The journey of a thousand miles does not have to be completed in one day. It's okay to stop for the night to sleep and pick up where you left off in the morning.
Kayla Evina (girl) was born 3/10/06, 3:31am.
7 pounds 9.5 ounces
21.5 inches.
Lots of hair, beautiful. Yeah, I'm biased. Doesn't make it not true... :-)
Pictures coming, but I left the camera at the hospital with Amy. I'm bringing them home tomorrow morning.
Thanks to Dad for watching Jareth during...
We got to the hospital about midnight. 3centimeters.
1am: 4 centimeters. Nubane administered for pain management. Discussion about epidural later.
3am: fully dilated and coming. No time for epidural, Nubane just wore off.
I might have to title the next post "Screaming." Whole story later.
As Amy posted already, we started decorating Jareth's new room yesterday. We're creating a place that can be a sacred space for him. No longer a box with four walls, now it is a space spiralling with symbols of the cycles of life and the world around him. There are the four phases of the moon, the four seasons, the cycle from dawn to midday to dusk to night.
It isn't all done yet, but it has begun. The first coat of paint for the moon is up. It's a glow-in-the-dark paint. It's difficult to see by daylight, and I think it will take a few coats to be heavy enough to work well at night.
There is a mouse hole painted on the east wall. East is about morning, and spring time, and the new moon, and about new beginnings. There will soon be a mouse looking out of that hole. He'll have glow-in-the-dark eyes, and he will look out from his night-time hole out to the new day.
Other totem animals for Jareth are Wolf and Bear. Particularly Bear has resonated with him. He is surrounded by plush bears. They dance in a mobile above him at bedtime. One of the first animals he hugged was Cloud, a polar bear. The first animal we got him, even before he as born, was a beanie-style Winney the Pooh bear.
So Wolf and Bear will adorn his walls, along with a few other animals. The nocturnal ones will probably also have glow-in-the-dark eyes, and they will watch over him in his sleep and keep him safe in the dark.
Each of these things is becoming a spell of its own. Each of the items is being hand done. It's a magical process, and we're loving it. There are ladybugs crawling up the bookshelf that will be his big-boy-bed headboard. There are fluffy white (with some gray) clouds in the blue sky that is his ceiling.
Maybe by next weekend he'll be moved in. I think he is really going to love the room when he's old enough to appreciate it. Ironically enough, in three or four years, when he can really apprecate it...that's probably the point we'll be looking to move. His room in the next house he can take more part in planning, and it can reflect what he wants. He's not old enough to do that, so we're laying a foundation for him. We want him to feel as loved as he is. I think he will.
So Amy is reading a book to Jareth. This one has an alligator character, and one page shows Al (the alligator...) in a cannon at a circus. "The circus is always a blast," the text on the page reads. All is a partly stuffed insert that can partly fly out of the cannon when pulled.
It took her a bit before Jareth would leave the page alone long enough for her to show him.
"See, Boo!" says Narrator Mommy.
It's Like Peek-A-Boo With A Cannon, thinks me. Oh, now there's a blog post title for you...
And so it is.
Okay, I've done the proud father thing officially now. Jareth is a permanent part of the blog. See sidebar on left.
He's not even a year and a half and I've already been away too much. I'm not a part of his daily routine like that.
Amy's sleeping upstairs. He ate his breakfast fine. But he normally drinks at least part of a bottle on Amy's lap at her computer, and then the two play for maybe an hour before he goes in his corral to play on his own for a while.
But he won't take a bottle from me. Nope. I'm not Mommy. He didn't even want to play on my lap, and is already playing in his corral. He didn't cry when I put him there this time, because it's where he wanted to be. Until Amy comes down. Then he'll want Mommy time.
Then again, nobody ever said being a Daddy would be easy. At least I know that he misses me when I'm not around.
Some days I'm reminded of a sign I saw:
Any man can be a father.
It takes someone special to be a daddy.