I think it's a good time to blog again.  I'm pretty sure that everyone in the world knows by now that we have welcomed our new baby girl into the world!  We are really blessed by the arrival of "G-Dub" and could not be more proud yet humbled at the same time.  It is apparent to us already that having a baby you brings out this incredible amount and level of love for another human being that is like no other thing we've experienced in our lives.  And we are reminded about how God loves us so much more than we love our little girl.  What a great reminder and personal display of God's deep love for us as His children.  We are blessed and humbled.

We have been somewhat in "survivor mode" over the past couple of weeks.  There's a lot to adjust to becoming a parent I am quickly learning, although I would say Jan has had the biggest adjustment.  Think about what she has been through over the past 9 plus months:  pregnancy, leaving her job, delivery, recovery, feeding, staying at home, sleeping in 2-3 hour increments every night!  Wow, that is an incredible amount of change to deal with.  Yet, she rarely complains.  I'm pretty sure women are tougher than men...no, I'm now convinced they are when it comes to this kind of stuff.  If I had to go through all of that as a man, I'm not sure what I would have done!  So, I'm proud of my wife.

The first couple of weeks have been good.  G-Dub is really a sweet girl and is very alert when she's awake and very asleep when she's asleep.  The only middle ground that she goes back and forth on is the feeding part, which has proven to be a lot more challenging than we had expected.  She just can't make up her mind whether she's hungry or tired or both. 

I went back to work about a week after she was born, thanks to my mother-in-law staying with us.  That was a huge blessing the first week, and now my mother is poised to take over the support duties.  It's been good for me to go back into work and have some normalcy, but I sure do miss that little girl during the day!  In a sense it makes me focus more at work so that when I get home I can "turn it off" and focus on my girls. 

We're so glad she's finally here! 

             

Here is a great story that makes me proud of the Baylor family.  I don't have much else to say about it except to put it simply - this is a perfect example of how we should help those in our community, which can be defined as anyone in our "sphere", who are in need.  As Coach Teaff says in the video, "For God so loved the world, that He gave - and the world loves Kyle Woods, and we gave."

Update: 6/5/08

After 6 days of soreness, I finally got most of it out of my system.  I went kayak fishing at the coast last weekend, which meant a lot of hard paddling against the Rockport wind.  That seemed to do the trick.  As of Tuesday, I could extend my arms again.    I worked out again yesterday morning, and I am extremely sore today, but not the same kind of soreness.  This soreness I recognize this time. 

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Oh my!  Have you ever worked out with a personal trainer?  Before Tuesday of this week, I had not.  I decided a few weeks ago to take the step to sign up for six sessions with a trainer, and the first session was on Tuesday night.  I realized I needed some help to get my butt in gear, so that I can increase my body strength, fend off changing metabolism, and get in good shape for an upcoming referee camp (not to mention just to look good for my wife...sorry if that's TMI.)  So, I hired a guy that I play ball with up at the church from time to time.  He's a great player and athlete, and I know he does a great job with his basketball training and physical training.  He's also a former college player, so he can definitely ball (not that this is a requirement but worth mentioning.)  He's also a Believer and we prayed together beforehand.  Great start, I thought!

So, he worked me out extremely hard...much harder than I had expected.  We just jumped straight in and went after "burning out."  That's an appropriate description, I eventually learned.  Most of the stuff he had me doing was resistance training to focus on abs and triceps, as well as biceps and back.  I was doing diamond push-ups, military push-ups, bicycle kicks on my back, etc.  That was the first half hour.  The second half hour when we jumped onto some weights kicked my butt even harder.  I was hurting so bad by the time it was over, that I literally could not extend my arms.  They were locked kind of like you see those meathead body builders when they walk around with their chests out and arms bent.  I guess they really can't help it I now realize, given that I was doing it not out of my own choice. 

So, here I am three days later.  How do I feel now?  ABOUT TEN TIMES THE PAIN I felt after the first day!  I still can not extend my arms.  Is this normal?  My left arm when bending it bends about 40 degrees, when normally I can bend it nearly 90 degrees.  Some of you know my hidden talent/stupid human trick of basically being able to invert my elbows.  It's kind of freaky.  Well, I'm pretty sure at this rate, I will lose my special arm trick capabilities.  That's fine, as long as I don't permanently have that meathead body builder arms locked pose the rest of my life. 

My next session is Monday night, and man I hope I can get rid of some of this soreness before then.  If not, I'm in for some trouble.  Holy schnikees!  Pray for me.

