My Baby Is Turning Three Today

I can't believe that it has been three years already.  When my wife was pregnant, I was so worried that I wasn't spending enough "tummy time" with my daughter to be.  I had the best of intentions as an expectant father.  I pictured myself putting headphones against my wife's belly every evening and playing classical music each night before bedtime.  Or, playing my favorite Beatles songs and Bob Marley tunes so that she would be humming 'Strawberry Fields Forever' or 'Three Little Birds' shortly after birth.  Sadly, life got in the way, and boy did I ever feel guilty about it.

Up until the birth, I kept asking my wife, "What if she doesn't recognize my voice".  "What if she doesn't know who I am?"  I'm sure I was a huge pain in the ass toward the end.

Lennon was born at 4:35AM on May 11th, 2008.  My wife had some complications with the birth, so she wasn't able to spend much time with my daughter right after the delivery.  I accompanied one of the nurses to the NICU with my daughter to have her weighed and measured.  All the way down the elevator and down the hall, my little girl was quiet.  When we entered the NICU, she started crying.

I leaned down next to her and whispered, "It's OK honey.  Daddy's here."  She immediately stopped crying and turned to look for me.  She recognized my voice!  It was the greatest moment of my life.

The next morning when my wife got the OK from her doctor to go downstairs to visit the NICU for the first time, we were scrubbing in.  Before you could enter the room, there was a 10 minute scrub in procedure that you had to follow every time, as if you were about to begin an open heart surgery.  In the NICU, there were 24 babies at the time, and it seemed like all of them were crying.  There was one cry in particular that stood out.  "You hear that baby?" I said, "That one's Lennon."  Sure enough, out of all of the infants in the room, I picked out my daughter's cry.  It's not that I had remembered it, but that I had instinctually recognized my child out of the group.

Years later, I still feel like the daddy lion sometimes, although, more often than not, it seems like I'm grabbing my cub by the scruff of the neck more than anything else.

Today, we spent the day running around town, having the "Happy 3rd Birthdayorama!"  We went to her favorite restaurant for lunch.  Saw three quarters of 'Rango' at the dollar theater. (That's right, I said three quarters.)  Went to Nana and Buppa's to visit.  I must say though, when she doesn't have her nap, she can get like an abusive drunk midget carny at certain times of the day.  She'll test your patience, and your ability to drive while having shoes thrown at the back of your head.

Happy Birthday, John.

Had John Lennon still been alive, he would have turned 69 today. On the day when the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is announced, I think it is a great time to take a moment to think about what another man could have accomplished had his life not been cut short.

To steal a line from Elvis Costello, all Lennon ever preached was "Peace, Love and Understanding".

I grew up listening to the Beatles. My parents weren't "die hard fans", but "admirers and listeners". My mother saw them perform on Ed Sullivan. She had a couple of their 45s and the 'Rubber Soul' LP, which she later passed on to me. By the time I came along, my mom had moved on to Motown, and my dad to country music. Most of what I knew of the Beatles I discovered myself in my early teens.

I had picked up their greatest hits CDs; the red and blue albums. I realized very quickly that I was a fan of the blue album and not the red. It was very easy to tell when they were starting to find themselves; as men, as musicians, spiritually and psychedelically. It was also very easy to tell which songs were written by Paul and which ones were written by John. Paul was simple....'Blackbird', 'Yesterday', 'Hey Jude'. John was fuckin' out there.....'I Am The Walrus', 'Strawberry Fields Forever', 'A Day In The Life'. It took 10 seconds of a song to tell if Paul wrote it or John wrote it.

By the time I met my wife, I was such a Beatles fan, simply because of John Lennon, their music made up a large part of what I had listened to. Luckily for me, I met someone that loved his music just as much as I did. We enjoyed his music so much that we decided that, when the time came for us to get married, we would walk down the aisle to Lennon's songs.

And when it came to love, John could blow the doors off of a love song. During his solo career, he wrote and recorded a demo song for his wife, Yoko, called 'Real Love'. The demo was eventually released, but didn't get any airplay. It was actually featured in the movie 'Funny People', with Adam Sandler singing it, and it sounded quite nice.

Two years ago, a benefit CD was released called 'Instant Karma'. It was a CD of all John Lennon covers by various artists to help relief efforts in Darfur. On that CD, Regina Spektor, covered the song Real Love. You would think John personally wrote the song for her 35 years ago to sing it. Take a listen:



We were driving in our car the first time we heard it. We had to pull over because were crying so hard. We couldn't stop smiling and kissing each other. We knew it was the song that Jessi was meant to walk down the aisle to.

But what for after the kissing of the bride? We both felt that John had written, in our opinion, what I think is probably the most over the top, celebratory, philosophical songs of all time with the most simple message of any song in the 20th century: 'All You Need Is Love'. With the horns coming in at the beginning of the song, announcing to the world for the first time in history "Mr. and Mrs. Adam Hall". We felt it was the perfect match. I love this video. It amazes me that this song...the horns...the strings...the band...the extras...all were on one take, one track. Music isn't recorded like that anymore. It never will be again.



