I didn't get the best of it, but this is a video of Vera Laughing. It's about the best thing ever!

This is serioulsy cute

She's in a good mood!!

This is one of my Literary Club poets reading some of his original work at our sister school. This kid's the man. He's the only one of my students who liked reading Ralph Waldo Emerson

Holidays

This is Vera in her Halloween costume. She was a frog. Perhaps a tadpole would have been more appropriate. We are going to be spending our Thanksgiving with Sophia's family first in Litchfield for dinner and then the Hamptons for the weekend. Christmas is the Lampe family holiday this year. There will be charades in the Hamptons (an annual BU10F tradition). I'm thinking that Vera's costume may come in handy. I'm sorry this is about the cutest thing ever, am I right?

Pics

Who's kidding?

More Pics

Here she is only minutes old!!!

Vera meets the grandparents!

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Quality time with the family unit.

Vera

The first thing you have to know is that the day my wife and I headed to the hospital a bear wandered on to our beloved campus. This fact is not directly related to the events that followed; I think of it as more of an omen. It's arrival is a huge event, it's scary as hell, but ultimately it's just an untamed force of nature looking for some food. Sound familiar? The bear wandered on to the village green near the headmaster's house during one of my classes. A campus alert sounded. This was during one of my four classes that day. At the end of that day I went to cross country practice in which we, more importantly I, ran five miles. That was about the longest run I have done in a very long time. Right after I arrived at the end of the run covered in sweat and questioning the existence of God, my mother-in-law called me and informed me that my wife was bleeding, and I should come home. I ran home. That is the end of the part of this story in which I complain of my day. From here on out I had it pretty easy. We called the doctor and he told us to go to the hospital. No one at this point was seriously considering the possibility that we might be about to have a baby. This was clearly one of those times you always hear about when a pregnant couple goes to the hospital only to be sent right back home because labor has yet to start. We knew that Sophia wasn't in labor. She hadn't had a single contraction. We got there and the first thing the doctor told us was that we weren't going home. We were going to stay there until the baby was born and they were going to start an induction. For those of you who are unaware of the details of the process of induction, it starts with twelve hours of a medication called cervadil whose purpose is to ripen the cervix. After that was done they started pitocin, a synthetic form of the hormone that causes contractions. So to recap we got there at night we had to wait until the next morning before they even started the labor part of the induction process. All throughout that night they checked her blood pressure and monitored the baby's heart rate, which in layman's terms means they never let her get any sleep. The next morning after the pitocin started there was a lot more waiting. In fact the pitocin seemed to have virtually no effect what so ever. We got all the way until 10 pm that evening before she had any real contractions, but I am getting ahead of myself. In the mean time they decided that her blood pressure was too high and they were afraid that maybe she had preeclampsia. They gave her a blood pressure medication, but it didn't work. The only way that they could determine for sure wether or not she had preeclampsia was to test for protien in her urine. In order to get an untainted sample they needed to do a catheter. Fear not, catheters are just as horrifying as you would imagine them to be, especially when the nurse has the empathic capabilities of a pet rock. After that wonderful experience it turned out that the sample was tainted anyway. Oops. So unsure if she actually had preeclampsia, the decided to act like she did and put her on Magnesium Sulfate which is a medication which prevents seizure. It also causes flu like symptoms, neccessitates staying in bed, and slows the effectiveness of pitocin. A fun little side note: there is a danger of toxicity with Magnesium sulfate if the patient doesn't urinate enough, so they needed to measure precisely how much urine Sophia was producing. That means she needed another catheter, and this one had to stay in. Yea. So at around 10 Sophia started bleeding. This was the scariest part of the whole experience. The nurse came in and a doctor and they put in an internal fetal monitor. They didn't know what was causing the bleeding and with the external monitor they kept losing the baby's heart rate. They decided that his was unacceptable. The internal monitor would give a more constant direct reading of the baby's heart rate. That way even if Sophia is bleeding that can be sure the baby is ok. This monitor also necessitates breaking the water because it attaches directly to the baby's head. This is what started labor. Sophia labored for several hours, and eventually decided to get an epidural. It was at around two in the morning. The anesthesiologist put in an effective tap, that became ineffective the moment she left the room. So after an insightful discussion about the difference between pressure and pain, the anesthesiologist was called back in. She did a second epidural, which was better in that it took a few hours to become totally ineffective. During that brief respite we slept. I got more sleep than Sophia because she was awoken to have an internal contraction monitor inserted. At this point Sophia was at her maximum number of attachments. She had a catheter and two internal monitors, an IV which was dripping two bags of fluids one of Magnesium Sulfate and one of Pitocin. She had inflatable leg warmers that inlfated up and down her leg to ensure adequate circulation, and she had a blood pressure cuff on her arm. She looked like someone hooked up to the matrix. So now it's 6 am and we're up after three hours of sleep, and at this point the contractions are hard and long, and seriously pitociny. The only good news that we had was that at 7:30 our very own OBGYN was coming on. We loved him. He was awesome. He gave her a pelvic exam, and found that the baby had yet to descend into the pelvis in spite of the fact that she had dilated 5 cm. He suggested that we have a C section, and by the time he brought it up we were so spent and frustrated that we were saying yes before he got done explaining what he wanted to do. They brought her down the hall, and gave her a spinal. That was the third shot in the spine she had had that day, and the first that really alleviated her pain. They gave me some scrubs and some shoe covers that were very nearly too small, and ushered me into the OR. I was seated at a stool near Sophia's head next to a blue sheet set up to block Sophia's view. I could hear the Doctor talking about what he was doing. When he got to the part where he was going to pull the baby out I stood up to look over at the action. This was the moment for me. I was not overly emotional up to this point. I was concerned for the well being of my wife, I was eager to meet my daughter, but I wasn't welling up with tears or anything. Then her little head popped out I and could see her face. She had a face. It was earth-shattering. Not having passed through a birth canal the fluid had not been squeezed from her lungs and therefor she had to be suctioned, and they had to provide a little positive pressure on her lungs to get her breathing properly. Then we got to hold her. They sewed up Sophia's belly and took us to recovery. She is healthy happy, and if I say so, the cutest thing ever. She's the best and I love her. In the OR Sophia was feeling cold and so they put an inflatable garment over her upper body that filled up with hot air to keep her warm. It was called a bear-hugger. She's our little bear, our little untamed force of nature looking for a meal.

