Swelling

By now you may have guessed that my entry titles have more than one meaning.

Yes, swelling refers to body parts.  Poor Erin.  I know that body changes are an expected part of pregnancy, but it is just one more thing I would save her from if I could.  She hates her clothes and she feels unattractive.  Nothing I say will help her feel attractive, but I continue to tell her anyway -- even if she doesn't believe me.  Some people never quite get the idea that it is possible to find someone attractive no matter what they look like.  In fact, were that not the case, I probably wouldn't have ever gone on a date in my life, much less gotten married.  People have so much more to offer than the way they look.  You can put a piece of gold in a cardboard box and you still have a treasure.  And no, I'm not calling my wife a cardboard box.

Swelling also refers to how life seems to be growing so rapidly these days that it is hard to keep up with it.  Gotta pack.  Gotta fix some stuff with the new house.  Gotta move into the new house.  Gotta prepare for the baby.  Gotta find day care.  Gotta have the baby.  Gotta take care of the baby.  In other words -- gotta lot to do.

And, I find that when I don't think I can do much more that I find new energy to get things done that need to be done.  There is so much important stuff to do that resting doesn't seem like an option -- but for once I don't mind.  This isn't stess born of frustration.  This is a stress that comes with the anticipation of new and exciting changes.  It isn't always fun but the light at the end of this tunnel seems so bright that I am a lot happier about working to get there.

Every time I see my wife these days, I smile in anticipation of what is to come.  That makes her even more beautiful in my eyes and I could absolutely care less about the way she looks on the outside because all I see when I look at her is our future together.  I have a good feeling that our future will be wonderful.

The first _______

Yesterday was the first snowfall for this portion of New York.  That tends to tick off most people.  I hear questions like "why is this so early" and "what happened to fall".  True, fall and spring have become almost non-existent seasons, but you would think that people would be used to stuff like that by now.  And snow in mid-October certainly isn't unheard of.  I remember as a child that trick-or-treating was flat out canceled in my area one Halloween due to a winter storm that left nearly everything in sight covered in roughly half an inch of solid ice.  It was amazing to see even though it was very dangerous.  I don't think I even minded missing out on trick-or-treating that year because I could walk down the street and feel like I was living on Krypton.

Yesterday I took the dog out for her morning potty break before heading to work.  There was maybe an inch of snow stuck to the ground outside and it was still coming down in large, slowly drifting clumps.  It was really beautiful and I took a few minutes to watch, which is certainly preferable to watching the dog do her business.  I wish I could have stayed out longer, but I had places to be.  I started thinking then, and continued to think through the rest of the day, about the firsts in my daughter's life.  There will be the very first snowfall for her, when I imagine she will be staring up at the sky and crinkling up her nose when she gets hit by a particularly large snowflake.  I want to be there for all of those firsts -- first steps, first words, first day of school.  Those are the things I'm looking forward to.  I want to be there to help a new human experience the world for the first time.  I want to watch her go through the process of learning how things work, like the day she figures out that just because the toy went behind daddy's back doesn't mean that it doesn't exist anymore.

I'm looking forward to looking at the world through a fresh pair of eyes.  I'm sure it will help me learn almost as much as she will, and I look forward to having those experiences together.

Kind of dumbfounded

A girl.  We are having a girl.  At least, the doctor says he is about 97% sure that we are having a girl.  It is hard to tell since our daughter seems to be very modest and doesn't like to have any pictures taken -- just like mom and dad.  In the last round of ultrasounds she covered up her face a lot and kept her legs crossed so it took some effort to get a peek at her gender.  I would very much apprciate it if that same modesty continues for the rest of her life.

