A 4-year-old's stairway to heaven

Can you guess where we're "hiding" the Easter candy?

(The actual child was omitted from the photo due to the fact that I don't want the CPA after me...)

From dirt to destiny

It’s been said by many a parent here that Rift Valley Academy is Kid Heaven. Playground, playing fields, great weather, and secure grounds are all prime reasons, but the biggest factor is that your friends all live just a few hundred yards away. When we returned from home assignment last August, Asher received the freedom that Micah had for a few years. Now both boys either call a friend or knock on his door, and hours of childhood memories await them.

The current highlight of their young lives is the dirt pile. Construction of a new house nearby has created a mound of fresh dirt near the edge of campus. As the dirt cascades down the hill that’s already there, the mountain of pleasure grows higher and steeper for the kids. We don’t mind. They head directly for the shower when playtime is over, and they’re as good as new by dinnertime.

But 7-year-old Micah knows that his love of dirt is only temporary. At dinnertime, he shares his future plans with us. He’s recited it so many times that Asher can repeat it too. Listen along and you’ll hear the intricacies of a young missionary kid already preparing for future transitions.

First thing after graduation, he’ll go to California to say goodbye to Nana and Papa. Then, he’ll fly to Texas to see his friend Jonah. Jonah is a neighbor at RVA and has spent more of his life in Africa than America, but Jonah is a Texan by birth. So, to Texas Micah will go. After that visit is complete. He’ll fly to Pennsylvania and say goodbye to Grandma Strobeck. That will complete his visiting circuit. Next, he’ll be off to college. Where, you ask? Hawaii, of course. Micah has heard that Hawaii has lots of exotic birds and great surfing, two of his supposed interests. Maybe he’ll be an oceanography or ornithology major?

He hasn’t decided on that yet. But we’re always telling him, “You’ve got time, Micah.”

12 Tears, part 3

The birth of a child is an emotionally overwhelming experience. After nine months of “expecting,” emotions turn to a mixture of excitement and dread as the delivery date draws nigh. The actual birth experience itself? Well, it’s hard to imagine human drama at a higher crescendo. And then there is the joy and anxiety of the fragile and tenuous first days of life. A few tears were shed on our part during the birth of our first daughter, Claire Grace last week. I counted twelve, which I’ll spread out over the next few days.

9. Breaking the news of Claire’s illness to family members over the phone—after breaking the good news of her birth to them just hours earlier—wasn’t easy. There was a degree of “holding it together” in front of the nurses and doctor and Heather, but when I heard the voices of family, all of the exhaustion and fear and emotion overwhelmed me.

10. Staring at a baby in an incubator gives one a guilty feeling of boredom. One wants to do something…but there is nothing to do—but pray. We stayed with Claire about three hours that night, heads bopping from her chest to the O2/breathing rate monitor, back and forth. We finally decided on attempting to sleep back in Heather’s hospital room. After a quick snack (the most food I had eaten all day amidst all the activity), we almost turned off the lights when we got one last call from the doctor. He said that he breathing had stabilized enough that she wouldn’t need to be on constant oxygen and that he was so pleased with her hydration that he didn’t feel that liquids through the IV were needed either. She still was to be kept for the night in NICU, but the update left us both teary-eyed and peaceful enough to sleep.

11. I’ll skip through most of Tuesday’s events, saying only that the doctors gave her a glowing report in the morning, Claire was back in our room by lunchtime, and the rest of our hospital stay amounted to primarily favorable O2 readings and test results. Tuesday brought us word of hundreds and hundreds of people praying from California to Pennsylvania to Africa to wherever-else-Facebook-and-email-goes. It was a day of great relief. Then on Wednesday, our friends Mike and Kim brought their kids and our two boys to the hospital to visit. We had vivid memories of Micah holding his baby brother for the first time, and now both boys would sit on the same chair and hold little Claire. The sight of all three of our miracles on one bench was beautiful beyond description. Wet eyes snapped away behind the camera.

12. Although we originally hoped to leave on Wednesday, the worries of Monday night and Tuesday morning kept us waiting for results into Thursday. I returned from Kijabe after spending the night with our two boys and relieving our babysitter of her duties, and after a few hours of waiting for all of the different departments to clear Heather and Claire, we were released! We snapped her into her car seat, just a little dollop of sweetness in the vast expanses of that seat. I turned the key and looked in my rearview mirror. Heather. Baby. Clean bills of health. A week of emotional heights and depths. Headed to our blustery home on the hillside as a family of five. It was a beautiful thing, and I couldn’t help shed one last tear of joy and gratitude.

