Welcome Sonia!

My posts are going to become fewer and further between! Right now, my mom and Ryan are here helping me and I am not sure how I will do the job of three people in a few weeks. Luckily I have some help until Sonia is 6 weeks old so I have some time to figure it out.

Sonia Katherine was born on 9-13-09 at 115am. She was 20 inches long and weighed 8lbs 4oz. She seems to be doing well.. lots of eating, sleeping, pooping, and crying. We are happy she is here.

Big Brother

Jack is now a big brother. Since this is my second child, there are many things I am already used to --sleep deprivation, hanging out at home, diaper changing. The new thing is Jack. He has changed a little. He doesn't seem as happy as he used to be. He throws tantrums a lot. I miss him. I don't get to spend the same kind of time with him that I did and that makes me sad. So with the happiness of welcoming Sonia into our lives, we are also a little sad at having to say goodbye to Jack's only child status. I am almost always confident that a second child was a great decision for all of us. Yet, transitions are hard and this is probably Jack's first real challenge. We are hoping to help him through as best we can.

He seems to like Sonia. He is very kind and gentle around her.. He has also taken a new interest in drinking milk from a bottle (although I am breastfeeding -- much easier this time)

The labor

Almost two weeks ago (seems like years) on Saturday Sept 13 my water broke at 8am. And just like my labor with Jack, my water broke, then nothing happened. I went to the hospital - - the midwives confirmed my water had broken and told me to return at 8pm. They thought my labor would start but I was convinced it wouldn't. They kept saying this time is going to be different than the last.

Well, at 830 or so, I returned. Still, nothing was happening. They put my on the monitor and said I was having contractions. I felt some light contractions but told them I'd see them in the morning since the only time I had any contractions was when I was on their monitors. I went to the house of some friends (Jack was staying with my mom for the weekend). By about 930 I realized I was having regular contractions and I went home to labor there (although I still wasn't convinced I was in labor) By 1030, I knew I was definitely in labor and things had gotten difficult enough that I didn't want to be in the car. Ryan drove me to the hospital. We arrived around 1045. My labor went pretty quickly from there and Sonia was born at 115am. Really, it was a piece of cake as far as labors are concerned.

We were so happy to meet sonia and so happy things had gone so smoothly. Ryan was snoozing and I was feeding Sonia and talking to Jenny, our friend and doula. I noticed I was bleeding but I thought that was normal. HOwever, when the nurse checked me she said I was bleeding quite a bit. Then it became clear my bleeding wasn't slowing down as it was supposed to. Many people started coming into the room -- for hours -- it took until 6 or so to get things under control. It's not a great memory.. the worst part was that they kept pressing down on my uterus and I would hear a splash as large amounts of blood came out. After a few hours, it became very disconcerting but by then I was getting pain medicine because of all the intervention and that mellowed me out. For several hours, I had a 10lb shotput sitting on my abdomen.. Whatever they did helped, because here I am. My recovery has been much more difficult but in the end, I am so glad it's me and not sonia who has the big recovery.

Still pregnant

I have 7 days left until my "due" date. It's odd that I could have the baby either tomorrow or in 3 weeks. Hopefully, soon.

Reflections

This weekend while I was eating a doughnut, I reached over to dip the doughnut in a bowl of whipped cream. Then I thought that I really need to give birth. It’s time. Mom and baby are large enough. I am at the stage when everyone comments on my size. Imagine if everyone who saw you made a comment about how big you are. It’s tiresome at best. When I was pregnant with Jack, I felt like it would be ok to be pregnant forever. It didn’t bother me much and I wasn’t really ready to have a child. Now I am ready. But I technically have 4 weeks to wait … and grow… larger.

I'm on a boat!

We've been on the ferry a lot this summer. Usually, Jack races around the ferry -- playing with the vending machines and video games.. chatting with other passengers about the space needle. Our last ferry ride he was more pensive.. just gazing out the window at the other big boats passing by.

Summer!

Corn-on-the-cob + overalls + sun = summer

Camping!

We went on our first camping trip with Jack this weekend. We went to a beautiful camp site near Mt. Rainier called Walupt Lake. The camp was at about 4000 feet situation between Rainier, Adams, and Mt. St. Helens. We were just a five minute walk from the lake. The campsite was really mellow.. We went with good friends from my college days. Jack loved it.. he just loves being outside. We borrowed a 7 person tent from friends (called the tent-mahal) which was the perfect size for us. The only difficult part was the mosquitos which apparently only come out in this area for 10 days during the summer.. we happened to arrive on day 2 of their stay. Jack didn't mind at all. Even though he was covered in DEET, he still got lots of bites but they don't seem to bother him. Ryan and I had a harder time with it. We all vowed to return again next year -- just later in the summer.

