davejenbarnes

I added a subtle link from our wordpress blog to this more private, intimately Jennifer, closer-to-the-heart blog about my journey to pregnancy… hopefully through pregnancy even… You can see, if you found the link, that this is not a spur-of-the-moment decision we have made. There has been praying, research, waiting, and even a little hope.

I have disabled comments because I, honestly, do not want to know what you think about this intimate part of my life. This is me, my feelings, my thoughts, my research, my pain, my joy and my hope and I’m opening it up to you now.

Exactly a month (by date) since my last post, only to say that it wasn’t our time. I have had a lot of emotions but underneath them, I realize that this reproductive system God installed in my body will only work when He wants it to, so I give up control. I handed it over to God this morning. I will hand it over to Him every morning, anew, so I won’t keep my grubby little hands on even a corner, pinching to hold on for dear life. Nope. I don’t want the responsibility of making this work. I don’t know how it works (really, I mean, I didn’t design human reproduction) so who better to submit to than the Creator of Everything?

Oh, yeah, and since sooooo many of my girlfriends (and they all seem to be gettting pregnant these days) won’t take my word for it:

You don’t have to look if you don’t want to… it’s the negative pregnancy test I took this morning, even though I felt my period coming.

I stopped by the hospital briefly this morning to drop off the quilt for Kimberly and Kambry and got to see Kambry one more time before heading down to Austin again. There were many more tubes today than yesterday.

Kambry needs your PRAYERS. Please petition God for His mercy on little Kambry’s health. I know Philip, Kimberly, Ransom, and Tait will appreciate it. So far, Philip says it is looking like Kambry will be staying in the NICU longer than Kimberly will be staying in the hospital.

Also, I have added more pictures.

Kimberly is now able to see her daughter in the NICU since the nurses brought her a wheelchair. Please pray for little Kambry so they can take her out of the NICU and let her stay with her mommy. Kimberly is planning on being at the hospital through Saturday.

Pictures are online: Go see them now!

Our newest niece, Kambry Laine Barnes, was born this morning at 7:51 weighing in at 7 pounds, 12 ounces to David’s brother, Philip, and his wife, Kimberly. Kimberly is recovering from the C-Section, but has not yet seen her daughter since the birth. Kambry needs to start producing a hormone to help her breathe before the doctors will take her out of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where she is hooked up to all kinds of monitors and tubes and lights. I did get to visit her briefly and she looks divine, like a little angel waiting for her mommy. She was the biggest baby in the NICU and looked out of place in the world of such tiny beings. I have never seen babies as small as most of the babies in the NICU. Some of them would not even fill both my hands. We are assured that Kambry will be okay. She just needs to start producing her own hormones, which the nurses told Philip is a common occurance in C-section born babies… I don’t know how true that is, but the information has allowed Kimberly to rest this afternoon.

I have spent the day with David’s mom, Caroline, or “Grandma,” and Ransom, 5, and Tait, 2. Tait is resting and Ransom is waiting for me to get off the computer so he can play a game which probably won’t last long since Grandma is trying to get everybody (me, Ransom, and Tait) to decide where to eat dinner so we can pick up the film we dropped off at Wolf Camera, get some food, and head back to the hospital with the pictures so Kimberly can see her baby girl. So sad that she can only see her newborn daughter in pictures right now. My heart aches for Kimberly so!

I will log on later tonight and upload pictures off the CD that Caroline ordered!

Courtesy the teenagers who play bass clarinet at Cedar Park High School who I had the honor of spending my afternoon with:

I was scrounging through the folder of “stand tunes” — tunes a high school marching band plays whilst standing in the stands — and I came across Speak Up Mambo, which I mentioned last night on this blog for being the inspiration for the name of our large, formally dressed, floppy butler, Mambo. Of course, some of the students had already heard this story because every time I see that song, I tell whoever I am around that THAT is the song my CAT was named after! So when I hold up the score to it and start to say, “Hey! Speak Up Mambo! This is the song my cat…” they ended my sentence, “yeah, was named after, WE KNOW ALREADY!!!” This got them started and one of them, (Chris, for Manuel, who I know is reading this) says, “Hey, Mrs. Barnes, when you have kids, you should name your first born Speak Up.” They then proceeded as a group to come up with some crazy classroom situations in which that name would be funny. I couldn’t control myself and I did end up laughing. I hate laughing in front of students when you’re trying to keep them quiet! Especially when something strikes you as being totally hilarious. But Speak Up Barnes is simply a funny name… Reminds me of the man named Spider Web that we met in Virginia!

