Tag Archives: family
The Baby is Imminent.
26 DecAfter waiting for nine months, we are ready for the baby.
Any day now.
The holidays are done, the cradle is set up next to the bed, we have a supply of diapers and blankets; now we are just making minor tweaks to our plans.
I love this baby.
This is our third child. After going through two labor experiences, we have a good idea of what to expect. During the birth of your first child, everything is new, and a little scary. The second time, it is familiar and exciting. This third time, I’m expecting a fast, easy labor with lots of strong pushing and gentle music, warm baths and candlelight, and a trance-like state that comes from being completely in tune with the heroic changes that a human body can only make a few times in its life. (And only a female human body, at that.)
Although it has been my habit to work in the city ten minutes away, it is too far; now I work from an office just down the mountain from our house, so I am on call at any hour to jump to my wife’s side and keep her hydrated and calm.
Our other two children were born in the afternoon, with contractions starting in the middle of the night. Will it be the same this time?
One thing we are all sure of, is the labor this time will be fast. A woman’s third child usually comes out faster than her other two. Zaden was born in 6-7 hours, and Indilea’s labor was four days long.
Johanna’s sister, who was the third child, was born very rapidly.
22 minutes.
Start to finish, that’s how short it took. With this spice in our gene pool, we’re expecting a fast, easy delivery.
The baby is big, which means we will have a healthy boy that doesn’t get sick. Living in the tropics, we don’t have to worry about colds and flu. Our small house is cozy, clean, and ready to accept the baby into it.
Our whole lives seem set up for this moment. Johanna’s parents spend hours with us every day, tending the house and the children. The weather is bright and cheery. Little Taos will be here any day now.
We are asking for our friends and family to help us aid his transition into the world, by being there in spirit.
Please click on the picture above if you would like to receive a phone call when labor starts. (I will also be crowing it through my social media profiles – connect with me on the sidebar if you haven’t already.)
When you get the call, light a candle and pray for a safe, healthy birth.
Surprise Baby Shower!
19 Dec
'0' Birthday for Baby Taos
This weekend Heather Gamewell (Indilea’s ballet teacher) and I put together a surprise baby shower for Johanna.
The cover story:
I told Johanna I was being interviewed by a reporter from El Financiero, the Costa Rica’s version of the Business Journal. I left in the morning to set up the party, and called her an hour before party time with the message:
He’s got a photographer with him, and when I told him about you, and the kids, and about Summerland, he got all excited! He wants to do a photo shoot at the pool with the whole family. Can you put on some makeup and be ready in an hour?
(This was Cherie’s idea. I never would have thought about how ladies don’t like to show up to their own surprise parties looking frumpy – a lesson I should have learned for Johanna’s 28th birthday, when I took her to a Nia class, and we returned home to a dozen unexpected friends, and we were all sweaty and red-faced.)
Anyway.
Johanna was not thrilled. AND she knew something was up. She played along, and was really happy that she did, when we got to a pool festooned with balloons, and 3 friends ready for a party!
(Everyone else showed up half an hour late. It IS Costa Rica, after all.)
Although she knew SOMETHING was up, she did not expect a big event like this. When I told her there were flyers, and a secret Facebook event, she was very happy we had gone to so much trouble for an amazing, wonderful, nurturing mother like her.
It was apparent during the party: everyone loves Johanna.
Some photos from the day:
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- ’0′ Birthday for Baby Taos
The potluck was Dairy Free AND gluten free. (Its Johannas party, I told everybody, she should be able to eat anything she wants to.
The pool was a big hit with the kids, and kids and adults played some really fun games, hosted by Heather and Zane. We stuffed ballons in big t-shirts (to empathize with the pregnant lady), had a sack race, and played a really cool game where everybody had a balloon tied around their ankle. By stomping everyone else’s ballon in a chaotic heel-thrusting crowd, the last one with a balloon was the winner.
After the party, we went back to the house, had a quiet family dinner, and the kids and I played games and cleaned while Johanna took a bath. It was a wonderful day; the kind of day we see a lot here, in Costa Rica.
I’m a lucky bastard.
25 Sep
Any list of personal gratitudes could potentially be very long, for any living person: having eyes, having a mind that allows you to think, a heart that gives you desires, and the fulfillment of even tiny desires – these are all gratitudes that are available to any of us.
Sometimes, life puts us in the blessed position of having great big obvious gratitudes, making it exceptionally easy to feel thankful.
I am now in one of those positions.
- I live in tropical paradise.
- I do work that I love, and I am supporting my whole family.
- I take breaks from my workday to swim in a great big pool with my children.
- We have fresh pineapple every day.
- My wife is pregnant with our third child.
- We wake up early every morning to the sounds of toucans and monkeys.
- We live on a mountain in the middle of the jungle, in a well built house, only ten minutes away from a small city.
