A few years ago when my grandmother passed away I inherited a little chair that had been in the family for a very long time. It was owned by my Great Great Great Grandfather who died in 1878. My Great Grandfather learned to walk with the chair by turning it upside down and pushing it around the house. Doing so wore down the tops of the legs of the chair at an angle that you can see in the picture to the side.
Sam has been learning to walk lately…matter of fact, he took his first two unassisted steps on Sunday…walking from the coffee table to the chair that Marybeth was sitting in. He’s nine and a half months old. Below is a compilation video of some of the walking with the chair (and a laundry basket) that Sam did when he was eight and a half months old.
Okay…it has been entirely too long since I’ve posted…over two months. Life has been a little crazy, but I finally cleaned up the rest of the Rod Trent interview to prepare it for posting. Hope you enjoy it. Also…I expect to post the next interview within another week or so…it is with Tim Mintner of the Microsoft Deployment product team!
As I promised last week, here is the first of a two part interview with Rod Trent that took place the last night of MMS 2009. I hope to post part 2 sometime next week. Enjoy!
Having an infant in the house again has reminded me of many things that I had forgotten about after our daughters grew out of that stage. It has also caused me to learn a few new things. Here are a few that I have been reminded of lately:
While it rarely happens, a child sleeping in on Saturday morning is a wonderful thing.
Middle of the night diaper changes are often times the equivalent of attempting to wrestle a spastic octopus.
There is nothing quite like seeing the unbridled joy on your child’s face when you walk in the door after being at work all day.
Seventeen pounds doesn’t sound that heavy until that seventeen pounds is a teething baby that you’ve been holding for six hours.
It is absolutely possible to fall asleep standing up. I’ve done it multiple times while holding a baby at 3AM. The feeling of knees buckling while holding an infant is scary.
While the sight of a baby spitting up is bad, I promise you that feeling spit up is worse.
Older children make great playmates for infants. Quite simply, older siblings rock!
Sleep deprivation is a very effective form of torture…especially if inflicted by a small child.
The sight of a content sleeping baby is one of the most beautiful things in the world.
If a baby is going to sneeze during a meal, it will typically be with a mouthful of some dark colored food. Green beans are bad. Prunes are much worse.
It’s really cute watching a baby smile in their sleep. I often wonder what they are dreaming about.
Sometimes a clean shirt is nothing more than a target (for spit up, poop, puke, food, etc).
Being a parent is exhausting work. There is a reason that God didn’t design us to do it alone. I have all the respect in the world for the single parents out there…you have a really tough job.
If teenage kids had any real idea of how much work being a parent is, there would be significantly fewer teen pregnancies.
Last Friday night I took my daughters on a little adventure. The park service in Minneapolis sponsors nighttime canoe trips once a month during the full moon. Friday night was the scheduled “Moonlight Canoe” trip. Only trick is that it was overcast and had a light rain. We went anyway. Bundled all of us up and wore raincoats. It was a fun trip that we will definitely do again…hopefully with a visible moon next time.
This is the follow up to the video that was shown at MMS 2008 showing my five year old daughter deploying systems using ConfigMgr. I used this during the intro to my “Operating System Deployment in the Real World” session at MMS 2009.
Last year at MMS I had a touch with fame when Bill Anderson used a video (during the “State of the Nation” address) of me and my five year old daughter doing Operating System Deployment with ConfigMgr. It was shocking to me how much face recognition that video gave me last year.
Well…I am presenting at MMS this year on “Operating System Deployment in the Real World." If you are at MMS, that session is Wednesday at 2:15 in Bellini 2001B. During that session I will be debuting a follow up video to the one shown last year. If you want to see it, don’t be late. I will also be posting the video here after the session.
Tonight I had the honor of baptizing my six year old daughter. She has been asking spiritual questions for a few years now, and my wife has been doing a great job of answering them at my daughter’s level of understanding. About two years ago (when she was four) is when she first clearly understood the meaning of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection…that is when she chose to accept His payment for her sins. We have been amazed at her level of understanding of spiritual things and the way she is able to articulate spiritual truths.