The other night I opened an email from a friend asking me to join Reunion *dot* *com*.  I usually ignore things like this since I already have accounts at other similar social networking sites.  I don't know whether I was just caught up in my emotional high state after the Spurs beat the Hornets earlier that night and wasn't paying attention or what, but for some reason I decided to open it and sign up!  Why not!  I figured I might be able to find some long lost friends along the way, so I signed up.  Then I saw something about paying for a monthly membership and quickly lost interest.  I was halfway paying attention and saw a screen that asked for my Google account info which I figured was just a way of linking my account so I didn't have to enter it again.  Well about halfway through the page load after submitting, I quickly realized what was happening and as fast as I could I clicked on a link to skip that step.  What had happened was that the site sent an invitation to every single contact in my address book!  Crap!!!

So, to those of my readers who received an invitation from me, kindly disregard it unless you want to add me as a friend to a service I am sure to never use again in my life. 

To the following, please accept my apology:

• City of Austin Water Services 
• mortgage company customer service
• guy I used to work with 8 years ago
• my pastor
• home owners association members
• people who I turned down job offers from
• Microsoft SQL Server google group unsubscribe administrator
• Dell tech support person
• thermostat manufacturer tech support person

If I missed anyone, then consider this my apology and request to disregard the message...unless of course you want to add me as a friend!  That would be swell! 

Well it's hard to believe that in just 8 weeks or so Jan and I will be parents for the first time.  I'm pretty sure most of you know by now that we are expecting a little girl in July.  If you didn't know, well, surprise!  We are very grateful that Jan has experienced a fairly smooth pregnancy thus far.  That may be a lot easier for me to say than for Jan, but my observation has been that she has handled it extremely well.  Of course I will never know what she is truly experiencing nor do I want to.  But I am forever grateful to her. 

While our honey-do list seems to grow pretty constantly, we have teamed up make a reasonable dent in our list.  I have to catch myself at times because I will think that I need to do something before the baby gets here or else it will never get done.  For example, I feel that if I don't by a lawnmower now, then I will have to put all to purchase for another two or 3 years.  This is mostly a misconception on my part, and something that I need to make sure that I am balancing correctly.

So, we have been able to rearrange the upstairs bedrooms, which has been an interesting process.  We have consolidated our office and guest room into one room, while leaving the other room available as our nursery.  In the process of doing this, we continued to stumble across several items that we needed to either throw up way or donate or shred.  It's really a good feeling when we get rid of so much junk.  And it's amazing to us both how much junk we can accumulate in such a short time.  Granted, most of it is small stuff, but add all of it together and you get quite a load.  We have also stumbled across some sentimental items as well, which is always fun and, err sentimental.

We have yet to decide if Jan will go back to work, but if she does it will most likely be in a part-time role.  We are thankful that we will be able to make a decision after the baby arrives, once we have a chance to see how things go and after diving in.

(Note:  I "typed" this entry using some dictation software that I have been evaluating at work.  Hopefully I did not miss any words that I needed to correct.  Since it is not a perfect science, it can be pretty funny and at times scary what the software dictates.)

That's right.  The title was not a mis-type.  Today, I gave my wife an ultrasound exam and have the pictures of baby "Jandon" to prove it.  Part of my job at my company is to evaluate various medical devices.  So, when I recently had the chance to try out a handheld device that can perform ultrasounds, I thought that I couldn't pass up an opportunity to take a peak in to see our growing baby.  Once I felt comfortable with the idea I decided to go for it.  The quality is not near what you will find in the 100K machines in hospitals but it's pretty good nonetheless.

So, with 10 and a half weeks to go, here's our beautiful girl's pictures taken from our living room!  Medical technology is really getting cool!

 

 

I'm guessing this site still works since I'm typing these words.  Hard to believe it has been around 4 months since I last posted anything here.  For the record, there have been at least TWO people who have approached me and asked me about this.  So, to those two people, thanks for caring.  Here's a blog post just for you!

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Between January and April, I worked with my father-in-law and rebuilt our privacy fence.  That's right.  It took over two months!  What I had originally thought would take a couple of weekends ended up taking 7 weekends!  Ouch!  Totally underestimated that, but so glad that it's done and it looks good, too.  It was good carpentry and construction eperience for a wannabe handy man such as myself.  I really enjoyed getting to spend quality time with Jan's dad as well as a few other friends that came over and pitched in from time to time.  Thanks to Gabrysch, Oliver, Kyle, Steve, and the lifeblood and architect, Tim!

Here are some pics showing some of the progress.  As you can tell, my backyard is pretty much shot now, which means an upcoming sod laying project.

I'm really pleased with the way it turned out and am proud of our work.  Looking back, I'm not exactly sure that I would do it again myself given that it turned out to be much harder than expected.  The hardest part turned out to be removing the existing posts.  They would usually snap off at the base or we would just run into some serious rock which the original concrete had settled into.  In the end though, we probably paid half of what the total would have been had I outsourced it. 

Here's to at least 10 years of having a sturdy dependable fence!