Week 50 - Revoir

The sun was just dropping past home plate when we arrived at the game this weekend.

This week was one of the more sad of the week, as the Brazilians started to say their goodbyes, and they flew out home on Wednesday. It seems like just yesterday that I was picking them up at the airport, dragging them around work for introductions and mounds of paperwork, and driving them through 2-hour traffic to their new home with us in April. Not every thing about them was easy or pleasant, but neither is it for anyone else. They were very hard workers, always positive and non-cliques unlike the most of their nationality that visits here. We had a lot of good times while they were here and I only wish we could have gotten more research work done. With the freeze-dryer dead for 3 weeks now, and the fermenters period 4 dying this past week, and nobody running PCR or taking the time to teach them (and me being too busy to help them with this), they probably didn't get as much out of the trip as we had hoped, but I know that they are much better at their English and their fermenter work than before. And they got to work and meet many famous people to their own university while they were here.

To celebrate their time here and say farewell, our PI took us out to the Clippers for a mLB baseball game. The Clippers haven't been traditionally good, but they have had a couple of good years recently, as if to encourage people to come out and watch them in their new stadium. I am a big fan of the new stadium, and shot many pictures with my iPhone during the evening to give you a feel for the game experience here in town. Our stadium is near the downtime high life but surrounded by good parking and traffic managers who are familiar with heavy attendance events. Neither my PI or I had the foresight to purchase tickets ahead of time and so we were lucky that the scalpers outside had a set of tickets near the outfielders which turned out to be a good show with home runs and good catches galore. Since it was dime-a-dog night, we did our part to consume copious cheap carbs and mysterious ground meat, combined with beers pricey enough to bring the balance back to the norm.

What really struck me about the game this year was that we were in the hot dog line when the national anthem was introduced. You could just barely hear it over the crowd, but as the stands stood and most (should be all!) removed their hats and covered their hearts, a silence fell on the food stands. These, these are the people who get it. They work every game in the park, all summer, and they drop it all when the song symbolic of all their dreams, and the freedom of the game is played and sung for all. Their respect for the flag, the song and all it represents was inspiring to me. The great American game is still alive with great American patriotism. You don't have to love the game to want to go, you just have to love this country and the people in it.

I told the Brazilians that there is nothing as American as a hotdog and a ball game on a summer day.

The stadium as the lights came on. With so many hits, it was a long game.

A panorama of the field from our seats as the sunset's colors faded away.

Full on dark at the game.

A view down as it rains.

In other news, I am in hardcore training mode for the Pelotonia this year. If you are interested in donating money to cancer research, please Google Pelotonia and make a tax-deductible contribution to a fund dedicated to cancer research here until there is a cure found. The research is local, but the impact is global and I am proud to be a part of what I hope to be a difference-maker for the betterment and enjoyable extension of my childrens' lives.

Crop-duster flew over my bike.

Of course, as I ride, my skill improves, and I am finally cutting into better times that are respectable among my peers. This week I have finally climbed up into the top 7 for my area, and am 2 minutes behind the leader for our 13-mile stretch of road. My goal is to catch the leader by this fall and pass him, but these last couple miles per hour are tough to tackle and I really need to lose a few more pounds to lighten the ride. Losing pounds is incredibly hard, and I have started using a new app, LoseIt, which I hope will help with the loss. If I can achieve my goals with it, you can count on me posting a special post about the use of it and the long road to weight loss, but for now I am happy to regulate intake and trade fat for muscle, even if the weight isn't going anywhere.


The state fair is still in full swing, and I took our baby girl on a tour of the animals around the grounds. Here's just a few of the pictures from our trip. Other notable stops include a diaper change at both the cattlemen's association booth and the lumberjack competition, a bottle-feeding at the poultry barn, a walk-by of the sea lions (which I never got to see up close because they were out in the bright sunlight) and a short stroll through carnie-town.

Us, with the little piglets and safe animal handling display.

Us, with my brother's fancy chicken.

Us, with my brother's crazy rabbits.

Us drinking a bottle, promoting our favorite stock industry.

Post-game relaxing w/Dad.

"You're picking that up?"

