So Chloe and I have explained this elsewhere in some version or other, but we essentially adopted a newborn with no notice. We matched 9/10/19 with a birth mom who was due in mid-October. Planned a trip up to SD from OK to meet her briefly at the end of September and then have a few weeks to get things in order at home. Certainly not the same as having nine months to mentally and physically prepare, but 5-6 weeks is something anyways.
Drove to Omaha and stayed at my mom's one night, the plan for the next day was to drive to Pierre, have lunch with birth mom and agency rep, then turn around and stay in Sioux Falls that night. Back to Tulsa the next day. Two nights, three days of driving in service of a lunch at Perkins, but it was going to be worth it.
About 40 minutes out of Pierre on our way up, we get a call, birth mom had a OB appointment that morning and they'd decided they were going to induce that night. I don't remember what the reasoning was for the early exit, but it wasn't super-duper worrisome on its own. What was worrisome was suddenly being in SD with three days worth of warm weather clothing (extra day of clothes to be prepared, right?), the "small" vehicle, precisely zero baby stuff in hand, and an indefinite stay in South Dakota staring us in the face.
Between calling workplaces, calling soon-to-be grandparents, and rearranging hotel reservations on the fly (turns out some hunting season or other starts 10/1 in SD, and all the hotels in Pierre suddenly fill up to capacity), we had to come to terms with having no prep time at all. Also the Perkins was closed for remodeling so that was a bummer.
24 hours of waiting and bouncing between the hotel and hospital and watching Gameday in Lincoln for the first time in years and for some reason the Huskers didn't even play a game that night (cit.needed) and suddenly Chloe was texting me from the delivery room where she was holding our son.
Thence followed a couple more nights in Pierre and three weeks in Sioux Falls (it has a Target!) waiting for permission to leave the state without it being considered trafficking.
In the meantime, one of our neighbors had a spare key and had been checking our front patio for deliveries while we were gone. The good people of the internet sent us something like $5k worth of baby gear while we were gone. Filled the living room from top to bottom.
I don't know why I'm typing this all out aside from some mild attention-whoring I guess, but those three weeks stuck in a Hampton Inn "suite" with an actual factual newborn, trotting him down to the lobby to watch football on TV in a different room from time to time, exploring a bunch of touristy crap in Sioux Falls that I'd never have seen otherwise, just having him around 24-7 was the scariest, most stressful, most joyful time in my life. Kids are great.
People are like trees; every year a new ring of growth on the outside, but all the previous years are still there on the inside. We're just a little bit bigger and studier, with all the same branches and scars as the year before.
Whew. Terror is an interesting emotion at first meeting, isn't it? When my daughter was born they handed her to me and pushed me out of the room so they could concentrate on saving my wife's life (which they did). Spent the first half hour of my daughter's life terrified that we were doing this thing alone. Parenthood is good for creating new categories of fear.
Do you ever get out of the schizophrenia where you miss when they were younger, never want them to age, but can’t wait for the things you can do with them when they’re older?
Like, my daughter’s coming up on a year (thank you for the “it gets better”, it is needed), and I miss the cuddle bug stage, love her just now saying Dada, but can’t wait for her to be old enough that I can read her Harry Potter and do all the voices, and go to Disney, etc. Wanting three things that are aggressively at odds with one another quickly becomes an Austin Powers “Oh no, I’ve gone crosseyed” situation.
Oh sure, Scott. Do this to me the week after I came across an entire trove of old photos from the late 1990s when doing some cleaning. I had finally cured my dust problems, and then you have to go and do this.
Today is my daughter's second birthday (it gets better, but more complicated). I remember when I first laid eyes on her in the doctor's arm and as she was passed to get weighed and checked before she was placed in my arms. I don't think the terror set in until I was driving all of us home in sheets of driving rain down I-395 at rush hour. Perfect time for everything to hit: fatherhood, responsibility, the fact my wife almost died (another story for another day), my daughter's health issue (which is now better/fixed?, again another story on the greatness and terror of modern medicine), it's pouring rain and people want to go 8000mph. But we made it and 2 years later I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I take a lot of silly videos and pictures just so I can go back in the evenings and look at how far we've made it and remember those days when she was first walking, babbling, smiling, experiencing the world for the first time. It's still magical and that's the important thing I think, as long as it's magical to her Im good.