One last word about our Doula. Her name was Meg and she was invaluable. She stayed up with us, she massaged, encouraged, supported, and helped us through one of the most difficult ordeals of our lives. We could not have done it without her. She was amazing. She was a rock.

I'm back

It has been a while since I have updated this blog. If you have been eagerly awaiting my return to the not so time honored world of the blogosphere, I apologize for my absence. Since we all know that virtually no one has lost any sleep over my hiatus, let's move on.

During my time away from the internet I started a master's program at my alma mater, Wesleyan University. I took three classes beginning my journey towards a masters in Liberal Studies. How Wesleyan to offer a Masters in Liberal Arts. What's next, a PHD in nerdliness? I could become a doctor of general bookishness. The three classes that I took were called Writers at Work, Plays for Performance, and Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The first was a writing class, the second was a theater class about analyzing plays from the point of view of actors and directors, the third was a jazz history class about the eponymous musicians. I have to say it was fun. Wesleyan is a great place to feel very smart about very nebulous things. They did offer classes in hard sciences. I even think there was a math class, but taking classes like that at Wesleyan is like taking nude water color finger painting at MIT. (Nude painters not nude models) I particularly enjoyed Plays for Performance, in which we read Hamlet, Angels in America, Uncle Vanya, Long Day's Journey into Night, and Phaedra's Love by Sarah Kane. For those of you unfamiliar with the works of Sarah Kane, suffice it to say that her play inspired one of my classmates to refer to it as Long Day's Journey into Genital Mutilation. It was exceptionally graphic. In Writer's at Work, I read a number of authors whom I had never read before, and whom I now admire. We read Brian Doyle, David Foster Wallace, and Andre Aciman, whose novel Call Me by Your Name forever changed my feelings about peaches after I read a passage in which the main character violates a peach which he feels resembles the ass of the man he loves. It was an interesting summer.

