amidst a sea of incoherancy

To me, a happy home is one filled with friends. Today, we had such a home. We started the morning by going to Heather's grandma's house to introduce her newest great-grandson!

It was here that we realized who Bjorn looks like. Bjorn is on the right and both pictures on the left are of Heather at 2 weeks old. Yeah, Heather is definitely a poser. 

Then, we went to Heather's grandparents on her dad's side to do some more visiting. Man, Bjorn is one loved kid.

Then, Amy, Becca and Olivia Cradle stopped by and brought us an incredible dinner!

Later, Jamin and Jayneen came over for a wine&cheese tasting/movie watching extravaganza. 3 bottles of wine were proudly opened, two of which I purchased more than a year ago for just this occasion and the remaining had been stored by Jamin for over a year as well.

Heather pumped a bunch of baby food in advance so she could join in and it was fantastic! While we were getting started, Dan, Heidi, Anna and Evelyn stopped by to say hi. It was great to see Anna and Evelyn (Who gave me plenty of "The Evelyn." "The Evelyn" is a look I see her doing all the time. It's sort of a, "Go ahead and see if I care" kind of look and it melts my heart every time I see it.)

As all this was going down, I kept thinking, "Blessed is the home filled with happiness." We are certainly blessed. 

Bjorn was zonked out for most of the evening, but woke up every couple hours to remind us he was hungry. Then, he'd eat and zonk out again. Welcome to our home and family, son!

We started with an 0830 lactation consultation. Bjorn hasn't been interested in eating and certainly not interested in boobs, so feeding him has been a challange. In addition, Bjorn hasn't pooped since the day he was born. Anyway, the lactation lady saw how disinterested Bjorn is with boobs and heard about how he hadn't pooped in a while and kinda freaked out. She thought we needed to see a doctor immediately. We called in an appt, but on the way home from the consult, I started thinking about how we had just seen the doctor yesterday and he seemed happy about how Bjorn was doing. So, we called his office to ask them to page him for us. The nurse heard why we wanted to talk to him and freaked out also. She told us to go to the emergency room and have Bjorn admitted to the Intensive Care unit at Childrens. I was pretty POd at this point. These nurses were in near hysterics about not pooping. We told the nurse we weren't about to go to the ER and had her page the doctor for us.

Even after taking a stand on this matter, our hearts were racing about the situation. Did we make the wrong call? Luckily, the doctor called and I complained to him about hysterical nurses. He was very calm, said not to go to the ER and to come see him "just in case" at 3:45.

In the meantime, my parents flew out of the country today. My whole family came to our house to say hi/bye. I drove with my parents to the airport for a tearful goodbye. My sister, Laura took this especially hard. This is the first time she will live without them...since she's still in highschool, it's tough. It was also tough on my mom, leaving Laura and two new grandbabies. Dad, on the other hand, is just cut out for this sort of thing; on a mission and ready to get it started.

Raced back home from the airport just in time to pack Heather and Bjorn up for the 3:45 Dr. Appt. The doctor took an x-ray of Bjorn's guts and told us everything looks great. Then, he had a nurse stick a thermometer up Bjorn's butt to try to stimulate a poop. Boy did that work! It was a pooptacular. I've never seen so much poop come out of something so little in my whole life. I had two immediate reactions to this event. 1. Thank GOD! 2. I hate the hysterical nurses...why couldn't they have just told us to put a thermometer up Bjorn's butt. I'm actually still PO'd as I write this. I think it has something to do with the fact that we practice medicine only to prevent law suits these days.

Anyway, time for dinner.

This is Bjorn and his cousin Kadon. Kadon is Bonnie's third child and was born 1 day before Bjorn!

Here's my whole family before heading out to the airport (Heather is in the doorway).

And here is one of the tearfull goodbyes between my mom and Laura.

Here's another sad goodbye between my dad and Bonnie.

And, to end on a positive note, here is Bjorn dressed up like a bear on his way to poop at the doctor's office. He really does look constipated.

Getting to know my son is quite the experience. He's the most mellow kid Heather has ever delivered. Probably the most handsome and manly kid she's ever delivered also. Bjorn failed his hearing test twice within 24 hours of being born, but he took the test a third time and passed today. We're thankful that he isn't deaf. That means my dreams for him being a rock star aren't smooshed quite yet. Knowing my luck, however, he'll come out being a sports fan and even though Jamie is trying to teach me how to dig sports, I'm going to feel at a loss when that happens. 

In other news, Heather is experiencing shortness of breath. The doctor noticed a wheezing sound when listening to her lung sounds. They've extended our stay for a bit to keep an eye on Heather and are currently giving her some Albuterol. We'll see what happens.

