Jackson Paul Wisk

We started this blog three years ago now and I just can't believe all that has happened in that time. The goal was for this journal to serve a dual purpose. First, we are fortunate to have friends and family from New England to North Carolina and it's great to give them a glimpse of how our family is growing and even some day-to-day life in the Maryland Wisk House. Second, and what may prove to be most important will be the opportunity for our children and hopefully even grandchildren to read about how they grew up.I'm not a photo guy...I'm definitely not a video guy. We have this awesome video camera that we don't use near enough! One thing that I've always done well and even somewhat enjoyed was writing. I think I'm pretty decent at it and one day this journal can be my gift to my children and hopefully, their children.So here we sit, on Sunday, May first with our five-day-old little man, Jackson. Born at 9:09 a.m. on April 26, 2011, he was twenty inches long and eight pounds two ounces. Naming this child was perhaps the toughest task that Courtney and I have taken on together thus far in our almost six years of marriage! I would say that Jack was pushing an hour old before he "officially" had a name. In fact, I was asked twice what his name was and actually had to reply, "I'm not sure".
I believe that there should be significance in names. Julia Elizabeth has significance in both of her names and now so does Jackson. Courtney's grandfather was named Jack and her father is Paul. That means that our son is named after two guys that are both about 6'5"...now I just need to tie his right hand behind his back and work on that nasty change-up!!!
It was kind of ironic that the doctor that performed JP's c-section was a Duke fan...given his Kemba nickname! I couldn't help but talk a little smack to her during the surgery, telling her that the only thing that would have made Uconn's championship sweeter this year would have been if they went through Duke to win it!

This may end up being my longest post ever. So much happened over four days in the hospital, but one thing was different than the last time. This time I was completely relaxed. Last time I had no idea which end was up, why she was crying or what I was supposed to do. This time both Courtney and I had far less anxiety. We just did what we needed to do.

I was caught off guard by the whole boy thing. Just like with Julia, I had the "pleasure" of changing the first diaper. Only thing was this time, he got the better of me. I forgot about all the warnings about boys peeing all over everything! He got me, he got his mom, he even got himself. He actually got his mom first. The first thing that he did upon delivery was relieve himself on his mom!Julia has been AWESOME with her little brother! She still refuses to hold him...I think she's afraid to hurt him, but that will come. She gives him lots of kisses and holds his hand. She spent a couple days with Grandmom and Pop and seemed to behave so well! They brought her to visit mommy a couple time and she was so well behaved in our small hospital room for 3 and 4 hours at a time that it was incredible! She is a pretty special little girl!
Through this whole experience, we have been so blessed with such giving family and friends! Clearly Grandmom and Pop went above and beyond in caring for Julia, but so many others sent gifts, food and most importantly to me, came to visit. Four days in the hospital is a long time...I don't care why you're there. I think that Courtney would agree that having visitors meant a lot!

So I had a couple mornings at home with Julia to get her ready for school and they were hysterical! The first time, we went downstairs and I put on one of her favorite shows, Super Why, to hold her attention while I went to shower. I told her that when I got out of my shower we would have breakfast.
I walk down the stairs after showering and I Jules greets me with a big "Hi Daddy". Then she says, "Look, I already ate breakfast!" There she was sitting on her Dora couch, covered and surrounded by powdered sugar! She definitely thought she was doing me a favor by going to the kitchen and helping herself to the bag of powdered donuts that were on the counter!

A couple days later, after we had gotten home, I wake up to some distant crying. I come down stairs to see Julia sitting on the floor in the kitchen with a box of cupcakes and cookies beside her. She was crying her eyes out because Mia had vomited and Julia was upset because "Mia's belly was hurting!" Apparently, our little helper came down, fed the cat and then started to feed herself when Mia got sick.

She's such a good kid, such a BIG helper and so much fun. But something tells me that the fun is just beginning as I can't wait to see how she and her brother grow together. My only hope is that she and Jackson are fortunate to have a relationship like my sister and I have. Sure...we drive each other nuts, but we have always made a pretty good team and always look out for each other!

So now I sit here, completing a post that has taken three different sessions to write...interruptions are frequent these days...reflecting on my family. Some call it the perfect family (one boy, one girl). Perfect or not, a couple things are certain, I have the perfect bride and partner, who continues to amaze me. In return, I do my best to drive her nuts! We are both all in and committed to raise these kids the best way that we can. These may be the most stressful days of our lives...certainly thus far, but these will be the best days of our lives!
-Andy

A Noteworthy Acheivement

Now I'm no expert, but I'm pretty impressed with this. My beautiful bride has just worked right up until her due date. Yesterday was her last day of work and she is due tomorrow!!! In fact she said that the patients were ever joking with her that she's going to have the baby on Sunday and be back to work on Monday.

