Thursday, June 19, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
3 weeks down, 933 to go!
Just kidding, I'm not really counting down the weeks until he moves out! But I am proud of us for how capably we've made it through the first three weeks. Nathan deserves the "Greatest Dad of the Year" award and so Christy and Ozias are happy and healthy. We even went to a fancy dinner AND a community event this week and made it through with our sanity intact!
To catch you up on how we got to where we are... you may have noticed that his due date was May 23rd and he was born on May 5th (Cinco de Mayo! Bueno, bueno bueno! Also my 1/2 birthday, incidentally.) This just goes to show how cooperative our baby is. We went to California for a good friend's wedding on May 2nd, and got home May 4th. When we left, I (Christy) told Ozias, "Just wait three more days and then we'll be ready for you" and when we got home, I said "Ok, feel free to come any time now!" After we got back from the airport, some friends came over and we went to play a couple of holes of frisbee golf and had a BBQ. I said "I don't feel like going to work tomorrow. Maybe I'll go into labor tonight." And I did. At 11:30 I started having contractions (which were coming really frequently), but by 1:30 I was really sleepy and I so I tried to relax enough to fall asleep. It worked and the contractions slowed down to every 20 or 30 minutes. In the morning I tried to get up and get them started again, but I was still too tired and just kept falling asleep. Finally by 8:30 I had woken up enough to start walking around and that got them going a little bit more. I was supposed to have a Dr's appt at 10am, so at 9:30 I called to see if I should come in or just go to the hospital. (I wasn't sure if I had pretty much stopped the labor by sleeping through it.) I really didn't want to go to the hospital and get sent home because I wasn't far enough along, so I decided to go to my Dr's appt, but right before we left I decided I didn't really want to labor in the waiting room, so we should just go to the hospital. Good thing. We got to the hospital around 10 or 10:30, and at 12:30 we had a baby in our arms! Ta-da! I had quite an extensive birth plan prepared and had packed enough cd's, books, and movies to get us through at least 36 hours of labor, but we didn't manage to get any of it out, including the birth plan. Fortunately, everything happened so fast that the birth plan was followed to a T. (No drugs, no extra people in the room, etc.) Nobody had time to do anything contrary to it! We had to pull the emergency cord to get someone in the room to tell them the baby was coming and I don't think they believed us even then. I was pretty amazed at how obvious it was that my body was created to do this and I was able to spend my whole labor relaxing (as much as possible) and letting it do its thing. Thanks to some great books that our brother's girlfriend gave me from her midwifery classes, I was able to educate myself and learned that, if I let it, my body would know what to do and get the job done. This was a good experience for me because before I had my doubts about the intelligence of God's design when it came to the birthing experience. (I thought it would be better if he'd made us like kangaroos so it came out when it was really tiny and I could peek in and check on him every once in a while.) But now I'm convinced that God's design is flawless and I'm glad I got to experience it so (relatively) naturally.
Thanks for all the prayers that have gone up in our behalf. God has truly blessed us with an amazing baby boy. Feel free to drop us a line or give us a call if you're in the area!
