Our 5 Top 5's

With the help of stephanie, I have come up with 5 top 5 lists relating to the arrival of Brayden:

Top 5 Surprises so far with Brayden:

5. You know what they say about guys with big hands? What.....they wear big gloves. My child is Sasquatch, at 2 weeks old he easily has the hands and feet of a 5 week old.

4. Brayden still isn't cordless, we're 2 weeks out and he still hasn't lost his umbilical cord yet. We can't wait for it to fall off so we can give him a real bath (he's not fond of the sponge variety) and we can throw on a diaper without worrying about yanking it off. Plus we're dying to see if its going to be an innie or an outtie (for the record, stephanie thinks mine looks like someone stabbed there finger into my belly and it stuck that way, apparently i have a waaaaaaay-innie). NOTE: As I wrote this his cord actually fell off, great timing, and its an innie for the record.

3. Parpdon me, do you happen to have any Grey Poop'on? I'd heard the stories, but nothing can prepare you for the real deal.


2. Time Ratio Breakdown: Broken down by hours, brayden's average day is roughly 19 hrs sleeping, 5 hours on the boob, and 1 hour alert (yes, it is 25 hrs, but i give him about an hour of booby sleep a day).

We actually have a tie for the number one spot:

1A. Brayden's "other" Mom: Shelby has taken on the unofficial role of brayden's mom-in-waiting. She is absolutely obsessed with brayden, everywhere he goes, she is right behind to make sure he is alright. From a dog who gets scared of her own tail wagging, this comes as an absolute shocker.



1B. The Hair: That he has any at all was surprise enough (it took margaret 2 years to grow hers), but that he had a head full of dark brown hair really took us by surprise. he's in the running with TomKat's Suri for the upcoming baby Revlon commercial.

( More Brayden Pictures )

Top 5 Reasons It's Great to be Brayden:

5. The Help: He's got 2 adults and 2 dogs waiting on him hand and foot (which is a big task if you recall Number 5 of the "Surprises" list).

4. Hand-me-downs: Enough Smocking and Gingham to clothe all the children in China at his disposal. And he makes them ALL look good.

3. The Fact that UPS now has a dedicated route to our house: Our readers generosity has been astounding. Brayden hasn't quite concurred box knife yet, but we're working on it.

2. He's living every college kids dream: Brayden sleeps and drinks all day, not too bad.

1. Two words: Sponge Baths

Top 5 Reasons Its No Fun to be Brayden:

5. His best friend, aside from us and the dogs, is a stuffed Giraffe, who doesn't talk.

4. We've read him the same book about 5 times already, and those silly monkeys still keep falling off the bed.

3. Neither his mom nor his dad are particularly good singers (see point #4).

2. All that milk and no cookies (or ice-cream or chocolate for that matter.....of which we have plenty)

1. Diaper changes don't come quick enough (see #3 from "Surprises" above)

Top 5 Numbers Between 1 and 5:

5. The number 2, Jeff's number in baseball, always thought it was a pretty good number).

4. The number 3, The Babe's number (which is remotely related to Brayden). Shout-out to Jonathan Ruth, the great-great nephew of the great George Herman "Babe" Ruth.

3. The number 2.5, its the mid-way point between 1 and 5.

2. The number 5, Go big or go home.

1. The number 1, there's only 1 number 1, because if you had 2 then it'd be 11 (admittedly stolen from Talladega Nights).

Top 5 Top 5 Lists in the Jumping Off a Bridge Blog:

5. Top 5 Top 5 Lists
4. Reasons its No Fun to be Brayden.
3. None, they all pretty much are lame.
2. Reasons its Good to be Brayden.
1. Surprises Top 5.

I promise that was my last top 5 list for a while.

What Just Happened?!?!?!?

I can't believe that a full week+ has already passed. They say that kids grow up extremely quickly, and if this first week is any indicator then they are VERY correct. Now I could go into an emotional schpeel about all the emotions that I have gone through in the last 7 days, but in reality, i don't think even the great author Martin Hanford could do an adequate job of describing how happy/proud/terrified/euphoric/energized/tired (all at once) that I have felt for the last week. So instead, I will tell you about what I think just happened, although if you talk to stephanie, you will probably get an entirely different set of details....

