7 QT - New Baby!

Joining Jen at Conversion Diary for a day late 7QT.  And no pictures today because the computer I'm using doesn't want pictures, which is too bad, because I have lovely new baby photos, but... technology. ***Update:  Well, at least I could change the header!

1.

Felix Anthony was born Saturday, June 21, at 5:01 p.m.  During daylight hours!  He's our only baby to not be born when it was dark out.  He's just gorgeous, sweet, snuggly, happy, and wonderful.  We all agree on this.   

 

2. 

His head was transverse, so he took some sweet time coming out.  I went in at 5 a.m. at 6 cm and by 4 p.m. was...7.5 cm.  But my midwife was spectacular, Michael was a hero, and my support team was so helpful, so it wasn't as bad as all that.  And the tub!  I got to labor in the tub for some of it, which is just about the only place I want to be in labor.

 

3.

We didn't find out boy or girl before the birth, so the midwife said to Michael,  "Dad, do you want to call it?" The look on Michael's face when he said, "It's a boy!" with such surprise and delight is something I hope I never forget.  I guess we were both expecting this baby to be a girl, but he is most definitely a boy.

 

4.

Picture a sweet newborn baby boy... on a scale that reads 10 lb., 1 oz,  He's 21 inches long.  He is a big ol' boy!  And a big head, too:  14.5 inches in circumference.  Nobody was expecting him to be quite that large, least of all me.  Of course, as the people in the room were taking bets before he was weighed, my guess was 30 lb. (he was tough to get out), but I wasn't really expecting 10 lb.

 

5.

The next morning (Sunday) I went into septic shock, complete with high fever, crashing blood pressure, and all manner of medical procedures.  I was rushed to the ICU for care.  I got out of the ICU Thursday night and am on a medical floor of the hospital, still working on recovery and control of the infection that hit me.  Nobody is quite sure why this happened, because I had NO risk factors for this condition.  Felix went home with Michael on Tuesday, having been monitored for sepsis and found to be healthy, and having gotten his weight back up to 10 lb again (he has his priorities straight).  This is all about as fun as it sounds, and I certainly didn't expect to be spending his 1 week day at the hospital without him.

 

This is also why there aren't pictures -- I'm not on my usual machine and I can't make this one bend to my will. 

 

6.

Thank God for modern medicine and excellent health care workers.  And our parish priest who came to anoint me and brought the Eucharist.  And blanket warmers -- I think I might be addicted to warm blankets now. 

 

7.

We named him Felix because we really like the name, it means "happy" or "happiness," and there are  some really cool Sts. Felix in Church history.  We named him Anthony after St. Anthony of Padua, to whom we have a devotion.  When the kids came to see him right after the birth, Hannah asked me what his name meant.  "Happy," I said.  But she wanted to know what Anthony meant, too.  I didn't know, because we were thinking of the saint when we chose that name.  She went home and looked it up and told me yesterday when they visited.  Anthony means "beyond measure."

 

We named our baby Happiness Beyond Measure. 

 

I try to remember that as I work on my recovery. 

 

And I would like to ask for your prayers for my full and swift recovery.  I can't wait to get back to my family.



7 Quick Takes on cooking, Michael the duck whisperer, and old photos

And for more quick takes, visit Kathryn at Team Whitaker.

1.

I recently realized that this equation:  Hannah’s proficiency in the kitchen + newborn coming = excellent opportunity to have Hannah make some meals.  This post by another mom with older kids and a young baby inspired me, and I suggested to Hannah that she might enjoy planning and making a dinner.  She was enthusiastic, so Hannah made dinner for us Thursday night.  Seared cod with gazpacho salsa and tomato vinaigrette.  It was delicious!  And she also made dessert, because why would one have an opportunity to make dessert and not do it?  She made white chocolate pudding with blackberry curd.  The pudding didn’t gel as she expected, so she ended up freezing it.  It was also tasty.

2.

#1 gave us learning opportunities.  Hannah was really disappointed when she discovered the pudding hadn’t gelled.  Really disappointed.  Then she was irritated with me because I didn’t know of any helps for non-gelled pudding.  (I don’t think I’ve made pudding from scratch, ever.)  It took a little while for her to realize that her irritation with me was actually disappointment about the pudding, and being disappointed about the pudding was something I was glad to work with, whereas having her irritatedly yell at me was not.  But we got there, even fairly calmly, and she’s now vowed to MAKE PUDDING UNTIL SHE CAN DO IT WELL.  But next time it’s going to be regular chocolate, because white chocolate isn’t as good as she’d expected.  I have no objections.

