They’re unretouched, they’re great examples of how difficult it is to get six people to look good at the same instant of time, and they’re here, at the Wilcox Family Photo page.
Nichelle’s Notes from May
Naomi will be 7 mos. old on 5/13…the time goes so fast. She is now mobile. At 5 mos. she started to creep, but realized rolling where she wanted to go was much faster until a week and a half ago. One day last month she was on my bed w/ me playing with some toys and a doll that was mine when I was either 4 or 5. Things were great until David came in with his sword and shield and she left the doll and played with the shield. LOL. So now on occasion she'll have a sword in hand, or mouth (check out the picture—it’s quite cute).
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Isaac and David play w/ her and she grabs their hair. Now mind you, they do scream or say “ouch,†but they keep giving their hair back to her to pull, it's pretty funny. John too, does the hair thing, but doesn't scream, which is good.
Nearly 6 mos. of residency here in Nashua, amazing. We love it here! As Doug is home so much earlier now, a huge blessing. We do miss our friends in Ma., we'll be down again, really, but many times over we see why God brought us here—Particularly for the 24-hour Wal*Mart in Amherst (just outside of Nashua) or the one in Hudson (a few minutes away) that’s open to midnight everyday ;-)!! :: drool, drool :: Alright, maybe not just for those, but it's a perk. I will have to admit shopping after midnight can get a bit wacky, as my sister-in-law, Joyce, came to see. We said, we'd never do that again.
Two weeks ago now, I joined the choir and work in the nursery once a month. Doug has been going out on visitation weekly now and John too has gone a couple of times. As for other ministries we're still praying for God's leading on that. It's wonderful seeing the kids excited about Sunday school and junior church and also their classes on Wednesday night. One of David's friends in his class is named David and was born two days before him. They'll be in K5 together in September.
Isaac turned 9 a couple of weeks ago,and we had a party for him at the house. He had a great time w/ his new friends and even Nda came up for the event. Nda has been up here a few times and we've so enjoyed his visits and the visits of our other friends and family as well. Hope we'll see more of you, too.
A couple of months ago, I started watching a little girl named Mikayla (4 days/wk). She's a sweetie. She and David get along very well. Mikayla will be starting K4 in September.
For the month of July our church offers a day camp for grades 1 to 10. I'm really looking forward to that. The program sounds awesome!
Today (5/6), I was asked to watch a little boy of about 15 mos. old named Ethan. I'll only be doing this two days a week-which is great. I start tomorrow.
Wow, it's already the 31 of May … Yesterday my cap on the radiator went once I arrived at church for choir practice. The car is now in the shop. We were planning to visit Cindy, but obviously that had to change. It's alright for it gives us an extra day to get things cleaned out downstairs.
Naomi had a full bath in the tub today…which she loved. She's been creeping for several weeks now,and two days ago started pulling her legs under her to get ready to crawl. Naomi also was able to pull herself up on the stairs in the family room.
John wanted to visit his friends in Mass. and Doug took him and the kids to Lowell and road the train w/ him part way (to North Station) and then sent him on the way. John made it to Brockton, with only a minor problem due to someone giving him the wrong information about what track the Middleboro/Lakeville train was on. Well, he made it back to Lowell Sunday afternoon so we could leave for Cindy's after church. With that trip being cancelled due to the car problem, John hopped back on the train to head to his friend Ryan's party. Can't believe his 16th birthday is a few weeks away…need to get planning. Actually, he needs to get planning!
Why God Gives Children Mothers
[doug]I don’t think I’m a bad parent, but recent experience has shown me that, without mothers, most children would never live to see their third birthday. Let me explain a couple of incidents that happened with NaNi this week:
Incident 1: I took all the kids, including Naomi (NaNi), Mother’s Day shopping at Wal*Mart Saturday night. The trip actually went pretty well, and the boys’ behavior was not-as-bad-as-usual-while-shopping. On the way out to the car, we started down a small incline, and NaNi’s car seat (with her inside), flipped off of the shopping cart, and she landed face-down (but without a scratch, because she was securely fastened in a 5-point safety harness) on the mulch in an island we were adjacent to.
In the moment afterward, the entire cart flipped over, dumping David, who was riding it, and our merchandise to the ground. No one was harmed, although NaNi cried for about 60 seconds.
