Fantasy Football & More

I haven't posted in 5 days! Where is the time going? If I could quote one of my current favorite movies, "Time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so." Friday we took Megan on her first stroller ride. Just up and down the block, but it was fun! She slept through it, but hey - we've got that memory at least!


Saturday we took our first road trip. We drove all the way down to Lafayette to visit Andreas grand parents. Megan actually has 3 great grandmas and 2 great grandfathers! I really hope she gets to know them all the way I was able to get to know my great grandmother Ella. She was one remarkable person. The trip itself was great, takes an hour and a half to get down there, Megan slept the whole way. After some time with the great grandparents, we headed over to Andreas brothers place so Megan could meet her other Aunt and Uncle. On the way home she slept again, waking up just 5 miles before we arrived. Almost flawless!

Sunday Megan and I watched football... I almost turned the Vikings game off when it was 17-0 going into halftime, but Megan told me I should stick it out. Sure enough, she was right. That was a hell of a victory, but perhaps my faith in Daunte has been restored. I won Fantasy Football this weekend without having Daunte in, and I'm hesitant to put him in against Carolina on the road.

Other then that, things have been going pretty well. I've made it to the health club a few times, although I skipped today simply because I was too tired. I will go tomorrow and Thursday/Friday I think. It's been REALLY hard to try and think about exercise when I am already so exhausted by taking care of Megan. Today Andreas comment was "How can someone so small wear out 2 grown adults?" Damn good question! Before I know it, I'll be going back to work and Andrea will have some really tough nights. Hopefully she will be ready for it.

Speaking of Andrea, I will leave you with this picture. Yes, Andrea is weird. I think that's why I married her. The best part is the expression on Megans face, she seems to be thinking, "What the hell are you doing Mommy?". Enjoy!

4 hour naps rule

Not much new to report on Megan, so I haven't posted much in the last week. Megan is a very easy going baby so far. She has her fussy periods, and sometimes at night she isn't happy unless she is sleeping next to one of us. We bought a Snuggle Nest so that Megan could sleep in our bed with us at night. I had heard that it could end up being a bad thing, because every little sound or snort she makes might wake you up. But for me, it ends up being more of a soothing thing. I know Megan is right there, and it's comforting to me to hear her sounds. We like to call her Squeaker because she is quite the noise maker sometimes!

On Monday this week I got my membership to Lifetime Fitness. I've gone three times so far, just doing 60 minutes on an elliptical machine. Eventually I will add in some other things, but I'm not sure when/how. I need to come up with some type of plan but I'm not sure where to start. I'm actually thinking of buying this starter package available to new members that would include 3 sessions with a personal trainer. It just seems like they focus on things I don't really care about. I mean, I realize flexibility is important, but do I really need to do Yoga to achieve my overall fitness goals? I had a Body Age Assessment done on my second visit. I was told my body is actually that of a 37 year old. Awesome. Okay, so I'm still out of shape, I realize that! But I know that what I am doing is working for me, and for now that's more important.

I wanted to get a picture of Megan awake, so I took the following picture with no flash, in a dark room. I've heavily enhanced the photo so it looks brighter. As you can see, Megan does in fact open her eyes every now and then.

Fantasy Football, week 6

I've reworked a decent amount of my squad. First off, I'm starting Culpepper again for the first time since week 3. Why? I figure if there is any chance he will have a good game, it will be coming off a bye week and a sex filled boat trip. I've also moved around some RBs since it didn't make much sense to have 2 RBs from the same team.

I love how the media is portraying the Vikings right now. "The mess that the Vikings have become." Friday night, Andrea and I went out to Champs restaurant for dinner. Some DJ was talking about the weekend specials and mentioned the Vikings. The entire restaurant boo'ed. Damn... oh well, I guess we can say goodbye to Tice next year? Because obviously, the players having crazy sex parties is all his fault.

Position	Player
QB	D. Culpepper
WR	Ke. Johnson
WR	K. Curtis
WR	E. Kennison
RB	S. Jackson
RB	T. Barber
TE	J. Wiggins
WR/RB	C. Perry
K	S. Graham
DEF	Carolina
D	A. Wilson
D	Do. Edwards

Sleep Deprivation

Andrea and I are dealing with the lack of sleep pretty well. We had a small scare Thursday night. Andreas feet were swelling a little more then normal, and when one started to swell more then the other, she called the Nurse hotline. They said she should goto the Emergency room because it could be a blood clot that could be very bad. So, 1 am we packed up and headed to the ER. 4 hours later, it was nothing to worry about and we were back home. Just made for a REALLY long night.