Now let's think about this for a second. If I eat a little too much pizza the night before, I might have a rough day (especially in the morning) the next day. And I sit behind a desk all day. This woman is working in a gym with therapy patients, taking them through their exercises or out on a soccer field somewhere walking the sidelines, hauling some giant supply bag around. And she's not carrying a couple extra slices...we're talking 30-40 pounds here!

I suppose that one could speculate that her activity has helped her to stay in shape and manage the pregnancy better. I don't know (like I said, I'm no expert), but I'm impressed as hell!

She is ready for this to be over though. And we're trying various techniques and suggestions to get things moving, but I think that LBMF is afraid to come out and actually meet his loud mouth father that he's been listening to for a few months. We've walked (she walks more everyday than I do in a week!), we've tried Mexican food, we've talked to it, we've rubbed it. We even went out for steamed crabs the other night (and if you've had those you know that they can get everything moving).

Yet still we wait. LBMF is comfortable hanging in there a little longer. I'm thinking that we have a Momma's boy on our hands!

-Andy

"We're Not in Kansas Anymore" Part 2; And If We Were, We'd Be Celebrating a National Championship and Not Blogging

I've been eager to post this follow up, but 1,000 wrestlers and one hell of a cold have slowed me down. We had a big tournament this weekend and Courtney gave me a cold the likes of which I haven't seen for a decade. Mom...the good news is that Courtney is almost as good as you are at taking care of me! I'm just kidding baby...you know you take great care of me! (There...have I covered all my bases?)

So we head off to baby class and I'm sniffling, hacking, sneezing and coughing. Clearly being surrounded by twelve expecting mothers is the best place for me to be! (I'm still waiting for an angry Dad with a sick wife to come knock on my door) Needless to say, I'm irritable (or as Courtney would say "a big baby") and combined with the wrestling tournament, have too much on my mind to want to have to deal with this stuff!

The only thing is, this class wasn't really that bad. I mean, sure...we watched some really awful child birth porn, but the teacher seemed more comfortable and we didn't do half of the ridiculous breathing / relaxation exercises that we did last time. In fact, the teacher even earned some respect from me.

At one point, she was talking about the relaxation exercises and using music to take you to your "happy place" and I just couldn't resist! That's right! I made a Kenny G comment!!! And to her credit, she fired right back at me and said this was coming from the guy who knew that it was Kenny G!

At that point I had to tip my hat. You see, in life, every once in a while you're sitting in a fastball count and expecting a fastball and your opponent throws you a curveball for a strike and it locks you up and sits you down. That was the case right here! I was almost proud of our fifth grade teacher, as she sent me back to the dugout.

We break for lunch and Courtney and I end up being the first ones back. Earlier in the class, the teacher had taken out the "empathy belly". Fortunately I was in the bathroom, blowing my nose, but when the teacher asked for a "not so shy guy" to try it, someone in the back of the room said, "where's Andy?"

I had successfully avoided a couple exchanges of the empathy belly, but after lunch, there was no avoiding it!!! It was just us and the teacher and she wanted to put it on me! I was trapped! So I agreed and then ate my lunch.

At first I thought it was great to finally have breasts, but then I quickly learned that this wasn't all I thought it would be. One thing was certain...I was MUCH more pregnant that Courtney is!! Every time I leaned over to take a bite of my wrap, I thought I was going to fall into my wrap. This was difficult! I'll be honest. I thought I would just testosterone through it and be the bigger man, but this was a pain in the a$$! It was pushing on my bladder and I couldn't breathe half as easily as normally. I wore that thing for an HOUR!!! That's about 1/2 hour longer than any other guy in the class. I was pretty proud of that accomplishment!

The end of our class was a tour of the Hospital birthing facilities. They were about what we expected and all I can say is that I (kinda) hope we get a private room. I get the impression that in most cases, everyone does, but if they are really busy, anything can happen. If you get a semi-private room (which I don't get...either it's private or it's not) the husband can't spend the night in the room. But I'm not gonna say that's a bad thing. We live 5 blocks from the hospital and I rarely get a chance to have the bed to myself, but if Momma needs me, I'll be at her side!

