Science Project!

UPDATE: There's a third frame that got cut off. Please click on it to read the rest!

My dad found this comic in the paper he was reading on our flight back from upstate New York on Monday. I think it will be quite applicable to Louis and I in the future... hopefully I can set aside my perfectionism to let him make the project ;-)

Busy

Sorry everyone. Life has been extremely hectic. I'm so busy at work that I have no time for anything else besides hanging with my family. Well, and updating Twitter. I highly recommend you follow that instead of this blog, as it's gone by the wayside unless I have something really great to talk about that a few tweets can't handle. Anyway, once I get some time I hope to pick the blogging back up, but for now, you're stuck with endless status updates.

Anyway, for a life update, all I really have to talk about is my family. If you didn't see on my website, I graduated with a combined BS/MS in mechanical engineering this past December and am currently working toward a PhD in the same field. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm real excited about my PhD research because it's a little more mathy (dynamic modeling) than kinesiology (for my MS). Linnea is great, she's got 2 part time jobs, one of which she works from home to spend more time with Louis. Louis is amazing. Every day something new happens, and it's so exciting. He recently learned to crawl and can pull him self up to stand. It's been very exciting (and scary) watching him move around and become more independent. Unfortunately, he'd rather play with the dog's toys and food bowls than his own toys. If you'd like more of Louis' updates, let me know and I can add you to the list. We're too chicken to un-password protect his blog for now...

Parenting tip:

Do not make your child laugh after eating cereal (like the mushy rice cereal infants eat, not "grown up" cereal). They might spit some up, and cough, at the same exact instant you're leaning toward them to make them smile more, and a tiny little piece of regurgitated cereal mixed with applesauce (thank God, but it still tasted bad) will fly right into your open mouth. You'll freak out because it tastes so bad and because you'll think "what are the odds?"

Too long...

Sorry for the huge gap between posts. I guess it's been a busy month. I assume that since I haven't posted in a while, nobody will read this anymore, except the possible few who might subscribe to the feed. I find my free time dwindling, and when I do get some, I'd rather just relax or hang out with my son. There have been countless things I've experienced since my last post that I really wanted to write about, but just didn't pick up the computer. Maybe I'll add a list at the bottom of the post. Anyway, my iPhone is still great, a month later, except that it needs to get charged at least every other day. That's a little annoying. Man, that just reminded me of something else I've been putting off. I have $50 from my birthday to buy music, which I haven't done for 2 weeks. I really need to re-stock my collection.

Ok, so as a recap of the last month (since my last post), I gave 2 conference presentations (that took up way too much time, now I'm behind on my thesis), Linnea was Matron of Honor in Angela's wedding (where Brandon and I made quick friends with bartender Tom, and got free shots for trying a "cement mixer," and my iPhone rocked it out so we were able to keep track of the Illini tear it up against Indiana), We went to a Chinese Halloween party (where Louis dressed up as a horse, and Linnea and I dressed as babies, diapers and all), we had a great birthday dinner for me at a decently cool pizza / arcade place with ok pizza, started going to a bi-weekly bible study / dinner with people our age at church, witnessed the Change (we'll see if I believe in it, but at least the next Pres is a Sox fan!), turned 24, Louis got baptized, Illini football sucked, Louis went to his first Illini basketball game, and most recently (i.e, right now), waching the Bears blow chunks against the Packers. Absolutely horrible. Oh yeah, and I told Linnea not to let me buy Call of Duty: World at War until I finish my thesis. I'm thinking now that that was a big mistake.

Finally, a list of random thoughts that have popped in my head since last time. Why do I see some girls riding their bicycles wearing skirts? Why do people talk on their phone while riding their bicycle, in the middle of the road, almost getting hit by cars? Why do people cross the street without looking, assuming the drivers see them, rather than being safe and waiting for them to stop? Why does EVERYONE constantly talk on their phone while driving? Why doesn't my iPhone have a video camera? Why did I see a girl driving a sport motorcycle with a dress on? Why are people dumb? Is it a stereotype if it's true? And finally, why do some girls ride their bicycles wearing skirts?

One Month

My son is one month old today. If you never got a link to his blog, let me know. That's where all the pictures are. Anyway, I had a bunch of cool stuff to talk about here, but I either forgot about it, or I'm too tired to type it out right now. I've really been concentrating on keeping Louis IV's blog updated so that everyone knows what's been going on and who he's been meeting, so my blog is kind of riding the pine right now. It's really hard too. I don't know how many times each day some random thought pops in my mind, or something neat happens, or I read something amazingly cool, and I just don't have time to write about it. I would say it eats at my insides, but if it really ate at my insides I would just blog instead of playing Call of Duty 4 in my free time. Speaking of that, I'm really kicking butt. I don't know what happened, but something just clicked one day. That's for another post though, that will probably not get posted. Excluding my brother and brother-in-law, I'm pretty sure there's only one other dude who even cares. He knows who he is.

I guess I'll just ramble quickly about some other things since I don't really want to post anything else after this post for a day or two, since I don't want to overshadow a post about my son, even though it was only about him for a second. How about those White Sox? I don't know what to think anymore. Every time they start winning, they just go back to losing (see: tonight). Oh well, hopefully they can hang on until October. It's almost like the collapse of 2005, except that they had about a 16 game lead before tanking in the second half. I remember it well, I was scared for my life. Luckily the game I picked to go to was when they broke their longest (7 games) losing streak of the season by hitting 4 homers in a row against Randy Johnson. That was amazing to watch. That season turned out o.k. though... Oh, and what do you think about that Brett guy? I dislike the Packers greatly, but I've always had a great respect for Brett's playing. Unfortunately this month long stink has left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

Alright, I'm up for feeding the little dude, hopefully I'll get my posterizer ramped up again soon.

