Eily's 3rd, Cavy's firsts and Daddy's rants and raves...

Fair warning...this is likely to be long. It's been a month since I posted, I have a lot to say and not all of it is about the kids.

First...as to why it's been so long between posts. My apologies, I intended to post much more frequently in the last month, especially considering there are so many things going on. However that is the very thing that has kept me from posting. Between work, kids, family visits and other such things life has been non-stop for a long time.

On to the good things...

As many of you know, Eily's third birthday just passed. She had an absolute blast...even though she was spiking a pretty good fever at the time. It seems as if she is finally getting her two year molars...she hasn't been able to get her fingers out of her mouth since the fever started. To add to the festivities, Eily's grandma and grandpa (my mother and father) were able to come visit for a week and a half and were here for her birthday!!! Eilish had an absolute blast, from waking up to a mountain of presents (and balloons) to having her birthday extended as the packages from family and friends have rolled in (for those of you that have sent stuff and I have not personally said thank you...thank you!!!). I think the most entertaining part of this whole experience was as she opened her gifts...she got mostly clothes (she needed them...Daddy hadn't been able to convince himself to go to the mall and get her spring/summer clothes...)...but she so badly wanted to get some new toys that she just threw all the cloths aside..."More clothes..." It was hilarious. I will of course have some pictures below. Another great part of the whole experience was this dress and hat that her grandma found for her. It is so pretty. Well one day they finally get around to trying it on and Eilish walks around talking about how she's a princess and starts curtsying!!! I'm serious...there is a picture of it that I'm going to post. I have no clue were she learned it...the kid almost never wears dresses. Then she starts dancing, so I kicked on some tunes for her and she went nuts. There are two videos of her dancing that I will post below.

She's such a big girl and I am so proud of her...and so scared that I'm going to somehow hinder her development. I know what to do with Cavan...I've been through all that already. But, Christy was the one who steered Eilish into new frontiers...she was the one who always had the magic touch of knowing exactly when to do what with her...I just followed her lead. A lot of times, I feel completely at a loss as to the direction to try and steer her.

It's somebodies birthday!!!



Yeah...it's my birthday...aren't I cool???



Oh yeah!!! Birthday Cake!!!



Isn't my new dress pretty???



Told you I could curtsy!



I'm to cute for words...



Cavan is growing so fast. He had his 4 month check-up recently and was 25.5" long and 14lbs 7.5oz. That's right folks, an inch and a half and 2 lbs in 6 weeks...also, that means that he doubled his birth weight at 4 1/2 months. Crazy kid!!! Developmentally the child is a whiz kid. He can grab his paci...take it out of his mouth, play with it and put it back in. If he drops it, he can (sometimes) find it and put it back. He's already adept with toys and plays well with them...rattles, toy car keys, big soft squishy blocks...he may not be able to creatively play with them yet, but boy is he good at picking them up...shaking the crud out of them and eating them. He also has become adept with the exersaucer...he no longer needs blanket support to stay upright...he can turn the seat completely around...and that pesky giraffe that he couldn't figure out in the last post...he can eat it now. The kid is amazing. He's had some other really big firsts in the last few weeks. First...he's cutting his first teeth! The two bottom front teeth are so tantalizingly close to through...the left one is most of the way through, with just a bit in the middle left to go, the one on the right is just got both corners poking up...but you can see the whole top edge of the tooth through the gums...so I imagine it's gonna pop quick. The poor kid has been miserable the whole time. His other big first was...he tried real food! Baby food...whatever...on his sisters birthday he got his first taste of fruit. Boy was it entertaining. Some great pictures below.

Got you, you pesky giraffe!!



Ugh!! What's this?!?!



Still not real sure about this...



Aren't I cute?



Yeah...I'm a stud!



Some great combo shots...







Now on to me...at this point, I would imagine quite a few of you would like to just skip down below this post for the videos...feel free. Just so you know...I'm going to rip the media, remember my wife and destroy the people who killed her. Read on...if your interested.