Every fair needs a little bit of post-fair partying, and my best man and his girlfriend were over to hang out this weekend and celebrate the end of the week with some good-spirited, competitive euchre. Our little girl has been quite the celebrity, and got passed around to guest-play for everyone. She does make it a bit hard to focus on the game since she's so precious, but she is learning to play a family tradition early, and I am looking forward to many good times to come.

So, the time has come to say goodbye to a good chapter in our lives, as we wind up the summer, our time at home with baby Hannah, and the stay of the Brazilians. It has been a good summer, and I am not quite ready to let it all go. This was definitely one of those nostalgic weeks where you look back and try to hold on to what is passing with your toughest grip. But, in the end, time marches on, whether we are ready for it or not. This summer was a great adventure, a fine new chapter in my life. As we say goodbye to Brazilians, I am reminded of saying goodbye to our friends in the Netherlands when I came home. Not just goodbye, but "au revoir", because I know we will see each other again.

Believe it or not, they did not pack half of America in all that luggage. Just a "few" things.

Week 49 - Video

Most of this week was absorbed by 4-H camp, so I will summarize briefly. It rained, a lot. I heard something like 4 inches of rain over a 4 day camp. The creek flooded and washed logs over the car bridge, but we had a pro group of counselors this year and they did a great job keeping the kids and their peers positive. Despite some of the worst weather for a summer camp, I think the kids this year had more fun as a group than many previous years. Less injuries despite the fact that kids don't get any smarter, I am sure of it (expect a future post on the failure of parents to educate their children). This was the first year that we offered a teen-specific camp and I think that despite some simple changes to make, it was a smashing hit. Of course, now that it turned out well, our debbie-downer of the group has decided it was her great project for the year. Luckily my wife isn't out campaigning for credit for the things she does and is willing to let it go. I taught some mountain biking, some tower climbing and zipping, and got to watch Dan give kids the talk about working hard and making your own breakfast.

Btw... we launched a balloon monkey with a bottle rocket.

Our little baby girl had 2 special visitors this week. First, her aunt finally came home from Prague and we met her at the airport. I classed up the place with a blowout diaper change in the luggage claim which helped clear the area and give us a quiet place to celebrate Sis's return to the states. Technology can help you visit with people, but there is still no replacement for seeing someone in person. I think the picture of them meeting for the first time is perfect evidence of why all our electronics will still not be replacing personal contact anytime soon. And of course, there is also the possibility that our little girl was a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. But she took it in stride, looking around with those expressive eyes and filling a diaper nonchalantly. Now she has finally met all of the close family.

Hannah also got to meet a professor friend of the family from Australia who was in town to visit this week. This woman was the former teacher of the class I was a part of during the technology upgrades for online learning. She has done similar work in Australia since her time here and both classes have grown in popularity. With her came the most interesting stuffed animal Hannah has received (and there've been some doozies with the Dr. Seuss theme, trust me). All the way from Australia, she now has a stuffed wombat. And it apparently is relatively lifelike, because my wife says Betsy went crazy about it when it came home sitting in the carseat. Again, it just goes to show how blessed we are to have so many friends around the world who care so much for us, and for Hannah.

Our little bug with her new wombat!

Later this week also marked the start of the state fair. Here, we have a great fairgrounds managed by a good team who really care about the balance between culture expectations of a fairgrounds and the historic tradition of agriculture exposition. Our state government supports the grounds and the board of directors is very active and forward thinking. My family's involvement over the years has been increasingly concentrated around the sheep show, specifically Shropshires and my little brother had another great showing this year, winning an exhibitor award and placing in the top 5 with sheep bred and raised on our own farm. Coming from such a limited agricultural background and nourished over the years in our pursuit of knowledge and excellence, it is a proud moment to see the youngest of the family finally recognized publicly for his hard work and knowing that it was a family effort to get to this point. And now we are bringing up the next generation in this great environment and lifestyle.

So, the main point of my post today was more related to my work side of life. We made some big time progress this week in the video realm (see the clip below) with the intern's camera. At first, there was some trouble capturing video with the SLR (or even pictures), but we figured out that with the Nikon, it will only function without a lens attached (built in sensor) if you set the camera in manual mode. Once we did this, we needed to push the "live view" button, and then if we pushed the "ok/select" button, it would record video. The video isn't perfect, but with good focus and the ability to use the LCD screen to improve this focus (the focus won't be the same as what is seen in the viewfinder since they are slightly different distances from the stage), we were able to capture the videos we need to proceed with the experiments.

