I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what a big commitment it is to have a baby. The number one thing that comes to mind is the issue of time.

Having children and getting married are both huge commitments, so I’ll compare the two. Getting married is huge because it’s the end of your independence. You can no longer do whatever the heck you feel like doing, but instead must always consider your spouse in day to day things. In some ways it can actually save you time. While your awesome wife makes you a sandwich (that’s for all the feminists) you can do something else.

But having a kid is quite different. I only know up through age two, but the time it takes just to feed, bathe, dress, punish, clean, chase, drop of at daycare, take on walks, and put to bed is amazing. I think most people only consider their personal maturity, and whether or not they’re ready to shape a young mind. All important things to consider, but for one main reason, I think the time issue might be the most important.

Now let me come back to marriage for a moment. I believe the number one cause of failure in marriages is selfishness. You don’t show your spouse how much you love them by what you buy them or what you say, but by what you do. If you’re selfless, then you do things like take out the trash, get water for your wife, let her pick the show to watch, and in general do things to make her happy (not necessarily yourself). If you’re selfish, you look out for yourself, and sometimes to the detriment of your spouse (and ultimately the marriage).

So back to babies. The time issue is so important, because kids require so much of it! If you are selfish with your time, then you aren’t being the loving parent that you should be, and I can see this being another reason marriages fail. In an instant, the amount of time you have to yourself is slashed, and it ain’t coming back for the foreseeable future. If you’re selfless, you give that time up. If you’re selfish, you leave. When people say they feel suffocated, what they really mean is they’re selfish.

I think society in general romanticizes love SO much, we’re told that our feelings should trump all else. That feeling of being in love is great, but that’s not actually love. Love is doing anything and everything for someone else, and whether you’re doing it for a spouse, child, friend, or family member, it means there will be less time for yourself. That’s something I think all potential spouses and parents should consider.

We’ve had discussions about abortion in the past. I’ve heard fellow Christians say that the government shouldn’t stop people from aborting their babies. I challenge any of you who are supporting Barack Obama to read the following article, and then explain to me how your doing so can possibly coexist with your Christian faith. I’ve heard Trent try and defend abortion laws, and I’ve heard Mike say he doesn’t think Christians have to be Republicans, and the same goes for any other Christians supporting Obama or pro-abortion laws.

Read This Now

…and then tell me with a straight face how someone with such views has earned your support.

I’ve been told that people check this website solely to see pictures of some baby. So for all those people, here you go.

Stacie’s good friend Shannon came to visit from Georgia!

Have I mentioned that an infant can be tiring business?

Stacie and Lydia went to work to show off the babies to all the other teachers. Apparently Luke did not appreciate this.

Every now and then we get a shot of him smiling. They’re really infrequent right now, so whenever we see one it’s like we’ve struck gold. Note to self, never take cute smiling son for granted.

Here are four generations all lined up. Having a great grandpa around is very special.

There aren’t very many pictures of me, so here’s one. Yay me.

And I had to put this one up, because dude Paul, you’re a natural.

I feel like I should get a Flickr account or something, but I know you’d all be too lazy to go look at them. And this way I can add some commentary. Look for videos sometime this century. Only two months of work left. Woot!

I’m not sure I can make this a completely non-baby post, but I might be able to go half and half.

Last month we drove up north to Turlock for my Grandmother’s 89th birthday. This was a place we went several times a year for my entire childhood, and I have very fond memories of those trips and the people we went to see. I bought my video camera just in time to take it on this trip, so I shot some video to help me remember the place. If you’d like to watch it then go here:

Turlock Almond Orchard

For the geeks out there, I’ve decided to render all my videos twice. The first is a super high quality 1080i AVC/264 that can be played back beautifully on the PS3 (or the htpc if I can get 264 material hardware accelerated), and the second is a smaller 720p version that can easily be played back on a modern computer using quicktime. That should give me the best of both worlds with just a little extra rendering time and storage space.

So this baby of ours is a fussy little booger. He likes to eat all the time, and rarely sleeps for big blocks of time. He also loves to be held, and 9 times out of 10 if you lie him down to sleep he’ll wake you up with his cries a few minutes later. The worst part is that it means very little sleep for mom because she is getting up constantly to feed him. She’s upstairs sleeping right now and I’ve got the baby entertained (and quiet!) downstairs.

