How We're Getting Along (OR, Fascinating Random Baby Stuff, I'm Sure)

William's cord stump fell out so yesterday we gave him his first bath, right in the kitchen sink. Everett thought this was a really fun thing to do and asked me today if we could give him another one. We'll wait a few more days, but I'm sure Everett will still be thrilled when I give him the go-ahead.

These are terrible pictures, but they were the only non-blurry ones we had. Now I have taken "first bath" pictures for all of my kids so far. (If I miss some of the kids it will be the biggest regret I have when I die, I'm sure. . .)

The kids have been having fun with William (all two seconds at a time). Since he is still so little and sleeps the majority of the time, they are always pleased to see that his eyes are open, but there is little else he does that interests them. Fine by me; he has his whole life to be rough-housed with.

Everett has to give him kisses all the time. If I tell him William doesn't need a kiss right now, Everett hears, "Quick! Give that baby a kiss! If you don't, he will wither away from lack of affection! You are solely responsible for making sure this doesn't happen!" Fortunately William doesn't bat an eye at all the attention.

Mostly he just captivates us with sweet, innocent looks. Even Joel is not immune. I'm afraid William has us all quite paralyzed. I don't even mind all 12 messy diapers he has in a day (get back to me next week about that one, though).

He also really enjoys his fingers whenever they randomly coincide with his mouth.

And he is fast becoming our "little bear." He is the only child who has earned a nickname so far. Everett informs me every day that "William's name is Bear, Mommy!"

Some of you have asked if he really is as hairy as Joel lets on. Yes and No. He is mostly just covered in peach fuzz, the way pre-term babies are. Since his hair is so dark, the peach fuzz is dark, but there is a whole lot of it! Notice the sprinkling of it across his forehead. His arms, back, shoulders, and ears all have hair like this too.

I'm still on a high from the birth. The weather has been great, and Everett is old enough that I can send him out back to the playground and watch him from the living room window. William doesn't eat very much yet--I can only get him to eat for about five minutes at a time (after a good burp he is usually ready for another five minutes), and he eats every 3-4 hours. He is gaining weight, but don't ask me how. I'm hoping his appetite will pick up a little bit.

And, whenever Joel starts to cry over his slaughtered NCAA brackets. . .well, I just remind him that he has gained a new son and that he can just be thrilled about that.

Oh, and that my brackets are beating his quite handily, all things considered. The deal was that Joel makes cookies for the winner. I'm thinking. . .snickerdoodles. Yum.

Pictures

The puffiness in William's face was better the second day so I took some more pictures. Here is the little guy with his eyes open:

He has the biggest newborn hands I've ever seen. Joel is convinced he'll grow up able to palm a basketball.

My babies like to be born with plenty of black hair. Everett and Ashley had thicker hair, but William has lots of hair all over his body to compensate. He even has it sprouting on his ears, shoulders, and arms. You can't really tell in this picture, but the sides of his forehead are covered with hair, too! The child is a bruiser, and we love him dearly. I started calling him "little bear" in the hospital, but I don't know if it will stick. Right now I'm just trying not to call him Everett.

Proud Dad

Proud Everett

Proud Ashley

Ideally, I would have liked to go home from the hospital Sunday night, but I was willing to stay an extra night for William's sake. I was hoping we could go home first thing Monday morning, but no such luck. The hospital needed William to stay so they could send the 48 hour post-birth blood work in to the state. Even though I was antsy and ready to get on with my life, I decided it was a good thing he and I had an extra day to spend together. I gave him as much skin-to-skin contact as I could.

My favorite way to hold newborns: laying on his belly with his head snuggled right up against the skin of my neck and collarbone area. This is how we looked the majority of that last day. It was wonderful and peaceful, and despite my anxiousness to get home, I really enjoyed being able to do this without interruption.

