Well Laura’s Thursday appointment came and went without any change from her previous check.  Meaning that my prediction of a three week early baby is looking kind of shaky.  Ah, oh well.  Good for Kate for sticking in there and packing on that extra weight.

I’ve been getting all my photography stuff ready to go.  I’m planning on taking tons of photos that first week or two because I know that is not something you can just postpone and do later.  They are only newborns once, right?  I came across Carrie Sandoval’s site the other day.  She does amazing newborn photography and has really inspired me.  “Now where can I find a good looking branch……”  I really like the gauze that Carrie uses in some of her shots.  She talks about it here.  I’m going to try to find some and do my best at replicating some of her shots.

Any other mom or dad amateur photographers out there that have any tips or tricks to capturing those first few weeks of a newborns life?

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Whew, it’s been ages since I’ve posted.  The big day is fast approaching in which I can go from musing about what fatherhood will be like to reflecting on how is actually is.  Laura is 36.5 weeks along so I should officially become a father sometime in the next few weeks.

The nursery is good to go for the most part.  I’m still trying to figure out the webcam situation so I can peek in from work, but that can be taken care of later.

Laura has been great throughout the entire pregnancy.  I am so proud of her and know she’ll do great during the delivery.  She goes back to the doctor on Thursday.  At her last visit she was already 30-40% effaced and 1cm dilated.  I know that doesn’t give us any firm indication of when things will get cooking, but at least we are getting close.

I’ll update more on Thursday.

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I read a good interview over at Husbands and Dads blog with Dr. Michael Kimmel about the “guy phase” that sits in between childhood and manhood.  This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.  Now for reference, my wife and I got married at a pretty young age, I was 21 and she was 20.  Before that we had dated for about 5 years.  I started my my first job when I was 15 and aside from a few months in between jobs here and there, I have worked since then.

I give you all this background to make the point that I don’t necessarily fit the over-generalized profile of a guy in his twenties. I still have “guyish” tendencies though.  I love playing video games, a night out with “the boys”, and generally lazing around from time to time.  Looking back at my father and grandfathers though, I can’t help but wonder why it is that these days the “guy” phase keeps being extended at the expense of embracing manhood for a lot of men.

My paternal predecessors matured earlier because they had no choice.  Life for them was much harder for them than it was for me.  Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be though? Every father wants to provide a better life for their children.  But does my generation have it too good?

College is routinely seen as nothing more than a big party, and that first “real” job that puts a little money in our pockets just opens up more avenues of fun.  I think the way marriage and family is portrayed in a lot of media is partially to blame for the extended “guy” phase.  Let’s face it, marriage is not often portrayed as fun.

Think about it, there’s normally the idiot/overweight/lazy/ husband or dad.  He is always at odds with his nagging/manipulative/shopaholic wife.  Oh boy! Where do I sign up!  The fact of the matter is that these days if a man is willing to admit that life is not supposed to be 24 hours of “fun” everyday he may very well find that having a family is the one of the most rewarding things they can achieve.

I realize that all men are different and there is no set schedule, but every now and then we should all take a look in the mirror and decide if today is the day we start to grow up.

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Technology in the nursery?  Of course!

So, I’m doing some brainstorming about what I might like to do to get the nursery ready and my geek gene neurons keep firing.  Now Laura and I have already made decisions about the major items such as the furntiture, bedding, and such.  On the whole, we are planning a more traditional design for the nursery, but I simply must infuse a healty dose of technology.

So, right now there are two main objectives I want to accomplish for the nursey.

1. Setup some form of streaming video so that family and friends can sneak a peak at baby Kate from time to time.
2. An audio setup of some kind that can be controlled remotely so that we could change the music or volume without waking her.

Initially I thought I would be going with the Panasonic BL-C131A Wireless Network Camera for the streaming video.  It get’s great reviews, is reasonably priced as far as wireless cameras go at $250, and seemed to fit the bill nicely.  For the audio setup, I was looking for something like the Logitech Squeezebox or a Sonos BU150 Multiroom Music System which are around $300 and $1000 respectively.  That is more than I want to pay for what essentially amounts to a radio I can control from my laptop.

Then I got to thinking.  What about Orb?  Orb is a free web application service that you can install on a spare PC that allows gives you access to video, audio, photos, or pretty much any other form of digital content via the web to all sorts of devices.  For less than the cost of the BL-C131A and Squeezebox, I could get a small and quiet HTPC, install Orb on it, attach some speakers and my old analog camcorder,  and it would pretty much replicate the functionality of the webcam and Squeezebox.

Which route will I end up taking?  I’m still not certain.  Let me do some testing with Orb, and I’ll get post my results.

Any other techie ideas you’ve implemented in your nurseries?

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Sometimes you have to be the bad guy.