I think God knew he had to make little babies cute so that people would put up with the lack of sleep and crying. Every time this little man poops it is fart city. It’s like he can’t poop without making massive amounts of noise, it’s great. And his little sneezes are the cutest thing in the world. How they go from cute little baby sneezes to obnoxious adult sneezes I have no idea. His mouth even made a smiling motion this morning, but I think it was more of an accident than anything. Shortly after though he sounded off with a loud fart, so maybe the two were connected.

I still have some more Turlock video to edit, but after that I’m on to some of the baby footage.

A few days ago Lindsay posted about needing more motivation for making blog posts, and boy do I have the answer. It was staring me right in the face the whole time. You don’t need interesting stories, or a good sense of humor, just have a baby! Do it Lindsay, go make a baby, and then the posts will just fly off your fingertips and onto the screen. I pulled off 9 days of consecutive posts because of this little guy. He’s a bloggers dream. Yesterday was Easter, so that’s my excuse for breaking the streak.

The last two nights have been pretty good. We’re on a pretty flexible schedule right now, but he basically woke up twice during the night. His biggest problem is that it takes a long time to feed him. He’ll suck and suck forever and then act like he’s done and asleep, but the minute you put him down he’s awake and crying. Then it’s back to more sucking until he tops off the tank. It’s tiring for mom, so the last two days I’ve watched him in the afternoon while Stacie takes a nap. Last night I watched half of season 2 of The Office with him curled up on my chest. Good times.

Right now he’s upstairs sleeping, I’ve got our baby monitor in front of me, and Stacie is taking a shower. We got one of the fancy ones that detect movement, which I have to admit is pretty cool. Even if there are no sounds, I know he’s breathing and OK. I’ve even had enough time to plunk out a few sentences on the book this morning.

I’ve got some Easter pictures to post and a lot of video to edit, so maybe I’ll get to that this afternoon. To everyone on Spring Break, happy Spring Break to you. To everyone in Mexico without internet and not reading this, I hope you get lots of work done on the houses. To everyone wondering if they want babies, the answer is yes. Unless you’re crazy and psychopaths run in your family, then the answer is no. If you fall somewhere in between “well adjusted” and “crazy” on the sanity spectrum, please talk to my sister about whether or not you should bring a child into this world. Contrary to popular opinion, your baby should not be used as a sounding board for your conspiracy theories regarding radiation tainted trail mix. That’s crazy.

Made a short visit to the hospital this morning. Baby and mom are both doing well. Doctors said that Stacie can come home tonight after dinner, so that’s a positive. He gave her the option to stay another day, but they’re moving a new person into her room, and at this point she’d rather sleep at home. Baby Luke is doing well. He’s eating better and they haven’t put a tube down his throat. The last jaundice test came back fairly high, so they’ve got him under the super cool UV lights. I was thinking of running to Frys and buying some UV case lighting to make him feel welcome once he finally comes home (the geeks will get that one). It sounds like the baby will be there for another 2-3 days for them to monitor/improve the jaundice and his feeding. My job today is to go to Babies R Us and get the breast pump that we don’t have yet, and then straighten so mommy can come home to a clean house. Dave came by this morning to see us and pray with us and that was really nice. It’s great knowing there are so many loving people in his life and he’s only two days old.

Today is 2 weeks from our due date! Something like 90% of babies are born during the 2 weeks before or after the due date, so we’re getting down to the nitty gritty. Since the baby could come any day now I have a bunch of lesson plans ready at work so I can be absent without warning. And because the due date is so close, the next picture you see might be the baby itself, so I figured I better post some final “before” pictures.

Every week we’ve been taking a picture of Stacie’s belly, and I turned it into a short video. You can watch the video of her tummy growing here. You have to enter a password which is babyblarg.

So after seven days of jury duty…I get to do at least one more. Ugh!

The regular 12 jurors are busy deliberating. They started Thursday, but couldn’t finish on Friday, so I’m going back on Monday. While it’s still good for the book, I’m getting very tired of the court cafeteria food.

I’m busy getting our technological life in order for the baby. The new video camera came and parts for a computer upgrade, so I’m busy installing programs and copying over settings. I moved both bookshelves into our room, now I need to finish earthquake proofing them so we don’t have any smooshed babies over here. It’s hard to believe that all the stuff in the second bedroom, except for the bed, is now in our room.

Stacie is off shopping with her mom and I’m supposed to stay busy here getting things done, so back to work I go! Oh, and in case you were wondering, I’m kicking some major butt in my online baseball league. You can follow the action here.