A visit from Anders

Gretchen and Anders came over yesterday for a little visit. It's nice that Gretchen and I are both new moms, so we can usually count on each other being at home, slightly bored, but not usually able to go do anything too exciting. So visits are a nice, low-pressure relief.

It was fun to see Amelia and Anders next to each other. Amelia seems so big all of the sudden! Besides size, the main difference between them is temperament. I kept teasing Gretchen because I guess Anders was "upset" which meant he was waving his arms around and making cute noises. Amelia was sleeping the whole time, and it was probably a good thing. If you have spent much time with us lately, you already know that she doesn't often wake up happy, and she is honestly a rather angry baby. I think it's colic, and I feel bad for her. She has her very sweet times when she's awake, but this...
Quickly escalates to this! She keeps us on our toes, and we do lots of dancing and bouncing around the apartment to keep things under control. Poor baby!

Silver Lining...

We were so sad to say goodbye to our neighbors and dear friends the McMillans on Monday. They are moving to St. Louis for the next chapter of their lives, and although we are excited for them, we miss them already.
However, I am big on looking on the bright side, and am reminded of this one every day. They sold us their dining table and chairs! We had been using the tiniest table and only had four chairs. When we had people over for dinner, we could only barely accommodate two more, and that was without the serving dishes on the table! This set comes with six chairs and two extra leaves to easily seat ten. My favorite thing in life is having people over for dinner, so this is a serious step toward a better life. I am consoled.

What did they do to our baby?

Amelia had her very first professional photo taken at three weeks. It was a promo that came with our cloth diaper service, in hopes that we would be the kind of new parents that would spend $300 or so on portraits. A photographer came and set up a studio in our living room, and then charmed and cajoled Amelia into all sorts of impossible poses. The session was one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life! She was already crabby before the photographer arrived, and got so angry during the shoot. Somehow, however, he managed to work miracles in between the shots and coaxed her into some very sweet pictures. The above was the best one which we got for free, but she still looks mildly annoyed in the rest. I still laugh every time I look at this! I told the photographer outright that putting sunglasses, a cheesy bow headband or a plastic lace parasol on her were a complete waste of time.

Happy One Month, Amelia!

My, how time flies... She seems just the same to me, only she can hold her gaze and has enough coordination to bat things (things? I mean parents!) away with her hands. This smile was hunted and captured-- I can't wait for her to smile on purpose!

Early Harvest


It feels strange to have pumpkins in July, but we probably won't eat them for quite a while. These were "volunteers" from our compost pile, from a jack-o-lantern Meg threw away in October! One of the garden plots is almost exclusively from these compost volunteers, including butternut squash and many of our tomato plants. We planted that garden with a technique called "Lasagna Gardening." The best thing about this method is that you get to skip the initial weeding and ground prep process, and you create a raised bed.
A quick How- To:
Pick your plot, and create a border, if it doesn't naturally have one.
Cover the whole surface with cardboard, paper bags or a thick layer of newspaper.
Drench it in water to make it stick to the ground, and fill in any gaps with more paper.
Lay down a layer of undigested compost (yes, just kitchen scraps!)
Cover with a thick layer of good soil-- compost, manure or purchased garden soil.
You can then just leave it and see which volunteers show up, or go ahead and plant your own.
Super easy, and you will hardly have to weed at all, since the paper layer kills the weeds!

Amelia goes in the big bathtub.



I was so happy when her icky little umbilical stump fell off the other day, since I have been anxious to take her in the bath with me. She LOVED it, and was so relaxed in the warm water. It was a really fun event that I had been looking forward to since she was born.


She was NOT happy to come out, inspite of having such a cute towel to welcome her. By the way, she had her 2-week check-up yesterday and her pediatrician announced that she has quite a temper! We've been finding this out in the past few days ourselves. For now, it's kind of funny to watch. For now.

Urban Sprawl


While our gardener (that's me) has been on maternity leave, most of the carefully tended plants have withered and weeds have returned in full force in many beds. It's a little disheartening, but I expected as much. The vegetable garden, however, has been thriving. I will post more pictures soon, but I just love this one of our pumpkin vine scaling the fence, with a pumpkin balanced carefully on the pole, especially juxtaposed against the stucco of our neighboring apartment complex.

What happened to our Easy Baby?


Seems like someone slipped Amelia some Needyness Potion a couple days ago. I guess that's what I get for posting about how easy she's been. The last few nights she has been engaging in feeding frenzies, needing to eat about every 45 minutes or so from midnight to early morning. I feed her every two hours or less in the daytime to avoid this, but it doesn't seem to matter much. Sigh. It's a good thing she's so adorable!