Since then the wife and I have been spending a lot of time at the doctor's office as we come ever closer to our due date. The upside of this is that we have had several extra ultrasounds allowing us to see her majesty again. The downside is that, though they assure us that nothing is really wrong we still have to spend way too much time at the doctor's office.

We went to a breast feeding class too. That was pretty cool. Each couple got an infant practice dummy, which each mother immediately handed to her husband because her belly prevented anything from resting comfortably in her lap. There was a plush-breast visual aid that the lactation nurse used to illustrate proper latching. It was awesome.

We have also been showered with baby gifts. We have a crib, lots of onesies, and cute little knit things. The Baby's room is pretty much completely furnished. Now all we need is a baby.

Huge head

I don't know if you ever noticed but I have a huge head.  I don't mean that I'm arrogant.   Maybe that can the be subject of another post, and whole lot of soul searching, but I mean it literally.  It's huge, a virtual planetoid (to quote Mike Meyers).   I love hats too, but the truth is that I have a hard time finding hats that really fit my enormous melon.  Sophia has a big head too.  In fact on those rare occasions that I find a hat that fits my huge noggin it fits her too.  We share everything.  Yesterday in birthing class we saw a video of a woman who ended up having a c-section because the baby's head was too big to fit through the pelvis.  The whole time I'm thinking, "Damn I hope Sophia has a huge pelvis."  Check out these pictures and judge for yourself how big the baby's head is.   

Alarm!!!!!!!!!

In case you were unaware the wife and I and our two cats are moving this summer.  It's going to be hard leaving behind our lovely one bedroom apartment, with it's huge basement, and huge kitchen, and new appliances, and psychotic fire alarm system.  All year it has been our nemesis.  At first it hated pizzas.  Any attempt to bake a pizza was met with a deafening siren whitch automatically calls the fire department.  "Damn, I guess we'll have to stop baking pizzas!"  I said.  But noooo.  That wasn't the end of it.  Then it started going off even when we preheated the oven.  The fire alarm made war on all baking.   Not to be discouraged we developed a strategy, that involved openning all the windows, putting a fan in the kitchen window, and covering the smoke detector with a shower cap, turning the lights out and pretending no one was home.  Then in the darkness of our kitchen we would try to fool our evil fire alarm into ignoring our culinary efforts.  This was only met with mild success.  I began to tire of telling the firemen who kept having to come to our house in full gear that "I swear I didn't really burn anything, it's just the alarm, it's crazy I'm telling you it's out to get me."  As the weather warmed a new day dawned in the war against the smoke detector.  We bought a grill.  "Haha" I thought.  "I'll cook outside.  Take that stupid fire alarm."  I was momentarilly struck with horror the first time I tried to light it and saw the pillar of smoke heading toward an open window.  There is little that can be done to disuade a plume of smoke from heading in it's desired direction no matter how much flailing of the arms one attempts.  Thinking quickly I wheeled the smoking grill to a new location farther from the house and at an angle wherefrom the smoke would drift by the house rather than directly into it.   I had won the battle but the war was not over. This last week the dastardly device has countered by going completely insane.  Now it just goes off whenever the hell it feels like it, each time with the same deafening wail and obligatory appearance of the fire department to inform us that yes indeed there is no fire.  "No kidding?"   I can't wait to move.

Endings

I am on vacation.  I can't tell you how awesome it feels to have a job that ends once every year.  Throughout my education there was always summer to look forward to.  Life had a natural rhythm.  Work all fall winter and spring, push through and then, relax.  During all those years that I spent working normal jobs, it was so hard to get used to the idea that I was never done.  Work continued as it always does, for ever.  

The end was great.  I said my goodbyes to students who meant a lot to me, and to whom I meant a lot.  I offered my congratulations, and posed for pictures.  I wore a gown with Wesleyan colors on the hood.  I sat in the early summer heat and listened to a notable speaker lecture about the inevitability of failure and the necessity of persistence in the face of it.   Then I finished grading and writing comments, and started looking to next year.  We will be in a new house, we'll have a little girl, and I'll have a new batch of seniors.  I already have ideas about how it will be different in my class, how I will be different, how I will be better.  I will have new responsibilities.  I am taking over the school paper, along with a few of my distinguished colleagues.  Some students approached me about starting a film club that they want me to advise.  

