photo: marjorie o'brien
Results tagged “cole” from NoMuse
Earlier this year, I decided that we needed a garden. Our home included a 200 square foot flower bed that was moving steadily towards total reclamation by aggressive, thorn ridden, noxious plant life. People who know me weren't surprised by the weed cultivation -- I insisted for several years that the back yard was xeriscaped with native plant life prior to Nat ordering sod. I spent several weekends and evenings digging out the undesirable material, tilling in compost, busting sod, and removing galvanized sprinkler pipe with my trusty sidekick. We started with eleven 9 foot rows over approximately 24 feet of garden.
I discovered that I enjoy playing in the outside dirt almost as much as I love playing in the clean dirt of my (presently mostly hypothetical) studio (e.g., clay). I planted three varieties of lentils (calypso beans, kidney beans, and boston favorite beans), roma tomatoes, tomatillos, yukon gold potatoes, pumpkins (for Cole and Tate) and peppers (jalapenos, seranos, habaneros, cayenne, and red bell). With one thing and another, I seized another 200 square foot section of the southwest corner of our lot for berries. I dithered on the berry decision long enough to miss out on the supply of blackberries at my local garden stores. I planted red raspberries, black raspberries, and boysenberries. We will get blackberries next year along with a couple of fruit trees. I will likely expand the garden to the edge of the driveway before I finish for the year. And, I have started thinking about a compost bin.
Before I started, I chatted with Jeremy of the Rockin' E Country Store and the fellow who runs the East Farms CSA. I knew almost nothing about vegetable gardening. Jeremy gave me some pointers for getting started and recommended a drip irrigation system. Once my berries and vegetables were planted, I spent a vacation day trenching across the backyard and plumbing in an irrigation water spigot at the garden. My sister-in-law is connected with Orbit Irrigation and got me a couple of their vegetable garden kits (Thanks, Mel!). I also set bamboo posts and purchased hemp twine for trellising my vines. I don't know how well the bamboo is going to work, but I like how it looks. If/when it fails, I'll explore other options.
I view the garden as the natural evolution of my lifestyle change back in January 2005. Michael Pollan's books "The Omnivore's Dilemma"
shit steer manure she received was the best possible house warming gift her friend Ivan could have given (Jean moved to Colorado at the start of the year to be closer to her children. And probably Ivan. I miss her something fierce.).
Cole's Photo Album continues to be updated. If you have just been looking here for the updates, you have been missing out. Nat suggested this pointer to his album.
more photos of cole
Yesterday, Nat kicked me into semiconsciousness around 5:00a to let me know she was having contractions.
"Cool," I thought, "no work and a bit of a sleep in." I staggered out of bed and turned off the alarm clock.
By 8:00a, however, her contractions had stopped and Nat told me to go to work. I was at the office for all of an hour of work when I received a phone call from her saying the contractions were back and really bad. I asked how far apart her they were. She didn't know but offered to ring back directly. A few minutes later she informed me she was at six minute intervals.
The one thing iterated to us over and over ad nauseum during our six weeks of Babies for Idiots classes was not to show up to the hospital until Nat had been contracting at a three to five minute intervals for over an hour. I began the intentional dragging of feet before leaving work. I managed to stall for a half hour, told Rita I was off to try to have the baby, filled the car up with gasoline on my way home and bought Nat a slushie at the QuickieMart.
Twenty minutes later we were waiting for parking at the hospital. Nat let herself out of the car and waddled off to labor and delivery. I eventually followed with her bags.
When I arrived, she was already in a room and events had shifted into a kind of fast forward. Nurses flowed in and out. It turned out she was fully dilated and birth was happening soon. The anesthesiologist arrived directly and quickly became Nat's favorite person. Dr. Pieper appeared in short order and Cole was born at 1:45p MDT.
At the time of birth, Cole was 19.5 inches long, 6 pounds 11 ounces. As promised, tacky, sentimental, poorly framed, badly lit photos of the chap. As a bonus, constant reader, photos of the completed nursery.