Now, I was certain that I had attached NaNi’s seat to the shopping cart—but Nichelle (a Mom), wouldn’t have stopped there: She would have attached the seat, listened for the click of the latch attaching, tried to pull the seat off to verify it was secured, asked 3 people to try the same, and probably avoided the slightest incline when navigating back to the car.
Incident 2: Last night, I was watching the kids while Nichelle went to ladies’ Bible study and then grocery shopping. When Nichelle got home, NaNi spit up, and Nichelle asked me, “How is it that NaNi was eating brown paper?†(Oddly enough, I didn’t get “The Look,†which husbands and children everywhere fear.) Somehow the little weaselette had torn a 1-inch long piece of cardboard off a big box David was playing with, and swallowed it. She did this while being watched by me, and in the presence of both David and Isaac!
You may now go about the process of organizing the lynch mob …
Geeks Rule!
[isaac]Isaac, now almost 9 years old, has taken up the motto, “Geeks rule!” How it happened was like this: One night at supper John called Isaac a geek, which gave me the opportunity to explain that, in our family, geek is a compliment.
[john]I went on to point out to John that most of what he enjoys in life he owes to geekdom:
- The computer you like to use: Invented by geeks.
- The games you like to play? Written by geeks.
- The chat software you can’t live without? Also written by geeks.
- The switching system that lets you talk to your friends on the telephone? Developed by geeks.
- The standard of living we enjoy? Paid for by my own geekdom.
Isaac quickly caught on to the fact that geeks are doing the cool things in the world, and is now proud to be called one. He told me that he now prefers to say negative, instead of no, because it’s more precise.
Geeks rule!
New Arrivals at the Wilcox Home
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No, we’re not having another baby.
For a long time, Isaac has been begging for a second pet. He has had his crested gecko, Kim, for quite a while now, and has done a good job of taking care of it, and has wanted a snake. (Nichelle just bought a juvenile corn snake, named Jaden, but I do not yet have any good pictures of it, although there are a few on my friend Mark Sohmer’s BLOG.)
I told Isaac if he saved up half the money for his new pet, I would chip in the other half, figuring it would take a while for him to save the $60 or so he would need for his half payment on a decent pet snake. Well, we stopped at the reptile store, R.J.’s Exotics, on the way home from church, and Isaac fell in love with a Pink Zebra tarantula, which was only $30, of which Isaac already had saved $15. He named it Chandan, which was on our list of gender-neutral names.
David has been begging for a pet, too, and the store gave him a couple of goldfish (they raise them as feeders) for free. He is thrilled to finally have pets of his own, and named them Luke and Kyle. (Luke Skywalker and Kyle Katarn are characters in the Star Wars Jedi Knight series of games.)
I have to admit, this tarantula is pretty cool.
Lessons in Rocketeering
[doug]This should also satisfy those of you who want pictures of our new house.(Well, not really, but there’s a picture of part of one room.) If you are planning to sell your house, then Sell your house quickly with Bonnie Buys Houses Fast which will help you in selling your property quickly and at good rates.
Phil Luchon gave “The Boys†(which includes me) an Estes complete model rocket kit for Christmas. We got permission from Pastor Miller to use the church ball field for launching (try that in Brockton!), and got two flights up on Saturday. The first photo above shows David when it was his turn to launch. John missed out until the next day due to what I thought was bad batteries, but turned out to be a dud engine. So, I bought fresh batteries, and some extra rocket engines, and we planned to have another try at it on Sunday.
Sunday included the regular church service, a pot luck feast (dinner is too small a term for it), and an early afternoon service. We had a guest speaker, a pastor from Arkansas who is being interviewed to become principal for the Christian School. There was a lot of teasing about the weather and his accent—Pastor Miller has a great sense of humor, and both services were a lot of fun, while being spiritually fulfilling as well. Bryan Harrington may be interested to learn that his Temperature Conversion Chart got read from the pulpit.
After the afternoon service, we went back out to launch the rocket again. After discovering that the engine, not the ignitor or batteries were to blame, John got as near flawless a launch off as we’d seen so far. Then I decided to put in a size B engine….
The flight was spectacular. The B engine took off with enough power to send the rocket at least a couple of hundred feet into the air (we haven’t done the triganometry on any of our flights yet), leaving us cheering, “Wow!†and gazing awestruck at the power demonstrated by the rocket’s flight. (The blast was hot enough to mis-shape the steel splash plate where the engine fired.)
