New Year's Eve

2010 draws to a close today.  We plan to have a quiet evening of martinelli's with spaghetti & clams.  Arianna goes to bed around 8:45 each night and we usually follow shortly thereafter so we will only ring in the new year if that happens to be the time she wakes up for her first feeding of the night.  Project Baby 2010 now becomes Arianna 2011 and we expect next year to be very eventful.

Happy New Year to all our family and friends.

The Big Five O

Yesterday Arianna turned 50 days old.  Not much longer until college.

Reflections on 2010 Part Two: July to December

July began with me in Miami for the summer seminar and Katie headed to Texas to see her family and do some baby shopping.  For both of us it would be our last trips off island until after the baby.  We started practicing being parents even attending an early matinee of a children's movie just to get the feel of it (*edit by KT* Scott just says that...we actually wanted to see Despicable Me...).  July was also the month that I received a call from the Minister of Health asking if I would be willing to serve as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Cayman Islands National Insurance Company.  After discussing it we decided it would be a great opportunity as well as an interesting challenge and I accepted.  It would take almost a month for the formal appointment to come through but it certainly gave us a sense that we are making a difference down here and that it has been noticed.

We started August with a virtual baby shower thrown by my sister Johanna up in Naperville and attended by us via skype video.  The theme was make the baby a onesie and we saw some really neat ones that we couldn't wait to put our little girl into.  The fortieth anniversary of the college was coming up in September and August saw a media blitz with me doing TV and radio appearances several times.  We were also preparing for our fall quarter which looked to be the largest quarter since we had arrived in Cayman.  I also got my official appointment as Chairman of CINICO and began coordinating that work.  Hurricane season would be extremely active for the next few months but fortunately each storm would curve either north into the Atlantic or die off before entering the Caribbean. Katie had done two classes for her Masters in the summer term so August was intense as she finished projects for both classes.

We celebrated first day of football season in early September but the Horns performance even in victory that day would be a harbinger of the extremely disappointing season to come.  Katie always gives me a gift to celebrate and this year presented me with a small book that had the words to the Eyes of Texas and the sonogram photos of our little girl with various Longhorn and football related stickers strategically placed on the photos.  September was the start of the third trimester and we were both now counting the days until Arianna's projected arrival.  Our students threw Katie a shower at the college and we added a ton of baby clothes to our stash.  I had been invited up to Chicago for the baptism of my God Son but between the storms and worries about Katie's condition (all of which turned out to be just my own paranoia), I decided not to leave Island.  My cousin Chuck would stand in for me as Zachary Alexander Cummings was baptised up in Naperville.  It was ironic that Chuck would stand in for me as we had asked him and our sister in law Kristy Cummings (Kevin's wife) to be our child's God Parents. 

On the work front, ICCI would register 227 students for the fall well above our projected count and the thirteenth straight quarter of increased enrollment for the college over the same quarter the previous year.  We would also go through a mock accreditation visit to get ready for the real one coming in February 2011.  I would reach my 40th birthday which we celebrated with a night at the Sunshine Suites and Sushi and a few days later the college would celebrate its 40th anniversary with a gala dinner at the Westin Governor's Ballroom. We would continue to dodge storms but would lose one full day to rain as the island flooded from Tropical Storm Nicole which passed to the west of us.  We also moved to biweekly appointments with Dr. Richter in Mid September which let us know that we were definitely getting closer.

October would basically be a month of watching the days go by and counting down time.  We would make our first foray to the Ritz Carlton for an event thrown by the Cayman Islands Society of Professional Accountants and for Katie's birthday we went to the Buccaneer's Feast at the Marriott Resort.  We dodged Tropical Storms Paula and Richard in successive weeks but continued to get a lot of rain.  Much of the month was spent trying to get everything lined up so that I could be off work for five weeks when the baby came.  Our big accreditation reports were due October 31 so the latter part of October at work was mostly spent finishing the Self Study, Institutional Effectiveness Plan and application for new grant paperwork. Toward the end of the month we moved to weekly appointments and now the countdown was really on.  We also got some disconcerting news late in the month.  Dr. Richter was going off island on November 11 (our due date).  We didn't want to use his substitute physician as we had a bad experience with him a few years earlier so now we needed to make a decision about inducing early or hoping that Arianna would either come early or late.

