more coming

This is a pic my mom-in-law took for us when they were here a few weeks ago. I don't want to write more about this right now because there are a lot of good pics that haven't been uploaded yet.

I have been listening to "This American Life" online (check out http://www.npr.org/ and look under their programs tab) since I spend a lot of time sitting and nursing and day time tv is not that great. I have mostly been listening to their favorites list and there are some really good thought provoking shows there. My favorite right now is the one called "My Pen Pal", which is about a little girl who started writing letters to General Manuel Noriega, who was the leader of Panama at the time and considered a dictator, drug runner and murderer by the USA. I don't want to share too much, it is definitely worth listening to, but it made me think about what kind of impact each of us can have if we push ourselves to keep an open mind and dare to listen. There are also a lot of more simply amusing episodes, but most do have something to think about somewhere in there. Would you rather fly or be invisible, and what does that say about you?

I have one more week off from work, very sad about the thought of being away from PooBa so long at a time, but it's a part of the way we are currently living our lives and I think that a part of me will enjoy being back with my co-workers and patients. I guess I just need to get past the guilt of not always being there and remember that most people now grow up with working Moms, including my mom, and aren't damaged at all by that fact. Still, I feel like being selfish. I don't want to miss out on anything, his first word or step or anything. It helps to know that he will always be with either my mom or my husband, always will be in a warm loving environment with more than enough attention focused entirely on him. (-:

Poo Ba smiling...

PooBa is almost smiling for real now, I think he actually is about half the time but he hasn't quite figured out how to do it whenever he wants. He is definitely getting the hang of it, though, and over the last few days the number of smiles I have gotten has gone up significantly, but there are still times when he looks like he is trying so hard to smile and can't quite get there. This video was actually taken last week when it was still pretty much all gas related but I wanted to post it anyway for my sister far away. (unfortunately you can hear Oprah talking about puppy mills in the background.)

Five Generations!

I have a great grandmother who is 96 years old, 97 in June. She lived in her own home until about 2 years ago when she moved into assisted living. Less then a year ago, on the weekend we found out that Poo Ba was coming, she fell and broke her hip and eventually moved into a nursing home. We never expected her to still be here to see Poo Ba. I go to visit her every week with my mom like I have since before my great grandpa died when I was 15. She wasn't always awake but when she was I would show her my growing belly and we would talk about the coming baby and about how things were when she was a young mother. She used to crochet lace around pieces of flannel for baby blankets and each grandchild and great grandchild got one. She can't crochet anymore but she has a few extras so one day I picked one out for Poo Ba. The pictures below were taken the first time I took Poo Ba to see my great grandma. My grandma, mom and sister who lives in Vermont were also there so we got a 5 generation picture. Grandma was so awake that day, and every other time I have brought Poo Ba since she has perked up When we come. She has held him with a little help and she has kissed him. I write special things down in a book for him and I wrote to him that these are very special kisses. It's amazing that Great Grandma is still with us, even more amazing that she knows who Poo Ba is, but it is highly unlikely that she will live to see any other great, great grandchildren. He is probably the only one lucky enough to be held and kissed by her.

family pics

Four generation pic from my dad's side.

My WHOLE family, if you thought we were big before take a look now!

Poo Ba!

Some More Pics

Here are a few pics of family with Poo Ba.

These are Tim's hands below.

more pics of my son

This is Poo Ba's daddy holding him soon after he was born.

This is from the next day.

We had a lot of visitors, these are just a few. Below are a few of my cousins. Eli is the youngest and he was trying to figure out the family relationships to my son. The funniest thing was that this made my youngest brother an uncle and Eli went to church the next week asking where uncle Wes was! When someone tried to explain that Wes was still his cousin he was insistent that Wes was an uncle now, not a cousin!

Both sets of grandparents came but I have other pictures of the rest of them that I will post later.
Faby and her daughter also came.
This is us on the second morning after Poo Ba was born just before we left to go home. My mom and her mom spent one whole day cleaning our house and getting things ready for us, thanks!!!

Sad Week

Friday last week my second cousin was killed in a horrific farming accident leaving a young wife and 8 month old child behind. He was only 24 (I think). This week is the one year anniversary of the death of my first cousin in a car accident. She was only 28 and was living a very full life, in school, racing on the track, and engaged to a very good man. Life isn't fair.

As I think about my two cousins and their families, and as I look at my son, I ache. Part of me wants to protect him from all of this somehow. To be able to assure him that no matter what his daddy and I will always be there. To keep him from ever having to experience the loss of a spouse/fiance/child/close loved one. To keep me from ever having to lose him. I would like to protect him from a lot of other things too, most just as impossible as protecting him from death. He is so precious to me and as his mother I somehow feel like I should be able to do this for him.

At the same time I know that not only can I not protect him, if I am totally honest I know that hard times will make him a better person and that protecting him from every hard thing would not be a good thing for him. I still want to protect him and myself from these hardest things. I can't help it.

For today I pray for the families of my cousins, that they will feel God's presence, because even though we know God is always with us sometimes we feel all alone. I pray that those around them will be gifted with knowledge of what to say and do that will be helpful and not cause further pain. I pray for my cousin's child. I don't even know what to pray for here, just that there is a prayer in my heart for this child. The spirit will interpret for me. I pray for myself and my son, wisdom to know how to be a good mother to him, to know what to protect him from and how, and what not to protect him from and how. I pray for his physical safety from things I can not yet imagine and cannot protect him from.