The video below is from her baptism tonight. It took place at the church we have been attending in Minnesota, The Church of the Open Door. It was a really neat experience for both of us. Most of our words that we spoke are pretty clear, but I have transcribed them below so that all of the words can be understood.
Marybeth’s initial statement:
At Florida, my teachers at Sunday School told me Jesus died on the cross to get rid of our sins. And then I started thinking about him, worshipping him, then we got together.
My statement before baptizing her:
In case you can’t tell, she’s a little bit excited about this.
Marybeth, it has been a joy for me to watch you grow both physically and spiritually. I am so glad that when you learned about what Jesus did for you that you chose to accept his payment for your sins. You are not just my daughter…you are also my sister in Christ.
And now, because you have acknowledged Jesus as your Savior and want to obey His command to be baptized, it is my honor and pleasure to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
It was the pastor who made the statement at the end, "Is she for rent."
Going back to my previous post about how I enjoy macro photography, I have really enjoyed taking some close up pictures of my son. Typically have better results with it when he is sleeping. Here are a few of my better ones from this week.
So the stork came to my house this week. Apparently the Sandman thought the stork was a Pterodactyl cause he hasn’t been back since.
The first night in the hospital, Sam slept like a dream…between three and five hour stretches. Julie and I both got decent sleep. Since then…well, we’ve been awake a lot at night. Sleep deprivation is not fun.
I really enjoy photography. I especially enjoy macro photography. A few of my more favorite shots are posted on this blog. Nearly all of the macro photography (or photography in general really) that I have done has been of either nature or some inanimate object taken from a different perspective. It has been fun today taking some macro pictures of Sam.
What a day! We both woke up at around 5am. We stayed in bed talking for a while then got up to get ready to head into the hospital for the 7:30am induction. After checking in and getting everything set up, Dr. Manneh broke the water at around 8:30. Based on Julie’s past history of rapid labor, we were expecting to be done well before lunch. Well…God had different plans for us this time. Lunch came and went. Julie was progressing, but much slower than in past pregnancies. When we came in, Julie was at 3cm…by 1:30, she had only gotten to 6cm. However…
About that time, things kicked into high gear. She went through the classic “self doubt” signpost (I’ll try to get a link to that at some point). At that point, I knew that she wasn’t far off. The nurse checked her again…still 6cm. But the self doubt phase (characterized by the woman saying she “can’t do this”, is typically right before transition. Because I was aware of this (and because I had seen her go through the same phase with both of our daughters), I had the nurse check her again pretty soon after. The nurse got a surprised look…”wow, you are completely dilated.” Julie had gone from 6cm to complete in 15-30 minutes.
Right after birth, the nurses were all saying that he looked big…that he was definitely going to be 8 pounds. Once they weighed him, we were all shocked. 8 pounds 12 ounces. Based on the ultrasound from a few weeks ago, they were estimating that he was going to be just over 7 pounds at birth. Uh…really glad we induced early. He would have been well over nine pounds had we not.
Some may know the significance of the names, but others may not. Sam is named after my dad. My dad was my best friend growing up. I learned a lot from him about hunting, fishing, and repairing things. I worked for him during the summers, and most weekends we were either in the woods or on the lake together. My dad died of cancer when I was twelve…an event that had a huge impact on my life. There was never any doubt that we were going to name our son Sam.
Isaac is a Hebrew name meaning “laughter.” It is a name that has continued to stick out to me over the last few months. As we were nailing down the middle name, I kept coming back to it. When I would look through a list of names, I caught myself just looking to see if Isaac was on the list.
Thanks again to everyone who joined with us in praying that Sam would hold off until Tuesday. That was a huge deal.
Another big thanks goes out to our moms. My mom has done a wonderful job of taking care of our daughters while we have been at the hospital…a job that she did when Marybeth was born also. That is a huge blessing to us. Thanks mom! And Julie’s mom has been in the delivery room at the birth of all of our babies. She is a tremendous help. We are SO glad that they were both able to fly in for this birth.
