They're Heeeere....

Time Flies

You know how on movies, they make big jumps in time simply by fading out and then fading in with some kind of text hoving over the screen that says something like: Four Years Later...

Same thing happened here. You see, Marcy was hospitalized before Thanksgiving and has been languishing in the hospital room ever since. It was the most boring two months ever and therefore not worth our valuable blogging time. So, last time we spoke, it was Halloween, right? Okay, go ahead and fade out the camera.

Two Months Later...

Marcy was told when the babies were a mere 27 weeks in "the oven" that she was in danger of going into labor if she was not careful. So she was careful and held onto those little suckers for another five weeks.

The major problem rested with the baby that the doctor's had dubbed "Baby A". We later named him Alexander Wayne. Alexander had a problem with his umbilical cord. Apparently an umbilical cord has two veins and an artery. One of his two veins was blocked and therefore restricting the blood flow from Mommy. This caused several problems: One was that his placenta was wearing out much faster than his brother's. Another problem was that his growth was slowing down considerably. By the time he was born, he weighed only 2 lbs, 11 oz compared with his bigger brother "Baby B" which we named Anthony Shane.

At 32 and a half weeks gestation, Marcy went into active labor and the decision was made to let the babies be born. A Cesarean was scheduled for that night and on the evening of December 23rd, two new Bryant boys entered the world.

NICU

The babies are, as of this writing, still residents of Medical Center of Plano in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (or just NICU for the hip and funky). Anthony was on a ventilator for the first couple of days but is off now and breathing on his own.


Alexander, although smaller, seems to be in better shape at birth. He came out with his dukes raised and his lungs filled and screaming. He never had to go on the ventilator at all and is breathing just fine on his own.

They are also both now off of their IVs. The only tubes they have now are the ones that are placing the milk into their bellies. Once their little stomachs can handle the milk, we will begin trying to help them learn how to suck on a bottle while still breathing (which is a pretty tough trick for a little baby to learn and is one of the last instincts to develop). But in recent days we have been able to hold them a few times. They are so tiny and perfect. Enjoy the images:

Me holding Alexander

Maw Maw holding Anthony

Marcy holding Alexander

Granddad holding Alexander

By the way, I am sorry for not updating the Blog sooner, but I will try and do better in the future. No promises though. I think I am going to be pretty busy...

Halloween '08 - Gouls, Goblins, Evil Jedi and Pop Stars

Well, Halloween has come and gone. This year, only one of the children did what was expected of them. For Elizabeth, the choice of going as Hannah Montana was not even really a choice. When we asked last month, the name spurted from her lips so fast it sounded more like "Hnamntna!".

The most important part of the above costume, according to the Squirrel, were the black boots (thanks Nana!) Beth has fallen in love with these boots. She wears them as often as she can now. On more than one occasion, she has even attempted to wear them to bed.

The surprising choice in costume came from David, the pacifist. He loves playing the hero and really loved the Iron Man movie this summer. His first choice was, of course, Iron Man. Well, that was before he got his hands on the costume catalog (thanks Nana!) After perusing the catalog, I am sad to report that my son was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. The following picture says it all.

Pray for us.

To Bed!

“I have to go for one of those stupid, three hour blood tests!” Marcy says. She is angry and I, as the faithful and doting husband, patiently wait until it is safe to leave the room. (Like facing an angry mother bear, you must back out slowly and make no threatening gestures. If she senses weakness and makes a move at you just fall to the floor, cover your head with your hands and play dead.) During her first pregnancy she had a blood test that came back with high blood sugar and she had to go through this ordeal. She calls it “that three hour blood test” with the same venom in her voice as she might use to describe water boarding.

“First of all, you can’t eat or have coffee or anything that morning,” she explains. “Then they stick you like three times and take a ton of blood and then you have to drink this horrible orange sugar drink and then wait for like three hours with nothing to do but sit on their uncomfortable chairs.”

“You can take a book,” I offer helpfully and a moment later I am in a fetal position on our kitchen linoleum and trying not to breathe.

