"When Iliria told me she was pregnant, I stayed up all night worried about what kind of father I'd be. I thought of the man my father was and what he would do. At first light I took my father's ax into the forest near Haverno, searching for the right tree. After searching for a couple of hours, I finally found the perfect tree; a solid single-truck birch. It took me two hours to chop through the trunk; it took me another couple of hours to carry it all the way back to town.
I stripped the bark off the tree and started slicing it into smaller planks. Over the next four months, I spent all my time crafting the crib for our new baby. The most time-consuming part was hand-turning the bars; I needed to make 40 of them, and several needed to be redone. I tested its ability to hold my weight several times; I was so scared it wouldn't hold up. Only when it was finished did I let my wife see it. The first thing she said was, 'Let's hope it's not twins.' I had enough wood left over to build my wife a rocking chair. Though I had made a dozen or more at that point, I was so worried that it wouldn't hold her and the baby so I reinforced it to the point where it would have stayed standing even if the whole house had fallen on it.
When Adelaide was finally born, I watched Iliria rock her to sleep every night."