Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a real good time. My parents decided about 30 mintes before the big dinner that I should dress up. It's a good thing that Dad picked up a paper bag from Kroger that morning. Although it was kind of scratchy fitting it over my head, once it was on it was delightfully tasty to munch on. It's hard to appreciate in this picture how slobbery my paper bag is. Pictured next to me is my pilgrim playmate, Charlotte.


I have been practicing lifting my head. Most baby books say that a baby should lift his head off the ground while laying on his belly by about 3-4 months. My parents are starting to worry about me because I'm almost 4 months old and have showed no interest in lifting my head. They've decided that they need to give me "tummy time" every day to strengthen my neck muscles. But I just squirm and fuss (as you can see in the video) until the parents give up and turn me over to my back.

Perhaps part of the problem of not being able to turn over is that my body is just too heavy. I love to eat. And it shows. I think this picture of me with my friend Jeffrey shows how mammoth I've become. Granted, he is a few months younger than I am, but I think you can appreciate my ginormousness.

Happy Halloween

I was almost as excited as my mom to get dressed up for Halloween. We had a good time dressing up. My dad wasn't satisfied with the costume alone, so he put on the finishing touches. Don't I look spooky?

I cried the whole time that Dad put on the face paint, but I was real good and didn't scratch any of it off. And that's saying something because now I have a lot more control of my hands. I like to alternate fingers that I suck on.

Baby Blessing

On Sunday, Oct 19 we blessed Max in church out in Utah. I was trying to see if I could get any last-minute revelation and name him something different than what we had been calling him for the last few months. Sarah was glad I didn't get "inspired."

We chose to bless him then because it was Kevin's non-"farewell" missionary talk as he gets ready to go to the Edmonton Alberta mission next week. For those who would like a little cultural education, here are a few facts: Edmonton is Canada's second most populous provincial capital (after Toronto), has one of North America's lowest population densities (9.4% that of New York), and is home to North America's largest mall.

Max is definitely getting spoiled by his grandparents. I mean, how many babies do you know that get M&M's customly printed for them? I even heard that his Jeffery grandparents want to get him a Wii for Christmas. Max's father supports this decision.

Maxwell Photos

Tractor Pull

Sarah and I decided that we had one more activity to do before completing the middle America trifecta of hick motor sports. We had already been to the demolition derby and the monster truck rally, so all that was left was the tractor pull.

It was actually a bit louder than we anticipated. Max cried with the very first race. Max's parents were even plugging their ears because it hurt so bad. Sarah took the baby to the back of the bleachers, but the sound was still too loud, so she walked outside the venue for most of the runs.

I didn't know what to expect before coming. When I thought of a tractor pull, I envisioned a competition of local boys pulling a rope tied onto a tractor and seeing which group could pull it the farthest. Boy, was I wrong. The tractor isn't even pulled, but is the pullER. I guess it shows we're city folk.

A Yankees Rip-off

We spent the weekend in New York with Mom, Dad, and Kevin for his high school graduation trip to see the Yankees. All the tickets to the game for purchase on the internet were more than $100. My Dad, being the true Meacham that he is, refused to pay such a price for tickets, and decided that we should risk flying to New York without tickets and try to get them from scalpers before gametime for a cheaper price.

We knew that there were criminals scalping fake tickets. In fact, posted all around the stadium were signs that say: "Beware scalpers selling counterfeit tickets." We met a guy outside the stadium that was selling tickets. We asked him if he had 5 tickets for the next day's game and he pulled out some tickets from his coat pocket to show us. We were kind of skeptical that he was legit, but he told us he had been doing this business for 13 years. He pulled out a wad of cash that must have included 50 twenty dollar bills to prove to us that he had been doing business with many others.

My thought was that either he was for real or else he was ripping a lot of people off. We asked him if he would go up to the ticket office with us so that we could verify the tickets' legitimacy, but he declined by saying that even legit scalpers get hammered with a $200 fine for selling tickets within 1500 feet of the stadium, so he didn't want to be discovered. He was selling them for $50 instead of the face value of $65. My Dad and I deliberated a little more, but when he showed us that the seats were between home plate and the Yankees dugout just a few rows up, we decided that these tickets were too good to pass up. We bought 5 tickets for $250.

After buying the tickets, my dad marched right on over to the ticket office to ask for their verification. The man behind the counter looked at the tickets and said, "I'm sorry, these are fake." We were shocked, angered, betrayed, saddened, and a bit embarrassed for falling for a scam artist. We tried finding that guy, but of course he had walked away right after our transaction. My Dad called the scammer's cell phone number (which he had given us as "proof" that he was legit) and left a message on the voice mail that unless this guy called us back in one hour, we would call the police (which we never did).