From what I can remember this whirlwind week started just about like every other one of our last few weekends, with our saturday ritual which had turned into our little running joke....cleaning the house, taking the dogs to the park, and making our "last trip to ... before brayden gets here" (with ... being Target, Whole Foods, etc.). Well this week the "..." happened to be trader joe's. about 20 minutes into our shopping expedition stephanie looks at me, with a little different look in her eye, perhaps a look of angst, and tells me she's having a contraction and has to go to the bathroom. In my head i'm thinking, oh my gosh, is she going to have a baby in the bathroom at TJ's? I mean they do have absolutely fabulous prices on specialty items, but not the most ideal place to welcome your son into the world. luckily a couple of minutes later stephanie emerged empty handed from the bathroom and we were on our way shopping.

Stephanie continued to have contractions throughout the day on saturday, and around 5pm we started to time them to see how frequently they were coming. We actually wrote them down so we could keep track of them in case i decided to blog about this....(4:25, 4:27, 4:45, 4:25, 4:00, ....). The whole time we're trying to coordinate the travel itineraries of Nana, Oma, and Opa. Not knowing for sure if these are the real deal made this a difficult task. And at around 7pm, after it was too late for Nana to catch the last flight out of Atlanta, we decided this baby is coming, tonight.

Now being the midwife that she is, stephanie was bound and determined to labor at home until she hit her goal of 4cm dilated. So we sat around all night, packing our bags for the hospital (we probably should have done this beforehand, but seeing as how Nana packed her's 30 days in advance we figured it evened out our procrastination). At about 2:30am, after around 10 hrs of constant 4 minute contractions, stephanie decided she'd had enough and so we took off for the hospital. at about 2:45, and and roughly a half-mile from the hospital, stephanie tells me she hasn't felt a contraction since we'd been in the car. 40 minutes, 2cm dialated, an 2 ambien later we were on our way home. Now i've never taken ambien, but I imagine that under normal circumstances it works much better than it did for stephanie saturday night. When we woke up around 8 or 9am stephanie was still in a bit of a daze and talking incoherently about some plan (from what I could gather anyway). luckily this daze seemed to only last a little while and she was quickly back to laboring away.

At this point Nana is already here, and Oma and Opa are over half way to DC so there is a little added incentive to get this baby out into the world, only problem. contraction times that had been so steady at 4 minutes apiece have dropped down to around 12 minutes. Now normally pain is better when spaced out, but when you're talking about labor, stephanie put it best with her statement "I can't wait to hurt". The contractions continued all day, varying in intensity and frequency, at one point reaching close to 45 minutes between. They picked up again toward the later part of the day so stephanie gave the midwife a call around 6:30pm. Her prescription? Take 3 glasses of wine and call me in the morning. Oma and Opa showed up around 7 to help with the first 3rd of the prescription. At this point the contractions really started to come on strong, although the only hint of it from stephanie was the tapping of her hand and a slight impediment to her speech. When 9 o'clock came around stephanie had decided she couldn't take any more, so we once again packed up the car and headed to the hospital. About 10 minutes into the drive stephanie looked over at me and said "I haven't had a contraction since we got in the car", so I'm thinking to myself o brother here we go again. But much to our delight, we were checked into the hospital to stay at around 9:30, at 4cm.

To help speed the labor our midwife broke stephanie's bag of water and we ambulated and showered for about an hour. At this point stephanie was ready to call in calvary for help (Dr. Shea the Anesthesiologist). That was the end of the contractual pains. We (I) decided it was time for a little sleep, we'd let the pitocin flowing through stephanie's veins do the heavy lifting of contractions through the night. Little did I know, at this point, that sleeping on this 4 foot pleather sofa would be the best sleep i'd get for the coming week. While I slept, stephanie stayed up to chat with Nana and her upcoming labor, she did manage a few hours sleep.

