33

Turning 33 wasn't so bad. Paul and I enjoyed a delicious dinner at Roy's while Kelly (bless her soul) watched Eli. Paul thoughtfully gifted me with some sparkly jewelry handmade by the one and only Garnet Girl. What else could a girl ask for?

Ho, ho, ho!

For those of you who check the blog in hopes that I'll share profound insights or witty commentary, I apologize. I don't have anything exciting like DIY how-to's, giveaways or gift guides. Might as well tell it like it is: our world revolves around our pet monkey Eli. On the bright side, he is really cute and sort of resembles Santa with rosy cheeks and a round belly.

Happy Birthday, Grandma and Great Aunt Michaele!

Here is some footage of Eli smiling. We tried to get him to do his coy, shy, Stevie Wonder move with his head but no luck. You'll just have to wait to see that little gem in person. We love you both a lot and hope you have a great birthday.

First Hair Cut

Sitting up

This video cracks me up. Eli is just starting to sit up and so I grabbed the camera and was proudly filming my little sitter when he toppled over backward.

Family photos

We had some pictures taken of Eli. They could not have turned out any cuter! The kid is off-the-charts-cute, in our unbiased, humble opinion. To see the rest, click here.


p.s. We DIDN'T EVEN pose him that way. He just put his little paws up under his chin all on his own. 

Heaven Help Us

Eli is pretty determined to stay one step ahead of our childproofing efforts.

Awww

Eli and his friend, Sadie, like to swing together. We had a tough time getting both of them to look at the camera at the same time.

Happy Halloween

Hiking

We took Eli on his very first hike for Family Night. He was pretty content just gumming the side of the kid carrier. We saw a really spectacular sunset and enjoyed fabulous Phoenix fall weather.

Best Friends

Eli and his best friend Sydnie love the same things--wiggling and licking/chewing on things they're not supposed to. Both share a fascination with Eli's toes. Sydnie is so sweet she doesn't even mind if Eli pulls her fur and ears. At this point, however, Sydnie is much better trained and smarter than Eli. He'll catch up at some point.

Squash

We finally convinced Eli that eating from a spoon isn't so terrible after all.

Tiger belly

Eli never gets tired of playing Tiger Belly with his dad. Gotta love baby giggles.

Time for a crib bumper

I went to get Eli from his nap and found him like this. He was not happy and the fact that he can only push himself backward did not help.

Frustration

Eli is working on learning to crawl. He does a push-up type move and can get up on all fours but is unsure what to do once he's there.  He can only push himself backwards which puts him farther from the toys he sees in front of him. When I come back after leaving him on the floor he's usually a few feet back from where I left him and his squeals have gone from delighted to frustrated.

The beginning

I started writing this post months ago and just got around to wrapping it up. This is my attempt to document Eli's birth.

Remember how I said that blog posting would pick up once the baby arrived? Hahahahahahaha...well,  clearly I was out of touch (clueless?) about the reality of taking care of a newborn. I've been promising myself I'd sit down and write about his birth and the aftermath since we got home from the hospital. But a very difficult recovery and an even more difficult adjustment to having a baby have rocked my world so much that I'm still not sure I am ready to do it--not to mention that I don't have enough uninterrupted time to really be able to put into words what I've been through and how life has changed since Eli was born.

Pregnancy was relatively breezy. I had some discomforts and annoyances but overall I felt good. I was able to exercise up until the very end. I started having contractions off and on during the 39th week and started to get antsy for the real event. The day before my due date was a Saturday. Paul and I were running some errands in the morning and I was having contractions that were beginning to build. We finished up, got our hospital bags and got in the car to pick my mom up from the airport. Everything was ready and in order. I'd finished my list of things to do before the baby arrived and felt prepared. When we got out of the car in the airport parking lot my water broke. I got back in the car and sat on some towels while Paul went in to try to find her. After a few minutes I called his cell phone to tell him that I thought we should go on to the hospital without her since we didn't know how long it would take her to get through customs and get her luggage. We left her a message through the paging system to take a cab to the hospital.She arrived about 20 minutes after we did and found us in OB triage. At that point, Paul and I commented about how smoothly things had worked out: my water broke and labor started at a time when Paul didn't have to scramble to get back from wherever he was working and Mom made it into town at just the right time.