Mom'n'Dad

Newly Nana'd, Nana Mary Kleven

Great Grandpa John Willms, Grammy Sandy Halvorsen and Grandpa John Halvorsen

Grandpa Tom Kleven

Uncle Michael and Auntie Laura Kleven

Honorary Auntie Jayneen Haddox

Sorry, Jamin, Jamie and Gretchen- Bjorn's slightly spaceheaded father forgot to get shots of you guys

Here is the newest Halvorsen! Bjorn Daniel.

This was taken right after I got to cut the umbilical cord!

His little foot that kicked and kicked inside mom for the past 5 months.

The newly expanded Halvorsen family.

This experience has really placed me in awe of my precious wife.

As the title suggests, Bjorn is not here yet. Due date was last Friday. If Heather hasn't gone into labor by this Wednesday evening, she'll be admitted and induced on Thursday morning. We're both hoping for a natural labor, but I think Heather will take whatever she can get at this point.

I wonder if Jesus was thinking about his mom, or one of his sisters, or some friend who may have been pregnant when he said, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." - Matt24:36

Anyway, that's how it feels waiting for little baby H to pop into our lives. And I suppose that's how the next 25 years or so of my life will feel...hoping, waiting, curious to see what happens, trying to stand back and let the little guy do his thing without too much interference.

Due date is Friday, but we (and by "we", I mean Heather) haven't experienced any real pre-labor or anything at this point. Maybe we've got more time than the doctor's schedule shows.

A nurse told me that walking and spicy food help speed things along. So, last night I took Heather out for some spicy pizza. (Gretchen, we went to Fat Lorenzo's for the first time. We thought it was an awesome representation of Non-Chicago, MidWest style Pizza. Can't wait to hear what you think about it....) So we sprinkled the spicy flakes on the pie (one of my most exciting acheivements was assisting Heather develop a taste for the spicy). Afterwards, we both spent time on the treadmill--me trying to slow down the pear shape effect that happens to all glutons who eat too much pizza and Heather trying to knock out the baby. Obviously, he didn't come. We'll have to try again today

Anyway, I'll be posting pics as soon as the little guy let me.

I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamed that I was the opening act for Rebecca St. James who was on a world tour. (Just the fact that I dreamed I was an opening act for Rebecca St. James is pretty funny.) Anyway, Rebecca’s tour was titled “The Chastity Tour.” She was using it as a platform to preach on the benefits of saving oneself for marriage, etc.

At first, everything happened as you might expect-- pray before show, do show, preach chastity, go to next show, repeat. However, as the tour went on night after night, I noticed that Rebecca’s clothes were getting more and more provocative. The more provocative her clothes got, the more people showed up at her concerts. It got to the point where she was preaching about chastity to humongous stadiums while only wearing a live Boa Constrictor (I think Britney Spears wore one once). The media started talking about how edgy Rebecca St. James was getting and before you know it, she was boosted from a B-List Christian artist to an A-List mainstream artist who filled the biggest arenas available and then preached chastity while wearing nothing but lives snakes.

I kept thinking to myself, something is wrong here. How can you tell people to be chaste while wearing nothing but a boa constrictor and doing cover shoots for Maxim? But that’s when things got even dicier. Rebecca had her stage re-designed. She said she wanted it to look like she was singing between a pair of hands that were raised to God in praise.

When the stage was finished, Rebecca covered it in a big cloth and brought all of us out for the unveiling. She unveiled the raised hands and we all looked at them, scratching our heads. They weren’t hands at all. They were these huge boobs. We were all like, “Dude, those aren’t hands…they’re big boobs.” Rebecca kept saying they weren’t. “Whatever guys (in her Auzzie accent) these are beautiful hands raised in praise of our God.”…but they were seriously NOT hands raised in praise of God. They didn’t look one bit like hands. They were boobs. I should know because I was the opening act who had to play between them every night.

The new stage made Rebecca VERY popular with the dance crowd and she made a dance video wearing the Boa Constrictor. I can’t exactly remember the lyrics, but they were something like, “God gave me my hotness so I’m gonna strut my stuff. I’m gonna follow Jesus cuz I’m just so dang hot.” Something like that. I remember a few churches added it to their worship setlists.

Northwestern Bookstores had no problem putting up big cardboard displays of Rebecca’s “Hands praising God,” but for some reason they took offense at the words “Strut my stuff.” They said it “sounded prideful.” At this point they stopped selling Rebecca;s CDs and demanded that she apologize for her pride.

It was about this point when my alarm clock went off. I wish I had been able to finish the dream and see what happened. Anyway, it was a pretty funny dream.