, this one immediately popped into my head.

A family member has the two cutest little girls and at a recent family gathering asked me if I'd take some pictures of the two of them together. They were perfect little ladies, and enjoyed being in front of the camera. We had a great time, and as sometimes happens, one of my favorite shots ended up being this test shot of the youngest, Emily.

I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb book photo contest. If chosen, I grant I ♥Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces web sites.

Work Hard, Play Hard.

Andrew

Take two, and call me in the mornin'

2009-05-18T07:30:00.004-04:00

Last week I had the pleasure of sharing a momentous occasion with my extended family. It was graduation week for me from Medical School and Jaynah and I had a fantastic time hosting family and friends during the festivities.

In preparation, I was psyched that I actually had some time to get to many of those projects that the farmboy in me had been pleading me to find time for. So after some gardening, landscaping, pressure washing, painting and some carpentry work it was great to welcome everyone for a visit.

After we passed on the baseball game due to tornadoes and hail, we had a great time catching up with classmates at our graduation reception and banquet. Open bar = classmates that were only a legend showed up. Great time, food and company.

The hooding ceremony is a separate event only for the School of Medicine graduates and their families where awards voted on by the class are given to outstanding students and faculty. It is held the day before graduation and is a lot more intimate than the full graduation ceremony with the entire MCG crop of graduates from nursing, denistry, physical therapy, etc. At the hooding ceremony we receive our doctoral "hoods" which aren't really hoods but a funny looking sash time thing.

Before I left, my brother wanted to take some pictures of me. He's gotten into photography recently and has had Excalibur on loan. I really liked his idea for this shot.

Before Hooding, we had our official class picture, in front of the perfect Old Medical College which you might recognize from my previous post.

After the class picture it was time to line up in ABC order. Despite a class of 180, it took almost no time because it was easy to find our first year Gross anatomy lab groups and then get in between the groups that were at cadavers on either side of us in the lab way back in '05

My man Tim above, recently married, and bound for the Wake Forest Pediatric program and I have been through a lot since the depths of UGA biochemistry hell in the '03, physics lab, genetics, and oh yeah the entire Medical school application process, and the medical school after that. It was fantastic that we both ended up at MCG, and with the name Moore, we started out in the trenches in the anatomy lab together. Big day for both of us.

I recognized a few people on the way into the auditorium.

Mom and her boys, ready for some baby back ribs.

The Morgan Men, blue eyes for the lot of us.

Lining up before graduation with my brothers in arms. R to L : Dr. Vanags (Duke Neurology), Dr. Green (Wake Forest Radiology), Dr. Moore (Wake Forest Pediatrics)

Almost 1000 graduates, every name was called to get their diploma which was great. Medicine was last so there was lots of time to kill. I wish I'd had my Blackberry a few days sooner.

My Dad found me as we were walking in and waved, then he lost me. It was hilarious to watch him try and get the attention of a random Dental student for about 10 minutes. He took lots of pictures of this Dentist as well. Finally my brother called me, we had a chuckle and he walked across the arena and turned my Dad 45 degrees to the left. Hilarious.

Grabbing the diploma before they changed their mind. I've never been on the big screen before.

3 Generations: (c/o '84, '09, '44)

We had to repeat the cross-handed shake:

White coat ceremony 10/05

Fishing buddies.

Glowing

I love these Hambys.

Another thumbs up to my brother, Ben

All that for a piece of paper. It was worth it.

Work Hard, Play hard.

Hayes Maternity Shoot

2009-05-12T08:00:00.002-04:00

Greetings.

I've briefly mentioned before that one of my New Year's resolutions was to start shooting my pictures RAW and dive into post-processing. Considering how long I've loved photography, I have no idea why it took this long. Needless to say, like any new skill starting out was a challenge. Oh yeah, that is why it took this long; whenever I got inspiration to convert, I quickly got frustrated and immediately went back to my JPEG loving ways.

My lovely wife bought me a great RAW processing program (Adobe Lightroom) that sat almost untouched for a year. Sorry honey, but med school might have contributed to that as well.

So this was the year, since Jan 1 I've gradually been increasing my reliance on RAW and really delving into Lightroom. The learning curve has been steep, but finally, I'm getting to the point where I feel comfortable, nay, enjoy working with RAW photos and finally see what all the hububb (sp?) is about. Literally a whole new world of photography has opened up.

This new found excitement, and free time coincided well with an email I got from an old friend who lives locally in Augusta. Coincidentally she is pregnant, and had wanted to have some pictures taken to remember this special time. I was happy for the opportunity and we had a great time with Jennifer and Barrett shooting in downtown Augusta.

Barrett is a lifelong Augustan, and Jennifer a true Southern Belle from none other than Thomaston, GA. We met one weekday afternoon after everyone got off work and had a beautiful Spring afternoon for Jaynah and Jennifer to compare notes on pregnancy, and Barrett and I to commisserate about how we know there is no way we, mere males, have a clue what is coming.

In front of the Old Medical College, home of MCG starting in the 1820's.

This was some type of bell tower that had once been on top of a building somewhere, but was now planted in front of a museum.

I'm a sucker for old growth trees, you can ask Jaynah.

There's a baby in there.

The Presbyterian Church has some beautiful grounds that we really enjoyed exploring.

We found this fantastic brick wall downtown right after we got some pictures with the King of Soul, James Brown (bronzed)

The Riverwalk seemed like a perfect place to end with our last bit of light. When Andrew has to start cranking up the ISO, it is time to call it a wrap!