Cole Hattaway arrived this afternoon at 1:45p MDT. He was nineteen and one half inches long and weighed six pounds eleven ounces. All fingers and toes appeared to have been in place and Nat is doing quite well. Tacky, sentimental, crappy pictures, the story of how it all happened and more tomorrow. Or, the next day. :)
Am I a real adult now?
Friday brought the happy news that all appears well with The Chap. We also learned The Chap is a chap and not a chapette. His feet are about one inch long, and his body is about 9 inches in total length. Nat informed me we are halfway through.
Though I was looking forward to ballet practice, I suppose I'll have to make do with soccer practice.
Stills and video from the ultrasound are in the normal bat place.
I've scanned the four prints we have been given and digitized the sonogram video from Nat's visits to LDS Hospital. I've not heard the baby's heartbeat yet, but I've seen it fluttering away. I am awed.
Earlier this evening, we had one of the monthly family hostage situations associated with Nat's family's birthdays. Nat has been a trooper keeping our secret even though I know it has been killing her to do so. She has had to use misdirection when acne and the other associated tell tale signs have come up in conversation, and she has not been keen on keeping up the illusion. We chatted briefly before we left for Mel's house and agreed tonight was a good time to let her Mom, siblings and their families know about our chap.
Nat had a copy of one of the sonogram pictures made and framed for her mother. We gave it to her wrapped and had her open it. She must have thought we had given her a picture frame for Valentine's because she was really nonplussed by what she saw. Val, however, saw the print and yelped with excitement. Nat suggested the use of LaRayne's reading glasses. Her response was much improved once she was able to see what Nat was showing her. It was a happy few minutes sharing our exciting news.
My December 18th entry went live moments ago along with December 22nd and January 26th. I've left them unmolested, to include comments to myself about the draft nature of the entries while they remained in hiding.
It's cold outside. It's dark when I go to work in the morning and when I come home in the evening. I'm on my early morning schedule, warming up for my last season in the purgatory of art school. This morning, Nat picks me up at 8:20a to pop a few blocks down from the University to an IHC clinic where her obstetrician practices. I am a bit standoffish. This will be a new experience for me and I have no real clue what to think about it.
We arrive, enter the building and ride the escalator up to the second floor. Nat checks in. I pull out my pda and pick up where I've left of in "Wolves of the Calla."
Prior to this visit, if you had asked me about having Nat strip for me someplace semi-public, I'd have likely said it would be very nice. If you had asked what I thought about Nat, naked and stirrups in the same sentence before today, my train of thought would likely not be considered very "nice" by proper folks. There is something off putting about this office and this visit, however, and I find the situation much less desirable than I'd initially imagined it would be.
Dr. Pipper comes back. Nat is poked, prodded, examined and sampled. I have never been more glad to be a guy in my life. I've got my PDA out, more as a security blanket than anything else. Dr. Pipper turns from the exam and asks if I'm taking pictures. I am so uncomfortable I cannot even laugh, though I find the idea hilarious. Finally, the poking/prodding part of the exam is over the doctor rolls over her "toy" sonogram machine. She lubes up the scanner and rolls it across Nat's stomach. The grainy black and white image begins to pulse as the scanner is moved down past Nat's at capacity bladder. Here, in glorious two bit color, is the addition to our family. As psychologically uncomfortable as the exam has been for me, seeing our developing child via the sonogram's display is really quite amazing. I almost wish I had a camera with me to grab an image of our chap.
Having a baby is somewhat like graduating high school or completing basic training in the military. Hundreds of thousands, millions, billions of people have done it before us and the same number plus will be doing it long after I've been laid to rest and forgotten. It is one of those things about which a big deal gets made when there does not seem (to me) to be a big deal to begin.
The first thing we needed to decide was whether or not we were going to tell anyone.
