mellow birthday

back in the day of cabin life, we coined the phrase "mellow good times" and that's definitely what my birthday was like this year.

last year I was anything but mellow, brimming with the excitement of a baby on the way and telling the whole family about it all. but now I got to live out the dreams that kept us up and excited this time last year.

it would have been nice to sleep in and snuggle with the wife and the pup, but the hungry munchkin was calling at 6:30. he ate quite well, which is always satisfying, and we had some good morning time together, making me regret my grumblings at having to wake up earlier than usual. and since mama had to run some errands, I got to feed him his cereal in the mid-morning, which is always an adventure (with me at least).

(an aside: for the first time this week I got a brief glimpse into what it means to be a fulltime mama. michelle and my mom were out getting their christmas manicures (a gift from santa), and I had to get the baby ready in time to drive out to meet everyone for lunch. trying to get him fed and cleaned and dressed (cutely) AND me relatively cleaned and dressed and out the door on time was an eye-opener. my usual extended time with him (weekends) doesnt involve deadlines. so to the mamas out there: I have a new respect, and sense of patience)

anyway, today I also got to do one of my favorite activities: take care of my wife. sometimes it's just enjoyable to serve her in the small things (like make the chicken salad and dressing).

as a bonus, Dan and Kat (Gulick) Haase stopped by. as Kat can relate to many of Michelle's health issues, we had a good conversation about such things, as well as general life stuff. Kat always asks good questions. and as a birthday present of sorts, she told me she made a huge mistake in not hiring me to be an RA back in the day. this bit of info is quite gratifying of course (as I was quite dissappointed at the time), but we all agreed that it was clearly God's providence (I wouldnt have edited the school paper, which indirectly led to web stuff a little while later). even cooler, she told me why I didnt get the job: I was too cynical at the time! who, me?! yeah, I had it pretty bad for a while, and I credit Michelle for lifting me out of that muck. as evidence of continued progress: I quit listening to NPR and now listen to Moody Broadcasting. this is of course a subject for its own entry sometime.

at dinner time we looked at the nearly barren fridge. I grabbed a birthday newcastle (thanks dad!) and longed for a pizza. we never order pizza, as Michelle cant eat it. but I think talking about covenant stuff made me long for a mr. t's pizza. I seldom directly express my desires to michelle, so when I said "you know what I would like?" I could have asked for pretty much anything and she would have got it done somehow. but a medium pinapple-and-ham only takes about $6.88, so it wasnt too hard to get it done. that and another newcastle. yum.

after some snuggling and uno, I finished the book I've been reading this week. I feel like I havent read a book through in a while. I determined this week to really relax as much as possible, and of course my mom and dad made it quite possible. so I read my new book that I bought on a whim (thanks to a gift card) and quite enjoyed it (perhaps not as much as promised on the cover, but still enjoyable).

and now I blog. that's part of relaxing these days too. when we travel or get birthday phonecalls or whatnot, I'm always surprised to learn of all the folks who check in on us here. lurkers (those who read but dont make your presence known), feel free to comment.

so here goes another birthday, and really I've got the best present ever on the other side of this wall: a beautiful, wonderful son, who is so great I can hardly believe it, and his mama who is so much a part of me I cant remember who I was without her. what's that verse about God blessing us more than we can imagine? He really has.

christmas digest

lots of goings on in the past week. here's the reader's digest version, in no particular order. fully annotated and uncondensed version may arrive later. maybe not. initial pictures here.

travel
besides not eating, not sleeping, and generally disliking being in his car seat, Caleb traveled quite well. he didnt quite scream...more like sqeaking, which turned into crying. the trip to NC usually takes 7.5 hours. it took us 10 to get there and 9 to come back. not too bad, but not great.

the dog
katie was, once again, a superpup. my parents have a "no dogs" policy (my dad is allergic), but an exception was granted for our tiny non-shedding woocher. she did great, and my dad spoiled her, even tho he cant pet her.

presents
as usual, there were many presents spread around. for us big kids, lots of music, games, clothes, and candy/cookies/tea. for the little one, lots of toys and clothes and books (no candy yet). many thanks to all the givers. I think we need to declare a moratorium on toys for a while, as he's received lots of cool toys that will suit him this time next year and the even the next.

grandparents
Caleb was the pride and joy of both grandma and grandpa w. he got to tour both of their workplaces, where they were all aglow with the excitement of showing off the cutest kid on record. if we had a nickel for each time we heard "so this is the boy from all the pictures..."

