To my wife

I read this post from Momastery and immediately thought of you. I was reminded of our commitment to each other, my love for you and of the wonderful friendship we have developed and maintained over all these years.

There is a song by Bebo Norman, called "Borrow Mine." It is a song he wrote about a conversation heard between two friends; one, who was going through deep personal troubles, told the other, "I just don't know if I have faith anymore." The other friend replied by saying, "Then, you can borrow mine. I'll have enough faith for both of us."

I love you.

It's the little things....

My lovely and oh-so-generous wife mentioned this to me in passing. I had a slight understanding of the enormity of what she was about to do but...it's these little things the she does in life that go so far for so many other people.

Follow the two links and you will understand.

http://sites.google.com/site/milkforsophia/home

http://sites.google.com/site/milkforsophia/our-progress

She makes me so proud

She handled a sudden and quick labor with aplomb...she drove to get me at the rink when her efforts to dry her cell phone were unsuccessful. She labored with no complaint, she never said that she couldn't do it, she just did what she needed to do and got herself through it. She has picked up nursing Emiko like she has been doing it every day of her life, like it just comes to her naturally. She handles dinner tonight with our friend Molly like it was just another evening in, forget about having given birth only 3 days prior. She walks about our home in an unfamiliar body with a grace, beauty and poise becoming of someone whose pregnancy was assisted by personal trainers, personal chefs and personal assistants, not of someone who recently gave birth, nursed, helped clean up the kitchen and changed a diaper.

I am so proud of her, the love of my life. I am constantly amazed, the love of my life. I am so in love with the love of my life.

The best laid plans...

A little Burns for you this evening.

We had so much planned out for today. I was to go riding in Nederland after work. Hope was headed to her pre-natal aerobics class after a day of relaxing.

I had a busy day at work. Couple this with watching a grass fire erupt from a lightening strike on Green Mountain this afternoon and I was left feeling too small to fix a flat tire and drive the sixty minutes to Ned.

But compound this with the fact that Hope was called in for jury duty today. Ignore the fact that she is 8.5 months pregnant and needing to pee every 45 minutes. What happens? She is the first choice for both the prosecution and defense teams on what is guaranteed to be at least a 3 day criminal trial. Needless to say, she had a long and emotionally trying day listening to the opening arguments and the victim's testimony.

By the time she got out, she drove the 3 minutes from the court to Yeti's office and took some time to unwind. We decided that Ned and the gym were not in the cards for us this evening. We headed off to fill up our tank's tank and talked about heading down to Denver for a nice Indian meal since we had not planned a dinner at home tonight. As I watched the dollars float by on the pump, I came to the conclusion that driving to Denver simply to eat out was not the best use of our fuel budget or gasoline in general (wow...I'm starting to go ever greener).

We headed to a local restaurant (yes Jeff...Malone's) and enjoyed a nice dinner together. We discussed our plans for the next three days and how Hope sitting in a juror's box would change all that we had laid out. Gone was the opportunity to ride my bike to work tomorrow. Gone was Hope's chance to seal the grout in our upstairs bathroom. Gone was Ned. Gone was the gym. But not all was negative. We had the chance to spend some quality time together on a night when we didn't plan on seeing each other until our heads hit our pillows.

We were home while it was still light out. I set up an area for Hope to work on her computer in our driveway and I collected my tools to finish painting the trim for the upstairs window. It was so warm that my coats were almost dry by the time I finished painting so I climbed my ladder and hung the trim around our upstairs bathroom window (yeah...cross another one off the honey-do list...five months later). Hope worked on a poetry paper and read some wonderful pieces that she had written over the years. Together, we reflected on her words, her images and the songs of her soul while we collected our tools and retired to our house.

I don't so much mind when my plans are ruined for a night spent together. I'd be happy if the rest of my life was spent breaking such plans just to spend a few more minutes together like tonight. Sometimes the best laid plans aren't necessarily the best ones after all.

An unexpected trip

Perhaps I should preface this story by saying everything for baby and mom-to-be is ok. I don't want you reading this with baited breath wondering what the hell just happened.

We spent the last night in the hospital...a good 12 hours before we finally came home. Hope ended up coming down with the flu/food poisoning/some sort of ugly crap. She couldn't keep any fluids down and we ended up heading off to the hospital some time after midnight last night. They put her on an IV in the ER and then we were moved up to Labor and Delivery some time in the early morning around 3:30. Hope was having something that could have been contractions or could have been her stomach and back muscles saying that they had had enough after so much violent vomiting.

That said, we are finally home, Hope is feeling ok though tired and I am feeling pretty wiped out. The big thing I noticed all night long was that as I sat next to Hope concerned for her, for our unborn baby and scared of having a premature birth, there was a voice of reason in the back of my head. That voice kept telling me that while it was ok to be scared because of the situation, that we still needed to relish every moment. There are people in this world who would give up so much of their lives to be in our shoes, to be pregnant. And I think it was that thought that kept me sane and calm the entire time.

It seems so unfair that there are so many couples, so many people that would make such wonderful parents, folks who would love to have the opportunity to create life (and deserve it), people whose somberness is often unnoticed by the rest of us in the joys of of parenthood. They are happy for those who can but feel such a plethora of emotions for themselves. And then we look around at those who have created too many, those who can't stop, those who don't understand the meaning of birth control.

I can only say my point is that we should never feel sorry for ourselves. Despite what life throws at us, we have so much to be happy for, so much to look forward to, that we should never find ourselves despairing our situation.

She makes me so proud

She has a great deal of responsibility at her school, more than I want to go into right now. She is in the process of completing a Master's program. She finds time to talk to and take care of our friends. She puts up with and takes care of me and Gibson. She found time to train for the Boulder Bolder. She completed said race, the largest 10k in the US in 2 hours flat. She carries our child every day.

She makes me so proud!