Why June 30th, 2014 means so much to this family...

(Micah: Once again, to finish out the week of Jael, the lovely Rachel will tell the story of the little girl who has stolen our hearts and made sure that no matter where we go, we won't be without medical insurance.  L'chaim! To Jael!)

 Rachel:  To be honest, June 30th has been a fairly unremarkable day for us in the past. I actually don't remember much from the previous halfway points of the year. But in 2014, June 30th means a wee bit more to our little family -- and it all begins with a story (surprise!). This is Jael's story.

"The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you, he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged." 

Deuteronomy 31:8 (NIV)

     The idea of having a c-section terrified me. The separation right after birth, the lack of control, four days in the hospital away from the boys, the two weeks of not being able to drive, even the six weeks not being able to lift my two year old all haunted me (It's kind of funny now how unimportant all these worries became)! In the days leading up to the c-section, I found this Deuteronomy verse listed above comforting to my soul -- and after the introduction of Jael into our lives, it became a sort of theme verse for me.

   Jael is one incredible little girl. There is so much about her life that is a miracle that it's clear how God's hand has been upon her. Not only was she born into a family with two big brothers to contend with, but she was also born with something else -- arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (AMC for short). Amidst the story you've heard over the past few days of me going into shock and, subsequently, the ICU, we didn't really get to meet Jael until day two of her life -- a day that quickly moved us past the close shave I had and into a different world entirely.  

(As it so happens, June 30th is Arthrogryposis Awareness Day, which is why it's so near and dear to our hearts now.  For even more accurate info, click this link, which has a lot of easy-to-understand thoughts that would have been nice to know when we were trying to get up to speed :  http://amcsupport.org/awarenessday.html  )

So Arthrogyposis Multiplex Congenita is a very rare joint and muscle disorder -- the kind Jael has happens one in every 10,000 births.  Basically, Jael's joints didn't form correctly while in utero, so they have very restricted function. (You'll see that in many of her early pictures, this shows up as her looking very stiff or rigid) This disorder affects each person differently, and there are over 400 causes, and in many cases the cause is never determined. Jael's particular arthrogryposis affects her shoulders, elbows, wrists, thumbs, knees and ankles.

Meanwhile, back on the day after Jael was born, there we were -- meeting our sweet baby girl, googling arthrogryposis to figure out what exactly the doctors thought she might have, and trying (on the fly) to alter our lifestyle and life expectations for our baby girl. Actually, I sorta freaked out and called Micah, who was with the boys. He was very unconcerned. "Is she dying?" he asked. "Well, no." I said. "But this is still a big deal. You need to google it." (by the way- I do NOT recommend googling it. If you want some good information about it try amcsupport.org or the link above).

On our last day of our hospital stay (two days after we found out about her condition) , we had this really cool consult via satellite between us at the Beverly Hospital and a geneticist at Boston Children's Hospital. It was almost out of a futuristic movie -- with the doctor on a screen with a robotic body. At one point, the doctor wanted to see us better and tried to move the robot forward but accidentally moved it left. It was a much-needed moment of humor.

That next day, my mother-in-law took the boys, my mom took Jael, and I sat solo in the quietest place in the house (the basement) and called a variety of specialists, early intervention, masshealth, etc. for two straight hours. Every time someone asked me to spell arthrogryposis, I would have to google it (the spell check in Word does not recognize it as a word). When we had for our first early intervention evaluation and our therapist knew how to spell it, I almost cried! Finally, someone who was familiar with this!

 

And so we began a very different role of parenting a medically complex child. Our rather simple life was suddenly filled with specialist appointments (I think we are up to seven specialists who follow her routinely), weekly early intervention visits, daily physical therapy, MRI's, ultrasounds, x-rays, second opinions, surgeries, and a great unknown future.

                                               (Here we are doing physical therapy with her)

But God is good. So so good. We have learned so much these last nine months about his goodness to us. We see little miracles all the time in everything Jael does. Her first smile- miracle. Rolling over by four months- miracle. Sitting up by six months- miracle. The tiniest little bend in her left arm while she's laying down- miracle. Her little giggle or watching her face light up when she sees her brothers- there's nothing like it. He has surrounded us with such an amazing support system in our family, our church, and our friends -- all who recognize that this is our new life and love us for who we are and what we can offer in this new adventure.