We woke up around 5 ready to start the pushing. Patrice, our midwife, came in to check the cervix one last time to make sure she was the full 10 cm. It turns out that she was only 9.5cm, with a small rim around one quarter of brayden's head. So she upped the pitocin and we waited it out another hour. Patrice came back at 6 to check the cervix again and realized that brayden was OP (sunny-side up, or face up for us non-OBGYNs). Well, apparently this makes the delivery a little harder. I went out to tell the very eager soon-to-be-grandparents-again that we were getting ready to start pushing. Patrice said that we should wait a little longer, and she got called away to help another patient deliver. About 5 minutes later we heard the screams of bloody murder coming from across the hall. Normally this wouldn't evoke this reaction, but I had to start laughing, knowing that Nana, Oma, and Opa were thinking this was stephanie. I went out to assure them that we were still status-quo. They were extremely relieved.

Around 7 Patrice arrived back in our room and told us it was time to get that baby out. She said that she had delivered several OP babies and she was confident she could get him out. So we started pushing, with 3 sets of 10 for each contraction. We pushed for about 30 minutes before Patrice took a break to tell us that brayden may be stuck. She called for the doctor to come in and advise. This only made stephanie push even harder, instead of 3 sets of 10 for each contraction stephanie stretched these out to 4 sets of 10, and when the doctor showed up it got extended even more to 4 sets of 12 to 15!!! I couldn't believe the effort she was putting forth. She could have lifted a bus off a baby, she could have straightened the leaning tower of pizza. I tried as hard as I could to hold back my emotions, and I found out later, that my counting was actually louder than stephanie.

At 9:06am on July 16, 2007 we welcomed into the world Brayden Michael deRijke. The doctors put him on the scale to weigh him, 9lbs 8 ozs. For those of you that heard he was only 9lbs, you are correct. 3 minutes later we realized there was a blanket on the scale, we reweighed him at 8lbs 15.8ozs, and 21 inches long.



A week and a thousand pictures later I still can't believe all thats happened.

Sorry Folks, Wally World Is Closed for Refurbishing

("these look like big, strong hands, don't they?", What movie?)

Due to the long awaited arrival of Brayden Michael deRijke at 9:06 am on Monday, July 16, 2007 (at 9 lbs. and 21 inches), Jumping Off A Bridge will be closed for Refurbishing until we can catch up on a little sleep (hopefully no longer than a week). After popular demand, picture "320" will be displayed here in the meantime to keep you satisfied. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well this one should buy me a week or so to catch up on my thoughts. I just hope i can remember them all so that I can share them with you.

hint on the quote for the pictures caption: Bastian, Atreju, Falkor

Customer Service to Sneeze At...

I just called Pepco to cancel our Power bill for the much anticipated move back to the A-T-L. With all of these new-fangled "computers" and the advent of the Internets its virtually impossible to talk to an actual person in customer service these days. Today, I was fortunate enough to talk to a lovely Pepco "employee" that i can only imagine is named "customer service terminal 7". I have to admit, she did have a pleasant voice, however, she might have been sleeping through her training. Here's how the call went:

Computer: "What would you like to do? Transfer Service? Terminate Service?"

Myself: "Terminate Service"

Computer: "You have selected Terminate Service, is this Correct?"

Myself: "Yes"

Computer: "When would you like to terminate services?"

Myself: "August 15th"

Computer: "You have selected July 15th, is this correct"

Myself: "No, AUGUST 15th" (I pronounciate this as clearly as I possibly can)

Computer: "You have selected August 3rd, is this Correct?"

Myself: "No", then i coughed

Computer: "You have selected August 12th, is this Correct?"

Perhaps I should have Sneezed...

Just another Manic Monday

Monday 7/12/2007-
ok, so i may not lead THE most exciting life in the world, but I have to say there aren't many days that I don't have some very interesting events take place...

So I'm the first one home monday night, which for the last 2 years means that I get the pleasure of walking the dogs to logan cirlce to take care of "business". Some days this is actually quite enjoyable, a time to relax and get some fresh air and a little exercise. Today, unfortunately, it was 98°F as I'm walking out the door, i think even the dogs wouldn't mind skipping the walks on days like today if I gave them the OK to "work from home", but I'd rather beat the heat deal with their, ugh..."conference calls"? (i couldn't think of a good work analogy for that one). So I leashed up the dogs and we were on our way.