First...

As most of you know, I've been working my tail off for the last two months. Huge hours, lots of working at home and on weekends, stress and agony. Many of you may also have seen the news reports about the 787 (which for those who haven't really heard the details is the plane that I'm working on). For those of you that missed it...it was recently speculated that the 787 was going to face a 6 month delay due to structural issues with the "center wing box". This would be the part of the airplane that I work on. While I admit we've had some technical challenges, these news reports are patently false. It is a wonderful example of the sensational nature of the news media. There are a lot of issues with this aircraft...as with anything that is this new (this aircraft is revolutionary...it's more than 50% plastic and 20% more fuel efficient than any plane it's size flying), when you put it together for the first time it doesn't quite work the way it should. Car companies get around it by ignoring it and dealing with recalls later. You can't do that in the aerospace industry. You have exactly one chance to get it right...if you screw it up, billions of dollars of development money go down the drain. There are many other parts of the aircraft that have much greater challenges than we do, but because we are the part that "holds the wings on" (as so many news outlets so blithely reported) they used this news to scare the bejesus out of everybody. Currently, the economy is on the precipice of a cliff and the bloody news media is doing everything they can to shove it and everyone in this country off that cliff like so many lemmings. It's ridiculous, when they could run so many other stories that would warm peoples hearts and give people confidence in where they live and how they live, instead they choose to use freedom of the press to try and destroy the very country that grants them that right. Forget Osama bin Laden...the media is doing his job for him...

I now step down off my first soapbox...

I miss Christy. I miss her so much, it kills me. I wish I could describe the feeling...but I just can't. The best I can come up with is try to imagine the one thing in your life that fuels you and drives you. The one thing that makes it worth getting up in the morning...the one thing that makes you want to be the best person you could possibly be. Now imagine that that is taken away from you...and you will never get it back. That is how I feel. I love my children more than life itself...I will do anything to ensure that they have the best life they possibly can. But my wife was what made my life worth living. She was the absolute center of my universe. And she's gone. What good would this planet be without the sun? A frozen chunk of rock floating aimlessly through space without a purpose. That is how I feel.

Those of you who read this and truly love your spouse...I urge you to look at them everyday and remember how much you love them...make sure that they know it. I live in fear that Christy died not knowing how much I loved her. I won't bore you with the whole story...but many of you know that this last pregnancy was really rough on Christy. And I mean, really rough. She was brutally ill from the middle of May until about the middle of October...so bad that a lot of the time she was nearly incapacitated. Most of it was stress and anxiety related...as I said, I won't go into the details, but suffice to say...Christy convinced herself back in May that she was dying and nothing that anyone would say, me...doctors...anybody could convince her otherwise. It took months for her to overcome this. So after months of enduring this, she gets what seems like a cold 2 1/2 weeks after Cavan is born...I was just getting over one, so I thought nothing of it...she on the other hand starts stressing out about it. After spending a lot of time trying to calm her down...I started to get upset...suffice to say, I wasn't as nice and loving to her as I could of been. Possibly understandable given prior circumstances...but none the less poorly timed...she died 12 hours later. I'm so terrified that she died thinking that I hated her. So learn a lesson from me...don't make the same mistake I did...you and your spouse will have disagreements...there will be times where you are angry with each other...but don't let that make you forget how much you love each other...you may end up regretting it...forever.

Speaking of the topic...I have finally managed to nail down the "official" cause of her death. Sepsis induced by a post-partum infection...yes, that's right. She died because some idiot doctor or nurse didn't keep themselves or their hospital clean enough. Things like this are not supposed to happen anymore. My children lost their mother...their wonderful, sweet mother because somebody messed up. I'm here to tell you...the people who cared about her most...that this will not go unpunished. I will have the collective heads of the people responsible for this. I will not let them do this to someone else.

Ok...stepping down off of soapbox number two...

Remember...videos after this.