We are excited to see Jael continue to learn how to move and see how she figures out how to do things. It'll look different from the way we do it, but she'll do it! And we will continue to be blessed and thankful that God added Jael to our little family as we get to watch her grow and be a part of her precious life.

Isaiah 40:28-29

New International Version (NIV)

28 Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.

Jael's Journey: A (very different sort of) Birth Story: The Finale

At this point in the story, I (Micah) thought it would be better if Rachel provided the finale seeing as how a) she finally came back from la-la land (staying at the morphine mansion, if you will) where she had been spending the rest of the day, and b) at this point (4:30pm) I went home (many) hours later than we had planned to relieve my mom from watching the boys.

    Rachel :  It's rather difficult to think back on all the 'plans' I had for the day that simply didn't happen. Actually each of my three births was not what I had planned (although Jael's was the most traumatic, to say the least). With my first birth, I was planning on an all-natural birth and ended up, 13 hours later, (happily!) with an epidural. With my second birth, I was planning on having an epidural and 3 hours later (with no epidural) I had Judah wailing in my arms.
     With this birth, I would have taken either of the previous two, but the reality of the pre-labor situation was that Jael was breech for the better part of the third trimester. Despite many chiropractic appointments and standing on my head multiple times a day, she didn't flip and we had a planned c-section (I even tried to hold out until I went into labor on my own but it just wasn't happening).

    I don't really remember much from the day Jael was born. I remember nursing her once in recovery (Micah: This was about 10:15, right before things really went south) as I threw up (I was pretty impressed with myself!) and then I knew things weren't good because the doctor was in the room and they were worried about my temperature, but I have no sense of time or details. I felt SO guilty about not holding Jael. I kept saying, "I know I just had a baby, but I'm too tired to hold her." When it came time to transfer me, I couldn't figure out how that was going to work with me on a floor without a nursery and Micah at home. I actually thought they were transferring me to a cardiac floor, because they said they wanted to monitor my heart (apparently when your temperature drops so does your heart rate and mine had been between 30 and 40 beats a minute) so it wasn't until the next morning when I saw the Critical Care Unit sign, that I realized where I was. I'd like to say I was super rested after a night in the ICU but the truth is that no one truly sleeps in the ICU. You are woken up about every two hours to check your stats, so it was almost as though I was nursing a newborn, except she was upstairs.

     I got to talk to Micah on the phone a little later that night and I was happy that he had taken the boys in their matching big brother shirts to meet their new sister in the nursery-- without me, of course. Ah yes, more things that didn't happen as planned.

   The next morning, I was really anxious to get back upstairs to postpartum and see my baby.  I was really excited when the doctor said I was cleared to go back upstairs. Mind you, everything in the hospital takes about three hours to happen so although she cleared me at 6:30am, I was still waiting to be moved when my lunch came. Of course, as lunch arrived the transportation people came to get me, and although they offered to wait, I said, " No thank you!"  (really I was thinking - "but you might never come back!"). It felt a little like a circus act: the nurse with all my bags (FYI- apparently people in the ICU don't usually pack their bags as they aren't expecting necessarily to be there so the fact that I even had bags struck the nurses as funny), me being pushed on a stretcher holding my lunch. I was SO happy around noon when I finally had my baby with me!

So that pretty much wraps up the birth story. Unfortunately, there is little that is glamorous about this birth (Micah:  She's actually wrong here; you haven't seen glamour until you've seen your beautiful wife in a giant plastic bubble heater), but we couldn't really control that. Then again, isn't it when the veneer of control is pulled back that you can actually see the truth about how broken we are and how faithful our great God is to meet us there? While there is a lot of things in this birth that was still difficult to remember, there was so much of God's grace woven into it too. Going into morphine shock brought my mom up to Massachusetts a week earlier than planned, and as we quickly learned (the next day) , we were going to need her (and everyone else's!) help with our sweet new baby girl. But that is a story for Monday...