Now we're home and doing well, and it has been really nice to get back to my normal life. I have my wonderful mother and sister out here to help me, so I get to enjoy all of the fun parts of my day and few of the routine chores. It was great to spend time with Everett and Ashley this morning and it is nice to feel self-sufficient again.

Straight From the Horse's Mouth

It is always fun to read Joel's take on things. If you want to read my take on the delivery, keep reading. If you have no desire to hear anything else about contractions, dilations, or mucous, feel free to abandon this post and do something useful with your time.

I suspected this labor would go fast, but I had no idea how fast. This was the timeline, for those of you who are wondering why I waited "so long" to go to the hospital:

A little after 6 pm, I feel a contraction. We are driving in the car to a restaurant everyone wanted to try out (my mom and sister had come into town three hours earlier and we wanted to celebrate before the baby was born). There is a long wait, so we go somewhere else. My contractions are about 6-7 minutes apart, and I have had no more than four of them.

We find another restaurant, park, sit down, order, and I decide I should start timing my contractions.

6:45--I was surprised that the contractions seem to be three minutes apart.

7:00--Definitely two minutes apart. Right? Am I timing them wrong? This can't be possible, can it? These were all things I was thinking.

7:15--I decide that yes, these are contractions, and yes, I should probably go to the hospital. It has been one hour since my very first contraction.

7:25--We arrive at the hospital. Joel and I walk in to the main entrance because we don't know where to go. We are directed to a long hallway leading to the emergency room. Still having contractions every two minutes. We check in and I answer some questions and try not to look like I'm in pain.

7:35--Someone comes to get me and puts me in a wheelchair. The contractions felt better when I was standing up but I go for the ride anyway.

7:40--I am in a small examination room and change into a robe. I am wondering why these contractions are hurting so badly. I figure I have a couple of hours until I'm going to be fully dilated, and that the contractions will get much worse--these I felt I could handle, but not if they got a lot stronger, so I mention that I would like an epidural so they have time to page the anesthesiologist.

7:40-7:50--I answer questions about my medical history. The contractions hurt (duh). Apparently the nurse asking me questions didn't notice that I was having so many contractions until she looked over and saw me grimacing. Then she looked at the contractions on the monitor and realizes that they are coming every 1-2 minutes.

7:55--the midwife arrives at the hospital and checks me, informs me I'm complete and ready to push. I am surprised. I didn't think I was even close. I laugh/groan and remark that this explains why the contractions were hurting.

8:00--en route to the labor room (we were only in a tiny check-in room), I start to feel the baby coming.

8:00-8:05--everyone is trying to get dressed and grab blankets and towels, but I feel like pushing so I inform the midwife that the baby is coming. I start pushing (with or without them being ready, I decide, but I knew they would be). All of a sudden I have two nurses helping me and the baby is crowning.

8:06--The baby comes barreling out after a few pushes. They place him on me with a whole bunch of blankets. It was really fun to hold him like that and let him nurse for a while as we wait for the third stage of labor to be completed.

A few things surprised me about labor, besides that this particular one went so fast. I thought it would hurt a lot more. The only part about having a natural delivery that scared me was the pushing part (I have had one child get stuck for two hours, and I didn't want that to happen again sans pain relief), but thankfully I only had to push a few times. At that point it was more a matter of wanting to get the baby out than trying to bear the pain, anyway.

I feel like I had a great overall experience and an easy delivery, and I know this was because I didn't already have my energy sapped from having contractions working up to the tough ones. My hat goes off to those of you who spent a few hours contracting only to have to work up more energy to deal with the really bad contractions at the end. Jumping in and having the tough ones to begin with and for only a little over an hour most definitely saved my sanity :). It probably also helped that I was walking around for a lot of it as we were coming to the hospital.

I have some better pictures to put up, but I'll have to do those in another post. If you're still reading, congratulations! You made it to the end!

William Warren

William was born at 8:06. He is 8 lbs 2 oz and 20 1/4 inches long. He has big hands and is hairy like a bear. Hair on his forehead, ears, shoulders, back, etc.

