Clare

"Clare is a thing of beauty" is how her pediatrician put it and I, of course, agree. As I write this she is sleeping soundly in her swing waiting to be woken for a feeding. So far she is a fantastic nurser and a terrific sleeper (I had to wake her last night at 5 hours to eat!) and we love her to distraction.

Her delivery was long, 14 hours, and I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I actually enjoyed the experience. :-) There were painful moments (duh, it's labor and delivery) but she was so much easier than Shea that I couldn't believe it could be like that. I feel great now too, again, much better than with Shea's birth. And props to Dr. Mason, it turns out that an 85 year old man CAN deliver babies! (Although he was about 30 seconds from missing it - she was so quick there at the end that he walked in the room, shrugged off his jacket, got gloves on and there she was!)

Shea is so far extremely helpful, he loves to hand us diapers, and offer her a binkie. He wasn't too keen on holding or kissing her at first - in the hospital his answer to everything related to her was, "No thank you;" however, he asked to hold her today and did a great job. He loves to look at and talk about her teeny tiny hands and feet.

We'll try to keep up to date on posting pictures and news as I figure out how to do everything that has to be done in my life AND take care of TWO kids. (I realize this is not rocket science, by the way, and that most of you have managed it, but on day 3 it does sort of feel like it! :-)

Daddy Daughter



Mommy and BOTH her beautiful babies!



Leaving the hospital


Big brother

Baby girl Flood has arrived!!!

Clare was born last night at 10:09 PM. She weighed 8 lbs 4 oz and was 19.25 inches. Mommy and baby are doing great!

And inductions finally get scheduled!

Hooray!!!!

So my stubborn little girl who decided to be five days late (!) is being induced tomorrow morning at 7am! Woo hoo!!!
I went to the hospital Friday for a non-stress test and I was having so many contractions, I thought for sure they'd let me stay - but no, they sent me home because they weren't quite regular enough. They stuck around ALL weekend. Then this morning at 3am, I woke up with serious contractions exactly 5 minutes apart for 2 hours. When I finally woke Chris and mom up to go to the hospital they stopped! Completely. So I went to the doctor who sent me back to the hospital, where again, I had massive contractions for an hour and a half - but they were afraid they'd stop like they had in the night so they sent me home again! As I write this I'm now having them every 4 minutes, so maybe we won't have to wait til 7am, but based on the above, I'm sure that they'll just stop in an hour or two. :-)
The nurse today said that it'll just take a wiff of Pitocin tomorrow to keep these contractions going and get this baby out. I guess we'll see in the morning and we'll keep you all posted!!

Due dates come...

and due dates go. And babies stay put.

Bummer!

Oh well, grandma arrives tonight and we have a Dr.'s apt. this afternoon where we won't leave his office until we have an induction scheduled soon! :-)

We'll keep you posted.

While waiting for a baby girl.

I realize that tomorrow is my due date, so technically Clare's not late yet - but I'm OVER the waiting!! So to keep myself from thinking about how irritated I am that I'm still pregnant, I've made more baby girl hair clips! :-) These little felt ones are too much fun! I think they're so cute and although I've just copied them from some website and didn't think of them myself I feel proud of them and can't wait to see them in her hair.

New Look!

Don't you LOVE the new blog look? My fantastic, wonderful, terrific, talented, sweet friend Megan made it for me. Just because! I love it Megs! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Celeste took these pics today at preschool and emailed them to all the moms. I'm pretty sure the grimace on his face is what happened when she said smile - as he always ends up with the weirdest faces when he's trying to smile on cue.

My baby shower...

was amazing! I have the sweetest friends, who put together the cutest red and pink shower. The food was delicious, the decorations adorable, the games so fun and the company, the best! Thank you so much girls!!!!

And all I have to say about having a baby girl is the clothes are SO MUCH CUTER!!!!
I got the most adorable, precious, seriously cute baby girl stuff. I can't wait till she arrives and I can put her in all this cute stuff!

My list

I must be close to delivery. I got a huge burst of energy this past weekend (and Chris put off his school work to help) and got almost EVERYTHING on my "To get ready for Clare" list done! Wahoo!!! Now she can come!

- Clean out Shea's toys to make more room in their bedroom: check
- Clean out and organize my closet of shame so I can fit food storage, games, toys AND the baby clothes: check


- Go get all the baby stuff from storage and the garage: check
- Take all the stuff that needs to be in storage over there to make room for the baby stuff: check
- Wash ALL that baby stuff: check
- Put the crib together: check (I did this all by myself while Chris was at school one day, and am very proud. :-)
- Make crib skirt: check (although in this photo, the bottom of the side rail totally covers the cute green ribbon that lines the bottom of the skirt.)