Looking back, there were signs that should have tipped us off that this guy was bogus. The posted signs, the fact that he was selling them before gameday, that he wouldn't verify with us at the ticket office, that his ticket price was too good to be true--all these things pointed toward the conclusion that we were too obstinate to see. Afterwards it made me reflect on the signs of the Second Coming; I hope I'm not equally obstinate with those signs. And just like we were rejected at the gate to enter Yankee Stadium with our fake tickets, we will likewise not gain passage through the heavenly gates if we are not prepared and haven't given heed to the signs of the times.

ps--we had to buy another five tickets to finally get into the game.

On the Links

It's too bad that my parents didn't start giving me golf lessons when I was 2 years old because for sure I would have ended up like Tiger due to my insanely uncanny abilities. Um..yeah!?! Actually, I don't think there are any golf skills in my genes.

The OSU golf course was rated the #1 collegiate golf course in America, so Dad and I thought we'd give it a try. Since I'm a student I got to golf for only $18 on a course that was definitely the most groomed and scenic that either of us had ever played.

Our favorite hole was #10 where we both had memorable shots, and serendipitously it was the only hole where we took out the camera. We were kind of nervous hitting off the tee and having to make it over the lake because both of us had skipped many previous shots, the kind that rocket off at 100+mph about 3 inches above the ground.

Dad shot first. I tried to take the picture mid stroke, but because of the camera's delay I was late. But it turned out to be a good thing. Circled in red is the area that I have enlarged for your viewing pleasure. Yes, Dad nailed that poor duck. It squawked and flapped its wings, perhaps grateful that he didn't die yet annoyed that we hadn't called 'fore.'

Determined not to lose my ball in the lake like Dad, I swung as hard as I could. Unfortunately, I hit one of those skipper shots, but fortunately this one skipped through the water and up onto the fairway.

It was a time of good laughs and light sunburns. Oh, what a sport.

Zucchini Festival

Like some of our other activities in Ohio, the Zucchini Festival will be most remembered for all of the hicks that we saw. I call them "hicks" for lack of a more politically-correct descriptor.

According to wikipedia, to call someone white trash is to accuse a white person of being economically, educationally and/or culturally bankrupt. White trash should be differentiated from the more socially acceptable term Redneck.

My favorite "redneck" moment was not the pony turn. It was not the zucchini fudge. It was not the fried snickers bar (pictured). It was the mouse run (unfortunately, not pictured). Inside a large booth was a round spinning table that had holes numbered 1-100 along the perimeter. The booth workers would hold a mouse (named Sparky) above the table and then drop it. Whatever hole the mouse ran into for cover was the hole that won. The cost to play the game was 25 cents. If you had placed your quarter onto the correct hole number then you would win a larged stuffed animal. I placed quarters on numbers 65 and 61, but alas, victory was not for me.

My First Sunday, by Max

Hi everybody. This is Max. I wanted to tell you how rough my first day at church was. It started out all right. I loved my littled ducky outfit that one of Mommy's neighbors gave me.

But then I got a little bit nervous about being adored and passed around by all those
people at church. Just the thought of it made me a bit queasy...so I threw up.

Really I had no reason to be nervous. Everyone at church said I looked adorable. And they all talked about how Mommy didn't look like she had just brought me here 2 weeks ago.

I didn't like Sunday School too much. I fussed my way out of that meeting and got myself into the much more comfy mother's lounge. My mom was so good at making me comfortable that I relaxed a little bit too much and spit up down her shirt and tinkled through my diaper, through the blanket, and down Mommy's skirt.

(picture not available)

Mommy and I left church right away and for some reason when we got home, Mommy wasn't anxious to put new clothes on me. So I just chilled in my stylish garbage collectors.

But I soon found a softer blanket and I decided to take a nap.


I love my naps. They make me happy. I have happy dreams.



In fact, sleeping time is some of my best thinking time.


Maybe I should think about how to behave better next Sunday.

Max at 1 week

Here is some video of Max. It's amazing how much you long a little newborn can hold your attention. Sometimes we will lay next to him and just look at him as he makes countless facial expressions in his sleep, which range from looking like he's in excruciating pain from a circumcision to smiling as if he's in a warm uterus. Do you think babies dream? If so, did they dream in utero? If so, where do they get the ideas of which they dream because they have yet to process any visual pictures? Do their dreams then consist only of sounds that they've heard before? I guess these are pointless questions, but ones that we've thought about over the last week.

Max has decided that he likes to sleep all throughout the day and have little interaction with his parents. However, he does like to wake up from 10pm-2am and doesn't seem to understand that we want as little interaction with him at that point as possible.

He is a cutie, though. It's amazing how fast the bonds start to build between parent and child.

Baby Maxwell

Sharing an August 1 birthday with the likes of Francis Scott Key, Herman Melville, and Coolio, Maxwell Ryan Meacham decided to come into the world after 14 hours of induced labor at 11:46 pm. Weight: 8 lbs, 7 ozs. Length: unknown.