Elise's Mom and Sister arrived today. I guess they got here just in time. We were leaving to go to dinner and Elise tells me in the car that she just had a contraction. We go to dinner and she continues to have contractions. She starts monitoring how regularly they are and after about an hour decides we should go to the hospital.

On the way to the hospital she thinks that her water was already broken and I ask why we didn't go to the hospital earlier? We get to the hospital and she comments how much more painful these contractions are compared to Everett or Ashley. We got to the hospital around 7:30 and Elise immediately asks for an epideral. They wait for her midwife to get there before they do anything. Again Elise asks for an epideral. As soon as her midwife takes one lok at her she informs her that the baby is coming and she can't have an epideral. Elise is moved to the delivery room and her midwife has no time to get fully dressed. She was trying to put on these scrub like boots, and couldn't put them on. At 8:06 Elise gives birth to a new son, William Warren.

Funny story from my perspective. With both Everett and Ashley they immediately cut the child loose clean it off and proceed to weigh and measure it. With William they clear his lungs and immediately give him to Elise. So Elise is holding this mucussy child while they clean it. Then they tell her to breastfeed him. So Elise is taking care of this boy and they haven't even cut the embilical chord. I attribute to having a midwife. I am predisposed to think of midwives as treehugger types.

Toilet Trouble

Everett has been using the toilet all by himself for some time now, ever since he discovered that if he got up on his tiptoes, leaned in, and propped himself up on the lip of the toilet bowl, he could go standing up. Apparently this was exciting because a) he has a friend who goes that way, and b) more bubbles appear in the bowl when using this method. The only trick to going this way is that our toilet has a bit of a finicky lid--it just doesn't stay up very well. Fortunately Everett is good at getting everything situated correctly.

The other day, when I was getting Ashley dressed in her room, Everett announced that he needed to go to the bathroom. I didn't pay much attention to this because he is pretty self-sufficient, but a few minutes later he came back into his room with a very pained expression on his face.

The fact that his hands were holding his crotch area was a dead giveaway as to what was bothering him, but I had him tell me anyway.

"Da toilet lid fell down!" He moaned, "Right dere!" He pointed to his privates.

Though my first instinct was to erupt in laughter, I managed to keep a straight face and invited him over to my lap for a little consolation. Poor guy. Someday he will be tall enough that this will not be a problem. Until then, he has recovered and surprisingly has not acquired any fear of the toilet. And, I now have a great story to embarrass him with when I tell his future dates.

Bracketology

I just filled out two tournament brackets. . .and though there is little hope since I don't know what I'm doing, I'm hoping by some miracle that I beat Joel this year (Kansas, you'd better come through for me). Joel and I listened to a Bill Simmons podcast about the teams, and with all the sports shows I've been hearing over the past few weeks, you'd think I would absorb some useful information, but that is not necessarily the case. Those announcers are just like old gossips with the way they hash and re-hash everything from hairstyles to injuries! Joel bristles defensively any time I use the word gossip in conjunction with a discussion about a sports show, but I am unmoved.

One thing I do know is that Joe Lunardi has predicted BYU to make it to the elite eight, much to Joel's smug satisfaction. I keep trying to tell him that BYU won't make it very far, but he remains hopeful even though he isn't as high on Jimmer Fredette as most people seem to be. At any rate, he wore all his BYU gear to school today in support of their game this afternoon against Florida. The unfortunate thing is that he has classes during the entire game, so if he comes home sick today. . .well, I think we'll all know why.

Wish me luck on the bracket! Also, does anyone have any good movies to suggest? My weekends are going to be filled with tournament games now, and much of the time I prefer to opt out and watch a movie on the computer from a distance, making the appropriate replies whenever Joel yells out in agony over a failed play.

Fire House

On Tuesday the MBA playgroup had a field trip to the local Fire Station. Everett was thrilled; Ashley was thrilled; during the whole drive over they were convinced they saw the station about 47 times before we actually arrived.

