Welcome to the world, Little One!

Your big brother is so excited for you to get here he painted some special artwork just for you.

Your bed is so comfy, we’ve had a hard time keeping Penny Cat out of it.

(Sam and Bob prefer the nursing chair because they are too fat to jump into the crib.)

Promise we have the finest amenities for the infant on-the-go, including diapers AND wipes.

(Just don’t look in the closet.)

And, remember, although you’ll always be fondly known as “Ferpy” in this family, we promise we won’t make you leave the hospital with that name.

(Psst…notice that Tommy is painting one of your two framed paintings in that linked video.)

Love you,

Mom and Dad

The crazy inflatable water slide was a HUGE success.

Tommy in time out after breaking the “no sliding down head first” rule twice.

An attempt to get a group shot of all the cousins. We may have had more success with a group of monkeys.

Tommy and the family’s latest edition, Luke, who was celebrating his 6-week birthday.

I can’t wait for him to meet his little brother.

(For any of you keeping track of these things, little Ferpy is still pretty content to just hang out.)

Full set of pics here.

Tommy’s due date was Valentine’s Day and on February 7 I said to my body, “OK I’m ready to have this baby.” The next morning, I went into work, made it through the rush (I managed a coffee shop at the time) and then said, “I don’t feel so well, maybe I’m in labor.” I went home, took a shower, called my doctor, and and she told me to come in and see her in the office.

She checked me out, said I was in labor – didn’t I notice the contractions? (Oh, those things? Those are contractions? Hmm I guess so. ) They were too far apart to admit me, so she told me and my husband to go for a walk, have lunch, and come back in a couple of hours. We came back, my water broke in the office, and then she sent me downstairs (office conveniently located within my hospital) to admit myself. By the time we rode the elevator down two floors and filled out my paperwork, I was in active labor with OH YEAH THOSE ARE CONTRACTIONS. The anesthesiologist deftly administered my epidural. I slept for 2-3 hours. I chatted with my parents for an hour. They went out for sandwiches. I called the nurse in and told her I needed to push. Moments later we had Tommy. Total L&D time from when my water broke: 4 hours and 17 minutes.

Because I was a little early with Tommy and my delivery was so quick, when I measured 2.5 cm at my Friday appointment, my doctor told me to be “diligent” of early warning signs of labor. Those might include: nesting instinct, Braxton Hicks contractions, dropping/ lightening, spotting/bleeding, ruptured membranes or actual contractions.

Saturday, after spending the day shopping for some last minute baby items, Rick and I went out to dinner (by ourselves!) and I noticed I was having some cramping in my lower pelvic area. Ladies, think bad menstrual cramps. Guys, think mild leg cramp, except in your groin. The cramping wasn’t affecting the amount of food I could stuff in my body, so I figured they were just Braxton Hicks. They were so mild that even when Rick stopped to change my flat tire 200 feet away from the hospital, I didn’t think twice about calling my doctor.

Six hours later, the cramping was still hanging around, even after drinking a bunch of water, taking a hot shower and relaxing. That’s not very consistent with Braxton Hicks. So I called my doc’s office, got a hold of the on-call, and we all agreed it would be best for me to come in and get checked out. At 12:30 AM. So happy we had a sitter.

They hooked me up to the monitor, and indeed I was having contractions! Every four minutes. Then every 12 minutes. Then every 6 minutes. Then every 20 minutes. Ends up that the contractions weren’t strong enough or frequent enough to progress my labor, as was confirmed after several internals (human dipstick), so they sent me home. As the nurse handed me my discharge papers, she said that maybe 50% of patients come back the next day and have a baby, 50% end up delivering closer to their due date.

So why am I telling you all this? The lovely Michelle from Burgh Baby has opened up a baby pool for you bettin’ folk. To increase your odds in winning, I thought I’d be nice and provide you a bit of back story on my L&D.

So again, here are the facts, in a neat little list:

1. I was about a week early with Tommy. Total L&D time 4 hr, 17 min

2. Tommy was 8 lbs, 0 oz, 20.5 inches
3. We are having another little boy
4. My actual due date is 8/20
5. I’ll be 37 weeks (full term in the eyes of the medical community) this coming Friday, July 30
6. I had Tommy on my MIL’s birthday. My FIL’s birthday is 8/1.
7. I’ve already had one bout of preterm contractions
8. I may be having some more right now. Maybe they’ll subside after a full night’s sleep, maybe they won’t.

Happy gaming!

I’m 36 today. I was a few years older than Tommy is now when for some reason my mom being 36 floated into my consciousness. I’m guessing a group of us girls were talking how about completely old our parents were and dropping numbers just to prove our points. Can you believe my mother is 36? Gahd. I know. So old.