3.

 We like your husband.  Not you.

Michael, because he is a generous and loving soul, offered to close up the duck house Thursday night when the time came.  Did I mention he’s generous and loving?  I told him I’d help if they weren’t in yet, but they’ve been very good about going in at dusk.  He went out and came back in a few minutes later.  “They weren’t in their house.”  Oh.  So then I started to get up to help him herd them in.  “But I just herded them in.”  Um, what?  Whenever I go out there and try to herd them into their house, they act like I’m trying to herd them into the lion’s jaws.  Yep.  The ducks love Michael and don’t like me. 

4.

I’ve been working on some old photo projects, because it’s obvious that these projects are what are keeping the baby from being born.  What baby can be born into a house in which there are outstanding photo projects?!  Seriously.  So…I’ve been looking at lots of old photos.  Like this one:

Hannah’s First Communion, while I was pregnant with Tess. 

5.

One of the outstanding projects is photo compilations from Tess’s first three years.  So I’ve been seeing lots of baby Tess:

Totally cute.  And she had no hair. 

Which makes her hair situation now look like she’s got a ton. 

6.

We have a rule at the table:  no shooting people.  The shooting is, of course, pretend, but I don’t want to say, “No pretend shooting people,” because I don’t want anyone really shooting people at the table, either.  I’ll give you one guess which child was the one who made us come up with this rule.  It’s one I have to repeat a surprising number of times.

7.

One benefit of being past the due date with this baby is that we don’t actually have anything planned.  So when friends called Friday morning and asked if we wanted to have dinner with them that evening, we could say yes.  That turned out to be a lot of fun.  We hadn’t seen them in a while, and it was great to catch up.  Our kids all had fun playing together and we were tricked into staying fairly late by the long hours of daylight.  A good way to start the summer.

…But I’m still ready to have the baby.  :)

{p,h,f,r} Flowers, play, ducks, naps

I’d been hoping that this could be a newborn edition of {pretty, happy, funny, real}, but it is not to be…this week.  Maybe next?  At any rate, I’m linking up with Like Mother, Like Daughter, and they’re also on baby watch. 

{pretty}

The garden is starting to go a bit crazy!  Yay!  Calendula flowers are blooming.  The snap peas (on the left in this photo) are producing lots of peas these days.

Borage is also blooming.  The bees love the borage flowers.  The ducks love the leaves.  

Future tomatoes.

Future squash.

{happy}

I love it when my kids play happily together.  The best way for this to happen is for them to come up with the game, of course, because then it can go on and on without interference or input from me.

Yesterday, Naomi played chef to Sim and Tess, who sat at their tables and put in their orders for various meals.  Tess’s order pretty much consisted of ice cream for whatever meal Naomi served.

It was too bad that I did have to eventually put an end to the game so I could serve actual lunch.  Which wasn’t ice cream. 

Tess likes playing with the Bananagrams letters, and she even recognizes certain letters already.  When Hannah told me that Sim had spelled out “Tess” with the Bananagrams, I thought she meant the actual letters.  He got creative, though, and made a lovely mosaic “Tess.”  Tess herself loved it.

{funny}

Really, the ducks are too funny.  They like to all lie down together when they rest.  Here two are lying down in the water bin, two outside the water bin.  How do they decide who gets the privileged water spots?

I mean, really, look how funny.  Can you stand the tilted head look?  Yesterday I saw them chasing flies, which entertained quite a bit, because from the house one couldn’t actually see the flies, just the crazy ducks making short dashes here and there.  Hopefully they got some of them.

When I got up from my nap at Quiet Time yesterday, Hannah said, “Tess is asleep on the couch next to Sim.”  I was surprised, since she gave up her naps nearly a year ago, and only occasionally falls asleep in the car.

But sure enough, there she was.  Sim didn’t mind hanging out and reading Garfield while she finished up her nap.

{real}

But, of course, I found myself worrying about whether she’s getting sick, because…tiny girl doesn’t nap.  So we’ll see.  Maybe she just needed to catch up.  I hope so.

5 Favorites – unrelated to pregnancy or labor

Joining Heather this week for 5 Favorites!  Some of these are merely odes to things that everyone already knows about, but I’m recognizing because of their helpfulness to me right now. 