birthday
today is my 28th birthday. so far I've enjoyed a good morning with my son, had a nice breakfast with my wife, and opened some presents (one each from the music/games/clothes/candy categories). some old friends will stop by later, and otherwise I think we'll enjoy a nice day home together.

our gift to you

...is quite possibly the cutest picture yet of the cutest kid around. click the thumbnail for a larger version:

no more work for the year! woohoo! "no more compys, no more books..." a little vaykay with the fam and we'll be back for relaxing good times here too (in time for my birthday).

merry christmas to all!

christmas letter 2004

Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas and happy New Year to all. Exactly a year ago we learned that we were going to have a baby, and now Caleb is four months old! It has been an exciting and amazing year as we’ve been carried through this wild ride of parenthood. God has blessed us in many ways, and we’d like to take a moment to remember just how good He’s been to us.

Of course for the first half of the year we busied ourselves preparing for Caleb’s arrival. We are so thankful for all the prayers and encouragement from you, our family and friends, and we’re very grateful for all the material needs for the baby. As Caleb grew inside of Michelle, we wondered if she would ever stop feeling sick, and how her chronic health issues would work out through her pregnancy. Thankfully, the sickness subsided, and so did most of her usual aches and pains.

As the weather warmed we enjoyed our little garden as we counted down the days until August. We read all the books and took all the classes that we could, waiting for the day we would hold our little boy. We prepared his room with lots of sewing and painting and whatnot, dreaming of playing with him in his own room. July seemed to last forever, and on the very last day, good news came: Michelle’s sister had twin boys, and we hoped our little boy would come soon too.

After all our waiting and praying and a long labor, Caleb Robert Wiegers arrived on August 11. He was and is the most beautiful baby we’ve ever seen, and we’re simply overwhelmed at how much of a blessing he is. At first he wasn’t a very good eater, but now he’s doing great. We’re especially thankful for an entire year of nothing but good health reports for Caleb.

Now we’re loving life as parents. We’re so thankful for a happy baby and we enjoy him so much every day. He’s very tall and skinny, and he’s made friends with the dog already. Just today he ate his first solid food (rice cereal), and he’s quite excited about his first Christmas at Grandma Wiegers house. Michelle is home fulltime with Caleb, and loves her new role as Mama. Bob is still enjoying being a website programmer at a small company in downtown Chattanooga, and each day can’t wait to come home to be with the family.

We pray that we’ll be faithful to God’s calling for us. We especially pray that Caleb will know and love Jesus as he grows up, and ask that you will pray this with us. He is one of many covenant children recently born in our small church, and he was baptized on October 24. We’re so thankful for such a supportive church family, and for God’s faithfulness to us all.

We’re so glad that we’re in a small group with some friends who are also parents with young children, trying to learn what it means to shepherd our kids. Also, Michelle has been mentoring a college student, and she has been learning so much of God’s grace because of it, and it’s so good to see her being used to bless others.

We’re looking forward to Michelle’s brother’s wedding this spring, as we’re so excited for Brad and Renee, and Caleb is also excited about getting to meet most of the extended family, so we’ll see some of yall soon!

We haven’t been without trials and struggles this year, but we thank God for His care for us in this time of such overwhelming changes. As we think on what it means that God would come live with us and in us, and come as such a little baby, we are once again amazed at His love. We pray that you will know more and more of Jesus love this year.

We update our website with pictures, videos and stories quite often, so please visit www.wiegersfamily.com when you’re able. And we would love to have you come meet Caleb here in Chattanooga! Please pray for us and let us know how we might pray for you. Thanks and Merry Christmas!

Love,
Bob, Michelle and Caleb

late

I dont usually put in late hours at work. I guess I'm spoiled. but tonite it's me and the bossman, trying to crank out a multifaceted site before we all leave town. I miss my son desparately. I last saw him 13 hours ago. apparently he had a good day. but dot-net has humbled me again. just when I think I'm catching on, I spend 2 hours trying to track down a problem. and the end result was a bit of code that said "?,*" instead of "?" argh. now I know. and we've made good progress. and I'm hyped on Coke, which is a rarity for me.

the day after tomorrow we leave for grandma's and we're all going a little nuts with anticipation. will everything fit in the car? will there be snow on the way to chapel hill? will the munchkin travel well? will michelle travel well? will katie travel well? God knows (and I dont mean that flippantly) and He'll get us there.

busy

tis the season to be very busy. lots to finish up at work before taking off for the rest of the year, and lots to pack up for the road trip. one more christmas party too.

for the latest cuteness, go here to check out Caleb's first solid food experience. he likes it!