Yeah, that really doesn’t seem so old now, Mom.

My kids are gonna think I’m ancient.

Yes, it is hot. Please rest easily; I’m handling it well and for several reasons:

1. I’m in air conditioning 90% of the time. Between work, my car, and my house, I stay pretty refrigerated.

2. It’s generally acceptable to wear less clothing in the summertime. Sleeveless shirts and flip flops are frowned upon in February, when I had Tommy, and coincidentally I was hot all the time.
3. If I’m not in A/C or breezing about in sundresses, I’m at the pool or some other body of water.

Point in case: on Saturday we went to the Regatta and I spent the majority of the day standing around in the fountain by Hyde Park. Today we went to the Wave Pool at Boyce (one of our favorite places to go because admission is still the same price as it was in 1990). SUNDAY, however, we went to the zoo and walked around in the very hot sun for several hours. That was not so wise. I left the place exhausted and swelling. The animals were definitely smarter than we were that day: we witnessed one of the tigers taking a shower in his waterfall, the lions lounging in the shade and panting like trains, and two of the younger elephants took a nice long dip in their pool.

Elephants swimming? Yes, it’s true.

I was ready to jump in with them, but I’m guessing that I would NOT be welcome not matter how tolerant the elephants seem. If you need me I’ll be in the human pool.

• Celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary by attending kindergarten orientation.
• Sent Tommy off to Kennywood for the first time with just his friends (and their parents).
• Said goodbyes to two sets of friends (one just to a new neighborhood, no longer in walking distance, the others to a completely new city).
• Watched Tommy accept his preschool graduation certificate.
• Held our breath as Tommy practice holding his during his first swimming lesson.

And of course we’ve done it all while we’ve both been pushed to the limit in our jobs, and while Rick is still pushing his new business to launch, and while I’ve been pushing to get Tommy set up with summer camp, pushing for a more flexible schedule with my employer, pushing to get all my doctor appointments scheduled conveniently, pushing my kid to try a nectarine, take a bath, brush his teeth. Pushing myself to free up an hour or so so I can push out a damn post.

That’s a lot of pushing. And I’m not even in labor yet.

It is hard not to feel overwhelmed by the pace and the amount of change, especially for me, who takes great comfort in routine. But I guess I have to accept that our routine right now is change and I should take comfort in allowing the change to just happen. These are not bad things that are happening. Just a lot of things. All at once.

Us: Vegetarians eat only plants, they’re herbivores.
T: They eat only plants?
Us: Yes, and products of plants. You, me and daddy eat plants and animals. We’re omnivores.
T: We eat animals? What kind of animals?
Us: Sometimes chickens, beef (that’s cows). Tonight we ate pork, which is pig.
T: Pig? Ewwwwwwww. [and then] Daddy likes to drink beer. He’s a beerivore!

Except it didn’t come out quite “beerivore”. The boy’s pronunciation is getting much better, especially when it comes to dinosaur names. Unfortunately, this made-up word came out a little mangled.

Daddy’s a beer whore.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

Tommy was really excited and hoped it would be a lot like dying Easter eggs. The sugar cookie mix was easy enough to mix together, but then the instructions call for you to separate the dough into balls and then color them using powdered dye packs. The packs come in red, yellow and blue, which you can mix together to make secondary colors. True to the instructions, the colors did blend well together, and they were quite vivid, but my LORD what a mess. The box recommends that an adult mix the colors together and let me just say that this should not just be a recommendation, it should be a warning, in big, bold, dayglow-orange letters. My hands were stained blue for two days (so yes, it was much like dying Easter eggs). I would have taken pictures of my hands, but I like my camera too much.

After mixing the dough and the colors, which did take a considerable amount of time – maybe a half hour – I had a very bouncy kid who was anxious to start playing with the dough. Unfortunately, I had to pop it in the fridge for another 20 minutes because the dough was too warm to work with. When we did get down to shaping the dough, we found it hard to work with because it warmed up quickly and broke apart easily, especially under eager little fingers. We tried to cut some shapes out with the few cookie cutters I have. The dough was a bit too puffy for successful results, though, as shown by our “dinosaur” and our “gingerbread man”.

Eventually we ended up smooshing all the dough together an cutting out circles with a small juice glass. And when Tommy got tied of making the little ones, he created one, giant Colossal Cookie. (Please note the size of that thing in relation to the cookie sheet.)

Despite our struggles, we did have lots of fun making them. What little boy doesn’t love a giant mess? In retrospect, it might have been fun to put the dough through one of Tommy’s Play-Doh fun factories. But I’d still be hard-pressed to buy this kit again. While the cookies were very good – I made mine with all butter – sadly, I was the only one to eat them. Apparently the boys in my house do not eat cookies unless there are chocolate chips in them.