Sunday Shots: The Plumèd Lions

Mia,

Years ago, Daddy took Mommy to Jekyll Island; site of Daddy's family vacation spot every year when he was growing up. Jekyll Island is the southernmost inhabited island of the several that form the Golden Isles off the coast of Georgia. There is one farther south, Cumberland, but now that is owned nearly in its entirety by the Department of the Interior as Cumberland Island National Seashore. From the turn of the 20th century through the 1920s, Jekyll Island was the playplace of millionaires. The families who summered in Newport got in their yachts every autumn to sail to Georgia and winter on the golden coast. Here you could walk the streets and find a veritable "Who's Who" of all of the famous names in our society at that time: Morgans, Goodyears, Disneys, Fords, and Rockefellers. The only ones missing were the Carnegies, who owned Cumberland Island in its entirety and lived on Dungeness Plantation there.

Three things sounded the death knell of the exclusive millionaires resort on Jekyll Island; the progressive income tax, the Great Depression, and finally by the early 1940s the German U-Boat threat made yachting from Rhode Island to Georgia inadvisable. After closing for the summer in spring 1942, the club did not reopen. From the early 1940s to the early 1980s, the club slowly disintegrated. Slowly the main clubhouse was restored, and is open for guests today as the Jekyll Island Club.

All of the houses are slowly being restored and turned into guests' quarters at the inn, though some were completely destroyed by the elements and are being allowed to regrow into the forest in order to provide some privacy between the mansions still standing. I saw this, of a pair of two lions formerly marking the entrance to the Disney mansion and thought of the lines from Chesterton's masterpiece of the English language, Lepanto:

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of Saint Mark.

The palmetto bush is slowly overgrowing the statuette. Maybe when you come back in 30 years, it will have been consumed by the forest growth. Behind the lion you can see the line of tall grass grown up around the tabby formation of the house's foundation, now all but destroyed.


I hope that, in your life, you build things and a reputation that will last. I hope that, as the Ten Commandments say, "your name will be long in the land the Lord your God has given you." Remember that a good name is rather to be had than all riches, honor, and glory. I wonder what it will be like to be your Dad for a long, long time. I hope that you chase your dreams and make an impact on our world.

Three months from yesterday is your due date. I'm 2/3 of the way to meeting you.

Daddy

It's Here!

Last night, while I was at work, my new chair arrived! Here she is, looking rather lonely in the empty room, but it's a start!


A close-up of the fabric, though the picture is still a little blurry:


I'm still totally excited, and I may have to go in and try it out a couple times a week. You know, for the sake of practice.

Today is the 27 week mark and, depending on who you talk to/read, the start of the 3rd trimester (already??). Mia's had another busy week. Some landmarks this week:

• She is about 14 inches from head to toe, and weighs just over 2 pounds. Babycenter.com compares her to the size of a head of cauliflower.

• Her lungs and immune system have developed to the point that, if she were to be born today, she would have a chance of survival, with lots of medical help. Not that we want that. Stay where you are, Baby Mia!

• She has discovered thumb-sucking, which actually helps strengthen her cheeks and jaws.

• Her eyes, previously fused shut, are now able to open and close and she has developed distinct waking and sleeping patterns.

Back in August, not long after I found out I was pregnant, I came across this blog. At the time, she was about 19 weeks pregnant, she's now days away from delivering her baby girl. I'm a full 2 months past the point she was when I started reading her posts, and it's a little unnerving to "feel" how fast time goes! On the other hand...how exciting!

Starting the Nursery

On Monday night, we had plans to visit a local store to look for a rocker/glider for the nursery. It's a family-run business and the hours are not really convenient, so Monday night was the one night this week that it seemed really feasible. However, when I got home on Monday night, I walked in to find Kevin and both cats stalking a little four legged visitor that had somehow gotten into the house to escape the cold. Apparently, our cats are not mousers. They soon lost interest, and I was not much help either, which left Kevin to finally trap it and release it back outside. Needless to say, we never made it out to look for that rocker.

I had pretty much given up on going out there again until Saturday, but yesterday was my day off and it was rainy and miserable all day. By early afternoon, I was feeling house-bound, so I arranged to pick Kevin up from work and shoot straight over there. We got there just 45 minutes before the store closed, but I really think that it was meant to be. I had this idea in my head of what I wanted, and had looked in several stores, as well as online, for a couple weeks and not quite found it. In the store last night, the chair we eventually bought was one of the first I sat in, but I dismissed it as being too large. We kept looking and almost settled on another recliner, but I couldn't find a fabric that I truly liked. At the last minute, I went back to that first chair again. It was a floor model, the last one in the store, and so marked down approximately $150. It rocks and glides, and is so incredibly soft and comfortable, as well as wide enough that my arms are not pressed up against my sides. I'm completely in love with it. I don't have a picture of the chair with the exact fabric, but it looks something like this:

Our fabric is a slightly off-white color, with a subtle paisley print. Keeping in mind the size of the room, I decided against the ottoman (not available without special order--and a higher price---anyway), and instead opted for a nursing stool:

The sales clerk said that ours was the third chair she'd sold off the floor that day. I know that if we had waited until Saturday, we wouldn't be bringing this chair home. I'm so excited that I found what I wanted and can't wait to test it out with Baby Mia.

