Family Values

• When I was a kid, my favorite books were the ValueTale series by Spencer Johnson, MD. They came once a month. I always looked forward to their arrival. When we found out we were having Bennett, I purchased the complete set on ebay. Tonight we started in on the series with "The Value of Patience - The Story of the Wright Brothers". Maybe eight days old is too early for a child to understand the power of a good story - but he did stop crying when I started reading (plus with his early arrival, he could learn a thing or two about patience). So we learned about how the Wright Brothers wanted to put an engine on a glider so it would stay in the air. Their father taught them that "patience means not getting mad when something takes a long time." The Wright Brothers used the value of patience to fly the first airplane in Kitty Hawk, NC (where Daddy took hang gliding lessons a few years ago). Bennett dozed off before he realized that if we are patient we can accomplish anything we want (we'll save that lesson for his third week of life).
• I went back to work yesterday. What a feeling to come home to your family (smiling wife, happy baby, and a dog wagging his tail off).

• I used a cool trick of shooting a few drops of breast milk (from a bottle, not directly from the breast) up Bennett's nose to clear out his blocked nostrils. A bulb syringe and a couple sneezes later he went from whistling through his nose to breathing free!

• A couple of fellow fathers have told me, "Life begins now." . . . I believe them.

• I'm working on my diaper change time (ala nascar pit crew) . . . doodie is my duty.

• I feel like having a baby minimizes the browser on the rest of your life.

• I look back at the last nine months in disbelief. We've moved 1700 miles, remodeled a commercial space, started a business, and (most importantly) all this has happened (save the last minute):