Tomorrow morning (Election Day 2008), we are supposed to call the hospital at 6am to confirm Julie’s appointment to induce labor. The appointment is at 7:30am, but because it is an elective induction we can be bumped down/off the schedule for various reasons. Based on past track record, once they break Julie’s water, she will likely be in strong labor within 15 minutes. And if the past track record continues, this should be a very quick birth…possibly by mid-morning even.
Thanks to everyone who prayed over the last few days for labor to hold off til Tuesday. God chose to answer your prayers with a “yes”.
Check back on the blog sometime around mid day or in the afternoon. I expect to be able to post the birth announcement with pictures from the hospital.
Our former next door neighbor in Orlando really wanted to see what Julie looks like at nine months pregnant and was bummed when we were moving at seven months pregnant. We promised her that we would put pictures up of Julie at that point, so here you go. Jenn….the picture to the right is just for you. It is Julie at the beginning of the ninth month.
We were at the doctor for Julie’s weekly OB checkup. We had already been talking with the doctor about scheduling the birth. With Julie’s history of rapid labor (two babies…a total of 5 hours and 20 minutes of labor), we are very concerned about just getting to the hospital in time. On top of that…Julie has said that with Marybeth she wouldn’t have realized that she was even in labor until transition…which was 20 minutes and a couple of good pushes from birth.
[Stop rambling Jarvis…get to the point of the post] (also…if you don’t want pregnancy details…stop reading now)
Anyway…during the checkup, we were talking with the doctor to schedule the birth for next Tuesday (November 4). When she checked for dilation/effacement/station, she got this surprised look on her face and said, “Wow! You are three centimeters, and the baby is REALLY low. I hope you make it til Tuesday.” We were a bit surprised…Julie was 2cm on Friday and hadn’t had a ton of strong contractions since then, so we weren’t expecting that.
Now…this is where you come in. We really need you to pray that this baby holds off til Tuesday. The hospital won’t schedule an elective induction before that day…and we really don’t want to have the doctors that are on call before Tuesday.
So…check back Tuesday/Wednesday. The hospital has wireless internet, so I should be able to post the birth announcement with pictures here reasonably quickly.
Last week when we went in for the monthly OB checkup, the doctor said that Julie’s belly hadn’t grown as much as expected. Probably nothing, but she wanted to send Julie in for an ultrasound just to make sure. The ultrasound was this afternoon. The ultrasound tech (Megan) was fantastic. Definitely the best experience we have ever had in an ultrasound. I made sure to brag on Megan to her boss.
Towards the end of the ultrasound, Megan switched the machine to 3D. WOW. It was really cool. I hope to get more pictures up in this post later tonight, but in the meantime, check out the picture of my son eating his own foot!
The Realm of the Verbal Processor has been on mute for the last week. We got an early morning phone call on Sunday June 29. Julie’s grandmother died. We were able to get reasonable flights to PA the same day (and Julie’s grandfather offered to pay for the flight). Grandma was 85. She and Grampa had been married for 64 years. They had been dating since they were both 14 years old. Needless to say, this had been really rough on him losing his sweetheart of the last 71 years.
In a brief conversation with Grampa this week, he mentioned that they had grown a lot closer after they retired to Florida 25 years ago. What struck me was that after 40 years of marriage (25 years ago), they grew significantly closer in years 41-64 of their marriage. That is really cool…something that Julie and I aspire to. For that matter, we have a great marriage legacy in our families. Thinking about that prompted me to write the post just below this one.
Grandma will be missed. It is only just becoming “real” to Julie. It hit pretty hard yesterday…capped off by a birthday card last night. My birthday is June 30…the day after Grandma died. They had already sent me a birthday card…it was in Grandma’s handwriting. With our traveling to the funeral over the last week, I didn’t open it until last night. Seeing her Grandma’s handwriting on my card tipped things over the edge for Julie last night. It’s very possible that this was the last birthday card she mailed.
That Sunday morning when we told my five year old that Grandma had died, she had this very brief look of shock and horror and then quickly recovered and said, “We won’t get to see Grandma any more til we get to heaven. So when we go to Grandma and Grampa’s house, we’ll only see Grampa? So now Grandma gets to see the fence?”