You can look at the rest of the images and slideshow of these two glowing parents-to-be by clicking the link below.

Hayes Maternity

Thank you so much, Jennifer and Barrett, for letting me be a part of this milestone. Jaynah and I had a fantastic time.

More posts coming....I graduated, Jaynah is 38 weeks, the lost Savannah adventure, and next Tuesday we are scheduled for induction.

Living the dream.

Andrew E. Morgan M.D.

36 weeks

2009-04-22T22:45:00.006-04:00

We are closing in on 36 weeks now and the belly is growing and mostly due to the baby. At our last check-up U/S the little lady was nearly 5 3/4 lbs. at the 57th percentile for growth. Yes, we are still getting growth checks, or BPP's every two weeks because of the weird insertion of the umbilical cord: velamentous insertion of the cord , but everything is still looking A OK.

Jaynah's last day of work will be May 1st, and she is truly counting down the days. She has been an absolute trooper through this whole process, but the past week or two have really seen her excitement for a long commute and really physically demanding work diminish. I think this is due to equal contributions of two things: 1) The end is in sight, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and 2) the third trimester is no joke, hormones, the belly, and the body's metabolism is in overdrive to fatten the baby up for delivery. Of course, a flat tire at 6:30 in the morning last week did not help the cause. Luckily, AAA to the rescue and she was quickly on the road after a nice patch job on the tire.

Don't feel sorry for me, I am off school, haven't started my job yet so I'm just enjoying some free time. I feel really bad to still be in bed when my lovely 35 week pregnant wife leaves for work at 6:00 a.m. every morning. But I've been busy with lots of things and have a lot of things left to do on my list before intern year begins. We took Jaynah's 36 week pictures tonight:

Nickel shy of 36 weeks - 4/22/09

I apologize for the teaser last time, and I apologize for the catalog bright-light feel of these next images, but the wolves are circling, so I had to get some pictures up, and fast. Honestly, I had to wait for Jaynah to "nest" after I finished getting all the furniture together. This used to be our guest room and we had a lot of fun with the paint, chair rail and..., okay not so much fun with the chair rail, but we are really excited about how it turned out. Still to come: custom artwork by Mimi Morgan aka (...she hasn't picked her grandmother name yet), as well as a glider chair and ottoman that we ordered this past weekend in Savannah.

Okay, so the crib is filled with every fluffy thing we have right now just for Jaynah's enjoyment. Fear not, everything will be taken out when it is time for baby to actually sleep. (except the tan bear on the right end, he makes sounds of the womb)

Never underestimate the complexity of the mobile. After remodeling the kitchen, the nursery and all the furniture assembly, the freaking mobile was the thing that had me scratching my head.

View as you walk into the door. Colors: (Pink, brown, green and white)

Looking from the crib to the other corner. The stuff stacked in the corner, don't ask, a place will be found and this is actually a huge improvement.

Chair with ottoman and side table are going to go where the little pink bounce seat is. There is plenty of room, you'll just have to trust me.

Tall chest with "neat" pile of stuff that will find a home. Honestly, a big thanks to everyone, we have gotten so much love and support, and gifts from all our family and friends, it has really been amazing.

Low chest, aka changing table, aka "The Poop Deck"

Hit us up with some comments.

That about does it for this episode. We're going to be scheduled for an induction at 39 weeks so that Jaynah's labor can be monitored with this crazy cord insertion. So it is looking like May 19, 20, 21st are gonna be the big days coming up. Not sure when it is going to really hit me about what is happening. I can only hope that when it does I'm sitting down and preferably not near my car keys and the Garmin.

Next update should be Savannah adventure pictures and/or a maternity shoot I'm doing tomorrow for some good friends here in Augusta.

Work Hard, Play Hard.

Long overdue

2009-04-16T10:48:00.008-04:00

I was doing good there for a few minutes then kind of fell off again. Lots of photos so let's get going.

First one is 2 weeks late, we are taking the 34 week picture tonight.

Still glowing at 32 weeks:

Jaynah getting used to the video camera during our photo shoot:

Jaynah's co-workers threw her an excellent shower a few weeks ago:

The HealthSouth crew: Thanks so much

A group of old friends also threw Jaynah a shower at Callaway Gardens last weekend:

Our hosts: The Grahams

Jaynah's little bro, Chandler, watch out ladies.

The awesome Hills and my long lost Best Man, CKIII.

The tower of presents was impressive, but as Leslie's husband the engineer put it, "It isn't structurally sound..."

Can you feel the excitement? The fear is palpable.

Jaynah's cousins and their assortment of kids.

Great to see my buddy from MCG Jonas and his fia...girlfriend Heather. He's a Blue Devil now.

Great to see UGA friends Jen, Jess and Erin.

My boys:

These girls shared pacifiers I'm pretty sure.

My Dad also happened upon some tickets to this year's Masters practice round. After 4 years here, I'd driven by the National every morning but had never been inside. My Dad had also never been while he was here so we were looking forward to it. You aren't allowed to bring cameras in on tournament days so I was actually pumped that we were going on a practice round day. I shot in RAW all day and have been working on the images as I've had time, really having fun with it.

Scoreboard w/ flags of all of the countries represented in this year's field.

The 10th green, a beautiful hole.

Jaynah was tiring out with all the walking so as soon as I got my Tiger fix, we headed out.

Tired, but still smiling for a portrait on the way out. She was more excited about her "lady-fit" hat than anything I think.

More Masters pics here, link is also on the right side for future visits.