Unfortunately, the chute deployed at an altitude high enough to carry the rocket about 100 feet downwind, just enough to get tangled in the top of a tree at the edge of the church property. Despite John’s bravery (see the second image above), he couldn’t get a decent grip on the branch it was on, so the nose cone and parachute are still up in the tree, until we return with some rope or a saw. Thankfully, we shook the body of the rocket (which is not weather-resistant) loose, and that is safely at home.
That evening the church hosted a SuperBowl get-together, at which I dropped John off, while David, Isaac, and I built with Lego. (See the third photo above.) You can see that our new family room has more than enough space to spread the Lego boxes out while we build. The pinball machine and pellet stove are in the background, as are sundry other items that have yet to be unpacked. Nichelle is going to kill me when she sees which photo I’ve posted, but the fun is worth it.
While I was at it, I put up a newer photo of Naomi, for her many fans.
Naomi at 3 Weeks of Age
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The Spoiling Begins
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Okay, Nichelle is making me post this, to illustrate just how big a change having a daugher can make. Before Naomi, you wouldn’t catch me near “girl toys,†or clothing of any kind. Then, with Naomi on the way, something happened to my mental processes. First was the dress I bought in México. Then came the Barbie. I … I don’t know what has come over me, although co-worker Judy Hirsch told me this would happen.
The remaining issue is which of the geekwear t-shirts/creepers to purchase. I can’t decide amongst “Newbie,†“TCP/IP,†and “Geek in Training.†Which would you pick?
It May Be Time – 1:28 p.m.
We’re off to the hospital. Contractions are coming quite frequently.
It Was Indeed Time!
Nichelle’s contractions started around 11:00 a.m. She phoned me at noon, and said, “I think you’d better head home.†The contractions were already causing her to be in a lot of pain, so I headed out almost immediately. I ran in to the house (discovered our friends Phil Luchon and Shelby Sohmer were already there to help, Phil by watching the kids and Shelby by assisting Nichelle), checked the Naomi mailing list (a good thing—I had never switched it over from test mode to mail to the entire list), updated the BLOG, grabbed some food to take with me and all of Nichelle’s stuff, and headed off to the hospital, expecting the usual long process of labor and delivery.
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We arrived at the hospital at about 1:50 p.m. Nichelle’s contractions had increased in severity and frequency, and she was already dilated about 5 cm. She spent 10 minutes in a pre-labor room, before they moved her to the labor room.
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Things were moving very fast. So fast, in fact, that we weren’t sure a doctor would arrive in time—he almost didn’t—a paramedic was there as a backup. Nichelle’s contractions were so strong and frequent, that there was no way for her to get the epidural she’d planned on—this was going to go “natural,†an issue we managed to deflect. After I think only about 15 minutes of excruciating labor pain (I’ll let Nichelle describe with another time), Naomi joined the outside world. The doctor said, “Congratulations, you have a beautiful boy,†and then quickly corrected his statement.
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So, Naomi Nichelle (“NaNiâ€) Wilcox was with us on the outside, officially born at 3:02 p.m., but I later discovered the room clock was wrong, so it was really 2:55 p.m.
Naomi Nichelle (“NaNiâ€) Wilcox, future Geek goddess, weighed in at 7 pounds, 4.8 ounces, and measured 20 inches. We are thrilled to have our little girl. Friends and family visited. We ate birthday cake and relished the joy of being new parents. Nichelle and Naomi are both fine—no complictions or other problems. We’re all tired. Whew!
Our Trip to Boston’s Museum of Science
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On Friday, October 3, I Took Isaac and David, and Isaac's best friend Nda (En-dah) (John opted out) to the Museum of Science on Friday (I took a half day off, and picked Isaac up from school, and we went by subway). We had a great time. The digital camera I bought lets me get low-light and other kinds of photos I could never capture before.
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It’s funny, because you never know what will really interest the kids. David now wants to go back (he asks approximately every day now). For some reason a 2300-year-old mummy in the life sciences section fascinated him. Later, he was a little mad that they put a sign up asking people not to sit in or stand in the tyrannosaur footprint.
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One very cool new exhibit was sponsored by Microsoft – it's a mock-up of the “cockpit†of the Wright Flyer, linked to a huge projection screen and M$ Flight Simulator 2004. The Wright Flyer was very difficult to fly – not so bad climbing and leveling off (although it would stall very easily), but banking (by weight-shifting) was usually disastrous for us. Friday afternoons and evenings the museum is mostly empty, so we all had plenty of chances to try it.