In the meantime, it's being delivered tomorrow and our nursery currently looks like this:

Can you tell what I'll be doing today and tomorrow?

Tempus Fugit

Mia,

This is the Little Drummer Boy on the mantel in our house. He was great-grandpa Sims's Christmas gift to great-grandma in 1973. Ten years later, as a young boy, your Daddy looked exactly like this music box; thick brown hair and blue eyes. Of all the gifts exchanged in the family "music box" Christmas tradition, great-grandma's music box of the Little Drummer Boy was always her favorite. Great-grandma moved into an Alzheimer's care facility two days before Christmas 2007. When we flew to Atlanta at Labor Day to tell grandma and grandpa about you, the Little Drummer Boy came back with us to live at our house. One always knew it was finally Christmastime when, on Thanksgiving night, your great-grandma got out the Little Drummer Boy from his place where he lived all year in the curio cabinet, wound him, and put him down on the kitchen table. The Christmas season always began to the tune The Little Drummer Boy. As long as the music box was out, it was Christmas - he was always the first thing to come out and the last thing to be put away. Today we will put him away again.

How will our world, and our lives, be different the next time he comes out? The biggest one, obviously, is that you will have made your appearance. But I pray, also, that your great-grandma will stay with us long enough to hold you, safe in the knowledge that the Little Drummer Boy remains well cared-for in our home.

Sunday shots: New Year's By the Sea

At the beginning of 2009 we went to visit some old people and places that we left behind us in 2008. Love got us a great deal on an oceanfront room...guess not many people go to the beach in December. We saw old friends and remembered some places we loved but got too busy in the "business of living" to photograph. As the sun rose over the ocean on the first day of the new year, I remembered my New Year's wish from a year ago; that God would bless our union and that we could become parents, or at least on our way to there, by the end of the year. God answers prayer. Who knows what's in store for 2009?

Here's some of my favorite images from our trip back to the oceanfront:

Sunrise over Virginia Beach, January 1, 2009

Sunrise over Virginia Beach, January 1, 2009

On the right is Old Cape Henry Light, marking the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. This was the first aid to navigation constructed by the new United States Government in 1792. On the left is the newer marker to the entrance of the Chesapeake, built in 1872 to replace it. After the one at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, Cape Henry light is the second-tallest on the east coast.

Cape Henry Memorial, on Fort Story at Cape Henry Virginia. This marks the spot where members of the Virginia Company became the first English to set foot on the North American continent. They re-embarked their boats and sailed another 18 miles up the James River, founding Jamestown.

St. Theresa's (Our Lady of the Sea) chapel, on Fort Story, at Cape Henry, Virginia.

St. Theresa's (Our Lady of the Sea) chapel, on Fort Story, at Cape Henry, Virginia.

St. Theresa's (Our Lady of the Sea) chapel, on Fort Story, at Cape Henry, Virginia.

The former site of Duck-In, a locally-famous seafood restaurant known for its patio and gazebo overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. We were the last wedding reception held here. The building had already been purchased, and it was torn down in October 2005 to make room for a bayfront condo development. Construction financing fell through, and the site of our wedding reception is now a vacant lot. In the background is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

26 weeks

Let's do first things first. You can easily "see" Baby Mia from the outside now, no question about it.

I'm starting to move from the glory days of the second trimester into the slightly more achy days of the third. I learned this week, for example, that 3+ hour car trips are no longer in the cards. Too long for this lady to sit comfortably, and Mia, for some reason, starts kicking like crazy after I've been in the car for an extended period of time. And no wonder! She's going through another growth spurt stage. I've put on another 2lbs in the last week, bringing the grand total up to 14, and I'm starting to feel the extra weight. She's got a long way to go, though! Here's what else is going on:

She's now about 2 pounds and over a foot long, approximately the length of a hothouse cucumber.Her eyes are fully developed and will soon open and close with her sleep cycles. They are currently blue, as the final color is not determined until a few months after birth. However, since Mommy's eyes are a blue-green, and Daddy's are blue, it's likely that they will stay some shade of blue.

She's still practicing her breathing by continuing to take gulps of fluid.

Mostly, though, we think she's preparing for a future in acrobatics as she is constantly moving. Typing with the computer on my lap, pressed up against my stomach almost always causes a reaction. Earlier this afternoon, the kick was strong enough to actually move the computer. Guess she wanted some attention?

We'll be starting to clean out the room that will be the nursery in the upcoming week, as my parents have bought the dresser below for us, and it will be arriving sometime in the next 7 days or so. Time to get a move on!

A Different Milestone

Last night, as the clock struck 12 and the ball dropped and champagne was consumed (not by me) and kisses were exchanged and resolutions were made...we were home from our night out and watching COPS from the safety of our hotel room.

But there was another milestone achieved last night. As that same hour struck on the clock, our Baby Mia countdown passed from 3 digits into 2 digits. Assuming, of course, that she chooses to arrive on time.

Eeks.