What kind of parent will I be?

So it's close, Anna is going to have the baby in like six weeks (according to the due date) and I have all kinds of questions about being a father that I don't have answered yet. One that pops into my head is "what kind of father am I going to be?" Am I going to be a strong leader, am I going to be a push over that the kids always come to because they know Ill give in? Am I going to be the one who hands out the punishments? Will I be the cool parent or will my kids be embarrassed of me? I think Im going to be a fun parent, I think my kids will think Im funny and love to be around me. You know, like when my kid wants to feed the raccoon, Ill lower him down so he can hand feed it. Seems like a good idea right? Anna's a natural and I know shes going to be great, but I can be a real dork so I worry about me.

I know all of that doesnt really matter what matters is that Im there and I love them even when they are hard to love. I have tremendous examples to look up to on both sides of our family now. All of the good qualities I find in myself I can identify where they came from and how they were instilled into me. Hopefully Im just as effective at passing on traits and qualities as my own parents were. I also hope that the bad qualities I see in me stay here and I dont pass those on to my children. I also have the examples of my three best friends Chris, Josh and Travis all have sons within two years of each other and now mine will be the fourth! So I can see at each stage how my friends parent and draw from them as well. And yes you heard me correctly Chris Pestow, Josh Dull, Travis Cameron and myself will all have sons within a couple years of each other in age! Thank goodness we live in different states, I dont know if one region of the U.S. could handle those four boys together! We're going to call them the fearsome foursome and you really should keep your distance. All joking aside they are wonderful fathers and husbands who are doing a great job and I cant wait to join the group!

Anna had another doctors appointment last week and everything went great, again. She is measuring just right and looking wonderful. We have another appointment next week and then they start going weekly! We took a birthing class at the hospital this past Saturday and I am now informed and ready for the birthing process. It was very informative and helpful with answering a lot of the questions that we have had and know we will come across in the labor. So now we've done that and we've taken the infant first aid and CPR class all there is now is the acutal birth. And did I mention that it's getting close?!!? Next month and Ill be a dad!!!

Please continue to pray for Anna and our son as he grows and developes in this final stage of pregnancy.

I'm running out of time

Anna had her first baby shower this past weekend in St. Louis with her family and friends. It was an incredible reminder of how loving and generous our friends and family are. Our spare bedroom/nursery has turned into somewhat of a staging area for all the things we have acquired so far. There is normal bedroom furniture in there now, since it was our spare room. There is also baby furniture that is waiting to be set up in there, and all the presents we have been given so far. I'm in the process of finishing our basement and then the bedroom furniture can go down there and I can get working on setting up the nursery. Today Anna and I are going over her lunch break to get a quote for carpet in the basement and set up a time to have in installed! Its all happening so fast and I'm running out of time. She is less than two months from her due date now and we have a lot to do. It is such an exciting time for us. Ill be putting the crib and bassinet together soon as well as, with Anna's help, decorating the nursery.


We had another doctors appointment yesterday and everything went well. The doctor said her weight gain and belly size are right on for where they should be at this stage. His heart rate was in the 140's and strong. As he is growing lately he is spending most of his time in his mothers ribs and making mildly uncomfortable for her to stand, sit or lay down. He punches and kicks and we can even see an elbow once in a while. I'm so proud of my son, hes still two months from being introduced to the world and is working on his mixed martial arts! Seriously though Anna, our son and I have been incredibly blessed by most of all God, and our friends and family during this pregnancy. We can not thank our friends and family enough for all the support and advice that they have given us during the past months. And we cant thank our family enough for their incredible support and generosity. Please keep Anna and the baby in your prayers and Ill update everyone soon!

Just a little side note, I am listening to the Ray Charles Christmas CD right now and I just heard the song "The Spirit of Christmas" and it made me think of the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation when Clark gets stuck in the attic and is watching the old projector and this song is playing... Then his family gets home and pulls the attic door open and he falls out of the attic. Im actually laughing out loud, thinking about it...

It's been a while...

I know it has been forever since I have posted anything on here and I have a totally legitimate reason for that and Ill explain it to you...