Jael's Journey: A (very different sort of) Birth Story, Part 3

(Another disclaimer:  What Rach and I realized is that due to events that happened immediately after the birth story, I have shut this day away in the 'do not disturb' memory vault for nine months and am actually just processing it now in my head while I process it in writing, so it probably won't be as lyrical as normal... )




  Have you ever seen a newborn be a complete afterthought in a maternity ward?  I have.  The commotion had started about 10:00 am, when the hulking nursing student (I kid you not, he was a football player from Endicott College who must have weighed 235 and was built like an ox) couldn't get her temperature to read out on the vitals display.  His supervisor oh-so-gently chided him and showed him how to do it, except (surprise!) she couldn't get a reading either.  After a wee bit of internal hemming and hawing, a third nurse (Cassie!) showed up with a temporal reader and immediately said, "That can't be right!" when 93.4 showed up on her little display.  So she took it again.  93.1.  Keep in mind, these were not local radio stations.  They were my wife's core temperature.  She couldn't keep food down; she couldn't keep water down, and the IVs they were giving her for fluids were actually bringing her temperature down even further.  I WAS FREAKING OUT.  You could tell because I had my completely stoic face on.  Right, you couldn't tell, but I WAS FREAKING OUT.  By 11:30, I was making mental plans in my head of what I would say at her funeral if I was going to be a widower with three tiny kids...  and frantically trying to think of who would watch them when I eventually dragged my grieving ass back to work.  Isn't it odd what happens when your mind goes down the rabbit hole?  All the while, I sat almost motionlessly in the corner holding the tiny Jaelster and praying while teams of nurses (and a doctor) poured in and out to Rachel, trying various things to find out what was wrong and raise her temperature.  They tried not to talk in front of me, but I didn't get a 1570 on my SAT's (back when you didn't get that for signing your name) for nothing.  I knew what was unfolding in front of me.

      And yet, amidst that, there was grace.  Rachel never lost consciousness.  Around 12:30, her temperature was reading 89.2 -- at least the last one I looked at.  I stopped looking around that point. because my mind could no longer reconcile the number appearing on the temporal scanner with the grace-filled reality in front of me that Rachel never once passed out, and if she was really tired and displayed some pretty funny mental lapses, we gave her a pass.

       Instead of terror, there came peace.  From time to time Jael would wake up and I would comfort her or give her a bottle.  Nurses kept asking me if I wanted to put her in the bassinet;  I just wanted Jael to know that even if her mom was too busy fighting for her life to do anything but make a dopey attempt to nurse her here and there, she still had someone to hold her.

       2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

                                       ---Psalm 23:2-4 (KJV)

  And then, the tide turned.  Cassie, who would be simply my favorite person in the room by day's end, had suggested earlier that there might be a special blanket, and she took it upon herself to track one down... it was specialized enough equipment that no one really knew what it was at first.  When it finally came into the room, I would have smirked if my smirking apparatus had completely failed hours ago.  It was a giant plastic inflatable object (think a in-pool lounger) attached to a bomb heater pumping in 130 degree air.  Essentially, the Sahara Desert in portable form. 

  Sometimes, a little hope is all you need.  Within ten minutes, her temperature rose drastically to 89.8.  Now when you consider that 90 degrees or so is acute hypothermia and many people with that temp are corpses soon after, it might sound bad, but it's all relative.  By the time she got back up to 92 degrees around 2:15, I was positively euphoric.  I knew that I thought she might actually live to see another day when The Police's "Cold as Ice" started pulsing through my head.  ( A side note where I briefly brag about just how tough Rachel is: about 2:30 our pediatrician, who is actually one of her employers, came in to do a routine check on Jael.  Further side note: this would be the last time in Jael's life that there was a pretense of a routine visit.  Ah the good old days.  Anyways, he came in to see Jael and I'll be damned if Rach didn't (with a core temp of give or take 92.5 at this point) sit up and start talking to him like nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day.  Whatever else she might be, I'm pretty sure my beautiful wife is the PERFECT employee.)

