Cerebrate Good Times

Sitcoms are funny. What? That's what they're for? Sure, smart guy/gal, but I'm not talking about anything intentional. What I mean is the way they portray children. Children in a lot of TV shows only exist to move the plot forward on occasion. Babies and toddlers in particular very very little screen time. Otherwise they're always mysteriously sleeping, in the crib, or just not mentioned at all . Meanwhile, the adult characters are free to have whatever adventures they would have even with no children in the picture. This to me is the most unreal aspect of entertainment. It's not the giant monsters in movies or the impossibly good-looking people who abound. It's perfectly obedient children. We're all about gritty realism these days, so why doesn't anybody have to change a diaper blowout in the middle of a terrorist attack?

Now that the dust has settled a bit, and before the memories are lost in a haze of sleepless nights, it’s time to walk you all through the birth of our latest child. Blue Steel On Wednesday, May 14, Katie went to pick up Sam from cub scouts, and stopped by a neighbor’s house for a minute. While on her porch talking, Katie noticed that her pants seemed to be getting wet. She came back home and reported that she had felt her first contraction. She didn’t want to have another false alarm, but I insisted we call my parents, send the kids to our friends’ house to wait for grandma and grandpa, and get to the hospital immediately. We got in the car within ten minutes or so, and by the time we were on our way the contractions were about 2 ½ minutes apart. We got into the hospital and up to the delivery unit, and by the time they got an epidural going she was close to being completely dilated. Then we finally got her to the delivery room and waited a bit for the doctor. The epidural wa...

Unsurprisingly to anyone who has given birth, or had a spouse who has given birth, or has watched a show about people giving birth, or heard about someone giving birth, it’s pretty danged stressful for everyone involved. And one of the most stressful parts can be knowing when to go to the hospital. If you go too soon, they send you home. If you go too late, you end up with a baby named Backseat or Parking Lot. Baby #1 Katie and I went to the hospital as soon as she started having contractions. It was a lovely, scenic drive from Provo to Payson, with me not at all being a wreck while trying not to cause one. Once there, they told us to turn around and go home because she wasn’t far enough along. Well, her body didn’t have a nice, gradual increase in frequency of contractions. She basically went from 0 to 60 very quickly, and by the time we got back to the hospital she was ready to go. They did manage to get an epidural going, but I guess they had to dose her more than normal for it t...

All of a sudden last week I decided to run the Provo City Half Marathon. I had been a little tired lately of running the same places every week and wanted a little variety. I also felt like I had improved my time a lot since 2011 when I ran that distance for the first time, and I wanted to see if a race would improve it more. It started when I awoke at 4 a.m. and headed down to Provo, where the organizers shuttled us up Provo Canyon to the starting line. We got there by about 5:30, which means we had 90 minutes to hang around in the freezing cold before we started. They had some raffles and such, and there were some bonfires for warmth, but that wait was definitely my least favorite part. And then at 7:00 we were off. I could immediately tell this was going to be interesting, because I was just flying down the canyon. My GPS later told me that I ran one of the miles at a 5:59 pace, which is insane for me. Eventually we got out of the canyon and things more or less leveled out. I ...