In the midst of all this change I am struck by the cyclical nature of life.  Earlier this year I lost a cousin to pancreatic cancer.  Next fall I will become a father.  Juniors will become Seniors, and seniors will become freshmen again.  As a teacher there were times when I found myself filled with frustration and hatred and anger, other times I was so filled with pride I could barely contain it.  That's good.  The worst thing life could ever be is the same.  Variety is essential.  Peaks and valleys, highs and lows, beginnings and endings, make life interesting.  

She's a she!!!

It's a GIRL!!!!

This is the dock at Beaver Pond here on campus.  As the weather has gotten better kids have been heading out there to swim.  I have been loving the weather.  I have been driving with the top down as often as possible.

Hormones

I was reading The Expectant Father last night, and it suggested that a change in the hormones of the father might account for his deepening interest in infants and children.  It said that though the rise in hormones in the father is not as great as the rise of those in the mother, it follows a similar pattern.  

I do not know if this is true.  I am sure that there is scientific evidence that the change of hormones in the mother influences the hormones of the father, but I am not sure that it accounts for my growing interest in children.  I am, however, definitely more interested.  There seem to be babies everywhere I look now adays.  To be fair I did move to a small community recently, and there are lots of kids running around here.  Along with the normal amusement that comes from watching a two year old awkwardly try to play catch with his father comes a pang of envy.  I always try to keep a respectful distance from the children of others.  I am nice to kids, and I like spending time with them, but they're not mine so I usually avoid picking them up and dangling them upside down by their ankles, or giving them a raspberry.  These are things that I plan to do a lot with my own kids.  In the mean time I have to be patient.

Is there something on my face?

Babies stare at me. I don't get it. Little kids do it too. I haven't had anyone point yet, but I forsee that happening in the near future. Maybe it's the buzzed head or the beard, or being as large as I am, I don't know but babies stare at me. Today at the local Cosi I had the rapt attention of a 5 month old for a good five minutes. It used to make me more uncomfortable than it does now. Impending fatherhood has made me more interested in babies than I used to be. I can't help but wonder what they are thinking. "What happened to his hair? It's like it fell off his head and landed on his face." or perhaps "Is he going to eat me?" or still yet "Can he breath up there?"

Hardness

One of the first moments in the first season of Lost that really got me interested in the show was a scene in which Locke shows Charlie a butterfly coming out of its cocoon. Locke points out that he could pry open the cocoon and help the butterfly escape, but then it wouldn't be strong enough to survive. The act of wrestling itself out of it's shell is the very thing the moth needs to prepare itself for the hardships of the life to come. It is through struggle that the moth becomes strong enough to survive. It's such a good show. Anyway. The reason that I bring this up is that making it hard is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my career as a teacher. Sometimes the F is the best teacher. Mistakes, failures and academic hardships can, and often are the very things that prepare students for the future. All I really want to do is open the cocoon for them.

Spring at the school.

Poems

Here are two poems that I read at the school's recently held poetry slam. I hope you enjoy them.
I’m so Deep

By Joe

I’m so deep
I think deep thoughts
I empathize with the homeless
Even though they are often really really smelly
Because I’m so deep.

I write poetry
Deep poetry like this one
I’m pretty good too
I even know what a troche is…I think
Because I’m so deep

When I’m with a girl
Sometimes I just want to cuddle
And listen to experimental jazz
Deep

I think that the best thing we can do
For the earth is keep breathing
Because when we exhale
We feed the trees
And trees are people too
That was deep

I’m so deep that the deepest depths
Of my deepness are so deep
They can not be measured
That’s pretty deep

I’ve been thinking about buying
A beret because berets are only
Worn by the deep
And the French
Though let’s be honest
If you speak French you’re automatically pretty deep
Je suis si profond

I don’t care about superficial things
Like cars or clothes
Or personal hygiene
Because I’m so deep

I don’t watch movies, I watch films
When I watch films I only watch the ones that have subtitles
Or those shot in black and white
When I’m feeling especially deep
I’ll watch a film in black and white with subtitles
Because I’m so deep

If God is omnipotent can he make a rock so big
That even he can’t lift it?
Did I just blow your mind?
I know. I can use the word omnipotent correctly
Because I’m so deep.