Since it has been so long I had some catching up to do, and if you have made it through this whole post, then you DESERVE something special.

How 'bout a preview:

Hope you have a great one, yard sale this weekend, should be interesting.

Work Hard, Play Hard.

4D Ultrasound

2009-03-29T19:36:00.006-04:00

So this is turning out to be the most photographed baby in the world. Well some of you expected that already, but not before the little thing was even born! It turns out that we've been having weekly Ultrasound check-ups, called Biophysical profiles (BPP's) for the past few weeks to monitor growth, movements, etc.

This has been done just as a precaution because of the way the babie's umbilical cord inserts into the placenta. I tried to search for a decent diagram but all that came up was post partum gross pathology pictures of the placenta that most would not enjoy looking at. Everything has gone fine to this point but as the baby gets larger and larger, our doctors have just wanted to keep an eye to make sure she keeps an adequate blood supply and keeps growing as she should.

With that, we got some new 4D pictures of the face at our most recent visit :

31 weeks

Peace....bro....

In other news, I am done with Medical school. I had my last clinic on Friday morning and now I have a glorious three months until I begin the trials of internship. It was interesting to tell my last patient in clinic that she would be the last patient I saw with my short white coat (as a student). She failed to grasp the gravity of the moment, but was sweet and said "Hun, as long as you know what you are talking about and can refill my medicines you can wear whatever you want."

Lastly, my class ring for medical school came in last week. Many years ago, I got a high school class ring and ended up regretting it because I never wore it after I graduated. I mean who wears a high school ring at college?? No one!

I didn't get a college ring....and funny enough ended up regretting that. I will be proud to be a Bulldog until my dying day, and I've seen some rings from there that are really nice looking that I'd be proud to wear with a suit any day.

Well there was no doubt I was getting a medical school class ring, mainly because the rings at MCG are freaking sweet. They have had the same custom class ring for about 100 years or something crazy like that and the most prominent design element....you guess it, the skull and crossbones:

Makeshift macro with the trusty 50/1.8 ...almost has a Lensbaby type feel to it:

A little further out:

A cool thing is, my dad has this exact same ring, except on the other side it says '84 and his is 10K gold so it has the yellow tinge.

I'm enjoying it so far.

Tomorrow, going to Florida fishing with my brother and Grandfather for a few days if the weather will hold out.

Playing hard...

Lily Menagerie

2009-03-20T22:49:00.006-04:00

It happened to me. I'd say for the past maybe year or so, I've had a real photographic block. You might have noticed that my other blog has been all but abandoned and I've done no recent weddings, or posted any other real photos in quite some time. Honestly, this blog has been mostly prose with just a few ultrasounds sprinkled throughout. Any of the other photos you've seen posted here have been pretty much the only photos I've taken.

Sure, I've been busy finishing up school, working, traveling for interviews, etc., but deep down I've known that it's been more than that. I've had a mental block of some sort, and I can't really describe it more than to add that even when I've had time off and have been relaxing, I just haven't had the urge to grab the camera to take with me as much as I normally would.

Call it coincidence that today (the day after the Match is off my shoulders) I got home and didn't check my email, did not pass go, did not collect $200. I went straight to my office.... grabbed the camera..... grabbed the trusty 50mm f 1.8.... checked the battery....'good it's only half dead'.... and went out shooting.

I decided to focus on our menagerie of Asiatic Lillies that we've been enjoying so much lately and had a few things in mind I wanted to do. I played with several different lighting settings (full sun, shaded with my white umbrella, backlighting, and softer evening light) and decided to shoot most of the pictures in RAW format (something I've dabbled with off and on but this year made it a resolution to convert). I played/processed the images in Lightroom (where I've been building a preset library, thanks for the tip, Matt) and decided to post a few here to break up the monotony of this constant babbling on about the baby.

Just kidding dear. Enjoy

I'm back.

Work Hard, Play Hard.

University of Alabama Birmingham

2009-03-19T16:01:00.003-04:00

The question is answered, we'll be in Augusta for one more year where I will do my internship year in General Internal Medicine.

Then we'll move to Birmingham, AL where I'll start my Residency in Radiology!!!

When I got home from the ceremony it was nice to have an email from the Program Director at UAB and he sent a sheet of the 2010 class of Radiology residents. One is a classmate of mine, and the most of the others I met on the interview trail at some point.

Jaynah has already started talking about re-arranging furniture, but we are both grinning ear to ear!

Click the image to enlarge.

Cardiology clinic is going to be a little more laid back tomorrow morning.....

Time to play hard!

Timeline Gaps filled

2009-03-18T23:44:00.008-04:00

Our first home movie 20 weeks:

Peyton's first portrait 24 weeks:

Lovely at 28 weeks:

Family Portraits 29 weeks:

We were so happy with our photo session shot by our close friends over at altmix photography .

You can see more of our shots on their blog and you should also check out the slideshow .

On a side note, I loved the latest post by another close friend and a genuine Southern Belle

My six word story: Tomorrow we will know the future.

The 4 word Mantra: Work hard, play hard.

Stuff

2009-02-07T03:00:00.004-05:00

It has been far too long since a post. Alas, rotations, travel, etc. have kept me occupied.

This post is about STUFF. And you know what I'm talking about.

I didn't think I'd ever own 1000 bibs. But right now, I might just. I am super excited about this child, and I know that women have a need to "Nest" that men just can't at all understand. Jaynah and I are in a unique situation in that right now we don't know where we'll be living right after the baby is born and so our hands are really tied when it comes to preparing a nursery. We do, however, have a closet now dedicated to any and all things baby. This is where my lovely bride gets her "Nesting Fix" as I've come to think of it. She folds, re-folds, admires, coordinates, organizes and re-organizes all the STUFF in the closet to fulfill this primal urge.

