Random Thoughts. Shelved.

I have so many posts I wrote while pregnant that I never published. Too much thought-dumping, I guess....

Now you know.

But now, here are some pictures. ;-)

Seth and cousin Kenny! Don't you think they look like they're singing a bar song right here? Haha! Cute boys. :)

Handsome boy #1....

Handsome boy #2.
And...3.... ;-)
You never know what might happen when you conk out at Christmas.

Some More Pictures

The sad thing is, you delay publishing a post for a few weeks and the pictures already look like an era gone by.... My goodness! The newborn phase passes in such a hurry.

This is where Seth decides it would be great fun to burp her. I just kept taking pictures, perhaps a little too confident he wouldn't just drop her. Haha! She dealt with the abuse like a champ. ;-)

The Name.

Why Maren Elise...?

I still remember the spot in the road, driving along Mission Bay (in 2003!), when I said to Matt: "Actually.... Ooooooh! I think I like Maren even better than Morgan." And he said, "Ah! Me, too!"

And Maren never wore on us, not in all these years.

I love that we decided on her name in San Diego (the first time we lived here), and that she ended up being born in San Diego, coming home to a house right near Mission Bay. It's kind of sweet.

There's a logical sequence that both name-decisions have followed. Seth's went like this:

1) Williams is boring. A boring first name would be criminal!
2) Boy names are always either: a) too popular or boring, or b) bizarre.
3) We want a non-bizarre but not-popular name.
4) We want a Hebrew name.
5) We want a meaningful name, referencing God.

Seth!! It was perfect from the second we thought of it. WAY down on the Social Security Administration popularity list, yet not bizarre. Sounds great with Williams. Looks great with Williams. And references an incredibly touching moment in the scriptures when Adam and Eve, suffering from the tragic losses of Abel and Cain, are blessed with an "appointed son" to comfort their souls.

It's more than a little hilarious that the scriptures say of Seth that he was "the perfect image" of his father. Our Seth might look much like me, but he is Matt reborn! Really, they're indistinguishable.

(On a more serious note, I love that Adam's and Eve's Seth was said to be "the perfect image" of his father. I think that's a reference to the Father and the Son.)

Then there's Gabriel because it was the only name that ever, ever fit with Seth Williams—the only thing that made the name seem like our child-to-be instead of just words on a page. It was him. With the added bonus that my brother, Jordan, who we adore, is named Gabriel. (Seth was even due on his birthday! And we had picked out Seth Gabriel, with Jordan's permission, years before. Coincidence?! :)) Seth Gabriel was his name long before we met him.

Seth's miraculous circumstances made the name so incredibly meaningful to us. He truly is our comfort after loss. And, as the name Gabriel references, his strength is from God—he is a strong man (or boy :)) of God. We love and relate to how the angel Gabriel announced miraculous births, and brought peace and comfort to our hero: Mary.

Enter Maren...! She's named for Mary, the mother of Christ. We love Mary. We love the nativity story for its quiet simplicity, for its meekness. We adore Joseph, and we're endlessly fascinated by and in awe of him. What a family. What beauty, and kindness, and humble meekness. Besides Jesus Christ himself, there is no one in the scriptures we love more than Mary and Joseph.

But, per the aforementioned logic, Mary Williams just will not do. Haha! (As our friend, Amy, had said about another favorite name, Anne Williams: "She'd have to be really pretty to pull that one off!" Ha!) And so we turn to the Danish: Maren.

A side bonus is that Matt and I are both of Danish descent. I even have a couple Maren Rasmussens on my family tree—Rasmussen being a name that Matt and I both share, he from his mother, me from my mom's grandmother. (Don't worry. We're not related. :)) We were never ones to turn to the family tree for name inspiration, but it is kind of fun to see a Maren Rasmussen or two on there. And even though our kids are a gazillion times more British than Danish, it's fun to remember that ancestral line in her name.

Maren—or Mary—has a disputed meaning, but we like the meanings we find. We learned when we were Hebrew students that her name (Miriam) meant "bitter," referencing the bitterness of the death of her Son. His was a "bitter cup," which His mother shared in a way unique to the world. (Does it astound you that Christ came as a baby? And was born to a woman? That even God needed a mother...! It's a beautiful thing to ponder.) We love that Mary's name carried the mission of her Son, almost like it were hers, too. We love that Maren will carry a remembrance of His sacrifice in her name.

Mary may also mean "wished-for child." If ever there were a name appropriate for this baby!

It may also mean "beloved." Or it may mean "exalted," which we particularly like juxtaposed with "bitter"—for though He descended below all things, His sacrifice creates exaltation of all things. That a single word could mean both "bitter" and "exalted" is further testament to the reference it can be to Christ.

And as for Elise.... We were on a roll with the nativity names, so enter Elizabeth! Elise was the form of Elizabeth that we most loved with Maren. Elise was also on Matt's shortlist from the time we were married—since 2002. (I remember coming up with that name, too! Matt was cooking in our first apartment, and I was sitting on the couch doodling names, and he said that he had always loved the name Elise. This girl of ours has had this name for years!)

Maren gets to bear the names of two beautiful women from the world's best story—how the Love of God was made Man, how God cares for mothers!, and how miracles happen to bring babies to this earth. We have relied on the Lord to bring us our babies, too....

"Elise" references a covenant with God. We are so grateful for God's voice in our lives, and for the covenants we have made with Him. We know He is mindful of us—every moment, in every circumstance.

And so: two babies, three nativity names, four references to God's hand in their lives.

And nothing too boring.... ;-)

I'm Sorry.