This started out much like any other afternoon walk with jack hitting every fence, twig and stick from our place to Logan. Once at the circle, on que, shelby makes her way to the very edge of the circle (even on leash it freaks me out a little how close she gets with the cars screaming past her)to, I believe mountain dew puts it best, do-the-dew. Jack does his thing and we're on our way.......until we see one of the logan circle regulars screaming at some guy. He's yelling something about breaking his dogs leg. Sure enough we see Max laying on the ground, with his leg obviously broken or severely dislocated. It turns out that Max, a miniature pincher who's a regular at the park, was getting a little frisky with another dog at the park who was in heat. Well either the owner, or a friend of hers, didn't take to kindly to max's advances and grabbed max's leash (he was running free with leash attached) and flung him in the air. He must have realized what he did so he immediately exited Logan Circle. So we, along with 2 other regulars, stayed with Max while his owner called the police and followed the dog-flinger. About 5 minutes passed before Max's owner arrived back on the scene. At this point, one of the other regular's asks him what happened, and he says he "took care of it", which to me is much like the army's policy related to gay's in the military (I'm not gonna ask, and please don't tell me). But someone else was a little more inquisitive than I and asked what that meant. He said something about a brick and an ally, and thats about all i wanted to hear.

So on the way back we (jack, shelby, and I) came across a housing-impaired gentleman talking loudly to himself. He kept repeating to himself about how clear the water was in the lakes in Jefferson County. There was construction on the other side of the street so there was no real way to avoid passing this man unnoticed. And for some reason I decided to ask him where Jefferson County was, perhaps because I know Jack loves to swim in lakes and he might like a nice clean lake. So if you ever ask a man talking to himself a quick question expecting a quick answer, you will be disappointed. Eric, 40 years of age, proceeded to tell me all about his friend Matt, who was 18, and his father, the retired FBI agent. How he and Eric went down the path and through the woods (and through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops and under the Lincoln Tunnel) to the crystal clear lake. How Matt was brave and jumped off the rock cliff so Eric did too. How matt's father used to have him over for dinner and how Matt had told Eric how he was the first "black man" that his father even talked to. He told me all about the He also told me about the job in baltimore at the factory that he left, but never should have left. Jack was not impressed whatsoever. When eric got down on the ground to pet jack he actually backed away, at which point Eric informed me that he could "do this". Apparently this means talk to dogs, because Eric then told me that Jack told him that they were cool, but that he didn't want to let eric pet him in front of his master (me). Not that I didn't trust Eric, but I thought it best not to walk directly home while Eric was still telling me about him and Matt. So about 3 blocks passed our house Eric finally decided it was time he shared his story with someone else. I said goodbye to Eric was he crossed the street, at a red light, with cars slamming on their brakes and horns in an effort not to hit him.

Anyway, just another Manic Monday...

As a side note, check out the wikipedia entry for "Manic Monday", its pretty interesting (for those who haven't yet figured it out, blue underlined text is a hyperlink to click on for additional material).

So I might Just Fast for Lunch Tomorrow

So now I'm sitting here with a possibly broken thumb, a bruised chest, and marinara stains all over my shirt...

Well, I guess I better go down to the cafeteria to grab some new cutlery. As I cafeteria i reach out and throw the door "open", or what I thought was open, which in reality was only at best 3/4's open. This 3/4's turns out to be just enough "open" to perfectly aim the skinny side of the door directly at my chest. Well, with the velocity of my anticipated entry through the doorway, my little "Siskel and Ebert" never really stood a chance. The force of this blow was so severe it actually knocked the wind out of me. I can't really decide whether or not i was lucky that the position of my thumb at this moment was sandwiched betwixt spotted green cotton and metal. On the one hand, although small, it provided some buffer between my chest and that devil of a door (i mean what kind of door only opens 3/4's). Yet, at the same time, it focused the force of the blow into one exact spot on my chest. I'd have to say that one is a toss-up.The only saving grace of this whole incident is that the usually packed cafeteria, was unusually empty, nobody had seen my human-battering-ram. So though my thumb may be shattered, my ego is left intact...