-Andy

"We're Not In Kansas Anymore" Part 1

This is a fantastic quote from a one of the greatest movies of all time that easily applicable to so many situations. The irony for me today is that in our child birth class, the teacher used that phrase to describe what goes through your mind as you enter the delivery room. At the very same time, I was thinking that phrase in reference to her class.

This could be a very long post, but then it was a very long day. All I can promise you is that you've not read a review of child birth class like this...now you might have thought it, but I'm bettin' you haven't read it!

The day started out and I felt like I was going to church. You know, nobody makes you go, but you feel an obligation. Then when you get there, everything is quiet and cold, everyone is afraid of eternal damnation if they speak to each other and the room is filled with things that you would never think to have in your own house. The "ceremony" starts and the teacher gives us a basic overview and tells us that we just paid $50 to learn how to breathe. At the time I dismissed this comment, not realizing that she was 100% serious...I'll come back to this again.

We move onto a couple of ice-breakers. One of them split us into the mothers-to-be and the "coaches" (a title that I am quite used to thanks to Courtney's college friends and the multiple teams that I have actually coached). We then needed to elect a captain and that captain needed to memorize everyone else's name and introduce them to the group. I turn around and count the number of guys in the group (12) and blurt out, "all we have here is a basketball team". That got me elected.

I proceeded to systematically memorize all the coaches' names very quickly and turn my attention to trash talking to the moms. That's right...I was running smack to a group of pregnant women. The coaches were done and ready to go and the moms were just taking forever so I asked the teacher if we had a time limit on this thing. The coaches were done and ready to WIN!!! AH...Winning...a life lesson that I hope LBMF picked up something about today!!!

We had an interesting mix of characters in the class. We had the frat boy, who's first question was "when will sex be "safe" again?". We had the quiet and shy guys and we had the class clowns (I might fit into this category). Most noticeably, we had the percentage guy! This is the guy who's hand was up anytime the teacher told us about things that could go wrong, asking what's the percentage of cesareans, meconium, induced labors, etc. He must have been a statistician who was setting up a probability matrix on the successful delivery of his child.

Now it was movie time! The first video that we watched was a stand up comedian. While I was hoping for Bill Cosby, we got the love child of Bob Saget and Joe Piscopo. The cheese was flowing from the tv screen as he told jokes about the labor and delivery process. I do admit though...I laughed at a few of them. I'm not even going to talk about our next video which was apparently some sort of socially acceptable porno!

I guess one of the focal points of the class was teaching us to relax, deal with pain and of course...breathe! I've never been a big fan of group participation nor am I big on public displays of affection (PDA's) and that made it difficult to handle much of this portion of the class. I'm definitely not down with sitting in a group and massaging my wife's stomach, back or any other body part. That's just not the place. No problem at home, but not in public.

Furthermore, I really don't want to sit in a group and breathe wooo-chooo, waaaa-hooo or anything else. I understand its importance and am 100% confident that I can handle it when called upon, but I really don't need to publicly practice it 16 times.

Then there's this meditation stuff that they were making us do. I love to relax. Here's how I relax...feet up, Sox on TV, clicker in one hand, Bud Select in the other. That's my "Happy Place". I don't go to my happy place by sitting on the floor listening to Kenny G! I don't get away in my mind. If I spend too much time in there, I get overwhelmed by thoughts of work (I know I'm not alone here!). In looking around the room, I know that of the 12, there were at least 5 other guys that shared my sentiment. Courtney seemed to enjoy it though and so (after some joking around) I decided to behave for her.

I don't want you to think that this was a total waste for me. We did learn quite a few interesting facts and tricks of the trade. We got to play with big balls (I never met a ball I didn't like). We honed in on a motivational statement for Courtney to use to give her strength through the birth. And we chose "when this is done you can have Cold Stone".

One really good thing that we did in the class was a card game where potential consequences from potential decisions that the "coach" (that's me!) might have to make during the labor and delivery process. I knew that Court and I had talked quite a bit about these issues and I really felt that I knew what she wanted, so I was READY to take on this game. First they had us choose the results that we wanted (without input from the moms) and then they gradually told you that you couldn't get your way on more and more of them. My choices echoed Courtney's feelings and I am now confident that we are going into this experience on the same page.

What an experience this is going to be! That is, we have one more class next Saturday. Stay tuned for Courtney's take on today and my thoughts next week.

P.S. The nursery is painted!!!

-Andy