- Rearrange Shea's room so all his and all the baby stuff fits: check
- Pack my hospital bag: check
- Put together the basinette: check
- I can't remember what else but: check!
Man it takes a lot of doing to get ready for a baby!!! :-)

He's not even 3!

How do they learn this stuff? Although I'm certain that the actual word booby came from me as he calls my bra my booby shirt. He got this little heart filled with candy today and this is how he played with it.

"Look mom, I have heart boobies!"

Parking Tickets

I realize that we live in LA and parking tickets are a way of life here, but I hate them! We've had three (just for the record: me = two, Chris = one) in the six months that we've lived here. We don't have extra money to pay for parking tickets! Geez!

So this last one I got as I was trying to avoid the $7 that I have to pay every time I go to the OB - and in the last month, that's every single week as you probably know. So two weeks ago I parked my car a couple blocks away and walked to the office so I didn't have to park in their garage. There were a bunch of different signs in the neighborhood that I parked in, so I studied them very carefully, found a spot that applied to me and parked.

What did I find when I got out of the Dr.'s office - 14 minutes later? A $47 ticket! I was outraged! A friend said that if you send in an appeal letter with photos they usually drop it. So this week when I went, I put my car exactly where it was, took a ton of pictures of all the signs and how my car was parked and wrote my letter. As I handed it to Chris to look at before I sent it in, it took him about 5 seconds to point out what I didn't see in 2 weeks of parking there, staring at the signs, taking pictures and writing a letter defending myself.

This...



Oh wait, does that big one on top say 9am - 2am? Pretty much every hour of the day and night?! Yep!!! Nice going Jenna.

The Pedicure

I have to start this post by saying that my husband HATES absolutely HATES feet. I think I have cute feet (except when gigantically swollen with pregnancy, of course) but he wouldn't touch my feet if I paid him. I think I've had one foot massage in our almost 5 years of marriage. So my mom did the 12 days of Christmas for me this year and one of the days was everything you need for a pedicure and she asked Chris if he'd give it to me. Since he didn't know how to politely say, "No way!" he said ok instead, desperately hoping that I'd never actually make him do it.

Well, as we're nearing the big day, I figure if I'm going to have to stare at my feet in stirrups for some horrific length of time, I should at least have painted toe nails right? So I started warning Chris a week or so ago, that THE PEDICURE was going to be tonight. And...

HE DID IT!!! With a grimace on his face most of the time :-) but I got the whole nine yards - for an hour and a half ! He even painted them! And the result? Not too shabby if I do say so myself and my feet feel great!

Thanks babe! You're the best!

When I grow up...

Thanks to uncle Timmy, Shea has discovered his calling in life. The other night he said to me in a very serious tone, "Dad, when I grow up, I want to be Darth Vader."

Target today

I am still skittish about shopping at our Target since my wallet and checkbook were stolen there in Oct, but Shea and I had gift cards to spend today so we braved it. And guess who we saw?



Lisa Leslie. The first words out of Chris' mouth were, "How on earth did you know who she was?" As he can barely get me to watch an NBA game, neither of us have ever watched a WNBA game, so he had a valid point. So I checked out her picture to be sure, and I was right. But it really wasn't that hard, I mean come on, when the two girls in the baby aisle with you are both almost 7 feet tall, gorgeous and wearing LA Sparks practice jerseys, you're pretty sure that the one, the friend is calling Lisa is Lisa Leslie. Sure enough!

And since I'm being such a "new to LA" kind of girl and posting my star sightings, I can't forget to mention that I've seen both Larry King and Dr. 90210 (Dr. Rey) at church and Sly Stallone at the guard gate of the neighborhood where I work.
(I know it's lame - soon I'll have lived here long enough that it won't be a big deal and I won't have to post these, I promise!!! :-)

12 Days!

And nothing is done but the hair bows! :-)
Isn't that all a girl really needs anyway? Cute hair?

Who needs their clothes washed, a bed put together, a car seat installed, binkies and bottles washed and stored somewhere in their mom's tiny kitchen, their crib skirt and blessing outfit sewed, their burp rags and blankies organized and put somewhere in that messy closet or baby toys pulled out of storage and organized somewhere in their big brother's room?

Yeah, mom's hoping a lot gets done in the next 12 days! :-)

President Hinckley

We were able to attend the broadcast of President Hinckley's funeral today. It was a beautiful, moving tribute to our beloved prophet. It was so good to remember all the reasons why we loved him. The words of the hymn have been running through my head all day.

"We thank thee O God for a Prophet."

A boy and his Tigger (s)!

aawww!

Only as a parent...

would you ever hear a sentence like: "Mom, the storm trooper has a green turtle inside his bum." and not find cause for alarm.


Said Storm Trooper:



And sure enough - A green turtle is inside his bum!!