   Potentially the most heartbreaking part of the day came around 3:30, when we decided that even though her temp was coming up, she should be moved to the ICU for the night to make sure that she was surrounded by urgent care nurses day and night in case anything went sideways again. When we relayed the info to Rachel, she thought about it briefly and said, "Thanks, but I don't think that's a good idea.  I don't see how I can have Jael brought down to the ICU to be nursed every two hours."  It was an astonishing glimpse into her thoughts.  Indeed, little miss Jael would not be coming down every two hours that night-- or at all.  Though she had indeed walked through the valley of the shadow, Rachel would have to walk (and hopefully, sleep) through another night before she could get to know Jael at all. 

Tomorrow, the final episode...

Jael's Journey: A (very different sort of) Birth Story, Part 2

So when I last left off the story (with apologies, I've been studying like fury to pass my training exams so I can actually KEEP my new job, so this story might take a week), beautiful Jael had just graced the world with her furious cries.  It was (for me, at least) a very different sort of birth.  Instead of rejoicing with midwives and sighing great sighs of relief, oohing and aahing over the miracle of birth, I was standing idly by while my two ladies were attended -- each by their own hospital team.

    After five minutes of activity, they asked me to accompany Jael upstairs to the hatchery, where she would be kept until Rachel was through recovery and settled in a room.  It was a pleasant surprise to run into Father Tim (our priest) upstairs, and I was tired enough to tell him what an unexpected surprise it was to see him there.  After we had chatted and prayed together for health and strength for Rachel and Jael, he headed off for the rest of his morning.  I called the families and tried to walk them through the birth and to tell them how to spell and pronounce our little princess' name.  It's Jael, pronounced Ji-ell, and she is named after a fierce warrior of the days of the Judges.  The story is told in Judges 4:15-22.  15 And the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before Barak by the edge of the sword. And Sisera got down from his chariot and fled away on foot.16 And Barak pursued the chariots and the army to Harosheth-hagoyim, and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword; not a man was left.

17 But Sisera fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite.18 And Jael came out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Turn aside, my lord; turn aside to me; do not be afraid.” So he turned aside to her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug. 19 And he said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. 20 And he said to her, “Stand at the opening of the tent, and if any man comes and asks you, ‘Is anyone here?’ say, ‘No.’” 21 But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died. 22 And behold, as Barak was pursuing Sisera, Jael went out to meet him and said to him, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” So he went in to her tent, and there lay Sisera dead, with the tent peg in his temple.   For anyone familiar with the Hebrew faith or the Old Testament, we fully intended on this little girl being a tough beauty-- we figured she's need it with two older brothers like LJ and Judah.  As it turned out, we couldn't have named her more appropriately. 

       By the time we (Jael and I) made it back to recovery to see the beautiful Rachel and got transferred into postpartum, it became clear pretty quickly that she wasn't doing so hot.  Really.  It wasn't so much that she was throwing up every ten minutes (that just made it feel like she was pregnant again,)  it was more the fact that while she was complaining that the room was unbearably hot, her temperature was registering a smouldering 93.4 Fahrenheit.  Before my very eyes, Rachel was well on her way to becoming a real ice queen-- and it was only 10:30am. Jael might have beaten most of the odds getting out of the womb, but she was unknowingly staring down life without a mother in a far more real way than any of us knew yet.

     The story continues tomorrow... 

Jael's Journey: A (very different sort of) Birth Story, Part 1

It's always a little poignant looking back at big days in your life and realizing just how unprepared you were for them.  Sometimes I thank God for that.  There's a carefree nature to these pictures that has taken months to regain, and in some aspect we may never regain-- and that's fine.  On with Jael's birth story.

 It was a high-energy morning.  The boys knew that we were going to the hospital so "Mama could get her scratch where the baby would fall out," as LJ put it, and my mom arrived right on time to take those energetic little knights off our hands so we could get Rachel into pre-op for the C-section. ( A side note about C-sections:  I have been witness to the birth of all three of our kids now, and for whatever reason it seemed to me that a C-section would be a little neater and tidier, potentially require giving away less of your privacy, etc.  For the record, I'm an idiot. Some of the stuff that she had to go through simply for the operation is not going to be written here mainly because I'm a squeamish prude. It's pretty icky.)