What you see in this video is a group of isotrichs/entodiniomorphs swimming around in flocculated rumen fluid. Basically, we sample rumen fluid by squeezing it through cheesecloth from digesta samples out of a rumen cannulated Jersey dairy cow in the morning, approximately 1 hour post-feeding when the protozoa are up and swimming around amidst the food. Then we take the fluid back to the lab and put it into a separatory funnel. Over about an hour, the feed particles will mostly float to the top with fermentation activity and the protozoa will settle to the bottom. Then the feed and whatnot is removed from the top by aspiration and the remainder is dispensed into a CO2 flushed container. From there we distribute to a series of anaerobic tubes with different diet treatments. Then we take a sub-sample over to the microscope, throw it up on a slide and take the video. For a size perspective, the larger, fuzzy protozoa are isotrichids and they are about 150-200 um in size. To capture this with a $600 camera is really amazing and the possibilities for where we take the research next are endless and will have great relevance to our ongoing projects. Enjoy!

Week 48 - Growing...

...like a weed. Our little girl is definitely all that and the end of this week marked her 1 month birthday. Of course, with all the hussle of getting ourselves out the door for 4-H camp, we didn't have time to celebrate it in style, but will postpone that "special moments" whiskey on the rocks for another milestone month in the near future. Thankfully, my wife had the foresight to create these super cute little blocks with colored numbers to mark the passing of time. And thankfully twice, she had the good  memory to take the picture you see on the right. That hit the background on my phone faster than bugs on a Ferrari grill. Hannah has such wonderful expression and personality for 1 month. She is certainly a treasure to cherish (just like her mom!).

Little baby girl is fast asleep with mom at 4-H camp this week.

Speaking of growing, we have been growing up just a few groups of protozoa in the lab, and while other members work on new filtration techniques for live rumen protozoa (since they are anaerobic, this is no easy feat), we have been working on hooking up a camera to a microscope in another lab. This has been met with limited success, starting with a QCapture setup which I have to say was found to be lacking. The firewire takes forever to communicate lighting adjustments and realtime viewing/focus, while the image clarity is challenging and the pixelation is disappointing. Limited software support for video capture also prevents this from being a viable option.

So then I pulled out all the cameras from my house and took them down to work. Without adaptors for the open view, the video cameras and point-and-shoot cameras I brought were completely worthless. However, the old Canon Rebel XT was finally able to capture some first images, and examples of these are below. The SLR allows for much better light control and the manual aspect of the camera combined with rudimentary memory of camera function was all I needed to get some pictures taken. Well, that and some electric tape. Since the camera was on the microscope, but open (no lens) and balanced, I wanted to prevent it from being trashed in this fragile state. The electric tape leaves little residue and served to secure the camera body against the microscope opening to prevent dust contamination to either object and to prevent me from clutzing my camera right off the top to its death (almost happened once).

Isotrichid amidst entodiniomorphs, notice the cilia moving all over the body.

For scale, the entire distance on the gridline is 1000 um.

While these pictures are great, there are still 2 main drawbacks which we need to address on image capture. First, my camera doesn't take video. Next week when I am back from camp, my intern will be bringing in her camera to take some video. It is a Nikon D5000 and promises great improvements in light sensitivity, color and video capture over my current situation. Plus, she was gracious enough to offer it for free since it benefits her undergrad research project. Second, we still cannot capture dark field contrast images. The dark field stage is important to me because I think it offers the best opportunity down the road for projecting movement and correcting for protozoal dodging between particle clumps of various origin. Right now the protozoal movement seems to be random and we classify their activity based on chemoattraction or random motion (you can see a rough video below, thanks to the iPhone). However, when you examine the protozoal movement on dark field where bacterial colonies are highlighted (2nd video below, kinda looks like a starry night sky), then you notice that the movement is less random than we supposed. Instead, they are also dodging around lots of different particles in the space provided. It is important when we proceed with our motility analysis to take this into consideration, especially since we will be scoring them on 2 distinct categories: distance traveled versus location change over time.

