The Untitled Title Page » Emily

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.

Mother’s Day

Emily — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:55:06 +0000

It was a good day of love from and to our mothers and baby girl. We celebrated all weekend and spent Sunday taking a big family nap for a couple hours. Quite lovely. And we finally took a picture of just me and Morgan, which I don’t think has happened since she was teeny. That’s what happens to mommies behind the lens, right?

How gross would I be if I ate a whole pound of See’s chocolate in, say, three days? It’s really hard to resist an entire box of my favorites. Mmmm…

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.

What’s up with that?

Emily — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:09:00 +0000

Here’s a little mini-rant. I’ll try to keep it short. What’s up with people feeling the need to respond negatively to whatever you say? For example, when I/we tell someone how mellow Morgan is and how generally she’s very content, the response could just be “That’s great!” Instead, it’s things like, “Oh, how nice. Just hope she doesn’t start getting colicky.” (Proper response? What our pediatrician said: “Usually what you see is what you get, so I bet she’ll continue to be that way.” Even if it’s not true… lie to us. I have no reason to think he WAS lying to us, I’m just saying.)

You get lots of that when pregnant. If I ever discussed my plan to birth out of hospital (and therefore without medication) I’d get some positive responses, but often it was along the lines of “Ha, good luck with that” or, “Wait until you get there, you’ll change your mind.” Well, I didn’t change my mind, thank you very much. As Adrian said in his post a few back, I did say something about going to the hospital while we were still at home, but I was half joking, and it was more a “wow, this is intense and a little overwhelming, and it’s tempting to want to make it stop.” I never actually said that I wanted to go to the hospital or wanted medication. (Frankly, that’s because it came on so fast I didn’t really have time to think, but that’s another story. And I already had it in my head that it just wasn’t an option, so therefore I didn’t ask for it, you know? That’s partially why I didn’t want to be in a hospital. I knew if relief were available or offered I’d be that much more likely to want it. Hehe.)

Also fun, as I mentioned before, was the “Oh, you must be so uncomfortable. You look uncomfortable” where of course you want to reply, “Gee, thanks, I felt like I was doing okay right up until then.” Or even random people at stores saying things like, “So are you just ready to not be pregnant anymore?” Where I’d stutter out some response about how pregnancy has been fine but I am excited to meet her and see what she looks like, etc.

So while musing on this attitude that seems to come from people and why people seem to find it necessary to rain on my parade, the term Debbie Downer popped into my head. I realized where I’d heard this before: on my old law school friend Kathleen’s blog. Her post is much funnier than mine, so you should read it. Once again I realize that I don’t come up with any good ideas all on my own. Haha.

In any case, I suspect I probably do the same thing to people, because it’s some sort of thing in our culture that it’s funnier or something to be contrary. Perhaps it’s the prevalence of sarcasm? Also, I’m sure I like to interject my opinion way too much, rather than just let people do and think what they want. So I’m going to work on that, hoping that at least if I start being aware of it I’ll maybe be less of a killjoy for others.

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.

Before and After

Emily — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:52:00 +0000

This was taken the day before Morgan was born, Friday the 23rd. I hadn’t taken any belly shots in a long time, and since my mom was around I could actually get a daylight picture. For obvious reasons, I’m glad we took pictures that day.
Here we are a week later. I’m not trying to hide my belly, I promise. but my face looked a little better in this one than in the other pictures that did show my new belly. Hehe. (Anyway, who would want a post-pregnancy belly shot??) Now, the incredible thing is to look at that baby, and realize that she was inside of me. How did she fit? How did she get out? It’s pretty crazy stuff if you think about it. I was there for all of it and still can’t figure it out.

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.

Showered Again!

