Mack's a week old!

It's hard to comprehend how much life has changed in a week. The birth was such a whirlwind that I think it really hit me for the first time this morning. Katie and I were up for the 4:30 am feeding, which was a particularly long one. I went back to bed at 5, and was dozing back to sleep when I heard an airplane pass over the house (it's rare that we hear planes so it stood out hearing one so early). I kinda snapped back to reality as I realized it was likely the red-eye coming in from LAX, the one that leaves LAX at 10:30 PM, the one you can connect to via the 8:30 SFO, 7:00 SEA, or 5:45 YVR. That was my bread-and-butter flight for years, but it couldn't feel further away from reality right now...

This was a yawn, thank God. He really doesn't cry much at all. We're lucky so far...

We've vowed to raise Mack as part of our life, instead of dropping our lives to cater to his. As a result, he's exposed to all kinds of good noises and stimuli around Casa De Goedde. Movies, vacuum cleaners, dog kisses, he sleeps through it all. He'll cover his eyes when it's too bright for him to sleep, that's about it. He's in the process of that here.

Here's Mack's room. Baby blue and chocolate. Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, SPY Fox and Freddi Fish (characters from Humongous Entertainment games, my first job in the games industry) look out for him. A couple other cool things, Katie supplied the giant Good NeighBEAR from her former life as a State Farm agent. She also has a cool pedal car and a bunch of smaller collectibles that he'll break within 2 months of crawling... :-) You can also see a map on the wall, it used to hang in my grandfather's home office. He was a big-wig at Boeing and traveled the world extensively back when that wasn't as common as it is today. He used to send me postcards from everywhere he went so I could collect the stamps. Anyway, this map has push pins marking all the cities he'd visited and I remember imagining what they were all like as I pointed and asked questions. Back to today, I've been taking advantage of the time off to get the house whipped into shape and I found the map in the garage. Katie suggested we hang it in Mack's room, using a new color of push pin for my travels and one for Mack's upcoming adventures. My mother has made quilts in her spare time for as long as I can remember. She had a group of ladies from St Ed's who met every week to work on them, and they'd rotate through the recipients. I think the meetings were more about drinking wine, smoking cigarettes and gossip worthy of TMZ, but you know us Catholics, we need an excuse... Of course, babies and weddings always trumped the normal rotation. My folks moved out of the hood a few years ago, but I'm glad to see she's still quilting. This thing is pretty amazing. In the photo below you can see Katie and my names, plus an open space in the middle for Mack. You can also see the incredible detail in the stitching. I think it was driving mom crazy that we waited so long to name him, so she sent it ahead of the birth, and we'll bring it back at Thanksgiving to get his name added. Sometimes I wonder if I'm adopted. Those of you that have golfed with me know I don't have this level of patience...


That's it for now. We'll write again when Mack opens our eyes in a whole new way. I expect that will be tomorrow....