This has been a generally productive week at work, as we were also trained to use the new GreenFeed system. This system is automatically programmed to read RFID tagged dairy cattle and dose them with a treat (conditioning reflex). While they are eating it, it measures their gas production and we will be using it for some large-scale live animal projects. It might sound like a bit of work, but the design is really creative and effective, and we will be able to do some great research with it. Even though I'm probably not the primary research student to use the equipment, I am excited to be a part of this progressive methodology.

Our lab attending a training meeting for the new cattle gas sampler.

This week also marked our 3rd year of partnership with OFBF for the Pelotonia.

Week 47 - Indy

It's been a long time since my wife and I took a vacation, and this was far from it, but still it was nice to get out of town together on a trip to anywhere but work. So this week with the national joint annual meetings for my associations being so close in Indianapolis, I was pretty excited to finally be returning to the meetings to attend presentations, network with peers and betters, and leave the fermenters behind to do some brainstorming. Period 3 crashed and died over the weekend, so we restarted them and set off earlier than originally anticipated (was going to have to stick around for sample collections Tuesday am). We dropped down to visit my wife's grandma on the way out and by pure chance missed a good portion of the traffic backed up from a bad wreck on I-70 thanks to our late departure and a warning text from my adivsor.

Me presenting a poster at my first JAM in 2007.

Different priorities back in the day...

Indianapolis as a town wasn't much of a draw to me, having poor memories of it the last I was there as an undergrad recruiter for Michigan State at the National FFA Convention. Turns out, FFA has a way of down-funning a town (sobriety and all that, responsibilities for manning a booth, role modeling, etc.). But either my initial impression of the city was wrong or the place has improved over the last 5 years. There were lots of great places to eat, a nice shopping mall and beautiful parks/monuments. The skywalk/sidewalks between places was effective and pleasant (minus the random temperature/humidity flares). Our hotel was very nice and I think we had a good time there in general. I was struck by the cleanness and structure of the downtown area, not something I remembered from the last time I was there. Of course, I suppose it's all really about what you're looking for in a place. It was definitely better than Des Moines (read more here).

This was our first trip with the newest member of the family, and for the most part it was uneventful. We did have to make a couple of pitstops to refuel her and grab some coffee. I did a Wal-mart special and changed her diaper in the car with the door open. We also had a diaper change go amiss when she decided she wasn't quite done yet. That turned out to be while she was in my wife's lap (woops!). All things considered, not a bad trip for a baby of 3 weeks.

Having not seen many of my friends within my field in a while, our little girl was the "belle of the ball". I felt like I couldn't go anywhere without hearing how beautiful or cute she was from people who had seen her or held her before I'd even see them. I can already tell that our little girl is going to be one of those who is known by many more people in her childhood than she can remember. She is truly blessed to have so many people who care about her and we are blessed to count them among our friends.

A view of Indy from my phone.

I saw many cases of bad science ("educational indictments") at the conference, but also some great work and ideas as well. Our own work in instructional technology (see previous post) went over very well and it was exciting to see so many people interested in enhancing the classroom with technology. In general, I came away feeling like I had accomplished a lot of learning in a short period of time. My wife helping to watch Hannah really allowed me to maximize my short time with so many people in one place and I spent the days reading, listening and questioning, and the nights shaking hands and making contacts, the difference of which should be inherently obvious.

Me with Burk and Jeff.

One special moment from the conference was the symposium in honor of a long-time researcher in the field, coincidentally the MS advisor for my mother-in-law. He has done much of the research with the protozoal field, and is responsible for the drawings of the rumen protozoa that we take for granted when doing ID and other work. An accomplished scientist and friend of my advisor, it was nice to get to know him on our trip to Chicago (backstory) but this presentation let so much more light in on his work and the esteem that his colleagues have for him. It was the best 3 hours of the conference for me and that was before I even knew what surprise my mother-in-law had for me. After the meetings, she showed me the original textbook she had brought with her to be signed. I knew she had been excited about this for a while, but when I opened it up inside, it was signed to me! Wishing me the best in my future studies, she had him sign the book over to me. It is a moment I will remember for a long time. I can only hope that any of my work will have as much impact as what he has done.

Week 46 - Bar

Our first day pondering the other baby in the room.

