I'm back at work, and mom is gone. We have a couple days before Laura gets here. Beth is hurting...bad...and relying on friends to help with Alex during the day. Mom needed a lot of help too since just a few days after coming to cold (??), damp Indiana she came down with a sinus infection and bronchitis. Melissa is adorable. Alex is jealous.

We're home. In contrast to when Alex was born, when we thought 'wouldn't it be nice if we could stay longer' this time we thought 'I wish we could go home' during the hospital stay. The "bed" for daddies to sleep on in the room is a recliner and the least comfortable thing I've ever slept on. Melissa finally left NICU just yesterday, once her blood sugar was finally under control. Mom came up yesterday to visit and brought Alex. She says everything is going pretty well with him and he hasn't been too fussy or too hard to feed or get down to sleep. I'm really glad, I was worried he would be totally freaked out by not seeing mommy or daddy at all for a few days. Beth was very happy to see him too. So was I. They visited most of the day before heading home again.

I ran home again tonight, since Melissa is still in NICU and Beth has all the nurses she needs. We figured it would be a help for mom to have me here overnight with Alex since she's not used to taking care of babies (the last one was me).

Melissa Irene was born today at 2:11 pm, weighing 6 lbs 10 oz, and 18 3/4 inches long. She looks a lot like Beth. She is staying in the NICU for now, so they can monitor her blood sugar, which was apparently way off. Mom is in town; she got to Warsaw tonight and I ran home to meet her. I was running late so we met at the Applebee's. I then ran to pick up Alex (left with friends again), and he had just gone down when I got there. He woke up right away, and as soon as he saw me he just cried and cried. Poor guy has hardly seen daddy in 2 days and hasn't seen mommy at all. If only he knew what he was in for.

I'm having a bit of deja vu. Beth had a doctor's appointment at 11:30 this morning. I had to get a meeting at work rescheduled so I could go with her, and as it turns out I never made it back for the meeting anyway. Her blood pressure was just about through the roof, so the doctor measured it a few more times, then sent her over to Lutheran Hospital for them to monitor it for a few hours. Unless she was lying on her left side, it wouldn't come down. So, the doctor's decision was, we're having a baby tomorrow. She's still at the hospital. I had to run home to get Alex (we left him with friends today) and pick up all the things she needs for the stay. My mom was planning on coming out to help with Alex while Beth was in the hospital, but she wasn't planning on coming so soon. (Mom, we have a date for the baby! Oh good! When is it? Tomorrow. Tomorrow?) So she called the airline and did some fanagaling, and will be here tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm going to make a lot of trips between Fort Wayne and here.

The softball team got it's first win of the season last night! I think we're 1-5 now. I still haven't gotten on track with batting. Still getting some hits, but most are weak ones that I beat the throw. Last night I was 2-3, but could have been 3-3 except I slipped and fell down in the batters box after hitting the ball. I must get myself some cleats. Overall, I'm batting 7-for-13.

Beth and I went camping last weekend over the Memorial Day holiday, and it just didn't work out. We no longer have a vehicle that is capable of pulling our camper (see 11-16-2003) since we never got the truck we were planning on getting this spring. Anyway, because of that, we got a friend to pull the camper up to Potato Creek State Park for us, but Friday evening got here and he had never shown up. So, we were hoping for the phone call from someone asking where we were. It finally came..."Hey, when are you guys getting here?" "Terry's supposed to pull our camper for us." "But Terry's here!" So I don't know what happened there. Anyway, Jack had to run home for something so he brought someone else and brought us his Expedition so we could pull the camper up ourselves with that. We got to the park at about 9 or 10, busied ourselves with setting up the camper, Alex (who had slept the way up) woke up and was very upset, it's cold, and I can't get the heater in the camper to work because as it turns out we are out of propane. I never checked it. So we unhooked a tank and went looking for somewhere to get it filled (nowhere); failing that since it was way too cold to stay in the camper with no heat, we went home for the night. Saturday I got the tanks filled and we made it back up there by about 11 am. The heater worked, but it took all day to get the hot water heater running. Fortunately one of the guys camping with us is an appliance repairman so he adjusted the pilot settings and got it fired up. The overnight stay was pleasant enough. Sunday, however, was not so good. A whole group of us went geocaching in the morning, intending to seek out several caches, but as we found the first one (which involved a lot of bushwacking we wouldn't have needed to do if we'd had a trail map) the sky opened up and it started raining. Hard. It proceeded to rain most of the day. The awning of the camper, of course, broke. A bracket pulled right off the wall of the camper. So the awning was put up to prevent further damage. Everything we had with us was inside to keep it dry. We're all inside, with a squirmy kid who hates being cooped up, and it's raining so hard we can't have any windows or vent open or we get soaked. The bed got wet because a window wasn't shut tight. The camper kept getting smaller and smaller. Alex's 2-year molars are coming in so he's not feeling good. We made a trip to the mall in Mishawaka just to get out of the camper. The forecast was for more and more rain...so by about 6 pm we hooked up and left. And drove through a horrible thunder and lightning storm all the way home. So, we camped 1 night of the 3 we paid for, spent all that money on groceries for camping, and it took $48.04 to refill the Expedition with gas. Camping this year was a bust.