Laura announced last night that she was going to make some “inventions”. She had a bag full of assorted building materials that included two wiki sticks, a cup with a crazy curved straw, a plastic flute, an empty McDonald’s Apple Pie box, some crayons, and a pencil.
She first decided she needed to invent a “Zipperump-a-Zoo Catcher”. Being a good little engineer, she had to have plans drawn first:
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| From 2010-03-08 |
You can see that it’s even carefully titled “Z C”, since she wasn’t sure of the correct spelling of Zipperump-a-Zoo.
She’s happy to explain the plans to you, too:
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| From 2010-03-08 |
Then it’s time to build.
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As any good engineer knows, sometimes half the trick is keeping the troublemakers out of your project:
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| From 2010-03-08 |
Getting close to done:
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| From 2010-03-08 |
Success!
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Very happy.
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| From 2010-03-08 |
As a friend noted the other day, it’s a bit of a weird feeling to know that you’re driving only two to the hospital, but when you come home there will be three. But it’s a great feeling, too, to finally leave the hospital and bring folks home. Becky and Katie were discharged on Sunday morning and came home to two excited sisters and two grandparents.
Since she came home there has been a steady stream of visitors: my brother Aaron and his wife Emily came down on Sunday for a few hours, my parents came down to visit today for the day, and my sister Rebecca and her roommate came down this afternoon and will head back tomorrow. Such excitement for such a small person! 
Katie was awake and hungry a good bit of the night last night and has then managed to sleep a good bit of the day today. Hopefully we can get her schedule switched around this week so we can get some better sleep… or, I should say, so Becky can get some better sleep; I’m afraid I slept through most all of it last night.
Such a blessing to have a home with a beautiful wife and three beautiful little girls. God is good.
Katherine (Katie) Paige Hubbs
born March 20, 2009 at 11:22 am
7 lbs, 13.5 oz 20.5″ long.
Everybody is doing great.
We’ve gotten to that point in Becky’s pregnancy now where it’s just a waiting game. The calendar is clear; the in-laws are here (and planning to stay until after the baby is born), the bags are packed. Heck, we even made a trial run to the hospital on Thursday morning when we had a bit of a false alarm. So now we wait.
Last time when we were playing the waiting game we ended up buying a minivan. We’re still paying it off. I don’t think we’ll do anything quite so expensive this time, but we might at least take advantage of the free babysitting and go out to dinner or watch a movie or something. The weather is great this week so we’ll take lots of walks. And then we wait some more.
Actually, if the baby were born on Wednesday or so of this week the timing would be pretty great – nothing like having a built-in excuse to take vacation days from work during the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. Not that basketball would be my, um, priority or anything.
I am slowly learning patience whether I like it or not.
Our little Addison (age two and a half) caught a low-grade stomach bug earlier this week. She wasn’t notably ill or uncomfortable, just sleeping more than usual and not wanting to eat much of anything. That it was, in fact, a stomach bug became clear on Wednesday morning when she threw up. Still, she was running around like normal, and talked more and faster than an overcaffeinated chipmunk for the first ten minutes after I got home from work.
Later on Wednesday, with church activities canceled due to other folks being sick, we decided to go drive through Culver’s and bring some burgers home. (Oh, and some cheese curds… yum yum.) Addie wanted to eat, so we went ahead and gave her a quarter of a cheeseburger and a few fries. And I tell you: that girl went to town.
She ate the first few fries in no time flat. She asked for more. What the heck, we said. If she’s hungry and wants to eat, she can have all the fries she wants. So she ate a couple more fries, then started in on the burger. She had eaten probably half the burger, and had the rest of it half-chewed when I saw her make a gagging face. I warned Becky and she grabbed Addie’s plate (by now empty except for a few fries) and up came the burger. After a couple more heaves she was done, and her determination was remarkable. Without even sparing a second, two words came out of her mouth.
“More ketchup.”
See, it didn’t matter that she’d just thrown up her entire dinner back on to her plate. What mattered was that there were three unscathed french fries left on that plate, and there wasn’t enough ketchup left for those fries. That, my friends, is focus.
While she didn’t get the rest of those fries, she did start managing to keep food down Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon she was eating another cheeseburger, and more french fries, and feeling fine.
[Disclaimer so I don't feel like a bad parent: yes, we regularly feed our kids stuff healthier than cheeseburgers. The end.]
Well, these are over a month old now, but better late than never. Let me just say the things that they can do with 4-d ultrasound now are crazy cool.
Before anyone asks, we don’t intend to find out the gender of the child beforehand, and even if we’d wanted to know, the kid wasn’t being cooperative on this particular day.
Due date is the last week of March or so.
Children have ways of saying things that just cut you to the quick. They don’t realize it, but you hear the words, and, whammo, they’ve got you. Today’s example: my four-year-old daughter Laura.
Laura loves her daddy time, and loves to play. Some days it’s Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders; other days it’s playing “horsies” in her room (we each get a toy horse and have pretend conversations!); other times we play hide and seek in the house. (She always hides the same place: under the covers on our bed.) And when she wants me to play with her, she always asks the question the same way.
“Daddy, do you want to play with me?”
It’d be so much easier if she asked “Daddy, will you play with me?” or “Daddy, can you play with me?”. Because then at times I could respond “sorry, Daddy can’t right now” and just go back to whatever else I am doing. But instead she asks “Daddy, do you want to play with me?” and then I’m forced to check my motives.
Too often my first (internal) reaction is something along the lines of “but I was just checking my email” or “no, I want to finish reading this article online”. And then I’m convicted. Shouldn’t I really want to play with her?
Time moves fast. Laura is already four. Next year she’ll start school of some sort. We won’t always have time to play horsies or hide and seek or Candyland. When I stop to think about it, I really do want to spend the time with my girls that I’ve been given right now. Facebook, email, and blogs can wait. So I’m thankful that God can use even my daughter’s simple requests for Daddy time to convict me of my own selfishness. So if this blog sits dormant from time to time, or I don’t respond to your email very quickly, be patient: I might just be playing horsies.
Well, the girls know now, so it won’t be long before the rest of the world does.
It seems that the Lord has seen fit to bless us with another little Hubbs kid. No word as to whether Laura and Addie will have a little brother or sister (and we probably won’t find out before hand), but, Lord willing, we will welcome child number three sometime near the end of March next year.
Time to start practicing the zone defense.