“I know you aren’t dead,” she says, “and I am not mad at you anyway. This is just stupid. After three hours of sitting then they drain another few quarts of blood.”

I wisely decide not to correct her over-exaggeration of the amount of blood they will take. Besides, I am getting lightheaded from holding my breath.

******************

“Well, I’ve got it,” she says. Her voice is shaking slightly and I know that she is about to cry. Marcy is not normally an easy weeper, but pregnancy has changed the weather patterns of her emotions and unwanted storms sweep from out of a clear blue sky sometimes.

“Got what?” I say stupidly. I knew that she had just survived the blood test and I should know better.

“They showed me the results at the doctor’s office today. I definitely have gestational diabetes. I can’t believe that! I have done everything right…”

“Whoa!” I say, “this is not your fault!”

“…I have been eating right and drinking plenty of water…”

“You didn’t do this, Marcy,” I try again. “If you want to blame anyone, blame me. I was the one who got you pregnant.”

“Believe me, I know,” she says darkly. Did I just hear thunder?

******************

“How did it go at the endocrinologist?” I ask. It has been a long day and my feet are hurting, and then she wraps her arms around me and puts her face in my chest and I feel painless and complete. Since the forming of the baby bump, the hugs have been more awkward but no less wonderful.

“She was really nice,” Marcy says tentatively.

The truth is that Marcy is mad that she even had to go see a specialist. In her view, seeing an endocrinologist for gestational diabetes is like hiring a plumber to flush the toilet: it is ridiculous to hire someone to do something that you can do yourself. Of course, since I have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, she has ridden me constantly about taking care of myself. It is different when you are the one getting prodded and judged by the person in the white frock.

“You know,” she continues, “you still need to find an endocrinologist yourself. You should go to her. I think you would like her.”

“Is she hot?” I ask.

Marcy ignores the line. As is often the case in the comedy routine of our life, she plays it straight.

“They were very thorough,” Marcy says in a tone that indicates that perhaps they were a little too thorough. “They did one test and said that they found protein in my urine, which is a little strange. They wanted me to call my doctor in the morning and tell him about that.”

******************

“I am on the way to see my doctor,” she says and I suddenly feel like maybe a goose has just danced a jig across my future final resting place. I can hear the sound of traffic as she drives herself the half an hour to her doctor’s office. I can also hear the panic in her voice. She is scared.

“Today?” I say. She has been out and about for more than a week, seeing doctors and specialists and dentists and everything else. Today was the day that she was supposed to finally get some rest.

“I called his office and told them about the protein in my urine and about how my ankles have been swelling so much and they want me to come in right away. I’ll call you when I know more…”

“Are you going to be OK?” I ask.

“Don’t worry,” she says.

Yeah, no problem.

******************

"So?" I say anxiously.

"Well," she says calmly, "My blood pressure is way too high. It's so high he wanted to put me in the hospital for monitoring."

I can't reply. All I heard was hospital.

"...but he said that I cold go home if I promised him that I would really rest and not do anything else."

"Can you do that?" I ask.

"Yeah," she says, "but I didn't get a chance to finish the house and..."

"And nothing!" I almost yell through the phone, "We can have someone pick up the kids from school and I'll be home as soon as I can."

"Yes...okay." She sounds defeated.

******************

Once when David was much younger, his sister had talked him into cutting her hair. They had sneaked a pair of scissors into their room. David had sat Beth down in a kid sized chair; wrapped a towel around her shoulders and proceeded to mangle her pretty locks.

When Marcy found them she told them the lie that has been passed down by parents for generations: “When your father gets home, he is going to kill you!”

Later Marcy confessed that she put off punishment because she could not stop laughing long enough to be serious about it.

That night, when I got home, I walked into their room and found two very sad and frightened children. David was sitting in the very center of his mattress. He had taken his comforter and wrapped it around his body and over his head like Biblical sackcloth. His head was bowed and when I opened the door, he looked up at me with a unnique mix of fear, sadness, embarrassment and maybe a sliver of hope that I wouldn’t want to punish him after all.

