Mountain Ranges of Pain

So if you are going to make an insightful comment drawing a comparison between the contractions graph thing and the Tetons mountain range (a place both Molly and I love by the way. I am sure she caught this subtle reference to a previous vacation early in our relationship), it is best to make that astute observation at a "mountain valley" and not at a "summit."

This post would like to thank our corporate partners Dell Computers for this product placement.

Have to run, apparently I have to make the hot packs. And why do I have insurance? Although the ice cream cart is a nice benefit.

OK one last thought....someone should make Princeton-themed hospital gowns. What better time than to assert your Princeton affiliation than when you are naked and surrounded by doctors? It's just like Reunions.

Ice Chips or Ice Cream?

Um, hi. Can you keep your contractions-based gasps to a minimum so I can enjoy my ice cream? thanks.

No Need for Worry....

I was able to get some lunch. Many thanks for your concern. Oh, Molly is still eating ice chips....i think she may have an eating disorder. This is no time for body issues.

Just In Time!

Talk about last minute Larry....perhaps all this baby was waiting for was a little blog-love. The showdown is GOING DOWN. Feel free to use the "comfort chart" in your daily life. I am about an 8 right now since I've not had lunch. Thanks for asking. We got here around 9:00a.m. and they are predicting a 3ish delivery. I hope it doesnt come during "Days of our Lives" as I hate to have my programs interrupted. Love how Molly is doing last minute cramming for the new baby! At least his/her first view will be put together toes courtesy of Pink Nails, our corporate sponsor.

Finn Hears Footsteps!

I will admit that I've been a little delinquent. Let's get everyone up to speed. And by everyone, I mean me since most readers expect a blog to be updated more than once a year, and no one can still be reading this blog. So, Finn stopped eating Capt'n Crunch and grew up. He is now an insurance salesman/fantasty role playing gamer living in Fresno, California. Ok, so it hasn't been quite that long, but he has flown once to Omaha, Nebraska and twice to Charlotte, North Carolina. He has had another birthday, moved to Lawrenceville, had multiple swims in the ocean, and gone through numerous cliched little boy obsessions. Wow Finn, you love dinosaurs and trucks? How interesting are you?!

The other big news is that he has a sibling coming literally any minute/day. Molly is past her due date by a few days so we are in the red zone. I tried desparately for a 10/10/10 birth but no luck. Perhaps if Molly had accepted my offer to go horseback riding this morning...

So, in a last minute half-hearted effort to thinly mask over the classic second child syndrome, I plan to add some content and give the new baby a bit of ink s/he can call all his own. So, here are updated photos of Finn. The first is from the pool at Spring Lake this summer, and the second is Finn standing on B.o.B's guitar case at his Princeton concert. Based on that show, Finn really got into dancing to the song "Magic." If i learn how to put video clips up we have great footage of some very serious kitchen dancing. The top picture is a shot of the new baby taking his first push from a threatened older sibling. Enjoy!

O Captain My Cap'n!

As part of an inside joke during our trip to Boston, Sheherazade was kind enough to buy me a bit of the "forbidden fruit" otherwise known as Cap'n Crunch. Anyone who knows me well also knows this particular cereal played an almost mythic role in my childhood. Our family would go grocery shopping only once a month at the army base BX about 45 minutes from our house. The one "child concession" was a single box of Cap'n Crunch. In an unregulated state, the cereal would cause us kids to get up at 3:30am in order to have bowls of cereal before the competing siblings could scarf it down. Many fights in footsie pajamas followed suit. As a peace-keeping measure, we ended up getting a ration of our share of the cereal in a cleaned-out Country Crock butter tub (this was the early '80s; the recycling involved was revolutionary). My goal was to successfully hide my ration --the crawl space was my go-to spot-- and then roll out weeks later with my Cap'n goodness while my greedy siblings, who had long ago eaten their rations, had to sit silently, glowering into their bowls of Shredded Wheat. Nice. Revenge is a dish served in little yellow squares.

As a kid, my dream of adulthood was a pantry full of Cap'n... Crunch Berries, Original, Peanut Butter, all good. I never factored a Molly-figure putting a ban on this and filling the house with Special K and Cheerios. As luck would have it, Molly left town right after we got home from Boston. So it was just Finn, me, and a box of the good stuff. As the saying goes, "When the cat is away, the mice will play." It is with great paternal pride that Finn's first sugary food was Cap'n Crunch. Let the long glorious road to food addiction begin...

I think I'll go to Boston, where no one knows my name

After listening to Augustana's "Boston" all summer, we decided to take Finn to our favorite city in America and show him what all the flowery pop magic was about... the song also briefly mentions Spain, but we couldn't financially swing that and Finn doesn't have a passport. We got to catch up with our good friends David and Sheherazade, who headed north after David got his PhD this last fall. Apparently, even PhD recipients still move themselves with milk crates full of dishes and such, and even illegally re-paint their apartments to salvage their security deposits. I guess old grad student habits die hard. Moving into their post-student lives, they now have a beautiful apartment in Cambridge and they were kind enough to invite us for a visit. We had a great time walking around Cambridge, and David gave Finn a lesson about roses and thorns (literally not figuratively). We had a fantastic dinner at the Helmand, an Afghan restaurant not far from their apartment. One side benefit was that none of the staff nor patrons batted an eye at us bringing a baby in for a 9:30 pm dinner... I guess that is how they roll in Afghanistan (or at least Afghan restaurants.)

We also went to the Science Center where the big attraction is a new butterfly habitat. Turns out that Finn really likes butterflies... he likes to crush them in his little fat baby hands. It's a tough blow to humanely capture a butterfly in a Peruvian rain forest, ship it all the way to Boston, await the detainment period in customs (yes, our government detains butterflies to ensure they are not part of a bio-terrorism plot) only to be crushed by a drooling, over zealous infant with a bewilderingly large head. We got Baby Dahmer out of there and checked out the other parts of the center, and Finn loved the exhibits. He equally loved the elevator in the parking garage so I am not sure we should put too much into these early signs of a love for science.

On Sunday we got to visit the Roethkes who live and work at Milton Academy. The place looks far more like a college than a high school... amazing facilities, beautiful historic campus, quaint New England neighborhood. We had brunch and then Finn hung out with Davis and played with some of his music toys. I think the boys bonded and Davis even gave Finn a hug before he took off for Nantucket. We got in the car and headed back to New Jersey, which I think is often called the Nantucket of the mid-Atlantic. Yes, it's that nice here in the Garden State... scrimshaw baskets and turnpike tolls for everyone!