Tonight Laura and I went out to dinner with our close friend, Deanna, and her two year old daughter.  Now don’t even get me started on this little ball of sunshine.  When we visit, she normally squeals Laura and I’s names when we walk in the door.  She is a jewel and we love her dearly.

Tonight however, something was…off.  She was uncommonly shy and rather clingy to Deanna.  No biggie, Deanna says she things she must be coming down with a cold or something.  As our meal progresses, the daughter loosens up and starts to get rambunctious.  I’m done with my meal at this point, so I offer to take her for a walk so the ladies can have a little time for conversation.

That’s where things got tricky.  Now up until this point I had been perfectly content in the realm of “psuedo-unclelike-figure”.  When assuming this role, I get to enjoy all the fun times without dealing with keeping her in-line. When Deanna trusted me enough to release her child into my care, I suddenly had the responsibility of bringing her back the same way. Uh-oh.

Now I don’t know if you realize this, but “No” is not a word that a two year old is very fond of.  In fact, I’m not sure their ears are developed enough to register the sounds generated by speaking it.

“No, don’t pick up that glass”

“No, don’t throw rocks”

“No, we can’t keep the pile of rocks you’ve accumulated”

We were just walking around the restaurant, so it’s not as if we were playing Frogger on the interstate or anything, but my paranoia of her getting hurt on my watch was amped.  I tried various variations and distractions to coax her into doing what I wanted until it finally hit me.

I am the adult here.

Children at that young age are used to being douted upon and will test your limits to see how far they can push things.  But in the end, you are the adult who loves them and it’s your responsibility as a parent/guardian/mealtime-conversation-distraction to keep them safe and well behaved.

So with a final “No” we went back inside, paid our ticket, and left.

So did the night end in tears? Yes.

Did it get easier to be the bad guy? Not really.

Did I realize the importance of sometimes having to be the bad guy?  Without a doubt.

P.S.  For the public record I did return her to Deanna with all limbs intact

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My work situation has been somewhat tenous over the last couple of months.  My employer was bought out and I resigned from my position of 6 years due to conflicts in managment styles.  I have a promising lead which I hope resolves itself this week, but still… I worry.

I worry about the unexpected and unknown, and with a new baby on the way the unexpected and unknown are just about all I see for the future.  I’m done tons of reading about the needs of a baby, and I fully understand that babies can do just fine without spending a fortune on “stuff”.  It’s the things that aren’t mentioned in those books like health complications with Laura or the baby.  Childcare is another biggie.

And its not just finacial costs.  What about my time?  Ask Laura and she’ll quickly point out that if I don’t get enough “me” time, I tend to get…moody.  Reading that over again may make me seem childish, and maybe I still am.  That’s a topic for another day however.

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Last week we had a little scare when Laura didn’t feel the baby move for a couple of days.  We ended up going to the doctor and they checked the heartbeat and everything ended up being ok.  Still we were pretty worried.  I started looking into the small fetal dopplers that the physician uses.

There are several sites online that you can rent them on a month by month basis. Stork Radio is one that I found recommended a lot.  You can rent different models for between $20 and $50 per month.

While these would have probably worked, I found the Bistos Hi Bebe Fetal Doppler at Amazon for $115.

Fetal Doppler Monitor

We got the monitor in and immediately gave it a try.  It worked perfectly!  There is a LCD screen that displays the babies heartbeat. The monitor comes with one tube of ultrasound gel in the monitor box, with two more additional bottles thrown in by the company.  It has a output jack on the top, so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to hook it up to my laptop and record the heartbeat.

All in all, I’d highly recommend buying this model if you have 3 or months left in your partner’s pregnancy, or if you anticipate having additional children in the future.

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My wife is about 5 and a half months pregnant with our first child, so I’ve had a little while to reflect upon what it means to me to become a father.  When we first found out she was pregnant, I was in shock.  Now we had been trying to conceive for awhile, but the initial shock of finding out that my boys could actually swim was staggering.  As the pregnancy progressed, it all began to seem as if it was all happening to someone else.  I would go about my day to day routines and sometimes wouldn’t even think about it at all.

Then we heard the heartbeat for the first time…

I remember standing in the doctor’s office with a huge goofball grin on my face as tears were streaming down my wife Laura’s face.  It all hit home with me then.  “I am going to be a dad.”  My whole world kind of shifted on me.  Up to that point, I had been a young guy in his twenties, fairly successful, and pretty much concerned with having a good time.  Now I have responsibilities!  It might sound like I’m pining for my soon to be relegated freedoms.  Not at all.  I’m am so excited to welcome my child into the world!

But rather than where we’ll take our next vacation, I’m facing more important decisions.  What kind of father will I be?  How do I raise a healthy and balanced child?  How do I protect them from the world at large?  Heady topics? Believe me I know, I’m wrestling with these things everyday.  That is partly the reason I created this site; to connect with others like me and work through these things together.  I have about 4 months until the big day, so ready or not, here we go!

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