12 Tears, part 2

The birth of a child is an emotionally overwhelming experience. After nine months of “expecting,” emotions turn to a mixture of excitement and dread as the delivery date draws nigh. The actual birth experience itself? Well, it’s hard to imagine human drama at a higher crescendo. And then there is the joy and anxiety of the fragile and tenuous first days of life. A few tears were shed on our part during the birth of our first daughter, Claire Grace last week. I counted twelve, which I’ll spread out over the next few days.

5. The hospital Internet proved good for more than only suffering through a Carolina loss. I spent an hour or two studying up on our options to get Heather unpregnant. Our research and our situation led us to the following course: break the waters, start pitocin three hours later, and then epidural if the pitocin makes the contractions too painful. Well, we didn’t get past phase 1. They broke her waters at noon, and it wasn’t a cup of happy sunshine for my wife. Tears five.

6. When I published my second book, the unparalleled favorite section was the part about Asher’s birth. And the highlight of that section was my description of Heather’s transition phase of labor, where my mild-mannered wife turned werewolf. The prospect of another transition phase gave Heather nightmares for nine months, and after her waters broke, I said hello to Freddy Krueger. I joke, but the 45 minutes of transition labor are no cause for laughter. The most excruciatingly painful times of Heather’s life were Asher’s transition and Claire’s transition. As a husband, your “pain” isn’t really relevant, but powerlessly watching the woman you love cry and writhe and suffer is a harrowing experience. Hers weren’t the only tears here.

7. Of course, transition comes to an end. The baby emerges, and that’s where words wholly fail to express the beauty and the humanity and the brutality and the wonder of human birth. Claire Grace Murphy was born at 1:05pm oN March 28^th, 8 lbs. 12 oz. and 21 inches long. The seventh tears.

8. Claire’s first few hours mostly resembled a normal start to life, except for one significant detail—low oxygen levels. Her hands and feet were slow to turn pink after birth, which prompted constant monitoring. They kept putting her back on oxygen until it was decided at 6pm (about five hour after her birth) that she’d need to be admitted to the NICU in an incubator with an IV, antibiotic infusions, and constant oxygen over night. Multiple tests would be administered to rule out a lung infection. Our helpless little baby…out of our room, out of our hands. And out of our eyes came…

Stay tuned for the final four tears...

12 Tears, part 1

The birth of a child is an emotionally overwhelming experience. After nine months of “expecting,” emotions turn to a mixture of excitement and dread as the delivery date draws nigh. The actual birth experience itself? Well, it’s hard to imagine human drama at a higher crescendo. And then there is the joy and anxiety of the fragile and tenuous first days of life. A few tears were shed on our part during the birth of our first daughter, Claire Grace last week. I counted twelve, which I’ll spread out over the next few days.

1. With Claire already measuring at eight and a half pounds on March 23^rd, our doctor recommended we induce on Sunday the 27^th. So, we called in our expert babysitter in the afternoon (the same wonderful woman who babysat Micah when we had Asher in Nairobi four years ago) and drove into the city. Driving away from our two babies as we journeyed towards another baby was a bittersweet necessity. Tear drop number one.

2. Our doctor delayed our admittance into the hospital for an unknown reason, so we had a few hours to kill. After a relaxing meal (perhaps our last one alone, without a baby present, for months), we decided to catch a movie near the hospital. Our only option? The Green Hornet. I was optimistic heading into it, but it was atrocious. Ironic, aye? Only a few windows of opportunity to catch a new release in Kenya, and what do we get? Seth Rogan in tights. Ugh. Life isn’t fair. Tear numero dos.

3. We dried our eyes and headed for the hospital, a bit bleary-eyed at the late hour. Then, the nurses took over three hours to examine Heather and monitor the baby’s heart rate before they’d let us sleep. It was 2:30am before the induction had officially begun. The upside of insomnia though is that my beloved and surging North Carolina Tarheels were playing their Elite 8 basketball game in primetime, in America and I could follow the score on the Internet. Alas, Daddy’s magical weekend wasn’t to find completion. Kentucky shot the ball out of their minds and eliminated UNC. Another tear drop before falling off to sleep.

4. The labor-inducing suppository sometimes took three tries, according to our doc. After nothing had happened for the first eight hours, attempt #2 began. This one seemed to have some small effect, but overall, it had been a frustrating start. Less than three hours sleep, no contractions, and little dilation or effacement. Emotions were raw, as we contemplated our next step. Break the waters? Pitocin? Epidural?

Stay tuned for tear drops 5-12...