Well, it didn't take too long for us to start setting standards high for our little girl. It's not that we are demanding performance from her, but more that we are giving her the opportunity to explore the world around her rather than bundling her up and watching the television. So as our little girl levels off her weight and hopefully starts to gain (she's just so active, she's not putting weight on!), we have discovered ourself in the mirror. That's right, this week our little Hannah was looking at herself in the mirror as she lay on  her activity mat. There's really not much else for her to do on the mat right now but be put on her stomach for a little "tummy time", so we let her lay on her back for a while and look around. She is so curious, I just know she's going to be a great learner.

My wife and daughter on our first walk.

Meanwhile, we've also gotten out on our first walk together which turned out to be a bit more difficult (and easy) than we expected. First the easy part. Courtesy of great family and friends, we were blessed with many gifts during the course of the baby shower period, and one of these was the Graco Click Connect (Fast Action) stroller/carseat system. Yes, shameless plug, but my wife did her shopping research and this turned out to be a great system. I recommend it to anyone. The seat base was easy to install (despite my wife's best efforts to complicate it with too many iterations of the manual), and the stroller pops right out of the back of the car and opens up into correct standing. When we're done, we remove the carseat and pull the handle and it folds right back up. It is light, sturdy and fits square in the back of the Corolla. The only difficulty is that it doesn't come with shock absorbers and living near a reservoir, our typical walking spot is up on the dike. This isn't quite level enough for the stroller though, so we had to seek out pavement where we could get a more smooth walk in that was as peaceful as little Hannah needed. Bumpy rides freak us out a little bit after the county forced us to watch a shaken baby movie. Nothing quite so inspirational to brand new parents like a forced viewing of destroyed children. 

Us, after our first ride together post-baby.

While I'm bragging on my wife for her shopping acumen, I should also praise her for her seemingly quick recovery. She is a champion and proved it once again by hopping back on a bike this week, less than 3 weeks after her C-section. Props to modern medicine and the staff that worked with us, but the main award goes to my wife for her dedication to the Pelotonia (approaching in just a few weeks) and her willingness to challenge herself. We only did 8 miles, but with an average pace of 13 mph, I would say that it was a pretty good first ride. 

The shelving all washed up before Old English oiling.

Projects around the house continue to progress, including clean-up work on the garden and my final start to the basement bar. I asked my mom to help us pick up some lumber from Lowe's and she mentioned the availability of an old oak shelf built by my great-grandpa Ralph back in the day. It took a little bit of love since it has been sitting up in the dilapidated seed barn for the past few decades, but it is a special piece for my basement since he is who I was named after. The wood is still very pretty and the shelving isn't too wobbly - you hardly notice on the uneven floors we have anyhow. Lumber picked up and 2 engineers and Mexican coke later, my brother has helped me make some almost square and level stands for some rejected cabinetry. Home Depot and their scammy register clerk who signed me up for emails helped me get some decent in-store cuts to build a bar counter and there will likely be a wheel table in the works as well. At least for now I can store all my glassware and finally take it out of the boxes it has resided in since we bought the house.

On the work front we have FINALLY put period 2 of the fermenter trial to bed. Not even kidding, but my Brazilians' lab notebook said "Period 2 Again Again AGAIN". My adviser says that to pull off a fermenter trial you need 2x as many experimental periods as you will actually measure and he has been sadly underestimating for this project. I know our visiting scholars are disappointed, but I have been trying to find them other things to get done instead. Here's to literature reviews and reading instead while we wait. We are also starting to talk about doing some video work to estimate protozoal volume more accurately than the oldschool L x W^2 method which is obviously incorrect based on a non-cylindrical shape of many rumen inhabitants. The real challenge is video quality because the eukaryotes are mostly moving too fast for a firewire on a standard microscope camera to catch them. The image is blurry and separates into red and blue at the same time for both pictures and video so the processing is obviously not fast enough.

Such a small hand grabbing my fingers.

Our little girl sleeping in the cool porch air.

Family get-together for Independence Day was a little different this year without Grandpa, and Grandma definitely had a struggle with the change. I had hoped we'd be sitting there around the table with him holding our baby girl, but things were not to be. At least we know he is at peace now and in a better place. With the cool weather, we've been able to enjoy a little bit of time outside, including fireworks for the 4th and a few different cookouts which once again murdered my diet routine in its sleep. But every day feels like a bit of vacation right now, even though I have to work and I have been better at opening my eyes to the great things going on around us. The world is a beautiful place most days.

This little frog was out front of our house this week.