The night after Marcy’s trip to the doctor, I come home and find her in much the same state. She is in bed, the covers pulled tight around her. Her eyes are deep wells and sometimes, like tonight, I can only see what floats on the surface, but what I see is fear and not a little embarrassment.

“I am sorry,” she says and her eyes mist over.

“For what?” I say, coming over to the bed to hold her.

“The house is a mess,” she says.

“Don’t worry about the mess,” I say. “My mother is on the way. She is ready to stay with us until the babies are born to help with the kids and the housework and whatever else we need.”

“I can do some stuff,” she starts and then stops.

“So, how long will you be on bed rest?” I ask

She shrugs. “For another three months. I guess.”

“I guess the kids and I better get to work then.”

The Hunt For the Perfect Names....May Be Over

I was once told that it is a woman's prerogative to change her mind. If that is the case, then I submit to you that it is doubly true for pregnant women. For example, just this weekend, Marcy decided not to kill every one of us (a decision, by the way, that everyone in the house except the cat supported).

The biggest things to change are our choices for the babies' names. After long consideration, we have decided that Broderick and Marshall are not right. After a brief, cordial discussion we have decided on these possible names:

• Alexander Wayne
• Anthony Shane

Okay, I am not going to lie. The discussion was not cordial. The truth is that the discussion was infuriating. When deciding on the name of a child, there are a number of things that each person brings into it that have nothing to do with rationality. Like a great number of things that happen in our marriage, there was no set list of rules out there. She never said, “Okay, honey, here are the things that I am looking for in a name,” and neither did I.

So, our search was a process of elimination. I would suggest a name and she would slap it out of the air like our cat slapping at a fly. Sometimes the reason was obvious, sometimes it was more obscure. Eventually, I began mentally keeping track of the reasons we rejected certain, perfectly good names.

Our Naming Criteria

1. Can’t use the name of any other child born in the near family. This would be copycatting and would create too much confusion at family events and gossip circles.
2. Can’t use the name of any of her former boyfriends.
3. Can’t use the name of any of her friends’ former boyfriends.
4. Can’t use the name of any of her family’s former boyfriends.
5. Can’t use the name of anyone who was ever mean to us in school or in life. More than once during our discussions, something like this was said: “Oh, I knew this kid named Franklin in third grade and he used to put boogers in my hair. No Franklins.”
6. Can’t use any boy’s name that could also be a girl’s name. This one was mine. I think I took that Johnny Cash song, Boy Named Sue too seriously. I wouldn’t want to be tracked down later in life and beaten by my son Tracy.
7. Can’t use the name of any former pets.
8. Name must be able to be abbreviated in a cute, yet masculine way. Marcy is a sucker for an abbreviation. If it were up to her, the entire English language would be monosyllabic. She calls me just “J”. I am sure she will do the same to Alex and Tony.
9. Names must sound good together. Of course what “good together” means is very subjective. Often we would find a good single name but when combined with the other name it would sound preposterous. “Samuel and Wallace? Wallace and Samuel? Does that sound like a law firm?”
10. Names can not get them beat up. This is similar to 6. Everyone knew that kid in school with the very bad name. It either sounded like something embarrassing or could be crafted into a rhyme and perhaps set to a tune in which it compares the child to what his name sounds like. I, for example, knew a guy in college named Harry Peters. We all called him “Steve”.
11. Name cannot resemble the name of any fictional character with which either of us has ever had a negative reaction in either print or other media. “You want to name our son Marvolo?”

As you can see, it is frank miracle that we were able to reach an agreement on these names. Wait a minute….hmmmm…Frank is a good name….like Frankenstein? Frank Stank? No. Never mind.

Drumroll Please....

Well, we made another trip to the doctor today. This one was a perinatal specialist. This means, among other things, that our co-pay was higher. It also means that they are supposed to know what is going on while the babies are still in the oven.