Today, Andrea forced me out of the house. I haven't been away from Megan since we brought her home. It was 70 degrees and sunny outside, so I figured it would be a perfect day for a bike ride. I got a good 25 miles in, it was very relaxing. What weird weather for October!

This weekend Grandma Joleen is going to be staying with us and help around the house a take care of Megan for an hour so Andrea and I can have a quick date night. Should be fun. It is really nice to have so much support from friends and family. I'll have to post later about Andreas crazy networking skills.

Daddy and Megan were able to grab a very much needed 3 hour nap.

Hour 42

Pictures at the bottom for those in a hurry!

The answer to life, the universe, and everything! We've been home now for 42 hours, and everything seems to be going okay. We are slowing learning the pattern of change, feed, rest, change, feed, rest, repeat. Still in the process of figuring out the overnight part, right now we are leaning towards splitting the night in half where each person gets to sleep for 4 hours.

Today we had our at home care visit, where a nurse comes to the house to check on things and answer any questions we might have. It was a nice visit, and we got some useful information. Megan has very slight jaundice, when we left the hospital she was a level 8. But today, it had dropped to a level 6.1. They really don't worry about it or do any treatment unless it's level 20 or so. Her discharge weight was 8 lbs 3 oz and her weight today was 8 lbs 2 oz, so she has not lost any weight and will probably be back up to birth weight within a week. They like to see a baby return to birth weight within 2 weeks usually.

Andrea and I are doing good, we've already had our first break down! Glad to get that over and done with. On the plus side, my Mom was over at our house during the incident, and her comforting and helping with the baby was exactly what we needed. THANKS GRANDMA!

In the near future, I will probably shift my posts to more of my perspective of this whole experience. It is my blog after all. :-) But I want to share details about Andrea for all my friends and family as well. Probably the only real big development for Andrea in the last 42 hours is that her milk came in yesterday! That was a very exciting thing for us, and Andrea as well. We've actually got through a few feedings that were exclusively breast milk. Prior to that, we've been adding in formula feedings to keep Megan well fed and happy as a clam. And she is a very happy baby... so far. (fingers crossed)

I'm personally doing okay - it's been harder then I thought it would be. I think it's tougher for Dads to figure out their role in these early phases. Add to that my all or nothing personality, and it can get even worse. It's probably why so many Dads go back to work right away. That way they don't have to think about it. It's also been very hard dealing with all these new emotions. Yes, I'm a guy, but believe it or not, I'm human too. I've always been the type of person to keep my emotions in check simply because it's easier. Now they are coming on so strong and fast, it's pretty impossible to do that. Andrea is a little worried about me, and probably rightly so. I haven't really been eating right (enough) and I've dropped almost 4 lbs since Megan was born. (that's 4 pounds in 3 days) Obviously this is not very healthy and I need to get back on a regular schedule. For some reason my appetite is just not there. Or I will go to make something and lose interest in eating it by the time it's ready.

I think the key for me is slowly integrating aspects of my "pre-Daddy" life into my "post-Daddy" life until I find a healthy medium. I should take breaks to blog, play an hour of video games here and there. And I've decided that next Monday I will follow up with my Lifetime fitness plans and hit the gym starting next week.

Last but not least, I thought I would include some close-up shots of Megan so people can pick apart who she looks like. (I'm no good at that game, I think Megan looks like Megan!) I apologize for the quality, but these were taken with no flash.

The Adventure Begins

Wow. Just wow. It's going to take me a day or two to collect my thoughts into a cohesive post. For now, I will just say that these last 2 days have been simply amazing. A roller coaster of emotions, thoughts, experiences, and everything else. The important stuff: Megan is perfect (of course) and Andrea is feeling very good. I wouldn't be surprised to see her pretty close to her normal self within a week. She is already talking about going to a Mom's group tomorrow morning!

Enjoy these pictures for now, much more to come in the following days.

Name: Megan Joleen Anderson
Born: October 9th, 2005. 6:41am
Weight: 8 lbs 7 oz
Length: 21 inches

Fantasy Football, week 5

Quick update before I get into my fantasy football. Tomorrow we head back to the hospital for Inducement Part 2. One way or another, my next post will be pictures of Megan so check back for that. I wouldn't expect any new posts until at least Tuesday, probably Wed night.

On to fantasy football... half my team is out on BYES this week including BOTH my Quarterbacks. I basically had to through together some half-assed squad just to finish my roster out. I have 3 offensive players from the Rams, so lets hope they have a good day. Odds are stacked against me big time. Still, even if I don't win another game this season at least I can say I beat both my brother and sister-in-law!

