Baby Pics

On Sunday, November 30, at 3:02pm, we welcomed Isaac Jay Dixon to the world. He weighed in at 8lb 1oz and 20.5 inches long. I'm sure he'll be embarrassed about this for the rest of his life, but that's smaller than his big sister was when she was born. Here are some photos.

We chose the names for a couple of reasons. His first name, Isaac, Rach came up with. She's actually been calling him Isaac for months. It was very thoughtful of her to at least let me pretend to have a say in the matter, but the thing that finally got me was the Hebrew meaning of the name. It means "he will laugh". Hopefully, that means that he will be a light-hearted and happy person throughout his life, and bring joy to all around him. It may also mean that "he will laugh at his dad" for being a dork.

His middle name, Jay, is the long version of "J". That came from two places. First, I didn't want to have Jeremy as his middle name. I didn't particularly like my name when I was a kid* and just didn't like the sound of Isaac Jeremy Dixon. But we liked the idea of naming him after me, so we just went with Jay. Second, my dad's middle name is J. Not Jay, just J. So he's also kind of named after my dad, but without the lifelong challenge of explaining that his middle name is just a single letter, and no, it's not short for anything.

As you can tell, M is pretty excited to have a baby brother around. She hasn't yet figured out that she's supposed to be jealous.

*So, back to the story of why I didn't like my name to be Jeremy when I was a kid. At the time, I didn't reallize that is was a very trendy name in the early 70's - I just thought it was weird. And I don't know if I was just too shy or quiet or if I mumbled when I was a teenager introducing myself at dances and being called 'Jerry' or 'Jared' for the rest of the evening. So I'd spend the whole night being embarrassed that the new people I'd met still didn't know my name. Don't know why I felt obligated to include that particular piece of my personal history. Maybe because I've been up since about 4am and am slightly delerious.

Musings of a Future Father

From Pacific Bell, the time is: 9:49pm. Actually, that's just what my computer says. And nobody remembers the days when you used to have to call the phone company to find out what time it really was. But I remember that, so I think it was funny. So there.

I just put back together the changing table and crib that we've been kicking around between closets for the past 3 years. And I'm musing. For those of you (like me) who aren't quite sure what the word 'musing' means, I'd recommend going to google or wiktionary to look it up. I might go look it up later, but right now I'm busy with my musings.

I've realized that I only have 3 Saturdays remaining before life as I know it ends. And only 7 more Saturdays after that until the world as we know it comes to an end (the Inauguration is January 22nd I think). But that's a different post. Back to the musing.

It's funny how I've started to measure time in Saturdays. Saturdays are filled with soccer games, grocery shopping, cleaning the house, doing laundry, and mowing the lawn. And on the really good Saturdays, a trip to Sea World or a dive or two in my favorite ocean (hint: it's not the Indian ocean). In other words, Saturdays are the days that are mostly spent with my wife and/or daughter and/or just having fun (these things are NOT mutually exclusive). During the week it seems like by the time we're all together we're so tired we just want to eat and then sleep. However, Saturdays, we get to do more of what we want to do. AND, to make matters even more muse-worthy, most Saturdays are followed by Sundays, which means even more time to hang with the fam. HAH! Ponder that for a minute.

What was I musing about? Oh, right, fatherhood.

So in about 3 weeks (or less) we're going to have another teeny-tiny little human living with us, and he probably won't be very independent (although I keep hoping we'll get lucky and he'll pop out already potty-trained and able to make himself a PBJ). And for at least a little while (18 years or so) he'll demand pretty much all of our attention and try to prevent us from ever sleeping soundly again. Not that I mind. I mean really, that was kind of the plan all along. Besides, who needs sleep anyway? Like my oldest brother has wisely advised, 'you can sleep when you're dead'. Muse on that deep thought for a while. (And enjoy Ed Robertson of BNL singing my theme song for the next year or so.)


I guess I thought I'd be more prepared this time around. But instead, I feel just as unprepared - I just know that I'm unprepared this time. Last time I was ignorantly unprepared, this time I'm unprepared with a full knowledge of my unpreparedness. I could muse about my lack of preparation for a while, but I think I'll muse on something else.

We've been musing on names for a few months. Actually, I should say that I've been musing on names for a few months. R and M have already picked out the name and I'm just pretending like I have a say and thinking of all the really cool boy names out there. I still think Moses would be great name, but R using 'Good Moses' as a substitute swear word for the last 8 years has kind of ruined it for me. I also have leanings towards 'Fernando' and 'Yuri', but I'm not sure I could spell them correctly. Probably the MOST important thing to consider in baby name selection is the 'Normal Mormon Husband's list of baby naming rules. See here: <http://mormonhusbands.blogspot.com/2008/03/baby-naming-manifest-verison-10.html>

With three Saturdays to go, I'm going to attempt to document what weekends are like. Since I'm not sure they'll ever be the same. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to do a museworthy documentary of a normal weekend for the sake of posterity. It'll be like Twitter, but with pictures. And musings. What IS Twitter anyway? And what does 'musing' mean?