5 days

I've been Dad for 5 days. It's finally sinking in that I have a son. It's still a little weird for Linnea and I to refer to him as "Little Louie." It's not that he doesn't look like a Louis, because when I look at him it reminds me of my grandpa (Louis Sr.). We had been calling him "Little Guy" for about 5 months, so it's been hard, but we're getting used to it.

In case you hadn't figured, my posts here will be more sporadic for a little bit with the baby, and trying to update his blog. Also, if you have experience with private blogs, any ideas how I can get around the 100 reader limit?

It's a boy!

Well, it happened. We thought he'd never come, but Louis IV was born on Monday, July 7th 2008, on his due date ironically enough. He was born (naturally, with medication thank God) at 4:08 pm, 10 pounds 11 ounces, 21 inches. I'll talk about him more after describing the events preceding his birth.

It started on Sunday night, well Monday morning. We went to bed around midnight, planning on sleeping in since we had to go to the doctor as Monday was Linnea's due date. Linnea was up constantly with some more pain than usual, but nothing as regular as contractions. We should have thought something was up; for a change I was waking up when she would get up. I usually sleep through her midnight bathroom breaks. She started feeling strange and called the Labor & Delivery nurses at the hospital. They said it was probably nothing, but she could come and get checked out if we wanted. As soon as she hung up the phone she started getting strong pains about every 4 minutes. Contractions 3-5 minutes apart is the usual go to the hospital time, so I guess we were lucky she wasn't feeling strong contractions before then. Most people feel them for quite a while (5-12 hours) before going to the hospital. We got to the hospital at 5:00 a.m. on Monday. She was at 3 cm. Later in the morning her doctor showed up (just back from vacation, fortunately. We gave her another day away from the office), and Linnea was almost at 4 cm. The doctor decided to get things moving along and gave Linnea something to strengthen the contractions. By noon she was set up with the epidural and ready to go. We got a scare when it stopped working for about an hour, but it started working again just in time. Linnea was fully dilated around 2:30 p.m. and with only an hour of rock star pushing, we had our son.

I can't even describe the moment my son came into this world. I was overcome with unexplainable emotion and started crying. Not sobbing, but they were definitely rolling down the cheek. I couldn't even say a thing, maybe a squeak, but no words. It was all I could do to even smile at Linnea. The moment was easily in the top two of my life. I can't choose between my wedding and my son's birth, because they're totally different. In a way they were both an affirmation of overwhelming love for somebody, but the indescribable nature of watching your child come into this world sets it apart somehow. I still can't believe he's ours when I hold him, but big things tend to take a while to sink in for me. I'm sure bringing him home tomorrow will help. I really can't wait.

Back to the little guy. If you don't know babies, he is absolutely HUGE. Babies are about 8 pounds on average. He looks like he's 1-2 months old already! Every time I walked by the nurses station yesterday I heard some mention about the "big boy" or heard his weight being mentioned. One nurse told us that he had the biggest hands she's ever seen on a newborn. I guess we're going to be throwing away all the newborn diapers (up to 10 lb) we already opened... We had a couple of slight scares, but he is absolutely fine. Right after he was born they needed to take him to the nursery to monitor him. The reason was unclear at first (I think the nurses don't realize the terms they use are way over everyone's head), but since he was so big he had trouble adjusting his blood oxygen levels. Unfortunately that means we couldn't hold him until about 8pm. By that time my anxiety had definitely built up, but it was a huge release to hold him for the first time.

Everyone was here when we got to bring him to our room for the first time (Grandmas Krista and Laura, Grandpa Lou - Louis Jr., and Uncles Dylan and Christian). We passed him around and took pictures of him with everyone (email me if you want the link). We fed him and convinced the Grandmas to change his diaper. We chose to have him sleep in the nursery so we could take advantage of our last two solid nights of sleep. This morning we got the second scare. The pediatrician who checked out all the babies in the morning came in at 8:30 a.m. to inform us that the murmur she heard last night (normal for newborns I guess) hadn't gone away by the morning (not normal). My heart sank as I stared blankly at the doctor trying to not look too much in shock. Linnea and I were pretty bummed, and we couldn't get him from the nursery yet again. The doctor came back at 10:00 a.m. to let us know the eckocardiogram (sp?) showed no holes in his heart (which would cause a murmur), so we were sufficiently elated and went to get him! Everyone came back today and we all hung out with the little guy. Unfortunately, my family had to go back home, but will be back in a few weeks. Grandma Krista was pretty sad to say goodbye to her grandson. I'm sure Grandpa Lou and Uncle Christian were too, but they didn't express it as much. Grandma Laura will be staying for a week to help take care of everything, and Uncle Dylan is in charge of Bailey.

Anyway, my battery is about to die, and I don't feel like reaching for the cord. From now on, baby updates and links to all his pictures will be on his own blog site. We're paranoid, so it'll be private and you'll have to get invited to see it, so email me if I don't send you an invite tomorrow.


- Dad (Louis III)