My sister Lisa gave birth to her first child at 7:10pm on Monday, a precious little girl named Reagan LeAnn. She weighed 6lb 4oz and was 20 inches long. Mom and baby are doing great! Here’s a pic:
Category Archives: Family
Date Night Part Deux
We’re not quite hitting date night every other week, but we’re trying! Friday night is our second date night since Brenden’s arrival. Papa and Mare Mare (Jenny’s parents) are coming up to watch him while we go to Midori Sushi, our favorite sushi place. We are thankful for such eager babysitters and for the chance to have some time just for us. Jenny in particular deserves a break after this rough week. I’ve been sick most of the week, so she’s had to care for Brenden alone and had to stay away from me so that both of them wouldn’t get sick. It’s also been tough for me, just in different ways. On top of the illness, I had to avoid my cute baby boy AND I had to sit and watch while my wife did all the work of caring for him. Thanks to Dr. Phillips, amoxicilin, and God, I’m now feeling MUCH better and can work, hang with B, and go out tonight with my bride.
First Date Night
Our first Date Night as parents was a lot of fun! In case you missed the first post, we went to Pappas Bros. Steakhouse for a special dinner to celebrate Brenden’s birth and spend some time together. We believe that other than teaching him to love and serve God, the most important thing we can do for Brenden is to keep our marriage strong. Brenden and Grammy hung out and had a good time while we were out, with only a little fussiness.
Dinner was fabulous! We both enjoyed some of the best steaks we have ever had along with excellent mashed potatoes, bread, and desserts and one of the best rieslings we’ve ever had. Pappa’s is definitely expensive, even during Restaurant Week, but it was a great experience.
Date Night During Restaurant Week
Before Brenden was born, Jenny and I agreed to go out to dinner alone within the first 2 weeks after he arrived. We want to keep our marriage a priority amidst the constant demands of parenting a newborn. We postponed our first date night slightly because so many of our wonderful friends are bringing us dinner this week and next, but we finally have a plan! Since this is a very special occasion, we decided to go somewhere we would NEVER go on a normal date night.
Each August, KRLD organizes Restaurant Week, a chance to try some of the best restaurants in the DFW area for a fixed price of $35, which includes appetizer, entree, and dessert. Even better, it’s a fundraiser for the North Texas Food Bank. We made reservations at Pappas Bros. Steakhouse for August 16 at 5:00. The plan is to feed Brenden at Grammy’s house, enjoy dinner, and pick him up before he gets hungry again. This will be our first time to leave him alone with someone outside the hospital and Mom’s first time to watch her grandson alone, since my dad will be on a plane returning from Alaska. If you’re looking for a nice restaurant, Restaurant Week is the way to go. Just don’t try to meet us at Pappas – this is a solo date!
Three Generations of Boxes
I didn’t realize this at first, but Brenden is the first male Box in the generation after mine. I have a few cousins with the Box name, but all of them either have no children or have girls. So at least for now, it’s up to little Brenden to continue the family name. No pressure, buddy!
Here are a couple of related pictures that I found after I put together the first gallery. One shows three generations of Boxes: my dad, me, and Brenden. The other shows Dad (now known as Grampy) and Brenden. Since Dad is our family photographer and often has a camera in hand, he doesn’t show up in many of our pictures. He actually took many of the pictures in the gallery from yesterday.
Observations So Far
It’s been a memorable week to say the least, but it’s also given me the opportunity to reflect a bit. Here are a few things I’ve observed:
- When your wife is going in for major abdominal surgery to rescue your struggling unborn son, you don’t want the C-team doctors and nurses on the job. You want the A-team. We got the A-team at Baylor Irving with Dr. Dominique and nurses Teri and Cari, and we are so thankful for them.
- As a corollary, when I’m on the job, I want to be the A-team. That means I have to work a little harder, pay closer attention, and care more than I have to.
- Nothing makes you reevaluate your priorities like wondering whether your wife and child are going to be OK.
- My sister’s job as a labor and delivery nurse has some parallels to my own job that I hadn’t noticed before. We both have safety as our top concern in an environment that requires gathering information, analyzing it, and making educated guesses. She cares for a laboring mother with the goal of a safe delivery for mother and baby. Ideally, the delivery will go according to the mother’s wishes (or birth plan, if you will), but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way, perhaps changing the planned normal delivery into a c-section. I launch flights and hopes that my plan gets the flight to its planned destination on time, but sometimes the weather or air traffic doesn’t cooperate, forcing the flight to divert to an alternate airport and then try again later.
- Dirty diapers really are more tolerable when they belong to your own kid.
- Grandparents really, really, really like having grandchildren.
- Babies make weird noises.
- No matter which parenting philosophy you choose, you can find plenty of people who disagree with it, and you might disagree with it yourself at times.
- Sometimes babies make sense, and other times they don’t, and that’s OK.