Legend of Rownan

Of course the title should read the Legend of Ronin (pronounced the same) as according to Wikipedia:

“… ronin were masterless Samurai during the feudal period (1185–1868) of Japan. A samurai became masterless from the ruin or fall of his master, or after the loss of his master's favor or privilege. Since a ronin doesn't serve any lord, he is no longer a samurai. A samurai is a "servant", since the noun came from the verb "saburau" which is the Japanese for "to serve".”

Another spelling, very popular in Ireland, is Ronan. This is in fact where we had heard the name first, not in Ireland but through the Irish community in Edmonton. While Kellee was pregnant with our first, I was playing men’s league Gaelic football and one of the players was from Ireland and his name was Ronan. In the first of many weird coincidences to come, this Ronan turned out to be Kellee’s Mom’s respiratory therapist a year after Rownan's birth.

When our first son was born we had the name Merrick picked out for him but when we actually laid eyes on him, it just didn’t suit him. Merrick, to me, is an individual with dark hair and sharp features. Rownan was anything but a Merrick. Ann Rice titled one of her vampire novels Merrick with Merrick being the lead vampire. We passed around a few other names and Ronan came up again. We both liked it, Kellee changed the spelling so people would pronounce it easier here in Canada and the name Rownan stuck.

Now here is where the really weird part begins.

Rownan was 8 weeks early and at only 28 hours old they diagnosed him with a perforated bowel makng it necessary to have surgery and a 2 month stay at the NICU at the U of A’s Stollery Hospital. The picture shows him after surgery with the incision across his stomach. He did great and pulled through with flying colours thanks to the staff at the NICU.

During the time Rownan was in the hospital, Kellee’s Dad bought us the movie Ronin where I learned of the masterless samurai called ronin and sepaku, the Japanese ritual for suicide. The way that ronin perform sepaku is by slicing open their stomachs with a blade. Hearing that my hair on my arms stood up - our boy named Rownan now has a scar across his belly…

I'm a New Phasha - Isn't Dat Kazy

Yes the rumours are true - I am a proud Daddy of a new baby boy. Check out the details on my Family Blog. Here is a photo of Rownan, baby Braun and me in Rownan's new bed.

Aftermath Video

Here is a little video clip of what my wife did after reading my last blog entry...

Who’s Tougher

Been out of the Blog loop a while – sorry to all you die hard UTCWAP Blog fans (Wardo & Mego) but I have been kind of busy.

One of my busy activities has been baby making. He/She should be here any day.

Is it OK for me to say “we” are having a baby? Some people say that the Mom does all of the work but that the Dad takes credit for “having the baby”. We Dads do a lot of work too! While Mom is being slowly and increasingly tortured from with in for 9 months , us Dads have to listen to all the whining and requests for us to make it better. What can we do? Is there actually a way we can take all the pain away and no one told us. Maybe it will be in the Daddy Instructional DVD I bid for on eBay that I should allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery. Maybe I can find the almighty answer in the ever accurate and all knowing Wikipedia.

So the question arises – Who’s Tougher – us Men or you Women. Yes it is true that you Women push a 5-pin bowling ball out your crotch but lets look at the big picture. How many times does an average woman give birth? Two? Three? Lets say four for arguments sake. So if you had these women rate the pain level a zero to ten with ten being the worst pain they have ever felt, what would the rating be? Again for the sake of argument lets say they rate it all the way up to a ten. SO – ten times four is 40. Would it be fare to give the rating of giving birth to four children a 40 on the pain scale?

OK now lets look at us Men. Hands down the worst pain for us - getting kicked in the nuts. There is always one little girl in the play ground who likes to see the facial expressions of the boys when she walks up and out of the blue lays her size 5 to an unsuspecting crotch. If you ask I would have to say that this pain rakes up there at least at an 8 on the ol’ pain-o-scale. Now we boys usually get the old crotch shot annually even if we needed it or not. So if you start counting crotch shots starting at school age (~5), by the time you are 35 (average age of a birthing woman) you would have at least 30 contacts give or take a few near misses. This adds up to a whopping 240 point on the ol’ pain-o-scale. So I say to all you prego’s out in baby making land, stop complaining about how much it hurts cuz we have it worse then you do.

Just walk up to us and kick us in the nuts!!