I didn't mean to win the poll! Honest! (We should have known, though, since I am often eerily clairvoyant.... It's kind of crazy! Maybe I should have foreseen my win.... ;-))

But, hey, three cheers for me! And, really, isn't it kind of fun to have the mom be the most in tune? That's kind of fun. :-) Right? At the very least, it was fun for me, while things were kind of painful and crazy, to be watching the clock thinking about poll times. Thank you, all, for playing!

And a HUGE congratulatory 2nd-place prize to Christy! Christy guessed 2:34! Only 11 minutes short of Maren's actual birth time should have gotten her major, major props. Again, I'm sorry to have been only 3 minutes off. (Three minutes, people! Three minutes! Haha!)

3rd place was a distant hour off, so Christy was solidly in the pocket. You rock, Christy! You might even find some cookies in your mailbox sometime. ;-)

Maren Elise

Best few days EVER: Maren was born on November 24th, the next day was Thanksgiving (what a perfect day to go home with a new baby!), and the 26th was our 8th anniversary. I love November and Thanksgiving so much! It's been wonderful to celebrate our anniversary around Thanksgiving every year, and now we get to celebrate our daughter then, too. Happy Thanksgiving! So many things to be grateful for.... :-)

In honor of the fact that my due date was this week, and to finally reveal the results of our prediction poll, here's the two-week-old story of Maren's birthday! (Thank HEAVEN she came two weeks ago instead of staying in there clear until now. :))

The Timeline!

5-something in the morning: I get up after a nasty night of bad pregnancy-sleep to get ready for the hospital. It didn't take long, since I was, you know, going to have a baby. Haha! You don't exactly do your makeup for that unless you're the most ridiculous, vain lady in the world. :) (I did tame my bed-hair a bit. And I enjoyed a loooonnnng shower. :)) Matt made me a not-too-big-but-not-too-small breakfast. And then I went to hug Seth in his sleep so I could have a little moment with my boy—the last moment it was just him in our family. Oh, I love that kid. I was glad when he wandered out of his room a few minutes later (oops, I guess I had woken him up.... :-)). He sat on my lap for a while, hugged me and the baby over and over, and told me I'd do great. I could have cuddled with him all morning and then some (even though it kept making me cry). Ah, my sweet boy!

7:00 am: We show up at the hospital for my 7:30 appointment time. By the Grace of God (really...), I wasn't overly nervous. Nervous, yes, but not phobic-nervous. I was so grateful for that relative amount of peace.

They took a couple hours to get me a room.

9:30 am: My day started with a botched IV. The bruise all up the side of my arm is way impressive! My battle scar!! (I was pretty bummed that my day started this way. Great, I thought. So this is how it's gonna go! ;-))

Then on to IV #2. Then on to the first of five—FIVE—liters of saline I got that day. That's 11 pounds.

The nurse was pleased to see that, "hey, you're already having a lot of contractions! You feeling those?" To which I could only say, "uh... Sure.... I pretty much ignore them but, sure...." I mean, hahaha! I had been having them for months. Her enthusiasm was amusing.

10:30 am: The induction begins! Doctor placed a tablet of Cytotec to ripen the cervix, which was hardly dilated at all and still ridiculously posterior. There was a long, long way to go. (Matt had predicted a birth time after 7:00 pm and I had predicted 2:48 pm. I was now laughing about my early time as hard as Matt had always laughed over it.... :))

10:30 am to 11:45 am: I had to lay flat and pretty still so the tablet would stay in the right place and do its job. Contractions were the same ol' same ol'. I started to feel bad for Matt that things were so boring. (I wasn't too chatty. I was listening to Tosca. :))

Sometime in the noon hour: I started to have contractions that were totally new to me! They weren't the uncomfortable-yet-painless Braxton Hicks contractions that I'd had 10 million of, but they weren't the destroy-your-soul contractions that Seth's labor had started with. It was something . . . in between . . . . I'd breathe through the intermittent pain that was progressively getting worse and wonder, huh, is this what normal labor is like? Is this what women are talking about when they sit at home counting contractions and they don't want to die but the pain is manageable? Huh. Huh. ;-)

1:00 pm: Still finding the contractions absolutely fascinating even though they were starting to get extremely unfun. (And starting to wonder.... If these contractions keep getting worse, and I keep listening to Andrea Bocelli sing Recondita Armonia, will I ever be able to listen to that aria again? ;))

1:10 pm: My doctor stopped by to see how things were going. The idea had been to break my water after four hours of nothing really happening. But here we were only 2 1/2 hours after getting the tablet and I was, surprisingly (or NOT ;-)), apparently in active labor. (Cervical-ripening drugs are slow-mechanism stuffs—this is why you can get them and then go home for the night. We always thought if they'd have sent me home, I'd go right back to the hospital in major labor. Ha! We were right!) He mulled it over for a little while, smiled and asked me if we wanted to get on with it, and went ahead and broke my water. Cervix was only 2 cm dilated and still horribly, horribly posterior. (Worst exam EVER.) Long way to go, still. Dr. Awesome had to go to clinic at that point and told me he'd be back late that afternoon. (Hahahaha!!)

2:25-ish pm: I had been suffering through some really bad contractions. The nurses were just checking stuff on the computer and dawdling around when one nurse told the other: "She says she went pretty fast with her first, maybe you should just check her now...?" Uh...ok.

So, rather perfunctorily, she did.

I keep trying to think of an awesome way to express the mood of the room, the thoughts in my head, the look on Matt's face, and the tone of the nurse's voice when she said: "Ohhhhhh.... Yeah, you're 10 centimeters...."