To catch you up on how we got to where we are... you may have noticed that his due date was May 23rd and he was born on May 5th (Cinco de Mayo! Bueno, bueno bueno! Also my 1/2 birthday, incidentally.) This just goes to show how cooperative our baby is. We went to California for a good friend's wedding on May 2nd, and got home May 4th. When we left, I (Christy) told Ozias, "Just wait three more days and then we'll be ready for you" and when we got home, I said "Ok, feel free to come any time now!" After we got back from the airport, some friends came over and we went to play a couple of holes of frisbee golf and had a BBQ. I said "I don't feel like going to work tomorrow. Maybe I'll go into labor tonight." And I did. At 11:30 I started having contractions (which were coming really frequently), but by 1:30 I was really sleepy and I so I tried to relax enough to fall asleep. It worked and the contractions slowed down to every 20 or 30 minutes. In the morning I tried to get up and get them started again, but I was still too tired and just kept falling asleep. Finally by 8:30 I had woken up enough to start walking around and that got them going a little bit more. I was supposed to have a Dr's appt at 10am, so at 9:30 I called to see if I should come in or just go to the hospital. (I wasn't sure if I had pretty much stopped the labor by sleeping through it.) I really didn't want to go to the hospital and get sent home because I wasn't far enough along, so I decided to go to my Dr's appt, but right before we left I decided I didn't really want to labor in the waiting room, so we should just go to the hospital. Good thing. We got to the hospital around 10 or 10:30, and at 12:30 we had a baby in our arms! Ta-da! I had quite an extensive birth plan prepared and had packed enough cd's, books, and movies to get us through at least 36 hours of labor, but we didn't manage to get any of it out, including the birth plan. Fortunately, everything happened so fast that the birth plan was followed to a T. (No drugs, no extra people in the room, etc.) Nobody had time to do anything contrary to it! We had to pull the emergency cord to get someone in the room to tell them the baby was coming and I don't think they believed us even then. I was pretty amazed at how obvious it was that my body was created to do this and I was able to spend my whole labor relaxing (as much as possible) and letting it do its thing. Thanks to some great books that our brother's girlfriend gave me from her midwifery classes, I was able to educate myself and learned that, if I let it, my body would know what to do and get the job done. This was a good experience for me because before I had my doubts about the intelligence of God's design when it came to the birthing experience. (I thought it would be better if he'd made us like kangaroos so it came out when it was really tiny and I could peek in and check on him every once in a while.) But now I'm convinced that God's design is flawless and I'm glad I got to experience it so (relatively) naturally.
Thanks for all the prayers that have gone up in our behalf. God has truly blessed us with an amazing baby boy. Feel free to drop us a line or give us a call if you're in the area!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Baby Pictures!
We're having lots of fun, but not sleeping much. We try to get naps in when he does, and are trying to take good care of each other. This baby thing is simply amazing, I feel like I have a well of love in my heart and it's overflowing for him and my friends and family. It's an unusual and good feeling. Write us a note and when we get some time away from the changing table we'll try to write back! :)
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Groundhogs Day Letter
Dear Friends and Family,
In the spirit of following in the Whitley’s footsteps, we’re putting out our “Christmas” letter in plenty of time to make sure it gets to you before Groundhog’s Day.
While 2007 was full of adventure for us, it was also relatively calm. Since Xenos closed in August of ’06 when the church was given a new building, we have scaled back our involvement with Red Sea to a mere combined 15-20 hours per week instead of the 100 -120 (combined) we were putting in before. Though we went through some rough patches in the transition, the outcome is a very healthy relationship with the pastors and congregation of Red Sea that has been strengthened by facing conflict and working through it together. We consider Red Sea our Portland family and have been able to learn and grow in leaps in bounds with them.
What have we been doing with all our new-found “free-time” you may ask? We’ve had a couple of great vacations this year, including visiting friends in California, and going camping with friends outside of Ashland, OR. We spent one of the rainy nights in the cheap seats (which happen to be the ones with a roof over them) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the other one huddled under a tarp next to the campfire. We were also able to spend time with both of our families at Christmas and wrapped up the Christmas season with just the two of us at a beautiful vacation home in Redmond.
Back in real life…Nathan has been teaching piano lessons both in his private studio at the church, and at Ethos, a local non-profit music center in North Portland. This past summer he was the coordinator of Ethos’ week long music camps, one of which was a Rock Band Camp where one of the bands (made up of three 8 year olds) called themselves the Food Fighters. Nathan also enrolled in Concordia University’s MATE (Masters of art in Teaching) program so in the summer of 2009, he will have his teacher’s certificate!
