wanted to share that with everyone. I don't typically veer very far off baseball topics on this forum, but I'm making an exception with this post. Mrs. RedRain is due in about three weeks. I think it's going to be June 20.
The whole thing is pretty crazy, just how fast it happened. We got married last year, June 3rd. So, this weekend, I'll be at the games Friday and Saturday, but will obviously be missing the Sunday game to spend it with her.
I remember last summer we went for a walk around the neighborhood one afternoon and started talking about having a kid, when we wanted to start trying. Looking at the calendar and projecting things out 9 months, we decided to start trying around the end of September. I told her that day "it'll happen quickly.... it'll happen very quickly, I know that it will."
We decided that Sept 30 would be the day that we'd start trying. I'm 99% sure that was the day that she was conceived. Sept 30 was a Saturday. That was the day we beat Tennessee, 41-0. Looking back and knowing when I was born, I think there was about an 80% chance that I was conceived the day that we beat Tennessee 44-0 in 1981. So that's a pretty cool full circle.
Funny story about Sept 30.... the night before, I'd driven up to Buford, by myself, to see Coach Perno's Clarke Central team play Buford. When I got back home that night, I had a bowl of Golden Grahams. One of our cats really wanted to drink the milk after I got done with the cereal. I let him and didn't think much about it. The next day, the wife and I were going to the tech/ North Carolina game at grant field, which kicked off at noon. So we got up fairly early and as I'm getting ready, I glance into the bathroom where the litter box is kept. Without going into any detail, because I don't want to remember this too vividly, it looked like a war zone in there... that sugar and honey laden milk had really done a number on the cat's digestive tract. I had to put on some huge yellow gloves that morning and use practically an entire roll of paper towels to clean it up.... it's funny that's how the day of the conception started.
The wife and I decided that we should have a prayer together before we started trying, and we did in the early evening hours of that Saturday... Sometime later night, something else happened. This allowed me to lay one of my better ever lines on the OB/Gyn several weeks later when she asked how long we'd been trying, to which I replied "an hour and a half."
I've had this theory awhile that women are more likely to menstruate when there is a full moon. I think there's an evolutionary component to that; it makes sense... back in the caveman days, on nights of a full moon, the men were more likely to be out hunting, when they could see a bit better at night, so it was advantageous for the women to cycle then. I've presented this to a few different females, including my wife, and the immediate and vigorous denials and rejections of the theory only lead to my believe that I'm onto something. So it was Friday night in mid October, the Friday night before UGA's off-week. I'd met the wife up in Rome that night and we were driving back home in separate cars. I remember there was a nearly full moon. So when we got back home, we are watching TV.... funny enough, it was a Modern Family re-run and was that episode where Mitch and Cam decided they didn't want to adopt another child. I remember making some comment to Mrs. RedRain about the nearly full moon and asking if she'd started yet. She gets this funny look on her face, then hid her face behind a pillow. She didn't say anything for a few seconds... then she said "I took a test earlier this week... I'm pregnant.... I am pregnant."
I was speechless... just totally speechless. At first, I thought she was messing with me. She went to get one of the pregnancy tests (she'd actually taken a few by that point).... I can feel my heart beating almost out of my chest. She showed it to me, it was one of the kinds that shows the cross if the sample is pregnant.
The next few days were pretty crazy, to say the least.... suddenly, a lot of other stuff just didn't seem THAT important. We decided to keep the news to ourselves for awhile. I proposed to her at St. Simons the night before the Florida game in 2016. I'd planned to do it after dinner that Friday night, which I did, but I was so keyed up all day I almost did it a few times that afternoon, just to have it done. We went for a long walk on the beach that Friday and I remember thinking how neat it was to have that secret that nobody else knew... The next year at St. Simons, we are walking by ourselves on the beach on Friday afternoon with a secret that nobody else knew. That was neat... walking around, talking about parenting, how we are going to do what, etc... and how the next year we'd be pushing the kid around in a stroller.
It just gradually started feeling more and more real.... I remember driving over for the South Carolina game the following weekend and wondering what would be the first Georgia game I'd take the kid to... I remembered my first Georgia football game (Temple, 1989... at least that's the first one I remember, but I think it was the first overall). After the Kentucky game a few weeks later, I took a very long route back to my car after the game.... just walking through campus, past a lot of the same buildings where I had classes my freshman year in 2001.... And the reality hits that the next time I'm in Athens for a football game, I'll be a father. It's crazy.
We had our first ultrasound the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and we told both of our sets of parents that weekend. We trickled the news out between then and Christmas.