But I can't.

It was hilarious and shocking and action-springing and a relief and validating and, well, I'm back at hilarious.

I wish I could have read all their minds so I could tell you their thoughts—it was obvious they were funny.

My thoughts, all together at once, were:

—Whaaaaaaa...?

—Of course! HAHAHA!! Of course!

—Huh. So THAT'S what that incredible, mind-boggling pressure was that made me feel like the bottom of me was just going to explode in half.... Yes, now that I think about it, I've heard people describe this as "the urge to push." Huh. Maybe I should have said something. Also...that's been going on for at least half an hour. Have I been fully-dilated for half an hour?

—HA! I KNEW I was in PAIN! This proves it! Dilating in an hour? So validating. Thank you, thank you.

—Woo hoo!! Baby's coming!!

—Whoaaaa.... Baby's coming....


And, of course:
—Hey, two minutes ago, who knew my prediction wasn't so off after all?! Laugh at that, Matthew! ;-)

2:35-ish pm: The nurses are happy to find out my doctor is already back at the hospital, but he is headed to the OR for a c-section. I have two options: I can have them get the on-call doctor, or I can try to wait half-an-hour for mine. In the back of my mind, I knew this baby wouldn't last a half-hour. But I really wanted my doctor. He's awesome and amazing, and one of the benefits of the induction was that he'd definitely be the one there. So I said I'd wait (and wondered what kind of craziness might ensue...!). Five minutes later....

2:42 pm: My doctor comes in! Sweet! His other patient was being prepped for the OR and since he's awesome, he rushed over to my room hoping to be able to deliver the baby before his patient was ready for surgery. He seemed pretty confident it would be quick. (What? Do I seem like a quick laborer or something? ;-)) I look at the clock, thinking about my 2:48 prediction. If I really hurry, maybe I can be right on! YES!! (Six minutes, though? I didn't think I could hurry that fast.)

2:43: Doctor sets things up.

2:44: Doctor takes a look and says: "Whoa, look! The head! Look at this, Matt!" Matt says when he heard the doctor say that, he genuinely didn't believe it. He actually thought the doctor was mistaken—because, you know, awesome ob's can just be wrong about that sometimes. ;-) ("But Auburn, I've been to a lot of deliveries. The head doesn't descend that fast unless it's a seventh baby or something. Insane.")

2:45: Beautiful baby Maren was born. It took about 45 seconds and two whole pushes.

She hardly cried. By the time she was back to me, she just laid on my chest and looked around with wide, bright eyes. She seemed so...comfortable. And actually happy...? Can a brand-new baby have joy in being alive? She seemed to.

Matt called Seth to tell him the happy news. Seth's response: "Ah. Welllll.... I'm just going to play on the slide a little more, then I'll come to the hospital." Haha!

Matt texted my parents in the waiting room. (They had knocked on our door just before the surprise 10-cm discovery and been turned away with the promise that we'd invite them in "in about five minutes." Haha! :)) Because he underplays everything, Matt's text just said: "Auburn wins the poll." My mom said: "What was her prediction? Oh noooo.... Does that mean it's gonna be a while...?" My dad said, "No, he said she WINS. I think she's already born! Say what?!" Then my dad texted it to Matt: "Say what?!"

Seth was the first person to come see Maren.... It was beautiful. I'll probably write about that all on its own sometime.

And then Seth got to bring all four of his grandparents in to meet his new sister.

All in all, it went well! A beautiful day. A painful day (yowza...), but a beautiful one. :)

So here she is: Maren Elise Williams. She was a petite 6 pounds even, 19 inches long. She's beautiful and amazing, and the best Thanksgiving/Anniversary present we could have ever waited our whole lives for. We're a happy family!

(Pictures are all from our day in the hospital. We went home the next day—on Thanksgiving! Our more recent pictures still haven't been uploaded from our camera. But I'll post more later.... :))

First moments.

Later that day (or maybe the next), just playing with us for a while....

THE POLL ENTRIES!

The High-Hope-ers (Pre-Induction)

November 20th

2:19 pm

Laurie (sister-in-law)

November 22nd

8:15 pm

Sandy (friend)

10:16 pm

Kristen (sister-in-law...soon! :))

November 23rd

11:41 am

Samantha Burns (friend)

11:23 pm

Steven (brother-in-law)

November 24th

12:24 am

Ellie (sister-in-law)

Induction Day!

November 24th

11:24 am

Kathy (mom-in-law)

1:12 pm

Greg (bro)

1:46 pm

Tera (friend)

2:34 pm

Christy (friend)

2:48 pm

Auburn

4-o-clock-ish-sunset-y-ish :)

Gwen (my mom)

5:34 pm

Becca (friend)

7:09 pm

Jordan (bro)

7:13 pm

Matt (my man :))

8:27 pm

Janelle (sister-in-law)

9:23 pm

Hillary (friend...and labor-delivery nurse!)

The Apologizers

(Sorry, but I think the induction will last all day and night...!)

November 25

2:15 am

Chuck (dad-dad-daddio)

2:17 am

Amy (friend...and "Godmom" ;-))

The Foes!! ;-)

November 27

12:14 pm

Elizabeth (friend)

December 2

2:30 am

Bruce (dad-in-law)

Honorable Mentions

Before I announce The Big Winner, I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize some special participants.



Special Thanks are in order for everyone who guessed I'd have the baby before the induction day. That was pleasant of you. :-) So for making me really hope you'd win, Honorable Mention to Laurie, Sandy, Kristen, Samantha, Steven, and Ellie!