Happy Family

Jeff and I are really enjoying being an actual family. Amelia is a really sweet and easy baby, so far. When she is awake, she just looks around quietly-- sometimes for a couple of hours. Anyone can hold her, and she is especially entertaining in her sleep. She very rarely cries, but squeaks a little to let us know she needs something. We heard her squeaking as soon as she was born and thought it was pretty endearing. Jeff and I keep telling each other, "She's so cute!" all day long. We just can't seem to get over the fact that she's actually ours!

Babyspa.
Amelia had her first "spa" experience: a sponge bath and full body massage with coconut oil. I was envious, but she didn't seem to realize how lucky she is!

I love this bunny towel!

I have always looked forward to giving my baby a massage.


Clean and sweet!

Baby bliss?

Some more pictures!


Her eyes are a deeper blue than most newborn babies'-- we're hoping she keeps that color!



Amelia quietly entertains herself with a sock puppet...

At long, long, LONG last!



Amelia was born at 7:10 p.m. on Thursday evening. She weighed in at 7 lbs, 12 ounces, 20 1/2 inches.
We had a really long labor. It lasted about 40 hours, and was pretty hard because she was posterior presentation-- back labor is no fun! Things progressed very slowly, too slowly. After 40 hours, I hadn't dilated past 7, despite maximal contractions. We ended up having a cesarean birth. At that point, I was really ready to be done and to just have Amelia. It had been hard on both of us, and I was relieved to know that she would be born within a half an hour of making the decision. We found out afterward that she had the cord wrapped around her neck, came out kind of gray, with labored breathing. I was even more glad then that we had gone ahead with the surgery!
They took her to the NICU, but they sent her over to the nursery within a few minutes because she was doing so well. So amazing to finally meet her!

In spite of a difficult birth and some disappointments, we still had a very positive experience. We had the birthing "dream team," I think: Jeff, my mom, Jeff's mom (who is a nurse,) our friend Sarah was our nurse, and we have a wonderful OB doctor. All of the other staff at the hospital was amazingly kind and supportive, as well! One of the nurses that I had before Sarah came called later to see how things were going and to let us know she was praying for us. A couple of others that were friends of Sarah's also let us know they were praying for us throughout. What a sweet sense of support! Although I am 100% glad I'm done, I can honestly say that I enjoyed much of the process, mostly because of the community experience in that birthing room with Jeff, Mom and Amy. So even though the birth came later than I was hoping (date-wise) the timing was great that the moms could attend.

This picture is like a dream for me. I have waited so long to feel Amelia against me, and i cannot get enough of her.

This is a little blurry, but I love those eyes! She seems to get sweeter every day.

Final Profiles


As big as I'll be. And I look so patient! It's surprising to me how much smaller I look in the April picture-- I should line them all up...


I love the perspective on this one.

Ready and Waiting




We are just kind of waiting around for Amelia to decide it's time to meet us. My deadline to go into labor on my own is Wednesday, at this point. I have been getting acupuncture, taking vigorous, determined walks, and doing other unmentionable things to try to get things going. But there is only so much we can do. The funny thing is that it could literally be any moment, we just don't know!
Jeff's mom, Amy, has been here since Wed. night, and it has been wonderful to have her. She has been spoiling us with cooking and cleaning and we've been having some fun outings. So at least the waiting is enjoyable. Yesterday Lisa came over, so she Amy and I all watched a movie and ate snacks on our bed in the air conditioned room. Fun! My mom and dad arrive on Monday. Maybe internally that's what I'm really waiting for...
As far as statistics go, I am dilated one cm., 50% effaced, and Amelia's head is "engaged" in the pelvis. And I am starving all the time, but very energetic. So we shall wait and see. You will soon be looking at pictures of the little wonder!

Garden Update

Strawberries are my favorite, and next time I will plant many, many more so we can pick more than two at a time.


We will have quite a variety of tomatoes in a while. In fact, we probably have about 20 different plants growing. If you are local, you know where to come get them soon!



Broccoli, left to its own devices.

This is my favorite section right now. It looks like a jungle, then underneath...

A favorite.
I love these flowers-- Fuschia. They are so vibrant, exotic and, well, sexy. I have a basket of them hanging outside our front door, and I pause every time I pass by to admire them.

The Getaway.
Jeff and I planned a trip last weekend to spend some time together relaxing before Amelia comes. Below is my really lame attempt at documenting the fun.





