Summer

Despite the unrelenting 100+ degree weather, we've managed to have a ton of fun so far this summer.

Almost every evening, and on weekend mornings also, when the backyard is relatively shady, we go outside to "play splash" with the hose and sprinkler and pirate boat full of water (sometimes the dog's water bowl too). It's most fun when the big kids play too, and often Sarah will get out the sidewalk chalk. She and Grant have a blast making art/messes in the driveway. All this running and playing in the back yard does have its downside, though.

A few times EARLY in the morning before it gets oppressively hot, we've gone over to a little park to play and walk around in the grass field next to it. 

Grant has just suddenly learned to go down slides fearlessly by himself.

He's also learned to go up and down stairs somewhat safely (on his belly), though if we're not vigilant he stands up and tries to go down the way grownups do. He doesn't yet have a full measure of respect for gravity.

His vocabulary has gone through the roof. For a while I was trying to keep a list of words he was saying regularly, but he went from about 50 to 75 one week, the next week was over 100, and now I've lost all hope of keeping track. He can and will say almost anything (or at least try). I get surprised on a daily basis by words he says that I've never heard him say before. Today he pointed to his wooden Zebra toy and said "BEEZA!" which is both close and adorable.

Yesterday when I got home he ran to me, put his arms around my legs and said "HUGS!" I love that boy.
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My mom gets to smirk about this one

In every family of more than one child, inevitably one is sweet and cooperative, and one is hell on wheels. Starting from a VERY young age, I was the one sporting said wheels. Always. The stories of me as a kid always revolve around my stubbornness, independence, disregard for rules and consequences, and so forth.

Fast-forward to now, when I get to go head-to-head with...the exact same qualities in my own child. The "I do it myself!" attitude is in full swing (not the words yet, but they aren't far behind). He is endlessly frustrated with the fact that he isn't quite tall enough to do EVERYTHING on his own. But he is finally tall enough to climb up onto chairs and couches by himself. He thinks this is enormously amusing. Now the whole house is his personal bounce house. The ONLY thing we absolutely will not agree to is letting him stand UP on the furniture and walk around.

Of course he stands up every single time. It doesn't seem to matter what the tone of my "No!" is. He helpfully now says "iiiit DOWN!!!" to himself. We have tried physically sitting him on his butt again, we've tried removing him from the couch, removing him from the room, and we have even removed the movable chairs (though the couch has to stay). His response is the same: he crinkles up his nose, then smirks (dimples and all), then giggles, and runs/jumps/flops and does every cute and/or dangerous thing he can think of OTHER than sit down.

I have yet to see any shred of evidence that he is taking us seriously.

:)
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The Conversationalist

Grant's verbal abilities are starting to really take off. He's mastered dozens of words, as well as at least 9 animal sounds (when you ask him what sound the animal makes). His favorite word right now is, of course, "No." He's really good at it. A couple of days ago I was putting something in the trash and he very helpfully reminded me, "no, no, no!" I wasn't supposed to touch the trash!

Today he surprised us twice with new words. First he brought me an empty juice carton and pulled on the cap. When it didn't come off he handed it to me and said "tuck!" (STUCK!). He said it again at the park when he was interested in one of the bolts that held the park bench together. He tried to twist it and said "tuck!" Then tonight as Shane was giving him goodnight hugs and kisses, he spotted one of his favorite books on the couch. He started pointing over Shane's shoulder and said "Lilla! LILLA!" He wanted Shane to read Goodnight Gorilla before bed!

We got him a little kid-sized table and chairs for his play area and he loves it. We got some play pots and pans that he and Sarah play with for ages. He has also tried coloring with crayons a few times and really likes that too. Things are getting more fun by the day.


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A nice spring day outside

Today was one of those wonderful but rare spring days that wasn't too hot, wasn't raining/hailing/tornadoing, and wasn't a workday.

We had a nice long walk in the stroller in the morning, a lot of playing, and then Grant had his first ride on the new toddler seat attached to Shane's bike. He loved it. He didn't show any signs of being scared. After a few minutes he started smiling and saying "mamadadamamadadamamadada" which is what he has been doing lately when he's really happy. Next time we'll take pictures.