In mid December, we found out that we were having a girl. I honestly don't know how people just wait until the birth to find out. We wanted to know as soon as possible.... and heck, it's made the subsequent ultrasounds much less of a guessing game.
On that note, the ultrasound technology just blows my mind... So does the growth rate. The first one we had, she was about the size of a gummy bear. We had one in January where you could see her ribs, her spine, her arm and leg bones... everything. You could see her heart beat. It's incredible. It's incredible to think that there is a little human that's been growing inside my wife... the day after the conception we went to the Falcons/ Bills game (I saw a lot of football that weekend). We took a selfie in our seats... I've looked at the picture several times since and I think how cool it is to know that she wasn't quite 24 hours pregnant yet.... that then, our daughter was just a collection of cells. Yesterday we had a 3D ultrasound. In that short amount of time, that collection of cells has turned into a 6 pound baby that has my mouth and lips.
People keep telling me that my life is about to change, and frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing that. For one thing, I know that it is. That statement isn't very insightful. But really, my life changed when I graduated college and started working. My life changed when I got married last June. It changed when I moved out of Atlanta and started living with someone for the first time since 2006. This will be a big change, I get that, but change isn't unprecedented, not by any stretch.
Sometimes you just take "yes" for an answer. I didn't fight it when I met her near the end of the baseball season in 2015 and we fell in love. I see people that start getting what they wanted, and they either don't believe in it or they sabotage it (on that note, how long did it take you to take "yes" for the answer on this baseball team? It took me into April)...
What we prayed about on Sept 30 is our business, but one thing that she and I talked about afterward was accepting whatever answer we were given. We were given a yes; and almost immediately at that.
I believe that she'll make an appearance at Foley Field next spring, but maybe 2020. But she'll see it sooner than later. There is just so much out there that is front of us... all three of us... it really blows my mind. I can't even begin to comprehend it.
I'll leave this here. Back in 2012 we were up at Vanderbilt, Saturday night, we'd blown a late lead and lost a very winnable game. I'm devastated.... just felt awful. One of my coworkers sent me a text message with a work question and I responded with "I don't know.... I'm nowhere close to work right now [mentally]." It's just different now, but it should be.... That's six years ago, but it seems like longer.... I just can't believe how it's come together, how fast it's all happened... I'm just about the luckiest sumbitch in any crowd
The whole thing is pretty crazy, just how fast it happened. We got married last year, June 3rd. So, this weekend, I'll be at the games Friday and Saturday, but will obviously be missing the Sunday game to spend it with her.
I remember last summer we went for a walk around the neighborhood one afternoon and started talking about having a kid, when we wanted to start trying. Looking at the calendar and projecting things out 9 months, we decided to start trying around the end of September. I told her that day "it'll happen quickly.... it'll happen very quickly, I know that it will."
We decided that Sept 30 would be the day that we'd start trying. I'm 99% sure that was the day that she was conceived. Sept 30 was a Saturday. That was the day we beat Tennessee, 41-0. Looking back and knowing when I was born, I think there was about an 80% chance that I was conceived the day that we beat Tennessee 44-0 in 1981. So that's a pretty cool full circle.
Funny story about Sept 30.... the night before, I'd driven up to Buford, by myself, to see Coach Perno's Clarke Central team play Buford. When I got back home that night, I had a bowl of Golden Grahams. One of our cats really wanted to drink the milk after I got done with the cereal. I let him and didn't think much about it. The next day, the wife and I were going to the tech/ North Carolina game at grant field, which kicked off at noon. So we got up fairly early and as I'm getting ready, I glance into the bathroom where the litter box is kept. Without going into any detail, because I don't want to remember this too vividly, it looked like a war zone in there... that sugar and honey laden milk had really done a number on the cat's digestive tract. I had to put on some huge yellow gloves that morning and use practically an entire roll of paper towels to clean it up.... it's funny that's how the day of the conception started.
The wife and I decided that we should have a prayer together before we started trying, and we did in the early evening hours of that Saturday... Sometime later night, something else happened. This allowed me to lay one of my better ever lines on the OB/Gyn several weeks later when she asked how long we'd been trying, to which I replied "an hour and a half."