The labor process was quite “laborious” (how ‘bout that for a descriptor). Apparently, Baby Max just didn’t want to come out. I mean, who wouldn’t want to stay in a microwave oven drinking over and over again his own urine to his heart’s content?

The delivery was unique for me because the nurse midwife, knowing that I was a 4th year med student, convinced me that I should be the one delivering the baby because this might never get to happen again. So I scrubbed in and when the time came, pulled out his greasy cheese-caked body.

We actually had a little scare for a few minutes when he came out. The cord was wrapped so snugly around his neck that they couldn’t reduce it, but had to cut it off him before he was out of the birth canal. He came out completely blue and limp. After I tossed him onto Sarah’s belly for 5 seconds while they dried him off, they quickly took him over to the incubator where they placed a bag valve mask over his mouth and pumped oxygen into his lungs. He stayed blue and still hadn’t moved. They called the NICU nurse to come intubate him. After a minute of endotracheal ventilation he started turning pink and about 30 seconds later he started moving on his own. They took the tube out 5 minutes later and he has done fine ever since.

In total he was probably motionless for about 3 or 4 minutes, but it seemed like a couple of eternities waiting for him to show signs of life. We were so grateful for the nursing staff who acted so quickly to resuscitate him. I have no doubt that had it been a home delivery he would not have lived.

Sarah was a champ throughout it all. In fact, true to form, she seemed more concerned about other people than herself. She asked Dad Jeffery if he needed an extra pillow for his head while he rested, and then she kept asking all of the nurses, doctors, and midwives about their own children. It was very painful for her, but she was very much under control. She didn’t even need me to do the Bill Cosby cheer I had prepared ahead of time: “Push him out, shove him out, wayyyyy out!” (Actually, I might have been slapped if I had tried.)

In short, things are well. We hope you all get to see him at some point, hopefully sooner than later. He seems like a real calm fellow so far.

Nite Out 2008

This is from way back in April when our med school holds its annual talent show to benefit the Columbus Free Physician's Clinic. We also were asked to sing this song that Kelly made up to a regional group of med school administrators.

Day at the Races

We found out that we've been living in a horse racing paradise for almost three years and we haven't done anything about it. Scioto Downs track is just a couple miles south of the beltway and holds a trove of good experiences waiting to be had.

It was only $3 to get in to watch the races because the venue makes most of its money off the people that gamble on the races. I thought that we ought to be good citizens and provide more revenue to this beautiful venue. Wouldn't it be good to participate in a little gambling so that we might understand and be able to better relate to those that suffer from such addictions?

It was Elder Maxwell that said the study of doctrine will do more to change behavior than the study of behavior will change behavior. That established, wouldn't it be easier to understand the viles of gambling by participating in it rather than reading about other peoples' experiences with it?

Well, truth be told, we didn't put down any money on any horse that night. But we did try to make guesses among our dinner party to nail the trifecta, perfecta, or the exacta. Those weren't the only terms we learned that night. We also learned the difference between a standardbred vs a thoroughbred, a trot vs a pace, a harness race vs a saddle race. We also learned that not all jockeys are petite (to put it nicely).

This post was initially supposed to have a third picture. But for some reason the pregnant lady did not think it becoming to show her beautiful belly in the doorway. So instead I took some artistic freedom to recreate for you all what pregnant lady looks like. These dimensions are proportional and realistic in every way. T minus 4 weeks!

Smoky Mountains

Did you know that this is America's most visited national park? And to think that I hadn't even heard about this place before arriving to Ohio.

Wildlife in the Smokies is incredible. Over the course of the trip we counted 145 deer, 11 elk, 5 black bears, 2 snakes, and 3 salamanders. The bears were all at a distance, but the snakes were more up close (I nearly stepped on one, and the other one I accidentally ran over with the car).

Monster Truck Rally

You know, sometimes being a hick is fun. Six months ago Sarah and I went to the demolition derby at a county fair. This derby was located just ten miles out of Columbus, a city of two million people, but of the 35 entries in the derby, only two or three were from Columubus. Everyone else was from a Hickville, OH.

And that's why when we heard of this opportunity for the Monster Truck Rally, the Meachams were stoked.

But when we got there it was kind of a shock. Sarah had told me I was going to need ear plugs. I had initially thought she was being overly cautious in the normal Sarah soon-to-be-mother type of way, but she wasn't pulling my chain. With the deafening growl of the engines and the annoyingly shrill microphone of the emcee designed to penetrate the stoutest of ear plugs, my head and ears hurt despite my earplugs and two hands squeezing to attempt to create a tight seal around my ears. As a future ENT, I could just imagine the cochlear hair cells getting fried in my inner ear. As a future father, my instict was to take off my coat and wrap it around Sarah's belly to save the hearing of my cute little fetus.