That was in the car on the way to Long Beach. Yes, we went to Long Beach for a vacation! I didn't want to have to drive long, but wanted to be near the coast. We stayed a couple of nights at a B&B that we would never recommend to any of you. But highlights were: not having to cook, not being able to clean or work on the "to do" list, and spending lots of time together. And reading magazines. And watching TV at night. I was so relieved to be home. our bedroom is so much more relaxing than the room we had, it felt like heaven to not be overstimulated by busy wallpaper and walls covered with a mishmash of framed pictures and assorted tchotchky (Is that how you spell it?) in an already very small and crowded room. Anyway, we love our apartment and another bonus of going away was being really thankful to be home!
On another note, we stayed up really late last night installing an AC unit in our bedroom. It was almost 100 degrees yesterday, and we are both pretty uncomfortable. We are taking walks every evening to coax Amelia into position for takeoff.

A fun first (with better pictures now!)

I decided to try making a patchwork blanket for Amelia. I was surprised by how fun and easy it actually was. I embroidered several squares while waiting for things (doctors, airplane flights, etc.,) and then the rest probably took 4-5 hours. The back is a really soft flannel and velveteen ribbon.





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A little closer than we thought.

So I got a bit of a shock at my OB appointment today. I found out that I had been given an incorrect due date by the first OB I'd seen in Pasadena so long ago. Somehow, when I had talked to my current doctor about it, we'd never used calendar dates, but weeks. I thought I was due July 3rd. Then he said he wanted my pregnancy to go 39 weeks, and that he expected the need for me to be induced, so have Mom come out by week 38. In my mind, week 39 was the 26th of June. This was great news, and pretty exciting. Mom and Dad bought tickets for the 19th, so they wouldn't miss anything. I am planning on using accupuncture to get labor started before anyone wants to induce. My accupuncturist said to get an "induce by" date so we could get started in time to avoid that. Imagine my shock when he said that date would be the 20th of June! I kept saying, "What? Are you sure? What happened? Are you sure? So how far along AM I, anyway?" I think he was pretty amused. I am really excited to meet Amelia sooner than expected. That's in 3 1/2 weeks. Wow! It's crazy how much of a difference a week makes at this point. I think it's also because so many people from far away are involved, so logistical planning has been a huge factor. But it will all work out just right. It's amazing to think that a month from now, our little one will have already arrived and will be here to be adored.

Let's Talk About... Food!

I don't know why I don't write more about food, since that is one of my favorite things in life. Anyway, I feel it is my moral obligation to let you all know about Trader Joe's Carne Asada. If you live near a TJ's, you already know you are incredibly fortunate and eat better than most people in the world. I need to give Joy credit for telling me about their pre-marinated carne asada. In the past few months, this has been a weekly dinner for Jeff and me. It is a flank steak, so it takes about eight minutes to cook. Grill some onions and bell peppers (I make a pouch of tinfoil with oregano, salt, pepper and- scandalously- a little bacon fat,) heat some black beans with lime juice, and then slice an avocado, and you are in for one of the best, quickest meals of your life. With a little more work and much more reward, you can enjoy this with sliced grapefruit and cold sangria. If you haven't tried, it yet, get to a TJ's this week and get some! I think most readers are enjoying some beautiful weather right now, so it is perfect for an evening of leisurely eating outdoors.

In- Utero Antics

I never expected to feel like I knew so much about our baby before she was born, but she has made her presence distinct. I started feeling her move at about 14 weeks, and have known that she was a pretty active little thing ever since. Something else I noticed was that if I poked my finger into my belly where she was, I often would get a little flick right back at my finger. So she's responsive, I thought. On Wednesday, I had my first of a series of bi-weekly appointments for non-stress testing that will continue until the end of the pregnancy. Basically, they strap two belts onto my stomach, one with a heart monitor for Amelia and one that monitors uterine contractions. Then I just lay there for about 20 minutes and they track her heart rate for that amount of time. Her HR is usually about 150 BPM. I don't know how, but she very quickly figured out that the monitors were there, and that she didn't like it! She started kicking (or hitting?) the monitors, directly, over and over again. Her HR was in the 180s for most of the time, and you could see the monitors bouncing up and down. You could hear her heartbeat, but then also all of the blows to the monitor were really loud. My doctor came in wondering what all the commotion was and left very amused, but pleased that she is so strong and active. Then she sent the nurse in to see, too. I almost felt kind of embarassed by my child's behavior! The doctor looked at me, shaking her head, and said, "I'm sorry, Ariana, but you have a very strong-willed child." And?... What do I say to that? I can't wait to meet her, but I have to admit I'm a little nervous! I know I need to write this down for us to all look back on.

Should we have named her Imelda?

Not even born yet, and she already has more shoes than her Momma. We won't even talk about clothes!