And the winner is...

After literally hours and hours and days and weeks and months of looking and searching and debating and arguing and fighting, not to mention all the pleading, begging, bribing, and threatening, Mark and I were FINALLY able to come up with a name -- HOORAY!! And not a moment too soon either, since it was decided upon the morning we intended to bless him.
So without further ado,
I would like to proudly announce the official name of our little boy

Hyrum Scott Viehweg



What a cutie!!!



Another good shot...



"With a wink and a smile..."

Yeah, I'm a "Twilighter"

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And yes, I was there at the midnight showing of the movie opening night (though I was severely disappointed).

On our current country affairs...

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams

Call for Help

As a follow-up to the last post...

our plan right now is to bless Baby X this Sunday. As previously stated, we are no closer to having a name for him than we were 7 months ago.
I am looking for a name that isn't weird, but uncommon; unique.
Mark is concerned about him getting beat up at school for having a funny name.
Suggestions?
Please?

A.K.A.

You'd think after 7 months of fore-knowledge we'd be a little more prepared to give this kid a name. Sadly, we're having to get really creative in what we call him because he still doesn't have one. Not that I didn't have a name for him. Oh I had one. I had it from the beginning. And I had plenty of back-ups. So did Mark. Unfortunately, none of the names I had made the list for Mark and vice versa.
So we're left with:
Brother
Baby Brother
Baby Boy
Little Boy
Little Boy Blue
My Son
Our Son
(at 2 am) Your Son
The Kid
The Baby
Him
Bundle o' Joy
Buddy
Kiddo
Heyyyyy, You
Baby X


Of course, if you ask Andrea she'll tell you,
"His name is Emmett. Mommy likes that name and Lacie and I like that name, but Daddy don't like that name."
Tell it like it is kid.

They love their daddy...

Anyone who has ever seen Mark with our girls knows that they have him absolutely wrapped around their fingers. It's not hard to see why when Andrea says things like,
"Daddy, when I have a scary dream I think of you, and it makes the scary things go away and I see pretty things."


Whenever Emmett starts crying Andrea gets concerned and tells him, "Don't cry baby brudder." Tonight as she was saying that I told her that when she was a baby she used to cry and cry and cry all the time - that she had a very bad tummy ache and no matter what I did, I didn't know how to make it better. She responded,
"But Daddy how-ed, and that's why he's Dr. Daddy."


Lacie: "I'm a princess and you are the king."
Mark: "You are a beautiful princess."
Lacie: "You are a beautiful king."

Hairy Beast

Just showing off the head of hair this kid has...





What you can't see is all the hair on his back. It's hilarious. There is so much and it's so long it actually looks like it could get tangled into knots.
Reminds me of nasty Italian men you see at beaches covered in masses of black hair while sporting itty bitty speedos. Ew.

The drama starts...

The day after we checked out of the delivering hospital we found ourselves back - this time in the ER. Turns out our little guy had jaundice bad enough that it was affecting his eating, which worsened the jaundice, which worsened the eating, and so on. As a result, we won a 4-day stay at the plush new Children's hospital up in Plano.



Little man got a nice simulation of a beach vacation



except that instead of roaming waiters serving drinks he had nurses every 3 hrs taking his vitals and poking his feet.



He didn't like that part much.

"Aren't you cute? Oh yes you are."

-Andrea










Yeah, we're all pretty proud of our little guy. Sadly, Andrea, and then later Lacie, got sick. So it's been real fun keeping the doting older sisters away from such a cute, new toy.

Andrea-ism

We unwittingly ran out of Lacie diapers, so in an act of desperation we decided to give potty-training a shot. We sat Lacie down on her little training potty and told her to see if she could go pee-pee. After a while without success she finally said,
"I can't. It's too hard!"
to which our seasoned vetran of the potty counseled her sister,
"That's because it takes practice."

He's here!!

At 1:34 am, Friday, November 7th we were blessed with the newest addition to our little clan. Weighing in at 7 lbs, 4.5 oz and 19 in. long, he has lots of dark, wavy hair and the faintest little cleft in his chin.



