The Untitled Title Page » Adrian

Why am I posting more…?

Adrian — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:58:22 +0000

Well here are some reasons (in no particular order):

I do a lot of thinking.
- For anybody that knows me in any depth, they know that I have to always be thinking about something. Regardless of what it is and how it relates to WHATEVER may be going on around me, my brain needs to stay full and active. So I read a lot. I actually do. I never really thought that I did since I don’t read what you normal people would call “books” but more of articles and just little things that pique my interest. I think it’s because I like to know a lot about everything, and not focus on only a single thing, which I feel is what you have to do with a book. Of course, you can read multiple books at once, but then you are just stretching yourself thin and for a very extended period of time. The way I go, boom boom boom done, next. By the time you could read one book (I’ll assume one week), I could’ve read over 500 articles and other pieces of information on many different subjects. I’m probably not exaggerating either. So I have a lot going on in my head and feel like I have a lot to share. Will I be sharing a lot of that here? Maybe. A lot of what I read is just random stuff that interests me, sometimes I’ll feel like blogging about it, other times I’ll just throw it up on Facebook or Twitter. I’d like to lean more towards just throwing everything (no matter how brief) up here and since it also publishes to Facebook and Twitter, kill three birds with one stone.
I like technology.
- I mean, I put this blog together after all. Blogger was too boring for me so I did this whole custom self-hosted Wordpress thingamajig. Of course there are some drawbacks to it, I’m not hosted in the cloud like Google Services are, and when something goes wrong I have to fix it. But there are also some benefits, like we can customize it more, and it doesn’t look like EVERYBODY ELSE’S blog (sorry, but most blog layouts all look boring to me, at least Google Reader evens out the boring playing field by stripping all of the floating babies and auto-play music out). It’s fun for me to tweak with things, so this is another outlet to do so.
The Shark thinks that only wives blog.
- Yes, you heard that right. The Shark, aka. Shark Gillins, aka. Mr. Famous Editor (check out his own IMDB page here) said to us previously that 99% of “family blogs” are just posts from the wives, that the husbands don’t do anything with it. Well, I am like the Wizard of Oz. I run the show behind the scenes! Except now I’m out and you can’t handle it! Where are my flying monkeys? And Shark, your IMDB page doesn’t have your latest endeavor on BYU TV listed! And no, don’t worry, his parents didn’t actually name him Shark. He just likes Seafood a LOT.
A good suggestion by Shayne Holmes.
- Our good friends up in Redmond, Shayne and Stephanie Holmes (who inherited our fancy shmancy bookshelves, the 1 (er, 2) items we could not fit in our 26′ moving truck, or the 12′ trailer, or the 8′ trailer, or the SUV, or the Sedan) had an idea, or maybe just Shayne did. He takes the Microsoft Commuter to work. It’s a bus service, paid for by Microsoft, that runs routes all over the Puget Sound, to pick up and drop off people for work. It’s part of their effort to reduce carbon emissions and be earth friendly and hippy (as they assimilate you into the Borg with Windows and Office). So on his bus ride in, he took it upon himself to create a new blog and try to put up a post each day. About whatever. Random.

And now are are here. So if you find what I write irritating, tough, there will be more of it. There will be more quick little links to articles, more random thoughts, more whatever. I like to share what I’m thinking, so now instead of just Emily or a select few, I’m making it known here to. Or not. We’ll see. I might get bored of it.

I need to eat better…

Adrian — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:23:18 +0000

No pictures in this post, sorry picture liking people. This will be just words, and probably boring words, maybe upsetting to many people.

I can eat whatever I want (see, I told you it would be upsetting). I have always been able to. I can’t gain weight (more upsetting). I’m glad I can’t. I used to want to weigh more when I was little, but now I’m fine with it. I am happy with the skinny lot I was granted.

However, I should probably eat better. It’s not that we don’t eat well, we do. We eat organic mostly, red meat sparingly, some meals entirely veggie. But when I eat, I EAT. And if I’m done eating and I will be hungry again in 3 hours, I will eat again. I do this all the time. By all the time I mean practically on a daily basis. I find myself going out at 9pm to grab more food.

And therein is where the problem lies. Going out to eat. There aren’t a ton of healthy options when you want to grab something quick, even less later in the evening. It’s not that I get junk (to me, junk is McDonalds or an equivalent), but still, it’s not as good as it could be. I could still go out to get my 2nd dinner but get something a little healthier. Or maybe not as much. I don’t seem to have a very timely “I’m full” mechanism. Then I’ll eat and eat and eat and at the end feel like I want to puke. It happened once. By happened I mean puke. It was for a birthday dinner (mine) and I ate 2 appetizers, a main course and 2 pieces of cheesecake (courtesy of my friends and The Cheesecake Factory). The cheesecake made a return engagement before we left the restaurant.

But then I was fine and we proceeded to watch a forgettable movie.

So I guess what I’m saying is I should be wiser. I could do many things. I’ll choose to do a few for now. I could only eat my 1 dinner and not a 2nd. I’ll choose to continue eating when I’m hungry. I could eat only at home for my 2nd dinner. I’ll choose to try and find quicker things to make at home, frozen perhaps, from Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, but I’ll also choose to continue to get my 2nd dinner food out as well. I’ll also choose to try and cut out the unhealthier options I may choose (choose pun) for my 2nd dinner.

You can choose to hate me because I am choosing to do this rather than having to, but maybe if I don’t choose to do this now, I’ll have to when I get a heart attack.

The Mark Grace Diamondbacks of Arizona

Adrian — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:40:10 +0000

It all started sometime in early 1989. I was 11 years old at the time, so that would’ve put me in 6th grade, my first year at Conway Middle School after being Patrol Captain my last year at Conway Elementary. Big changes in life. We were always in the middle of potentially moving someplace. The Gulf Coast of Florida, Southern California, maybe no where. I was always a fan of sports and playing outside. I still remember my first baseball bat, it was a Rawlings metal bat with green writing on it, we got it at the Rawlings Outlet at the Belz Factory Outlet Mall in Orlando. I still have that bat. It’s so tiny looking at it now.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to play baseball when I was younger. I would get to play with my friends in the cul-de-sac though, and I’d do pretty well with our tennis balls. Most of them would end up in Enrique’s backyard, which was straightaway Center Field. I never really watched much baseball, TBS and WGN were new “Super Stations” and the only televised games were the Saturday game of the week. ESPN was barely a blip on the radar.

I was at a mall, I think it Maryland visiting Dave and Jay (my cousins), there was a kiosk that sold baseball cards. For some reason, I thought hey, I’ll buy each of us a pack. They were 1989 Fleer and came with 25 cards a pack! I remember opening mine up and looking at all of the cards, then being the type of person I am and loving numbers, I wanted to find out what the most valuable card I had was. There was one card worth over a buck, and to think I only paid 25 cents for the pack! That card…was a 2nd year Mark Grace, first baseman for the Chicago Cubs. It was worth $1.25.

Exactly!

Immediately, I took hold. Baseball. Baseball Cards. Mark Grace. First Base. Chicago Cubs. In the immortal words of Gandalf the White “It Has Begun!” I became a mini Mark Grace. I began to play First Base. I wore #17. I watched the Cubs win the National League East in 1989, led of course by Mark Grace. He had one of the greatest postseason series a hitter had ever had to that point, no joke. 5 games, .647 batting average, 5 extra base hits, 8 RBI’s. It looks like that pack of baseball cards was paying off. After the season, he was going to appear at that same Belz Factory Outlet Mall at a baseball card show, signing autographs! By this time I had PLENTY of his cards, including the coveted 1988 Score Traded Mark Grace rookie.

Danny recently got me a Graded (means it’s awesomeness has been verified by an outside company) one just like this, but it’s a 9.5 instead of a 9, the highest known rating for this card in existence since there are no 10’s (note: this is not my actual card).

I paid to have it signed. It was awesome, I got to say hello to him. I also had him sign a baseball. That was sometime in late 1989/early 1990. December or January. I think I still have the little ticket that you had to get punched to receive your autograph.