We had yet another sonogram. We thought that it would be one of those cool, 3-Dimensional jobs that would allow us to see the babies up close and personal. We didn't get one of those. What we got instead was the basic grainy black and white thing. For example, this picture of one of the babies looks less like a real baby and more like a scene from a horror movie about small, skeletal aliens who peer at us from our static filled televisions:

ooooh...scary....

We did learn several important things today. Here they are in no particular order:

(1) My mother, when given the opportunity, will plop down $12.00 for a DVD of grainy sonogram footage.

(2) We now know what the gender of each baby is. First of all, they are both the same sex. For those that don't already know, the babies are both naughty, stinky, snake-chasing, frog-handling, spit-ball shooting boys. For those who demand physical evidence, we give you this (and may my future son forgive me):


I am not going to explain the above picture or cheapen it with words. If you can't see it, ask a friend to show you what you are missing. (Here is a hint: what is that white arrow painfully pointing to?)

Now, we must decide on names for two boys. That battle is just beginning but will be settled soon. Right now we are leaning toward the following:

• Marshall Wayne Bryant
  
• Broderick Shane Bryant

So, what do you think? Let us hear from you...

Night Time is the Right Time…

It looks like after two previous pregnancies, one would encounter just about every possible side effect. Here is a new one. This started a week before we were even aware that Marcy was pregnant. About 2:00 AM one Monday morning, Marcy flings back the covers of the bed we share and leaps up. I begin struggling up from the deep sea that is my sleep. I slowly come to realize that Marcy is standing in the middle of the room, knees bent and her fingers clutched to her head like she is in pain.

Before I can even register alarm, she charges forward, shoulder slamming against the door frame of the bedroom door.

“HELLO?” she bellows to the house. Now, when I saw bellows, I mean she shouted louder than I may have ever heard her before. The sound alone was a wet slap to the face and it was my turn to spring up from the bed.

“HELLO?!” she screams again. She is already in the middle of the living room which means she must be at a near run. “HELLO?...HELLO?”

In my mind I can see the intruders who have bashed in the front door. We have heard about such things on the news. In the rough economy, home invasions are on the rise. Marcy must have heard them and is charging in and screaming so loudly because she is trying to spook them away. All of this goes through my mind in a nanosecond and turns my blood into ice water.

I hear her repeat that same word again, “HELLO?” and as I turn the corner, I see that the front door is in tact and we are alone in the house. Marcy is standing near the front entryway and turning in a circle, confused.

“Marcy, what’s wrong?,” I say and she looks at me without seeing me at all.

“I can’t find them,” she says near tears and then turns toward the kids hallway, as if about to rush down that hall. Then the reality of what is happening hits me: Marcy is sound asleep.

“Marcy,” I say in the most commanding voice I can assume. This is the voice I use when trying to get the kids to understand I am through playing and I am serious. They call it the ‘Daddy Voice’. “You are having a dream.”

She nearly cries then and confusedly explains she was dreaming that someone had come and taken the kids away and she could not find them. It was such a frightening experience that it was the next day before either one of us found any amusement from it at all.

The truth of the matter is that these night wanderings have a bizarre dual nature. Being woken up from deep sleep by any event can be jarring to the psyche. I remember when we were kids, someone claimed that, even in sleep, one can be aware that they are being stared at. We tried out our little scientific hypothesis – and I encourage anyone else who wants to duplicate this with a loved one to try this out for yourselves – by waiting until my father was taking a nap on the couch and then staring intently at him until he woke up. Even this little thing, waking up and finding a strange child staring at you, is psychologically grating, as evidenced by the way my father’s eyes bulged out and his mouth worked furiously as he chased us from the house.

Even as upsetting as being woken up abruptly in the middle of presumed danger can be, there is a funny side as well. There is comedy to imagining the large man leaping up, boxers askew, and falling from the bed. There is something very Dick Van Dyke about the idea of a possible night time pratfall.