Honorable Mention to these people with remarkably similar ESP:

Jordan and Matt had guesses only four minutes apart.

Our friend Amy and my Dad had guesses only two minutes apart! (And they were the only two people to have guesses on that day at all.)



Honorable Mention is in order for Elizabeth and Dad-in-law Bruce, who had the courage to guess the induction would be derailed even though they knew I'd just have to label them foes for it ;-). And who still had me going into labor well ahead of my due date. Nice to know that nobody's ESP was picking up the vibe that I'd be miserably waiting for labor into the middle of December or something. Thanks, guys!



And, finally, Honorable Mention to everyone who had a fun number that was obvious enough for me to recognize:

Steven for 11/23 at 11:23
and his mom, Kathy (my mother-in-law) for 11/24 at 11:24 (like mother like son!)

Ellie for 11/24 at 12:24 (24 is an awesome number—no, the awesome number—of course! 11/24 at 12:24 would have been pretty cool.)

Christy for 2:34

And Jordan for turning his birthday into a guess of 7:09

Big Winner and one more Honorable Mention coming up!

Don't forget to vote!

You're already running out of time! Get your prediction logged! :)

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/D7NFBHD

Me and My Girl

For a lot of this pregnancy, I haven't felt so much like I'm getting to know this baby. And, honestly, I'm not really, am I? ;-) But Seth was such a funny dude even in the womb that I had distinct impressions about his personality. Which I wrote in my journal. And which were correct! Ha-HA!

Tell-tales for Seth.... He was a total acrobat, moving in strange, discernible, and funny ways. He was wildly active as such a tiny thing that I could feel crazy stuff at only 15 weeks. He never got into fetal position. (Hahaha! I wrote in my journal: "If that's not Matt-like behavior, I don't know what is." HAHA! Fetal position. Who needs it.) His ultrasounds were hilarious. Then I'd get those non-stress tests where they strap you up to a monitor, and he'd kick the monitor off—over, and over, and over again. I don't remember how I got the impression that he was also a mellow dude but with a physically active personality, but I did (maybe just because I guessed he'd be much like Matt), and it's totally true.

This baby has been asleep at every single ultrasound. Aw.... Darn! And she's more of a rumbler, not an acrobat. Her movement is fairly nondescript to me—instead of feeling feet and arms doing weird things, I just feel a rumbler in there hurting my organs. :) I also didn't feel her for so long because of the anterior placenta. She's a mystery to me!

[Amy says the mystery part is what I'm learning about her personality. She'll be an enigma! She'll be . . . like me!! I think that's an awesome and hilarious theory. As she grows up, if I ever think to myself, "man, you're just a tough one to figure out!," I'll also think, "you've been that way from the womb!" :)]

But lately there's something I've really, really been bonding with this little girl over. She's been throwing little fits. My little rumbler has these sudden bursts of activity where she frantically kicks as hard as she can—this jolting side-to-side craziness for a few seconds that makes all her other movement look weak.  For a few brief moments—as knees and feet and butt and shoulders take turns frenetically stretching as far as my skin will let them—she seems like she's fed up with being a good sport about her compromised space, and she's just got to bust out.

"AAAAHHHH!!! Get me OUT OF HERE!!!"

I swear, I hear it! ;-) [I hear you, mija!]

And, while I grimace in pain from all the things her little fit is destroying in there :), I also smile to myself and think, "ah... You and me baby girl. I'm with you on this!"

And I think, hey, we can do this together. Almost there, baby.

Are you a winner? :)

It's Baby Time! And by that I mean: it's time to make your best guess as to when this baby is coming. (There's a link at the bottom to input your prediction!) Winner gets.... Fame and glory!

Maybe I'll even send some chocolate or cookies or a prize or something. ;-)

At the very least, I promise to tell the world you have ESP.

So, here's some background information to help you with your clairvoyance:

1) Baby is scheduled to be induced on November 24th. My appointment is at 7:30 am. If they have room for me, they get me in, they hook me up to IVs, they blah blah blah. And the process begins....

2) On November 24th, I will be 38 weeks and 1 day along. Seth came all on his own at 38 weeks and 6 days.

3) When Seth came, it was after two months of him being engaged and me having contractions every 3-7 minutes every day all day. With this pregnancy, I've had a gazillion contractions still. A gazillion. They started earlier than with Seth and they've been stronger than with Seth. But baby didn't go crazy and become engaged at 31 weeks. She's not engaged now.

4) You know how first labors last a really long time...? And then by your second labor, things tend to happen in more of a hurry...?

5) When I went into labor with Seth, I had one very, very painful contraction out of the blue. (Remember, I'd had contractions every few minutes for months. Suddenly one was horribly painful.) A few minutes later, another very painful contraction. It got my attention. A few minutes later, very painful contraction #3 did not stop! For the next four hours, I was never not contracting—not for a single moment. They didn't even know how to read the monitor! I kept hearing things like: "We're sure that monitor isn't broken?" "Well, you're just one solid contraction!" "Wow, I've never seen contractions like this. You're a contractions machine!" The time from that first painful contraction until I was fully dilated wasn't more than two hours. Because of his stress, and because I didn't have contractions come and go to give us a good cool-down period between pushes, they'd only let me push every 10 minutes or so and it took as long to deliver as it had taken to dilate. The whole thing only took four hours. Four hours. And only half of that was to dilate. First baby, y'all.

Take from that information what you will!