Position	Player
QB	M. Hasselbeck
WR	D. Driver
WR	K. Curtis
WR	Ke. Johnson
RB	M. Faulk
RB	S. Jackson
TE	D. Graham
WR/RB	D. Foster
K	S. Graham
DEF	Carolina
D	A. Wilson
D	T. Parrish

Update: Once again, I pull a victory out of my butt. Seriously, I threw together this squad at the last minute, picked up some random free agent QB that was available, and bam - WIN number 3.

Record: 3-2

Megan Watch, 2005

Short update - Megan has not arrived yet.

Long update - I know everyone has been waiting for blog updates on the big day. I apologize to all my faithful readers checking back daily. (all 2 of you) And of course, everyone wondering why all I blogged about on Sunday was Fantasy Football! The honest answer was that I didn't have any news on Sunday to report.

We scheduled an induction for Sunday (due date +4) and ended up getting bumped to Monday. On Monday morning we headed into the hospital to get things started. As you can see, we were all smiles when we arrived!

Andrea was instantly hooked up to monitors (tight straps wrapped around her belly) in addition to an IV. From there various induction methods were used, I won't bore everyone with the details. The gist is, Andrea had some small positive reactions to the drugs, but nothing that got her labor started.

Fast forward 36 hours, still no labor. In fact, Andrea had so much of one of the drugs used to start labor (Pitocin), that they said they had to stop because her receptors were most likely saturated. The positive aspect, was that during all the induction, Andrea's health was perfect. Last week she had a slightly elevated blood pressure, but during the 40+ hours in the hospital, her blood pressure was near perfect levels the entire time. In addition, baby Megan was completely healthy. Her heart rate was solid during all the various procedures. Basically, she's happy as a clam where she is and isn't quite ready to come out!

When tonight rolled around, the options laid before us were more invasive inducement drugs (adding in yet another new drug), followed up with more Pitocin the next morning. Now, the idea of Andrea being plugged into all these machines for another 48 hours didn't sit well with either of us. The mere act of using the restroom was a chore, let alone walking around or getting out of bed. I won't even go into the blood squirting from the IV incident. And really, the main reason we even went in for an earlier induction was because of her slightly high blood pressure. But once we saw that her blood pressure was totally fine for a long period of time, it just convinced us that maybe we should go home, get some good rest and give Megan a few more days.

It's not an easy thing to not do what the doctors say. Not because they aren't accommodating, but because doctors always tell you about how they want to "Error on the side of caution." We both felt like our intuitions were telling us to just go home and get some rest. We mentioned this to our nurse, and she got the doctor for us. Dr. Miller's first words to us were, "You guys were thinking about going home? Ya, if I were you, I'd go home and get some rest." That was VERY relieving and we ended up having nice conversation with him. If there is anything I have learned about this whole process, is that there are still LOTS of things about childbirth that we don't have clear cut answers to.

Of course, we hope that sometime in the next few days nature will kick in and Andrea will go into natural labor. We will most likely schedule another inducement for later in the week. If we do end up going in for a second inducement, that will be the final show down as it were. One way or another, Megan will be joining us after that.

Now.... the drive home tonight? At 9:30pm? During quite possibly the worst rain storm since 1987? Ya... well, we made it home in one piece at least. That was quite the topping to the last 48 hours.

Fantasy Football, week 4

I finally did it, I benched Culpepper! Turns out my brother never benched him in his other league, what a liar! But honestly, I feel like his performance last week was a fluke and I don't think he will do it again. Especially at an away game vs a decent team. On the other hand, K. Collins has a home game against Dallas. Now I know Oakland is 0-3, but that's really the fault of their running game. K. Collins still has been posting decent stats even through his losses, so I feel like today is their game. They are going to be at home and they are REALLY going to feel the need to win today in order to prevent an 0-4 start.

Position	Player
QB	K. Collins
WR	D. Driver
WR	Ke. Johnson
WR	E. Kennison
RB	T. Barber
RB	S. Jackson
TE	J. Wiggins
WR/RB	D. Foster
K	S. Graham
DEF	Carolina
D	A. Wilson
D	T. Parrish

Update: I have no clue how, but I was able to beat my undefeated sister-in-law! I'm not sure how this happened, seeing as I was pretty busy over the last 48 hours. But I checked scores today and I won! Looks like pulling Culpepper was the correct thing to do, and odds are he will stay out for awhile. Problem now is that next week, both my QBs have byes. I might just say who cares and take the loss, I'm not really sure.

Record: 2-2