 Everything went all right until we saw the anaesthesiologist, who was pretty amped up for 7:00 in the morning.  Both Rach and I were a little disconcerted by his manner, and in retrospect I probably should have been even more forceful about my fears regarding my incredibly tough wife's total inability to deal with painkillers (half a Vicoden sent her into a four-hour puking spree once), but live and learn.  Or in our case... well, you'll find out.

  By 7:30am, they were ready to begin.  They wheeled her down the hall into the OR and gave me a spacesuit to put on.  "We'll come back and get you in ten minutes," they said.  Somewhere during this span, I realized how terrified I was, even through my game face.  I was pretty sure that Rach was feeling the same way.  I had never done anything like this (how times change, eh?)  and the thought of walking into an OR was making me nauseated.  I couldn't even imagine what Rach must feel like to be lashed to a gurney, completely devoid of liquid for ten hours ("suck on some ice chips if you get thirsty" -- because you know when you get a powerful thirst, you don't want a beer, you want freaking ICE CHIPS) and about to be sliced open and have a slimy, screaming tiny human ripped out of her.  Is it super sad that every time I hear the words C-section now I immediately think of Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8? :
                          Despair thy charm, 
 14    And let the angel whom thou still hast served 
 15    Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb 
 16    Untimely ripp'd. 

  Poor Jael was about to embark on that great journey, although we were convinced that she would actually be a boy named [NAME WITHHELD IN UNLIKELY CASE A THIRD SMALL KNIGHT EVER COMES ALONG].
  The operation itself was a blur.  I stood up by Rachel's head with a charge nurse, two anaesthesiologists, a couple people for whom I had no idea of their function, and two surgeons and a resident on standby.  It was like a clown car of operating rooms.  And then... at 7:56 am, out popped our little wonder.  I say wonder because I wondered what gender she was for a good twenty seconds.  I told you I was an idiot.  I don't know why they always ask the dad to call the gender, but I'm a royal failure at it. ( I couldn't call Elijah's gender either-- his cord was way too big.)  After about 15 awkward seconds where I looked for man-parts that weren't there, I squeaked out, "It's a girl?"   And indeed it was.  Welcome to the planet, Jael Juliana ... born at 7:56am on September 26, 2013.  7lb 13 oz and 19 1/2 inches long.  As I saw her being washed and dried off to the side, I looked over and remarked offhandedly, "She looks like a little ninja."  And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the truest and most poignant thing I would say all day.

 The story continues tomorrow...

Bonus: What it's actually like to read to tiny knights (at least mine!)

     So I feel like this is what most soon-to-be parents (including me!) thought reading to their tiny formative offspring would be like as they imparted the great mythical stories of our world:



There they sit, little minds hanging on every word as my vivid reading brings the stories to life.

       Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.  It's, um, not like that, is it?

      So let's run the actual transcript of the reading of a book that a) the knights and I have read multiple times together, and b) they really love. Keep that in mind as go.  It could be worse the first time. This transcript is from probably the third time that we had read it that day.

         Me: --  That night, Robin Hood left purses by the villagers' doors, filled with glittering coin---

         Elijah:  How did he get the purses?

         --Well, he took them from the rich people who were being unjust to the--

         Judah: He stealed them?  Is he a bad guy?

        -- No, not really.  He was trying to help the poor people who were being treated unfairly.

          Elijah:  Stop explaining, Dad. It's boring.  Read the story
          Judah:  What unfairly?

       -- But the very next day, the Sheriff  of Nottingham rode into--

         (squinting at the picture) Elijah:  Which one's the sheriff?
 
        -- That one right there.  " Give me your money, the Sheriff howl--

        Judah: Wait, which one the sheriff?

          -- Right THERE.

       Elijah:  Which one is he?

       -- THERE. The one with the dark spot on his face.

      Judah: Which one is he?
      Elijah:  Oh, I remember him.  That's poop on his face, right?

       -- Mmm-hmm.  Horse dung, actually.  Listen.  "The boy hated the Sheriff.  When no one was looking, he picked up some horse dung and hurled it pow! in his face."

      Judah:  Dat POOP!

      Elijah:  I told you, Dad. Dung means poop.  Keep reading.

