Category: Family

First, I want to thank everyone that has been praying for Stephanie and me. I know that a lot of you out there care a great deal about us and we know your prayers have been with us. Stephanie is still on bed rest. We have a follow up appointment for her blood pressure this Friday and today we take Lexi to her first doctor’s appointment.

When we had Zander, Stephanie did the overnight feedings. She is a stay at home mom and has always been great about letting me sleep so that I could get up for work the next day. There were many women that commented that I should help with the over night stuff and my favorite – “she doesn’t get the day off while you are at work, so why should you get the night off?” I usually replied with something like “And I don’t get to take a three hour nap in the middle of the day – she sleeps when baby sleeps – I sleep when my boss does”. Stephanie changed most of the diapers, handled most of the feedings, and allowed me to (for the most part) just enjoy Zander. But this time – she is on bed rest…

Stephanie’s mom is here and she has been wonderful in helping with meals and cleaning and Zander. We’ve also had several meals provided by members of our church. Just last night, we had the best chicken pot pie meal I have ever had – which included salad, rolls, and a desert cake (Thank you, Connie)! The outreach has been grand and help me realize that family doesn’t stop with people who share your last name. Still with Stephanie being on bed rest, I’ve been up for many of the over night feedings, I’ve changed more diapers this week with Lexi than I think I did with Zander for the first three months. I’ve washed bottles, done laundry, attempted to clean (although I don’t do the same quality job Stephanie would do), and this time around we have a three year old to keep engaged in non-destructive activities! On top of all of that, I’ve had to go back to work this week.

My job however has been wonderful, in that I’m allowed to work from home while Stephanie is on bed rest – a blessing most people do not get. It’s still difficult to stay on a conference call while your three year old is yelling, “Daddy, come play with me” or “I have to go uckies!” – Or trying to explain that the last instant message was from my son and not me, I would never have typed “fjsdaklnzxvzxnasvaiqvfasdiqa dasl;fdasnsd” and I don’t know what it means.

Being Mr Mom is hard work! I know there are women out there that love to comment during times like these, “Now you’ll appreciate your wife more” or “See, its tougher than you thought”, but comments like that suggest that I didn’t already appreciate my wife or that I thought her job was easy. I’ll try not to come back with “try writing a script to install the new version of drivers that will work on linux and windows” or “if you think that’s tough, trying building a virtual server that time syncs with the database server so your application doesn’t crash on reboot”. I’ll try to hold those comments back, because my wife’s job is tough and she deserves the recognition regardless of whether or not my day job is tough too. I’m not as good at it as she is, but God (and Grammie Shorey) are helping me pull though while Stephanie gets better.