I followed his career. I watched his games. I went to his games. He hit home runs in the games I went to (at least twice that I can remember). Mark Grace wasn’t a home run hitter. I was almost given one of those home run balls. Anthony Young is NOT cool! Mark Grace was so cool. He dated celebrities.

Janine Turner of Northern Exposure fame. Harry Caray used to crack jokes about them dating when the camera would pan to her during a game.

He parties with fans after games.

Mark Grace doing what Mark Grace does…

He was Harry Caray’s favorite, you could tell by hearing how he spoke of him. He was my favorite too. Eventually I even got him to sign a baseball bat for me, that was sometime in 1994/1995, maybe 1993. I’m sure I have that autograph ticket too. I thought he would be a lifelong Cub, just like Ernie Banks. He was elected to the All-Century Cubs team as the starting First Baseman. Of course he was…he was MARK GRACE. He is widely credited as coining the term “slumpbuster.” Don’t ask me what it means. If you don’t know, you don’t need to know. You search for it on Wikipedia and it’ll simply redirect to his page.

But the Cubs now had Sammy Sosa. It was all about him. He hit the home runs. Grace was deemed expendable now. Mark Grace had the most hits of ANY baseball player during the 90’s. He also had the most losses. The Cubs were not good. They were “The Cubs” afteral. The GM didn’t even give him a call once his contract expired. Andy McFAIL (mis-spelling intentional). I was really REALLY angry. How could this happen? Well, lo and behold, the Arizona Diamondbacks came calling. Offered him a contract. Boom. Done. Starting First Baseman for them. They had Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. You may have heard of them. It was 2001. They made it to the World Series, against the Yankees. The effectively killed off the “Evil Empire” in the best 7 game series you will ever hope to see. Grace did well (he even his a mammoth upper-deck home run in Yankee Stadium in game 5). He led off the bottom of the 9th inning of game 7 against the Yankees stud of a closer Mariano Rivera with a single. He began the rally. Luis Gonzalez just finished it off. I jumped and cried like crazy. Mark Grace was a winner. He was quoted after the game as saying “What really feels good is I wasn’t good enough to play first base for the Chicago Cubs, but I was good enough to play first base for the World Champions and that feels really good.” EXACTLY.

That team had a new name for me. They would forever be known as the Mark Grace Diamondbacks of Arizona. He didn’t lead them with the best stats, they had a LOT of players who played better, they were LOADED. He batted 7th, he used to bat 3rd for the Cubs.

But to me, it didn’t matter. I didn’t watch any more Cubs games on WGN. I didn’t root for them to win. I was glad the Marlins broke their hearts in 2003, they deserved it. They punked out Mark Grace. I do still have their jerseys and hats, I even get some new (vintage…note the pictures below) ones every now and then. I’ll go to a Cubs game this Spring Training. I still don’t have a Mark Grace jersey, but I will one day. The Cubs are now the Evil Empire to me. I really don’t care how they do anymore. Forget the curse of the Billy Goat. This goes way beyond that. They traded style and substance for flash and steroids. What have you done for me lately?

Mark Grace retired after the 2003 season. Baseball lost its luster for me after that. How could it now? This was a cosmic connection that we had. Look at this quote from him…

“I like donuts. I like Krispy Kreme donuts a lot. Too much”

Seriously? Anybody who knows me knows that those words have probably come out of my mouth at one point or another. I had nobody to root for. I was more of a player fan, not a team fan. I am still like that now. Luckily Fantasy Baseball came calling, but I have since retired due to my obtaining the Triple Crown this past season (Baseball, Basketball and Football championships). Mark Grace had wanted to become a manager, but nothing panned out. The Diamondbacks offered him a job as the Color Commentator on their TV broadcasts. Josh told me he was hilarious, but you could only see him on those local Arizona games. Booo.

We now live in Arizona. Last week the Mark Grace Diamondbacks of Arizona had a Fan Fest. It’s basically a free event where you get to go out on the field and mingle with players, play games, see the stadium, fun stuff like that. I HAD TO GO. We penned this in (no pencil, this was not being missed for anything) and made our way.

They estimated that between 10,000-15,000 fans attended throughout the day, most where there to see Mark Grace.

By the time we got there, all of the autograph “donation tickets” were sold. Mark Grace was sitting there, next to Kirk Gibson, practically calling out my name, asking to sign an autograph for me.

So close…yet so far away! At least the gentleman working the empty line entrance let me go up and take a quick photo.

They acknowledged that this was a problem that would be rectified next year. I’d gladly have paid more than $5 to get his autograph again. They’ll work on it, Mark Grace will make sure.

Anybody that lives within driving distance of a ballpark, you REALLY have to look into whether your team has a Fan Fest. I went to an Angels one a long time ago but it was pathetic to say the least. I mean, it was in the parking lot…NEXT to the Stadium. Was it too out of repair to let the fans inside? Hopefully they fixed that. I even got to sit in the teams dugouts.

This was actually the visitor’s dugout, but you could go into either one and play around.

We decided to go underground, into the clubhouse. They had an underground set of batting cages.

Mark Grace used to take swings in these cages.

The clubhouse was really cool looking. It was a wheel and spoke design, with the spoke being a large open space for gathering and probably wrestling.

Nothing like your High School locker room, huh?

It was a very cool experience to be there. They even have a Fatburger inside the stadium and the prices aren’t as ridiculous as you may expect. The quality was pretty near close too, but alas, only fat fries are offered, no skinny fries. We walked around a lot, bought 12 t-shirts for $2.25, and I even bought a game worn fitted hat for $7.00. Good condition too. Can’t beat that.

If you’ve made it this far, I know you’re probably thinking WOW, that was long, well maybe next year you’ll get to have Mark Grace sign something Adrian. YOU THINK I’M DONE TELLING MY STORY? THIS IS THE LONGEST POST EVER! OF COURSE THERE IS MORE.

Like I said, they had players mingling around, doing interviews (Mark Grace hosted a couple of the Q&A’s, most questions were directed at him for the one I saw), throwing wiffle balls to kids, taking pictures with fans.

Taking pictures with fans.

TAKING PICTURES WITH FANS!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, behold, our Family Photograph.

Former Diamondbacks Reliever Mike Fetters, Emily, sleeping Morgan, me and Mr. Mark Grace!!!

You know this one is a) going up on Facebook as b) my PROFILE PHOTO! I already told Emily, sorry, but the zoomed in icon view is going to be Me and Mark Grace, you’re getting cropped out unless people want to view the full picture. He patted me on the back and afterwards noted how Morgan was sleeping and cute and stroked her back too.

Most. Awesome. Day. I. Could. Ever. Imagine.

I tear up writing about it again. I’m really a big fan.

We’re going to some games this year, maybe get some package or something. We don’t have Cable TV, so I’m not sure how I’ll get to hear or see his broadcasts, but I’ll find a way.

And next year, we’ll get that autograph. I have a year to figure out on what…

The birthday food

Emily — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:53:00 +0000

Food is an important part of celebrating. It just is. And we like food anytime, no celebration required. Here’s a sampling of the birthday fare this year:

Bialys. Adrian always talks about bialys (sort of like bagels, but different). Apparently you can only find them near New York or that part of the east. I even went to some place called Mikey’s Brooklyn Bagel Shop or some such thing and they didn’t know what I was talking about. So a couple months ago I found this recipe and decided I’d make them for his birthday. I am very afraid of making breads because it never seems to come out like I imagine. Here, the dough wasn’t rising right, but it came out okay in the end. Maybe not having anything in my head to compare it to was a good thing.

On Saturday, since his birthday was on Sunday this year, we went to the Il Fornaio Risotteria in downtown Seattle. It was good, as always. It’s hard to find real Italian food (Olive Garden doesn’t count, though I still argue it’s not bad for what it is, you just can’t compare it to actual Italian food).

We split a pizza for an appetizer. It was a little oilier than we felt it should be, but the pesto and veggies were good. Note the nice thin crust. Ahhhh. Looking at the picture makes me want to go to Italy. Or at least back to the restaurant, which is substantially cheaper than flying to Europe.