Will I make it to induction, or will she come before then? Do you have some cruel reason you think the induction will be derailed and she'll come later...? Will my labor go just as fast as with Seth, or faster, or was Seth a total fluke and I'll be stalled out all day...?

The doctor is planning to let me sit there "ripening" :) for four hours. He claims I'll be very comfortable. (I can't help but wonder if this will jump-start contractions more than they think.... We'll see. :)) Then he expects to be able to break my water. He hopes to not even use pitocin. He says baby by dinnertime.

But, like I said.... Take from all this information what you will!!

I'm tempted to use Price Is Right rules to discourage people from wishing a long labor on me. Hahaha! But, no, I think you deserve full glory if you're the closest from either direction. Good luck! Channel your inner psychic! And we'll see soon how right you were!

CLICK HERE TO INPUT YOUR GUESS!

Halloween

One of my favorite things about Halloween this year was watching Seth enjoy his candy. It brought back such fun memories! I loved seeing the excitement in his face and remembering just how that felt.

Matt and I were talking about how we remember that looking forward to Halloween as kids was more exciting than anything but Christmas. In the few days before, I could hardly stop thinking about it—always with total disbelief that something SO AWESOME as getting a HUGE PILE OF CANDY was really going to happen in a matter of days, one day, hours...!! A HUGE PILE OF CANDY!!! Can it be true? A HUGE PILE!!! OF CANDY!!!

And then the trick-or-treating would happen, and there it was. The huge pile. So fun and amazing and unbelievably incredible! I loved dumping out the pillowcase and seeing the spoils. :) Every year I meticulously sorted my candy, then counted it just for fun, then strategized how to eat it all. Plowing through that candy was just about the funnest five days of the year. :)

It was so fun to watch Seth open up his candy bag at home and light up over what he'd managed to bring home. You could see the wheels turning.... Which to eat first...? And after that...? He even had a really, really fun time offering candy to me and Matt—even things he likes. I think he felt rich enough to be a benefactor and it really excited him. So darling!

I had about half a moment where I thought, holy cow, he's going to fill up on candy before dinner. Maybe we should ration.... But it was immediately squashed by the memory of how fun it is to have one holiday a year where a HUGE PILE OF CANDY is yours, ALL YOURS!!! Why spoil the fun? Never! So lucky Seth gets to grow up without the memories of his parents sticking the halloween candy up in a cupboard and saying you get to pick two a day, or whatever. ;-) He gets to sort through it, eat it for breakfast, count it, give it away as presents.... Whatever he wants.... For a whopping three or four days out of the year. I love it. And we loved watching him love it. Too fun.

(Sidenote: To gorge or not to gorge? I think about this concept every time I get a big box of chocolates from someone. It's a lot better to just eat it all at once than spread it out! In my case, it's the calories I worry about. I trust my body to have no idea what to do with 8000 calories in 24 hours. Hahaha! But an extra 600 calories every day for two weeks...? Ouch! Trouble. With a kid—in addition to not wanting to spoil the fun—we'd still rather he gorge himself on candy for a couple of days than have candy every day for a month or whatever. Mucho mejor. What's the worst that can happen? A tummy ache? And then it stays totally novel and awesome, and unique to the holiday rather than turning into a little habit of getting candy after dinner every day.... Food for thought. Candy for thought! ;-))

(Another sidenote: I always wondered how the heck my meticulously-sorted candy disappeared faster than I expected. My mom fessed up just a few years ago.... Haha! While we were at school, she'd sneak some chocolates out of our stashes!! I have to admit.... I can see myself perhaps doing this to Seth someday.... Ha! Or maybe he'll keep wanting to give things away. Too bad he loves dark chocolate. ;-))

Today.

The Good:

Just found out that in addition to the two weeks of vacation we happened to get right at baby-time, Matt can take three weeks of paternity leave and not pay it back! YES! Now we just figure when we can make this work with the schedule they've given him (he can't do this during any critical rotations). Five weeks at home! During residency. Am I dreaming?

Also.... Matt gets the whole day off tomorrow. Woo hooooooo!!! Is it just my melted brain making things up, or has he not had a day off in about eighteen years? We get a few in the next couple of weeks! I love you ER. (Even if Matt thinks you're the one branch of medicine that's horribly boring.)


The Bad:

Seth woke three hours too early. Again. He was sick a couple weeks ago, and for at least a week now he's been awakened by incessant coughing early, early in the morning. I laid in bed trying not to burst into tears when I woke up hearing the coughing again this morning.... Not only is the day too long (starting three hours early!), but it's hardly manageable with such a tired Mama dealing with such a tired, tired boy all day. Every day. All day. He just needs a good night of sleep! Please?


The Ugly:

Me. :) Hahaha! Or at least my feet.


Oh, which brings me to another Good:

The glorious pedicure/foot massage I got yesterday. Ahhhhhh.... So therapeutic. (Thanks, Mom!)

November!

It's November!! AHHHH!! We're having a baby! :-D

In honor of November, when we met and when we married (four years apart :)), here's a little survey someone sent me forever ago.


When is your “engagement” anniversary:
June 22, 2002

When is your “marriage” anniversary:
November 26, 2002

How long have you known your spouse:
Since I was 17! Twelve years.

How long did you date/court before you were engaged:
Almost a year. Although, we weren't completely "official" that whole time. ;) (Matt had a hard time overtly admitting to ourselves that we were dating. So we just spent all day every day together, with dinner every night that he paid for. For . . . a long time . . . . Haha!)

Where did you meet your spouse for the first time:
Lobby of my dorm.

Do you have any children:
Seth and baby girl!