This is exactly, exactly the thing no one tells you about being a parent -- that you get to have a kind of "second childhood," or at least to see what it's like through different eyes. So, so true.
I mean this with the utmost respect, but "Damnit Scott!" I know that emotional hook is coming every time and every time I keep reading, pushing through all this extra moisture that appears in my eyes each time.
Well. Huh. This was an interesting one to read sitting next to my dad while I’m visiting (and seeing) him for the first time in 2 years. I don’t have kids, but the passage of time also seems to become a hostile force after your folks turn 65 or so. I find myself vacillating wildly between “we’re so lucky to have this time together” and, channelling Ziggy Marvin, “I’m going to die. You’re going to die.”
We just wrapped up a week's visit with my parents, our first trip north in about four years. It was great to see my 12 year old getting up early to help his grandma make breakfast, our youngest curled up on her grandfather's lap, both desperately fighting against the heavy eyelids after a long day. Just wonderful. I soaked it all in, knowing that before long, the kids would be too old to enjoy such simple pleasures. They didn't know that these peaceful moments were treasured memories, they were just what one does on a lazy Thursday.
Well, everything was wrapped up, the car was packed for our trek to the airport, and after hugs and well wishes for safe travel, you know there had to be a fight over who opened the door and got to leave first. Mom intervened, and forbade children from the entryway, and I felt compelled to apologize to my dad for all the years I did the same with my sister.
So Chloe and I have explained this elsewhere in some version or other, but we essentially adopted a newborn with no notice. We matched 9/10/19 with a birth mom who was due in mid-October. Planned a trip up to SD from OK to meet her briefly at the end of September and then have a few weeks to get things in order at home. Certainly not the same as having nine months to mentally and physically prepare, but 5-6 weeks is something anyways.
Drove to Omaha and stayed at my mom's one night, the plan for the next day was to drive to Pierre, have lunch with birth mom and agency rep, then turn around and stay in Sioux Falls that night. Back to Tulsa the next day. Two nights, three days of driving in service of a lunch at Perkins, but it was going to be worth it.
About 40 minutes out of Pierre on our way up, we get a call, birth mom had a OB appointment that morning and they'd decided they were going to induce that night. I don't remember what the reasoning was for the early exit, but it wasn't super-duper worrisome on its own. What was worrisome was suddenly being in SD with three days worth of warm weather clothing (extra day of clothes to be prepared, right?), the "small" vehicle, precisely zero baby stuff in hand, and an indefinite stay in South Dakota staring us in the face.
Between calling workplaces, calling soon-to-be grandparents, and rearranging hotel reservations on the fly (turns out some hunting season or other starts 10/1 in SD, and all the hotels in Pierre suddenly fill up to capacity), we had to come to terms with having no prep time at all. Also the Perkins was closed for remodeling so that was a bummer.
24 hours of waiting and bouncing between the hotel and hospital and watching Gameday in Lincoln for the first time in years and for some reason the Huskers didn't even play a game that night (cit.needed) and suddenly Chloe was texting me from the delivery room where she was holding our son.
Thence followed a couple more nights in Pierre and three weeks in Sioux Falls (it has a Target!) waiting for permission to leave the state without it being considered trafficking.
In the meantime, one of our neighbors had a spare key and had been checking our front patio for deliveries while we were gone. The good people of the internet sent us something like $5k worth of baby gear while we were gone. Filled the living room from top to bottom.