Since the “HELLO?” incident, there have been a number of other events. And here, for your edification and amusement are just a few of the recent highlights:

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One night I found her putting on her shorts. When I asked her where she was going, she said that Nana was coming for the babies. I told her it was midnight and she shrugged and came back to bed. I never found out why her mother was coming to take the babies away.

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One night, I rolled over to get out of bed and visit the facilities when her arm shot out of the darkness and grabbed my wrist. “Shhhhhhh” she whispered, “can’t you see the spaceship?”

“No,” I whispered. Sometimes I find it fun to play along and see where it goes.

She raised her hand and pointed into the air, roughly in the direction of our ceiling fan. “It’s the red one,” she whispered ominously, “shoot it!” and then she promptly fell back to sleep.

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One morning, my alarm went off at 3:30. I had to get a flight to Houston so I had to make sure I was awake on time. Before I could get up to turn off the alarm – really before the thing had had a chance to beep more than once or twice – she rolled over violently and slapped me right in the middle of the chest and said in a glorious deadpan: “Alarm!” As near as I can tell, my sternum must have been the snooze button.

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Late one night, I hear an awful ruckus on Marcy’s side of the bed. We have two tall windows on either side of the bed. They are covered with standard, rental house vertical blinds. The cat likes to sit in the windows and peer through them at night. Sometime, if she sees a bug and attempts to skit it, this can cause the blinds to jostle and rattle. On this night, I hear the blinds rattling and I sit up, preparing to yell at the cat (a futile gesture if ever there was one) but it is not the cat, it’s Marcy.

She is bent over almost in half. Her hand is stuck in the blinds and is holding open a large hole to look through. Marcy’s face is hovering over the hole as she scans the neighbor’s house suspiciously. The blinds are a mess. It looks like she may have done this several times already.

“Sweetie,” I say carefully, “what’s going on?”

She steps back from the window and glares down at me. She looks to be near tears. “There are noises everywhere,” she said.

I laid there, my sleep-drunk mind wrestling briefly with the simple philosophical truth in the statement. “I think you are dreaming again,” I said.

“I swear I heard noises everywhere,” she said and she suddenly pulled open the blinds again and glared outside, daring the unseen but noisy ninja to present himself.

“Do you want me to go check it out,” I said.

“No,” she said, shoulders slumped as she got back in bed. I could tell by her tone of voice that she was fully awake again and a little embarrassed and frustrated. “I already looked out of every window and checked all of the doors…and the back yard…and the garage.”

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In this one, I did not wake up because I was exhausted from not sleeping through the other nights, but according to Marcy, she had a nightmare one night that she had had a baby and brought it home and that it was sleeping in the bed with us.

She woke up in a panic because she suddenly could not find the baby. She was stripping the bedding off of her bed when she woke up and sheepishly covered me back up and went back to sleep.

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Early yesterday, I woke up and was slipping out of bed, when Marcy rolled over and patted me gently on the back.

“Watch out for the animals out there,” she said happily, “there on a mission to exterminate everything.”
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Like the other side effects that we have encountered, I hope that this one will fade away soon enough. I think that the both of us will need a few nights with full rest if we are to have the energy to run after our little dream babies.

The Story of Us: Part Two - The Slap

If you have not read the first part of this story, you can do so by clicking this link.

When I told Marcy that I was going to write out the story of how we met and got engaged, the only thing that she asked was that I change some of the names to protect the innocent (or in this case, the not-so-innocent). I have done that. For example, Marcy shall now be known as “Sweet Pants” and I shall refer to myself as “Captain Excalibur”.

I am sorry; Sweet Pants just informed me that is not what she was talking about. She was talking about Monica. Monica (made up name) was a girl that came to Howard Payne the same year that Marcy did and in many respects it was Monica that brought us together. But I am getting there…

Shortly after my first encounter with Marcy, I was walking toward the cafeteria which was on the bottom floor of the only girls’ dormitory on campus. (It is a small school.) I saw a friend and fellow theater nerd named Julie standing outside the back of the dorm and I waved a greeting. Then I saw Marcy. Although in truth, I saw the smoke from her cigarette first. There she stood, puffing on the business end of Marlboro Light and glaring defiantly at all of the other girls who were passing by and giving her double-takes.