In early November we decided to go the inducing route but both of us hoped Arianna would come early all on her own.  I finished my last day of work on November 5 and started my planned five week "vacation".  that weekend we had a very nice final dinner together as just a couple and walked Seven Mile Beach and Camana Bay to try and naturally induce.  Katie's grand parents would arrive the day we started the induction by the placement of a catheter into Katie designed to induce labor the next morning.  November 9th would be an extremely long day but would conclude with the welcoming of our daughter Arianna Macias Cummings  born at 10:13 p.m. in George Town, Grand Cayman.  Katie would spend three days at the George Town Hospital before we brought our daughter home.  Katie's parents would join us the next day and we began to experience the wonder of sleeping in 1 to 2 hour shifts each night (*edit by KT* yeah...Scott started it then...I had to start the new sleeping routine three days earlier in the hospital...I'm not bitter at all...).  As a part of my chairmanship of CINICO I chaired a session of a health care conference the weekend after the birth but otherwise we both were full time parents.  We lucked into several critical baby items from a swing a few days before the birth to a bassinet the day we brought her home. 

My father would be on Island for a quick weekend event at the college but unfortunately only saw Arianna briefly from a distance as he was sick and didn't want to get her ill.  Fortunately he is back on island in January and can spend some quality time with her then.  November seems like a blur but in looking back at blog entries we made a concerted effort to try and record events as they happened so we can one day show our daughter.  As Katie predicted I took a ton of pictures and Arianna will not want for picture of at least her first two months on this earth.  The great grand parents and grand parents headed home after about a week and half and just two days later we got a visit from great grampa Gene (my grand father) who was on Island for a day off a cruise ship.  We were settling in to being parents but there was not set routine and every day was something new. 

As December began we left Arianna with a non-family member for the first time and went to see the new Harry Potter movie.  We were both nervous but it went off without a hitch.   As Arianna turned one month old it was obvious she had grown and when we weighed her this was confirmed as she topped ten pounds and was now 23 inches long.  She was growing so fast we barely had time to put her into the onesie's that all our relatives had made her for the baby shower.  My mother, Grandma Cummings, would come for a visit in early December and it gave us another chance to take Arianna out around the island.  I headed back to work for a week and as we approached Christmas we reflected on a momentous 2010.  Christmas Eve saw us take Arianna to see the lights and Christmas Day saw us dip her feet into the Caribbean for the very first time.  December saw Arianna attend both mass at St. Ignatius and services at First Baptist the two churches we attend and we began planning her baptism with her God Parents Kristy Cummings and Charles Hughes.

As we look back on this year its hard to remember what happened before November 9.  Everyone tells you that once your child comes they will fill your every waking moment and they are correct.  We are already planning for next year and bringing her back to the States to visit.  There is no doubt that 2010 has been a life altering year and to a large degree it is just the start of what should be an amazing period in our lives as we raise our daughter. 

As we look to the future, we have decided to stay in the Cayman Islands for another two years when our contracts expire in August of 2011.  We will have to get our work permits renewed which is never definite, but is likely and this means we probably wont be back in the USA until September of 2013.  Katie will finish her Master's Degree by June of next year and will likely continue her part time work from home with the college and maybe some teaching.  I will continue in my role as Dean and hopefully help the college through its accreditation visit and achieving of a new grant with a minimum of issues.  I will also finish out my first term as Chairman of CINICO.  Whether there will be an additional term will be determined at some future point.  I am also serving on the Board of Directors of an Auto Insurance carrier that is looking to get up and running in January so that will offer an interesting challenge as well.  All in all there is a lot to look forward to as we move into 2011. 

Reflections on 2010 Part One: January to June

2010 would bring us earth trembling news and earth trembling changes so it was appropriate that the year started with the earth trembling literally as Cayman experienced an Earthquake in just the third week of the year.  It was no where near the intensity of the Haiti quake a few weeks earlier and in fact Katie and I didn't even know it had happened as we were out on walk and you only felt it if you were in a structure. We later learned that at the college the whole building shook but to us it was just another sunny morning.  January was Katie's first month as just a consultant for the college and once she finished graduation during the first week of the year she ended her full time work as Registrar and went to part time data entry work and teaching.  It was also a somber month as one of our students was killed in a car wreck.  Less significant but an omen of the year to come for my college football obsession, my beloved Horns lost a heart breaker in the National Championship game when their starting quarterback was knocked out of the game on their first offensive possession.  The Horns actually had the ball and a chance to win with 4 minutes to play in the game but couldn't complete the miracle comeback. 

