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.