      -- "The Sheriff went red with rage.  'Arrest that boy!' "

       Elijah:  They made him go to jail for throwing poop?  Will I go to jail?  If throw poop?  Why is the HairShif (sheriff) so mean to him?  Will I go to jail?

       -- " 'Run, Jack!' his father cried... but from the safety of the forest, the boy saw men taking his father away."

      Judah:  They take the father to jail because the boy naughty?

      Elijah: No, they take anyone to jail who throws Poop!


      ... And that's how Robin Hood becomes potty humor.  (And why you can kiss your evening good-bye whenever you think you're reading for just ten minutes.  If you're reading Dr. Seuss, especially anything involving Horton, you may want to just set aside a day!)

         

Jael's Journey: The Beginning

To say the least, our little girl's adventure in joining this big world has been eventful.  Her nine-month birthday will be on June 26th (Thursday upcoming), and in celebration of that, this next week or so will be devoted to her story.  Frankly, it's a miracle there's a story at all.

           I'm pretty bad with dates and inclined towards fiction, so if there's a supplementary post from Rachel correcting EVERY LAST FACTOID that I incorrectly spew here over the next few days, know at least that from an emotional standpoint, everything I write is true, if not factual.  (As my very favorite college professor would always boom at us from behind his desk, "Nimon, when the truth and the facts collide, the truth must always win out.") Words to live by.

          I'm pretty sure that Jael was the first time that I reacted correctly to being told we were/ she was pregnant (with LJ I said, "Good for you!" and walked away; with Judah I may have forgotten to say anything), so three weeks after that mountaintop moment, when Rachel had all the classic signs of a miscarriage, there was a definite pall over the house.  I walked around aimlessly at work all day; Rachel went in to our amazing midwives to confirm the inevitable.  The boys, to their credit, did their best to keep the mood light by smashing down the house like it was every other day.  It just wasn't any other day.
  Except... Jael's just tougher than that.  To this day, we're not really sure what went on-- but when they hooked Rachel up to a monitor, Jael (who I'm pretty sure we called Bean at that point) was doing great.  Strong heartbeat, nothing unusual, just a normal 3-month old baby hanging out in utero.  Jael 1, Life 0.
After that, we started calling that day the "miracle day," which was perfectly appropriate.  Life, however, would have a few more things to chuck at Jael before 2013 was over.  Stay tuned.

   P.S, At the end of each of these I figure I'd answer a teaser that I threw up there on day one.  What wakes  LJ up at 5:30?

The answer -- I kid you not-- he wakes up thinking his underwear smells like someone tinkled in it.  Not the one's that he's been wearing-- THE CLEAN ONES.  We had a total showdown about a week ago because he refused to wear any clean underwear in the drawer that didn't pass his 'sniff test' -- and they all failed.  ALL of them.  I was so tempted to obliterate them with Axe or Febreze or something and have him sniff them again, just for the effect, but it was 5:30 in the morning.  Needless to say, with his legendary ability to talk quietly, that was a fun morning for all involved.  And now you know.

Welcome back!

        (I'm talking mostly to myself , of course... I'm not so egotistical to think that after taking a year and a half off, anyone's sitting around waiting for me to write like I'm George R.R. Martin or something.)  Since it's Father's Day and I'm actually supposed to be doing dishes right now (I know, how cliche, another 'chivalrous' man who lazes around the house), this column will be the shortest one I can remember writing.

       However, it will serve if nothing else as a little 'big-market tease' as to what might be coming.  If you've ever wanted to know such burning questions as:
      A) just what DOES wake LJ up every morning at 5:30 in a total panic;

      B) why if I ever call Rachel the 'ice queen' after her delivery of Jael, I'm not being a jerk, just literal;

      C) why we have a new Square Table (still isn't square), or

      D) why my June 30th blog post might be my most important one ever-- to me, at least, -- come back over the next few days and weeks to find out !!

  P.S.  It's 11:30 and I still haven't done the dishes... I don't know how everyone can be the 'world's best dad,' but I'm removing myself from the running.  It's a lot of pressure!  I'll settle for "mediocre to terrible dad who by the grace of God raised loving, polite children anyway."  There!  That's got a ring to it, don't you think!