I'll be posting our Christmas letter soon, and we may blog from grandma's house. until then, Merry Christmas!

snow!

or at least flurries! yes, that's right...actual snowflakes falling from the actual sky here in chatty. of course it's only itty-bitty flurries, but it's better than nothing.

I grew up in south florida (just south of hurricane central this year), so snow to me (even a little bit) is a big deal. my first winter at covenant was the big blizzard/ice-storm of 96, and it was a beautiful, wonderful thing. ever since then I've been mostly dissappointed in the winter precipitation here in town, but I guess you dont get a "storm of the century" all that often.

apparently we average 4.4 inches of snow per year, with january maxing out at a whopping 1.8 inches. and unfortunately st. elmo seems to be warmer than the rest of the city, but if we got all 4.4 inches at once, I'd be one happy camper.

so here's hoping we get more than flurries and paper snowflakes (as displayed by auntie sarah) this year.

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speaking of snowflakes (this is for you jeannette), this is why the interweb is so darn cool: make-a-flake!. takes a second to figure out how to make it work, but definitely a lot of fun. here's mine:

4 months

happy 4 months to Caleb! it's hard to believe we've had him for 1/3 of a year already. seems like its been longer, but its also flown by. some of the latest facts and figures:

he just weighed in at 14 lb, 1.5 oz (~25th percentile) and measured 27 inches (~99th percentile), so he's keeping up the whole tall and skinny thing. that's my boy. he's finally losing the hair on the sides of his head, but it's still long on the top so he kinda has that skater-punk look to him. still super cute of course, but now with a bit of an edge.

he's really into chewing on his hands (often shoving as many fingers as possible into his mouth), and the doctor said his gums are a bit swollen, so there's apparently teeth on the way. let's just hope we're able to get some sleep while that fun goes on. and they advised that it's ok to start giving him some rice cereal, so that'll be a bit of an adventure too. things are changing so fast.

he's been noticing the dog a lot more lately. he lights up with a big smile when she looks at him, and he reaches out to her. she's very gentle with him and enjoys licking his hands, which he seems to like too. mama's not a big fan of that. usually in the evenings the dog likes her space, but when he was sitting on the couch playing the other night, she came over to him to hang out. too cute. it's fun to see them becoming friends, and I'm sure she'll be quite attached to him once he starts throwing cereal and whatnot around.

only about a week-and-a-half until Christmas time! yay! oh and we had a paper snowflake party last night. sarah is the undisputed snowflake queen. and joe is the mastermind king. pictures soon.

twinkle

one of my favorite christmas tree activities was and is simply looking at the tree out of focus. as you may remember, I have but one functioning eye, so I wasnt even sure this was possible to do with two eyes, but I'm pretty sure it is. I'm never quite sure how everyone else sees things.

anyway, I like to just look at the tree lights and bring everything to a blur. it makes the twinkle and sparkle all that much more fun. of course I cant hold it that way for very long before I get a headache.

similarly, I also like slow-shutter photography, with which I entertained myself for quite a few years. my old SLR is long gone, and the abilities of our little digicam are limited, but I had a little fun with it this evening, taking some funky shots of our tree. Michelle made an ink-blot kinda game out of it, seeing ballarinas and dogs in various shots. what do you see?

tis the season

we love the holidays, but it keeps us rather busy. and work is busy too. but we're never too busy to take pictures of caleb, who, amazingly enough, is getting even cuter. here's proof:

more here

many congratulations to and prayers for Jeannette, as she and Chris are expecting their first baby this summer! yay for babies!!! I keep trying to convince michelle that we should have another soon, but all in good time I'm sure.

we've found a very cool Christmas tradition thing from the FamilyLife people. they had a good deal on it too, and we think it'll be great to help teach the kid(s) about what Christmas is really all about. so check out the adorenaments.

wanted man

I recently received an unsolicited offer to work for another company. I was pretty intrigued, since it's a good company with good folks, and good money too. I really do enjoy it around here, so I was having a hard time making a decision. do I pull up roots and start over just for a few extra bucks?

but we could pay off our debts a lot sooner, and, priceless as he is, baby stuff isnt always cheap. but the folks here made it pretty easy, essentially matching the offer I had received, with assurances that a raise was just about to come anyway.

after 3 years, I feel like I'm finally hitting my stride here, and I'm even catching on to the new stuff we're doing. in a lot of ways, I'm a slow learner when it comes to programming, but I think I'm a good worker bee once I catch on. I'm just glad that God provides for all our needs, and many of our wants, through the work that I can do.

so it's good to confirm that this is where I belong now. perhaps its more of a function of lack of quality help here in town, but it's nice to be wanted, and it's especially nice to be able to provide for the fam at a place I enjoy.