Adrian and Morgan with the desserts. We had creme brulee AND a chocolate fudge-like cake. Both very good. (Oh, and we had main courses of a grilled pear ravioli and the porcini risotto. Yummy.)

The rest of the birthday food got a little drawn out because my big plans for Sunday didn’t work out until Monday, but I’ll spare you the details. We’ll just say Saturday was the celebration day.

Daddy

Emily — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:27:14 +0000

Adrian’s birthday, and of course Morgan is trying to eat his knuckle, which is one of her favorite things to chomp on. I love this picture.

The joys of marriage

Emily — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:13:51 +0000

It has occurred to me that we’re reaching this sort of comfortable place in marriage. We’re no longer newlyweds (assuming that two years is the limit on that one), and we’ve also had a baby in the meantime. It’s nice to be so comfortable with one another. There have been a few particular instances that have really hit it home that there is no sense of mystery left, if there ever was one to start with.

-I used to think I could never ever ever use the bathroom in front of my husband. I mean, how gross! But… nope, got over that one the day we were married.

We always were quite comfortable with each other. The fact that I could always be myself and not hold anything back was one of the reasons I wanted to marry him.

-A few months after we got married, I had been doing laundry when Adrian came home from work and saw my bra hang-drying in the doorway. He stopped, looked at it, and muttered, “I really am married.”

Oh, yes, dear, you are.

-Recently we got new Sonicare toothbrushes, and it’s a little confusing because they look alike. After brushing his teeth, Adrian realized that he had accidentally used mine. And I proceeded to use it anyway. After that I used the UV sanitizer on it, but still.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure whatever bacteria passed there makes no difference anyway. If I have some sickness, or vice versa, there’s no chance we haven’t already shared it.

-Whenever I start feeling a little down about my post baby belly (which frankly is just about the same as my pre-baby belly, but now I have an excuse for the squishiness), or about any other thing I could feel sheepish about, Adrian will remind me that he was right there watching as I pushed a baby out.

Yeah, after that, I’m not sure there really can be anything hidden.

-The other day I noticed that we were low on toilet paper in our bathroom, and I though to myself that I’d better remember to bring more up because Adrian wasn’t home, and I thought, “Good thing I’m married… what would you do if you didn’t have someone to yell for when you ran out of toilet paper?”

Now if THAT isn’t romantic, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know what is.

-Last night we were watching this new show on TLC, “The Little Couple.” For the first few months they were married, they were living in different states, and the wife said how when she flies to see him or he comes to see her she always makes sure she’s looking good because she’s excited to see him. And I couldn’t help but remember all the time that we have spent apart, before and after marriage, and how I used to always make sure I’d done my nails or my hair looked good or I’d wear a favorite outfit when I’d get to see Adrian. “I used to do that,” I told him.

And then I thought about now, when I think I’ve bothered to blow dry my hair once in the past four months, I rarely even bother at all with makeup (mascara and a little concealer when I’m feeling fancy), and I wear the same clothes day after day. I started to tear up. What have I become? Yikes!

And he got off the couch (I was rocking Morgan around the room), hugged me, and said he’d much prefer to see me every day regardless of how I look than have me look fancy on the few days he got to see me before.

I may not be dolled up much anymore, but we do have a fairly well-run home (emphasis on the fairly… maybe it should say somewhat ), food to eat, and a happy baby. And we get to see each other every day.

And that really is the joy of marriage.

It’s that wonderful time of the year again!

Adrian — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:30:16 +0000

Well, today was the day…the first day of the 2009 Major League Baseball season! And for all of you rabid fans, you now have come to know what that means…the return of our friend the StatTracker!

Lest you have forgotten, please see this post from July 2007 or this one from April 2008 to know of my fondness for Fantasy Baseball.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of real baseball too, but Fantasy Baseball keeps me more occupied and stimulates my mind. It’s partly why I drive a stick shift instead of an automatic. Driving an automatic bores me to sleep, while a stick shift gives me something to think about and do. Plus it’s fun. And the same goes for my Fantasy Baseball. This is the 5th year of this same league, with some friends from Orlando and their friends, and my 7th year overall. You can check out my sweet “player card” on Yahoo and look at how well (or not so well) I have done in my various Fantasy Sports.

Last year was a down year for me, the previous 2 seasons I finished 2nd to the same player. And then 2nd time, if Trevor Hoffman didn’t blow the game for me (thereby forcing the Padres into a 1-game playoff) I would’ve won the league. Side note: I have never had Trevor Hoffman on my team since. This year, we decided to mix things up a little bit and make it a “keeper league.” What that means is you get to keep a certain number of players each year, instead of having to pick them all from scratch again. I worked out the details of how we should implement it (since I like figuring out that kind of stuff), so we’ll see how it goes.

And if you read Emily’s post about baseball season approaching, you also know that Emily has decided to take the plunge and fill out our league as the 14th manager. It will be fun, for me at least, to get to talk to her about yet another thing that interests me and have her involved in it somewhat. Before when I’d talk about it, she’d try her hardest to understand, but didn’t really follow it the way that I did. Now she’ll keep up to date a little more managing her team, and of course I will be helping her. It’s just another thing we can do together.

So will 2009 be my year to finally win it? Well, hopefully. I like my team, Albert Pujols practically fell into my lap with the 3rd pick (thank you Danny and some Yankee lemming who auto-drafted A-Rod with pick #2), and I have a fairly strong team with some very promising rookies. Really now it’s all about seeing how things unfold the first few weeks of the season and filling in any gaps. I almost “retired” after last season since we knew that Emily was pregnant, I didn’t think I’d have the time. But Emily convinced me I should play again (I think she knew it would make me happy since I do enjoy it so much) AND she’s now playing too, so it makes it that much better.

Here’s to a good season. What team do I want to win? Well…Mark Grace played for the Cubs (he’s my favorite player ever), but then won his World Series with the Diamondbacks. And we lived near and went to plenty of Angels games, but I have been big fans of the Rays for a few years since I always love the underdog. And I have Cubs, Angels and Rays hats. And Cubs and Angels jerseys. So I’ll go with the Rays, they are young and throw caution to the wind. They don’t let the establishment tell them it can’t be done, and I like that. Plus, it means they did better than the Red Sox AND Yankees who are both in their division, and that’s never a bad thing. Never.

So if you ever come across me, and I’m at a computer, and there’s a baseball game on…my StatTracker will probably be up and running. And now, so will Emily’s. Since we’re in this together. I gotta help her do well and beat all these other boys (and one other girl). Except for me. She can finish in 2nd.

Baseball season approaches…

Emily — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:43:26 +0000

You may recall how much Adrian enjoys fantasy sports. Basketball and football are pretty low maintenance, but, due to the number of games and how much he likes it, baseball takes a lot more time. As I said last year, I have mixed feelings about it because it seems to take a lot of time. By the end of the season I pay attention to it just so I can understand what he’s talking about. I do like baseball, more than any other sport besides maybe hockey (it’s obvious from my preferences what my dad’s preferences are… his favorite is hockey, but we also went to baseball games when I was younger), and I actually probably know more about it than any other sport. I still don’t know much, I just mean that I can name a lot of teams, even some players, and have a working knowledge of the rules. We watched the playoffs last year and I quite enjoyed it.

We’ve said to each other before that I should play fantasy baseball with Adrian so that it’s more interesting for me. The draft this year was last Saturday, and after watching Adrian read articles, go over rankings and positions and depth charts, and do multiple mock drafts (mock drafts? seriously?) and whining to myself about how I’ve lost my husband to baseball for a few months again, I was mentally gearing up for the season. (Let me say, however, that it’s not as bad as I make it sound. It’s not like he comes home and parks himself in front of the TV to watch games. It would be really easy to totally consume one’s life because there are just so many baseball games, but he doesn’t do that. I’m just possessive about my time with him and don’t like sharing with the infamous StatTracker.)