It was the perfect wedding plan. Immediately following the ceremony, we were going to see Cirque du Soleil's Beatle's 'Love'. One hell of a night planned. Then, we found out a little one was on the way. Jessi would have been 7 months pregnant at the time of the wedding. Early March, low 90s, Las Vegas...not a good idea. Within two weeks of finding out about the baby, we had already decided on a name: Lennon. It would been Lennon Ruth for a girl, or Lennon Matthew for a boy. Not because of his music, but what he stood for.

He was the embodiment of peace. 'Give peace a chance'. 'All you need is love'. He even released a Christmas song that was more about ending the Vietnam War than it was about Christmas. He used his celebrity to get media attention. He used his talent to get people thinking.

The day I realized what we were going to name our child I got a tattoo. It is a replica of the Lennon memorial in Central Park in New York City.



So John, not only today, October 9th, but because of my beautiful daughter, I think of you and thank you for showing me that I'm a "dreamer" too.

Antiques, Matthew McConaughey, and the Find of the Century

Wow....it's been one hell of a weekend.....let me tell you....

In fact, from this point forward, I'm not using punctuation. It has been that bad. Try to follow.

saturday jessi had a spinning class....spinning as in yarn...not as in cycling...so we went down to downtown mesa to a yarn and fiber store by ourselves and had mom and dad babysit the little one for the day. that was nice. while she was spinning...i thought i would stroll down main street and check out some of the shops since ive never been down main street before...very impressed.... the had a couple of really nice antique shops. one was enormous.....it was two levels...had to have had 2-300 vendors in there....found some old thomas edison phonograph plates that were a hundred years old or more....they were only selling for $6 a piece....probably since they couldnt be played and were practically useless...found a 45 of john lennons imagine on the capitol record label...vendor had it for sale for $2.99....flawless condition....knew it was rare because not too many were released on that label....they were mostly released on apple...looked it up online and it turns out its worth about $35...not bad

also found a really nice scrapbooking store....had some cool stuff that gave me a lot of good ideas....ive been coming up with some great ideas lately for some projects....some art pieces....jewelery....crafts....and found some things at that store that would work really well into some of the things im working on.....

so jessis class was finished and we decided to head up to bookmans to try to trade some of my xbox stuff.....sick and tired of trying to sell it on craigslist.....thats a story for another blog.....found a HIM lp in pink vinyl for $10....great deal....also found john and yoko double fantasy and the 12" vinyl of princes raspberry beret.....good day for me so far.....but thats when it started to get weird.....

we go around the corner to grab lunch....suddenly....with no warning...no provocation.....i start talking like matthew mcconaughey....like im channeling his voice or something....its strange but i think its sort of funny at first....i start saying things like "alright alright alright" and "i think now might be a good time for me to take my shirt off".....but after about a minute and a half....it starts to get really annoying....my wife thinks im fucking around....shes getting pissed off....im trying to stop...but i cant......its completely involuntary.....THIS WENT ON FOR MORE THAN TWENTY FUCKING MINUTES....im ordering my food as matthew mcconaughey.....im asking for a refill on my mountain dew as MATTHEW FUCKING MCCONAUGHEY.....i stopped talking....completely....my only form of communication for the next half hour was charades....i opened my mouth again 30 minutes later and he had left my brain and i was back....it was the most bizarre thing i had ever experienced....

next door to the restaurant we were at was a goodwill store....the sign on the window gave us the impression that it was 50% off that day so we walked in to see what was available....jessi went straight to the mens sweaters to see if there were any that the wool or cotton could be salvaged from....i went directly to the vinyl. i have some art projects in the works that involve old records and im always curious to see what these stores have. the bottom shelf of the rack caught my eye. there was a kiss album in japanese. i thought that was cool...but since i was never a kiss fan i set it aside. underneath the kiss album was led zeppelin 4....one of my favorites..since it had stairway to heaven....already have a copy of it but i could always use another for my project so i set it in a pile beside me. beneath that was the beatles....let it be. i nearly pissed myself. finding a vinyl copy of a beatles album in a store.....in a goodwill no less....was like getting video of bigfoot. my heart started to race.....i started going through the stack. meet the beatles.....sgt peppers....abby road...let it be.....the beatles second album....the beatles rarities....rubber soul...altogether.....10 beatles albums and 8 led zeppelin albums...all in mint condition...as if they had never been played....

i sat down on a couch in the furniture section just to pull each album out from the jacket to make sure the correct album was in there and it wasnt a con or a mistake....i was almost crying with excitement....i had a half dozen people come by to ask me if i had found those records in that store....it was at that time that jessi told me to hell with checking things.....put them in the cart and lets get out of there before someone tries to take them from us....most of the records were $2.99 or $3.99 each....but i paid as little as 99 cents for a couple of them....unbelievable.....

went to a diamondbacks game yesterday....it was fun to take the baby....but very trying on my nerves....way too much noise....my tourettes seems to be doing a lot better....still having a few series of ticks a day but not a serious as they once were. my doctor originally had me on 25 mg of topamax twice a day...now im at 125/100/100 a day....and still not tick free.....i am stuttering like crazy....like porky pig sometimes.....where i just have to use an alternate word to finish the sentence....my conversations with my wife now involve a lot of charades...so im still really fucked up...but im trying....im trying