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dad from day one: Baby Bean

Ten weeks.

Our kid is currently the size of a small strawberry.

This baby is growing everyday inside of my wife.  A living being.  Or as I think of it, a living bean.  We already love this little 10 week old baby though it decides to spend all its time inside my wife’s womb.

Yesterday officiated Week 10 of the pregnancy.  Here’s what all is forming right now: ears, nose, neck, hair follicles, muscles, nerves, and fingerprints.  And the baby’s testicles or ovaries.  Things are happenin’.

Anytime we do something for the first time since my wife has been pregnant, we acknowledge it is the first time our baby experiences it.

Like a few weeks ago (at that point the fetus was the size of a kidney bean) when we went on a four mile hike:  That was our baby’s first hike and boy were her/his little legs tired.

Followed by baby’s first quesadilla at Ruby Tuesday’s.  And baby’s first episode of The Office.

It’s gotta be a cute little thing inside there.  I told my wife that I wish we could take it out and play with it.  And set up a little carriage for it the size of a cotton ball.  And it could sleep next to us.

But if it got cold, we could put it back in the womb for a while.

Though I bet once the baby bean experienced life outside the womb, it would rather just stay outside with us.

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com

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dad from day one: How We Told the Family

Something else I’ve learned so far about being an expecting parent: People are intensely, genuinely excited when they hear the news.  Now that it’s gone viral (facebook), I have been blessed with all kinds of encouraging messages.

As well as some that crack me up:  A friend from high school said I will be a “fab dad” and that I should have a diaper bag with FAB DAD written alongside guitar-shaped flames.  And my 7th grade English teacher said, “You are like a mom… with testosterone.”

That’s brilliant.

But before the news could go public like it has this week, there was a point in time where we had to find a creative way to break the news to our family first.  It’s not something we wanted to do over the phone, if possible.

Conveniently, we had already planned to spend Easter weekend back in my hometown.  Even more convenient was that my mom’s birthday was exactly one week after Easter Sunday, so we found a way to make her birthday gift the news of the baby.

My wife found a tote bag with an insert on the front for a photograph.  With the sonogram in that slot, as well as a “grandparents’ brag book” inside the bag, we had our strategy ready.  The trickiest part was convincing my sister that she and her husband needed to be there at my parents’ house as soon as we got into town that Friday night at 9 PM.  Fortunately, she didn’t question my shady ways too much.

After the usual “settle in” conversations, I handed my mom’s gift to her, which was inside a larger gift bag.  She lifted up the bag from the bag.  It took about ten seconds.

Then her face dropped.  And the tears turned on instantly.  As to inform my dad, my sister, and her husband, my wife announced, “We havin’ a baby!”

It was everything we had hoped for during the four weeks we had to wait to tell them.  We received our “new parents hugs” in a joyous celebration.

My sister, noticing that my dad hadn’t said a word, asked him, “What do you have to say?”

He responded, “Speechless.”  And a little later: “I guess this means we’re gonna be spending a lot of gas money driving back and forth to Nashville.”  That means he’s really excited.  And again with the convenience thing, our child’s due date is on my dad’s birthday.  No way we could have planned that.

My wife had mailed a card and sonogram picture to her mom in Sacramento, with “do not open until you call me” written on the envelope.  Fortunately, it arrived just a few hours before we told my family.  So both sides of the family were able to find out the same day.

It’s not the kind of news a person can just announce to their closest family and friends through a facebook status.  It takes strategic planning.

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com

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Medium and a Half: The Average and Normal Size?

Being average does not equate being normal.

My body must be disproportioned. Medium-sized anything fits a little too short and tight once it’s washed.  Anything that is a large-sized ends up being a little baggy even if it’s washed in hot water and dried on “high heat”.

When a long sleeve shirt fits me right, the sleeves are always a little bit too long and the bottom of the shirt is too short.  So there’s not much to tuck in.  That either means my arms are shorter than normal or my torso is longer than normal.  Or maybe a little bit of both.

And pants, those are always weird.  My pants size is 33×31.  I am the average American male height: 5’ 9”.  And my weight is normal for my height: around 160 pounds.  Yet it’s almost impossible to find my pants size when I buy pants.

I have to settle for either 34×30 or 33×34.  So my pants are either a bit too big around the waste and a little too short in the legs, or they’re too long.

If I’m so average-sized, why don’t clothing companies make clothes that fit me?

Conspiracy.

Storms off, stage left.  Pants dragging the ground.

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dad from day one: The Minor Details

What will be his or her heritage?  How tall will he or she be as an adult?  Boy or girl?  I’m answering the tough questions today, based on educated theories.

This series isn’t a “baby blog”.  Instead, it’s a documented journey of what a first time dad thinks about, starting from when I first found out and started sharing the news with everyone.  Because this info is coming from a man, who processes things in black and white, it’s possible that the tone will be a mix of both practical and abstract.  No goo-goo gah-gah.  But maybe a little nanu-nanu.