With that context, Jaynah and I made a deal regarding STUFF. We have agreed that she can get one item for the baby whenever she ends up inside a store with said baby things. So far this has been mostly baby outfits (glorified doll clothes) that are very inexpensive and honestly really fun to look around and pick out. The problem becomes, we are T-Minus 2 1/2 months and counting until splashdown and the aptly named "baby closet" is nearly full of baby clothes. If you throw in a Saturday shopping with a future Grandmother or a shower sometime in the future, we might just get to critical mass.

Luckily, we'll know soon where we will end up. Two days in fact from now. Then either one of two things will happen:

A) Jaynah comes home, gets straight on her computer and makes a list of things for Andrew to get at Home Depot (or Lowe's now that Tony Stewart has moved on) to decorate the baby nursery in our current home.

B) Jaynah comes home, gets straight on her computer, looking at house listings online, contacting realtors, then making a list of things for Andrew to get at Home Depot (or Lowe's) to decorate the baby nursery on arrival to an unknown city.

Either way, something is going to give and give soon, and frankly right now as I sit at the VA Hospital awaiting the arrival of my next clinic patient, (at the VA everything is on computer so if you are on a computer, everyone assumes you are working on important stuff, which this is) it is really nice to know that right now:

- I have MATCHED

- I have a job as a Doctor (ahem..intern) starting July 1, somewhere

- After 12 months of that, my dream comes true when my career of Radiology begins, somewhere.

It is hard to wipe the smile off my face right now, and everytime I feel the little baby kick in Jaynah's belly, or Jaynah suddenly says, "Excuse me young lady, can we lay off the bladder, please?" the smile gets bigger and I thank God for getting me and my young family to this point. We are truly blessed, and pray for continued health and happiness in the months and years ahead.

I have some pictures and things to post later, but I felt it was time to get a post out there.

Glowing

2009-01-13T15:48:00.008-05:00

This post is dedicated to my wife, who unlike several couples' blogs I follow has not been a contributing writer thus far to this space. Driving like a crazy person all over the Southeast for the past two months has given me a lot of time to ponder things that sometimes get glanced over in my busy day to day life. The quality of this woman is definitely an overdue subject for a post.

She has really been a trooper through this whole process so far and I couldn't be more proud of her and certain that I married the right woman.

Early on it was tough for her. She got sick, A LOT. She was losing weight early on in the pregnancy because she couldn't keep food down. There was a point when her meal would consist of a bite of a pork chop and 5 lima beans....literally. On several occasions I recall her having a window where she felt okay and thought of something she really wanted to eat. At that point I was like, OKAY and ----->BAM out the door to get whatever it was, hoping she would be able to get a full meal down. It was always hard to see the dissappointment in her eyes when after one bite of an egg roll and a sip of egg drop soup, she knew that was it, no more food.

Luckily this period of sickness has passed and she has regained her appetite and ability to eat small portions and keep them down. Interestingly her sweet tooth has disappeared totally. I could only hope that as a pregnant female or just as a male for that matter craved healthy things like cucumber, celery, carrotts, just plain. When a pregnant wife says to you, "I want celery," then celery it is, as much as you like!

Then there was the whole early scan scare discussed in earlier posts. Even with our dual thoughts, fears, and anxieties, she was always there to be a rock for me after I had done my shift of doing so for her. We say often that we make an okay team, and believe me, she doesn't blink when shouldering her part of the load, and then some.

Through all of this, growing belly, sleepless nights, uncertainty, fatigue, and sickness, she still gets up every morning at 5:15(ish) and leaves the house by 6:00(ish) ;) to drive an hour and work a full day lifting patients who are paralyzed on one side, teaching a recent amputee how to walk, and encouraging trauma patients as they regain use of their shattered limbs on the road to recovery. She does this, every day, and with a smile on her face. She doesn't complain about the work, doesn't complain about the drive, doesn't complain about being the sole breadwinner for our fledgling family.

The most she ever says is, "I'm tired today."

The most she asks for is a nap when she needs it and she has a blanket and a dog that are always happy to oblige.

I know she will be a fantastic mother, there is no doubt about that. She comes from a family of top-notch loving human beings and has amazed me every day for the past ten years leading up to this point with her honesty, love, moral compass, work ethic, and endless optimism. I couldn't ask for better qualities to be instilled into any child much less my own.

No matter what I try to do to help out, as a husband how can I repay a woman like this who in addition to doing all the admirable things above is carrying my first child??!!! I feel like it is a futile effort. With this post being a very small testament of my appreciation I'd also like to add: Thank you, I love you.

Glowing at about 19 weeks.

What's in a Name?

2009-01-05T20:24:00.007-05:00

So the name, I said we'd talk about it more later. We thought we were golden. The sex of the baby wouldn't be a surprise but the grandparents would have their surprise when they met their new grandchild. It would make it even more special, we thought, if we thought of a good family name that might bring a tear to an eye or two. Everyone in our family loves a surprise, right? We already covered that.

Boy were we wrong.

Bordering on rage......only a slight exaggeration. Preface: We love everyone in our family and we are so fortunate to get along so well with all of our loved ones. We have pretty good communication with our loved ones as well. Again, fortunate. But man, did we blow this one.....

"It's a girl...."