Do you have any house pets:
Never! :) (We once had a fish. But even that got gross.)

Do you own a house or rent:
Renting currently.

Do you live in the country or town/city:
"America's Finest City" :) YES!

What is one of your favorite activities together:
Walking the beach for the last hour or so before sunset.

Do you have a favorite vacation spot:
Ooooooohhhh.... Too many! Which to pick? I'll say that places we dream of owning a vacation home are Korea and Costa Rica, and we're master-planning a way to live in London for a year sometime.

When did you first kiss:
After many, many weeks of dating. AND! After Matt had already told me he loved me. (He says he was waiting for the right moment.... ;-))

What church do you attend:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Is this the church you were married in:
Yes, we were married in the San Diego temple.

What town is your current address at:
San Diego! Woo hoo!!

Do you work or stay at home:
I stay at home with my buddy Seth.

Where did you go on your honeymoon:
San Diego! (Can you tell we love San Diego?)

What was the funniest gift you gave when dating:
For a while we gave each other Little Mr. and Miss books (Little Miss Curious, etc.) with funny poems written in them.

How long did you know each other before you started dating:
Three years.

Who asked who out:
I'm not sure which date to count as our "start," or who would get credit.

How old are each of you:
He is 30 and I'm 29, counting the days to be 30! YEAH!

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple:
Exhaustion.

Did you go to the same school:
Yes. This was good and bad. Good: we were at the same school! Bad: we couldn't stand the place. We dream of an alternate reality where we met at Stanford or something. :)

Are you from the same home town:
I'm from California, he's from Denver.

Who is smarter:
My IQ is five points higher! That's right, folks. Five whole points. :) But Matt has read everything, remembers everything he's read, and consequently knows approximately 800,000 times the number of things I know.

Where do you eat out most as a couple:
We love ethnic food, and we love a pretty view.

Where is the farthest you two have traveled together as a couple:
Korea? Italy? Which is farther away...? Probably Korea, huh?

[Sidenote: Ok, I just calculated the distance from San Diego to Pusan and to Rome. 6110 miles to Pusan. 6375 miles to Rome! So I'm not crazy to have to wonder which is farthest! I thought for sure the answer would be thoroughly embarrassing, and instead it's a virtual tie! But I suppose Italy wins. At least until I get funny and try to find the farthest Korean city we visited and the farthest Italian city. We lived in Denver when we traveled to both, which would give Korea the huge win. But we traveled from California.... Hmmm.... :)]

Who has the craziest exes:
We were pretty circumspect about dating and don't technically have exes. :) Hands down, I have the more embarrassing crushes. (Mostly because I had so many, while Matt crushed on no one. :))

Who has the worse temper:
Neither of us has a temper. Matt's foul mood is darker than mine.

Who does the cooking:
Matt! By a lot. (He never needs a cookbook. And he's good at it. And he loves it. So if he's home, he's probably the one.... :))

Who is more social:
Hahahaha! Me! Which is not saying much. We are total homebodies and love it.

Who is the neat-freak:
Depends. I'm more prone to leaving things out in the first place than is Matt, but Matt is more tolerant of something out for a long while than I am.

Who is more stubborn:
Depends! :) On who is right. Haha!

Who hogs the bed:
Right now I have a massive u-shaped body pillow taking up a large portion of the bed, so I guess me at the moment. :)

Who wakes up earlier:
Matt has to get up so early, the poor guy!

Where was your first date:
Again.... Which to count...? But we like to say our "first date" was a Laker game. Courtside seats at the Pepsi Center in Denver. I slapped Shaq, stealthily held hands with Kobe, high-fived Rick Fox, B-Shaw and D-Fish. Awesome night. Oh.... And being with Matt was cool, too. (Would have been cooler if he'd have kissed me. Hahaha!! Fun, fun night together, though. :))

Who had more boyfriends/girlfriends:
We're tied at one. Each other! :) [Aw....] And yes, that's totally awesome. (Like I said, though, I have the funnier dating history. He was smart to just be a cool independent before me. :))

Do you get flowers often:
Sometimes! Not that often, though, because there's usually a far more romantic alternative and he's so good at thinking of those. I don't surprise him with creative moments nearly as awesomely as he does for me. I try so hard to think of great ideas! Matt is fun. :)

How do you spend the holidays:
We love to spend holidays at home with our own little family. It's the greatest. Always will be. :)

Who is more jealous:
Of...what...? Neither of us gets jealous of really anything, anytime.

How long did it take to get serious:
Three years. Haha!

Who does the laundry:
He's always shared the task with me tons. But now we have a washing machine he adores that plays Korean ditties, and I feel like I have cement in my ribs, and he's been doing all the laundry. Cheerfully. It's, well...pretty much heaven.... :)

Who’s better with the computer:
Several years ago I would have said me by a hair (plus, Matt was still preferring PCs! Please...), but Matt has stayed with the times and I'm still living in 2001. So Matt. Big time.

Leave a piece of advice for the other couples:
Talk. :)

I Spy At The Wild Animal Park....

Does anyone else find this hilariously funny? We stood there and laughed for hours. Really. ;-)

Eight Years.

Well, we made it eight whole years without having to go there. But now we have . . . a second car. [Cue music. Whatever kind seems appropriate. :)]

You can read all about our good fortune to live so happily with just one car by clicking on the following sentence. We've been so happy and lucky to share a car!

Like I wrote before, it's been pretty amazing how our circumstances keep lending themselves so well to sharing a car. And it's also been SO rewarding to share our schedule to the extent you need when you only have one vehicle. We've loved it.