After a whole pregnancy of this kid playing mind games with me I shouldn't have been too surprised that he decided to pull some last-minute tricks on me with the labor and all.
Thursday afternoon, after a long day of errands and appointments, I was heading into the house when I suddenly wet my pants. (Yeah, the girls thought that was hysterical - "But Mommy, aren't you a big girl?") Since I normally have better bladder control than that, but since there was no flooding I figured I'd better call my doc.
Ironically, next on my to-do list was to call my doc -- to schedule being induced for the following Thursday, but to tell him I hadn't given up hope that I'd go into labor on my own before that Saturday morning (when he left for vacation) so that he could finally deliver one of my babies.
Turns out my hope paid off. My water had broken. But the little rascal wasn't ready to come out yet - the breakage didn't put me into labor.
Fortunately, that meant a pain-free ride to the hospital (though I do still agree Angela, driving myself there in rush-hour traffic probably would have been a bad idea. Thanks.).
Unfortunately, it meant a lot of waiting around.
Fortunately, I was able to get my epidural before I ever had horribly painful contractions.
Unfortunately, since I was so calm, the anesthesiologist figured it'd be okay to show me the needle -- holy crap.
Fortunately, he showed me after he had shoved what looked like a striped yardstick in my back.
Unfortunately, because it took so long for my body to finally kick into labor-mode, by the time it did, the epidural drugs were wearing thin.
Unfortunately, once my body kicked into labor-mode I went from a '5' to a '10' in FIFTEEN MINUTES.
Unfortunately, I felt every bit of it.
Unfortunately, due to my previous lack of progress, the nurse had called my doc and told him not to come to the hospital, but to enjoy a night of rest at home.
Unfortunately, as a result, I was told not to cough, laugh or sneeze for fear I'd push the baby out before the doc could get there.

Fortunately, miraculously, the anesthesiologist arrived, my doc arrived, 2 1/2 pushes later our baby boy arrived, and there was much rejoicing through-out the land. Hooray!



As you can see, the girls are both thrilled to be big sisters.

My take on it

So I've been reading a lot about the aftermath of Prop 8. I guess it's a little hard to miss. Anyway, it's made me think about a lot of things. One thing is what I would say to an "opponent" so that it wasn't an ugly confrontation. Another is how I would explain WHY it's so important to me that the definition of marriage isn't changed - WHY I would be for "denying" the gay community that right - WHY I could be so "intolerant."
Here is what I came up with:
On the road we have bikers and we have car drivers. Both like to drive on the road. And we have laws & rules to make sure that the bikers are allowed safe passage on the road while at the same time not interrupting auto traffic.
Now, imagine if suddenly all the bikers demanded "equal rights" to all the roadways - like the freeways. If they wanted to be able to use the freeways and have every right as the cars, well, obviously that would be a mess. See, bikes are not cars. No matter how good of a biker you are, not even Lance Armstrong can bike 60 mph, let alone keep up with freeway traffic. It's a bike. No engine. Pedals. Self-propelled. IT IS NOT A CAR.
So that is how I look at the marriage thing. I don't want to see anyone not get to have rights to a patient in the hospital because they are the domestic partner and not blood or marriage related. I do think that's wrong along with a whole bunch of other equally wrong scenarios. But that's why they have the code in California law that allows for those rights. Just like the bikers on the road.
BUT if you try to say that because you can ride on one road that all of a sudden you should have the RIGHT to drive on EVERY road now -- well, not so good. Marriage is not a right. It is an institution given by God that the government recognizes. God set the parameters, not us. Not the government. Not the socially affluent of the world. And as soon as you start messing with that you're essentially putting yourself up there with God. Not cool in my eyes. Nor in God's for that matter. Regardless of the fact that yes, He does love everyone.
But really, if he meant for anyone to be able to be married, he would have provided for anyone to have kids together as well.
So as far as I am concerned, once Bill and Steve are able to procreate I will take that as God's blessing on gay marriage. Until then, bikes are not cars.