Birth Story

On our birthdays my mom would always tell us our birth stories. "I remember the day you were born..." she would start. This is PooBa's birth story.

This pic is two days before you were born. See how big I was!

The day you were born I went to work at 6:20 am, just like normal. I had no idea you were coming, in fact I was sure you wouldn't be here until a week after your due date, and your due date was still three days away. When I got to work I saw that a friend of mine, Ryan, was also working and I hadn't seen him in several weeks. About a month before you were born he gave another co-worker of mine a 24 hr guarantee that her baby would be born by yelling at her belly, "Get out of there!", and within 24 hrs her baby was born. Now I had to work the next day so I asked him if he did too so he could give me his 24hr guarantee after work, but because he didn't have to work then he said he would go ahead and yell at my belly right then and call it a 72 hr guarantee. So that's what he did. At 11:30 or so he yelled at you to get out and said you had 72 hours, but you weren't fooled, you knew he had yelled the same thing for his 24 hour guarantee and you weren't going to wait. By 1pm I knew you were on your way!

Even though I knew you were coming I still thought you would take a long time and I wanted to stay at work until the end of my shift at 7pm. I tried to tell my boss that I could stay but she thought we should be careful and got me a replacement just in case. By 3pm I knew I needed to go home and get ready for you, but I couldn't leave until 4pm when I was done with my work.

Then, as I was walking out to my car I realized that your daddy had taken the key to unlock the car off my key ring and forgotten to tell me so I was stuck in Wichita! I tried to break into the car on my own but with you on the way I didn't have enough patience and gave up. I tried to call hospital security but they said they couldn't help me and gave me the number for Pop-a-lock. When I called them they said it would be quite a while before they could get there so I mentioned that I was in labor. At first he didn't believe me but when I said I was serious he asked why I wanted to leave a hospital! I explained that our Dr's were in another town and he said, "It will be 20 minutes"!

I finally got home at about 5pm and because your grandparents had given us a cell phone the day before your daddy already knew you were coming and he got home just a few minutes after me. By then the contractions were about 5 minutes apart so while your daddy got the bags packed I took a shower. When I got done the contractions were suddenly only 2 minutes apart so we knew we had to go to the hospital soon. Daddy called the hospital and my friend, Faby, who was going to help us while we were at the hospital, and we finally got to the hospital at 6:50pm.

It took a long time to get everything ready once we were there. We listened to your heartbeat and watched my contractions on a machine for an hour. The nurse checked to see how close we were to being ready for you to come and I was about half way there at 5 cm dilated. She drew blood for lab work and put an IV in my arm just in case I would need special medicine. Finally she was all done and Faby and your daddy and I could relax while we waited for you to come. We took a walk, got your daddy some coffee, and even played a game.

This is right after we got to the hospital while we listened to your heartbeat.

This is Daddy rubbing my back to help me feel better when the contractions would come.

This is Daddy and I playing a game while we waited for you.

At 9pm it was time for the nurse to check me again and I was 6 cm dilated, which made me a little sad because I thought we would be closer to ready by then. On the other hand we thought it was good because your daddy hadn't eaten any supper and was really hungry, so we sent Faby to get some food for him and she and the nurse left the room. As soon as they were both gone I had another contraction and my water broke and the contraction started to hurt a little more. We called the nurse back to check me and I was 8 cm! The nurse called the Dr and started to get things ready.

This was when I wasn't feeling so good, but I was still happy and excited because I knew it meant you would be here soon and I could hardly wait to meet you!

Soon Faby came back and the Dr got there and checked me again and before too much longer I was ready to push you out! It took an hour and a half to push you out and it wasn't easy but it also wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Only the last little bit was really hard, but it didn't last very long and suddenly you were out and the Dr put you in my arms. Your Daddy is a little queasy when it comes to blood so he didn't think he wanted to watch you come out but he did look twice to see how much hair you had and after you were born he even cut your cord!

Everyone was very excited and we were rubbing you dry and looking at how beautiful you were and the nurse was checking you to make sure everything was ok and the Dr was checking me to make sure I was ok and then I had to take some medicine and all the time all I could do was look at you because you were soooooo beautiful! You learned to nurse right away and while you nursed your daddy and I just watched you, you were so amazing. We were so focused on you we didn't even know what Faby or the nurse or Dr were doing, but I think they were looking at you too. When the Dr left she told me that we had done a very good job and said you were soooo beautiful!

Here you are nursing right after you were born and below is a picture of your dad and I just loving you!

You were born at 11:41 am.

You weighed 6 lbs. 13 oz, were 19 1/2 inches long and your head was 12 1/2 inches around.

Here is a very tired but very happy Faby. She took a lot of these beautiful pictures of you and was a very big help to me while we waited for you to be born.

After you were born and we had a chance to look at you for a while we remembered that there were lots of other people waiting to hear about you so we started making phone calls. We called your daddy's parents and my parents and both of our sisters and brothers. We decided to call everyone else in the morning because it was already after 1am. My parents decided to come and see you right away and Faby stayed with us until we decided to go to sleep too. My mom, your grandma gave you your first bath.

Here are my parents, your grandparents, holding you for the first time.

Here you are getting your first bath while Faby and the rest of us watch. You weren't very happy about it at first but you calmed down pretty quickly.

Eventually everyone went home except for you, your daddy and I. Your daddy was very tired and went to sleep on a couch in our room but I had too much adrenaline in my system to fall asleep and I stayed awake most of the night looking at you and nursing you.

Too be continued.....