Well. I was sitting in bed feeding Morgan as Adrian anxiously watched the clock–reading more articles, of course– for the start time of the draft. I made some joke again about me playing, and he looked and there was an open slot in the league. Uh oh. So what happened? We registered me and I got to draft my own team. I think all his pals think it’s a front and he’s just trying to sneakily help himself out or something, but I really am going to try and play. I sort of drafted by myself, but I would ask him what he thought of this player vs. this one, etc. So obviously he’s helping me, but I’m trying hard to do it myself. I would also like to point out that I made some selections based off of, “Ooh, I’ve heard of him. I’ll pick him!” or, “That’s a good sounding name. Yeah, I’ll go with that pitcher instead of that one.” Awesome, I know. I’m cool.

Wish me luck playing with the boys and I’ll let you know how it goes. So far I actually feel fairly optimistic. I randomly got the last pick in the draft but my team is better than some others, and definitely better than the teams of people on auto pick.

What TO wear, or my new personal shopper

Emily — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:24:47 +0000

Last week I was whining to Adrian about how I never buy clothes or things like that for myself and sit and really debate myself when I want to buy craft stuff and whatever because I don’t want to spend money. He, being the doll he is, came home from work that night and announced that we were going to use our weekend to trek to the outlet mall about an hour north of us and buy me some new clothes. See, if he’s there with me and insisting I try things then I will. If not, I find shopping to be completely overwhelming, plus I simply won’t spend money, especially if it’s for me.

So Friday afternoon after we went to the post office to get Morgan a passport (just in case… hey, even driving to Canada requires one now) we drove up there. It took a ridiculous amount of time dealing with the traffic. However, we finally got there, and Adrian carried Morgan in the wrap so I could try things on. She was a great helper and slept for hours. Cool. So in the theme of What Not to Wear, Adrian picked clothes for me I wouldn’t otherwise try (since if I were left to myself I’d wear nothing but cardigans and t-shirts with jeans). He even went through the clearance racks for me, which I usually will look at for five seconds and move on from because I just don’t have the patience.

We ended up scoring at Gap and got some pants, a skirt, and some tops, and then really scored at Kenneth Cole with 2 pairs of heels and 1 pair of flats. I also got some Pumas that are very similar to my old beloved pair–white with pink stripe up the side–that died a couple years ago.

It was a good night. I was super excited. And I love Adrian for doing things for me that I won’t do for myself. Now we just need to replace my collection of t-shirts with holes in them (which is almost all of them… I’m a class act). And then I need to learn to accessorize so that I actually look put together. And I need a haircut. Okay, so I have a ways to go. But I sure do feel good about my new clothes.

Next stop: Mushedville

Emily — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:12:22 +0000

Last night, somewhere in the pre-dawn hours, I got back in bed after feeding Morgan out by the computer (I do this sometimes so that I can stay awake by reading something). I was snuggled with Morgan on my chest and Adrian next to me, and for some reason I didn’t fall immediately asleep like I usually do… probably because Morgan had slept a little longer than usual in the stretch before that so my body wasn’t quite as exhausted. I thought back to before we all went to bed and Adrian so sweetly asked me if I’d like to go on a date with him the next night (tonight). I had been asleep because I went to bed earlier with Morgan, so I was in groggy-I-don’t-want-to-be-awake mode and he was still in heading-to-bed mode, but it still made me happy that he asked. So all this was running through my head and I thought–because I didn’t want to wake the sleeping ones by saying anything outloud–”Morgan, I love your father.” I sat there musing on that as I tried to fall asleep.

I’m grateful I love my husband. And I’m grateful that Morgan has parents who love each other. Sadly, not every child can say that. We’re not perfect by a long shot, of course. There are plenty of times that I get frustrated or out of sorts, like when I get sulky because I think Adrian isn’t hugging or kissing me enough (I know, I don’t have it so rough, but my sometimes fragile confidence likes to be retrofitted. A lot). But somehow he has always accepted me, no matter how crazy I act, and that has taught me patience. The fact that I felt so secure with him is one of the big reasons I chose to marry him.

My thoughts then went to remembering worries I had before getting married. Before meeting Adrian, I was really worried that I’d get sick of someone after I married them. No matter how much I loved my friends, there were always brief times of wanting to get away and needing some space… or even worse, eventually discovering that you didn’t like them as much as you thought you did. Some of that lingered while we were dating, I think, because I remember thinking that I wish I just knew how I’d feel in five years, because if I still liked him then I’d know he’d be worth marrying… but of course neither of us really wanted to wait five years of endless dating. In any case, this is all to say that I’m incredibly happy to say there is still no one I’d rather spend time with. I’ve had moments of frustration, but those rare times last about fifteen seconds. (Though I admit when we first got married it was harder because we were still figuring out how we each do and say things.) Adrian is my absolute favorite person to hang out with, which is great because we get to do it all the time. Really, almost every thing I can think of being even slightly put out about is because I want more of him than I’m getting, like if he’s working on the computer and I’m wishing he weren’t or he sits on the couch just a little farther away from me than I’d like (“Me! Me! Pay attention to ME!” It sounds really immature when I think of it that way). I’m glad it works out that way, because if not marriage would be pretty boring. And potentially annoying. Luckily for us, I happily don’t feel that way at all.

With all those warm thoughts in mind, I reached over to touch him and wrap my leg around his and fell back asleep.

“A change you can believe in”

Adrian — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:23:46 +0000

I totally came up with that one myself.

Okay, so if you are reading this post, you have noticed that the blog has changed dramatically. For those of you that subscribe to our feed, you will have to resubscribe using the links at the upper right of the blog. You now have 2 options for subscription: 1) you can subscribe to the posts like usual or 2) you can subscribe to the comments feed. #1 will be nothing different for most of you. #2 are for those of you who would like to know when people are commenting. There seem to be some performance issues with the site and the web hosting right now, so if you notice anything that is probably why. Shortcuts to the feed are 1) http://TheUntitledTitlePage.com/feed/ and 2) http://TheUntitledTitlePage.com/comments/feed/.

One good thing about these new feeds is that they publish the ENTIRE blog and comments, not just the past 25 like most blogging engines.

I could go on for hours about the changes to the blog, so maybe I will, maybe I won’t, we’ll just have to see how much I put into this post. It’s a work in progress, but I have been working on it for a good month or two now, I just wanted something a little fancier for Emily, and I wanted to have more control over things. I did not go the route of actually having my own server host it ala the St. Clairs, but with the performance issues I’m seeing from our web host, don’t think I am not thinking about it. :)

Okay, so we’ve gone over the feeds, let’s go to the top left of the page. There we have some new pages and categories. If there is a post or more in a category, it’ll appear up top. So if you want to see everything under Morgan, you can just go to Family -> Morgan and get your fix.

You will notice that I was able to import everything over from our old Blogger blog. This was, of course, a little bit of an ordeal, but I’ll give a shout out to a little application I was able to track down to convert a Blogger export file to a Wordpress file for importing. It is called Blogger 2 Wordpress and it does exactly as named. For those of you that use Blogger, under the Settings -> Basic page, there is a link to export blog. What that does is create a Blogger specific XML file of all of your posts and comments. They just recently rolled this out to users. Part of us moving to a new blog and getting more control over things means that I needed a blogging solution that I could host myself. What that means, is that not only are our files and photos on our server (and not Bloggers) but so is the actual blog engine itself. There are a few solutions out there, but after a while investigating, the best seemed to be self-hosted Wordpress. It is an open-source platform, which means you are free to change what you want and how you want it, plus a ton of people are out there making themes and plugins for it. It always seemed a little difficult to find a good amount of themes and plugins to use on our Blogger blog, especially plugins that would work outside of being hosted on Blogger. Okay, so Wordpress can import Blogger blogs, but of course, for some unknown reason, ours wouldn’t import. In come the Blogger 2 Wordpress application. I was able to take that Blogger export XML file, throw it into that little web-hosted application, and voila, a Wordpress XML file all ready for importing. OF COURSE since we have over 200 posts, it would only import 90 or so at a time, so I would have to run import a few times, but other than that it was pretty easy. We are slowly going through and adding our old posts to categories and properly tagging them, so that will take a while.