Well, that was essentially the end of any sort of smoothness. I was only dilated to a one when I arrived at the hospital so we anticipated a long labor. It was about noon when I was admitted and late in the evening around seven or so I decided I was ready for the epidural. I had waited, not wanting to slow things down. It took the anesthesiologist an hour and forty five minutes to get to me. He'd been called out on an emergency of some sort.  Sometime in the wee hours of the morning I developed a fever that spiked to 39.5 and wasn't responding to antibiotics or tylenol that the nurses gave me. The fever made me shake for hours and left me feeling drained. The nurses tried to use a cooling blanket but they didn't seem to know how it worked and were calling down to the ICU nurses to ask for instructions. In the meantime, Paul got a basin of ice water and cloths and iced me down which finally eased the fever. When the sun came up the next morning I had some juice and tried to rallied to get the strength and energy to push. I pushed for two and a half hours but Eli was posterior and over ten pounds and was not coming out. Once that became clear the only option was c-section. They gave me some pretty intense meds but I do remember hearing him squawk loudly and that the pediatrician brought him over so that I could kiss him.

Because Eli had been exposed to the infection I had (called chorioamnionitis) he would have to spend a week in the NICU to receive IV antiobiotics as a preventive precaution. It was a traumatic week. I was in a lot of pain recovering from the c-section but wanted to be down in the NICU to nurse him. Those three hallways between my room and his in the NICU were agonizingly long. Trying to learn to nurse a huge, wiggly baby who had the IV placed in his head was challenging. We were thrilled to leave the NICU behind and take him home at the end of the week

Taking Eli home from the hospital

Monkey goes to Gymboree

I took Eli to a Gymboree class for the first time today. I wasn't that surprised to observe that he was by far the loudest, wiggliest baby in the room. But he also seemed to be the strongest. He showed off the rolling over onto his tummy trick and even astonished the teacher by scooting/crawling a little.

Update

In a previous post I naively predicted that once Eli was born the blog posting would pick up. I couldn't have been more wrong about that one. Not only do we have very little uninterrupted free time but I'm stifled by the pressure of feeling like I have to do chronological updates starting from the beginning of his life.  That's just not going to happen. So, I'm going to ease back into this blogging thing with some non-chronological, random tidbits about our little monkey.

Sometimes Eli has sudden, unpredictable mood swings.

 

Eli's room makes its debut

This is where he's going to sleep (hopefully).

This is where he's going to eat.
This is where he's going to get his pants changed.
And this is where his toys are kept.
The bulletin board has pictures of people who love him--Mom and Dad, 3 sets of living grandparents, and of course, Jesus. Don't be sad if you didn't make the cut to be featured on the 'people who love him' bulletin board. Between my 5 siblings and their 10 kids, Paul's 8 siblings and their 31 kids he has lots of aunts, uncles and cousins. The bulletin board is too small!

Final picture is a close up of the mobile his crazy Mommy made herself. I hope it doesn't make him scared of birdies.

Bulging belly

38 Weeks

The other day I walked into the locker room at the gym on my way to join the grandmas for water aerobics and a woman looked at me, gasped, winced and exclaimed. I laughed and said, "That must mean that I'm about ready to have this baby when people are alarmed at the size of my belly." She laughed along with me and tried to soften the blow by saying, "No, you look good, it just looks like you're getting close." Part of me was thinking, "Whatever lady, don't try to back pedal now. I already saw the look of shock and horror on your face." Giving her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she wasn't expecting to see such a pregnant belly at the gym.

A few months ago it was all solidarity and empathy. I would pass another woman on the path as I was walking and hiking and I'd hear, "You go, girl" or "Bless your heart!" Now people are just cringing.

Brace yourselves. Here are some belly shots for posterity:


Both were taken at 37 weeks, 1 day. Kinda hilarious how my belly button has stretched out to the point of almost disappearing, no? Paul is disappointed that it didn't pop out and go bing like a turkey timer. He was looking forward to that.