"AHHHH!!!!! I'm so excited, a little girl, how cute!!! AHHHH!!!! Have you guys thought of any names yet?"

"We have some in mind, but we are gonna let the name be a surprise since everyone will know the sex."

......Abrupt record stop/screech sound......

"Do what? You aren't going to tell us the name? Are you kidding? I bet that was ______'s idea."

"Actually it wasn't his idea."

"But ________, you know the sex, you know what color to buy, that's really all you need, we want you to have some surprise!!!"

"But I want to know the name."

"Well, we're sorry we thought this would be something special for everyone to have one more little surprise."

"Well......"

Holy Moly. Names, places, and PHI have been left out to avoid repercussions, which I'm sure are imminent anyway, but this is the pregnancy from a Dad's perspective so hang with me.

We thought the storm would blow over, the brimstone would pass, wrong again. I guess I just can't wrap my mind around how important monogrammed things are for babies. Let me let you know right now, THEY ARE FREAKING IMPORTANT.

Setting: Baby shower for a friend of my lovely wife
Circumstances: Subtle hostility
Result: On the blog for other's educational benefit

"Oh my gosh, thank you so much for this monogrammed diaper bag, I absolutely love it!"

"Hey, ________ isn't that cute???"

"Yes, it is gorgeous, but too bad you won't be able to get one like that because you won't tell anyone the name."

"Oh wow, I love this monogrammed towel for the baby, it will be so cute at bathtime!"

"You know, you're only getting plain towels."

Ha ha, all in good fun, love joking around. But it starts to mount after about 200 or so references and reminders of how information is being with-held.

We caved, totally caved. Not at all worth it. The name wasn't a surprise for us, we knew the name. We were doing it for everyone else because we thought we had spoiled tradition and everyone's fun by finding out the sex. We thought we were doing a good thing.

It didn't turn out that way, and that is fine, we weren't upset at all, the whole thing was just comical because a) we totally misread the situation and b) because of the passion we encountered.

The moral of the story for any future first time parents:

1. If there is information to be had about the baby, you can bet loved ones will want it. ALL OF IT.
2. It isn't worth it to try and keep a surprise intact once they sniff blood in the water.

Below are some pics that I labeled up at the request of some readers. They are from the most recent 16 week Ultrasound that was in the last post. You can click on the pictures to enlarge and see the labels.

Scroll down past the pics below for the big reveal.........

Coronal Section of head and chest

Hand

Kickin back with feet crossed

Drumroll please....

We are going to name our baby girl.....

Peyton Anne Morgan

It struck our fancy, and pending the baby stays female we think will suit her very well.

Surprise....

2008-12-30T12:42:00.007-05:00

Alright, now that I've gotten through those last two posts and been comforted, called, chastised and lambasted we can move on to better, brighter things I hope.

What better place to start than that last Ultrasound I mentioned in my last post?

16 weeks profile

As always, first, a little background.....

So the overwhelming American tradition is for the first child's sex to be a surprise. People love a surprise, am I right? I love a good surprise, and my Dad is the King of Surprises. I mean if the man gets an idea in his head, nothing makes the idea better than an elaborate scheme in which to reveal it. His favorite technique is the good, old fashioned Scavenger hunt. Used on multiple holidays and birthdays over the years, he took time to write sly, twisted little riddles that led the surprise recipient from clue to clue.

For our family's first computer, my brother and I were trudging all over the family farm for about an hour before the last clue finally led us back to the living room where the family, save for my dad who had been watching us from a distance I'm sure, had all gotten a second cup of coffee awaiting our return. We had entered the '90's with our glorious 133 Mhz Pentium ONE, 1.6 GB hard drive, 16 MB RAM Packard Bell computer. Oh it was glorious, and I recall my Uncle who is our family's technology guru saying, "Guys, this hard drive is huge, you will never be able to fill up 1.6 GB." Ha ha.

Back on topic.

It wasn't a very appealing idea to either of us that one might know the sex of the child while the other did not. The scans are so dynamic and live action that it would be very hard for me to look away for the 1.5 seconds that the perfect perspective was in view and keep myself in the dark about the sex. On the other hand, if I did see it and Jaynah did not want to know, I know myself well enough to say that I would probably rub it in that I knew something she didn't (mainly because it would be one of the few times I'd have the upper hand on her).

So it was settled, we'd find out the sex of the child, avoid suffering through a gender neutral nursery and clothing and commit to either pink or blue. What about the family you ask? The grandparents? Tradition? We knew this decision would be going against the grain and so we decided that we would keep the name of the child secret so that on the birthday, there would be some element of surprise for everyone as we introduced the little one to the world by his/her newly given name. We'll discuss this more later.

The last scan with the specialist was at 16 weeks, kind of the start of the window for sexing the baby. As mentioned previously, everything looked great with this scan, measuring well for dates, moving well, strong heartbeat.

The child didn't really want to give up the goods easily though early in the scan there was a flash when the appropriate view was there. The tech said she wasn't sure, but would come back to it later once the baby had moved around a bit. After obtaining those million views of everything else, Jaynah needed a break and excused herself to the ladies room. I told the tech what I thought it was, she agreed and as I was explaining my career plans and such, Jaynah came back in and immediately knew we'd been scheming. We laughed an evil MWAA HA HA HA and took another look.

It took just a second before the appropriate view was there again:

A GIRL!
(Notice the "XX")

Another view:

So we are going with a Girl, for now. This is just one scan, and these things are notorious for being deceiving because they are so dependent on the position of the baby, stage of development, and the technologist scanning. It looks pretty clear, but we aren't gonna paint any rooms just yet, we should have one more scan before the baby is born.