As you can see as you scroll down the left, you will see a Search Box.. Then we have a snapshot of our 5 most recent posts. Pretty straigh forward. Below that are recent photos we have uploaded to our Flickr stream. We will be publishing all of our photos to Flickr now. Why? Well, they have a better unlimited usage plan that Picasa, and it’s always good to have an online backup of what you have on your computer in case of an earthquake or who knows what. We’ll slowly be uploaded pictures to that, and of course all of the photos we put into our posts will be hosted there as well.

Next we have the Tag Cloud. As I mentioned, we will be going through all of our old posts and tagging and categorizing them. As we find new categories, the links on the top of the blog will grow. Ans our a keyword is tagged, it will appear in the Tag Cloud. The bigger the link, the more it has been tagged. So you can see what we blog about the most, or the least.

Now come the polls. The first one will be what people think about the new blog. It’ll change every now and then, if Emily doesn’t like it, we’ll remove it. So it’s there for now, but who knows, maybe we’ll have new polls sometimes, maybe we won’t for a while. It’s dynamic like that.

Of course we had to continue to include translation for our friends and family overseas. It defaults to Italian, that should be a surprise to nobody. :)

Finally on the left, we have another link to Archives but broken out by month. It also shows you the number of posts in that month, so that’s cool. There is also the option to show you a calendar with what days you posted highlighted, but what if you post every day? Then you just have a highlighted calendar, and I thought that didn’t make any sense.

Okay, on to the right side. We have a bunch of link categories. Actually, they are Google Reader folders that we set up for a bunch of feeds we are interested in. If you are not on there but would like to be, it’s because I missed putting you in. Drop us a line on the Contact Us page and we can do a little “you add us we’ll add you” peace agreement action. As we add/remove feeds, you’ll see the changes magically reflected before your eyes. These are a work in progress because they appear to slow down the loading of the blog in general, so give us some feedback whether you like them or not. Maybe you’ll sway us in one direction, maybe you won’t. ;)

Well, I guess that’s really it for the right side. The Site Administration section is for us to login and post and do stuff like that. It also has a handy dandy extra set of links for the feeds.

As you view the posts, you’ll notice that we now have ratings, 1-5 stars. Maybe you people only care about when we blog about Morgan and when Emily talks about crafts. This will help us know, and may give you a better sense of what others find interesting or just plain boring.

Comments can now be threaded. What that means is that not only can you comment on a post, but you can comment on a comment. So you can start little conversations in there too if you want.

There are also a bunch of handy little icons at the bottom of each post to help you bookmark and share if you want. Avid blog readers seem to find that useful, so I thought hey, might as well. It looks cool anyway.

Each post will also show you what category(ies) it lies within as well as what we have tagged it as. Again, just makes it easier for you to find related content and for us to sort of “bucket” everything, rather than just having a blog of “stuff.”

So, we hope you like what we’ve added. If you don’t, we can always make changes. So let us know what you think, and if you see any problems, drop me a line and we’ll work on them. We have new “hosted” email addresses specifically for blog communication too. Thanks to our friends over at Google, you can now reach us at Emily@TheUntitledTitlePage.com and Adrian@TheUntitledTitlePage.com.

Oh yeah, so we have a new domain name too. We still have AdrianAndEmily.com but now it will redirect to TheUntitledTitlePage.com. So please, update your feed readers and your bookmarks. You will be forwarded here if you navigate to AdrianAndEmily.com but your feed probably won’t work anymore. :)

I think that’s about all I can remember for now. Sweet.

Two

Emily — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:22:00 +0000

17 February 2007Enjoying the fountain at the temple. It was HOT!

Okay, here’s a nicer picture…

17 February 2008Sweating at the airport in Cancun, waiting to go through immigration. It was HOT!

Okay, here’s a better picture… Enjoying dinner at the awesome Argentinean restaurant.

17 February 2009

I’ll spare anyone a picture because I have a lot of spit up on me after a rougher night with Morgan. It’s COLD outside and the winter is really starting to wear on me, which is a shame because I’ve tried really hard to be cheery about the coldness all winter.

However, we have a baby who is growing fabulously, we decided we’ll get some nicer take-out tonight, and as a gift to each other I will make sure we both get showers today. It’s not a bad way to spend an anniversary.

Happy two years, my love.

Outings

Emily — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:53:00 +0000

On Monday we went out for the first time. (Actually, Saturday, in honor of Morgan being a week old and in an attempt to keep some sanity, we went down the street for a walk. The fresh air and sunshine peeking through did us good, even though it was way too cold.) We had our appointment at the birth center, and I was very good and followed their advice that the appointment be the first time I went out. (We had had a home visit from one of the midwives earlier in the week to make sure things were good.)

Morgan was not happy at first to be stuck in a car seat, but then eventually the car lulled her off to sleep, and I took advantage of the natural light to get some pictures of her snuggled up. I tried to comfort her with the blanket tucked around her but I think the real solution was just the car movement. Go figure.

This is our little sign on the birth center wall of all the babies born there.

Morgan was already up to her birth weight on Monday, which was a big relief for me, of course. I was worried she wasn’t getting enough to eat. Apparently we must be doing things well enough, though.

Tuesday was a big day because we went to a photo session in the morning. There’s a lady doing photos of babies born at the birth center to display there, and so just for participating we got the free session and a few prints. I’m super excited to see them, and I was really happy that it worked for us to do it because otherwise I doubt we would have done real newborn pictures. Plus, it’d be cool if Morgan got to be up on the wall of the birth center. Anyway, our easy-going baby was very cooperative and it went pretty fast, relatively speaking.

Then in the afternoon we went to the pediatrician, whose office luckily is about three minutes from our house. She’d gained exactly an ounce from the day before–again, good signs that feeding is going well. Our doctor kept commenting on how alert she was and how she moves her arms and legs smoothly, not jerkily like I guess a newborn often does. Of course as her parents that’s what we like to hear. Oh, and she impressed everyone by not crying when she had to be naked to be weighed and then sit in her diaper for the rest of the appointment. She really is just incredibly mellow.

Morgan’s pretty strong already. She has been since birth, but now she’ll push herself up when she’s laying against my chest and look at me. It’s kind of scary how quickly she’s already changing and growing.

Things We Did Before Kids #3

Emily — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:48:00 +0000

I had more posts ready to go before Morgan was born and was just going to roll them out slowly so that I’d have something to post while “waiting”. Well, she’s here, but I still have the posts and pictures ready so I will go ahead and just put this up and then the other in a couple days. Sorry about the lack of baby pictures, which are probably more what many people would like to see. At least it’s something to read.

We like food. This should not be a surprise to anyone who has ever read our blog. I’ve liked trying new things ever since I was mature enough to start branching out, and Adrian will eat just about anything. And he knows a lot, since he grew up around restauranteurs. He has taught me a lot. One of the things he introduced me to was sushi. It’s probably his favorite, and I’ve definitely warmed up a lot since our first date when I was wondering what on earth I’d eat when this guy pulls up to a sushi restaurant. Now I ask for it as much as he does, though I’m still iffy on the really raw stuff (also, I’m aware I’m pregnant and you’re not supposed to be eating raw fish when pregnant, so please nobody stress out on me–I only eat cooked stuff and figure I’m okay).

So as one of our last hurrahs we went to our new favorite sushi restaurant. Side note: I like going to good sushi places and seeing raw octopus tentacles in the little refrigerated cases. I feel like it’s a mark of a “real” sushi place. Mmm… tempura vegetables and tofu. My favorite is the pumpkin, but the green beans taste pretty good, too.
Salmon Kama, which is broiled salmon cheek. It’s rather caveman-like to rip it apart and eat it, but somehow it feels civilized when you’re using chopsticks. I like to think so. And it tastes good.
This is art, not food. Adrian ordered the omakase, where you tell the chef how much you want to spend and they make you a plate with all kinds of things. I think it just looks beautiful, because they pay such attention to little details on it. Look at that whole chunk of crab on the avocado (I could have a bite of that one, so I’m pointing it out), the different types of eel and tuna and salmon–which was possibly the deepest orange I’ve ever seen for salmon… it was gorgeous. I get a kick watching Adrian try it all to see his reactions to the flavors. He even had sea urchin.