I've had this theory awhile that women are more likely to menstruate when there is a full moon. I think there's an evolutionary component to that; it makes sense... back in the caveman days, on nights of a full moon, the men were more likely to be out hunting, when they could see a bit better at night, so it was advantageous for the women to cycle then. I've presented this to a few different females, including my wife, and the immediate and vigorous denials and rejections of the theory only lead to my believe that I'm onto something. So it was Friday night in mid October, the Friday night before UGA's off-week. I'd met the wife up in Rome that night and we were driving back home in separate cars. I remember there was a nearly full moon. So when we got back home, we are watching TV.... funny enough, it was a Modern Family re-run and was that episode where Mitch and Cam decided they didn't want to adopt another child. I remember making some comment to Mrs. RedRain about the nearly full moon and asking if she'd started yet. She gets this funny look on her face, then hid her face behind a pillow. She didn't say anything for a few seconds... then she said "I took a test earlier this week... I'm pregnant.... I am pregnant."
I was speechless... just totally speechless. At first, I thought she was messing with me. She went to get one of the pregnancy tests (she'd actually taken a few by that point).... I can feel my heart beating almost out of my chest. She showed it to me, it was one of the kinds that shows the cross if the sample is pregnant.
The next few days were pretty crazy, to say the least.... suddenly, a lot of other stuff just didn't seem THAT important. We decided to keep the news to ourselves for awhile. I proposed to her at St. Simons the night before the Florida game in 2016. I'd planned to do it after dinner that Friday night, which I did, but I was so keyed up all day I almost did it a few times that afternoon, just to have it done. We went for a long walk on the beach that Friday and I remember thinking how neat it was to have that secret that nobody else knew... The next year at St. Simons, we are walking by ourselves on the beach on Friday afternoon with a secret that nobody else knew. That was neat... walking around, talking about parenting, how we are going to do what, etc... and how the next year we'd be pushing the kid around in a stroller.
It just gradually started feeling more and more real.... I remember driving over for the South Carolina game the following weekend and wondering what would be the first Georgia game I'd take the kid to... I remembered my first Georgia football game (Temple, 1989... at least that's the first one I remember, but I think it was the first overall). After the Kentucky game a few weeks later, I took a very long route back to my car after the game.... just walking through campus, past a lot of the same buildings where I had classes my freshman year in 2001.... And the reality hits that the next time I'm in Athens for a football game, I'll be a father. It's crazy.
We had our first ultrasound the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and we told both of our sets of parents that weekend. We trickled the news out between then and Christmas.
In mid December, we found out that we were having a girl. I honestly don't know how people just wait until the birth to find out. We wanted to know as soon as possible.... and heck, it's made the subsequent ultrasounds much less of a guessing game.
On that note, the ultrasound technology just blows my mind... So does the growth rate. The first one we had, she was about the size of a gummy bear. We had one in January where you could see her ribs, her spine, her arm and leg bones... everything. You could see her heart beat. It's incredible. It's incredible to think that there is a little human that's been growing inside my wife... the day after the conception we went to the Falcons/ Bills game (I saw a lot of football that weekend). We took a selfie in our seats... I've looked at the picture several times since and I think how cool it is to know that she wasn't quite 24 hours pregnant yet.... that then, our daughter was just a collection of cells. Yesterday we had a 3D ultrasound. In that short amount of time, that collection of cells has turned into a 6 pound baby that has my mouth and lips.
People keep telling me that my life is about to change, and frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing that. For one thing, I know that it is. That statement isn't very insightful. But really, my life changed when I graduated college and started working. My life changed when I got married last June. It changed when I moved out of Atlanta and started living with someone for the first time since 2006. This will be a big change, I get that, but change isn't unprecedented, not by any stretch.
Sometimes you just take "yes" for an answer. I didn't fight it when I met her near the end of the baseball season in 2015 and we fell in love. I see people that start getting what they wanted, and they either don't believe in it or they sabotage it (on that note, how long did it take you to take "yes" for the answer on this baseball team? It took me into April)...
What we prayed about on Sept 30 is our business, but one thing that she and I talked about afterward was accepting whatever answer we were given. We were given a yes; and almost immediately at that.
I believe that she'll make an appearance at Foley Field next spring, but maybe 2020. But she'll see it sooner than later. There is just so much out there that is front of us... all three of us... it really blows my mind. I can't even begin to comprehend it.
I'll leave this here. Back in 2012 we were up at Vanderbilt, Saturday night, we'd blown a late lead and lost a very winnable game. I'm devastated.... just felt awful. One of my coworkers sent me a text message with a work question and I responded with "I don't know.... I'm nowhere close to work right now [mentally]." It's just different now, but it should be.... That's six years ago, but it seems like longer.... I just can't believe how it's come together, how fast it's all happened... I'm just about the luckiest sumbitch in any crowd