Me and my two college pals have known each other 18 years. Can't quite believe that...


My friend's 6 year old son in their very cool rowboat:


One of Jack's favorite activities was playing with the camping gear:

Dog is Thirsty

I bought a bunch of used children's books recently. One of the books, titled 'Dog is Thirsty', is sort of odd. It's about a dog who complains about being thirsty until finally, it rains. I think it was originally written in Japanese so maybe something was lost in translation -- Jack and I both find it fairly uninteresting. Lately, however, it seems to me that my inner monologue (and often, outer) sounds like this book. If I had to put a title on it, I would call it Mom is Tired. There would be no plot... just me walking around or laying down talking about how tired I am. My book would also be pretty dull. Here I am cruising into month 7:

Traveling

We have been going out of town a lot lately. I think I am just trying to avoid our overgrown yard. In any case, over memorial day I took a trip to Coronado Island with my high school pals. Everyone left their kids at home so we mainly just sat around - We sat at the beach, we sat at our friend Sally's parents beautiful home, then we sat at a restaurant and then sat at an outdoor bar.. lots of hanging out - It was great.

Here we are watching the kite surfing:






Then a couple weeks later, Jack, Ryan and I headed back up to guemes island. We went on our favorite hike twice:






My mom and stepfather returned to town so we visited them this past weekend. Jack loved all the attention -- I loved all the sleeping.

I am bigger now and slower -- people at work continue to make that comment 'you're getting bigger' -- someone pointed out it was really the baby getting bigger but at this point, it's the same thing. I am trying to enjoy the pregnancy as it's the last one I plan to experience but the allure is gone.. if it was ever there. I don't mind it exactly but it's draining. As one of my biology teachers said 'for the female mammal, reproduction is expensive'



Unrelated to all the traveling, Jack seems to really dig the musical instruments. He strums his guitar and walks around the house singing like an old folk singer.



We find it endlessly entertaining.

The Big Doughnut

Because of the lovely weather we've been so lucky to have on the weekends this month, we've been spending lots of time at a beautiful park by our house that has two of Jack's favorite things -- a view of the space needle and a big doughnut (or a sculpture of a big doughnut). He named the sculpture himself but I've always thought of it as a big doughnut too. For some reason though, he will absolutely not sit in the doughnut.. he likes it better from a distance.. so mostly we walk around the park. Jack really wants to jump in the pond there because it's full of colorful fish.





THere are also lots of great trees to climb:



Unrelated to all this, jack got a hair cut. This is the pre-haircut photo.. we were a little shocked at first but got used to it quickly.

la hermanita

I am half way through my pregnancy (theoretically) so I went to my last ultrasound (i hope) where they measure all the organs and look at the brain. Basically, out of the almost infinite number of abnormalities, it seems the ultraound rules out about 8. I felt mixed about getting it.. but in the end, I decided it's better to have more information than less (in this case).

We found out the gender: we are having a girl.

I was a little shocked. For some reason, I saw myself as a mom of boys. Last December during the time when I could not know whether I was pregnant or not, I recall walking down the street and all of a sudden feeling like I needed to start thinking about girl names because I was going to have a girl. It was a strong feeling. But a few months later, I went to a vedic astrologer (long story) who was fairly certain it was a boy so I questioned my intuition and decided I just had no idea. In any case, I felt very surprised when the tech told me.

So little J will have a little sister. Crazy.

Tenacious J

Jack is asserting his will more often and he has very particular requests. He wants to have 3 binkies when he sleeps, if there are 5 things on the table, he only wants the one that will cause the most damage, when I unload the groceries he can always tell which box has the cookies even though he hasn't seen the picture.. and he just wants THAT box. He points at things and says THIS! so I've realized I need to get better at naming.. it's hard to explain the concept of demonstrative pronouns. If he doesn't get EXACTLY what he wants, he stomps one foot and says I WANT IT!

He also like to do the opposite of what I want to do. If I want to go uphill, he wants to go down, if I want to go away from the street, he wants to go towards it. One thing that is consistent is he always wants to be outside... at all times. I sometimes wonder if he doesn't like our house but then I think that's projection.

I don't really like the phrase terrible two's. I am glad that Jack is on track developmentally.. I'm glad he's becoming his own little person. I heard someone call this period "the tenacious two's" and I think that's a little more fair. He's so much more engaging than he used to be and that is a lot of fun for us.

Spring makes everything more fun anyway...
Here is Jack and his favorite cat, pumpkin. Every time he sees pumpkin he says "pumpkin kitty gentle?'



we got lots of great tulips this year:

Are you calling me fat?