As the baby kicked around when the food started hitting her, I wondered if the fact that crunchy roll was one of the few things that sounded good when I was all nauseated at the beginning is a sign that she’ll be a sushi eater, too. We’ll just have to wait and see.

More Pictures!

Emily — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:10:00 +0000

Here are a couple more pictures… I need to be taking more, because already Morgan is looking so different than when she was first born!

In case Adrian’s post about her birth somehow didn’t convince you, this should show you how much these two enjoy each other. She especially enjoys her naps with Daddy.
This was taken yesterday, when she was 5 days old! Time is already going so quickly…

We spend lots and lots of time snuggling around here. She has probably only really been put down for a total of, um, 45 minutes since her birth. And even then she’s still been right near us but maybe we’re both trying to eat at the same time so we lay her on a pillow next to us or something. Might sound insane, I realize. (Even her newborn exam, which was an hour or two after birth, was done right next to us on the bed of the birthing center.) She sleeps either snuggled next to us, like the above napping picture, or on one or our chests while we recline a little and try to doze. I’m going on the idea that it’s impossible to spoil a teeny newborn like that. Plus we were struggling a bit with breastfeeding at first, and staying skin-to-skin as much as possible is one way to help that. Mostly it’s that I feel like it MUST be a little scary for tiny babies to be out in the big world after their entire human existence has been snuggled up warmly inside their mommies. Then all of a sudden they’re out in some crazy new world, so of course they’re going to feel most secure when they are as close as possible to the people who were familiar even before their birth. And the joy of having only one child so far and absolutely no responsibility besides her care at this time is that we get to do that. We even generally change her diaper together so that one of us can touch her while the other one does the changing. Yeah, I know. Crazy. It’s okay.

Oh, one more example: after her birth and the first few minutes while we were still in the tub, Adrian got out and dried off and then she went from my chest to his while I did the last stage of labor passed the rest and they helped me to the bed and made sure everything was, you know, okay. (I’m trying to be delicate here! Hehe.) So even THEN she prettymuch only had contact with us.

And you can still say we’re crazy, it’s okay. It’s actually just impossible to NOT constantly hold someone so incredibly cute.

Morgan Josephine…A Daddy’s Tale

Adrian — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:36:00 +0000

I know many of you have been clamoring for more details about this sweet little baby, so let me just get a few of them out of the way for you before I get into the story.

Name: Morgan Josephine

DOB: January 24, 2009

Time: 4:02 pm

Height: 21″

Weight: 6 pounds, 5.5 ounces

So it all started Saturday morning. Emily has had previous experiences in the past couple of weeks with contractions. They would usually wake her up, make her feel uncomfortable, but they were sporadic and she was able to go back to sleep and ignore them. 6:30 am some more of these contractions began, but this time Emily was not able to ignore them, they were more intense but still a little sporadic. I finally woke up sometime around 8:00 because I noticed her squirming around more than usual, so I asked her what was up and how she was feeling. She let me know that she was having contractions again, but she couldn’t ignore these. We continued to time them for about 30 minutes and they were still all over the map. 8 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, but still intense enough that we knew these were a little different.

Now…every weekend since Week 37 we have been having our last “date night(s)” as a couple just in case we would not be able to again. We did that at week 37, a couple of nights, same with week 38, so we decided to give it one last go in week 39. Earlier this week, I was talking to Glorious about The Cheesecake Factory, and he mentioned how somebody told them that cheesecake was supposed to help make labor easier. Of course this was all scientifically backed by years of research. We had been meaning to go back and get the baby (and us too…ahem) an entire Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake for her birthday. And that is exactly what we did Friday night. But we also had a slice of Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake with our dinner. I realized that I did not like that one as much because it tasted too “cheesecakey” to me.

So it must have been that cheesecake, right? All that crazy sour cream cheese is really making her uterus go crazy. At about 9:00 I mentioned to Emily that she might as well get in and take a shower now while she can just in case this is more down the path of labor than her other previous contractions had been. She proceeded to shower, and every time she would feel the start of a contraction, or have one end, she’d put her hand out of the door and bang on the wall. They were now coming in at every 5 minutes pretty consistently, and a minute long, give or take 5 seconds. Side note, Emily also proceeded to shave her legs, because you don’t want to birth with hairy legs, right? I mean, when the midwives get down there, and see a little stubble, they just storm out of the room. :)

After Emily was finished with her shower, she put on some clothes and said that she was going to go downstairs and watch some TV to try and get her mind off of the contractions. She thought it would be a good distraction and help them go away. I decided to get in the shower too, and used my fancy badger hair shaving brush that Emily bought for me during our recruiting trip up here, so I would be extra silky smooth if the baby was going to come today. That and trying to email people to get their cell phone numbers in case the baby did come, took us to about 10:30.

I went downstairs to see how Emily was doing and find out how her contractions were going. Still about the same, 5 minutes apart, about a minute long. Definitely a pattern, and not tapering off either. Emily had decided that it was time for her to use the birth ball, so we both came back upstairs to our room, rolled out the ball, and then out of nowhere the contractions seemed to move up to being only 3 minutes apart and still about a minute long. She had a few of these and we called our Doula Wendy at about 11:30 to let her know what was going on and get her advice. From what we told her, and what she has seen, it sounded to her like this was the real deal. Okay. But she also said that typically, contractions that begin in the morning, tend to run through the afternoon and go into the evening, when the baby will be born. Okay, she will call us back in 60 minutes to see how things are going. Since we hadn’t eaten since about 9:00 pm Friday night, Wendy wanted me to get Emily to eat some protein and drink about 16 ounces every hour. She asked if I felt whether she should come over or whether she would be in the way, and I let her know that I thought we were doing find so far. Good luck to me on getting her to eat though.

I went downstairs and told Emily’s mom what was going on and asked if she would be able to make some eggs and toast so that I could go back up and be with Emily. She did and I was able to get Emily to eat probably a good 6-7 forkfuls of scrambled eggs, and a quarter of a piece of toast in the next 45 minutes. She was drinking pretty well too, and really using the birth ball to help with each contraction. There were 2 times where she mentioned about going to the hospital, but I told her she did not use the secret word. Emily kindly pointed out that we had never defined a secret word, at which point I told her that I guess she was out of luck on that one then. Sometime around 1:00 Emily also mentioned that she did not feel she was coping well, this was a signal to me that the contractions were in fact increasing in intensity and I decided give it a few minutes and call Wendy back. She conveniently lives 1 left turn, 1 right turn, and another left turn away from us (about 5 minutes if you take your time), so she made it over here pretty quickly. I gave her the quick recap of everything that was new and she talked to Emily about it and let me know that I should probably get the car packed just so we have everything ready to go when we need it, whenever that might be. I also called the midwives and spoke to Ali and let her know what was happening and that Wendy was coming over. We heard about Wendy from the midwives at the Birth Center, so Ali was comfortable with letting Wendy determine when we should come into the Birth Center, to just give her a call back then.

Loading my car took a while because I was trying to attach my cool car seat that I bought to match the interior of my car and was having some difficulty with it. I have never attached or used a car seat before, plus I wanted to get back upstairs and see how Emily was doing. Needless to say, it was a pain, but I got it taken care of. Everything was put in the trunk too, and we also threw in Emily’s car seat that is supposed to go into her car. I get back upstairs and Wendy tells me that we are probably going to be leaving within 30 minutes, that we are getting to that point. Alrighty. She wants me to move the passenger seat all the way forward with the bith ball in it, so that Emily can kneel behind it into the rear seat so that the position is almost like using the birth ball. That means I had to take the car seat out and have Wendy put it in her minivan since my trunk is now full. It was a pain getting out just like it was getting it in. And knowing that we know had a countdown, I was trying to get it all done as quickly as possible.

I get all of that done, get back upstairs and ask how things are going. They are finishing a conversation about laboring in the tub, and Wendy thinks it is a good idea, so we are going to leave now for the Birth Center. I called up Ali and let her know that we were planning on going in now, and let her speak to Wendy. Now, in order to do this, Emily has to have a contraction, then feel well enough to stand up, walk out of our bedroom, down the stairs, through the living and dining room, down the drive way and into the backseat of my car. Easier said than done, and that was not terribly easy to say either. Well
, she did it. We got in my car, put in a few last minute items, and were on our way. It was about 2:00-2:15 and the Birth Center was 20-25 minutes away.