Best News Ever

Travel arrangements have been made for my mom to come when the baby is born! I couldn't be more excited and relieved. My parents are serving a two year temple mission in Asuncion, Paraguay. They left right after Paul and I got married. We knew (well, thought we knew) from the get-go that if we had a baby before they came back that there was no possibility that my mom would be able to come help me out afterward. Well, happily, we were mistaken.

She found out that it was a possibility kind of coincidentally. They were at dinner with the other American missionaries serving at the temple and one of the sisters asked my mom how I was doing and so she was telling her that I was doing well but was nervous because besides it being our first baby there's a chance I could have complications from ulcerative colitis made worse by the fact that I'm not able to take the medication in the third trimester. Well, the temple president's wife overheard this and said, "Well, you should go." My mom kind of laughed and said that of course she'd like to but thought it wasn't an option. The temple president's wife turned to him and said, "Well, she can go can't she?" They all kind of laughed again because she put him on the spot a bit but he responded that as far as he was concerned she could but that she'd have to apply for permission and submit the application to someone in the temple department in Salt Lake. Long story short, the application was submitted and a few weeks later word came back that she was good to go. Ticket booked!

I'm not sure who is more excited, me or my mom. If wiggling is any indication of excitement, the baby is REALLY excited, too.

Carter's ski skills

I'm posting this video in honor of our nephew Carter's first time at ski school in Vail, CO. I'm sure you'll agree that he has some impressive ski skills for a three year old.

Hilarity at our house

Paul makes amazing crepes. He often whips up a batch and brings me breakfast in bed on weekends. (Again, not my problem that he makes other husbands look bad.) On Sunday we enjoyed some lovely crepes and tried different combinations of bananas, dulce de leche, strawberries, kiwi and whipped cream. Paul commented that crepes seem be a great excuse to disguise dessert as breakfast. Well, I walked into the kitchen this morning to find Paul feasting on a crepe filled with Girl Scout Cookie ice cream and covered whipped cream. He froze mid-bite with a caught-red-handed-guilty look on his face. The "are you seriously eating that for breakfast?" conversation ensued. All I can say is that we make a good team. We can count on Paul to take care of a good many things (like making yummy crepes, doing the taxes and demolishing the bathroom) but, thankfully, I'm in charge of prenatal nutrition. Someone's gotta take one for the team and eat the flax seed, broccoli, fish and oatmeal.

Springtime (almost) in Sedona

We went to Sedona to celebrate Paul's birthday. We're trying to cram in as many trips as we possibly can before the baby's arrival.


I hike a bit slow these days so Paul had plenty of time to take pictures. This last picture is of a certain type of cactus that leaves this squiggly structure behind when it decays. We find it kind of fascinating.

What nesting looks like at our house

Working on a birdie mobile

Paul assembling the crib and dresser.

Not making this up

I completed the online maternity pre-registration at the hospital where we'll be having the baby. After asking me to enter my due date the next question was, "Is this work comp related?" Uh, NO. It's pretty disturbing to imagine any scenario in which pregnancy could be work comp related.

Before and After

The baby's room preparations are coming together. This is the before and after of the chair I got off Craigslist and had re-upholstered.

Before:
After:
The best part about re-upholstering the chair is that it's no longer covered in cat hair. I actually kind of liked the original orange color but the cat hair situation was extreme.

Belly Shot

This was taken on our Valentine's Day outing to the Ansel Adams exhibit at the Phoenix Museum of Art.

The weather was particularly glorious and it really put our Valentine's Day celebration over the top. Speaking of over the top--my husband presented this masterpiece to me on Sunday morning.
That's right; the multi-grain pancakes, bananas and walnuts are all heart-shaped. The orange juice is freshly squeezed. I hope you'll excuse the shameless bragging but I can't hold back. He specifically told me NOT to tell anyone about this. Actually, I'm sure that he knew that I'd for sure tell my sister and sisters-in-law about it and that it would only be a matter of time before my brothers and his were giving him guff. He also brought me roses and an ice cream cake and scrubbed down the shower. So, I compromised by not posting the picture on Facebook. It's not my problem if he makes other husbands look bad. ;) The really funny part about all this that I tried to make little berry hand pies for him and they were an embarrassing disaster. There is no photographic evidence of that crumbly, berry-juice leaking fiasco.