Eight Days

Tess met her cousin this morning

DIY project gone awry. Will embroider some flowers on it to make it more special. It will fit maybe for another 2 weeks

Extreme closeup of those baby blues

Josh returned to work today. Julie is still recovering from the birth so I had the hard job of holding Ms. Allie while Julie took a nap. So far a pretty good baby but she does confuse nights and days. But during the day, she is fun.

Tomorrow Shanna goes on her honeymoon and we move in with her three.

Cranes and frogs

Sandhill cranes

Despite the steady drizzle, out I went on my 22 mile bike ride. I stopped to photograph a flock
 of turkeys right next to the road. Alas they scattered as soon as got the iphone out. So many
 frogs,mainly roadkill, were on the road! Again I saw my 8 sandhill cranes grazing in a plowed
 over corn field but this time I set Steve with his zoom lens to photograph them.

Ah new parenthood. Josh was giving me advice on how to hold a baby yesterday. I said he 
must regard it as a miracle that he and his sisters made it to age one.

Well maybe you forgot. (he didn't think Allie was getting the proper head support, she was
 and she was content)

I just had those four recent refresher courses.

We watched UM retain the little brown jug. At one point, the camera showed some of the
 tailgaters outside of the stadium. There was Josh's ex-wife catching a football on national TV.
 Some photos of Allie yesterday. Note the blanket

Art in the Night

The fire breathing dragon looked especially cool at night with its body covered with zillions of little lights

The glass orchids were in the Top Ten. Alas it didn't win. I got a living version of this for Baby Allie

Orchids from above

Bizarre street scene

Also top ten Made from suspended pieces of bamboo

This quilt is entirely one piece of carved wood. Also Top Ten (didn't win)

Dessicated eggplant slices

Small part of an enormous painting

peanut shell art

At night We had perfect weather despite an earlier forecast of thunder storms

These are preserved leaves Very pretty at night

A friend of mine had not gone to ArtPrize before. When another friend bailed out at the last minute, I happily agreed to take her place. Plus I hadn't been there at night. I was afraid it would be very crowded but the thunderstorm forecast kept some away (never did rain while we were there, perfect weather) and we got an ideal parking spot.

Part of the experience is the Pub Crawl where various bars have speciality drinks on sale. We had the Amway Grand hotel's featured concoction, a Long Beach tea. One more of those and we'd be truly crawling.

It is impossible to see everything unless you went there every day for a week. I tried to show my friend some of the highlights while going to some nearby venues I'd missed. I thought more would be lit up at night but still the stuff that was made the night look magic. Lots of music in the air, an excellent dinner in the BOB (Big Old Building full of art and trendy restaurants) good vibes all around.

On the long way home, the sky was lit with distant lightning most of the way. And it had poured back here.

Sunny side up babies

This is just another term for babies who are born in the less desired face up position or posterior occiput position. The best position for easy delivery is anterior occiput position. When the baby is inside, it is head down with its back along your front.

Previous to the other day, I didn't give these positions too much thought. I thought one way to tell if your baby is posterior is to have back labor. However it turns out that there is little correlation between what women feel in their back and the position of the baby.

About a week before I delivered Josh, at the OB, they had trouble finding his heart beat. I didn't panic because he happened to be kicking at that moment. I assumed a beating heart had to be there somewhere. They were able to find it with he Doptone versus the stethoscope. Because his back was against my back, his heart was not easy to get at. No one told me at the time that I was in for a world of hurt if he continued to be in that position. At any rate, his head was not engaged and even in labor, he could have turned.

My labor was the longest with him though not the most painful. I did not have any pain in my back and despite him being in the wrong position, I had no trouble pushing him out. We do have a fuzzy movie showing his head emerging and his arms springing out as soon as they cleared my body. Josh was face up. His face was much more beat up than other newborns. No one said it was due to his bad presentation but just due to his massive size (10# 1oz) a lot of that was his big head.

I was a birth coach for my sister in law who had painful back labor. It was just assumed that her daughter was in a posterior position. No attempt was made to turn her or to be in a better position to deal with the pain. They do not give VBACs drugs (vaginal birth after C-section). Though I was right there, I don't remember if her daughter came in face up.