Now…up to this time, I felt that I was handling everything pretty well. I was not nervous or stressed at all, but I absolutely do not like seeing Emily in pain. During the car ride, I could tell that she was in much more pain than I had seen before, since I just spent the better part of the last hour getting things situated while Wendy helped her cope and labor. It made me cry a few times when a contraction would hit because I knew how uncomfortable she was feeling, and all I could really do was drive safely, go slow over bumps, shift smoothly and let her know how proud I was of her. Of course, this was also the first time I had ever driven to the Birth Center from home, since I always come directly from work, so I had to work the directions back home in reverse and make sure I did not mess up. Luckily I did fine, and Wendy was behind me the entire time to make sure of that. Of course, before we drove off Wendy said “if Emily is in really bad pain, or says she can feel the baby or the baby is coming out, just pull over.” Oh yeah, sure…and you want me to drive slowly AND safely? Well, I still did, but I don’t have 400 horsepower to drive like my grandma.

We arrived at the Birth Center about 2:40, and luckily Abigail, one of the student doulas, was able to arrive before us and start the bath and prepare the room. The Birth Center has 3 bedrooms, and we spent a lot of our time meeting in Room 3, so we headed straight there. Emily was FOCUSSED on getting to that floor by the tub and getting her birth ball back. I went back and forth with Wendy a few times to make sure we had everything inside. Ali showed up a few minutes later and then so did Tonya, one of the other student midwives. Val, the other midwife, was not on call, and when we told her that we hired Wendy as our doula, she mentioned that meant she would not be at the birth because the universe cannot handle her and Wendy there together, or something to that affect. It looks like she may need to take up a side-job in ESP or something.

So Emily labors for about 10-15 minutes or so and decides that she want so get in the tub. It is filled up now, so we do not have to wait anymore. Interestingly, after every contraction now, Emily needs a drink of water. She is stil very lucid and with us mentally too. All of the books and our Birth Zone classes had all said that you will typically enter into an oxytocin-induced state of loopiness. That absolutely was not the case with Emily, and you will understand how as we proceed. Emily’s contractions seem to be a little longer now, and she is really needing to use much lower-toned sounds to get through them. Wendy was great at helping her really use her moaning to move through each contraction, she would also squeeze onto our hands during each one, but surprisingly to me, not with as tight a Kung Fu grip as you might expect. No broken bones or bruised knuckles here.

Emily enjoyed being in the tub for a few minutes and I ask if I should go in now, so I change into my bathing suit and hop on it. For those of you who may not have realized yet, by this point, Emily is naked. Once we got into the Birth Center, the clothes went off, no sense in them now. Your inhibitions fly out the window when you are this far along. Well, how far? Tonya asks if she would like to be measured and we agree. Part of Emily and my agreement was that all measures of progression or otherwise, would be shared to me, and then I would share them to Emily. This way, if you are not as far along as you may think you are, you will not have that number of centimeter dilated hanging over you, thinking how much more you have to go. Since Emily was in the tub, Tonya could not do it so the lefty Ali came in and measured. 8 centimeters. No sense in not letting everybody know that. We are CLOSE. And to think, with everything that Emily has read, all of her doula training, the classes, the people we know, to think she would be at this point in labor at this time was not something she was expecting. That is partly why we maybe were not taking things as seriously in the early portion, since Emily knew very well the amount of time and the steps of progression she should be taking. Typically, early labor is supposed to be from 6-12 hours, active is from 4-8 hours, transition is from a few minutes to a few hours and pushing about an hour. Best case on average for a first-time mom you are looking at 11 hours. At this point, we are at 3:00, about 8 and a half hours in, and all Emily has left to do is transition and push.

The tub was really nice, there was plenty of room for Emily to position herself in, and I was able to sit in a corner and help drizzle water on her lower back and hold her hand or her foot too. Ali had her 2 young boys with her, and Abigail is fairly new, so Tonya took the reins and we knew her fairly well so it was all really very comfortable. The rooms really are like suites at a hotel, dim lighting with candles, and since it was a Saturday afternoon, peace and quiet. Except for the animal moans every few minutes. I am not sure how to explain them really. Very low on the octave scale. Throaty. She moaned the word “low” a few times. Or “oh baby oh baby oh baby…”

Now…during certain parts of labor, the oxytocin is supposed to kick in and you are supposed to lose your sense of humor. Everybody who knows me knows that I like to joke around. But I made a promise to Emily that I would not joke during labor, I knew that it would be tough, maybe the toughest thing I ever did. Maybe even tougher than that one time I passed a kidney stone, but I would give it the old college try. And do you know what happened? What must only be the most awesome pain coping technique known to womankind, Emily transformed into a standup comedianne. There were AT LEAST 5 instances where all of us were cracking up out loud. On a few of them, Abigail and Tonya seemed to try and hide it by looking at me as if to say “um, we can’t be laughing” but there I was, shrugging it off and laughing away. When you hear your wife say “Booya!” during and after a contraction, you know that a) you have a very special woman as your wife and b) you say booya around your wife too much. At one point, MID-contraction mind you, Wendy told Emily “easy” as in take it easy with the pushing on this one, when my sweet wife, stops dead in her tracks of labor, turns her head, and gives Wendy a look that must only say “are you serious? EASY?” Again, outbursts of laughter. At this point, I no longer felt I had to keep the lids on my comedic repertoire, but I really do not even recall if I used a single zinger.

Do you know what is really cool? Seeing this all happen, in the water. If you asked us back in May, would we be giving birth outside of a hospital we would have told you no. If you asked us if we would birth in a tub we wouls tell you no way. But you know what? All it takes is exposure. Read some books, take some classes, watch some videos. Get informed about the whole process. I never thought I would be okay with a water birth, but there I was, in the tub, about to catch our baby. You could feel her head, and see as it progressed out more with each contraction and push. She had her left hand up with her head as she was coming, so Tonya just needed to make sure it did not fly out and that Emily was able to pace it nice and easy (there is that word again) to avoid any tearing.

Transition was fast, and the only reason pushing took 45 minutes, slow compared to the way Emily progressed through all the other stages, was because of that little left hand up with her head. 4:02, out came her head, then the rest of her. It was so pe
aceful. At one point just before this I sat there with my mouth agape, looking at this little head making its way out. The realization was inevitable. All I have ever wanted, ever wanted, was to be a husband and a father. You can take everything else I have accomplished away, all of our stuff, it just did not matter. Not one bit. Do you ever have that feeling where you know that life is good and if it was your time, you had lived a full life? I think I felt that at that moment. It only lasted a second, until I realized my mouth was wide open, but it was here. THAT day had finally arrived. And out she came, I put my hand on her back while Tonya helped with the rest and up she went to Emily’s chest. All was well. I gave our little baby a kiss on her head, her first kiss, my favorite kiss. The cold air of the world hit the roof of her mouth and she let us know with a few notes that only a parent could love that everything was alright. Ali asked for our camera, she could not find it, only the camcorder. Turns out, in all the rush towards the end of Emily’s laboring at home, I left it next to her phone on the floor. So out came her iPhone for our first family portait, and another. Those we will keep close to the heart. Then the camcorder to record her first few minutes here with us. Maybe she will want to watch it one day, I am sure Emily and I will be watching it much sooner than that.

And there we were, the Vanzulli clan has a new addition. We had a name in mind, but did not settle on it until today. God definitely gave us increase with this sweet little baby. Life is good. Nothing else really matters, you know? And now we adjust to a new life, a life without going out to eat all the time, or dates on a whim, or late nights on the Wii, or 2-seat sports cars. But when you look at her face, and the tears well up in your eyes, you just know this is what you have been waiting for your entire life. Forget about meaningless goals and achievements, I would take this any day of the week, for any price. Everytime.

