WOW, OK. So, things have changed a bit, huh? Yikes, where do I even start? Not even personally, either. As a whole, the world has gone completely mad. Like if you were to call IT on it, they would tell you to turn it off and turn it back on again. I could go on and on with the insanity we’ve all been dealing with out there the past few months, and don’t even get me started on all the civil unrest going on thanks to social injustices. But that’s for another post. Or podcast. I have a podcast, did you know? Because I completely forgot! I’m such a terrible person to follow for anything. I feel horrible for not keeping up with stuff lately, I truly do. At least I got a few episodes out the past 2 weeks! To be honest, I’m usually ok and feel no remorse for not updating. I used to, but a wise man with a beard once said to just own it. Why apologize every post, just dance like no one is watching. Or something like that. But lately, I’ve been absolutely riddled with guilt and I have no excuse.
Oh wait, I lied.
World, I officially introduce you to our daughter, Liliana Elyse!
As of this writing she’s 4 months young and she couldn’t be more perfect. Unlike daddy, who took 4 months to get off his lazy rump to post this announcement. But hopefully she forgives me. Maybe when she gets older she’ll read the opening to this and google “the world in 2020” and she’ll know why. It’ll be like Leeloo in The Fifth Element when she’s studying human history and gets caught up with all the bad stuff.
It’s crazy to think I haven’t updated this place for that long. I didn’t post anything about the pregnancy which wasn’t our first rodeo but still had us wrangling all new challenges. Like her being breached twice. TWICE! It was absolute craziness. It all went smoothly in the end though. But truth be told, I avoided posting about it here. The fear of the one we lost prior was strong enough to make me hesitant on making an expecting post. I still did it on social media though because.. well, I’ll get into that. But putting her on here felt wrong without first posting about our loss. And I did not want to post about our loss until after Lily was born. It was all very complicated, I know. I wouldn’t expect anything else from this crazy head of mine. I wrote up about our loss if you want to check that out.
Moving onward, that announcement. We were pretty proud! It was all the wife’s idea. She had her plan and of course, I couldn’t stop my creative juices if I wanted to. The goal was to announce at Universal Studios (yeah, NOT Disney, what’s up with that?!) right in front of Hogwarts Castle. Thanks to my sister in NYC who made the letterings for us, we were able to put together a nice little announcement with the boys and their wands. We held up traffic on what is possibly the busiest narrow bridge in the park but honestly I didn’t feel bad.
I’m totally making a follow-up post to this with a little how-to on how I made that sign. Sorry, I’m still ridiculously proud of myself, so yeah, you’re going to hear about it. If you’re reading this now, just check out the next post by date and it’ll be there.
It’s still crazy to think or even say that we have a daughter now. Or to tell the boys something about their sister. Usually it’s “your sister is SLEEPING!” because they’re constantly home now and couldn’t be quiet if you paid them. Trust me, I tried. But having a daughter now is an absolute blessing. Either way, boy or girl, would’ve been a blessing. But you know, being able to “complete the set” was something we were really hoping on doing. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that we never find out what we’re having. We have a ton of fun watching everyone who cares about knowing the gender suffer because they want to know more than we do. But we love the surprise. Like a Christmas gift that comes out of the wife’s… you know, where christmas gifts come from. So the entire pregnancy the wife was doing everything short of building a shrine of bows and Barbie dolls to pray to in order to have a girl. Well who knows, maybe she did have a secret shrine somewhere because it worked. Our Pokédex is complete.
It’s only been a few months but we’re embracing everything we can with having a girl. Trying to buy as much pink stuff as possible, the wife going absolutely mad with clothes, and… no, wait, you know what, let’s focus on that for a sec.
A long time ago, before kids, my wife was set on the thought that if we had a daughter, she would never, EVER, dress her in this “stupid girly girl” stuff. Froo-froo ruffles, bows as big as the baby’s head, she was all against it, that “she won’t be that type of mother.” But now? Now it’s like a monster has been awoken. We already have an entire closet just for Lily’s clothes. An entire closet.. for a 4 month old. And then some, too, because that’s just the nice stuff. It’s madness! Her BFF from work put her onto this boutique thing and she almost exclusively got all her clothes from there. Nice, unique looking stuff too. She described it to me one day, and said it’s unique enough to differentiate from the “Carter’s kids,” as her nose subconsciously pointed itself up towards the sky. But then she discovered this other boutique type store that focuses more on Disney themes with the occasional non-Disney cartoon or franchise thrown in there. R.I.P. bank account, I hardly knew thee.
It’s real entertaining to watch too, seeing her get excited for new releases, try and plan to see what can be resold, trying to get a good spread of clothes in various sizes. I’ll tell her I like this one style she bought and she’ll try to contain her excitement as she tells me she bought one just like it for when Lily is a year old. She tells me about women who would post to the group saying they have to sell off all the clothes they bought their kid because their husband just found out how much money they spent on it all. Honestly, I hope she doesn’t stop. Why? Because she’s happy. You have no idea. I’ve waited YEARS for the wife to find something that makes her happy. I’ve tried getting her into crocheting, and that lasted about 6 minutes. Tried to have my love for LEGO and video games rub off on her, and nothing even comes close to pique her interest. She’s not the type to have a ridic amount of hobbies like me. But seeing her collect and get excited and plan what Lily will be wearing, it all reminds me of me. And I’m glad she gets to experience all that excitement for herself. And the best part? I get to get excited over a new record or LEGO set or game, and I know she’ll understand my struggle now. I’ve waited years for this.
We’ve all waited years for this it seems. It’s all exciting for everyone. The boys love Lily, which is good, because you never know how siblings will react. And just like them, the dog wants to do nothing but play with her and lick and smell her feet. We always have to keep his distance though because we’ve seen what he does with that tongue.
All in all, the past 4 months have been a blessing, and God willing, we’ll continue to be blessed. The one thing that we’re really bummed out about is that thanks to the pandemic, who knows when we’ll be able to go to Disney again. Whenever we do feel comfortable going – because even when they open we’re not going near there for a while – we’re excited to finally have an excuse to meet and take pictures with all the Princesses. I know, we say that now, not thinking ahead a few years when she’s wanting full replica gowns and all the other crazy expensive girly stuff. Oh man, this kid is going to be so spoiled, it’s not even funny.
Bwahaha, “going to be.” As if she’s not already spoiled.
Oh, I can’t believe I almost forgot the game system picture!
See, way back in 2010, when our first was born, I was playing the role of superdork and I sent in a picture to PlayStation The Official Magazine with my PSP. At the time, they had a ongoing thing where people posted pictures of all the random places they brought their PSP. The picture won me Letter of the Month!
Fast forward to 2013, I took another picture with my second, this time with my PS Vita. No magazine this time to send it in to, but I figured why not since it was something I did before because, you know, nerd. So of course, here we are. Third kid and now I feel like I’m obligated to be this geek father. So I snapped one with Lily and my Nintendo Switch. In hindsight, it’s a great way to show how the technology evolved with time. The wife also pointed out that it fits how it’s the Switch and we switched from boys to a girl. Took her long enough to start coming out with the mom jokes.
Anyway, I’m sure you’ll see plenty of her on social media. Funny, we told ourselves we weren’t going to be posting our new baby’s pictures everywhere. That lasted about 15 minutes into her life. At least now I have the guilt off my chest of not dedicating a post to Lily!
