Halloween?

I know I have a really good excuse and all, but I feel kind of lame that this is the extent of our Halloween decorations this year... and we wouldn't have had this if it hadn't been for an activity at Andrew's work!


I did, however, make this lovely cake for the cakewalk at Leah's school carnival. I guess that has to count for something, right?

Details

Now that Eli is just over a week old and we are starting to form some semblance of a routine, I thought I'd take a minute to pass along the details of his arrival for posterity and since so many have asked. For those of you who would rather not know, you probably just want to skip this post - although I don't tend to get too graphic.



Most of you know that I was scheduled to be induced on Tuesday morning... so of course, my contractions decided to get serious on Monday morning at about 2 am. Keep in mind that I was already dilated to about 4cm on Thursday and had been having contractions for awhile, just not with any consistency. The ones that woke me up, however, were definitely more intense.. so I spent the next few hours waiting for them to get a little closer together.

At about 5:30 I woke Andrew up, called my babysitter, and let the hospital know I was on my way. We got to the hospital a little after 6... after a very slow walk up to L&D since my contractions got a LOT closer together when I was walking. Turns out I was already dilated to 8cm by the time they got me set up so Eli really didn't take very long to make his appearance. He has pretty broad shoulders though, so he got stuck a little on the way out in between contractions - not a fun place to be for either of us. Unfortunately, being stuck also meant that his umbilical cord was pinched off for a moment so he was pretty floppy and blue when he finally made it out, but pinked up quickly.The kids had just woken up when we called to tell them their new baby brother was here. When Leah heard the news there was a slight pause of disbelief (she really wanted a sister, I think) but she was excited nonetheless. And now she is completely enamored of her newest brother and has been a huge help around the house. She'll even sit and hold him for almost an hour if there's not too much else exciting going on.

I think it's safe to say that Eli has found his way nicely into our family and we're quickly approaching the point where we don't remember what it was like when he wasn't here.

First Photo

Elijah Charles

Born 7:35 am
8 lbs 15 oz
20 inches

Eviction Notice

This post is mostly to put my mom's mind at ease.... I know she's been waiting for a phone call to hear about the newest grandbaby - who still hasn't made an appearance. However, as a friend of ours put it, the child has been served an eviction notice. He or she has until Tuesday to make an appearance by choice. Then it's off to have a baby for sure. So if you don't hear from me before then, be sure to swing by for an update on Tuesday!

My Bags are Packed...

Yesterday was the day I woke up feeling just kind of icky and unwieldy and really ready to have the baby out rather than in.

Some friends of ours from Japan once told us (when we were expecting our first baby) that we needed to invite the baby to come when we were ready. At the time I was overdue with Leah and we were willing to try anything - and it worked!

So... now that we are back in our house with some semblance of order, we've gotten the important paperwork out of the way to finalize our refinance (and closing looks to be about a week away), I've finally packed a small hospital bag, found the car seat, set up the bassinet, and my doctor is on call this weekend...

We would like to issue an official invitation to our little one to come join our family! We can't wait to meet you!

Criminal Masterminds

This is a map.

This is a map made by my children to show their latest master plan. I've labeled it to make it easier for the non-secret agent to understand.

The plan is to have Lincoln create a distraction so Leah will have time to hide my books (which books, I have no idea). The goal? When I discover the missing books, apparently I will yell so loudly that Andrew will be able to hear me at work.

I'm still not sure how disturbed to be by this secret plan... especially since Leah was very distressed when she heard that Andrew had shown me the map.

In other news...

We moved back into our house last Wednesday - Hurray!! They were able to get the foundation up to within 1/4" of where they wanted it and my dad and brother were nice enough to come up and spend Monday and Tuesday fixing cracks and laying our floor back in place. Now we just have a lot of cleaning and organizing to do as we put all our furniture back in place and prepare for the new little one. We have many other projects in the works now that our foundation is more stable, but I think we'll wait until the baby arrives before we tackle those.

Marathon Kids

Leah ran her first leg of a marathon on Saturday! Austin is a huge participator in Marathon Kids - a program that encourages kids to run or walk 26.2 miles over a 6 month period. Saturday was the big kick off at the UT track, where everyone ran once around the track to start their "marathon". We'll keep running for the next six months and meet up again in February to run the final lap.

Leah did a great job and ran the whole way keeping up with her dad! Here they are after crossing the finish line :)

Barking Spiders

This may just be a southern expression, or maybe even just a Texan one, but around our house when someone passes gas we say they have a "barking spider". It just seemed better than the alternatives - especially since not everyone seems to know what it means. Since Peter's speaking abilities have rapidly been improving, he's picked up on the phrase as well - in a way that makes us giggle :) Whenever he passes gas, he gets that wonderful surprised toddler look and says "Oh! Bark! Bark!"