Grant's Baptism

So I am finally getting some old posts put out on line, here is one from last December and Grant's Baptism...attached is a picture of my brother Kevin hold Grant after the Baptism at a get together at Richard & Marcia's afterward.

The past several days have been very hectic for the Fordham clan as we have seriously put Grant outside of his comfort zone and any semblance of a routine since last Sunday when he was Baptised into our Church. In his defense, he handled it like a champ! Getting his hair wet, didn't phase him and when JJ (Rev. Jim Jackson) introduced him to the church by walking him around and showing him to everyone, he didn't cry, fuss or anything. Reminded me a little of Tess when she was baptised. Now the hours of people time at the reception did set him over the edge, something about not getting a nap until 3 or 4 in the afternoon did it for him.

More to follow about the BIG EVENT!

Diaper changing 101

Any good parent will tell you that every baby needs a solid routine to get use to life on the "outside". What they don't tell you is that the routine is just as important for the parent's survival because of the massive sleep deprivation that all parents go through during the first year.

Our bed time routine goes something like this. Somewhere between 4-5 pm Grant will start to get hungry. Hungry is a bit of an understatement because when he starts to eat his supper, he seems to pack away enough milk to satisfy a defensive lineman for the Houston Texas. Now given that the Texan's current record isn't that impressive, it may not seem like a lot but for a 4 month old, it's pretty darn impressive. Somewhere during this milk fest he is ready for his evening bath after which it's time to get into pajamas and get ready for the last bottle (or three) before going to sleep.

Such was the extent of my sleep deprivation this past weekend, that for the life of me I couldn't understand what was wrong with Grant when I put him into his pajamas. I kept looking and looking and thinking, my it sure looks strange to see is willy flapping in the breeze of the ceiling fan. I must have been contemplating this for a several minutes when it suddenly dawned on me that I might want to put a diaper on him before handing him to my wife for his last feeding. Luckily, I caught this one in time to prevent an embarrassing wet incident on my wife.

Thanksgiving 2009

This was an extra special Thanksgiving. First my Aunt Joyce and Cousin Kate came flew in from Michigan then a week later, my brother flew in from German. It's when I finally get to spend time with my extended family that it drives home how much I miss them. Here's to seeing them again soon.

Advent - Living in Abundance

Leah and are reading from a book called "Watching for the Light (c)2001 and the reading from Dec 7, titled: The Penitential Season by William Stringfellow started and ended with the following statements.

"We Live Now, in the United States, in a culture so profoundly pagan that Advent is no longer really noticed, much less observed."


"In the First Advent, Christ the Lord comes into the world, in the next Advent, Christ the Lord comes as Judge of the world and of all the world's thrones and pretenders, sovereignty's and dominions, principalities and authorities, presidencies and regimes, in vindication of his lordship and reign of the Word of God in history. This is the truth, which the world hates, which biblical people (repentant people) bear and by which they live as the church in the world in the time between the two Advents."

After reading this Leah and I were deeply struck by what advent is suppose to be about. Not the stereotypical "Putting Christ back in Christmas" or other things but trying to live in the in between. In between Christ's first coming 2000 years ago and his return somewhere in the future. How we are called to live expectantly and in accordance with all of God's laws. That we are suppose to live a life of gratitude and to remember that God has given us far more than we need, not so that we can have one more Pumpkin Latte from Starbucks (my favorite) but rather so that the abundance would flow through us and to someone else; thereby, showing the love of Jesus (God) to others. This concept of living an abundant life and how we have already been given more than we need struck me deeply. Because of this, we are exploring what it would look like to live an abundant life.

What is an abundant life? Well, I am not referring to the "Name it and Claim" concept or the Gospel of Prosperity that is preached by many TV evangelist. I personally think these things go against the teachings of Jesus. Because of this, Leah and I have decided to try something different this Advent and rather than living in a world of not having enough, try living in a world of more than enough.

What exactly are we doing? Well, you'll just have to wait until Boxing Day to find that out.

Christmas Kitty a.k.a. "Dumster Cat"

All three of our cats are various forms of "rescue" kitties. Peanut was adopted by Leah as a kitten from a shelter, Rocky was adopted by me as a fully grown adult from the Siamese Rescue mission when he was on display at Pet-Co, the irony here is that Rocky is 20+ pounds of pure love and is a tailless Manx which is about as far from Siamese as a cat can be and still be a cat. That brings us to my current favorite cat, Christmas, who was "adopted" by Leah from the nice lady who caught her in a live animal trap outside of Ciro's restaurant during Christmas a few years back. Hence the name Christmas.

Of all of our cats, Christmas is the one I worry about the least if she where to accidentally get out of the house. Rocky & Peanut would be pretty much screwed if they ran away as neither of them have anything that remotely resembles survival skills. Christmas on the other hand has all the necessary survival skills to make it in the wild. Keen reflexes, total paranoia, ability to go from zero to the light speed in 0.5 seconds and a cast iron stomach.

She has never had what one would call a "delicate" palette as can be seen here where she is eating her second "What-a-Burger" french fry. Yes, unlike most cats that prefer meat, Christmas will eat meat, cheese, peas, beans, bread and yes, french fries.

I Love that Cat!

My wife is better than your wife...

Things I love about my wife...
1. she can sit still
2. she listens
3. she offers honest meaningful feedback
4. she believes in prayer and creates a safe place for me to pray with her
5. she is funny
6. she is fierce in her love of people
7. she says ouch when I hurt her
8. she is compassionate to everyone...period.
9. she is willing to walk through uncomfortable places to reach the other side
10. she is an amazing mother

Did I mention she is beautiful? She is, the most beautiful woman I have ever known.