For our personal lives this would be a life altering year.  We had made the decision over Christmas to start trying to get pregnant and January saw us beginning the process of what we termed Baby 2010.  In mid-January I had a trip to Orlando for an accreditation workshop as ICCI started the process of its self study and application for new grant of accreditation.  This would be a huge project throughout the year and would take up a substantial part of my work time this year.  While in Orlando I got to see Kevin and his family for a quick visit.  Katie would continue her work on her Masters through the University of Denver on line and we decided to step it up in the spring term so that if we did get pregnant she would have most if not all of her degree done by the time the baby came.

February would actually be the month of conception though we wouldn't know it until March.  Another trip to Miami for the Winter seminar was the only trip off-island and the biggest news of the month besides that we were still working on the baby 2010 project was our sighting of a flying gurnard fish off the Eden Rock dive site and the learning how to post video's on our blog which we began to do with a flourish.  March brought the news that would change our world forever.  Katie suspected early on that she was pregnant but we agreed to wait to do a home pregnancy test until we were more than a few days late.  In spite of our agreement Katie couldn't wait and did the test early one evening while I was at work.  We had decided on a lark several years earlier to buy a baby longhorn DVD and Katie had told me that when she was pregnant she would break the news to me by playing that video.  That night when I got home she suggested watching an episode of whatever show we were on at that time and when I hit play and saw the baby longhorn come up I knew that she was pregnant.  A week and a half later the home test was confirmed by our visit to Dr. Richter and we would start our journey to parenthood in earnest. 

With Baby 2010 now a reality, Katie would start the baby blog a series of letters to our future child.  We also made an important decision.  We are both on the government health insurance here (CINICO) because none of the private insurers would insure us because we are considered health impaired (me for high blood pressure and Katie for variety of reasons).  With the government insurance we could only use the government doctors and they only see pregnant mothers after 20 weeks of pregnancy and then sporadically thereafter.  There are also only two ultrasounds for non high risk pregnancies.  I had spoken to one of the instructors at ICCI who also had CINICO and he mentioned that he and his wife had paid themselves out of pocket for a private doctor.  It had run him about Eight Thousand CI dollars (about 10k in US money).  Katie and I talked about it and realized that we wanted to go the same route.  We knew this would mean cutting out trips home and other things we might have wanted to do but we also knew that we would never once regret the money spent and would blame ourselves forever if something bad happened.  So we adjusted our budget and started the appointments with Dr. Richter. 

The first trimester would be a rough one for Katie who would lose over ten pounds.  April saw us marking time and trying to help Katie stay healthy as she lost that weight during the first part of her pregnancy because of all the nausea.  She had been on a weight loss regime prior to getting pregnant so this new weight loss actually got her back to her pre-wedding weight which was the silver lining to it all.  April also saw Katie come back to ICCI in a more structured part time role as she stepped into the Director of Admissions role while we looked for a replacement.  She would hold the job a little over two months which kept her distracted and gave us a little extra money.  We did a lot of walking and with both of us teaching the month of April went by quickly. 

May saw Katie go to the Bahamas with her sisters on a sister vacation and Scott go to Atlanta to teach the spring term seminar and as a result get to spend time with his brother Kevin.  We both picked up baby items on our trips and any trip off-Island as well as visits from relatives became ways to get baby stuff at the cheaper US prices (thanks especially to my dad who came down several times for college business and never failed to bring more baby related stuff from the breast pump to clothes and other accessories).  We also welcomed my God Son Zachary Alexander to the world as he was born up in Naperville, Illinois to my sister Johanna and her husband Brent.  In mid- May we hit the end of the first trimester and Katie started gaining weight again which was a good sign that the nausea and other issues were finally ending.

June was the mid point for our year and the first full month of our second trimester.  We had planned early in the year to do a getaway vacation to Jamaica and that became our "babymoon" once we learned of the coming of Baby "C" as we had taken to calling our youngster.  We had a great time in Jamaica and it helped focus us on what was to come over the next six months of 2010.  Katie finished her run as admissions director at ICCI and would begin teaching her last class of the year for the summer term in June.  June also saw the World Cup and if you ever get to experience a world cup overseas we strongly encourage it.  the entire country shuts down during the matches and national pride is at all time peaks for those countries competing.  We got to see matches in both Jamaica and Cayman and even though futbol is a distant second to cricket in popularity both nations had World Cup fever.  We had a little car trouble with a busted window and the storm season came in with a bang as tropical storm Alex, the first of the year dumped a bunch of rain on the island.  I was completely paranoid about storms and put all kinds of contingency plans in place to get Katie off island if any storm bigger than category two threatened Cayman.

