Maya's here!

Maya Grace was born on Friday, May 30th at 2:40 pm. She was 7 lbs, 7 oz (either their measurements were way off or those milkshakes paid off!) and 20.5" long. She has Dave's lips and my hands and feet, and pretty long hair. Labor was challening (but that's to be expected) and we've had some feeding challenges that have left me pretty exhausted (we're having to formula feed and pump right now---which takes twice the time per feeding), but we're progressing every day and happy to be at home as a family.

Soon I'll write up our birth story and explain more about her silly tongue (she loves playing with it).

Dave takes 10,000 pictures a day, here are some of them: (I need to upload the camera, so you can see more of Dave & Maya too)


Heading to the hospital:

Early labor:

Excuse my paleness and how crappy I look in the rest of the pictures. I'm exhausted (still) and have been a little pale since everything went down:

These pics are from 6/1, when she came home from the hospital.

Look how little her head is compared to mine (and how much healthier her color is!):

Tomorrow is the big day (40 wks, 5 days)

We've been trying to celebrate every night, knowing that the baby could come at any time (yeah, right). Here was our Memorial Day feast:


Dave is disgruntled with the little grill:

The "grill master":

This is why the grill scares me (and probably why we're not supposed to have one on the balcony). The coals have to burn for a while before you can start:

My feet swelled up yesterday. They look like Fred Flintstone's feet. It's kind of hard to tell in the pictures, but normally the top of my feet are bony, and here they just look all smooth. They suddenly got puffy.

The belly doubles conveniently as a table :)

Dave hurt his neck :( I don't think that sleeping at the hospital is going to do it much good.

So, tomorrow is the big day. We have normal appointments and tests in the morning and will then be induced either tomorrow afternoon or evening. So the baby will be here sometime on (ideally) Friday or (not as ideally) Saturday. I was ready to trust my body through a natural birth process, so induction was not my ideal outcome. I'm nervous. I've spent all day thinking about it and being nervous . . . now I'm tired and just wish that we were already at the hospital and getting this process underway.

A million pictures

*There is a new update post below this one. These are a million pictures from cleaning out my camera*

This was over spring break, when we were trying to clean out the apartment. Here's Dave in the guest room, going through boxes:



This was my favorite find of the cleaning project. An old wrestling t-shirt. I tried to explain that it's not quite as impressive if you're the champion, but they put the word champion in quotes. That would be like saying that I'm the "queen" of the universe.

Some of the garbage that we got rid of over break (along with my big self):


Our new grill! We're not supposed to have one, so it's got to be little enough to hide. Dave is the grill master. Or should I say "grill master":

My first non-stress test. Here I am hooked up to the monitors:

And the computer, you can see that at that moment the heartrate was 131 bpm.
Out to lunch on Mother's Day with Dave's parents & grandma:


The nursery, basically complete:

The baby's closet:

We can't use the bumpers once the baby comes, but they make the crib look nice now:
The dresser that used to be in our bedroom is now the baby's dresser/changing area:

I put the swing and bouncy seat together all by myself:

Car-seat carrier (stroller #1):

Jogging stroller with car seat attachment (stroller #2)--I put this together myself too!

This was the chart that my sister made for my shower. People who thought I would deliver early are dropping like flies:

And here are pictures of the rest of our apartment. I never finished putting them up after we moved in. I didn't take pictures of the 2nd bathroom, or the closets, but here you go:

Coming from the master bedroom & nursery, towards the main apartment:

The living room:

Standing in the living room, looking towards the kitchen/hallway:

The guest room:

Inside the guest room, looking out:

Kitchen:

29 weeks

The nursery is still a work-in-progress. Today we put up one long wall of the border---borders are hard work! It's the type of job that takes a lot of planning and forethought---these are not Dave's strengths. There is no doubt in my mind that had I left him in there alone he would have wet the entire roll, started to put it up . . . realized it was crooked . . . stared out the window a minute to think of how to fix it . . . noticed that the window was dirty . . . left to get the toolkit to take the window down and clean it . . .etc. 2 hours later the room would have no windows, the border would be half hung up (crookedly) pand he would be re-arranging the toolbox alphabetically. (**if you think that I am exaggerating at all, please view the evidence at the end of this post**)

We had to wet a section, then try to smooth it on so that there were no air bubbles, it was in a straight line, and it wasn't pulling or tearing. Then we started again with another section. I think by the time we were done I must have looked like a junkie, complete with flushed skin, sweat & shaking hands. No pictures of me during this loveliness--but here's the section we put up, and one of Dave (who obviously wasn't as high strung about it as I was).

Oh, this is where we found Layla when we came home from getting coffee the other day. I resisted the urge to scream at her long enough to take this picture. This tendency might be interesting after the baby is born---do you think it will send mixed messages if I tell the baby to smile for the camera before yelling at it when it's in trouble?



And here's me and the big belly at 28.5 weeks. It's really getting basketball-esque and moving a lot. It's somewhat entertaining to watch my belly move around---like a big bowl of jello.

Baby Update

This week the baby weighs about 2.5 pounds and is a tad over 15 inches long from head to heel. I have my next midwife appointment on Wednesday, and we were able to re-arrange the schedule at school a little bit so that Dave can come to this one too. He hasn't been to an appointment in a long time, so it will be really nice to have him join in. The appointment mostly consists of weighing and measuring me, so I feel a bit like a farm animal.

***This is what happens when Dave is in charge***

We are in the process of making 5 pans of brownies for the kids tomorrow (6th grade is taking a state math test). I'm in the living room writing this blog entry and he's in the kitchen, allegedly cutting up the first 3 trays of brownies so that we can use the pans again. I walk towards the kitchen, he is laughing so hard that he's in tears, and this is what I see:

I have no idea how he did this. He tried to lie about it but he keeps giggling. We may never know the truth.