He has been actively trying to learn new words, and has just started trying to repeat words that we ask him to say. He gets pretty close to saying them some of the time. He has learned: clock, no (of course), dude (which Sarah taught him), dirt, open, out, toast, and several more. He brings me the Seuss book "Hop on Pop" and he says "BOP!" and when we have burritos for dinner he says "booboh!" He's hasn't made up his mind which word to use when he wants out of his high chair, so he says a combination of out/up/off and it sounds like "Ouwuft!"

He is so happy, and so smart, and so much fun to be with.
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How Fast a Year Goes By

I just noticed it's been 1 year and 2 days since I posted last. That sucks. So much has happened. I have the best of intentions, but...

Quick toddler update:
He runs, he makes silly faces, he climbs, kisses, pretends to feed his toys, loves music, and has a great sense of humor. He says more than a dozen words, at least three of them new as of this weekend. He now says "waba" for water, "nana" for banana, "this" "that" "off" "up" "bath" and most recently "Lo-la" for stroller. "bwoo" for blue, and this weekend he held a tissue up to my nose and told me to "bo!" (blow). There are many others, and he learns so fast!

More to come...
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14 pounds of cuteness

Still trying to catch up...but you know what they say about the whirlwind of the first couple of months with a baby!

I need to post:
- details of the snowstorm the first week after Grant was born, the subsequent power outage and living in hotel rooms for a few days while trying to recover and care for a newborn.
- the awesomeness of this kid and the discovery of his amazing little personality.
- my MRI and the impact on my little guy.
- the many introductions to people such as his great-grandmothers, Auntie Trisha, and many others.
- his trip to the pediatrician for his 2-month checkup and first shots (Wah!).

But for now we will entertain ourselves with this adorable video of Grant "talking" to his play gym toys:



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Our Birth Story (Part 2)

... continued from previous post.

[ This is Jen comforting me at the Birth Center. There was a chance she had been exposed to the flu, so she was wearing the mask as a precaution. ]

So we all went over to the hospital in an awkward caravan of vehicles and some confusion about where to go and where to park. I remember thinking how stupid it was that the midwife kept trying to talk to me and ask me questions. I was still hallucinating. Everything had strange colors and patterns on them that I knew weren't real. I also had hubble-telescope-ish stars and colors superimposed on everything around me.

The trip across the street to Baylor was mercifully fast. Soon I was in a room in L&D with the nicest nurses I've ever met. They said the nicest things about how hard I had worked and they were going to help me and I could have hugged them all. The midwife had come with us to the hospital, and everyone there was very natural-birth-friendly, so they were very kind and sympathetic to the situation and the delirious condition I was in.

I wish I could have hugged the anesthesiologist gave me my epidural. How sweet he was, to warn me about a needle stick in my back, when it was laughably inconsequential compared to the galaxy-level pain I had been in for almost 11 hours!

He said, "You will feel your feet will turn warm and tingly." And I did!
He said, "your legs will start to feel numb and fuzzy." And they did!
He said, "do you feel that contraction?" I didn't! Hooray!

Despite the blissful pain-free state of the lower half of my body, I was still really really loopy. I think the midwife and nurses might have been asking me questions to distract me from what was going on in the action zone, but I'm not sure. It seemed silly to ask me about drug allergies and such when I might not have been able to correctly tell them what year it was.

[ In L&D, with a swollen face from all the IV fluids and trying to answer questions about stuff. ]

Then things got more serious. There were a couple of contractions during which I was told to push, so I did. Since I couldn't feel any of those muscles anymore, the pushing seemed kind of imaginary, but apparently it wasn't. I can't remember how I knew that she had to use the forceps to turn him, but that was what was happening. When it was almost time for another contraction, the doctor looked at me very calmly and said, "This is your last contraction. If we can't get him out now, we have to do a c-section immediately."

Somewhere in the back of my loopy brain, I knew that this meant things were getting dicey and dangerous, and I had to put everything left in me into that last contraction. I heard Shane and Jen encouraging me, and a lot of people telling me to keep pushing. I was really scared, and time had speeded up again, and I couldn't think of anything but getting the baby out so that I could see that he was okay.