Week 45 - Weight

Big news this week as we are already holding our head up at just 1 week!

Betsy loves her new sister.

Early on during my master's degree, one of our professors taught us something valuable about practical animal science research. Many of us over-complicate our research and forget about the big picture. We come up with all of these fancy parameters to measure and lose track of the obvious, or the measurements of long-term consequence. But the most valuable and important tool in his opinion was the scale. With the scale we can determine if an animal is gaining, maintaining or losing weight. And weight is linked to an animal's health, metabolic status, energy balance, and genetic worth. This isn't to say that other smaller parameters aren't of value for modes of action with research, but just to say that the scale is instrumental in the base layer of quantification, the big picture measurement to determine what is really happening in the life and health of the animal.

My little Spartan, despite her mother's misgivings.

But as a dad, all bets are off. And hard is it is, I needed for the scale not to be the primary determinant of success in the first weeks of life for our new baby girl. Hannah struggled with her weight for the first week or so, losing and then finally leveling off. By the end of this week, I am feeling like we might be on our way out now that the weight has started into the plateau. When we visited the doctor, they confirmed what I already knew to be true. She was alert, happy, passing plenty of diaper-fodder, but not putting on any weight, just going down. Everything was ok, but we just needed to keep on keeping on. So cheers to that - we will continue to be chilled out parents.

Hannah after her first bath. So cute!

Bathing was our big learning process this week, but just like running any brand new assay, you just need to have everything you will use laid out in front of you and ready to go. Ideally, she is declothed, wet down gently, soaped and rinsed and being toweled off as quickly as possible. But once the water hits her, it doesn't matter what the temperature is - she is going to squirm and doesn't like it. We were also trying to do this on a spongy flower which a family friend gave us, so we did it up on the countertop. Sponge didn't probably work as well as we hoped, so we basically bathed our baby right out on the kitchen countertop with a cozy cushion leaking water everywhere. Top this off with a happy little tinkle, and I'm pretty sure there are people who would never eat at our house again if they knew what went down in there. Good news is, it was just one of "life's bleachable moments". Our first bath didn't go quite smoothly, but I think we'll get the hang of it. At least she didn't cry too much.

With time at home, got the flags hung in time for the 4th!

View from our bedroom with the sunrise. Late night, but she let us sleep in a bit.

I love holding our little baby girl. She is so trusting.

Otherwise, our first full week of parenthood has been going well. We have been getting acceptable amounts of sleep, and I have been working from home for the most part. Period 2 died again, but we are back on the road towards getting it knocked out of the way. Meanwhile, electrical failures are the new frustration at work. Our lab has a collection of great equipment, but it is all worthless when a power surge blows fuses and causes adjustment fluctuations when nobody has changed the switches. Gremlins indeed, no, we have more power fluxes in my fermenter room than a horror movie. It is good to be back to work, and trying to make progress, and it is even better that the team pulled together so well while I've been out. But I long to be home as soon as I get on the road to work, and struggling with this equipment and the unknown ghost of power problems. It's going to be a long road to finish this PhD, now that she is here with us. I love learning and working in this research environment, but I love being home with her in my arms. Our place is so peaceful this year with the sheep grazing the pasture.

Week 44 - Girl

This was finally the week we've been waiting for forever. Of course, since this post is 2 months delinquent, I suppose you probably already guessed I was swamped in the new life of a dad. You would be correct, but I value this blog and hope some others have come to as well so here I am again to catch you back on things. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but let me tell you my story first and then you can judge for yourself.

With all of the research delays, period 2 has been a real thorn in my side and of that of the Brazilians and my summer interns. I think it is fair to say that we truly dread the fermenters and there will be a lot of reworking of the system once this project is done. But this week has been plugging along fine since the 3rd restart of period 2, when we went in for the ultrasound of our little baby. We were a few minutes late for the appointment and the girl behind the counter who couldn't figure out how to check us in did nothing for the cause. Then we waited until we could be let in for the ultrasound and things started moving along again. But I knew something was up when the tech kept trying to measure over and over again. It was obvious that she wasn't happy with the size estimates she was getting for the baby.

