Used to be, Declan would wake up around 5 or 6 AM every morning, I'd go get him, bring him to our bed and Jen would feed him and we'd all go back to sleep until 7:30 or so... Not sure whether it's because it's getting light so much earlier or that he's just older, but he's stopped going back to sleep now. And so the last couple mornings, Declan and I have been getting up early... and it's the best thing I've done in a long time.

Yesterday, we went for a bike ride around Forest Park, which I haven't done in a surprisingly long time. Today, we went hiking in the amazing Oak Savanna in Forest Park and then went to the Market in the Loop and stocked up on fresh fruit. Declan eats an amazing amount of fruit. We go through a cantalope, a pineapple, a big bag of grapes, and lots more every 4 days or so.

Walking through the savanna this morning reminded me of my mornings when I used to work at Miniwanca and how much I miss it. I just feel so much more connected and balanced when I'm there; spending all day every day outdoors, exercising constantly, interacting with and leading groups of open-minded folks who question everything, discussing philosophy and spirituality and the true meat of life. To be able to spend two months a year in that world was such a blessing. It grounded me and gave me a chance to see my life from another perspective and examine my path.

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Slaving away at the office

Eric Berger was foolish enough to sign on as employee number two at my Web Development company, Efficion Consulting. Eric's been friends with Jen and me for years which is great since he's working out of Efficion's world headquarters (aka, the middle bedroom). In addition to administering regular footrubs to the other Efficion employee's (that's me), Eric will be doing HTML/CSS, PHP, DotNetNuke, ASP.NET, and lots of other things that probably won't mean much to most people but result in great websites.

  

and you work too much...
and you spend too much time in front of a computer...

...when the most exciting thing you've gotten in a long time, is a chair... but this isn't any chair, it's the "Life" chair by Knoll. Everyone knows about the Aeron chair by Hermain Miller, but Aeron is so 1990's... the new thing in chairs is the ability to move with you and still be supportive so you're no longer restricted to one proper position... As I'm incapable of maintaining one posture for 10 hours a day, this is what I needed.

Knoll has a showroom here in St. Louis and they let me take home each of the desk chairs for 3-4 day test drive which was great. One of their chairs, the Chadwick, was designed by the same guy who designed the Aeron, but like the Aeron, just didn't work for me.

And now that I've bored you to tears if you indeed got this far, we'll return to our main feature... (Declan of course)   

Baby and mom are sleeping peacefully as I write this. Declan's a big, healthy boy at 8 pounds, 9 ounces and 21 inches long. He's perfect as can be other than standard newborn issues with a bit of a cone head and baby acne but still cute as can be.

Mom and baby worked hard at getting him out the old fashioned way but he just couldn't get past the cervix so after 11.5 hours of labor, we changed courses and went with a C-section, 30 minutes later, he was out, crying, and covered in goo...   Read More...

The latest round of contractions started at 10 this morning and they were the real deal this time. Jen suffered through some pretty back back pain for quite awhile and got really intense once contractions started... we headed out for the hospital a bit after 11. We recently found out Jen's water was already broken, not quite sure when that happened. Our little guy should be joining around dinnertime tonight.

Check this site for the latest... :-)   

Nothing new to report, some more contractions, some back pain and other discomfort, but still at home waiting.   

Well, no show yet... we were pretty sure it was gonna happen last night though, lots of hard, sustained contractions starting at 4:30 AM but then they trailed off around 5:30 (after I had gotten dressed and everything packed). This morning has been calm so far, perhaps the pancakes will stir him to action...   

Jen just left the hospital after having them check some things out with the whole pregnancy thing... they think she'll be back in within 24 hours for the "Main Event"... so, he could be coming very soon!!! Yikes... still so much to do to get ready!   

We had a wee bit of excitement here on November 28th as a class 0 tornado touched down in my back yard... it was quite the surreal experience... I was working in my breakfast room at around 11pm when rain started pelting the windows loudly... odd, I thought, never heard that before... then the door started shaking and I thought might burst open so I decided to hold it shut... it didn't take long before I realized that was stupid and so I ran and called for Jen (who was in the upstairs bathroom wondering why the windows were shaking) so we could head to the basement but by the time she made it down, it was over...

The storm knocked a huge chunk of my sycamore into my back yard along with the top of the neighbors magnolia. The neighbors large pine tree was uprooted into his front yard and a huge old oak tree fell into another neighbors house. Branches and whatnot were all over (and did quite a job on my car) and my roof (which needed replacing anyway) was everywhere, including in a yard 7 houses away. Pics   

We've been working furiously trying to get the house in shape for our new arrival (they're very picky about this stuff you know)... We replaced the roof which has needed doing for awhile but was helped along by the class 0 tornado we had on Nov. 28th. We're currently more than doubling the size of the master closet by just building it out into the unused deadspace and putting in all new closet stuff.

We're still in the process of completely redoing the breakfast room (aka Efficion Consulting's world headquarters). So far we've removed the drop ceiling to put in a slatted wood ceiling and ripped paneling off the interior wall to expose great brick work. We'll be redoing the floor, putting in a large bay window, replacing the door with much bigger mostly glass door, replacing paneling with dry wall, putting in a new fan/light and redecorating.

After that stuff is done, we've only got two more rooms to redo, the kitchen (big project) and the living room (just patching and painting). And then all the little fixes, improvements, and whatnot that houses require... oh, and replacing the fence in back, and reworking the driveway/garage and...