Even though the average age of the children was less than 2 years old, the fire fighters were exceptional at explaining things at their age level.

I just put up a post with a lot of pictures, so you can feel free to skip this one or slog your way through it.

Here are the highlights of the outing:

Trying on the fire fighter gear:

(Ashley is obviously not smiling in this picture, but you can rest assured that she enjoyed herself thoroughly. She doesn't smile very much with other people; this is about as good as it gets even when she feels perfectly content. She saves her big displays for home. The fire fighters who helped her out kept trying to get her to smile through the tour, and though she was very happy, she would not oblige.)

Everett thought it was funny that they slept at the fire station, but he enjoyed seeing the beds. Some fire fighters are better at making beds than others, but all beds were made without a pillow. Apparently they don't like how the made bed looks with a lump of a pillow under the covers.

Inspecting the fire truck from the outside.

A blow-up, rubber, fire rescue boat? The kids didn't care what it was. All they knew was that it was great for bouncing in.

Making friends.

Fun in the driver's seat.

Everett was obviously NOT happy to be there.

What a fun outing for the kids! They were thrilled and I am glad we got to go together.

Spring Break

Joel just had spring break. We couldn't go anywhere really, even within a few hours' drive because I'm (supposedly) close to going into labor. I would hate to have my water break in downtown Chicago, but it sure would be an adventure.

I decided we would have fun this week, regardless of the impracticality of traveling. Having all of us home all day would have been aggravating if we were reduced to sitting and staring at the walls.

Everett and Ashley entertained each other, as always.

Here they are pretending to be babies.

We read lots of library books, and I think Everett has his favorites memorized now.

Jumping onto a huge pile of pillows was always a treat. . .

And the weather has been in the fifties, so we went on lots of very long walks. I was hoping these walks would help induce labor (no such luck). However, the kids sure enjoyed them, so that was good enough for me.

We took our umbrella strollers instead of our double because I knew the kids would want to push them and I wanted to get their little legs moving. Legs moving = good night-time sleepers.

Ashley walked for a long time. It was fun to see her roaming down the trails even though she was slowing us down.

The kids always have to stop to watch the ducks and geese. In the spring the geese have new goslings and are pretty nasty to be around, but this month they were in the water and reasonably mellow. I'm not a huge fan of geese.

I think the kids had the most fun yesterday when we went swimming. Notre Dame has a great pool and family swim time a few days during the week (the pool we swam in was small and had all the pool toys in it. . .and felt as warm as a bathtub). We had never gone before, and after I saw how much fun it was for the kids and how it was much less of a hassle than I expected, I wondered why we had never taken advantage of these facilities before. Maybe we can go again next week.

I didn't get a picture of this, but on Friday we took the kids to the dollar theater for an early matinee showing of The Princess and the Frog. I was relieved to see that there were only a handful of other people in the theater, but fortunately our kids were perfectly quiet and watched the movie well. We did let Ashley have her pacifier, which helped. Everett took a bathroom break partway through the movie and saw some racing arcade games. After that, he asked Joel to take him to the bathroom three or four more times so he could go out and drool over them some more, but I finally convinced him to sit on my lap where he enjoyed the remainder of the movie without distraction.

We weren't a huge fan of the movie, but it was a fun treat for the kids and we had a good experience. It's going to be another two years before we can even think of going to a movie all together again.

It was a good spring break. Joel did study a little--he has to sit for the second part of the CFA exam in June (he passed the first with flying colors, so I'm not worried about this one), but I think he enjoyed the time off.

Even though I have family coming in on Saturday to come see the baby, I will not complain if I have this baby sometime during this week (tomorrow, perhaps?). Anyone want to join me in thinking labor-inducing thoughts?

Big

I'm 38 weeks pregnant today. This means that the baby is fully developed and could technically come any time (ahem). Probably nothing will happen until my due date. Probably.

