Welcome Completion

Welcome to A!  He was born five weeks early on 7/28/02 at 7:23 p.m. after a quick and easy labor.  He weighed 6 1/2 pounds and measured 18" long, with dark hair and features that are his own.  We all did great and our family of four was home napping together the next morning.

In these days of decreasing privacy and Internet access, I am conscious of how much of myself and my family I am putting onscreen for anyone, everyone to view.  What do I wish people to know about me?  What do I want to give away of the shape of my life?  How much faith do I have in the average viewer and how much do I believe I could be a victim?  I give out the address for these pages with nearly every e-mail I write.  My goal is to give my friends access to my thoughts, pictures, and my life in a way that the Internet renders possible; snapshots of those times when I am updating my pages.  C's solution is to let me maintain a homepage and pictures of the kids, and to update a page of his own accessible only on his computer.  He is much happier to type in addresses he remembers than maintain a page of links.  I will be changing my pages as I reflect on the answers to the questions above, and as I find time with two kids under two and the passel of other things on my to do list.  That I am writing here at all is a success of unseen proportions.

But of course this is important, and I do want to tell the world.  We have a new baby and we are proud!  He is wonderful, beautiful, healthy, strong, smart.....

I am very happy.  It feels as though we have completed our family - dog, cat, parents, and 2 kids.  I look forward to someday games of hearts and pinochle, family vacations and sharing the dish-washing.  For now I have two in diapers and a sibling relationship to foster, activities to resume (hiking, running), and a fabulously supportive community from my new FP doc to the AP group to my mom's knowledge and hands for seven whole weeks.  C's work has been long and exhausting for him of late.  He is the one who is under pressure to support our growing family so that I can mother at home.  He is the one who wants to be a proud employee, an involved daddy, and a healthy adult in addition to spouse, son, friend, brother, etc. etc.  So we juggle and try out different things - biking to work helps, and we have put our tv away for awhile.  I think he's doing a great job, but it is hard.

I do wish that I were writing more than I am.  Mostly because I am so aware that the times I am living will not come again.  The cute or amazing things that B says and does now will not be remembered if I do not write them down.  A will have less of a record of his beginnings than even his brother if I can not find the time to write somehow.  I don't plan to ever be pregnant or give birth again and the somatic experience is even now slipping away.  So, somehow, I will see what I can do, carve somehow deeper into my days for the time at pen and paper.

I hope you have found this and are enlightened or amused or perhaps moved to write back in some fashion.

Be well,
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