Lately we've been considering our various options now that:
1) A second baby is coming.
2) Seth is in his last year without school.
3) Matt is finishing his last year of roaming from hospital to hospital, soon to be working exclusively at Children's just three miles away.

The first two say to us, break down and get a car. The third says, HA! Yeah right! Three miles away means NO second car required! HaHA!

Which is absolutely totally true, and resulted in a firm decision to work out another plan. We'd still share the car. For the days when taking Dad to work would mean waking two kids up at 5:30 in the morning, we'd get Matt a scooter. It's a safe route for a scooter, and a lot safer than a bicycle would be, and would take much less time than riding a bus or walking the three miles. Scooter it was.

Then we started to get real about our Camry.

The awesome, awesome Camry. It's been with us our whole marriage, and with me before then (and my dad before then!). "The Crammy" (as my roommates affectionately named it when it was how we all got to grocery stores :)) has been a great car for 11 years and almost 200,000 miles. And it's still a great car. (Consider, too, that it was severely beaten for many years by snow and ice and snow-clearing things like sand, gravel, and salt! This car rocks!) But it's starting to demonstrate that if we keep putting this kind of mileage on it . . . it's on its last legs. :-(

It occurred to us: with this kind of use, we'll need to buy a new car in the next year or two anyway. May as well do it now and have two cars, right? And if the Crammy is only asked to drive three miles to Children's hospital and back every day, how long might it last...? Another five years? More? (That would be SWEET!!!)

So in an effort to be reasonable, and in a dramatic effort to possibly lengthen the life of our awesome old-man of a sweet car, we decided on Thursday to start—to start—looking at vehicles. The beauty being we were in absolutely no rush and could wait months for a great deal.

On Saturday we looked at cars just to get a preliminary feel for things.

And on Monday...we drove a new car home.

Hahahahahaha!!

Turns out that being in no rush with the flexibility to wait for a great deal gives you a killer position during negotiations to get the great deal. And you end up with a car in two days anyway! Kind of funny.

But Matt had a good time negotiating from his killer "I don't need this" position, and Seth had a great time test-driving cars (happiest day of his life :)), and we ended up with a 2009 Kia Rondo. It only has 20,000 miles on it but we got it for almost half the price of a 2010. And it's a Certified Pre-Owned vehicle, which means we keep the great 100,000-mile and 60,000-mile Kia/Hyundai warranties. All in all, it worked out pretty well! We love how the car drives, and we love that it has so much more space without being a van or an SUV or a big car (it's footprint is smaller than the Camry's, but it has seven seats that actually feel more spacious, and tons of cargo room!). It gets great reviews. Hopefully it can last as well as we expect it to after having a killer Toyota for so long.... (Oh, Kia, they say you're pretty decent now. You better be! I guess even if you're not, we got you for cheap. ;))

So, goodbye you fabulous eight years of shared-car bliss! We never thought we'd get that much of you. Thanks to good fate and a good car, you stretched out to almost a decade. I guess that's pretty awesome.

(Watch, the Crammy will die tomorrow, and our car-sharing will be back! Haha!)

Ohhhhh boy.

I've really been looking forward to getting a tour of the hospital where our baby will be born. I haven't been able to stand not knowing what it's like in there!

And I thought I'd enjoy it. Almost five years ago, I had really enjoyed the tour of Seth's hospital. Yes, almost five years! I had been so eager to see the place that I was one of the least-pregnant people there.

I think I was on to something....

Because this tour....
This tour scared the living daylights out of me. Too soon! Too soon!!

Even just sitting in the lobby waiting for our tour guide made me nervous! When a happy family came wandering in with "It's a Girl" balloons and bouquets of flowers, I apparently turned to Matt and muttered: "Oh gosh. Someone just had a baby. . . . Terrible things happen here...." (Haha! Matt laughed at that for a long while. At least one of us was having fun. ;-))

Have I mentioned I hate hospitals? Hate. It's amazing to me that Matt spends his life in them.

And have I mentioned that I hate not having complete control of my body...? The thought of all these people touching me, sticking things in me, collecting or measuring the gross stuff I can't keep from spilling out of me.... It's all very horrifying.

Worth it, though! Worth it! :) I keep chanting this to myself! (I'd be the perfect candidate for a home birth if I didn't care so much about having emergency care ready for our baby. Staying at home sounds sooo comfortable and appealing.... Aside from the mess. Hehe. ;))

So...yeah. I'm in a weird place. The idea of giving birth to a baby is a little too vivid right now, while the awesome idea of a new baby actually coming to our family is so surreal I can't even picture it. At all. Seriously? In a month we'll have another child? A baby again? A little girl? No....... Really?

Logically I say to myself, yes, there will be a new baby...right...? It's not just a medical horror occurring. It's really a new baby coming, Auburn, a new baby. Really! Even though you can't picture it. And I'll be so excited and happy in the hospital that I won't mind will be able to barely tolerate all the indignities and horrors. Right...? :)

And if there's one thing I learned from Seth's birth (or, rather, that was dramatically reinforced), it's that I want a pediatric team with their expertise and equipment to save my baby's life (or brain) if s/he plummets from looking low-risk to having a major emergency in mere (completely unpredictable) moments. So I can deal with it. Keep the maternal sacrifices coming.... ;-)

Less than four weeks, people! Whoa!!! :-)

A visitor.

