It was a Friday afternoon June 10th, 2011 at 3:22 p.m. that I heard the first of many cries from my son’s tiny lungs. He was 9 pounds, 4 ounces, and 20 inches long and already lifting his head and almost turning himself over in protest of the nurses attempts to measure and bathe him.

That was the day that more than two years of tears and prayers came to a culmination and began the long wonderful road of parenthood.

I am so proud of my amazing, beautiful wife’s strength of spirit and body. She labored for most of 14 or so hours naturally, without aid of any sort of drugs. However, we had been up for close to 32 hours and she was becoming exhausted. Because the pregnancy was progressing extremely slowly and we were afraid she wouldn’t have any energy left to push, we had her water broken to speed things up. Once we did the contractions became so fierce and close together that she was having a hard time catching her breath between them. She was exhausted. I was exhausted. I had been up with her through every contraction (barring a couple during which I actually had to do a password reset for work) making sure she had a shoulder on which to lean. And it was at this point that she acquiesced to a dose of stadol to allow her a modicum of reprieve.

She will be the first to state that labor wasn’t *that* bad. And I’ll agree to the degree that I can — it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be. However I will say this: it wouldn’t have gone nearly as well if we hadn’t had our dear friend Erin with us, helping and advising us. She acted as our Doula and was our voice when we were too overwhelmed to get the nurses to listen to our wishes. The voice of experience, friendship, and definitely love helped my wife through the worst of the pain and frustration. We are both so grateful for her help.

We’re also very grateful for all the prayers and kind words that we’ve received before, during, and after the birth.

The thought that God has given us this gift and responsibility all rolled into such a beautiful, tiny package is daunting, but I’m excited about it. I’m definitely looking forward to getting to teach him so much and to watch him grow up. Just don’t grow up too fast Wayne.

Meet Wayne!

Our subject for this year are various dreams in the bible. When thinking of dreaming for some reason I got the image of the Amazon Kindle logo and decided to go with that concept. Yeah, the tree is pretty much a direct rip-off, but I think it works well.

The most repetitive and frustrating part of my job is having to install commonly used programs. Very often it’s antivirus programs or updates to Adobe Reader, Java, Silverlight… etc. And getting the software has never been a fun, or easy task. You have to go to the different websites for each of these programs. Find the correct download page. Then spend a good deal of time reading most of that page trying to sift through the random download links and buttons that always seem to be in a different spot each time that you go looking for them.

Once you’ve found and downloaded the setup file, then there’s the actual install. You have to click next at least 10 times for each program and make certain that you’re not installing some random toolbar or unwanted software along with the one you actually need. (This is becoming more common; which, in my opinion, should be illegal to have it default to install.)

Maybe I’m whining a bit, but when you do this as often as I do it all this becomes extremely time consuming and annoying.

That is until a friend of mine showed me the wonders of the Ninite website.

This is a basic website that allows you to choose from a list of commonly used programs and click a download button that will send you a single install file. The install file will download the latest version of the software without any add-ons or toolbars and install it with little user interaction. I’ve been using it for several months now and it makes setting up a new computer a breeze.

::Ninite.com::

Since my first (and until this one, only) post here about our pregnancy was during our 10th week, I figured it would be appropriate to make a post with less than 10 weeks to go.

Things have gone absolutely wonderfully since that post. All that worry was worthless and Jesus tells us so in his Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 6:27

Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

But it’s still hard to make it go away. It wasn’t until we had several doctor’s visits and an ultrasound or two that I started really getting excited. Of course, feeling him kick helps a lot too. Last night I was actually able to distinguish FEET! It’s an awesome feeling!

Everyone is constantly commenting on how our lives are going to change as if we weren’t already acutely aware of it. I know that we cannot comprehend exactly how drastic the change is until after the baby comes, but we are human, we understand (albeit sometimes fear) change. My life changed drastically when I graduated from High School and when I quit college and got that full-time job. Being laid off numerous times were intense changes as well, not to mention meeting and marrying the love of my life.

Yes I know change rather intimately, and honestly normally I don’t like it.

However I’m looking forward to this one.

Counting toes and fingers, changing diapers, teaching him how to speak and walk. Teaching him how deep God’s love is for him. These are a mere handful of the changes I know are coming. And yes, I know that not all of the changes are going to be pleasant. But y’know… I’m thrilled about them all.

Bring on the change!

Less than 10 weeks left.

Please keep my dad and the members of the congregation at the Gugeegue church of Christ in your prayers for the next couple of weeks. He’s leaving tomorrow morning March 17 at 6:30am for a 15 day trip to the Marshall Islands. He will be speaking there as part of the Gospel meeting they are having and working on repairing the building’s leaky roof. He will be returning March 31st.

My dad’s specific request for prayers is this: “I ask for your prayers that all of the obstacles Satan tries to put in our way to helping this congregation will be removed, that we will be successful in our teaching, our construction efforts, and in our travel.”

There is a blog that should have up to date information on the Gospel Meeting as it is going on: nothertz.blogspot.com

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