How the hell to put my tweets into the header of my page… I guess I am just posting this to motivate myself to figure it out.
That old Fuzzy Feeling
Well, Griffin is 4 months old now. Its scary! How did he get so old all of the sudden. I tell you this, if you ever want to feel your own mortality, just have kids! His progression is amazing. I see all of the cool things he does and I just cant believe any of it. How I came to have such a blessed child i cant imagine.
On the other side of that coin i have my great aunt whom passed away last week. She was a fiesty lady whom never took shit from anyone. She had a sweet side, but it was guarded closely 
My aunt was approx 80+ she never would let anyone know her age so that is as good as i am going to be able to deliver. Her final act on this earth in the form of a funeral was to bring together a family that hadn’t really even realized it had drifted apart.
My family came together for the funeral and we had one of the best weekends as a family that I have experienced in close to eight years. People were awesome all willing to help work and play together and just the overall good vibes from everyone really took over.
Extra exciting was that for the first time Kylie was able to meet my family as a whole and as I remember my family acting. They made her feel included in a deep way. It brought me back to a good place that was positive. It showed me that my family was stronger than I had realized and more forgiving that I probably deserved.
I clearly wasn’t alone in feeling the good vibes. Almost everyone at one point in the weekend was caught laughing and horse playing in some way. My brother and I found each other throwing bottle rockets into the lake from the old dock like we had done years before. The years old fireworks were unpredictable and more fun because of it. We both grinned at each other when the bottle rockets exploded too quickly or zipped into the water instead of the air. It felt good in an old comfortable way that I don’t think either of had known we were even missing. The only changes were that we both walked away from the dock satisfied after only a single gross of bottle rockets between us. In our youth we could have both shot those bottle rockets off all day long and still wished for more time in the day to watch them fly over the lake and explode.
More exciting to me than some of those warm fuzzy feelings was the tremendous need that I felt from everyone else; that this feeling of energy was clearly something that they were missing too. Everyone seemed almost giddy that another gathering was being planned for labor day. We talked excitedly about the chores we needed to do and all the work that would need to be done. What I think was really happening was that we all understood that with this work would come the ability to bring back the fuzzy feelings of our past and make them into the kind of reality we have all been missing for a while.
If all goes well, we will have plans for years to come. I hope that in a few years I will sit with Griffin on that same old dock and show him how to light bottle rockets off. He will still have to use an old mason jar like I did for a few years, but it wouldn’t suprise me at all if he is caught tossing them into the air like his father and uncles, great uncle and grandfather all tended to do when they were the ones sent to the dock to blow off their fire works.
This is a test
Yep, a test of my mobile update…
What screen am I on?
So something that seemed simple really turned into a much bigger ordeal than it had a right to be. I rearranged the icons on my smart phone. It was a simple thing to start, but mid-way through I realized I needed more order to this, and I wouldn’t be just fitting things into gaps. There needed to be an organized design to my six screens of icons.
My first goal of course was to get all the games into one place. I had most of them on the main page, but after some thinking about it, I didn’t access them that often. Many times I used the little indicator that someone had played their turn on words with friends. I rarely actually used the icon that took up the space on my home screen. All games are now three screens to the left. All three angry birds (regular, seasons, Rio) sit at the top, Alchemy sits on the fourth slot. Under that are my word games and Sudoku… Oh Sudoku, the real reason those games are on the far left. An impulse game eats away my day just because the alluring icon of squared numbers tempts me for a second. The single press of an icon; eating away my time constantly.
Next, I took stock of the types of programs I used, News, settings, communication, notes, random stuff. I used the settings screen and the news screens quickly. I put the icons of communication on the home screen. (It is a phone after all) And I put the random stuff like recent calls, favorites, and the calendar in the settings screen. It just seemed to fit there.
I found my Conan app, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. In the end I put Conan Obrien in with the news apps. It just seemed perfect that Conan Obrien sits next to NPR.
At the end of my fifteen minute journey of organizing my life on my phone, I realized I could probably draw some really cool conclusions about how I run my life, hell how anyone runs their life by how they organize their phone icons.
Or I might be over thinking this and need to just move on.
Either way my phone is organized for the moment, and that brings me a small joy.
