Sit down, Maddy.
November 21, 2003 by Jay

Jack is here!!

Things have finally calmed down enough for me to update everyone and the good news. Jack was born on November 3, 2003 at 11:14 am and came in at 6.12 ounces and 20 inches. Everything went pretty well and mom and baby are doing great. See the Gallery for pics of this beautiful boy!

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July 18, 2003 by Jay

The Kick

Well, things have been going very smoothly so far…we saw the good doctor last week and he actually moved our due date up 9 days from November 21 to November 12 – which is cool. I put up 3 scans of some sonogram pics I managed to get my hands on. You can see them here. November 12th is also Neil Young and Grace Kelly’s birthday, which is nice.

Check out the link over there on the left, the baby registry is now online. Baby Jack needs stuff so don’t be shy (or cheap).

But the big news today was the “Kick”. After weeks of waiting for the baby to kick for the first time, it finally happened! And they told us it would happen this week too. And we’re about to leave to see everybody’s favorite, James Taylor. Another great day.

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July 18, 2003 by Jay

Sweet Baby Jack

You can never go wrong with a James Taylor concert. The guy doesn’t throw you any curve balls and he plays every song like it’s the last time he’s playing it. You have to imagine he’s played “Up On The Roof” 10 billion times and I’ve heard about half of those and last night was still the best version (save for the “Concert for NY” performance with the Paul Schaffer band, now that was good). He did have a couple of new faces in his band this time including Lou “Blue” Marini from the Blues Brothers Band on saxophone and Steve Gadd, who’s played with EVERYONE, on drums. They both sounded great and those backup singers! Arnold McCuller, that guy can sing.

Couple of notes: the only thing bigger than the woman on my side was the woman on Jen’s side. Sweet people but we were kinda squeezed out of our seats. The security there was nice enough to let us sit in an empty box section. Those were some comfortable seats. The other extraordinary thing was while James is playing “Carolina”, Darien Lake started their nightly fireworks display. Him and his guitar player seemed to get a real kick out of this and watched it as they played and as the fireworks are going off, he sings the line “Hey babe, the sky’s on fire…” with the same look on his face that I had, “wow, that was cool.” He didn’t finish the line, just left it there.

Another thing about James is he talks a lot during his shows, he’s probably one of few major concert entertainers that can get away with that because he talks so slow. You have to talk reeeeally slow for it to come threw on those PA speakers where people can understand you. We could hear him saying goodnight to the crowd as we walked to our cars under a beautiful summer night sky to my kick ass parking spot pointing right at the exit.

Jack’s first show was a huge success.

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June 27, 2003 by Jay

What a week!

A couple of amazing things happened for me this week and it’s tough to even say which one I’m more proud of.

Yesterday marked mine and Jen’s 4 year wedding anniversary. I’m not so much “amazed” by that since I see us being together for a long time and it’s no wonder we’ve made it this far. To put it into context, I bought Jen our cats, Socks and Boo, for her birthday 7 years ago just after we moved in together. It seems like yesterday and though we’ve gone through everything a normal couple goes through, I can only remember great times and A LOT of fun together. I think about Woodstock ’94 and what a grueling adventure that was and how we did it together. I look forward to what the future holds for us as we wait for the baby to arrive.

Which brings me to the second amazing event that happened this week. We got to meet Jack. Monday we went for our first sonogram where we found out that not only is our baby healthy, he’s also A BOY!! So not only do we now know we’re having a boy (runs on my side of the family apparently), but we’ve picked out a name: John (Jack) Ronan Gerland. Being able to refer to the baby as a him and even further, as Jack, seems so right to both of us. One of the pros they say of finding out the sex of your baby before the birth is the ability to bond with him or her on another level and I truly believe that. When Jack finally comes, he won’t be a stranger but rather that expected loved one you await to arrive at your door. Now that’s amazing.

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May 30, 2003 by Jay

Ok, the BIG news!!

Won’t even beat around the bush, WE’RE PREGNANT!!! Well, I’m not but Jen is and folks, we couldn’t be happier!

As of today, we’re starting week 16 and everyone’s healthy and happy. The due date is November 21, 2003 so we’ve still got a few months to go before the big day.

If you know me, then you probably already know the BIG news so Jen and I would like to say thanks to everyone that called and sent cards and gifts. Thank you!

It’s pretty wild to have onesies, rattles and bibs around the house already. In the first few months, not a whole lot goes on and the whole thing about having a child is sort of abstract so having these things around is an eye opener, to say the least.

I’m adding a countdown ticker to the page as well as a voting system so you can cast your vote as to the sex of the baby. And if you haven’t noticed already, there are two new icons to the top-left for changing the background color of this page. Enjoy! And stay tuned!!

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