Julie was a little confused at first until she realized what Marybeth was talking about. “You mean the one with the pearls?” “Yeah…that one.” Then Marybeth started talking about all the things that Grandma gets to do now. She wrapped up with this (in what is a typical stream of consciousness conversation with MB): “It’s very sad for us that we won’t get to see Grandma for a long time til we get to heaven. We’ll get to see her when we go to heaven, but I don’t think God wants me to go to heaven when I’m five…when I’m a grown up. Then some day we’ll all get to go be in heaven, and there won’t be any more earth, and it will be great because no one will have to die any more.”
She just had a perfect balance of appropriate sadness because we will miss Grandma mixed with appropriate joy at recognizing that death is not the end of things. She even got the end of things right. I’m not sure how she knew this because I haven’t been teaching her any lessons from Revelation, but she nailed it.
Over the last several months I’ve developed a relationship with Wally Mead. Wally is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft where he works with the System Center Configuration Manager product team. He handled a bug report that I submitted about SCCM (here and here…bug was fixed in SP1) and we connected offline afterwards. He had seen in the bug submission that I work for Campus Crusade for Christ, and he has had interaction with CCC in the past.
This week Wally has been in Orlando at Tech-Ed, so I invited him to come out and let me take him on a tour of CCC’s headquarters. After the tour we sat down and Wally allowed me to interview him. Below is the first portion of the interview. I will post parts 2 and 3 sometime next week.
I’d like to also offer a public thank you to Wally for taking the time to sit down with me. It was a very enjoyable time, and if Chris ends up coming to UCF, I look forward to seeing you more often!
Another thing…who else would you like to see interviewed? Let me know on that page and I’ll see what I can do.
[Update 6-22-08: It was brought to my attention in the comments below that if you don't have the Adobe Flash Plugin on your computer, you will not see the audio player that is just below the "Enjoy!" line. You can get it here if you don't already have it.]
We went in for our first ultrasound today. It was a fun experience getting to see our first glimpses of the little life that is growing inside Julie’s belly. The ultrasound equipment at Winnie Palmer hospital is much better than when we had ultrasounds with our two daughters. But that was several years ago also. Seeing our baby’s little fingers, arms, heartbeat and all of the movements was a really neat experience. We also found out that we are having a little boy! We were all kinda hoping for that. Laurel and Marybeth were running around quoting a line from “Lady and the Tramp“…”Oh boy, it’s a boy! Oh boy, it’s a boy! Oh boy, it’s a boy!”
This also serves as the complete answer to my youngest daughter’s prayers. Back before we got pregnant…and keep in mind that we were not planning to have a third child at the time…Marybeth prayed for a brother. I don’t know what it is about that child praying…but God seems to do backflips whenever she prays. She not only prayed us pregnant…she prayed herself a brother. (And yes…when she later started talking about twins…we both cringed.)
So…what does our baby look like now? Here are the five pics the hospital gave us (three are after the break). Also…if you don’t want to see the proof of “boyhood”, avoid the last picture.
A few years ago when my grandmother passed away I inherited a little chair that had been in the family for a very long time. It was owned by my Great Great Great Grandfather who died in 1878. My Great Grandfather learned to walk with the chair by turning it upside down and pushing it around the house. Doing so wore down the tops of the legs of the chair at an angle that you can see in the picture to the side.
What a day! We both woke up at around 5am. We stayed in bed talking for a while then got up to get ready to head into the hospital for the 7:30am induction. After checking in and getting everything set up, Dr. Manneh broke the water at around 8:30. Based on Julie’s past history of rapid labor, we were expecting to be done well before lunch. Well…God had different plans for us this time. Lunch came and went. Julie was progressing, but much slower than in past pregnancies. When we came in, Julie was at 3cm…by 1:30, she had only gotten to 6cm. However…
Some may know the significance of the names, but others may not. Sam is named after my dad. My dad was my best friend growing up. I learned a lot from him about hunting, fishing, and repairing things. I worked for him during the summers, and most weekends we were either in the woods or on the lake together. My dad died of cancer when I was twelve…an event that had a 
Over the last several months I’ve developed a relationship with Wally Mead. Wally is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft where he works with the System Center Configuration Manager product team. He handled a bug report that I submitted about SCCM (
