Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for the ‘Younguns (Children)’ Category

In celebration of Asher’s first birthday, I want to glance back on his first year of life…

One day, Asher, if you’re reading this, I want you to know you’ve brought an overwhelming amount of joy to your mother and me.  We love you.  Always.

Listen to this

asher.mp3

This is an Asher typical.  There’s a couple of top-of-the-lung screams near the end that can bring a grown man to his knees.

Just set up a new photoblog where I’m going to try to put up a new pic of Asher everyday to document him growing.

Dealing with a crying baby is hard for me. In most problematic situations, I’m usually cool-headed and focused. Once Asher starts bawling and literally shrieking in my arms and nothing I do seems to help, frustration rushes in. Dana and I have discussed it and initially thought it was fueled by my inability to solve the problem. Looking at it further, I discovered it is not only not being able to solve it, but even knowing what to do next. Somewhat of an overwhelmed frustration.

So intense the frustration has been that at moments I just wanted to shake the little guy. That will never happen but I don’t like the fact that my frustration drove that kind of desire in me. He is my fragile, depends-on-us-for-life newborn son and just picturing myself hurting him sickens me to the core.

My resolve to this boiling frustration is to take my ‘water off the burner’ by focusing on my highest desires… to protect, take care of and love him; not submitting to emotion-driven irrationality and malice.

We have created a wish list on Amazon.com for books and things we’d like to get for Asher.  They’re listed with their priority level so if you’d like to buy him his first Bible, a VeggieTales DVD, or any of the other small gifts, follow the link on our website or go directly there.

My profession or area of expertise is not fatherhood. But, in just 48 short hours (wow, Asher’s 2 days old!) I’ve done some things that amaze me. Nothing profound or revolutionary in the way of parenting but simply amazing none-the-less.

Over the past two days, I’ve discovered how Asher likes his pacifier given to him; the best place, so far, on his back to pat for a very quick and painless burping; to do a 2-minute successful diaper change; to thoroughly cover my shoulder with a burp cloth with one hand while adequately supporting him and his head in the other arm. There are quite a few others but I won’t go on.

Pro? No. Student? Yes, because I’ve already had a few what do I do? what do I do? what do I do? moments while Dana’s looking at me like, “Do something!”

All worth it. Besides, who needs more than 3 hours sleep in a 24-hour period anyway?!

Doesn’t matter what the weather forecast looks like because Dana appears to be in early labor.  We’ve been up since 3am watching for increased intensity, closer together.  We want to spend as much time here at home as possible.

March 4 would be a cool birth date.

We are waiting for him

Ain’t that the truth!  This is worse than waiting for our departure date to Africa back in July!  We still have no ‘big’ indicators that he is close.  Although, Dana is having some pretty intense braxton-hicks contractions tonight.

We’ll see.

It’s less than 3 hours from March 2008 and unless Dana goes into sudden ultra warp speed labor, Asher will be born in the 3rd month of the year; the same month as Dana and I.  That’s kind of cool now that we think about it.  Between him having a leap year birthday or a birthday in March, the latter has excited us much more.

Now, Dana is REALLY ready for him to show his face!  Other than losing her mucous plug yesterday, there is no other sign he is soon to come.  Dana’s just waiting doing her normal, calm, eventless waddle around the house.  She’s a really beautiful pregnant woman.  It goes well with her and she has handled it amazingly.

Dana is due one week from yesterday! It has taken an eternity to get here and yet it also seems as though it has abruptly come upon us. In about a week’s time, we’ll be parents. Ruh-roh. (That’s a good ruh-roh.)

Mama Asher (what Dana will go by in Tanzania) is doing great. We’ve noticed those Braxton contraction thingies where her belly just gets rock hard then soft enough for the poodle to sleep on. As far as we can tell, he has yet to even descend. We’ll see how this week goes and I’ll be sure to keep the website updated.