I am often surprised when I look in the mirror and see how big I've become; I've grown so used to hefting this belly around that I don't give it much thought anymore. The kids, however, are thrilled to use my belly as a step stool when they are climbing over or around me. It is an even better place for them to rest their elbows in full support of their body weight.

Mostly I've just been glad I haven't had any complications.

But Joel has been subtly letting me know that I at least look like I'm ready to pop. During the past week, Joel has told me that I look like I'm about to explode and occasionally looks at me with amusement as I waddle my way across the living room floor (he does sandwich these comments with sincere inquiries after my comfort).

Tonight Joel took one look at me and said, "Ho-ly cow! Those are some PUFFY legs!"

I think I'm ready to have the baby. Quite. Ready.

Family Home Evening, Simplified (Or, In Which I Wisen Up Like the Rest of You)

My biggest struggle with Family Home Evening has always been coming up with a lesson topic. I always felt it would be much easier to have it regularly if someone could outline a year's worth of lessons for me to do. This way I can look at the topic, prepare, and get it ready to go without having to actually come up with what to teach about.

Then (because sometimes I'm very slow) I realized something. Someone already has! I know there are various Family Home Evening lesson books out there, but we are still at the stage where we need to have our lessons last only minutes or, as if on cue, the kids start behaving like monkeys on sugar pills. The I Am a Child of God primary manual has changed everything for me. All I do is look at the lesson Everett is going to have the following Sunday, pick out a few concepts to go over and a few activities to do (occasionally their ideas make me have some of my own), and Everett has a meaningful lesson. I'm hoping the concepts will stick with him because he will learn it twice in a week's time. The best part about this whole arrangement is that I don't have to think very hard to come up with something--a huge plus, as my capacity to think things up is seriously lacking at this point. Ashley still has trouble sitting for the lessons of course, but I don't worry about whether or not I can tell she absorbs anything. The important thing is that she gets used to the routine.

Another thing we've been trying to be better at is having family scripture study. We spent three years hardly ever reading the scriptures together, but we decided we just have to make it a priority. We can only spend a few minutes at this or the kids get too wiggly, so we have taken to reading a story a day out of the simplified, illustrated Book of Mormon the Church has put out. I would love to get the Old and New Testament as well. I didn't realize how Everett has looked forward to our nightly routine of scripture study and family prayer until the other night.

We had gotten home late from a potluck dinner and had some friends coming over for games. We had to rush the kids to bed and I think Joel and I had the same thought: we'd just forgo scripture study that night and only have family prayer. When I mentioned to Everett that it was time for family prayer, he raised his arms in protestation.

"No, Mommy!" He exclaimed, shaking his head with great feeling. "Not prayer now! We need to read scriptures first. Then we have prayer!" His impassioned statements hit home for me and I couldn't help but smile and hug him. I told Joel what Everett had said, and Joel let me know that Everett had given him the same lecture not five minutes before.

Ashley has gotten very excited about our prayers together, as well. She seems to have the basic format down: bow your head, close your eyes, and fold your arms. (Right now we have various masking tape letters and shapes on our floor and she has claimed the "gircle" (circle) for herself to kneel on.) She usually squints her entire face up for good measure, then begins jabbering in a high-pitched cutesy little voice. At the end she says "AMEN!" and raises her arms up as though she is proud of her accomplishment. Someday I'll have to get this on video because I'm sure she'll outgrow it before I am ready.

It is a blessing to have small children in this home. Everything is black and white for them--either you are supposed to do it, or you're not; no sitting on the fence. I am glad they want to read scriptures together and pray (not having to drag groggy teenagers out of bed for these things is a major plus), and I am glad they are vocal about reminding us to do so as well. I certainly need that in my life. There are days I wish I had someone older around to talk to, but there are other times I really love being a mother to small children. It is precious to me to have these little children in the house. They constantly remind me of what is most valuable in the world, and they do it with cheerfulness and excitement and vigor. I love it.