Smooth Finish

2008-12-20T22:55:00.007-05:00

First, briefly, let me start out by saying it was not intended for the last post to "leave you hanging" or be suspenseful. I am right in the middle of residency interview season and I have had 4 interviews and driven 2000 miles in the last 7 days. The last post was written one of those nights in a roach motel when I couldn't sleep and just got to the point where it was getting too long to hold people's interest but not long enough to finish the story so I just stopped at a logical transition point.

So.......

The longest five days of our lives. Yes they were. Have you ever thought to yourself, "You know, this is one of those things where I can't honestly say I know how I would react until I was faced with the situation.,"? Well if you are like me, there are a several ethical/moral conundrums that you know how you'd like to react, but in all honesty you are human and being human........you know where I'm going with this.

A little more background, what was seen on the Ultrasound was a cystic looking structure on the back of the baby's neck. This could mean a lot of things, but the short skinny is that things that look like this, depending on how far along the baby is can be indicators of Down syndrome, Turner's syndrome, or other associated problems elsewhere in the baby's body. So, yes, we were worried and we reacted like we normally would by being upset initially but then diving into my textbooks, searching online medical databases for info, anything to get us through those five days.

It was, again, one of those situations where I hoped I would feel one way, but then when faced with the situation I couldn't deny that I wanted a healthy wife and a perfect healthy little baby. Through a lot of reflection, prayer, and discussion with my lovely wife who was going through these same things, we finally arrived at a great place......We loved this child, we loved this child, we loved this child. It is one of those weird, primal, parenting things that I guess is hard to describe. Despite the possibility of physical and/or mental problems with our growing child, it was OUR child and we knew we were meant to have it, just as it was, perfect in God's eyes, and really in our eyes too. It gave us a real comfort, a peace, a strength to know that moving forward, we had been prepared for this challenge by our ten year relationship, our issues becoming pregnant, and by our Faith to know that we could handle whatever lay in front of us.

With this perspective, I got through my days working in the ICU, Jaynah got through her long commutes of solitude every day, waiting for the day where we would learn more about what was ahead. That day finally came. We went to the specialist, filled out a million checklists of paper work, made a literal family tree with a genetic counselor and finally after what seemed like days in that office got to the money spot, shirt up, warm gel, probe....GO. Uterus, check, intrauterine pregnancy, check, ovaries, check, check, cervix, closed, placenta, check, amniotic fluid, plenty, developing embryo appropriate size for dates, check, heartbeat, 176 bpm.

This time baby had arms, had legs, and was starting to really take shape and then, the sweetest confirmation a parent can hear, "Yeah, so where was this 'cyst' they were seeing?" She didn't finish her last word when I blurted out....."It's not there." Jaynah's heartbeat dropped by 100, blood pressure by half, I got feeling back in my hand, and she actually started the, In......Out.......In.......Out breathing thing again. The technologist took a bunch of pictures, a bunch of angles and then went to get the doctor to come review the pictures. Much to our relief, they were very thourough looking up, down, around, behind, sideways and any other way you can think of to make sure there wasn't anything evident around the baby's head and neck. We were so thankful and relieved that at least at this point things were looking up. The specialist was very nice and was sure to explain everything and to let us know that she wanted to see us back a few more times to follow up blood work, and do follow up scans though at this point she considered it precautionary.

As I am writing this, we are one week past our final visit with the specialist and so far, everything is still on the up and up. As Yoda would say, "A purpose in everything there is." Again, Jaynah and I had the opportunity to come closer as a couple, to learn a great deal about ourselves and each other, things at the core of who we are. We are thankful for that, thankful for good news, and hopeful that health and happiness will continue.

8 Weeks:

9 weeks:

12 weeks:

Bumpy Start

2008-12-14T22:12:00.005-05:00

So we'd found out we were pregnant, both glowed with excitement for a few days, but had decided to keep this thing under wraps until we had some solid evidence things were progressing well. It was a tough two weeks before our first doctor's appointment. We went and I got to meett the doc Jaynah had been seeing and I think we hit it off well. He did his thing, answered our questions and said everything was looking great. He ordered some routine bloodwork and decided to schedule a scout ultrasound for a few weeks later, about 8 weeks gestation to make sure everything was progressing and see how many babies were actually in there.

That check up was all we needed. We were planning on going to a wedding near home during a very brief 30 hour off period I had during my ICU rotation, and we decided we'd spend the night and tell the folks we were pregnant as well as all of our friends at the wedding (quietly, I might add so as not to shift attention from the special occasion). Everyone was excited, but no one more so than our parents who were literally acting like crazy people over the news of the first grandchild on the way. My parents, to illustrate how ready they were, brought down from the attic a beautiful Amish hand-crafted oak high-chair that they had bought on their travels over a year before. It was a great weekend, the secret was out, things were peachy.

The time finally rolled around for our first Ultrasound. Jaynah was understandably nervous after trying so long to get pregnant and got herself up to a blood pressure that made the doctor tell me to keep checking it nightly to make sure it was just her nerves. The ultrasound tech was very nice, and quickly put Jaynah at ease. Shirt up, cold gel, probe in right hand, boom, gestational sac, check, only one, check, heartbeat, check, measuring correct for dates, check. She saved some pictures and burned them onto a CD for us. We then went into a regular patient room to wait for our Doc to see us. When he came in he got right to it:

"Well, I want to be really up front with you, we saw something on the ultrasound that might be a problem....."