I was on holiday in South America kayaking unchartered rivers and their tributaries for two weeks when I was ambushed and taken hostage by pigmes! These were not your average South American pigmes, there were a very hostile bunch of Southern South American sprinting pigmes. They are very fast, so even though I can move at a pretty incredible pace I stood no chance when these little svages cornered me as I went ashore to clean up and grab a bite to eat. I fought with incredible tenacity but in the end there were just too many of them and they overcame me. I was hog tied and dragged back to their camp where I was caged up on display like a side of beef. It was very clear early on that I was going to be dinner for these half starved little savages. I needed to concoct a plan to get out unnoticed and get back to my kayak so that I could make a clean get away. Fortunatly for me I recognized that these particular group of Southern South American sprinting pigmes were descended from an ancient tribe of Argentinian pigmes. In my previous travels I had spent a month there one day so I was familiar with their language as well as physical set backs, mostly that they can not swim. I knew that if I was able to get to my kayak and get back on the water I was home free. After all of my captors had eaten and drank themselves to sleep I made a key for the lock to my cage out of a feather and some bat guano that were within reaching distance of my enclosure. I quietly picked the lock and let myself out. Quickly I located my trusty old kayak and made haste for the water. About two hundred yards away from the shore I heard footsteps barrelling down on me as I made my escape. It was then that I realized that I had startled a couple of them as I was taking leave from their and I was now in a foot race with these pigmes for the shore. I ran like I had never ran before and to my surprise I hit the water running a full two steps before my attackers. I quickly got situated into my seat and paddled out to the middle of the river where I was safe and sound.


That is the 100% true story of how I outran two Southern South American sprinting pigmes and saved my own life!


In all honesty Im just a terrible blogger. In the future I assure you that I will do a better job keeping everyone up to date on how Anna, myself and our future son are doing. As of now Anna is over seven months pregnant and as beautiful as ever! Everything has gone splendidly with the doctors appointments her and the baby are developing perfectly. We just got back into town from a great Thanksgiving in St. Louis with Anna's family and we are already looking forward to going back in about a month for Christmas! Please remember to keep Anna and our son in your prayers and I will write again soon!

IT'S A BOY

On Friday September 11th. Anna and I had the ultrasound doctors appointment. We got to look at our baby through the ultrasound and it was truly amazing. The doctor had her reasons for studying the ultrasound and that was to make sure everything she was looking at looked normal. She wanted to make sure that everything was proportionate as well as look for things like four chambers of the heart. She also saw the bladder and stomach and was able to tell us that the kidneys were functioning. She said that everything looked great! We also told her that if she was able to tell us we would like to know what the gender of our baby was. She was able to tell us, she is sure that we are having a BOY!

Since this is our first child we both had no expectations as far as gender. We just want a healthy child, male or female. To find out now and know that I am having a son sparks up all these fatherly feelings that I had never felt before. Now I know its a son that I can put with all these feelings that I am feeling. Now I can refer to the child as him instead of it or the child. I feel like the bonding process is starting already and we are still months away from the birth. The due date is February 5th and I have from now to then to continue my bonding with my son.

Please continue to pray for Anna and our future son as the pregnancy progresses that they both stay healthy and the baby continue to grow strong. Pray that Anna feels better every day and that this pregnancy be a tremendous blessing for both of us.

I'm a protector

The reality of being a father and all the responsibility that comes along with it has been on my mind lately. Soon I'm going to be responsible for someone who is 100% dependant on me for their survival. That is a role that I think I will thrive in, dependability is something I pride myself in. Responsibility is something I'm good at. I am a protector by nature. I have always been the protective type toward the people in my life that I care about. I have always put friends and family before myself, their well being ahead of my own.

When I was eight years old my mom and dad had my little brother, my only sibling. Other than the occasional beating he took from me, okay daily beating, I did my best to intervene on his behalf any time he found himself in trouble. I got into a handful of fights as a kid so that Steven wouldn't have to.