Sappy stuff from a Father who is…
Griffin Blue Sexton was born March 10th 2011. He weighed in at 7lbs 1oz, 21 inches long. He is possibly the most perfect thing I have ever seen. I really held off of exploring my thoughts over the last few months, because honestly I was scared out of my mind that something would go wrong and Kylie and I would experience a tragedy. Those fears were thankfully unfounded and we have an amazing child sitting in our arms depending on us for survival.
It took 14 hours of Labor to convince the Drs. to do a C-Section. I sat in the operating room dressed like a spaceman and feeling absolutely powerless; until they brought him over to me. At that point my whole world turned on its head. I won’t rant about how much perspectives have changed or any of that garbage… If you want that, just listen to any new father rant about things.
Instead I just wanted to proclaim just how awesome this new life is! He is officially the cutest baby I have ever seen. I say that objectively too… I genuinely threw out that he was my first born son and he still came out heads and tails less ugly than any other baby in the nursery.
Even cuteness aside, Griffin is just an amazing person. On a completely selfish point, He brings me joy that is only really matched by my wife. I can just sit with him in my arms, and listen to him breath. I don’t hesitate to change his diapers. I am actually proud of the way he can power poop so loudly that Kylie can hear it across the room. He is more than I could have asked for, and he just knocks me over with how amazing he is every time I see him.
So to sum it all up in a sentence
Griffin is awesome.
Sappy things from a Father to Be
SO…
We found out that we are going to have a boy. Over the last few months I have been quiet about everything because I wasn’t even sure what to think about. Every time I thought about it all I could think of was: “Boy or Girl”.
Now that I know it’s a Boy I am planning everything I can think of. Colors for the room, How to talk to him about different and difficult things I encountered as a child. How am I going to discipline him, how can I be the best father possible. How I can stay in his life without him feeling that I run it, and still encourage him to make better decisions that I did. This is the stuff that goes through my head almost instantly. This isn’t even covering the next five seconds in which my head explodes with all the millions of things that I just KNOW I am not prepared to handle.
I think what worries me the most is will the Boy like me. Will he be like me? Will he like the same things I do? Will he…. The list goes on and on. I think that in the end I just have to hope and pray that I can do right by him. Already we are planning on fixing the room and house up to be more family friendly and hopefully by the time he arrives we will at least have carved out a place for him to live. Then I will do the best I can to help him when he needs and watch over him even when he doesn’t think I need to.
Update of stuff
I guess I have entered into a new section of life again so I figured I would put out an update that reflects what is going on in my head.
So Kylie is now working at a residential facility working with teenage girls in a program that helps the girls learn independent living skills. This is a really cool program, but it creates an issue for us because She has to stay overnight for a week at a time.
Otherwise I have seen the pregnancy become a large focus for us and it has defiantly outlined for me what kind of things I need to fix or change. It made me really think about what kind of money I am spending and how to start preparing for this huge change in our lives.
This has also outlined for me what kind of activities I really enjoy doing with Kylie. Because now that it is the hottest part of the year, Kylie is having the morning / all darn day sickness. This is really cramping her style and I think frustration doesn’t really contain all of what she is going through. Being very outdoor natured people, this need for air conditioned environment makes our normal activities a little tougher.
I think over all I am still excited, but wow is it a change of direction. I am just realizing just how easy life is right now and how dramatically that’s going to change. I think that I am in fix-it mode, and I am trying to fix everything ahead of time so that when the baby comes, we won’t be caught so dramatically unprepared.
Update
Kylie is 8 weeks along.
there is ONLY ONE kid in there. no twins or more for us.
She is due March 4th.
I am Crazy excited, but I do not really know how to express it.
Monday
It feels like a Garfield Monday around here.
First time.
The first doctor’s appointment was scary and boring all in one. I guess there was silliness with the scheduling. I guess doctors can take off weeks at a time without letting anyone at all know. It must be cool to be a doctor.
Focus on the doctor’s office visit really just emphasized how little I was really going to be involved in things over the next couple months. The nurses did an amazing job at building up Kylie and making me feel like I was privileged to even be in the room. I actually asked the nurse about how many times I would even be needed. I felt like she wanted to tell me that my part was already done, but instead she told me that really just for the ultrasounds. Boy am I excited.
I guess I just am trying to gain some kind of reference as to what to expect. As far as I can tell, Knocked Up is about as close as I am going to come. God help me, I am just not that funny.