The worst feeling was, I had seen it too.

For those that don't know, I'm planning on being a radiologist, and this past summer, I did a month long rotation at Vanderbilt doing only Ultrasounds. I'm by no means an expert, but I had seen the issue, agonized over it, but smiled for Jaynah, and calmly asked the technician if there would be an actual radiologist reading the ultrasounds. She, as if sensing where I was going said that no, whenever there was an issue, patients were referred for more scans with a specialist. I tried to shake it off, convince myself I was over-reacting. I mean it was pretty subtle and the embryo was literally not much bigger than a pencil eraser at this point. So when I heard the Doctor say those words, my heart literally dropped to the floor. My anxiety from the scan that I was sure was just an over-reaction by a parent who knows enough about medicine to get worked up about nothing was now realized as my worst nightmare. My poor wife was caught completely off-guard and I felt guilty for not giving her any heads up at all, but I thought I was doing the right thing by not getting her worked up before it was time.

Our doctor was fantastic, he explained everything completely, was very positive and upbeat that it could be nothing, but he had rather be safe than sorry. He knew us too well. Also using that insight into how we operate, he didn't come in the room until he had a plan for us. We were to see a specialist, he had already arranged an appointment.

It was set to be the longest 5 days of our lives......

See you there

2008-12-03T13:53:00.005-05:00

Hi,

We haven't met yet, but we will. Complete strangers, yet we will become the best of friends I'm sure. It will be a friendship in evolution, day by day, year by year, but it will progress nonetheless. It will be very one sided at first, yet I know you aren't the selfish type. You won't speak to me for almost two years from now, but I know it isn't because you are cross with me. And don't worry about me becoming cross with you, I'll do my best to try and get you to speak from the second we meet and I'll be diligent until I get just one word. Believe me, when you finally consider me worthy of hearing a word from you, you might has well have written a Pulitzer prize winning piece, because the excitement will be on par with very few things I've experienced.

You will be an instant celebrity, so prepare yourself. People will be screaming over a glimpse of you, or the chance to touch you. Cameras will be constantly thrust in your face, with video rolling and flash bulbs cracking. Your legions of fans will post your picture on their blogs, show you to their envious friends and plaster their walls at home with your likeness. And I, your new best friend, will be a helpless fan doing all of the above, I hope you'll forgive me.

We'll do lots of fun things together, I have all sorts of plans:

1) Scuba dive
2) See the pyramids
3) Learn to sail
4) See a World Cup
5) Drive cross country with no itinerary
6) Ski in the Rockies
7) New York, New year's eve, at least once
8) Go into Space (Who knows)

There are certain things you must work on to prepare:

1) Breathing on one's own (this is essential for all future adventures)
2) Sleep, wake, sleep, wake, work towards at least 8 hours between transitions
3) Master finger foods
4) One foot down, shift weight, lift other foot, swing, other foot down, repeat
5) Learn to appreciate a good camera
6) Learn to appreciate anything with cinnamon
7) Lawnmower = friend
8) Work hard, then play hard (The Morgan Mantra)

This should get you started.

There is so much I want to ask you, tell you, teach you, hear your thoughts on. Don't be overwhelmed, we have plenty of time. I'll explain every step as we go, and keep you headed in the general right direction. For now, just rest, grow. Think to yourself over and over, "Two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, two ears, one mouth, one nose", focus youngling. There's plenty of time for the rest, just focus on the basics for now.

Let's see.....I'm going to pencil you in for, say....the next 60 years? My schedule is clear, you just let me know when and where, and I'll see you there.

Love,

Dad

Clerical Matters

2008-11-21T08:15:00.000-05:00

My lovely wife and the mother-to-be asked that I relate the locations that we have registered.

I swear that the fact that they invented those little scanner guns has probably saved countless fights and possibly marriages by getting the husband just excited enough to participate in wedding and baby registries. For example:

Prior to scanner guns:

W: "Hey honey, it is Saturday afternoon and I've been excited all week about going to register at ______ for our upcoming _______. Come on, let's go, it will be fun."

M: "The game is on and I've had a long week, can't you just do it? I mean it isn't like I care what place setting we get or what pattern the sheets have. As long as I have a plate to eat on and sheets to sleep on, I'm good, I'm a man."

W: (Angrily) "Seriously, if I can't even get you to go with me to register for all the things we will take into our new life together, how do you think we are going to work together when something really serious comes up? This shows a lack of interest and commitment on your part, and maybe I should re-think this upcoming __________ all together!!!!

After scanner guns:

W: "Hey honey, it is Saturday afternoon and I've been excited all week about going to register at ______ for our upcoming _______. Come on, let's go, it will be fun."

M: "The game is on and I've had a long week, but do they have those scanner gun things?"

W: "Yep, they sure do."

M: "Sweet, I'm in."

See what I mean? Anyway, we are registered at:

Babies "R" Us

Target

Thanks to everyone for your continued prayers, thoughts and well wishes during this very exciting time!

New life....

2008-11-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, enough background, time to get to the heart of the matter.

We were close, very close. The closer we got the more the lack of results got to us. Add into that mix a couple of away rotations for me at 4 and 6 weeks at a time, we came to realize that this was a pretty challenging process. Questions about the latest core-body temperature had entered into our lives right after the regular "How was your day?" As the end of each cycle neared we both knew exactly what the other was thinking, "Is this the month?" The weeks after ovulation were the worst because what's done is done, all you can do is wait. We pepped each other up constantly, but during this lull period conversations tended to avoid the elephant in the room so as not to inflame anxiety during this time of waiting to see what might be.