Saturday night, we left the Birth Center around 9:00 pm (you have to do 3 things before you can leave, eat, pee and breast feed) and were getting ready to take our first night’s sleep together as a family in our own bed.

Baby Morgan sleeping on mommy’s chest. Tell me that’s not cute.

Here I am holding her after a feeding.

And now for the two pictures that will melt a frozen caveman’s heart…

Hello world, nice to meet you, I am cute, I like sleep, look at my stylish onesie.

I just overloaded you with cuteness by adding in a newborn yawn! World peace is at hand, hunger is no more, AND you get to witness my infamous left hand that was like glue to my head during delivery.

Things We Did Before Kids #2

Emily — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:09:00 +0000

…We went to movies. In the theater. But I don’t have a picture of it, for which I apologize.

Last week we thought it would be a good idea to get to a movie, since we hadn’t gone since summertime and we really did want to see the James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. That’s the kind of movie that’s worth seeing on a big screen. And it’ll be a really really long time until we get to theater-going again.

Well.

Seeing as the movie came out at Thanksgiving, it’s hard to find in theaters anymore. Between the holidays and traveling and all that snow we just hadn’t gotten out to see it. There’s one theater around here where it’s still playing. We knew it was some different kind of theater where they serve real food, but other than that didn’t know much about it. When I called to ask for the time, they told me it was in the “dry” theater, so no alcohol is served. Okay, whatever, of course. I did not think to ask how much it is, because I figured it couldn’t possibly be that much more than a regular theater, right?

Well.

We went to Red Robin for dinner and then headed over to the theater. This is like a final date night, right? We were excited. So we go to the desk in what appears to be a lounge area. Already this is not a normal looking theater. We ordered our tickets. And the guy says, “Okay, that’ll be $64. That doesn’t include any food.” Holy cow, are you kidding? I actually felt sick to my stomach, because now we’d have felt pretty stupid saying forget it after chatting with the guy and everything. Adrian paused but reached for his wallet, and I said something like, “Are you sure we want to?” because I couldn’t handle it. So, in the end, we saw the movie. It was good. I got over my sick-in-the-stomach feeling and decided that we’d just have to chalk it up as one really good last date night. The theater really is super fancy. We could have ordered food in the lounge, except that we just ate since we didn’t know the whole setup. We were shown to our seats, which were giant suede recliners. There were only 24 seats in the whole theater, spread out in groupings of two. They gave me a chenile blanket (since I had checked my coat… have you ever heard of a movie theater with a coat check?). Between the seats we had a button to call a waiter, so when we decided we were thirsty as the movie started we asked for some water, which was served on our little table. It WAS quite the experience, at least, so we’d like to think we got more than just a movie out of it.

So this is a perfect example of the dumb stuff we got to do before having kids. Also, it’s a warning to everyone out there that if you hear of some new theater in town that serves fancy food and drinks, consider carefully before you go. And I suggest asking how much it is over the phone.

Things We Did Before Kids #1

Emily — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:22:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking that I should take pictures of the silly things we could do before having kids that won’t be happening again for awhile. We’ve been making the most out of eating out without having to worry about entertaining kids or getting a babysitter and things like that. It’s a strange place to realize that all these things we have enjoyed doing together will totally change. I do realize that while it’ll all be different it will also be wonderful to have our own little baby and family of three… but there’s still a little bit of me that’s going to miss getting to spend time with just Adrian. We’ve had a lot of that up here together, and it’s been great. See, we didn’t know anyone for a while. It just takes time to get to know people and establish friendships and such. So we spend a lot of time just us. And we like it. I think that because we’ve spent so much time apart since we got married (you know, right after we got married while I finished the year of school, and then also when Adrian came up here before me and we were apart again), we don’t like being apart much at all. We try very hard now to limit it. And I’m glad that we’ve been able to have this time of relying just on each other before the baby comes.

Well! All that explanation aside, I took a picture the other night of one of our favorite things to do together…Canasta! Our friends Scott and Melinda introduced us to the game and proceeded to cream us. I bought it for Adrian’s birthday and we’ve played many a game since then. So lately it’s been on my nightstand and we’ll hop in bed a little before bedtime and play a few rounds… or a full game… and suddenly it’s really late and we’re really tired.

These are the kinds of things that won’t happen soon. Pretty soon we’ll be cuddling a little baby, trying to get her to sleep. And that’ll be good. I just want to remember some of the “us” stuff, too, because in a few years we might not even remember what on earth we did with our time before we had kids around to keep us busy.

Adrian or Emily?

Emily — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:14:00 +0000

I’ve just been curious for awhile about something. Is it obvious when a post is written by me or by Adrian, or do you have to check the “by” line at the bottom of the post? To me, of course it’s very clear. For one thing, I know what I wrote versus what I didn’t. But really, it’s that I know our different styles of writing. People’s voices come through in their writing. So I just wondered if anyone else sees that or if it’s just me.

Here are a few hints for future reference:
-Adrian often includes three exclamation points or an ellipsis in his titles (e.g., “Yay!!!” or “Today…”)
-My posts are usually more word heavy and longer
-Adrian’s posts normally include more links and external pictures than mine do

Also, of course, most posts are written by me, so it’s probably a safer bet to assume that I’m the one writing it. But then I wonder if we confuse anyone when Adrian sticks a post in and then someone reading is wondering why Emily would be talking about that or whatever. Like I said, I just wondered.

P.S. The smart posts, like about technical things such as the one previous to this post, are of course by Adrian. I get sort of glossy eyed when he tries to explain to me the technical stuff behind the blog…

Playing in the Snow

Emily — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:38:00 +0000

These pictures are really old now, but I had uploaded them to the ftp site so I might as well go ahead and post them. This was from the first day of our rather large snowfall. It was still new and exciting at that point. After a week of being intermittently stuck at home it had lost its charm. Hehe.

Incidentally, who knows what’s up with the crazy weather here. The snow has now all melted, which the rain helped to accomplish in the end, but now we’re getting so much rain that some areas are flooding. If anyone saw that in the news (it was the main story on cnn.com last night), don’t be alarmed for us. We’re not in that area that’s been evacuated. Still pretty wild, though.

Toby couldn’t run fast, so we didn’t bother to leash him, but he was quite curious about this dad pulling his kids on the sled thing. Actually, it was hilarious to watch Toby because he sort of had to jump with every step.

Toby practically buried in the snow. Good thing we had that sweater for him, but honestly it didn’t do much good because so much snow got stuck in his hair. So we dried him off and left him inside while we went down the street to play.

Me, looking lovely and making a snow angel. This was in the street in front of our house. Recognize the pants, Melissa? (Melissa left them at our house when they took care of the pets, and we found them but apparently they were too big for her so she said she didn’t need them… and they fit me nicely at the time so we kept them, but not so much now. I couldn’t zip them at all, but it was better than nothing for traipsing through snow.)

Adrian wanted to make a snowman, but sadly the snow was too wet or fresh or something to compact very well. So we took this picture where you can’t really see the scale. It was small.

I love to eat freshly fallen snow. My roommate at BYU Noelle taught me to make slushies out of fresh snow, so we’d go outside with bowls and spoons and collect the fresh (i.e., not dirty) stuff.

Laying in them middle of the street… just because we could. There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic.

Somewhere in here there was supposed to be a picture of Adrian’s very nice face he drew in the snow, but I think it didn’t upload right, and I am not going to further delay posting this by messing with it.

Adrian made this snowball as we walked around the street, so it got slowly compacted and bigger.

I like trees with snow on them. I just think it’s really pretty. My first year at BYU I walked around taking so many pictures. I was fascinated.

Take that, stop sign! It was such a large snowball that it still held form after a few good throws.

Let me go take a picture for you…

Adrian — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:30:00 +0000

I had a conversation with my good friend Navid today. It went something like this:

Navid: Do you have snow?
Adrian: Are you asking if it is currently snowing? I am unsure what you are asking.
Navid: Is there snow outside?
Adrian: Ah. Let me go take a picture for you.

Navid: HAHAHAHA!
Adrian:

So yes, not only was it currently snowing, but I’ll also be able to drive my car again in April…hopefully.