In fraction form, here are the proportions of my coming child’s ethnicity:

1/4 Italian (my wife and I are both this)

1/8 Croatian (from my wife; Croatia is the country we know today as “Transylvania”, The Count from Sesame Street speaks with a Croatian accent)

1/8 Mexican (from me, my mom’s mom’s family moved to Buffalo from Mexico)

1/8 Norwegian (my wife’s grandfather on her dad’s side was from Norway, but was adopted by an English couple in Iowa)

1/8 German (from me, where the Shell name comes from, as well as a little bit from my wife’s Norwegian side)

1/8 Irish (my wife’s grandmother on her dad’s side came to America as an indentured servant from Ireland)

1/8 English (from me, where the pale skin and light freckles come from)

*Greek (higher up on my dad’s family tree, there were two separate Greek ancestors; family tradition tell us that a Greek ended up on the Italian side as well)

*French (in my wife’s Italian lineage, family tradition tells us that a Frenchman got thrown in the mix)

*Jewish (my Mexican grandmother swears that my late Italian grandfather was part Jewish, and based on the family’s speech patterns, uses of random Hebrew words, and quirky behavior, I’m convinced it’s true)

Virtually, on both my wife’s side and my side of the gene pool, there is no man 6 feet tall or more, nor is there a woman 5’ 8” or more.  Combined with the fact that I am 5’ 9” (the average height of the American man) and my wife is 5’ 6” (two inches taller than the average height of the American woman), here are the most likely height ranges for our child once they become full grown:

Boy: between 5’ 8” and 5’ 11”

Girl: between 5’ 3” and 5’ 7”

Hair color on both sides generally ranges from medium brown to jet black, therefore it’s most likely the child will have semi-wavy, dark brown hair.  Though I do have two blonde-haired, blue-eyed aunts and also a red-headed, green-eyed aunt as well.

In one of my Mexican grandma’s dreams, the baby was a girl.  But based on a Vietnamese co-worker who correctly predicted the gender of my boss’s kid based on a Chinese calendar, he told me that there is a 70% change it is a boy.  My wife’s mom gave birth to 10 kids, and only 3 were girls.

My instinct tells me it’s a girl.  We’ll know in eight weeks if I’m wrong.

All this baby guesswork makes me think of those commercials for Puppy Surprise from 1992:  “Puppy, puppy, puppy surprise…  How many puppies are there inside?  There could be three, or four, or five…”

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com

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dad from day one: She’s Having a Baby

The word on the street is true.  And we couldn’t be any happier about it!

Three weeks ago my Mexican grandma (who has always been very religious-superstitious) called my sister, saying, “Do you have something to tell me?”

“No…”

“Are you sure?  You don’t have anything to tell me?”

“Nnnnno…”  (more hesitantly than the first time)

“I had a dream.  I had a dream where I saw your grandfather in Heaven and he was so happy.  He was pushing a baby stroller.”

In other words, my grandma assumed the wrong grandchild.  She also told my sister about another dream she had where she saw “the most beautiful little girl in a rocking chair”.  We’ll know in about eight more weeks whether or not that second dream is true.

Something I never realized about finding out you’re going to be a first time parent is that it has to stay a secret for a while.  Long enough to make sure it’s not a false alarm.  Long enough to confirm with a doctor.  Long enough to get a sonogram.

We’ve known for over a month now.  It’s a huge secret to keep from the entire world for that long.  What a relief!  Hey, we’re having a baby!

Expected arrival is on my dad’s 54th birthday:  November 11th.

Obviously I’ve got a lot more to say about it all and I will continue to encounter plenty more as time goes on.  Therefore, this is the first of many in my new series I call “dad from day one”.  While it seems pretty easy to find material out there for expectant moms, not so much for expectant dads.

Expectant dads don’t encounter physical changes, but they do experience psychological ones.  In this new series I will be journaling the whole process, from the time we found out we’re having a baby, until… well I can’t say until the baby is born because that’s only the beginning.  And speaking of the beginning, when is day one?

Was it the day of conception?  The day we found out?  Today, the day I’m publicly telling everyone I haven’t already told in person or on the phone?  I don’t know.  Day One is the beginning of this new person I am becoming.

In the likeness of a TV show I’ve never seen but heard good things about, How I Met Your Mother, another goal of “dad from day one” is to create an archive for this kid to come.  To show him or her what was going through my head during all this.

Eighteen years ago, I was given a blank journal by a classmate from school as a Christmas present.  Inspired by my favorite cartoon show at the time, Doug, I remember my first entry:

“Dear Journal, I will be writing everyday so that in the future when I have kids of my own one day…”
Then I stopped.  I embarrassed myself with the phrase “kids of my own one day” because it wasn’t the way I actually talked.  It just seemed too weird.  I threw the journal in the garbage.

Here I am 18 years later, seven months away from the big day.  About to have a “kid of my own”.  Let’s do this thing.

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com