Early on in the process it was no big deal, we were more content to wait a good while before testing. As the months wore on, we found ourselves researching which tests would give the earliest results, how accurate they were, what other signs we could look for as an earliest possible indicator of the goal, anything to shorten that two week lull period.

Then, a glimmer of hope. Jaynah had a few early symptoms, which we had seen before with no payoff but then she took an early pregnancy test and saw a touch of blue. It was pretty early, but we had read that any color at all was a positive test. Jaynah made me look at it to make sure she wasn't crazy, and I had no choice but to agree it was very faint, but it was definitely blue, barely. I tried to calm her down, while at the same time calming myself, we had come a long way, seen a lot of indicators and ended up being disappointed. Let's just be cool, and wait a few more days when the test will be a little less ambiguous.

So we waited. I had to go to Atlanta to take part of my medical boards. It was on a Monday morning, so she decided to come along with me. We went to dinner that Sunday night, got a hotel near the testing center, and I did some studying before turning in early for a good night's sleep. Jaynah was a trooper in helping me focus, helping me study, and suspending baby watch operations until after this huge hurdle (the boards) was behind us, or so I thought.

As I found out after the fact, she didn't sleep a wink, thinking, praying, hoping, anticipating. At 5:00 a.m. she couldn't wait any longer, it was too much, so she went and took a pregnancy test. This time there was no question, we could have painted the room with the amount of blue that line showed. She couldn't contain herself, but she did. I had my boards that morning and my alarm wasn't set to go off until 6:00 a.m. She wanted me to get every ounce of rest I could, so she laid in bed, looking at me, completely silent for a whole hour. I wouldn't have been that patient but at 5:59 a.m. September 15, 2008, she woke me:

"Baby, we're pregnant."

The real beginning...

2008-11-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

Rewind again...

Let's face it, we are planners. My wife and I are relatively motivated people with personalities that compliment eachother to keep us both moving forward and sane at the same time. To boot, we communicate well and having been together a total of 10 years this coming May, we know each other's wants, dreams, pet peeves, and the location of those all important "buttons" to push at opportune times for slight, however usually effective manipulation.

We had everything all planned out, or so we thought. We knew we wanted to have children, not right after marrying, we wanted to enjoy time just the two of us, and well the dog, Daisy. The number of children is kind of a running joke, myself two, Jaynah three, but I think when it comes down to it it doesn't really matter as long as the family is healthy and cohesive as a unit. The most important consideration was timing. With one of us working to support the family while the other has negative income and even less time as a student makes timing everything.

So we set a calendar and started trying at our specified time with an expectation to get pregnant by another specified time to put the birth at another perfect time for our plan. We weren't in a rush, but as the months went by with no positive test we had to re-think our plan and recognize that we are and have always been on God's timeline. With that humbling recognition we came closer together, communicated better, helped eachother through the questions we both had and the apprehension of the thought that it might never happen.

We did what planners do, analyzed the problem, researched solutions, spoke with the doctor and moved forward with our plan. Thank goodness we had several months to get used to the idea of the issues we were facing because right in the middle of this was when the quiet looks and off-hand comments became an all out "Baby Watch".

God's timeline.

We were prepared for these questions having talked about whether to make these issues known once they were asked. We decided to keep our loop closed, circle tight and just smile and nod to interested family and friends. No pressure.

In the Beginning.....

2008-11-15T10:38:00.004-05:00

We've been married a total of 3 1/2 years this past week and after about two years of marriage was when it hit. For those newlyweds and singles reading, you'll find out soon enough. It starts slowly, with looks and glances, occasional passing comments when suddenly one day it comes right out. You can keep it just beneath the surface for a time, at least you can try.

Whenever we're home for a visit, my Dad and I make our evening rounds of the farm feeding animals, appreciating the latest in his never-ending projects, explaining what he'd like to do next. These are times to catch up, talk about this and that, where we've been and where we're going. It was a few of these conversations that turned toward the inevitable topic. Now my Dad may be gruff and enigmatic to many, but the man wants to be a granddad and to me the anticipation and eagerness is obvious no matter how calm and collected he tried to be when broaching the subject. Suffice it to say that he and my mom had been talking about it, and they were curious but did not want to be intrusive or pressing. We had a good talk, the five year plan and all that. I thought we were okay, keeping the family awkwardness at bay when the very next day the eager young cousin blurts out over a Sunday lunch, "So when y'all gonna have a baby!?!?"

We were outed...the "Baby Watch" had begun......

Big News

2008-10-13T22:26:00.011-04:00

One of those moments in life that you'll remember down to the placement of the last hair on your wife's head when she says these words:

"Baby, we're pregnant"

The feeling is indescribable.

This isn't the start of this story....

First Post

2008-10-13T21:30:00.002-04:00

Welcome if you are visiting from my Xanga page.

This is the first post on this new blog which will chronicle the progress of our first pregnancy. Okay I read the Dad's chapter of the baby book, and seriously it seems like parts are geared towards a human that wouldn't be smart enough to get to the point of reading much less being a dad. So with that frustration, I will use my common sense and decency and:

1. Help out around the house
2. Rub my wife's feet when she is tired
3. Rub her back and hold her hair back with a fresh box of kleenex while she is sick
4. Not feel left out.
5. Recognize that her mood swings are likely not due to anything I've done (unless I've done something)
6. Start this blog to give updates on the pregnancy, tell the story of this exciting time and what we're going through from a Dad's perspective.

More to come...