One of Nat's compelling reasons for not delaying children any longer was to have children while they could still know her mother, LaRayne. Nat came along twelve years after her closest sibling and I'm continually surprised when I'm reminded LaRayne has entered her seventies -- she neither looks nor acts like seventy anything to me. If it were possible to tell LaRayne and then to keep it a secret from the rest of the world, I think that I would have had no reservations with Nat telling her mom. As things are, telling LaRayne (or anyone else in her family) is the same as telling everyone in her family.
As I contemplated the potential expansion to our family between the EPT test and the blood work, I became enamored of the idea of having a secret that was Nat's and mine alone. At some point, reality intervenes and prevents you from keeping this type of secret, but I thought it would be fun as long as it lasted. As LaRayne is the only of our parental figures on whom we feel like we can rely, I was torn between telling her and keeping our secret. I finally left it up to Nat, with my marginal preference leaning towards the secret option.
For the present, it is our secret.
This remains a draft entry for the foreseeable time. That said, I'd like to capture some of what I'm thinking and feeling now, rather than recreate it later. Part of the magic behind the scenes here is that I can continue to make these private entries and not unleash them on the universe at large until we choose to air our little secret.
Sunday, December 14th, Number Six was up mid-morning rather than for dinner, as has become our habit. I was eating some lunch, and Justin and I were chatting. As he got ready to head back to his place, Nat disappeared upstairs. I did not think much about it at the time. Justin and I wrapped up our conversation and he headed out to do laundry. Nat reappeared with an object wrapped in a tissue. I was suddenly anxious, nervous, intrigued and repelled simultaneously. On one level, I was very aware of what she was presenting me as I ate my bowl of tomato soup, and I was quite excited that the news must bode well. In a darker place in my head, I was sure that I did not want to have anything to do with the item cloaked in front of me. Certainly not while I was eating.
I should, perhaps, step back for some history here. Nat and I got married in August of 1996. I've been a perennial student and she was still working on her bachelors degree and teaching certificate. I knew that children were part of being married, and we discussed the idea of reproducing on several occasions over the years. As an idea it seemed a fairly good one.
I was pretty sure of a couple of things. First, other people's children were really good -- mostly because they went home. Second, adopting was a great idea. Both of our gene pools leave much to be desired and adoption becomes a win situation all around. If you succeed at raising the adopted child into a productive member of society, it is kudos all around for your fantastic parenting skills. If, however, the child goes south in a hurry, the adoptive parents are left with the option of shrugging and saying, "Hmm. Not our genes." Nat was not keen on this train of thought.
Between our wedding and the present, we've tried our hands at keeping plants alive (marginal success), maintaining salt water aquariums (high success) and finally with raising puppies (sadly, two for three). In my head, we were preparing well for our own 2005 or 2006 model year mini-Nat (or Jack). 2005/6 seemed perfect as Nat finishes her Masters in teaching and I finish my ultra valuable Bachelors of Fine Arts this coming spring, 2004. We would both get done with our final year of currently scheduled education, calculate the optimized time to conceive, get Nat into a "motherly way" and baby would make three about the time Nat got done with school for the summer of 2005. Did I mention this was the plan in my head?
Early this year (2003), Nat strongly indicated that it was time. I disagreed. She decided to nurture a side career as a Corkie Lee sales person. It was a glorious five or ten minutes of distraction for her. Then, the full court press was on me. The recurring dribble was "baby now." Though I openly confess to being slow, I do eventually understand which way the wind blows. To my way of thinking, I was left with two options:
1) Continue to disagree about the timing for the child and be miserable until I broke; or,
2) Hop on board the crazy train, be happy and get busy reproducing, or trying, or... you get the idea.
I went with the crazy train. There was a bit of trying. There was a bit of adjusting. There were a considerable number of questions from me that went, "Are you knocked up?" There was a bit more trying.
Which brings us back to the pregnancy test wrapped up in front of me. I still could not quite bring myself to open it, so I made Nat open it. I'm aware of what it means when a woman (and by "a woman" I certainly mean Nat) with whom I've been sleeping regularly is off her schedule by five or six weeks. And, I was right. Nat went in for blood work to confirm her motherly state. It was confirmed. Surprise! I'm an adult.
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