Cannonball's First Bath and Other Updates

Hey folks...

How's everybody doing? We're still not getting any sleep on this end. Alayna's beginning to have a tendency of sleeping all day and raising a ruckus at night - she hates her cradle with a passion, and Kristina and I are lucky if we can wrangle 3 hours of sleep at a time.

Anyway, we decided to give Alayna her first bath on Friday, as it had been a few days since coming home from the super-sterile hospital and all. This fiasco probably could've gone over a lot better.

Kris assumes that the water was too cold, but I like to think that we just have one, stinky-ass baby who hates being clean and would rather gas up the house in her own filth instead of taking a bath like a civilized human being. That's just me, though.

<- This picture, I believe, speaks for itself.

Bathing aside, things are beginning to settle down (slightly) around here. Fezzig's not enjoying the extra noise and commotion around the place, and we're pretty convinced he/she's already beginning to pick up and imitate the baby's wails. Not cool. Alayna's becoming a big fan of her Fisher Price 'Rainforest' gear and her Baby Einstein DVDs - holy crap, does music seems to knock her right out. If only this practice could be utilized at night... then we might be able to catch some shut-eye around this damn place.

In other news, we're getting ready to kick-off the Summer of Grandmas. Starting tomorrow, we'll be importing grandmas from Michigan to come stay with us for week-long stints of helping out with Alayna, the house, etc. Kristina's mom Marcy is coming in first - we're picking her up from the OIA sometime around 7pm, I think. Stay tuned.

F----n' Exhausted,

- brian

Reproducin', Part II: Bring It On Home

(continued...)

kris shot out that baby she'd been carrying around (for the last 17 months), the hospital wheeled her over from the delivery room to our post-labor room. this room, in which we would spend the next 48 hours, had a fridge, a bathroom, a couple beds, a DVD player, and a big, flat-screen TV that was bigger and better than our own TV in our house. it was a decent little set-up for the kid's first two days of post-vagina living, but nobody got much sleep.

alayna, upon bursting out of her flesh-walled prison, weighed about 6 lbs. 1 oz. and measured approximately 19 inches in length. for those of you who are as oblivious to the knowings of babyhood as myself, that's not quite dangerously small, but its definitely underweight.

being underweight isn't necessarily bad, i guess, but it does bring about some small problems. problem #1: low blood sugar. or high blood sugar. i forget which one it is, but its something to do with her blood sugar levels. one of those two. anyway, she had to have a series of blood samples taken during her first 12 hours out, which meant kris had to breastfeed more frequently and, as a result, lost a crap-ton of sleep in the process. and, as a result of her losing sleep, yours truly didn't sleep much either. this sucked.

problem #2: jaundice. i'm not sure what this condition is, really, but i'm pretty sure it has something to do with pirates. or maybe that's scurvy. i'm not sure. what i do know is that jaundice turns the skin yellow and has something to do with her liver. i guess most babies have some level of jaundice when they're born, but underweight babies are more susceptible to it. and, a sure-fire way to treat this condition is to stick the baby out in the sun and let the UV rays cook the jaundice out of her. or so i'm told (i'm not a doctor).

anyway, back to the tale... we spent about 48 hours in the post-delivery hospital ward. we had to attend some boring, pointless discharge class on how to take bathe your baby, how to hold your baby, etc... boring rubbish, and i was the only dude in a room full of newborn-wielding moms so it was pretty awkward as well. we also had a bunch of old ladies man-handle kristina's titties on a regular basis and show her how to 'appropriately breastfeed' the baby (note: if you ever want to be really creeped out, knock a girl up and stick around for the "lactation specialists...). then, finally, on wednesday, they let us take the kid home... which ruled.

hospitals are great and all, i guess, but after awhile you get sick of old ladies bossing you around and the constant smell of disinfectant and rubber. i also hate hospital food and the clammy feeling you get from the air conditioners. anyway, we brought alayna home on wednesday and introduced her to fezzig, who was not nearly as cordial as we would've hoped (though we kinda expected that from the get-go).

...and there you have it. baby-birthin', hough style. keep a weather eye out for more updates and pictures to start popping up on here. if you guys need me, i'll be elbow-deep in baby shit.

stay outta trouble...

- brian

Reproducin', Part I: The Cannonball

what's up, fan club...

as most of you guys know, preggosaurus went into labor on monday and shot out a little baby girl, which, after a few hours of deliberation and polling from the public, we named alayna renee (who we often refer to as 'cannonball,' for reasons disclosed below.)

our tale begins on saturday, the 14th of june... allow me to backtrack for a sec, here...

kris had just finished swimming in the pool and was home showering off when she thought her water had broke. the folks at the hospital figured it was best to err on the side of caution and had us drive from our place in hunter's creek to the winter park memorial hospital (all the way across friggin' orlando). after four hours of running tests and sitting around a hospital labor room, bored of our wits, the doctors discharge kris and tell her that, in fact, her water had not broke. more than likely, they said, preggosaurus had peed herself.

the next day, absolutely nothing at all happened. it was a really boring day, and kris was so exhausted she couldn't really do much. this all changed, however, at about 2 am, early monday morning, when she started having severe contractions. they started off being an hour apart, then began at half-hour intervals, then fifteens minutes apart, and then finally at ten minute intervals. not wanting to drive all the way across town for yet another false alarm, i told her to call the doctor's office when they opened at 9am and ask if they wanted her to go to the hospital again. in the meantime, i had to drive down to kissimmee for that stupid, boring ESOL strategy class (the one i mentioned before in my last posting), and, as you all remember, i could only miss one day of class before they'd drop me like a sack of wet laundry.

i was not about to use up my own absence on yet another false alarm. so i went to class.