1.  Water shoes for summer shoes for kids

My kids do a ton of outdoor stuff in the summer, which is great.  For the past few years, I’ve been getting them Keen sandals, justifying the expense because they wear them every single day and they’re good for water adventures, hiking, etc.  This year, I took some advice from Katy and decided to try out water shoes.  The ones I got (Speedo brand) are really flexible, fit well, stay on, and have great treads for things like hiking and climbing playground equipment.  More importantly, all the kids really like them.  And they’re water shoes, of course, so they’re…good in water.  They dry very quickly.  PLUS!  They’re about half the cost of Keens, which makes a difference when you’re buying quite a few pairs.

2.  Sanuk Yoga Sling sandals for me

I like my shoes to have flexible soles.  But I also walk a lot on pavement, so I need something cushy or my feet start to hurt.  There are barefoot shoes that have a ton of flexibility, but if I wear them on a walk I can’t go far because of their lack of cushioning.  These sandals, however, are awesome.  It took a little getting used to the fabric between my first and second toe, because I’m not a flip-flop wearer usually, but once I got used to that, these have been my FAVORITES!  The bottoms are made of yoga mats, so they’re very flexible and very cushy and I can walk for a long time without wearing out my feet, even on pavement.  Also, they’re not ridiculously expensive.

3.  Caller ID

Can I get an AMEN?  I’m not sure why Natl Gun Rights feels the need to call me three or four times per day right now, but the ability to just ignore their phone calls – or press talk and then press off right away – is an absolute dream. 

4.  Play Dough

This stuff is saving my bacon right now, because any time Tess is bored, I can suggest she play with play dough, and she goes to town.  This works really well, since there are some things that happen in our day that don’t need to have a two-year-old “helping.”  ALSO, when I’m reading History to the kids (did I mention that I’m a mean mom whose kids are STILL doing school?), they all like to have play dough to play with while I read, and having their hands occupied helps them to pay attention to what I’m reading.

5.  Crock Pot

I’m sure I’m not introducing anyone to anything new with this one, but it is one of my favorite things.  This isn’t my exact model, but it’s similar.  And I love this thing.  I don’t make as many meals with it in the summer as I do in the winter, but right now it is making beef stock.  Well, actually, I have two crock pots, one that’s a smaller model.  And right now they’re both making beef stock.  This is fantastic, because the stock is supposed to cook for something like 2 days, and I don’t really relish the idea of having my stovetop on over night…for some reason.  Oh!  and we made the black beans from Smitten Kitchen’s cookbook as a side dish for the smoked ribs Michael made the other day.

Things to do on one’s due date instead of being in labor

Yesterday was it for me.  And let me just be clear:  these activities are not guaranteed to make you go into labor.  They didn’t put me into labor.  In no particular order:

*Take a shower

*Take care of your ducks

*Admire your ducks

*Homeschool (meanest mom! mid-June and we’re still doing school!)

*Take kids to PE class

*Pick kids up from PE class, including getting them through the shower

*Mow lawn

*No, really.

*Make meals for your family

*Field phone calls.  Nope, not in labor.  Even the solicitors call more.

*Work on more stuff for next year’s history course

*Think about how to revamp organization for next year’s school

*Take a nap

*Read

*Check email

*Laundry.  And, yes, more laundry.

*Wonder if the bunnies got fed today.  Give them a little extra food and get attacked by one of them as a thank-you.

*Read to kids.  Put them to bed.

Things that one’s husband may not want one to do on one’s due date:  go picking strawberries.  I suppose I see his point:  it’s an hour away and squatting to pick strawberries would be a GREAT way to encourage the start of labor.  Which is one reason I thought I’d like to go, of course.  Driving for an hour in labor, though, is pretty much a terrible idea, and Michael didn’t want to take the day off work to go strawberry picking.  Hm.

Ducks in the beds

Not indoors – the garden beds.  It’s really only the bed where I planted the English peas.  The ducks LOVE eating the pea plants, so they’re big fans of this bed in particular.  They’re big enough now that they can get into the bed and eat from there. 

They’re not partial to many of the other plants, though, so I’m not too worried.  And they look hilarious in the bed. 

They also love to eat the slugs I find (they will actually approach if I crouch down and hold out a lettuce leaf holding the slugs – they’re so good the ducks are willing to brave the scariest woman on the planet to get them), and I’m sure they search out and find them on their own, so they’re doing that job.  And their entertainment value is extremely high, too.  Can’t argue with that. 

My tomato connestoga still looks…lovely…there in the background. 

After a trip to the library