Sure enough, when my wife went to the restroom, the nurses looked at me and told me the real news. Not only was the baby measuring big, but it was measuring at 9 lbs, 15 oz. Holy crap! I held it in as well as I could until the OB could see her and talk things over. He walked into the room with the print out and looks at her and says, "Well, go big or go home, huh?". After she heard the weight, we were a bit afraid of waiting until the baby came on its own, especially with a full pound of flex in the estimation. So a C-section it was, after debate at the local coffee shop. We met him back in his office and he told us we were making the right decision and to plan on Friday. It was 30 minutes later that my wife called me bawling on the phone the the appointment was tomorrow!

We made the preparations, sending Betsy off to visit the in-laws and calling off of work. We hadn't been planning for something so sudden, but we were ready, thanks to her insistent urges to get everything ready "just in case". Then came the phone calls in the morning asking if we could reschedule. Mind you, my wife has called off work (a big ordeal), stayed at work until 8 to close everything up for weeks, she hasn't eaten and we haven everything ready to go. This could not be happening. Luckily it worked out that we could go in that day and so we were off to bring home Betsy's little sister.

You can see the joy in our faces in the recovery room (about 45 minutes after).

Four hours later, I was holding a crying baby in the OR while they put my wife back in order. The events of that room are a bit too personal to share with the world, but having a child is a great responsibility and bringing one into the world is a tremendous honor and wonderful moment, regardless of what process it takes to get them there. Suddenly all of the waiting was over, and our daughter(!) came out like the statue of liberty into the whole new world. She laid on the table under incubators and oxygen for a few minutes before I was allowed to hold her and bring her over to see my wife. In 3 hours I had been excited, nervous, impatient, frustrated, confused, lost,  alone, anxious, worried and then I had burst into full joy. What a wonderful gift we were given that day; she is a true blessing to us.

So tiny and helpless. She wrapped her fingers around mine the very first day.

That night while my wife slept, I hastily published 4 blog posts to get all caught up in order to put the big news out, but then I was caught up in the wonder of the girl and never looked back this blog. We had issues with the nurses questioning our intelligence and being pretty bossy and disrespectful/rude to my wife. As a father, it's hard to see your wife treated that way, and I kept looking at her to see if she would let me step in, but she seemed to want to fight through on her own. To the 2 good nurses that we had, you were shining lights in the midst of a bad recovery experience we couldn't escape from. Luckily we had great family to visit us and interrupt the "service", but I wasn't happier than the day we could bring them both home.

Our little daughter, Hannah. She slept with us in the room every night.

When we pulled up the drive, our families had been working on a few surprises per my request and as exhausted as she was, my wife lit up to see them. Her old blue spruce from home had been brought over to the house, our hammock was set in the ground and hung, and a weeping cherry tree was planted out by the old stump in the side yard. I couldn't have possibly gotten all that done and it was so great of them to get my wishes done for Amanda. So grateful.

My wife with Hannah and our new cherry tree.

Amidst all our time at the hospital, my lab team had been quietly working away without me and I want to commend them for performing so well on their own. Period 2 is well on its way to completion this time (after another crash) and then we can put the dread behind us. My wife and I capped the week off by popping open one of the "baby beers", thus named because I made them while she was pregnant so that she could celebrate in the hospital post-parturition. However, it was a few days before she finally felt up to a bottle. This was my first cherry wheat, and while I think next time I will some of the mashing myself for a slightly more unique and richer taste, this turned out beautifully. Great color, carbonation, taste and after-taste. So I'd like to briefly share what I did for anyone interested.

Cheers to the newest member of the family!

• 1) Brewer's Best Wheat Beer Kit. Follow the instructions (I used my "city" water, which is pretty hard with moderate fluorine/chlorine.
• 2) Boil 3 lbs. frozen tart cherries during the brewing in a "sock" to sterilize.
• 3) When adding the final hops, the cherries stopped boiling to cool.
• 4) Rapidly cool wheat beer, then add the cherries and the water they boiled in (would lose a lot of color otherwise) in a primary container with a wide lid.
• 5) Primary fermentation lasted 7-9 days, then I transferred to secondary in a glass container and tossed the cherries (great for attracting unwanted varmits).
• 6) Secondary fermentation lasted beyond when they were done bubbling. I had a lot of sediment which I allowed to settle out, so about 4 weeks.
• 7) Bottled with 1 cup of sugar for priming the bottles.
• All fermentation steps occurred in my basement at about 68*F. I don't like to rush things with the warmer temps.