(old with wooden)

With My Wife over 25 weeks pregnant now, I feel like I have become more aware of our baby on the way. One of the choices we made early on in our marriage was not finding our what gender our future child is. This has been quite the chore, because to be fair to Peanut, I make sure to throw in a she every once in a while, where My Wife just calls it he all the time. One of the things that I enjoy doing is talking into My Wife's belly and telling Peanut about things going on, or what we are excited about his/her arrival. I also try to share with Peanut who we just spent time with, where we are going, who will be there. I understand the importance of it, and I want to know that it does make a difference.

Lately, I have had this fear about fatherhood, well it is more like our fear. Anyway, I'm a pretty loyal person and it takes quite a bit for me to just cast a person off. If they wrong me enough, you're out and you no longer have my heart. I fear this because I don't want Peanut to have this same conviction, and I fear it with myself towards Peanut some time in the future. As I look at some the friends/people I know, I see incredible relationships within their families and I want to be able to create that environment for Peanut. My Wife and I go back and forth as to what will happen 18 years from now when Peanut is entering her freshman year in college and if we will be financing the college experience or not. I was, My Wife was not and we have different stories to tell as a result. I was at home, she was in the dorm. I kept to my high school friends, she discovered many people. I couldn't get out of the house, she couldn't wait to come home...

I just want to know that those talks Peanut and I have now are going to make a difference. I would love to see what happens as we bring Peanut to freshman-family orientation at Name This University and see him build friendships that I know will have impact on him for the rest of his life. I have thought about starting to journal to my 18 year old now, so that the wisdom I may have tried to impart until then will be appreciated as she starts her life on her own, when she starts to think about how she will attain the dream of becoming the first woman to...

It's like that cell-phone commercial when the guy sees a pretty girl on the train that is boarding. He quickly changes his reservation and you then seeing the same guy sitting in the gallery at the Presidential Inauguration, they it zooms back in time to the guy at a graduation, then to like a kid swimming, a delivery room and them the guy sitting next to the pretty girl. When you reduce it all down the guy made the right choice to buy that phone, because it was his son who becomes the President of the United States of America.

Peanut and I have some fun moments though. I like to see if I can see him through My Wife's belly button. I like to listen to Peanut's heart, which is something My Wife can't do with her own ears. I also like to just lay there with my ear on where Peanut is pushing out on My Wife's belly. I like to think that Peanut has her face pressed against the inside, like a child looking into the toy store, trying to blow kisses out to me. Or when I can feel a small flutter with my hand on My Wife's belly that he is trying to reach out to touch my hand. This whole baby thing is pretty cool to me. I have to admit, the first few weeks I didn't understand much about what My Wife's body was going through, but now with a belly casting a shadow over her toes and the occasional elbow, knee or butt pressed up against the inside of her beautiful pregnant body I have a better vision of what the next part of my life is going to be like. Prayer for my family, wife, child and my our faith, her faith, his faith and my faith.