Last week, I mentioned that I longed to have a meaningful, sit down dinner with my wife because it had been so long since we had been able to do so. Without reading my blog post, she fixed a very nice candle light dinner for us. She is so amazing! We dined on chicken parmesan, salad and two pieces of delicious cake from Whole Foods! Sadly, Grant did have to interrupt, causing us to have cold chicken parmesan but that is OK, we had a wonderful time just talking and sharing a very precious moment together.

Where does he put it?

So I admit that I maybe a little naive when it comes to parenthood and like the pirate walking off the plank, I desperately hold on to the hope that maybe, just maybe, if I try very hard, I will be able to bend his will to my bidding so that I can get out of this precarious situation. Sadly, like the pirate, I eventually have to walk the plank and slam into the ocean of reality....(sigh)...So that begs the question, how much can a 10 week old baby eat? Apparently, as much as he wants for as long as he wants. Speaking solely from my experience of feeding Grant in the evenings, he can very easily run a marathon for about 2-3 hours and just not want sleep or be put down. Obviously, this puts a serious damper on my ability to have any kind of conversation with Leah, watch Law & Order or eat a meal sitting down.

But with cuteness like this, I can easily skip television (L&O forgive me!) and eating sitting down. It would be nice to have a conversation with my wife sitting down at a reasonable time of evening. Oh well, another day, another chance to try doing that. (I Love You Leah!)

P.S. To all my readers, yes, I am a complete unadulterated romantic.

Bouncy Seat of Forgiveness

While we were "expecting" G's appearance into our lives, there were many things that we knew that we would need and want. The car seat to take him home from the hospital, a glider chair for feeding and for those long nights where he just wants to be held, diapers (lots and lots of diapers) and a cornucopia of other items.

The one item that I never knew we would love so much was the Fisher Price, Jungle Theme Bouncy Seat, or as we call it our house, the "BOUNCY SEAT OF FORGIVENESS". Forgiver of all sins real and imagined, soother of all errors in judgement and timing and all of those just plain stupid things that his parents in training may do. Yes, this gift brought to us by Steve H. is prized by Mommy and Daddy so much, that if something where to happen to the Bouncy Seat of Forgiveness, Daddy would venture out into the city no mater what time of day or night and go to any lengths to get a new one, even going to Wal-mart (for those of you who know me, that's an amazing thing)!

Oh, yes they call him the streak....

Oh, yes, they call him the streak, look at that, look at that....

For those of you who are in shock right now, this post is not about our son but rather is a random post about things that I am now paying attention to now that I have a little one of my own. A little one, who just might do something like this in the near future.

My YMCA is a lovely two story building in the heart of the Galleria that overlooks a swimming pool, a baseball field and a school with real trees which for H-town is a vertual National Forest! So, I enjoy taking a break from work and going to the Y to get on a treadmill and do my hamster imitation which is running as fast as I can as long as I can and go absolutely no where. Kind of an analogy for life, don't you think? But that's another story.

While running today, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blinding streak of pale flesh run across the concrete by the pool, quickly followed by a larger, long haired blurr. After I was able to focus on said blurr, which, running like a hamster is very difficult to do, I realized that it was a butt naked little boy streaking the swimming pool with his mother in hot pursuit.

I found this amazingly funny and hope that all my friends and family will kindly remind me of this when G. goes streaking across the lawn, swimming pool or where ever once he realizes he can get out of his clothes all by himself....

Ah, the joys of fatherhood!

Choices

The following was the e-mail that convinced me to chronicle our lives in a blog rather than in random e-mails to friends and family.

Do you remember the last time that you made a choice that seemed inconsequential maybe even meaningless? Do you remember when you thought you were making a choice to be helpful to someone else and in reality the one you were helping was you? That if you had known of what would happen next, you would be considered selfish and self centered but instead, since you had no possible way of knowing what the future was, you were just plain lucky?

This the subject of today's post...

Leah and I have three cats, Rocky, Peanut and Christmas. Three cats who have been getting the short end of the stick when it comes to attention these past few weeks now that we have a little one (i.e. Grant) in the house. So little has been the attention that we have been giving them as of late that their litter boxes have been, how should we say, well used. Yes, we shall call their letter boxes well used, so well used that I am surprised that they have not learned how to operate the toilets.

Because of the freshness of the laundry room today, I took it upon myself to clean out the litter boxes. This meant carrying 50 pounds of cat litter up the stairs, cleaning out the three litter boxes (1 per cat) and then carrying three trash bags full of dirty cat litter out to the dumpster.

During the middle of cleaning them out, I was over come by a toxic wave flowing into the laundry room from the nursery, so toxic was this stench that I looked in to see if my poor wife was OK. When i looked in, I saw my wife on the verge of retching and Grant looking particularly pleased to finally have whatever was inside of him, on the outside. While I contemplated calling OSHA or maybe a local HASMAT team, I thought, no, my wife is perfectly capable of dealing with this and I went back to cleaning out my nice fresh smelling litter boxes.

Sadly, the diaper changing did eventually result in Grant's outfit, the changing pads and the rug on the floor beneath the changing pad needing to go into the washing machine.

The moral of this story is that 50 pounds of dirty cat litter is far better than 5 ounces of Grant's diapers...

Just something I thought I should share.

Three plus Three in Texas...
Three is for me, my wife and our son (John, Leah and Grant)
plus Three is for our three cats, Rocky, Peanut and Christmas
in Texas is where we live...

And if my wife has anything to say about it, where we will stay, secretly, I would like to move to Denver but that's another story...