8:28 am

We arrived at the hospital this morning, (only 15 minutes late) for our scheduled 7:00am induction.  After settling in (me), getting hooked up to machines and monitors (mommy), it’s go time (all of us!).  I’ll be capturing most of my thoughts throughout the day but I had to start off with a few reflections from the past few days.

The past few weeks has been a bit of a blur… we’ve been preparing the house for the arrival of our third child and finally it seemed to all come together.  Diapers?  Check.  Bassinet?  Check.  Looming sense of doom at the prospect of returning to the land of no sleep, poop, and crying?  Check.  There have been quite a few times in the past few weeks as the date has drawn near where my wife and I turned to each other and asked…what were we thinking again?  But then of course Olivia would do something extraordinarily Olivia (meaning, potentially mischievous, but usually funny, and then flash that million dollar smile).  Or Riley would impress us yet again with a comment or action of leadership (like her prayer the other night for her and her siblings to be leaders who make good decisions).  We’re blessed, we can’t deny it, with 2 and now a coming third wonderful baby.

I’ve also been pondering what it means to bring another black daughter into this world, given all that’s going on these days, socially, economically, politically, you name it.  It’s a crazy world out there.  In some ways that’s a beautiful thing, because what is the journey of life without a little adventure right?  But, in other ways as a parent I grow more concerned about the need to insulate my children from the world around them, protect them from the bad and invite the good.  Yet I keep going back to our core philosophy as parents: children are a gift from God.  As gifts, they will certainly bring us and others enjoyment, but a crucial part of our job is to responsibly help them contribute their gifts to the world.  That’s the part of parenting that I love… now time to welcome this little baby into the world.