So, to be honest, I was in a little bit of a daze when I heard it was a girl.  Please be aware that I was not hoping for one sex over the other -- at least not for myself.  I think Erin and I were hoping for a boy for the sake of her father, who has never had a little boy around to show things to and experience new things with.  He has two daughters and his son-in-law (and future son-in-law) aren't really the same kind of guy he is.  I love my father-in-law to death but he and I are pretty different people.  Still, I am hoping he will take me up on my planned requests to have him show me how to do home repair and maintainance.  I think he will like having the chance to show a guy the ropes and I can have the benefit of learning things I didn't know how to do before.  True, those are things I would have loved to have learned from my own father, but I'm the one who moved several hundred miles away and that makes stopping over to help with home repairs kind of inconvenient.  So, I hope Erin's dad will enjoy helping me with the new house.  Still, I'm not a replacement for a grandson that I'm sure he would have enjoyed greatly.

Aside from that, the news that we were expecting a girl still stunned me because, frankly, I don't understand women at all.  Little boys are easy to figure out.  We are kind of like walking Id's -- we pretty much do whatever we feel like and there isn't a lot of deep thinking involved.  If we feel like putting a bucket on our heads and running into walls we do it because it seemed like a good idea at the time -- you know, before the concussion and the getting in trouble.  But no matter how long I have studied human behavior and no matter how many letters I can put behind my name to say that I have advanced degrees pertaining to knowledge of humans in general, I will never understand women.  For that reason, the idea of having a daughter frankly intimidates me.  I think I was mentally prepared for the wear-your-thoughts-on-your-sleeve behavior of a boy, but I just don't know what to expect from a girl. 

Maybe that's what I should be asking my father-in-law for help with.

The halfway point

Well, we reached four and a half months.  Frankly, every day that everything seems ok is really a blessing, so in some ways the time has flown by and in some ways I have been anxious about each day that passes.  I could say that we can relax a little more now, but there is a long way to go.  And, I am positive that the stress levels in the Wilburn household have nowhere to go but up.

The mortage papers for our new house were signed on Friday.  We will be moving in a month and that is, by any standard, stressful enough.  At least this time we are only moving about 12 miles away and not 3 hours away.  And, since we are kind of lazy and we didn't ever have a lot of room in this apartment, much of the things we own are still boxed up from a year ago.

I've entered a busy time at work and there is lots to do to prepare for 2010.  I hope to have the vast majority of my scheduling for next year done by the end of the month, but that means some hard-working days in the office while I will be coming home to more hard work in order to move in the second half of November.  Plus, I am hoping to begin work on a study I want to do involving dual diagnosis in individuals with developmental disabilities and, if I get some help, write a federal grant proposal to fund that study.

Still, stress is all relative.  While there is a whole lifetime of stress on the horizon you really have to keep things in perspective.  It is easy sometimes to think of the enormity of all of the things that lie ahead and throw yourself into a panic state.  I choose to focus right now on the fact that my wife and my child are both healthy and as happy as can be expected.  Everything else is just a temporary hurdle.

A firm foundation

Once again there is the strong possibility that we will have a new house.  I refuse to say that we have it since the last time I thought that we had one it snaked out from under us.  However, whatever luck that I have that drives me forward seems to have worked in our favor once again.  While the house we would have bought certainly had it's positives, it also had some problems.  In almost every way, the house we may end up in is so much better than the one that got away.  See, my life is absolutely full of instances where it appears as though I have had some sort of misfortune, only to have that turn around and have my situation be better in the end.  This may indeed be one of those times.

The new house is an estate sale.  In other words, the people who owned it passed away.  They decorated the place as people from past generations do and Erin and I will have some cosmetic changes to make.  But, aside from those things, the house has what I truly look for -- a strong foundation, a good heart, and comforting shelter.  I could say that the house has an excellent basement with absolutely no moisture problems and the walls and floors are solid.  I could say that the furnace, the water heater, and the electrical wiring and breaker box are all new.  I could tell you that the roof is new.  But, a house is more than the sum of it's parts. 

If this house is to be the first one that my child grows up in then it had better be a solid one -- from the basement to the roof and one where the family inside is equally strong and secure.