In December of ’06, Christy got a job working for a mentoring program through a mental health agency. After working there for one full year, she still loves her job! (This isn’t something that happens every time.) She recruits, trains, and matches adult mentors with kids who are receiving mental health services in the area. Because she has to train mentors how to work with struggling kids, she has lots of opportunities to attend trainings on the subject herself. In many ways, her job has been like a parenting class and both Christy and Nathan have been able to learn a lot about how to help kids succeed. Which brings us to our last subject…
Have you been able to catch the theme of what God is teaching us this year? Growing with our church family, getting some time to relax, Nathan is learning how to educate kids; Christy’s job is like a parenting class. Yep, you got it! God has been working all year at preparing us to be good parents, which is a good thing because on or around May 23rd, we’re going to have a baby boy! After 5 ½ years of spontaneous freedom in marriage, we’re getting ready to start down an entirely different path. Nathan (with the help of both of our dads, friends from church, and neighbors) has been working on turning the garage into an office/craft room/guest bedroom so that the room in the house that has been functioning in those capacities can now be a nursery. Christy has been purging the house of all unnecessary items in an effort to make room for something so small that comes with so much stuff. Stay tuned to this blog for pictures and stories from the Conants.
It’s been a great year of growing and change and we are so grateful for the part that each of you has played in our lives.
In the spirit of following in the Whitley’s footsteps, we’re putting out our “Christmas” letter in plenty of time to make sure it gets to you before Groundhog’s Day.
While 2007 was full of adventure for us, it was also relatively calm. Since Xenos closed in August of ’06 when the church was given a new building, we have scaled back our involvement with Red Sea to a mere combined 15-20 hours per week instead of the 100 -120 (combined) we were putting in before. Though we went through some rough patches in the transition, the outcome is a very healthy relationship with the pastors and congregation of Red Sea that has been strengthened by facing conflict and working through it together. We consider Red Sea our Portland family and have been able to learn and grow in leaps in bounds with them.
What have we been doing with all our new-found “free-time” you may ask? We’ve had a couple of great vacations this year, including visiting friends in California, and going camping with friends outside of Ashland, OR. We spent one of the rainy nights in the cheap seats (which happen to be the ones with a roof over them) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the other one huddled under a tarp next to the campfire. We were also able to spend time with both of our families at Christmas and wrapped up the Christmas season with just the two of us at a beautiful vacation home in Redmond.
Back in real life…Nathan has been teaching piano lessons both in his private studio at the church, and at Ethos, a local non-profit music center in North Portland. This past summer he was the coordinator of Ethos’ week long music camps, one of which was a Rock Band Camp where one of the bands (made up of three 8 year olds) called themselves the Food Fighters. Nathan also enrolled in Concordia University’s MATE (Masters of art in Teaching) program so in the summer of 2009, he will have his teacher’s certificate!
In December of ’06, Christy got a job working for a mentoring program through a mental health agency. After working there for one full year, she still loves her job! (This isn’t something that happens every time.) She recruits, trains, and matches adult mentors with kids who are receiving mental health services in the area. Because she has to train mentors how to work with struggling kids, she has lots of opportunities to attend trainings on the subject herself. In many ways, her job has been like a parenting class and both Christy and Nathan have been able to learn a lot about how to help kids succeed. Which brings us to our last subject…
Have you been able to catch the theme of what God is teaching us this year? Growing with our church family, getting some time to relax, Nathan is learning how to educate kids; Christy’s job is like a parenting class. Yep, you got it! God has been working all year at preparing us to be good parents, which is a good thing because on or around May 23rd, we’re going to have a baby boy! After 5 ½ years of spontaneous freedom in marriage, we’re getting ready to start down an entirely different path. Nathan (with the help of both of our dads, friends from church, and neighbors) has been working on turning the garage into an office/craft room/guest bedroom so that the room in the house that has been functioning in those capacities can now be a nursery. Christy has been purging the house of all unnecessary items in an effort to make room for something so small that comes with so much stuff. Stay tuned to this blog for pictures and stories from the Conants.
It’s been a great year of growing and change and we are so grateful for the part that each of you has played in our lives.
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