I guess typing about it now… I can’t capture the funniness of it all, but I tried.

I am sitting here tonight with one hot kitty on my lap. That would be Samba. Funny how one is a lap cat when you’re not busy and the other is a lap cat when you are. Mambo’s the busy cat and Samba is the not busy cat, and since typing on a weblog generally means that you are indeed not busy, Samba is the one here now. She’s my little Purr-Purr.

Nicknames for cats are funny. Take Mambo, for instance. We originally came up with the name driving back from the rest of the world on highway 755, around Santa Elena on our way back to Rio Grande City, where we were living. We were all talked out, as a couple can get on an 8-10 hour drive, so we discussed the possiblity of pets. Cats were decidedly better for apartment living. We wanted a male and female cat, so we talked about names, naturally… much as an expecting couple (or even one who wants to be expecting) will discuss names for their future children. Well, the Roma band played a song during football season called Speak Up Mambo. It was an addictive song, especially since all the kids sang. With gusto. Con amor de la musica. This song always found its way into our minds when we least expected it. Like on a long drive. Anyhow, we decided that the boy cat would be named Mambo… naturally that led to a latin-dance-influenced name for the girl cat, so we settled on Samba. Hence the names of our cats: Mambo y Samba.

Once you have a cat, you quickly learn to mutate their name. I mean, the animals don’t respond to it anyhow… so why not have some fun and see what you can come up with? So one day I came home, walked in the door, and called out to Mambo (who is without a doubt our favorite), “Mambodilie-odilie!” which stuck for about two days before being truncated to just “Bodilie” (three syllables: BO-dill-ie” with the emphasis on the BO, of course)… From there we have only digressed… next was Mambo-jo… and the latest encarnation is Mambo-Tom-Bodilie-Jo-Barnes (which has a melody to it, but I won’t sing it here)… so it’s gotten longer for sure.

Samba has had the mis-fortune of getting stuck with the name Bidi or Bidilie as in Beady or Beadily… (work with me here, Bodilie… Bidilie). We don’t bestow the honor of messing with her name much because she is.. not the favorite cat.. I mean, she did bite me pretty bad (on the left pointer finger which EVERYBODY KNOWS is one of the most critical fingers for playing the clarinet since it is at the top of the instrument and seals THE MOST IMPORTANT KEY on the entire instrument!) which cost over $200 in bills for a visit to the clinic (for my finger) and antibiotics (also for my finger). The doctor was worried that the bite had gotten to the joint on my finger which would have been more expensive and more drugs. Alas, I hold no grudges (NO NOT ME–how could I EVER hold a grudge against a CAT?! <–note the use of sarcasm) well, I try not to anyhow. She’s also the more-annoying-shedding-all-over-the-world cat and sometimes it’s just hard to like something which produces all the nice-clothes-consuming never-again-will-we-ever-be-able-to-wear-black fuzz. sheesh.

(Mambo gets brushed (begs to be brushed) several times a day, so his hairs aren’t much of a problem.)

I am going to get the hotter-than-a-heating-pad cat off my lap and do something worthwhile — like sticky-roll all the fuzz off my black clothes.

We literally have a “like new” iMac. All of the software is new (which came with Panther, that is) and none of our passwords (uh-oh) or preferences are saved… but it’s so much faster! I think we have decided to only store software on the actual iMac hard drive, but to save all our files on the LaCie External Hard Drive that my parents so generously bought us. I will have pictures again soon. As I type, I am downloading over 50 pictures from the baby shower I helped host this weekend.

For those of you wanting to keep on top of the iMac situation, here is David’s topic so you can read what’s happened in the last few days.

(Oh, yeah, and in case you’re wondering where I am posting from… I am at the church)