- We have only the best of everything we used to own, shedding the least important possessions, and keeping only the essential.
- This simplicity has allowed me to enjoy little things, instead of being distracted by big things.
- Every day, I find myself smiling for no reasons at all.
Actually, that last one isn’t true. I have a whole list of reasons, that grows exponentially every day. I don’t think I will be able to keep up with writing them all down.
Family Dinner Redux
13 Sep
By far, one of the greatest blessings of our new life is having family dinner together.
Our house is small and cozy, making it easier to corral the chaos that is our children around a table for a meal. Every day, we sit around our small wooden table, and say grace, and eat dinner together.
In Portland, our kitchen was big, and open, and also served as a hallway. The energy was constantly being flushed out into the school, and it was so uncomfortable to sit in that room that we rarely ate together. If we did, it was hurried and chaotic.
Now our dining table is in its own corner of the house, and when plates are served and everyone is seated, we all say grace together:
Bless this meal
That it may nourish
Our minds, bodies, and spirits.
Amen.
Every night, I watch my children repeating this simple prayer, marveling at how much they have grown, and grateful for how happy our life has become.
One Strong Belief #trust30
2 JunOne Strong Belief by Buster Benson
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?
(Author: Buster Benson)
My one strong belief is in the power of the stage.
My family, and most of my closest friends, do not share this belief. The lifestyle of a performer is hectic, erratic, and extraordinary. The unpredictable schedule of an actors life – six weeks of intense devotion to a project, including nights and weekends, followed by a brief respite of recovery, which is punctuated by itches to get back into a period of intense devotion – leads to many actors marrying their own kind.
The community of performers is a small world, because when you are in it, you are in it all the time, 24-7. I got out of it, primarily, because I married a non-performer.
My wife does not like going to bad theater shows, that just happen to star someone we know. This is an essential component of entrenching yourself in the theatrical community, seeing the shows of your friends, good and bad. They reciprocate by coming to see your bad shows, ad your good ones. Then, one day, when someone has a line on a good opportunity, they recommend their closest performer friends to the director, and you climb up the ladder.
Instead, we spent our time, as a couple, doing non-performance things, and my relationship to the performance community waned, and ultimately stagnated.
I miss being on stage, almost as much as I miss seeing bad shows. Even during bad productions, I can learn, and puzzle out why what I am watching is not working.
And then, occasionally, after you have gone to a few bad shows, the numbers pay off, and you are treated with the extraordinary experience of watching an amazing piece of live theatre.
If my family and closest friends shared this belief, in the power of the stage, the magnetism of it, I would likely still be in the performance community. If I had more reliance in myself, as Mr. Emerson encourages, I would fight against the tendencies of my family and friends, and demand that I spend the time and effort to be a part of the theatrical community. I may be able to make more friends that share this interest, but I may pay for that by losing the closeness I have gained with those I love.
It is a balancing act, weighing our own predispositions against the tastes of those closest to us. I regret that my intimates do not share my love for the theatre, but I cannot blame them for it.
I look back at my stunted theatrical life with longing, and bite my lip as we decide what to do together.
Bachelor Name
20 Jan
‘MacTavish’ is a right noble name. It’s got the clout of a HIghland clan, and the stoutness that comes with healthy peasant genes. I gave this name up to take the name ‘Huntress,’ which is being daughtered out.
See, my fair wife comes from a clan that has lots of daughters. The Huntress clan, it should be noted, ruled the Isle of Mann as a matriarchy for 300 years. So matrilinealism is not foreign to the name.
Not having a strong connection to my own side of the family, after Indilea was born, I decided to pass the Huntress name on to them. After a year, I found myself faced with creating the complications of a two surname household.
A simple solution would have been to hyphenate. But I’ll be honest, I think hyphenated last names are tacky.
So I opted to be secure enough in my own masculinity to take my wife’s last name.
(Women, by the way, think this is incredibly cool of me. Men sometimes think I’m a douche. But few of those men have the balls to leap off a three story building, and none of them have the privilege of going home to a wife as hot as mine. So there.)
I kept MacTavish as a middle name, and when it crops up on documents or old profiles, whenever I am asked about it, I refer to it as my ‘bachelor’ name. The male’s equivalent of the ‘maiden name,’ the name I had before I married into another clan.
This will cause further complications when I go to Costa Rica, where two last names are, ironically, the norm. From what I understand, your mother’s surname and your father’s surname, in that order, make your own last name…sometimes. Some systems catalogue people by their first last name, and others by their last last name. So it seems I will not end up being free of the complication, after all.
My own children will endure more confusion in their records, since their names are reversed. (They each have MacTavish as a middle name, and Huntress as a last name, opposite of Tico custom.)
I’m Caelan.
Father of 3. Digital producer of websites, videos, and content marketing campaigns that help businesses connect dramatically with their audience. My office is my laptop in Costa Rica.
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