Baby Brooklyn

My schedule is starting to normalize. What is incredible is Brooklyn's sleep schedule. She sleeps almost all night long. She'll usually wake up somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30 and then fall asleep again until about 8:00 or so. It's awesome. That being said, I should start posting again tomorrow. I know you can't wait. JM

Schedule

It's tough to have a schedule with a new baby. I'll post regularly in a few days, until then it will be kind of hit and miss, well, really more miss. JM

We're Home

Well, not home. But we are out of the hospital. JM

Pacifier

Brooklyn loves her pacifier. Here's some pictures of her sucking on it and some pictures of her after they took off the first few sensors. She's done with her antibiotics now, and we're just waiting to see how she responds after they cap off the IV. JM

Scars

Ana Brooklyn has a little bitty scar below her belly button. The surgeon said that the skin incision is visible like that, but the incision underneath is perpendicular to that. JM

Not So Fast

Brooklyn will probably spend the night at the hospital for one more night. She's doing well, but still on the IV. At 2:00 they are going to try to feed her as much as she wants (they've been limiting her to 15 ml every 3 hours since the surgery). If she eats well for that, then they will cap off her IV. They'll wait 3 more hours and then check her blood sugars. If everything comes back clean, then we're good to go. But she also needs to get her hearing checked. So because of all of these things, it's probably going to be tomorrow.
Eryn is being discharged today, though. They're looking into whether or not we can stay in our room for one more night. Right now Eryn is still a patient, so we're all good. JM

Going Home

Eryn goes home today. We're going down right now to find out if Brooklyn gets to go home today, or if they'll want to keep her for one more day. She's doing well and is slowly being weaned off of her IV and taking in more formula. They moved her into a crib last night, out of the hospital warmer, so that's a good sign as well. I'll let you know what happens. JM

Post-Op

Brooklyn's chilling in the NICU now. She's still got her little wires and stuff hooked up to her, but they're slowly taking them off. It's cute, because she gets to hang out in the little warmer naked. JM

Surgery

The surgeon said that everything went well. The cyst had actually started to twist, so if we had left it alone, they probably would have had to eventually take it out along with her left ovary and fallopian tube. So that was reassuring. It's great now because we never have to think about this cyst again. JM

Wires

Here's what Brooklyn looked like before they took her back for surgery.


The doctors and nurses were wicked cool. They let me walk down with them near the O.R. I met the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, and the nurses. They explained everything that would happen and even some of the bad things that could possibly happen. It was really comforting. JM

Brooklyn's Surgery

Brooklyn just got out of surgery. Only took about 30 minutes. She did well. We're going to meet with the surgeon in about 30 minutes. Then we'll go see her in the NICU. JM

Brooklyn's Surgery

Brooklyn went into surgery at 12:50. JM

Brooklyn's First Trip

Brooklyn went downstairs just now. She's down in the NICU. They gave her a little IV and strapped a couple other monitors to her. She's just sleeping down there. I'll post some pictures later. JM

Before Surgery

They said we couldn't feed Brooklyn anymore before they take her to surgery, so hopefully they'll come pretty soon. That would be sad. They'll take her down and give her an IV soon. She has no idea, of course, but is just sleeping away.

You're Not My Mom

Ana really likes to act like the mommy. Yesterday she kept wanting to hold Brooklyn, give her a bottle, and feed her M&M's. JM

Surgery

We just finished talking to the pediatric surgeon. Surgery is scheduled for 12:40. Should be very simple, but still scary. She's so little and so pretty. JM

Settling In

We're starting to get used to being in the hospital now. Eryn is still in a lot of pain from pushing Brooklyn out of her body, but I'm feeling pretty good. Brooklyn just went to spend the night in the nursery. Tomorrow they'll do her surgery, unless we change our mind.
She has a 5 cm ovarian cyst. The pediatric surgeon said that we could either monitor it with weekly ultrasounds and it could spontaneously resolve, or we could do surgery tomorrow. We're going with the surgery. The risks are that she has to be fully sedated, a risk of infection at the incision, and a risk of rupturing something with the probe.
Basically they are going to make a small incision, go in laparoscopically, look around, burst the cyst, and pull out a small section to make sure it's benign. The fluid in the cyst as well as the cyst wall will be absorbed into Brooklyn's body.
If we just followed it without doing the procedure, then the cyst could get twisted and then they would have to remove the cyst, her left ovary, and her left fallopian tube. That seems less desirable, so we're just going to get it over with.
The surgery is supposed to be tomorrow afternoon, but I'll post when it is exactly so that you, dear reader, can pray for my beautiful daughter Brooklyn.
JM