In many ways the first six months of 2010 were prologue to what was to come.  We both questioned whether we were prepared to be parents and Katie at least spent a ton of time reading every book she could find on pregnancy and birth as well as raising kids.  This gave me a sense of security as I knew that whatever I didn't know, most likely Katie did.  As June closed the end of the first half of the year for us the best was really yet to come.

Merry Christmas

Christmas 2010 at
Seven Mile Public Beach

This morning to celebrate Christmas we took Arianna to Seven Mile Public Beach for her first dip in the Caribbean.  Unfortunately the water was a little too cold to really have her do a swim so all she could do was dip her toes into the water.  She was not crazy about the experience because the water was so cold.  On the way back we stopped at Governor's Beach next to the British Governor's Residence to take another picture of her with one of the Blue Dragon statues.  Four down, eleven to go.

Daddy and Arianna





Governor's Beach Blue Dragon



Mommy and Arianna with
the Blue Dragon







Christmas Eve

This evening we took Arianna to the Bodden House on South Church Street to see the Christmas lights.  A few years back we started going to this house across from Sunset House in George Town on Christmas Eve and it has now become something of a tradition.  Arianna was wide eyed and very awake as we walked around and was definitely intrigued by the colorful display.  It was a little chilly so we dressed her in pants and socks along with her onesie.  It wasn't a very eventful Christmas eve, though earlier in the day we went to Camana Bay for a couple of hours and Daddy and Arianna walked the trails there while Mommy did some work  for her Masters capstone.  Tomorrow will be Arianna's first day in the water as the Doctor has given the OK to Katie to start swimming again.  Since we have gone for a snorkel each year on Christmas that we have been here, Arianna will be cementing that family tradition, at least for as long as we are down here.

Arianna's Play Mat

Earlier this month, Arianna's Godfather Chuck and her Aunt Twila sent some money to her for an early Christmas present.  Yesterday we went to Little Darlings, the big baby store on the Island and picked out a play mat for her with the money.  Today she got to try it out for the first time and she loved it.  She enjoys talking to her animals and kicking the hanging pad which is designed to exercise her legs.  We had been doing "floor time" with Katie's yoga mat and a blanket.  Now she has something far more exciting to play on.  Thanks to Chuck, Twila, Cori and Christi for such a timely present.

Six Weeks Old

It is hard to believe it has been six weeks.  Time really flies.

Green Iguanas

Friday night Scott, Arianna, and I went for our evening family walk around 5 p.m. As we were walking, we noticed at the very top of one of the houses along the route a green iguana perched in the sun. Commenting about how strange it was to see them up there and trying to figure out how it got on top of the two story house we moved on with our walk. To our surprise we saw another one on top of another house. With the second house we could see the tree that he probably climbed to get up on top of the roof.

I don't know what was up with the iguanas on Friday but I wish we'd had a camera to capture it!

Santa and Mrs. Claus

Today Arianna got to meet Santa for the first time.

Arianna and the Blue Dragons

All around Cayman are statues of Blue Iguanas placed at often visited locations.  We have started taking pictures of Arianna with the statues and here are the first three from Smith's Cove, Rum Point and the Botanic Gardens.



Smith's Cove




Rum Point




Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Gardens

 

Sunday and Monday with Grandma Cummings

Katie, Arianna and Mary Anna
at the Wreck of the Ten Sail Monument
to Queen Elizabeth II

Visits on Sunday and Monday to the Eastern and Northern districts saw us spend time at Rum Point, the Botanic Gardens and various sites on the "Cayman" side of the Island. 



Katie and Arianna get
introduced to a Blue Iguana at the
Botanic Gardens



Mary Anna has decided she wants to be Grandma Cummings, thus the name change. She leaves tomorrow after a really fun visit.



Daddy and Arianna at the Tukka
Restaurant in East End



Seven Mile, Pedro and Parade of Lights



Seven Mile Public Beach



Pedro Saint James

Long and busy day today with Grandma Mary Anna, starting at Seven Mile Public Beach, then a visit to Pedro Saint James and ending with a trip to Camana Bay for the Parade of Lights.



