Miscellany

A Tour of Today

Danny and I have been sick for a few days. Sound familiar? This morning I fed him, and he fell right back asleep without so much as a burp. So I went with it. And the rest of today went about like that. Feed the baby, snuggle, repeat. It was that wonderful sort of day that didn't require much of me. A good Oregon day with lots of rain. 

Here is the rainy plum tree outside our bedroom. There are tiny purple buds on it. This pleases me.

Here is the sleepy babe now.

I love today.

 And here is the coffee table Jesse made us. I've enjoyed all of its stages. He's going to stain the top and paint the rest white. I'm in love.

Here is our house. Backward a la Photo Booth. 

 And here is my favorite corner of our house. I spend a lot of time in this chair. Good thing Jesse paid no attention to my eyerolls when he showed up on the porch with it. It's the most comfortable chair.

Little Bear is rumbling. Feed, snuggle, repeat.

Sweet as Pie

I know that this blog is only nominally a joint venture. I, Jesse, fit into the blogging world best as an occasional side picture or humorous anecdote. I try to know my place in an increasingly female dominated medium (sorry James, but Val has been out-doing you for a long time).

But sometimes a man needs to be heard. Or read.

I feel the need to put down in this blog that I have the world's best woman. That's right. Kathleen is a broad for the ages.

We got married in a haze. 

Dating forever (I was emotionally scatter-brained). 

Then not dating for months (5-8 months, depending on which of us is telling the story). 

Then engaged.

And three months later, married.

This was our first place, and we were so clueless.

This is my new bride helping out the Troll in Norway. Or Epcot.

 And this is Kathleen in our beautiful Rexburg with our stupid dog, Jud. 

We had amazing summers here. This is also around the time that we discovered our infertility. These were some of the greatest and hardest years.

We played in the Rockies. 

 And Kathleen got stuck on the jungle gym.

 And we did theater together. This is her playing the lead in Oklahoma!

She hated that dress.

We both learned how to deal with a medical condition that is common, but often goes unspoken. We were heartbroken. We got angry. And we both tried to learn how to replace something we never were given in the first place. 

 We graduated from college.

We went to Hawai'i.

After graduating, we moved from Rexburg to Oregon, and then from Oregon to Washington. We were in our third year of infertility,and the people around us began to wonder why we weren't starting a family. 

People gave advice. Lots of it. We were told to stop trying and it would happen. We smiled and nodded, and then in a pile with Jud and Molly on our bed, with what might be the closest thing we would have to kids, we cried and loved each other more than we thought possible. 

We held close and tried to figure out our future. I couldn't decide whether to be a doctor--something that made great financial sense, but my heart was only in 80%--or a teacher--something that made no financial sense, but something that I knew I was meant to do. Whatever the choices were, I was blessed with something to distract me from things for which I no longer had the strength to hope.

And all this time, Kathleen did what she could to find the place where she could be who she was meant to be. We watched a mom die, grateful to the end for the children she was blessed to find. I remember her hugging Kathleen and telling her that one of the things she regretted was that she never got to meet our kids. She told us to tell them that their Grandmother loved them, long before they were born. 

Kathleen and I never seemed to find a place to plant, so we went on to the next step. Infertility surgery. We were done with the anger, but the sadness became like a cold that we couldn't shake. With the surgery came hope, and it was great to hope again. And when it didn't work, we didn't dwell. We wiped our noses and got Master's degrees. In England. Cause that's what normal people do (when they are seeking distraction).

 So we went to England.

 and Italy,

 and Ireland,

and Scotland,

and France,

and Slovenia.

And we learned to love other people's kids.

 

We came home with best friends. And Kathleen amazed me more than ever. 

We decided that it was worth an all or nothing. So we went through In vitro. Kathleen, by necessity, bore the brunt of the procedures and pain. 

She was brave and beautiful.

I was mostly me.

And again, it didn't work.

On Christmas, when she surprised me with adoption papers, I knew that if I had a thousand years with just her, I would be the luckiest man on earth. And the oldest probably.

And then we tried one more time, knowing that it would be the last time. And Kathleen started getting four shots a day, in the muscle, delivered by me. And she rocked. She had the procedure, and we waited.

On my 29th birthday, she surprised me by throwing me out of a hot-air balloon.

And that night we found out we were pregnant.

(I am going to pay for this one.)

Kathleen was awesome through it all.

And when the little guy came six weeks early, she never missed a step.

 She is the bravest person I know. She was more than amazing. She was a mother. 

I waited for six years to see this face. 

And I can't wait to teach our son that his mother is what the good Lord intended a woman to be: loving, caring, beautiful and daring, brave and true.

Like I said, a broad for the ages.

 I don't even mind sharing her.

Especially with this guy!

Christmas '12