Of babies and cakes and dang tough breaks –

The Saturday before I left for Kansas City, our Gin’s Kris delivered to us The Granddog for safe keeping.  Kris had driven him all the way from Missouri just to boot him into our yard, then turned around and headed back for graduation and the big move to Rhode Island.  Fortunately, our woof loves it here, and Skye has gotten very philosophical about having to share space with him.  Piper, we think, actually likes him.

About twelve hours after I got home from Kansas City, Scooter was born.

Scooter’s was about the easiest delivery of my life.  L, his devoted mama, may not agree, but since this is her first delivery, she really doesn’t have much basis for comparison.  I find other people’s pregnancies and other people’s kids’ missions all very short and sweet, and am glad to be at a time in my life when these other people tend to supply experiences for me.  I’m tired of drumming them up for myself.

I did have four deliveries of my own—all done au natural (stop sniggering – you know what I mean).  The last one, I had sworn I was going to do with drugs, but M was altogether too eager to get here so he could start being wonderful, and the labor and delivery nurses, bless their hearts (do you hear my teeth grinding?), didn’t believe me when I told them this egg would not be long in hatching, so there was no time for drugs, and he, too, became an intensely personal matter of my self expression.

Gin’s baby was a little less work for me, but I was there for the whole deal, coaching and cheering and having lunch with her mother-in-law.  It was great fun.  For us.  But Scooter—his parents didn’t even tell us he was on the way (eleven days early) until about five minutes before he ran aground, choosing to tough it out without an audience.  And tough it out, they did.  This delivery ranks right up there with my sister’s method: posterior presentations are not for the faint-hearted.

Those hungry for details may find them at http://momsadvice.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/the-scooter-story-part-1/.  If it’s pictures we’re after, it’s Flickr we want: http://flickr.com/photos/24254482@N03/

The brave parents. Showing off for the camera, eh?

My sister, visiting from Texas, loving the Scoot.

Our Scooter had to deal with amniotic fluid in his lungs, and even hours later was laboring to breath.  G and I stood outside the nursery, plastered to the windows like a pair of vacuum pawed Garfields.  C (the father) stood by his little son in the nursery as several nurses fussed with the baby, at first unsure as to what his part actually was in all of this.  But over that scary hour, as lungs and stomach were flushed clean, I watched my beautiful son move from concerned spectator to loving father.

I am stopping here to realize once more how oddly our lives have changed.  When we decided to stay here—having one extended family in Texas and one in LA—we chose a sort of neutral life up here in the mountains where we had a growing business.  Over the years, the odd sister or brother came up here for school from time to time, but it was always temporary, and we, in the little house we’d built, also built a framework of family out of borrowed people: friends of the heart and their families, church members who became friends, musicians and writers and artists of different stripes.

  It’s only been in the last seven or so years that, suddenly, we are part of something that matches our DNA.  My brother and his family are here, G’s brother and fam and sister and fam.  And these families with their in-laws and student children and grown up married children – and the children of these children – make quite the crowd.  The wife and husband of our own children, together with their families, are a crowd in themselves.  Almost overwhelming to belong to so many – adopted sisters, parents, nieces and nephews together with the real deal.

My sister and her daughter, who was soon to leave on her own mission to California.  Oh, and the Chaz.

Do we think these cousins like each other?

 In light of all this, I promised my L a shower.  A baby shower.  Like I know how to do these girly kinds of things.  My sister was coming up on her way to Idaho, and so both my sibs were invited to the shindig – so it had to be good.  And somehow, between the trip to Disney and the trip to Kansas City, and thanks to the initiative of my Cam and L, who designed their own invitations—good friends and family were invited to my house on Saturday, a cake was commissioned (I’m still going to pay you, Karie—so don’t think you’ve gotten away with anything), festive plates and cups purchased.  But I had planned on having a little time to think up the entertainment.  Time I never did get, considering Scooter’s early entrance.

This was my only game: a baby assignment.  A) Give this child a name: must be suitable for a pirate.  Something along the lines of Demitarious Flindacious Buckmeister.  And B) As fairy godmother, raise your wand and bestow on this baby a great faery godmother style gift.

And bless their hearts if they didn’t come up with great names and even better FG gifts.

Assembled friends and family.  My cup runneth over.

 In the end, the entertainment drove itself down the street and stopped in front of the house, on its way home from the hospital. And how can you get better than a baby parade?

 By Tuesday, our little child was back in the hospital with a pneumonia that should have been detected before he’d left.  There are no pictures of this; L couldn’t bear to have to remember any of it.  But the kids did really well, sleeping in chairs and on cots—eating hospital food, and hinting that we should become smugglers of something better.  It was pretty scary, and lasted almost a full week.  $10,000 later, he was clear.  The heart murmur that his pediatrician had diagnosed had turned out to be nothing, and the pneumonia the doctor had NOT detected had been beaten down with antibiotics and special care.  When they could finally unplug their son from the monitors and the IVs, they took him home.  And then the fun really began.

I have this to say: grandparents have probably earned their own right to sleep.

(End of this installment: the Weird Month to be continued)

For more FABULOUS photos of baby, canyons, dogs, New York hamburgers, Rivers, highways, and the gorgeous FRAZZ, please go to

http://flickr.com/photos/ginnahendricks/