Giving birth to a car and buying a baby

They say a picture tells the story of 1,000 words, but here are about 1,000 more in case you wanted them...

Baby time is NOW! Caleb Nathaniel Jolly was born on March 4, 2008 at 6:26am. 7lb, 9oz and 20 1/2 inches. His official due date was about one week later on March 10. After about a week of getting to know the guy, I've finally found a few moments to blog about the whole thing. (FYI - the car thing is at the bottom of this post, just so you're not too confused by the title).

I keep reminding myself how wrong it is for me to claim this (being a dude and all)...but the labor and delivery went surprisingly well. Water broke around 11pm on Monday night, and after 7.5 hours and about 4 pushes the little guy was outta there. We were completely prepared for this marathon, sweat-it-out, profanity-laced endurance test that would last for 12 hours or more, but it was over so quick I barely had a chance to respond. I think my first words after the delivery were ".............."

I just couldn't believe we were done with it all! Hilary couldn't either, just shocking how fast it was. The remainder of the day was filled with doctors, family, friends and a little bit of rest. Two days later we were out of the hospital and headed home for a little quiet time (yeah, right).

They say you can never really prepare yourself for parenthood. Knowing that early on, I felt emboldened, not afraid - hey, if I can learn as I go along, that works for me. The whole preparation line is quite true if you've never experienced parenthood (or at least these very early stages). I knew there would be nights of lost sleep (I just didn't realize how horrifying 3 hours of screaming could really be). I knew there would be a lot of feeding and diaper changing (....yeah, I'll just leave that one alone for now). All told, however, I'm very excited about this turn. It's weird, it kind of makes my marriage itself seem brand new as it changes the rest of my life around as well.

People support has been super awesome this past week, and that is a big thank you to those of you reading this who have come by to visit, called, e-mailed or just said a prayer for us. You will never hear me say that "it takes a village," but I will acknowledge that the people in my life are more important to me than I might have realized.

There's not really a lot else to say...it's just happened so fast!

I will be setting up a separate blog for Caleb to keep people posted on pictures, news and emotional stress levels (NO, I won't be writing it from Caleb's perspective - though I could try it once or twice if requested...). That will free me up on this blog to continue the useless writings you have become accustomed to seeing here. As soon as I get that ready, I'll park a link here for you all.

[NOTE - parts of this car blog were drafted the day before Caleb showed up, so I'm mainly posting it now so I don't feel like I wasted so much time talking about a car just to not post it at all. Make sense?]

So as we got closer and closer to baby time, we realized we probably wanted a different car...something bigger, easier to get stuff in and out. However, we had two perfectly good cars, and despite being a little cramped, they seemed like they'd pretty much fit the bill for a good while longer. It's been a couple of years since we've had a car payment, and that's nice.

Well, one of those cars got a little less reliable (that would be "The Chief," our '96 Cherokee). High mileage, old car, time to rethink. We took a look around, but everything was a bit pricey, and we were figuring a zero-sum on the trade in value for the old car. In fact the Kelly Blue Book value was only around $400-$500, maybe $1,400 if you labeled it as "great condition." So on a whim (and a lunch break) I took the car over to CarMax to get an appraisal. Even though they basically refused to make an appraisal the first time, another guy chased me down as I was leaving to let me know they could try to offer me something. Long story short, they offered WAY more than the car was worth, and so the idea of getting rid of the old car became more of a possible reality.

We looked over our options for a new car and settled on a handful of different SUVs. Big ones and small ones. We mainly wanted to buy a pre-owned with low mileage like we did with our first car back in '03. The one we wound up really liking was the Saturn Outlook. It still seemed a bit outside what we wanted to pay, but we crunched the numbers, moved some stuff around and made it happen.

Now it should be noted that Saturn is a "no-haggle" car company. It's like they say...you pay what the sticker says. That's really not so bad, because they're not charging a whole lot on the car when you compare it to others in the same class (invoice, NOT MSRP), and most of the features you'd want are standard (tinted class, floor mats...the basics that you normally have to pay hundreds or thousands extra for). However, we felt the need to do SOME haggling just to make sure we got what we came for and nothing more. It almost didn't happen, but....well, long story short, we bought one new and are now officially ready to transport Caleb around in something that rides less like a theme park ride and more like a family automobile.

Caleb is riding in style.

It seemed like a dangerous thing to do...buying a new car (let alone a "new" new car) in the days leading up to your baby's due date. But...the offer on the old car was only good for 7 days, and so we made good on it while we could. Now we have a car payment again, but we have safe, reliable transportation.

Our sales guy was awesome (I never thought I'd say that about a car salesperson...ever). He (and the other people at Saturn of Gwinnett) were very helpful throughout the process. Turns out he and his wife go to our church (we never know...our church has something like 11,000 members and we've only started getting to know people). He's around our age, so he and his wife are going to look into joining our Sunday morning class before worship service. Pretty amazing that you'd be able to join your car salesman at church...I think you usually end up being at odds with a guy once you've debated over a car purchase. What's next, lawyers and tax collectors in the church?

Unheard of!

Anyway, I think this is one of those situations where you spend a lot of time researching something, you feel like you know it backwards and forwards, but then a few months later you hardly remember anything you learned while researching your purchase. I'll be happy for that...right now, I am wasting WAY too much brain space on car knowledge and sales/purchase tactics. I could really use that section of my brain for something else right now.

Like a baby.

Maybe. Ya think?