Mmmmmmm.....this is some really good pizza. I can't believe how soft the crust got overnight in the fridge, I can actually cut right through this with my plastic fork, amazing. Hmm...this crust is a little tougher than the rest of the piz...

Gonna Go Back in Time!!! (Update)

Alright, so I have no clue how this happened, but I completely forgot that I had taken this totally Rad picture a couple of weeks ago on our most recent trip to REI. Apparently REI is having a huge summer clearance sale on their Flux-Capacitors. Unfortunately there was no sign of Doc Brown or Marty McFly, so we had to settle for this pic of his De Lorean (if you're gonna travel through time, you might as well do it in style). Even though this De Lorean is completely sweet, Doc brown might want to consider converting a Prius next time, I hear they use way less power than the De Lorean's 1.21 gigawatts for their time-travel.

In case you can't read the personalized plates this car is sporting, they read "OUTIME". These plates, although clever, pail in comparison to Steve Sander's Vette's "I8A-4RE", a little early 90's trivia for you.

I wish I could go back in time and add this picture to my original blog (since this one seems to be going nowhere). I imagine Michael J. Fox (a.k.a. Alex P. Keaton) could go back in time and not make back to the future III.

Here's another little bit of trivia for ya, what is Michael J. Fox's middle name?

Andrew, he didn't want to be known as Michael A. Fox, so he changed it to J. as an homage to the character actor Michael J. Pollard.....and you thought this blog was worthless.

Making a list, checking it ....more than once

I've got to say, for somebody who's not even here yet, brayden has definitely made his presence felt. Not that our place is all that big, but we are wall-to-wall baby gear. In fact, I think our apartment is being classified as a satellite store for babies R' us. With somewhere around two weeks until Brayden's arrival, stephanie and i have been accumulating a lot of the "necessities" for our new life +1. And although we seemingly have everything you could possibly need, i'm sure there is something we're overlooking.

I suppose one of the first things we're going to need is some means of transportation to get him home from the hospital, I hear the food is pretty nasty so i'd prefer to not move in. I've also seen the "bed" that i'll be "sleeping" in at the hospital, if you can classify a recliner built for an Umpa-Lumpa a bed. Assuming i can figure out how to get this thing secured in the car we should be ok (where's brooke and her 4 day class on how to install this thing when you need her).


I guess we'll need to dress the kid, for a couple of different reasons, not that there's anything wrong with being naked, but.......Anyway, we've got plenty of little clothes that'll most likely be worn about 1 or 2 times before he outgrows them.



From what I hear Brayden's not going to be doing all that much in the first couple of weeks of life but sleeping, which we've got him covered there. Depending on where we put him in this bassinet, that last statement might be both literal and figurative.


I hear he's going to be going through a lot of diapers. we've got a stockpile of about 300+ diapers, which i hear is good for about a week or so.


We'll probably want to feed him too, so he can get to outgrowing the 0-3's. We're going to give this breastfeeding thing a shot, and since this is a PG-13 website, we're going to be skipping that picture. We can, however, show you the reserves that we have built up for stephanie and myself in anticipation of brayden's arrival.

In case you were counting, its 3 containers of ice cream (mint chocolate chip, moose tracks, and coffee), 4 boxes of ice cream sandwiches, 1 box of klondike bars, 2 flav-o-ices, and 1 superman stick. I'd like to say that this constitutes stephanie's pickles and ice cream pregnancy craving, but in reality, about half of that stash is mine and its just barely above par (although we usually have some frosty-paws in there for the dogs).

Along with all of that we've got all kinds of hooded towels, receiving blankets, lotions and creams (my favorite of which being Boudreaux's Butt Cream), thermometers, clippers........you name it.....we've got it. The only thing we don't have at this point is a baby. So to quote the great Rod Roddy, "Brayden, come on down!!!!!" (although most people would think that was Bob Barker, it was actually the announcer Rod Roddy and his eletrifying jackets who should receive the proper credit for that classic quote).