A little while ago, Seth accidentally left the sliding door open to the backyard. When Matt came home a little while later and headed out to say hi to Seth, I heard Matt call out to me: "Hey, Auburn, is that a toy lizard or is it real?" Which sounds scintillating to me.... If he has to ask, it MUST be something cool-looking, not your ordinary lizard! And I knew there wasn't any toy lizard. Matt and I get up close to it about the same time. He (the lizard :)) was AWESOME. Haven't ever seen one like this before....

Our favorite thing about this guy? We had just had an infestation of ants inside, which he promptly took care of. Ran around for a little while eating all of them. Gone. The whole three trails.... You go, Lizard!!

He also moved like a snake! Super-fast, as lizards are, but not a darter—he was a slitherer with legs under him. This whip-like side-to-side thing going on. Totally cool.

We chased him around for a while, trying to capture him (hard to do when the tail is so long...) to help him back outside. The harder it got, the more tempted we were to keep him around. Maybe he eats silverfish, too.... ;-)

Kids' Day

(I actually wrote this on October 3rd! Just now got the pictures uploaded from Matt's phone, though....)

We had a great Mother's Day. And then we had a great Father's Day. And a little while later, Seth randomly asked from the backseat: "Is there ever going to be a Kids' Day?"

Haha! What a great question! If we can take a whole day for kids and spouse to say thank-you to a mom or dad for being a mom or being a dad, why not celebrate the kids sometime? How fun! It took about half a second for Matt and I to both answer, yes, there is a Kids' Day!

Then we made up some hooey about how, uh, I think it's next month sometime.... :) Seth was darlingly excited.

Every so often he asks us again, "Is it Kids' Day soon?" And today—woo hoo!—today we finally got ourselves together and had Kids' Day.

It has been so, so, so fun. First, we made a special breakfast. Actually two special breakfasts! Matt planned to make cinnamon rolls but didn't get around to making the dough last night, so while we waited for the dough to rise, he made Seth's favorite pancakes: whole wheat. Mmmm.... Then came the cinnamon rolls for lunch.

We've spent the day thanking Seth for being our kid, to which he always grins sweetly and says, "you're welcome!"

And we got him some sa-WEET presents: two dress-up costumes, because we couldn't decide between them! (We might have to make the unveiling of the Halloween Costume a Kids' Day tradition. :))

Much, much, much thanks to our awesome Seth for being our kid, and a great one. Here's to you, kid!

Anesthesia

My book has gone back to a shelf that's too high for me to reach, and I'm too infirm at the moment to climb up a stepladder. But I have to recap the glory of 1940's anesthesia. :)

I loved the excited manner in which he described how, woo hoo! Gone are the days! The days when women must suffer such pain to give birth! Pain is now entirely optional thanks to . . . nitrous oxide!

It goes like this, he explains:

A woman is instructed to bear down just before the worst pain hits. Then she takes a deep breath of nitrous oxide, or "laughing gas." Blissfully unaware of . . . anything . . . the mother quickly awakes to discover that by bearing down before she was unconscious, she has assisted her baby in descending through the birth canal. As another pain begins to come on the process is repeated, until finally the mother awakes to find a newborn baby!

Awesome...!?!

You just have to appreciate our day and age, don't you? (And also, a man-centric medical world that managed to finally care about and address the issue of labor pain, even if the best they could come up with for a while was laughing gas!) Almost-all-of-human-experience Lady had no option but to suffer it out—over and over and over again if she didn't happen to be diligently scared into non-menstrual abstinence. (How sad that your relationship with spouse could be so scary! Imagine!) 1940s lady was still getting pregnant all the time, but she could at least whiff some laughing gas...? Dang! And now there's now, when the average woman can plan her pregnancies, then have a barrage of help during the delivery to manage pain in an actually low-risk way. Acupuncture, jet tubs, your husband, injections, epidural....

And you don't even have to be unconscious?! You have got to be kidding me! :)

Thank you, 2010. And all the research and progress that led to it. :)

Nurses and Residents

Courtesy of Expectant Motherhood.

This one had me chuckling a little. :)

"For many a young woman, admission to the maternity ward marks her first acquaintance with hospitals, as well as with the world of nurses and doctors. The immediate reaction may be one of strangeness, of loneliness and of homesickness. The nurses, in their stiff, white uniforms, may seem on first acquaintance somewhat stern and forbidding; you may even chronicle the impression that, to them, you are just another 'case,' which they are handling in a very matter-of-fact and routine sort of way. But beware of first impressions. Beneath their starched and sedate exterior, these daughters of Florence Nightingale cherish but one mission in life, the safety of such as you and yours; your welfare and that of your baby are their greatest concern and their greatest pride; let either of you show the slightest deviation from normal, and they are at attention to raise heaven and earth in your behalf. If they seem business-like, it is only because of their earnest desire to carry out every detail of the care necessary for your well-being. And what about the hospital doctors, the young men in white who venture hesitatingly into your room at odd moments, ask all kinds of silly questions and insist on thumping your chest or getting a drop of blood from your finger? Much maligned are these young men by misunderstanding patients, and a word in their support seems in order. They are doctors of medicine, you understand, who have gone through the most arduous period of study and training known to any of the learned professions. As medical students they have conducted dozens of deliveries and assisted at scores more; and they have passed no end of exacting examinations in obstetrics and every other branch of medicine. This may be their first, second, or even their third year out of school. Fresh from training in the latest scientific methods, they have at their finger tips an array of procedures which may be of the utmost help to your own physician, who will rely on them for much valuable assistance."

Ah, daughters of Florence Nightingale and young men in white....

(Interestingly, nurses are still almost all women. Do you find that odd? What's not "manly" enough for it?)

(I think I need to go watch Meet the Parents now.... ;-))