Perhaps the best part about the event was the people watching. From across the arena I could spot a thirty something year old with a mullet and beer belly standing up and waving his arms around his head as one of the trucks jumped. In the row in front of us a father had purchased for his son some earplugs that were shaped as oversized monster truck tires; the tires were squishing this poor kid's face, but he kept them on only because he thought he looked cool.

It's experiences like these that let me know that it was the right thing for me to come to Ohio. Oddities abound everywhere. Finally, a place where I belong.

Happy B-day Piano Meacham

You know, I never knew how much work putting together a stupid little video would take. This was my maiden voyage into video editing and it took several hours of downloading software, taking tutorials, and re-doing the whole thing on different software after the first one wanted to put its company's logo right in the middle unless I paid $40 a year. Arrgh. I hope I've advanced on the learning curve so that the next one isn't so painful. Enjoy.

The Polls are Closed

Well, I guess the polls are not technically closed, but it's kind of futile now to vote for a girl because...it's a boy! I know this news might disappoint the grandparents who don't have a girl grandbaby to spoil yet, but hey, I'm stoked as I think about the upcoming ballgames, the fishing trips, the donut outings, and the wrestling matches that'll happen once he can climb up the couches and jump off to deliver the body slam. I'm thinking already about how I'll train him on his balance, poking him on the shoulders as he begins to walk at 12 months. Only by stumbling will he champion his equilibrium and prove to be The Rock that I know my boy will be. Yes, this is great news. Sarah is excited too because she thinks that by having a boy maybe I'll release all of my rough housing energy on the offspring instead of her. We'll see how that works out.

I got to the OB's office a little late today. I got away from the hospital a little later than expected and started driving home on snowy roads to the OB office. It's kind of funny how all of Ohio hits the panic button with just a couple of inches of snow and starts to shut down. The OB's office even called Sarah to let her know that they were moving her appointment up an hour to 2:00 or else they would have to postpone her visit until next week because the roads were so bad. Good grief. I wish the city council could move to Utah, or Michigan, or Minnesota where people experience "feet" of snow before schools and cities shut down. It's kind of annoying actually. But anyway, I arrived after the OB had already started his evaluation. I got there after they had used the ultrasound to rule out any cleft lips or palates, increased nuchal rigidity (a sign of Down Syndrome), or extra digits. I DID get there in time to see the baby's beautiful cerebrum, aortic arch, and the extra little extension coming off between the two legs. Yeah.

Somehow everyone thinks Jimmy LeRoy is a joke. I personally think it's quite noble to name your child after his two grandfathers. And the name kind of rolls off the tongue. We'll have to see if we can get a few more pollsters to come away in favor of it. I think our plan will be for me to have one vote, Sarah to have another, and give the last vote to the public. Come on, I'm trusting you guys.

Maple Syrup Festival

This week we had Jesse and Alicia Alba come up and visit from the great city of St Louis. Actually, I don't know if being voted as "America's #1 dangerous city" in 2007 counts as "great," but whatever.

We drove up to the Maple Syrup Festival outside of Mansfield, OH. We enjoyed a free day of taking a horse-drawn trailer up the snowy "mountains" (I mean "hills") to get demonstrations on the making of maple syrup from the indians, European settlers, and modern day syrup makers. We learned that the sap drained from the trees is 2% sugar and 98% water. To get the syrup you have to boil out the water to get a 66% sugar consistency. You can also boil out all of the water and have dried maple sugar, which the pioneers used instead of going down to the mercantile store to pick it up. Although everything here was free, they did ask for donations. And they did sell maple fudge, maple beef jerky, maple barbeque sauce, hot dogs boiled in maple syrup, and of course maple syrup.


We're sad to report a member of our family died today. Yes, Brutus passed peacefully this afternoon. Although it was a little sad, I think it must have been fate coming. When we bought the fish back in September, I made the agreement with the little fish that we would name him Brutus and dedicate him to the Buckeye's football season. We had the arrangement that if the Buckeyes ever lost, we were going to cook him up for dinner. Well, he DID bring us luck for most of the season, but alas it wasn't enough. We extended him mercy by not eating him when the Buckeyes lost 2 games at the end of the year, but perhaps karma was reaching out to him when we weren't. Over the last 2 weeks he started swimming more slowly and developed some black spots on his chin and on his ventrolateral side. Note: black spots are never good. Last night he decided to curl up into a semicircle shape. His gills opened slower and slower. We're not sure at what minute he expired, but we're pretty sure it was overnight. At least, we hope he's dead because Sarah flushed him down the toilet already. She said he had "fish rigor mortis"--he maintained a perfect semicircular form as he disappeared down the crapper in clockwise swirls.