And We're Back...I think? What time is it?

The other day Amy and I had one of those moments when you just have to laugh, or else.   The gravity of our current context was pushing down on our shoulders with relentless force as we realized the situation that we are continuing again from the beginning....PARENTHOOD!  Yup, before I go knee deep into the details of poopy diapers and sleepless nights, I should make a formal announcement to all of the watching world...that God has blessed us with many more months of sleepless nights, Oh no I mean a beautiful and healthy baby girl.  We became parents of two last Thursday and have been enjoying mostly every moment of it.

Our baby girl graced us with her presence just after Amy and the doctor had posted her eviction notice the day before.  Since she was overdue and expected to be a "pleasant" sized baby the doctors kindly encouraged us to consider inducing labor before it was too late.  So out of persuasion and the desire to see and hold our little girl we scheduled her to be induced Thursday at 8am.  Little did we know that just as we would turn into bed Wednesday evening, Amy would look over at me and smile the last of her beautiful smiles for a time as she jubilantly and somewhat hesitantly told me that her water had just broken.......and what follows next was both a scene from a movie and a miracle in its own right.  Once Amy's water broke contractions hit hard and fast....something like 3 minutes apart and only about .5 to 1 minute in between.  This was the real thing, no more false labor! The challenge at this point was that since we had so many episodes of false labor, we had just sent Amy's folks home for the evening...and it was now 10:45 pm.  Our little boy was fast asleep in his bed and we didn't want to wake him and add to the trauma that was already besiging him as he was facing the reality that our family was about to change.  So we quickly called her folks and asked them to kindly make their way back to our house....NOW!  With contractions getting shorter and shorter and the evening growing longer and longer, we were not sure what to do.   As the doctors strongly encouraged us to get our behinds to the hospital or at least go find my baseball glove, God showed up in a miraculous way escorting Amy's dad back to our house with all green lights in about 20 minutes of the 45 that it usually takes...thankfully with no police cars in trail.

Then we were off as I got to learn the truest definition of the phrase "climbing the walls" as Amy, my kindhearted and gentle wife proceeded to disassemble the truck we were driving in piece by piece as we made our way to to hospital, contraction by contraction.

Long story short we made it and at 4:35am, our 9lb girl was delivered sunny side up! At the moment we are all recovering and seeking out a new way of life for our family of four.  We are also continuing to make tremendous strides towards our goal of reaching Indonesia, and can now begin the process of paperwork,visas, and passports.  Pray that this would all go smoothly as it often has a very long history of being a very bump road. 

We truly realized that we were in over our heads as we both looked at each other the other day at the doctors office and laughed at the fact that each of us had a child in our arms, one in tears from the trauma of a flu shot and the other in tears because she was stripped down to nothing for the exam. The only challenge is that at this point only one of them was potty trained, and one them was definitely not.   Reminded me of the old saying about "a bird in the hand, is better than two in the bush"...that was no bird in my hand!