Emily — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:17:00 +0000

Some ladies from church were very, very sweet and threw a baby shower for us up here. I was a little hesitant because I feel like I don’t know too many people, but I do at least know the ones who threw it and it actually turned out wonderfully. About 20 people came (which surprised me because I felt like I only knew about five people… turns out I actually did know most everyone), and it was just really nice. Here are a few pictures from it…
I like food. And the lady who did the food is amazing with it. I don’t know how it ended up that both baby showers for this baby had such fabulous food, but I’m pretty sure she appreciated it almost as much as I did. There was crostini with goat cheese and caramelized onions and filet mignon, a really yummy cheese collection (and she was cute and apologized for not remembering that supposedly I’m not able to eat soft cheeses and stuff… I got to explain how I just don’t care about things like that, most especially when it comes to cheeses. I’m sure there are a whole lot of other things more dangerous to a growing fetus than something like unpasteurized cheese–but that’s a whole other discussion), couers de creme with berries–soo good, chocolate pots de cremes–also fabulous and I wanted to eat them all but decided that would be piggish, and cupcakes and cookies and other wonderful things. Oh my, I’m getting hungry.
We played this Price is Right game with baby products. I’d have been totally off, but of course got to bow out and not play. Paula, who also hosted this all at her house, put it all together. I thought it was really cute. And then I got to keep it all, which was also very nice to her on top of everything else.
Some gals in attendance. Pictures of unsuspecting people are always tricky. This is the only one where noone had obviously closed eyes and everyone had normal looking faces. I doubt any of them will ever see these pictures, but I’m saving them anyway by not posting them.
Me opening gifts, and you can sort of see Stephanie behind me, who did the invites and helped arrange everything and also acted as my right hand person at the shower. I included this picture, really, because you can see my awesome belly. Kee hee, love it.
Me again, but you can actually see my face here. We got lots and lots of presents. People seem to enjoy buying baby stuff, and especially girl clothes I think. There were a lot of great gifts that I’m super excited about!

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.

Where I’ve Been

Emily — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:52:00 +0000

Thursday was my birthday. For New Year’s Eve, we went to some friends’ house and goofed off, playing Ticket to Ride and then Dance Dance Revolution. (I did one really slow song, figuring it was best to not bounce around too much, but Adrian was getting pretty decent at it.) We actually missed midnight, but that’s okay because we were having fun. So after we left there and came back home, seeing as it was officially my birthday, Adrian really wanted to give me my present then. It was already sometime between 1 and 2 am, so we took it all upstairs and I opened it all on our bed. And now you see what has been keeping me busy and entertained for a few days…
A new digital SLR! I’ve been “hinting” that I wanted one for a bit now. I know we already have a lovely camera, but I have always loved photography and I thought it would be awesome to have for taking good baby pictures and such. And yes, I do have an SLR that I bought in high school… but it’s film and whenever I would use it I was always conscious of not taking too many pictures because I didn’t want to waste the film and have to pay for developing tons of pictures. Anyway, enough with this justification. It was a present, and it’s my birthday/Valentine’s/anniversary/new baby gift. Adrian’s covered for a very long time.
Here is the little lovely, out of the box, though clearly I hadn’t even put the lens on yet. Adrian hunted things down online and even got me this awesome zoom lens that I’ll probably never use to its full potential (the way it should be used I mean) but it’s very very cool to have. I always wanted one for the film SLR (also a Nikon), so I was pretty geeked out, as the phrase goes. He also found a bunch of accessories which I am still learning to use. I was very impressed with everything he picked. He’s definitely getting himself to that illustrious best husband ever award.

I stayed up way way too late reading the manual and playing with it all, but the battery was still charging so finally I had to give up and go to bed. But then I woke up really early and had a hard time falling back asleep because I knew the battery would be charged and I could get up and play if I wanted. Hehe.

So between playing with the new camera and reading the manual and being SO TIRED from (a) staying up late playing with the camera and (b) being 8 months pregnant… I haven’t been blogging. Also, we’ve been working on some fun stuff behind the scenes with the blog. Mostly this falls to Adrian, since he’s the genius with that. If we can work kinks out the way we want, it’ll be a lot of fun, so just wait and see.

Approaching the Final Stretch

Emily — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:33:00 +0000

We took this last week, day after Christmas. First, the obvious: the baby’s getting bigger, which is making me bigger, too. It’s 36 weeks now, so the way I figure it could be any time in the next 6 weeks or so. It’s a big waiting game. Life is good, she wiggles around and appears to be doing perfectly, my hips still hurt when I sleep but other than that feel great–just tired. At my appointment on Monday she’s still head down, which she has been for months (thank you, thank you baby!), and apparently she’s already nice and deep in my pelvis so that takes some worry off.

Now for the background details of this picture. You can see how much snow we had gotten by looking at how much of Adrian’s car is buried. I know he already posted a picture, but anyway it’s funny. We haven’t touched his car in weeks and just let it get buried in the driveway and therefore didn’t shovel the driveway at all or anything. Also, it’s still snowing in this picture. And there are trash cans out… they skipped a week in the pickup for obvious reasons so half the street just left them on the “curb” for the whole week just in case. Hehe. We didn’t even bother when they DID come this week because it just wasn’t worth dragging the things through the snow. But we’re lazy snow people, so there you go.

One more thing: this is the 200th post on our blog. Nifty. I wanted to come up with something really fun to do, but we have stuff that needs to be posted. A big belly is a nice 200th post shot, I think. It definitely forebodes big changes!