Waiting on the Parade of Lights



Observation Tower at Camana Bay



One of Boats in Parade of Lights



Grandma Mary Anna

This afternoon Arianna was introduced to her Grandma Mary Anna who is down for a visit.  After an overnight flight from Seattle and layovers in Dallas and Miami, Grandma Mary Anna arrived in Cayman this afternoon a little tired but very excited to meet her granddaughter.  We had a picnic dinner on the beach at Smith's Cove and spent the evening catching up on all the news from home.  We have a full couple of days for Grandma who is here through Tuesday morning and had just one condition for her visit, lots of Grandma and Arianna time.

One Month Old

Arianna turned one month old today.  Unofficially she weighs 10 pounds and is 23 inches long.  That puts her right in the 50th percentile for weight but way up at the 90th percentile for length.  We have noticed how much longer she seemed with her clothing and the measurement today confirmed it.  Tomorrow her Grandmother Maryanna arrives and she will have the chance to show her Grandma just how active and involved a baby she is. Here are some photos we took of her this morning on the Penguin Christmas material for the 12 months of Arianna quilt that Katie plans to make.   

Harry Potter Day

Some of you may remember that one way we managed to stay sane during our first two months on the Island back in 2007 when we were in the little apartment at the college with no car and no TV and no real connection to anything beyond the college was looking forward to what we called Harry Potter Day.  That was the day that both the seventh book came out and the fifth movie premiered here in Cayman.  Ever since "Harry Potter Day", the day we get to see the next Harry Potter movie has been a big deal for us.  Yesterday we got up the nerve to ask a trusted friend to babysit Arianna and headed over to Hollywood Theatres at Camana Bay to watch the first part of the Deathly Hallows movies.  As always we were on Arianna time so the plans to be out the door by 11:30 and have lunch before hand at A La Kebab ended up not happening.  Still we enjoyed the movie immensely though both of us kept looking at our phones throughout the movie to make sure we hadn't missed a call.  It was a small first step but it showed we could go out on a date night (or in this case afternoon) and everything would be OK.  The movie was really good but we couldn't help whispering to each other several times that "hey that's different from the book".

Family Walk

This week we have really gotten into the routine of doing an evening walk with Arianna.  Since the road we live on isnt the greatest for walking a newborn, we drive over to the Royal Bank of Canada on the main road next to Grand Harbour.  It is just a few minutes from our house and sits at the bottom of Bimini Drive which is fantastic for walking and biking.  We park in the RBC lot and then walk the just over a mile distance to the North Sound where the road doubles back after a roundabout there at the water.  It is just about 2.1 miles round trip and it takes a little over 40 minutes for us not in shape people.  Obviously with some more walking under our belts we hope to cut that considerably.  It has been very good exercise for Mommy and Daddy and Arianna seems to view it as her nap time as she enjoys rolling in her stroller.  Today in fact we used it to help Arianna finally fall asleep as she had been up all afternoon and was obviously very tired but just couldn't fall asleep.  These picture are from a few days ago when we remembered to bring the camera on our walk.



Daddy near the start of the walk

Mommy and Arianna at the half way point
which is a roundabout at the end of the street
at the North Sound.



Arianna asleep in her stroller



The view as we walk south on Bimini

Hurricane Season Ends

November 30th is the traditional end of hurricane season and for the second year in a row we didn't get any uninvited visitors.  We will be pulling down our hurricane kit and using the water we had stored over the next several weeks.  These next couple of months are when Cayman truly is a Caribbean paradise and we plan to slowly introduce Arianna to the various things a young baby can do down here during these next several months when it is great to be outside.  Arianna has yet to establish anything remotely like a routine, she eats and sleeps at various and inconsistent times and in general is a newborn who is acting like, well, a newborn.  I have two more weeks of leave before I return to work on the 14th.  My Mom arrives next week for a visit and this weekend we have a friend watching Arianna for a few hours while we go see the new Harry Potter movie.  We found with Katie's relatives that we were OK going out and running errands and leaving Arianna with her grandparents and great grandparents. This will be the first time we leave Arianna with someone other than immediate family so we will see how, as parents, we handle leaving our little girl alone with someone who isn't a relative. It is only 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon but it should tell us how much we are comfortable with finding a sitter and having a date night/afternoon once or twice a month.