I know Naomi was face down.

I remember seeing fetus Shanna in an X-ray taken because she did not drop but actually she had. Her head  seemed to be on its side. I assume she slipped into the best position because things went smoothly from that point on.

For some reason, first time moms are more likely to have sunny side up babies. Half of people go into labor with the sunny side up babies but 80% of these babies manage to come out facing down. 25% of people complain about back labor but as it turns out, some of them have the baby in the good position and some like me, have the baby in the not so desirable position and don't feel any back pain.

Baby Girl comes home

Not sure if this is a real smile or random muscle twitching though at one point I did believe she smiled at me

Josh is not sure if the pacifier is a curse or a godsend

Finally asleep

Julie's milk came in; Alison came home with only a slight drop from her birth weight. All (mostly) is right with the world.

Yesterday we visited them, today we visited Shanna's family.

In the evenings, the hummingbird wars continue (probably during the day too). So much energy is expended making sure the others don't get a drink.

I finally saw this year the sand hill cranes though I have been hearing them. Too far away for my iphone and they were gone when I returned with the real camera.

And cheddar cauliflower is back.

The Little Mermaid

Maya found her Halloween costume yesterday while I was watching her and insisted on wearing it. She loves tutus, ruffles, glitter and all that is baby glam.

Spurred by the recent birth, I've been looking through baby books. Even though Maya was much smaller than my children and the other grandchildren before two, she now at 3 is the exact height and weight Shanna was at age 3. At 18 months, Shanna, Tessa, Maya, Daniel and Oliver were exactly the same height (32 inches) which is tall, especially for the girls. They had widely differing weights though with Shanna the heaviest and Oliver the lightest. It is fun to watch them grow. I suspect Ms. Allie will have them all beat eventually.

Also from the babybook:

Lots of identical features between father and daughter at the exact same age. Soon after I had sent this to Josh (and he must have shown it to the MIL) the following was sent to me:

Well I agree that Allie's chin definitely came from the Mom (and her mom) but the rest of Allie's features, to me, are clearly Josh's.

Mom and daughter today:

Eggs and Sausage

So you need a bathroom...which do you choose?

Lots of toasters on the wall

One of the few advantages of Julie choosing to give birth in that out of the way hospital, St. Chop-A-Lot, is that it is located in the Land of Good Breakfast Places. We decided to eat in one of them before yesterday's visit though my absolute favorite one was closed on Monday. This one, Toast, features a variety of very good toast. I had cheese jalapeno toast with my artichoke/red pepper omelet served with my favorite cheesy grits. On top of the cheesy grits, I put Foodie Sauce, a gemisch of cherries, peppers and carrots. All very tasty. Steve returned from the bathroom all annoyed though it does not take much; give him only chopsticks to eat in an Asian restaurant and he'll whine. He didn't appreciate having to think when choosing a door.

Eggs or Sausage?

Well who has eggs? How well did you do on the analogy section of the SAT anyway? He was in a position to watch puzzled people pause before the bathroom doors. The men hesitated the most. And when I when back to photograph it, I noticed the colors: Pink versus blue...and you hesitated?

As for Julie selecting the Chophouse to give birth at, she was born there and didn't realize she would be moving so far away. There is a spanking new shiny hospital less than five miles from her. She is choosing a pediatrician there. I was reading their promotion stuff for the birthing center (no word on C-section rates). To promote mother/baby bonding, they don't clean either up for an hour so they could get used to each other's smell. Also, they delay putting the antibiotic ointment in immediately because newborn babies are at their most alert for the first hour and you don't want to mess up their first vision of the world (mainly Mom)with vaseline.

Naomi's divorce was finalized this morning. Most of the ground work was done during mediation last week. Today Don'tae the plaintiff had to read the decree out loud. He kept reading 'filed' as 'filled'. He had a very hard time with 'reconciliation" (there will be none of that). It was a one size fits all form. He started reading "During the period of separation, I became pregnant..." before realizing this might not pertain to him. They were the only couple there not represented by lawyers. The lawyers did the hard work of reading the complaint and their clients just had to say Yes. We have become experts in self-help divorces.

All that is left is to pick up paperwork next week.