Prebble Family Tales

Today marks Brandy’s 35th birthday, celebrated by two morning serenades from Gareth and me.  While I’m sure Brandy will enjoy the Zune I got her, she says her favorite present is Collin.

Which sort of sucks, because there’s no way I can top a baby next year.

Collin Alexander was born at 9:33AM on Friday, October 24th.  He weighs 6 lbs 3 oz and is 19.75″ long.

Photos are now available.

It’s just before 7am and I have made the greatest discovery - I can blog from my phone.
Why am I wasting time figuring this out? Because we are both sitting here waiting for the shift change to occur so we can meet our nurse for the day.
Collin is doing fine based on the heart rate monitor. Brandy is extremely nervous but not so much that can’t be annoyed by me live blogging while she freezes in a hospital gown.

That’s our delivery time.  Brandy and I will arrive at the hospital at 6:10AM for admission and prep.  We are then scheduled to produce Collin at 8:40.  If you are one of the elite few, you’ll likely receive a phone call tomorrow once everything settles down, at which point I will have to convey the obligatory height/weight statistics and say “Baby and Mother Are Doing Well”, because I didn’t get to say that to anyone last time.

I wouldn’t expect photos until late Friday night since I don’t think Brandy wants me running off to upload the snaps so soon after delivery.  I get the impression that she would like me to hang around a bit.

Okay, time to catch up!

The Miracle League baseball season has concluded.  We went to the closing picnic last weekend where Gareth was given his first ever trophy.  He didn’t want to let it go the rest of the day and was extremely proud to have it.  If you haven’t seen it yet, feel free to ask him to show it to you.

We’ve traded in Brandy’s “I don’t want to be a soccer mom” Mazda 5 for the purchase of a 2004 Toyota Sienna with an automated wheelchair ramp and kneeling system.  I think the kneeling system is incredibly cool (it lowers the right side of the van before deploying the ramp), but it doesn’t buy us much of an advantage and it increases the time waiting for the ramp to deploy, so we don’t use that feature.  And no, it can’t be wired to bounce the van up and down as though we were starring in a Dr. Dre video.

In less than two weeks, Collin will be born and will get to move into his patiently waiting nursery.  Things continue to go well, and we’re still on track to deliver in State College.  Brandy and I will be traveling to Danville on Friday to meet with yet another doctor there, just in case.  We’re struggling with the idea of experiencing a relatively normal birth and the challenges of a child without challenges.  You’d think we’d be pretty well battle worn, but we’ve spent the last nearly seven years tuned to what Gareth requires in care and are wholly unprepared for normalcy.

Anne (my mother) has moved in with us since the last blog entry.  She’s helping us with Gareth while we help her with support.  By October 26th, we’ll have six people and a cat in our house every night.  It’s starting to feel like Charlie Bucket’s house.

Those are the big items from the past month.  It has been far busier than we would have liked, but we’re just about out of it in time to have our second child.  Can we take 2009 off?

Gareth and I have been spending some time this morning putting some new music on his MP3 player. So far, we have added:

• Peanut Butter Jelly Time
• The Star Spangled Banner
• Macarena
• Die Zauberflöte Act II: Die Hölle Rache (Königin)

Each of them makes him crack up.  I’m sure his nurse is thankful that she no longer has to listen to “Hollaback Girl” (she was offended by the profanity), but something tells me these aren’t going to make her any happier to listen to music in the morning.

Gareth started off on the right track - a medieval themed room. It was awesome. And then we moved and time went by and Gare had a Cars bedroom. Not bad. Now?

Should everything go well, Collin will be delivered on October 24th.  Happy Halloween.

Brandy and I celebrated our 9th anniversary yesterday with cards, flowers, Don Quixote art, carpet cleaning, Qdoba, and Cold Stone.

Next year, we’ll get even wilder!