Technology

My kids love portable LCD screens. Noah likes to watch videos on youtube and Ana likes to watch Shrek. This is pretty much how every night goes down. JM

Snow Day

Noah and Ana played in the snow for the first time together the day after we got here. Ana liked to stand on the driveway and walk up to the snow, but hated being in the snow. After I had placed her in the snow, she kept falling down. After falling down for the fourth time, I helped her up and she yelled "I want bye-bye" in a panic-stricken voice. It was really cute. Notice Noah's fountains of snot running down his nose. He liked making snowballs and throwing them at bad guys. JM

Noah's Preschool Christmas Performance

I'm pretty sure that I never posted these, but these are the pictures of Noah's preschool Christmas performance. They sang three songs. But he wasn't there. We left the day before to move up to St. Louis. So these pictures are from the practice that they had. It was sad.
Also, Noah just had his first real phone conversation with a friend. He talked to Joseph (two people to his right in the first two pictures) about bad guys and birthday parties and all manner of things that only make sense if you're three. JM

Not Brooklyn

I've called Brooklyn "Ana" at least 20 times today. Here's Ana. She's a lot bigger. And a lot sassier. JM

Sir, 22:28, Sir

They have massive clocks in these labor and delivery rooms that display the time in military time. I guess the thought is that doctors can't afford watches to figure out what time the child was born. Either that or they all have poor vision. JM

A Tisket, A Tasket

Frank's in a basket!! JM

Justice

Life is unfair. Look at the picture of my wife on drugs in the post below this one. She's happy. Look at the bed that the drug user gets to lie in. Now look at what I get. Labor & Delivery is unfair. Life is unfair. JM

Drugs

Drugs are magical. We all should use them. My wife was in pain. Her life was miserable. But drugs saved the day. Hooray for drugs!! JM

Curious

I'm a naturally curious person. Luckily, the hospital satiates my curiosity by showing me the contractions and fetal heart rates of every woman in the labor and delivery rooms (Eryn was room 3). I could watch this for hours. Especially if I had a buddy with me and we were placing bets. It's like an off track betting facility, only weirder. JM

Picture Pages

Contain your excitement. Here's Brooklyn.




JM

Chillin'

So now we're just hanging out with Brooklyn. Eryn keeps wanting to put an outfit on her, but I don't want to wake her since she's sleeping. She's all wrapped up in her blankets and stuff. She's really cute.
Brooklyn will probably have her ultrasound today to find out if they want to do surgery to remove her ovarian cyst. I'll let you know what we find out. JM

Brooklyn Is Here

Brooklyn came out at 2:12 this morning. She weighs 6 lbs 12 ozs. Pictures when I can upload them will be available here. JM

Stalling Out

So we're stuck at 7 cm. Nothing much going on right now. They may start pitocin soon. The baby's heart rate is a little erratic, but they're not too worried. Eryn's blood count was really low, but there isn't a whole lot they can do about that right now. Hopefully we'll have a baby before too long. JM

Brooklyn is coming

Brooklyn is on her way. It's real this time. Epidural and all. JM

Acts 16:1-3

How far would you go to further your ministry? There are certainly limits that I have, especially if we're just talking about making other Christians feel comfortable with me. I wouldn't take out my earrings. I wouldn't shave everyday. I wouldn't do a lot of things. Timothy got circumcised. That's pretty humbling. Although, I wonder if he just said he had it done. JM

Acts 15:30-41

Just because two people are Christians, doesn't mean they have to be best friends. Or hang out. They just have to be friendly. A lot of times we have this thought that we have to be friends with somebody just because they are a Christian too. But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I wouldn't want to hang out all the time with a home-schooling, cross-stitching, TBN-watching Christian. But I would be nice to them.
It's okay to disagree with other Christians, so long as the relationship is maintained. JM

One Day

Someday I will post two exciting pieces of information here: the birth of my daughter and the sale of my house. But not today. We went and walked around the mall today hoping to help along the process of either one, but to no avail. JM

Ron Paul

I have a friend who loves Ron Paul. He is always talking about how he has great ideas.
I'm politically apathetic, but this video about Ron Paul made me actually want to care. It seems as though I really agree with him. Unfortunately, he's an also-ran.