News

By Joe

There was news when I awoke
And the thing that strikes me about that
Morning, mucus crusting my morning eyes
Clogging my arid nose, the slow rhythm of
My snoring still drifting in my ears,

Was that though I was keenly aware
That my life would never return to what it had been
That everything in that singular moment had changed
That mountains had just shifted on a breeze
And rivers had started to flow north

I simply smiled kissed my wife
And fell back to sleep to dream
Of all the wonders of life.

What is this worth in the bush? Anyone?

Here's the baby!

Lost is the best show on television

Lost is the best show on television. My wife doesn't think so. She stopped watching it. She and I have different tastes in television to say the least. For example, she doesn't like The Wire... I know! How is that possible? The Wire would have been my vote for the best show on TV but it's not on any more so instead it's Lost. I am obsessed. What's the deal with the huge statue? Is Richard immortal or is he dead? Wednesdays are the best for the simple reason that we get to find out just a little bit more. I have the most recent episode sitting on my DVR at home right now. I have to wait to see it. It will be a while before I can get to it. My question is, are they going to be able to answer all the questions by the end of the series?

Baby

My mother once gave me a lecture about the dangers of sex. She was notoriously conservative on the subject. Still something she said stuck with me. She proved (as she often does) to be wiser than I gave her credit for.

“When I was pregnant with your brother Josh I felt very little connection to the pregnancy. I would not have been surprised if the baby had just shrunk away into nothing the way it had come. But then he was born and I got to know him, and I loved him. When your brother Ben was born I expected him to be just like Josh was as a baby. He wasn’t. He had a totally different personality, and it was evident even in his first days. By the time I was pregnant with you I couldn’t wait to get to know you. I was looking forward to meeting this whole new person.”

She was telling me this to impress upon me the importance of pregnancy so that I would not look upon sex casually.

Now as I look forward to having a child this is what I look forward to most. Who will this person be? I have gotten to know a few babies recently, and they certainly have their own identities, quirks and all. Who will mine be?

Conception

The most sure-fire way to make God laugh: make a plan.
My wife and I decided to try to have a baby months ago. To put it mildly it took a little longer than we had hoped for us to conceive a child. I imagined that the process of conceiving a child would be, well, fun. You hear horror stories about couples who try for years before they conceive, and even worse stories about couples that simply can not conceive, ever. My heart goes out to those people. It normally takes a woman anywhere from three months to a year to become pregnant. That means that it might take up to twelve cycles before that one fateful stick she pees on finally grows a little pink line. The would be parents could wait for as many as twelve months having their anticipation dashed, their hope of progeny snuffed out, their plans for parenthood postponed month after month before their waiting even begins to fall outside the realm of normalcy. Others we knew conceived right away, and while I am of course happy for them, their good news only made our waiting all the more long and arduous. Damn them.
In the end my wife and I conceived within the normal span of time that it usually takes for couples to conceive. We are happy. I still , however, remember the monthly tears, the fear that it would never happen, and the frustration. I know that there are those out there who might read this and look on our situation with envy, having waited much longer than we did for their miracle, who might think that I have nothing to complain about. They would be right. I am not sharing this out of self pity, but rather empathy. If God is laughing at you as he did at me when I planned to have a child, then you have my sympathies. It's hard to want a child, to be ready for a child, to plan for a child and to have to wait for God to stop laughing before he grants you a miracle.

Introduction

My wife is a fan of blogs. She checks several every day. Specifically, she checks baby blogs, even more specifically, those of our friends and family who have recently had children. It has become a trend among young mothers (at least those I know) to write humorous parenting anecdotes and post cute pictures of their children. The quality of writing one finds on such blogs is surprising. I have come to recognize my sister-in-law as a genuine talent. Still others are exuberant amateur videographers. There really is nothing like watching an infant dance to inspire laughter. Let's face it babies can't dance, which is why it's so hilarious when they do.

I have decided to add my voice to this chorus of baby bloggers, though I must admit that I hope that this blog will cover a broader range of subjects. I don't want to limit the scope of this blog. It's even a little early to be writing about my child. He or she won't be born until October.