I don't know why I'm typing this all out aside from some mild attention-whoring I guess, but those three weeks stuck in a Hampton Inn "suite" with an actual factual newborn, trotting him down to the lobby to watch football on TV in a different room from time to time, exploring a bunch of touristy crap in Sioux Falls that I'd never have seen otherwise, just having him around 24-7 was the scariest, most stressful, most joyful time in my life. Kids are great.
People are like trees; every year a new ring of growth on the outside, but all the previous years are still there on the inside. We're just a little bit bigger and studier, with all the same branches and scars as the year before.
Whew. Terror is an interesting emotion at first meeting, isn't it? When my daughter was born they handed her to me and pushed me out of the room so they could concentrate on saving my wife's life (which they did). Spent the first half hour of my daughter's life terrified that we were doing this thing alone. Parenthood is good for creating new categories of fear.
Man, you gotta stop doing this- everyone in the brewery is calling me the Crying Guy in the Lab.
I CAN’T HANDLE THIS TODAY, SCOTT
I have the exceedingly rare, “Kids Are at Daycare but I’m off of Work” day, and THIS is how I have to start it?!
Do you ever get out of the schizophrenia where you miss when they were younger, never want them to age, but can’t wait for the things you can do with them when they’re older?
Like, my daughter’s coming up on a year (thank you for the “it gets better”, it is needed), and I miss the cuddle bug stage, love her just now saying Dada, but can’t wait for her to be old enough that I can read her Harry Potter and do all the voices, and go to Disney, etc. Wanting three things that are aggressively at odds with one another quickly becomes an Austin Powers “Oh no, I’ve gone crosseyed” situation.
Scott, I am trying to work. God damn.
Scott, you are history's greatest monster.
Oh sure, Scott. Do this to me the week after I came across an entire trove of old photos from the late 1990s when doing some cleaning. I had finally cured my dust problems, and then you have to go and do this.
Today is my daughter's second birthday (it gets better, but more complicated). I remember when I first laid eyes on her in the doctor's arm and as she was passed to get weighed and checked before she was placed in my arms. I don't think the terror set in until I was driving all of us home in sheets of driving rain down I-395 at rush hour. Perfect time for everything to hit: fatherhood, responsibility, the fact my wife almost died (another story for another day), my daughter's health issue (which is now better/fixed?, again another story on the greatness and terror of modern medicine), it's pouring rain and people want to go 8000mph. But we made it and 2 years later I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I take a lot of silly videos and pictures just so I can go back in the evenings and look at how far we've made it and remember those days when she was first walking, babbling, smiling, experiencing the world for the first time. It's still magical and that's the important thing I think, as long as it's magical to her Im good.
This is exactly, exactly the thing no one tells you about being a parent -- that you get to have a kind of "second childhood," or at least to see what it's like through different eyes. So, so true.
I mean this with the utmost respect, but "Damnit Scott!" I know that emotional hook is coming every time and every time I keep reading, pushing through all this extra moisture that appears in my eyes each time.
Well. Huh. This was an interesting one to read sitting next to my dad while I’m visiting (and seeing) him for the first time in 2 years. I don’t have kids, but the passage of time also seems to become a hostile force after your folks turn 65 or so. I find myself vacillating wildly between “we’re so lucky to have this time together” and, channelling Ziggy Marvin, “I’m going to die. You’re going to die.”
Middle age is stupid.
We just wrapped up a week's visit with my parents, our first trip north in about four years. It was great to see my 12 year old getting up early to help his grandma make breakfast, our youngest curled up on her grandfather's lap, both desperately fighting against the heavy eyelids after a long day. Just wonderful. I soaked it all in, knowing that before long, the kids would be too old to enjoy such simple pleasures. They didn't know that these peaceful moments were treasured memories, they were just what one does on a lazy Thursday.
Well, everything was wrapped up, the car was packed for our trek to the airport, and after hugs and well wishes for safe travel, you know there had to be a fight over who opened the door and got to leave first. Mom intervened, and forbade children from the entryway, and I felt compelled to apologize to my dad for all the years I did the same with my sister.
But seriously, this was beautifully written and touching, and I don't even have kids.