our sweet milk mouth girl

one of my favorite things about having this new little girl is feeding her and the milk mustache that always follows. i love it. she is such a good girl and for the most part only cries when she needs to be changed or fed. we feel so lucky to have such a good baby.

Astrid Ella VanWagenen

6 lbs 12 oz
20 in

Today was her first check up and she now weighs in at 7.1 lbs

we've got her!

Please don't be jealous of my past fierceomness

I don't think 'fierceomness' is a word, and if it is I certainly didn't spell it right, but the beard deserves its own word and perhaps its own whole language. Jasmine dug these up the other day and I remembered how good things were before I became a lawyer. Also, I think Jasmine might go into labor tonight.

No Country for Old Men

Have you seen this movie? Set in a small Texas border town and the surrounding countryside, the story follows a psychopathic killer's efforts to track down a brief case of $2 million dollars that was lifted by a local trailer park resident who happened upon the scene of a massive drug deal gone wrong. The killer is played to harrowing effect by Javier Bardem (I think that's his name), who forces his victims to flip a coin and call heads or tales on their lives. The film will be remembered for its dark characters, brutal violence, and unorthodox plot. But particularly striking is the way the Coen brothers are able to integrate the landscape and geography of west Texas into the story in a way that makes you feel it is the only setting where a story like this could happen; the only place on earth that could provide a venue for a man like Bardem to blow up cars and trucks by stuffing gasoline-soaked rags into gas tanks after lighting them on fire. The only place where the murder weapon of choice is a air compression tank and hose with enough pressure to blow a quarter through the skull of an unsuspecting cattle rancher or gas station attendent. My wife is from west Texas and tells wonderful stories of her family's cars being stolen on a regular basis there. After their third car was stolen, the family resorted to physically chaining the car to a metal post cemented in the ground. Her father, awoke one night to the roar of a revving engine and a saw working its way through metal. He rushed outside with a loaded handgun which he kept under the bed only to see their van being towed out of the metal post by one man in a truck while his co-conspirator worked away at chopping the metal post with his hack saw. The post broke and the truck tore off down the street leaving a trail of smoking, screeching tires. The family van already had a driver inside when the post broke and the sawman jumped in as Jasmine's dad fired shots in the air and watched helplessly as the van sped away. West Texas is harsh, lawless country where a man is forced to rely on no one but himself to survive. Just hope Javier Bardem is after you with his air canon when you visit.

Why my husband rocks my world

When you get married you just don't really think about what your husband will be like when you're pregnant (at least I didn't). I lucked out and got what I think has been the most stable and reassuring part about my pregnancy--Arthur.
In addition to being absolutely perfect during our pregnancy, Arthur is also 100% game for using cloth diapers. I can hardly think of one guy who really doesn't mind changing diapers, much less cloth ones.
Last week we got our order (above). I can't get over just how cute cloth diapers are!
Like our birth plan, if they don't work, they don't work. But we're really excited to give them a shot.

As for Arthur's last post about "Fun Road Trips to CA", I'd rather not share and relive the nightmare (just the last day), but I'll give a very brief recap.
Arthur and his friends thought it would be really fun to go visit Paul Florence in San Francisco over a weekend. Wives were invited but I was the only one who actually ended up going. We were super excited to see the Florence's new place in Sausalito (gorgeous). We left SL really late on Friday and arrived in SF at about 3am. Paul was great and was our city tour guide all of Saturday. We left somewhat early on Sunday. On the road home all was well discussing the square mileage that would be needed to accommodate all 6 billion people in the world if everyone was standing in a 2ftx2ft box. Before we knew it, I-80 was a campground at Lake Tahoe. (Sidenote: This was the day I started to feel morning sickness). Furious and swearing, I packed up the boys and got in the driver's seat and drove for a good 5 hours. We arrived in SL 14 hours later. Needless to say, it was just too much fun for a sick pregnant lady.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgivings will, for me, be forever associated with long road trips to California to play soccer. Or to coach soccer. For the second year in a row, Jasmine and I will be several states apart on this holiday weekend. She in Colorado to show off her belly to her grandparents, and me in San Diego for the Nomads soccer tournament. It is my last such tournament with this group of boys, many of whom I've coached for over four years now. They are good lads...all of them. Last year I made the mistake of walking three of them around Tihijuana for an evening. We only had to reject 5 or 6 offers to go into the topless bars and 5 or 6 more for smoking hash and 10 or 20 for illegal firecrackers and switchblade knives. My first trip to TJ was also on the tale end of a trip to Nomads. My dad drove me and several teammates down in our old red and grey Suburban. We ate the buffet at Ceasar's Palace in Vegas on the way down and on the way home, the transmission dropped somewhere in the high desert between Victorville and Barstow. My Pops had to hitchhike back to Victorville to rent a car while we watched football and ate pizza. Sandwiched in between was a trip across the border, my first of any kind, and I was fascinated. Phil Snyder was our goalkeeper and was literally, not approximately, two feet and 80 lbs bigger than me. He listened to Rush, taught 30 year olds how to play the drums, had a brother in prison, and made me borrow some Andrew Dice Clay tapes that I was afraid to listen because I was fairly innocent then. PhiI smuggled switchblades and M-80's and other contraband back across the border. All I smuggled was a brown stain in my extra mediums from eating tacos and being stuck in traffic for three ours trying to cross. Phil's remarkable maturity in haggling with the street vendors only highlighted the embarassement of a kid who'd just crapped his pants. No matter. I tossed my drawers in the first gas station dumpster we passed and Phil acted like crapping your pants was the norm for a trip down south.

Next time on "Fun California Road Trips" we'll explain the picture of Jasmine and I walking on what we thought at the time was I-80 eastbound but was really just a campground at Lake Tahoe.