{"id":30,"date":"2002-08-30T01:13:12","date_gmt":"2002-08-30T01:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/?p=30"},"modified":"2002-08-30T01:13:12","modified_gmt":"2002-08-30T01:13:12","slug":"bumps-in-the-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/?p=30","title":{"rendered":"Bumps in the Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday, the wife and I stayed in and watched the
\nNASCAR<\/a> race,
\nwhich took place in Bristol, Tennessee.
\nBristol<\/a>, for the NASCAR
\nimpaired, is a tiny track – about 1\/2 mile in length – where they
\ncrowd a field of 43 cars into a bowl and tell them to go.<\/p>\n

If you don’t get<\/i> the sport of NASCAR racing, Bristol is the place
\nto start. No room to run and lots of guys looking to do so.
\nPaint is traded in every turn, where bumping and grinding is not the
\nexception, but the norm. Cars spin, tempers flare, and more than one
\ndriver gives another the one finger salute. The highlight of this
\nrace was the fact that my favorite driver,
\nJeff Gordon<\/a>,
\ngave the leader a tap in the back with two laps to go, pushed him out of
\nthe way, and finished up front for the
\n
\nfirst time in a while<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But that was nothing compared to the bump that awaited me. See, the
\nquickening<\/a>
\nhas begun. It started just a couple of weeks ago, with the wife uttering
\noohs and ahhs occasionally, spreading her eyes wide at the activity inside.
\nThere was a time where she wasn’t quite sure if the movement she felt was
\ngas or child, but, as the weeks passed, the thumps and wallops inside her have
\nbecome more pronounced and more frequent.<\/p>\n

The sad side of this, from the father’s perspective, is that I don’t get
\nto share in it. Whenever she feels any movement, the wife is quick
\nto grab my hand, place it upon her tummy, and anxiously await a signal from
\nme that I do, in fact, feel it.<\/p>\n

\n“Did you feel that?” she asks.<\/p>\n

\n“Nope.”\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Saturday that all changed. Laying down on the bed after the race, my wife
\nrevealed her belly to me and placed my hand on it. We’ve been doing this
\nfor a while and she had reported a recent spat of activity.<\/p>\n

Lo and behold the child gave quite a bump to the center of her baby carrier.
\nI got to experience a kind of quickening of my own. Contact was made and
\nwon’t soon be forgotten.<\/p>\n

Jenn made the cute observation that the child was giving me a high five after
\nthe race (if so, babe, we now know who his or her favorite driver is). Whatever
\nit was, I was just glad to be there. This baby thing becomes more real
\nevery day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday, the wife and I stayed in and watched the NASCAR race, which took place in Bristol, Tennessee. Bristol, for the NASCAR impaired, is a tiny track – about 1\/2 mile in length – where they crowd a field of 43 cars into a bowl and tell them to go. If you don’t get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}