Sunday, February 12, 2006

Reactions

One of the best things about finally being able to tell everyone we're expecting is seeing the wide range of reactions. Our friends that already have babies are some of the most thrilled about the news. You could almost hear the chanting, "one of us, one of us," a palpable excitement that we've joined the ranks of the breeders. Nabeel already has a post over on 'Start-Up Dad' about the news, and 'Marginal Benefit' has been added to the list of 'Daddy Blogs.' On the other hand our single friends have tended to be happy for us, but a bit freaked out about the news. Maybe it's a little mix of making them feel older and our impending lack of freedom to hang out as often as we'd like.

Of course Joe & Cate weren't at all surprised, and Elaine's mom seemed to have a pretty good inkling about what was happening, but for the most part people were impressed with how well we kept the secret. My sister was completely shocked, and I think somewhat relieved that the baby will distract our extended family from trying to convince her to get married this summer. Dad was just thrilled that he's going to be a grandfather, and my grandfather was simply happy that the day didn't go by without some interesting news. As for Mom's reaction, since Katherine couldn't be in town, she convinced me I should get a video of Mom finding out she's going to be a grandmother. So here it is:



There's a little more to this story, I had posted the news to the blog before we told Mom, so when we went over for my birthday brunch, there was a slim chance that Mom had already stumbled across the news. When we got there I did a quick check of the computer and noticed that someone had looked at the blog that morning, but since Mom was acting so calm, I assumed that Don must have been the one that read the blog. It turns out that Don had read the blog not long before we got there, and upon seeing the news he yelled for Mom to come over and see something. With a little bit of quick thinking and clicking, he decided that it was best to keep the secret from Mom a little longer, so he quickly closed the browser before Mom got to the computer, made up some excuse for calling her over, and left to go walk the dog so he wouldn't spoil the surprise. As you can see from the video, she didn't suspect a thing.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow, congrat's and welcome to the world of (almost) parenthood. I saw the meta-post on daddytypes: Alan...Elaine...Mr Fawcett. Hey, I _know_ those guys.

Allen A. Fawcett said...

Thanks Andrew. I had no idea there were meta posts about this untill I saw your comment. It turns out that my friend Nabeel over at "Start-Up Dad" knows Greg from "Daddy Types" and he spread the word about this post.

For those of you that don't regularly read "Daddy Types" click here to see the post Andrew referred to.

jess said...

that's sweet video!- good idea capturing and sharing it

Allen A. Fawcett said...

Thanks Jess, and good luck with the sweetest boy.

Allen A. Fawcett said...

Here's the link to the Daddy Types post on their new server.