Marcy was the only person I had ever known who smoked openly on campus. All of the rest of us smokers had the decency to at least sneak off to the park. I had to admit that I admired her tenacity, but her attitude was still so rotten, I couldn’t imagine spending any time with her.

My junior year was the first year that I was allowed to move off campus and I was rooming with a theater tech named Steve. For that reason, I had very little time to be on campus. Marcy became friends with Julie and since Julie and I ran in similar circles, I incidentally encountered Marcy from time to time. The best that I can say is that Marcy and I were aware of each other.

The first show that we were to perform that year was a fall musical production of “The Music Man”. Just being a Theatre major did not guarantee anyone a role. Everyone had to audition. The auditions were held in the evening. Everyone was asked to gather in the audience and after some words from the director, we would go downstairs and come back up to the stage when called to sing our song and read our lines.

When I got to the theatre that night I gathered to talk and laugh with the theatre friends of mine. Sitting all alone in the audience was Marcy. She was sitting in the front row with her arms crossed, looking sour and sullen. I recognized her expression immediately for what it was: nerves.

Some people react to nerves by fighting them. They pace nervously, break out in sweats, cross their arms, frown in concentration. That is the way Marcy deals with nervousness. I deal with nervousness by ignoring the symptoms and pretending that everything is cool. For some reason that I cannot explain, I felt a real connection to Marcy at that moment. I knew that she would never admit to being nervous, but I thought a bit of levity might be in order.

In true braggadocio form, I leapt down the steps on the front of the stage toward her. She looked up at me with suspicion arching her brow.

“So,” I said dramatically, “have you had a tour of the theatre?”

She glared at me but said nothing. Obviously, she did not understand the reference, or she thought I might actually be serious. I was now standing directly in front of her and the tension stood between us like an invisible wall. I was regretting approaching her and was looking for some small talk to help play me off stage.

“You don’t look like you are having any fun,” I said.

“Oh, I am just having tons,” she retorted.

“You look like it,” I smiled. “I mean, snap out of it before you have too much fun.” It was stupid and generic, but there it was.

She frowned and with the best sarcastic wilt she could muster, she said, “I am so excited I can’t stand it. I wish somebody would slap me.”

So I did.

Let me be clear. The year before, I had taken a class in stage combat and pantomime. A good friend of mine named Jeff and I used to practice stage combat moves on one another. We would often throw each other across the stage. We would take dramatic falls down stairs and tumbles into walls, all in the name of fake drama. And yes, we also practiced stage punches and stage slaps. When Marcy said to slap her, the impulse for a funny moment was so strong, my hand was up and descending before I really understood the decision that I had made.

Now a good stage slap takes both the slapper and the slappee working in unison. In a stage slap, the one being slapped stars moving before the blow lands. It looks real enough but contact is never made. Marcy would have known this had she hung around us theater geeks long enough, but she didn’t know the game. My open palm flew slowly toward her face, which never moved. The blow landed with no force whatsoever. The sound was dull and lifeless.

The two of us just stared at each other for a second and then Marcy’s face broke open into a smile so warm and genuine it transformed her face from something scared and maybe a little angry to something truly and remarkably pretty. It was a smile that deserved to be answered and so I did answer it. We both started laughing and, in that moment, the ice between us was broken.

“You slapped me,” she said with mock incredulity.

“You said to!” I retorted and then I sat down next to her and we began to chat about how much she hated auditioning and several other subjects that I don’t remember. What I do remember is thinking just how pretty she was and wondering stupidly why I had not noticed it before…

Okay, it looks like I have run out of space. I am trying to keep these little stories short and sweet, so we will call that the end of this chapter. I know that I did not get to Monica yet, but she is the star of my next chapter, I assure you.