The Preacher's Daughter (and son)

Hey Guys (or Y'all for those of you down south), it's the preacher here. I've been away from blogging for at least a year now. Sorry. I didn't mean to drop off the blogosphere, I just got busy. But, seeing as I'm sitting next to Eleanor in a hospital birthing room, it looks like I'm on paternity leave for a little while and I'll have time to post some stories, thoughts and (hopefully) clever comments. That, (cleverness) is something that this young son of mine will have to start learning early. It's a point of pride for the Christiansens that we are all clever. Now, this is not, mind you, corniness. No, our brand of cleverness is generally in the form of very dry humor that has a lot to do with timing. Sadly, this does not easily come across in blogging, but we'll give it a shot.

Speaking of things that a young male Christiansen must learn . . .

He must also learn to appreciate his mixed, but largely Scandinavian heritage. This includes eating 'skivers (see blog entry from January 2007), lefse and pretending to enjoy pickled herring on holidays (there, I said it. I only pretend to like it). If you are from the land of y'all-ers, lefse is a wonderful Scandi treat. Eleanor disagrees, but she'll learn to appreciate it one of these days, much like Minnesota weather.

Lastly, the young lad will have to, like his father, and his father's father, and his father's father's father, cheer for sports teams that will tease you and leave you devastated (see '91 and '97 Gopher Men's basketball, two plus generations of Gopher football, the '00 and '10 Vikings, the Twins 2003-present. Sorry little buddy, but that's just the way it is.

Anyway, back to the hospital.

So, at E's doctor appointment this (Wed) afternoon, the doc said that it was time to induce. We were set for an appointment at 6am Friday. We thought that sounded good. It gave us a bit of time to finish preparing and two more good nights of sleep. And then, as if proving to us that he's already controlling our lives, E's water broke just after midnight. So, we got up, called the doctor on call and phoned grandma (my mom), who came over immediately to stay with Gboo for the night. Ellie and I jumped in the car. Wait, no, we actually took a long time to leave the house. I mean, for having our bags packed already, we still needed to gather a bunch of stuff together. Not only that, but when we packed a week or two ago, we packed winter clothes, but we had to repack tonight because it's pretty warm out. It's 65 out and it's the middle of the night. And humid here too. You 'Bama folks would feel right at home. Now that I mention it, Granny and Gramps, you should probably make your way up here now. Time for a stroll . . .

We just got back from a walk. The nurse suggested that we take a stroll around the floor so we did. The only problem is that the floor is really pretty small, especially when you are walking for walking's sake. The highlight of the walk was the dozen or so times we paced by the nursery. Looking in at those babies is really quite the reality check. We were reminded that our lives are about to get rocked once again.

Okay, I'm getting pretty tired now. It's 4:04 CST and I'm actually struggling to type. So, I'm hanging it up. Next posting should include pictures, or at least his name!

-The Preacher