Now as a married man I have the responsibility of being the leader and protector of MY family. My wife and our future children are top on my list of things that I will protect now. I cant wait to raise our children and lead my family the best I can. Anna and I have been given a great template to follow based on how our parents raised us. More than that we have the example of our heavenly father. So if we can just instill those values that we've learned from our biological parents as well as the values that we follow from our heavenly father we will have done a great job.

There is going to come a time however when I wont be there to protect our children from possible dangers. I wont be there on the school bus someday when conversation goes to a place our children arent used to. I wont be there when our children are peer pressured by friends to smoke or drink. I wont be there someday when the pressure to have sex is brought up. The thought of these things could keep me awake at nights from now until the day I expire if I would let them. That is why the time we pour into our children when they are young is so important. The beliefs and morals that we hold highly will translate to them. That is why the people we surround ourselves and our children with when they are young is so important. I hope and pray that our children come to know Jesus as their personal lord and saviour at a young age. So when they do face these pressures at different times of their lives they are prepared and they know right from wrong and hopefully make the right decision.

Our pastor at Grace Community Church, Jim Brown, said in a sermon once that he wants the members of his church to be the type of people who will DEFAULT to prayer not worry when things get tough. In a time of despair we dont give up, we dont give in, we default to prayer and putting our faith in God. It's that motto that will help me sleep at night when our children are growing up.

Thank goodness

So the other day I sat down at my desk first thing in the morning and was going through my mail from the day before. I was opening a large manilla envelope that had some drawings in it that I needed to process some orders. As I was pulling the drawings out of the envelope I got a paper cut on my finger. (The above picture is not me, but it looked a lot like that) As I sat at my desk and clutched that paper cut finger with my other hand and complained, out loud, to the guy that I share my office with I thought to myself, "thank goodness I cant get pregnant." Anna tells me all the time about how I complain about the littlest things, and Ill admit Im kind of a baby when it comes to the small stuff. But I got to thinking about my wife and what she's going through right now. There was a time when Anna was about 9 weeks pregnant that she was AVERAGING throwing up 10 times a day for two weeks! Every time she ate, she threw up. Every time she woke up in the morning, she threw up. Every time she showered, she threw up. Just sitting at her desk at work, she would throw up. During all of this Anna very rarely got upset. She never got mad at her situation, she never cried. And Im sitting at my desk complaining about a paper cut. Now I must say that paper cut was very nasty and Im sure due to the sevarity of it I ran a serious risk of infection! That can lead to a loss of time accident from work and no one wants that.

Seriously though, I cant explain how proud I am of my wife for the discomfort and pain she deals with for our family. She does it with with grace and beauty and I find myself loving her more every day because of her toughness. We all know if this pregnancy were up to me to do, it would be a miserable nine months full of crying and self pitty.

Anna is over 18 weeks pregnant now, almost half way there! She is starting to show and looks radiant! Thank you so much Anna for doing this for our family. I love you and Im so proud that you are my wife!

Things are getting exciting!

We had our third appointment with our doctor yesterday! We got to hear our baby's heartbeat again and had the opportunity to ask any questions that have come up to this point. Our doctor found the heartbeat right away and it is an amazing thing to hear my child's heart beating from inside my wife. I heard it last month and was overwhelmed and again yesterday it was still just as overwhelming as the first time I heard it.

Our doctor also told us that within this next month Anna might start feeling the "fluttering" of the baby inside her. She also told us that about a month after Anna starts to feel it the baby is strong enough to be felt from the outside. Which means I'll be able to feel it! Anna and I are totally overjoyed by this blessing that has been given to us.

Also we scheduled the ultrasound for September 11th! Less than one month from being able to see our baby. At that time we have the choice of whether or not we want to find out the gender. We are still undecided but definitely leaning toward one decision. I wont put it out there yet what we are leaning towards, because I haven't asked Anna if it's okay to do that. So Ill update everyone when I ask. (I have learned how to avoid conflict). I think, just like hearing the heartbeat for the first time was overwhelming to me, actually seeing our baby in the ultrasound will be just as overwhelming.

God has truly blessed Anna and I with this baby, also with wonderful friends and family who have been more than supportive. Thank you everyone.