JM

Acts 15:28-29

It's amazing that they could boil down all of the Levitical law down to these four things. They didn't say, we have to do all of these things, and you should too. They didn't say, this is how it's always been. They embraced people who had embraced Jesus.
This is the most difficult step for the church. We expect all Christians to look alike. To live in suburbia. To dress nice. To not struggle with sin. But that's not real. And I don't think Jesus likes it. JM

Nevermind

The same doctor that sent us to the hospital to have a baby, sent us home from the hospital without a baby. It's really kind of lame. When we got there, we skipped the evaluation unit and went straight back to labor and delivery because they said our doctor said we're probably staying, and then they sent us home. Frustrating. JM

BirthDay

So we're in the hospital right now being evaluated to see if they're going to let us stay. Eryn was at the perinatologist this morning and they told her to go to the hospital because they were kind of concerned about the baby's heart rate, but that it wasn't a big deal.
Hopefully they'll just induce and then we'll have a baby. I'll keep you posted. JM

INTJ

I saw someone posted their Myers-Briggs personality type on another blog and found it to be an interesting insight into how they function. So I thought I'd do the same. I'm an INTJ, called a "mastermind". I like that!
The two paragraphs I find the most interesting:

In forming relationships, INTJs tend to seek out others with similar character traits and ideologies. Agreement on theoretical concept is an important aspect of a relationship. By nature INTJs tend to be demanding in their expectations and approach relationships in a very rational manner. As a result, an INTJ may not always respond to a naturally occurring infatuation but wait for a mate who better fits his or her set criteria. Persons with this personality type are very stable, reliable and dedicated. Harmony in relationships and home life tends to be extremely important to the INTJ. He or she tends to withhold strong emotion and does not like to "waste" time with irrational social rituals. This, however, may cause non-INTJs to perceive him or her as distant and reserved.

According to Keirsey, INTJs, or "Mastermind Rationals", are natural strategists, better than any other type at brainstorming approaches to situations. They are natural, but not eager, leaders, only stepping forward when it becomes obvious to them that they are the best for the job. Strong-willed and very self-assured, they may make this decision quickly, as they tend to make all decisions. But though they are decisive, they are always open-minded to new evidence and new ideas, flexible in their planning to accommodate changing situations. They are excellent at judging the usefulness of ideas and will apply whatever seems most efficient to them in accomplishing their clearly envisioned goals. To INTJs, what matters is getting it done, and they have a tendency to give little thought to personal cost in getting there.

JM

Acts 15:1-27

What a beautiful picture of how to handle disagreement within the church. Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever seen it happen like this. Everybody wants to make it personal, and political, and "God will only support my viewpoint"-al. JM

Regionalism And Religiosity

This map is really interesting to me (really most maps are interesting to me). It shows the predominant religion by county in the United States. JM

Acts 14:19-28

Love keeps no record of wrongs. If we really love people, then we'll be able to overlook the dumb stuff that they do. Our love will override it and make it seem like it didn't happen. That's what's hard about love. It hurts a lot sometimes, but it's worth it. I hope that I can love people the way that Paul did, even after being stoned and left for dead, to go back to them. JM

Google Montage

Not sure if this is really useful yet, but it seems like it could be. It uses Google's image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user. I messed around with it a little bit and got a couple to look pretty cool, but you can get some pretty random tags off of google images. JM

Missouri Chair

Some things just make you laugh. This is one of them.
I love the line "you can hardly call this work"...while she's spinning around trying to control her appendages. I would throw up. JM
(ht:double 3)

Architectural Projection

How cool is that picture. I would love to do this kind of stuff in our building. JM

New Phone

I'm supposed to be getting a smart phone. I don't want one, though. I like two phones, the blackberry pearl and the iphone. But both require me to get fancy data plans that I don't want and can't afford.
So I think I'm going to get a regular phone and an iPod touch. Yeah, I'll have to carry two things with me, but I'll just try to get a small cell phone, like the juke. We'll see. JM

Acts 14:8-18

Everybody has something in common with you. The more that we can tap into that and use it, the more we can effectively minister. When I speak to middle school students, I always try to find the commonality. But I need to try to do that with everybody I meet. Finding the commonality is the key to relational evangelism. JM

Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

Oh, oh! (I return).

JM