after about 45 minutes of sheer, mind-wrenching boredom (that class was horrible, horrible business), i received the phone call from kris stating that the doctors wanted her back at the hospital immediately. i drove back to the house, picked her up, and we went back, yet again, to the hospital in winter park.

this time, however, they wanted her to stay. preggosaurus was dilated to 4, and she was thinning out like nobody's business.

while kris' cervix was spreading apart like the red sea, i was frantically calling my HR department for the school district and trying to see if i could retake that ESOL class in the fall. i was convinced that i wasn't going to be able to make it back the next day at 8am and continue to attend class regularly for the next two weeks, thereby completing my teacher's certification requirement and, consequently, keeping my job. by the time kris was dilated to 8, i had been told that i could take that boring ESOL class in the fall. trumpets sounded from the heavens.

these trumpets, however, turned out to be the thundering approach of a terrible lightning storm that would kick off around the time of the baby's birth, and which would ultimately screw up my mass picture texting from the hospital (for those of you who received the same picture text message three or four times that afternoon, and for those of you who didn't receive anything at all, this is why).

now, kris has bore witness firsthand to the painful throngs of labor before, and she wasn't having any of it. natural vaginal childbirth was not something she was down with. therefore, she had an epidural done as soon as possible to nullify the pain of the contractions, which, for those of you previously unaware of this practice, is when they drive a railroad spike into your back and run a feeding tube of numbing goof juice into your spine. with this done, kris was oblivious to just about everything afterwards.

by noon, the nurses brought in this skinny, piece of blue plastic the size of a shortsword and rammed it up kris' crotch to break her water. for nearly three hours afterwards, absolutely nothing at all happened. nothing. it was boring as hell, and the only thing on the TV in the room was a marathon of home improvement. i wanted to kill myself. you always hear about the emotional and chaotic times of people in the delivery room, but it wasn't like that at all for us. occassionally, kris would ask me to check the monitor thingy and see if she was having a contraction or not. she'd feel a little bit of pressure, but that was about it. so yeah... really boring for a good three hours or so there.

...then the nurse came in and realized kris was dilated to 10, her uterus was vanquished, and the baby's head was in view. holy crap, its time to call the doctor.

the delivery gear was brough in and the doctor told kris to start pushing. she does this, no joke, about three or four times, before the baby's head comes out and the kid cannonballs its way into freedom. that was it. that was the delivery process: four or five minutes of painless pushing. and then we had a screaming, bloody baby on our hands.

in closing, i highly recommend all women out there reading this considering reproducing any time soon to receive a railroad spike of goof juice in the back. totally worth it. just make sure you bring crap along with you to the pass the time, just in case you're stuck in a room with nothing on but home improvement.

- brian

Kicking Off Summer Vacation... Sort Of

its been a few days, folks. i apologize.

the last two weeks i've been pretty busy with the ol' middle school scene - saying farewell to my gaggle of teenagers for the summer, closing up shop, and finalizing grades. our last day of school this year was on the 6th, and today i finished my end-of-the-year 'teacher inservice' (i.e. cleaning up my classroom and boxing up all my crap). i am now officially kicking off my summer vacation.

hooray.

this particular summer, however, most likely won't go on record for being one of the most wild and entertaining. yours truly still has some business to attend to that'll occupy most of his potential blocks for fun-time.

for starters, i have to jump through a few more hoops this summer in order to keep my job. usually, this wouldn't be as much of a pressing issue, but since the economy is in the dumps right now (especially in florida), the state decided to hack and slash the dept. of education's budgets to smithereens. that's right, smithereens. counties and districts throughout florida were forced to lay off teachers as school budgets were shrunk. dozens were let go at my school alone and not invited back next year. as a first year teacher, i was convinced i was royally screwed and among the first to be canned. somehow, though, i managed to hold on to my job (a feat i attribute to a hodge-podge combination of sheer luck and stick-to-it'iveness) and satisfy all of the state's requirements for a career changer (i.e. someone who didn't go to college for an education degree)

alas, i only accomplished the requirements needed to be completed during the first year. now i get to start on all of the crap that needs to be completed within the first three years' list, lest i get canned then (if not sooner, depending on how farther south the economy plummets). awesome.

what does aforementioned 'crap' entail? first, i get to take this ESOL (english as a second language) course, starting monday. holy borefest. i have no idea what this class is, really, but i can assure you it won't be as much fun as, say, sleeping on the couch. this class runs two weeks, running from june 16th through the 26th, monday through thursday, 8am - 2pm.

"but wait a sec, brian," you ask, "isn't kristina supposed to be popping out your yet-to-be-named daughter within the next 12 days? and, consequently, doesn't that due date fall right in the middle of this ESOL course?"

yes. yes it does.

i mentioned this to the course facilitator already, and she was nice enough to reply with the ol' "well, you definitely can't miss the birth of your daughter, brian! its a one-of-a-kind experience!" before adding, "i'm sure it won't be a problem to give you one excused absence."

again. awesome.

babies and ESOL courses aside, sometime this summer i have to start applying for grad school... finally. i've been putting it off since i returned from the peace corps. now is the time. i hated college (classes), and i hate the notion of going back to college (for more classes), but i promised myself i'd do this and, dammit, i'm going to do it. besides, when you have tens of thousands of dollars in student loans waiting to be paid off, what's a few more tens of thousands? i wasn't paying any of that off any time soon anyway. perhaps my amassed student debt can be passed down to future generations of houghs. a family heirloom of some sort. we'll see.

so, like i was saying... i can start working on my masters and finish up my teachers' certification by taking a handful of these stupid, district-required courses at the same time. two birds i'm really hoping to beat the bejesus out of a with a big, frickin' stone. this will most likely be a royal pain in my ass, but... what the hell.

in closing... here's to being unemployed for the summer. rock and roll.

- brian