And then all at once the room erupted into noise and motion. There were shouts of "yay, he's here!" and in only a split second I saw him. I saw his head and I saw several people with their hands on him. He was instantly rushed across the room from me, and I couldn't see him. I couldn't hear him either.

I completely fell apart. I was crying hysterically out of relief, fear, joy, more fear, and "where the hell is my baby." My whole body was exhausted and shaking, and my vision narrowed to a little tunnel. Various faces appeared at the end of the tunnel to say things to me, to reassure me, I think, but I couldn't really hear them.

It seemed like an eternity passed. Finally the one sound that penetrated my brain was him crying. Jen was next to me and said that was him crying and that he was beautiful and perfect and healthy. I think I was hysterical for a while again and kept saying I wanted to see him. I knew Shane was over there with him and it scared me that so many people were hovering and working on him.

[ Daddy watching over our sweet, angry baby as the team worked on him.]

Then Shane brought Grant to me (he says it was really only about 5 minutes, but it felt like forever). He was fine...healthy, beautiful, and perfect. I was able to breastfeed him right away, which he took to instantly with no problems. His poor little head was VERY cone-shaped, and a little bruised from the rough ride, but it was nothing to worry about. I remember being really annoyed with the blood-pressure cuff that was on my left arm because I couldn't bend my arm right to reach Grant. The nurses were understanding and took it off.

[ He had a few bruises from the ordeal, but they disappeared within a day or two.]

My mom arrived right about then. She was able to see and hold him too. She had given the big kids breakfast and taken them to their mother's house. We had hoped they would be coming to the birth center to meet the baby at that point, but Jen had let her know that the situation was no longer kid-appropriate.

We held him and I fed him and soon we were in a regular room. I can't say enough nice things about the nurses and techs at Baylor. They were so nice and helped with everything, from my pain and immobility to making sure that Grant was with us almost constantly.

[ I could not have imagined a more beautiful baby.]

There are many many details that I either don't remember or never knew about. There are several key facts that I learned either from listening to the doctor give her report to the nurse, or from Shane and Jen later:

1. The cord was wrapped around Grant's neck pretty tightly during the birth. It hadn't been that way long, so it didn't impact his growth or restrict his oxygen, but it gave everyone a scare and was part of why he had to be whisked away immediately.
2. He had to be suctioned, a lot, before he started crying. It reality it was a very brief amount of time, but it felt like forever to me.
3. I lost a LOT of blood. I didn't learn this until well into the next day when they started giving me iron supplements. The doctor said that if this had been a few years ago, they would have given me blood transfusions, but they are more reserved with those now. As a result, I felt very weak and looked ghostly white for the first week or more after the birth, and enjoyed the yucky gastric effects of iron supplements.
4. I suffered some significant collateral damage, and received a lot of stitches. The doctor worked on me for nearly an hour, which a had barely noticed because of the epidural and because I was busy bonding with the baby. The only other thing I have to say about that is...ouch.
5. Sometime after the birth, they gave me morphine, and boy howdy that was funky. My mom called several people to let them know about Grant, and I talked to some of them. If you're one of the people I talked to while high as a kite on morphine, sorry! The doc told me that as the morphine wore off I might feel itchy all over, which I did. I am more certain than ever that a narcotic habit is not in my future.

There is a lot more to this story, but I will have to spend some time with Shane and Jen putting it all back together before I can add any updates. While this certainly didn't go as we had originally hoped, I still have no regrets. We made every effort to have a natural birth, but it was in Grant's and my best interest to intervene at the end. We have a beautiful, healthy baby and I'm alive to enjoy him. And despite my fears, we experienced nothing but the best support and care from everyone at the hospital, with no judgment about our decisions or pressure for things we didn't want. Also, the medical intervention didn't in any way interfere with our bonding with Grant. I was instantly so in love with him that it took my breath away, and I regularly cry when I look at him from the magnitude of it.

I am immensely grateful to the birth center team, the doctors, the many people at Baylor, and of course Shane and Jen and my mom. Thank you.

With that, I will end with some adorable baby pictures.



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