Last week, I ate lunch at the Nordstrom cafe. I work downtown now and I have an hour for lunch (something I have not had for 4 years). I have gone out for lunch every day because it's so great to be downtown and there is lots of great food. El Puerco Llorron has the best mexican food I have had in Seattle.. It's at the market which is only a 10 minute walk from the clinic.

Anyway, back at the Nordstrom cafe, I ordered a salad and a coke because coke is to the second pregnancy as cream cheese was to the first. When my coke was gone, the waiter returned to ask me if I wanted more DIET coke. I thought 'DO YOU THINK I SHOULD BE DRINKING DIET COKE INSTEAD OF REGULAR?????????? Are you trying to make a point?" PRobably, maybe, he wasn't. A co-worker suggested that most women who frequent that restaurant order diet coke. maybe. That is the problem with this point in the pregnancy. You could be pregnant or you could just be someone who likes a good cheeseburger. No one knows for sure.

Weekend getaways..

We've been out of town a lot lately. It's been really nice to go relaxing places on the weekend.. places where we have no errands.. where we can just hang out. We went to my mom's on the Olympic peninsula (probably a month ago now.. I dropped my camera on a hike only to find it rained on the next day. Luckily, the memory card was fine.)

We played some hoop in the backyard:



Then a few weeks later, we visited our friends' cabin on Guemes Island. We had great weather and this is when we took the camera-dropping hike. As you can see the view from the top, Mt Guemes is stunning. You can see many of the san juan islands. It's such a lovely place because it's actually really close to everything but feels very remote.







It was at the top of the mountain that we figured out the names for Jack 2. I will be the only one finding out the gender. Ryan doesn't want to know so I can't tell anyone. That could be tough.

Jack 2: Electric Boogaloo

For some reason, whenever we talked about having another child, we referred to the theoretical baby as Jack 2 Electric Boogaloo.. Don't act like you didn't see the sequel to Break Dancing.. well, we didn't either but I guess it rhymed with Jack 2 better than Jack 2: the alien resurrection. It also lightened the mood of the conversation. We just felt like now was not a great time for many rational reasons: ryan works for a startup that doesn't actually have any "revenue" in the "Worst Economy We Have Ever Seen." Then there is the fact that I am planning to go to an incredibly demanding graduate program next year, and also, we don't have any space in our house for a second child.. since we didn't really have the space for the first. So we'd put it off but always return to the conversation. This is the only issue I have ever truly lost sleep over but once we decided, I was at peace. Such decisions are better made with the heart.

So here it is.. your first intro to Jack 2.. we should probably change that name pretty soon. I am a little more than 3 months along -- due in mid-september. This is one of the 12 week ultrasound shots from a few weeks ago.

Sunday afternoon fun

This is our family fun. It was pretty hilarious for us.

The negotiator

Lately Jack has been less willing to go to bed peacefully. A while ago, he started asking for water, then it was a snack -- since I always want him to eat more that worked for a long time. Until finally I figured out he was never going to eat the snack. Now when we say it's bedtime he says "Snuggle?" This always works. What parent can deny their child a snuggle? If Ryan is busy, we'll lie down together, Jack will be still for about a minute, then he'll wiggle out of bed. When I then say it's bedtime, he says "Dad Snuggle?" That also always works on Ryan. J is a clever little dude.



Here we are in front of his favorite park which we call Space Needle park:

Arizona in February

It's 80 degrees there. It's still a little strange to me that it can be so cold and rainy here yet so sunny and hot just 1500 miles south. We had a great time.. visited the zoo. Jack loves the giraffes although not so much that he wants to get too close to them. We mainly just hung out outside by the pool.





This is Jack danger. It's funny how he spent most of the time in the backyard inches away from the pool.. so I was inches behind him.



When not by the pool, he loved blowing bubbles or mainly putting the bubble blowing aparatus in his mouth. He won't touch a vegetable yet really enjoys soapy bubble fluid.

The Ga-deau

Jack's latest thing is that he is obsessed with the space needle. He calls it the ga-deau. He first noticed the space needle in a book we have about washington state given to Jack for his birthday. For a while, he talked about the gadeau but we didn't know what he was saying. We repeated the word gadeau and then he'd say it again and again until finally we figured it out and said "oh the space needle" Only then did he stop repeating gadeau. As Jack expands his vocabulary, he will say a word over and over until we repeat it correctly.. sometimes this leads to frustration. In any case, Jack sees the space needle everywhere. Last week, we visited the grandparents in arizona. When he walked into my mom's house, he immediately started saying gadeau and I said I don't think there is any space needle here. He continued to talk about it until I noticed that my mom has a space needle pepper shaker on her table. Jack has an eagle eye for the space needle.