"Cooked to perfection"

I have had many people use that phrase when they lay eyes on baby Noah. Knowing how long it felt to have him finally here and if you think of him as a "bun in the oven", who can argue looking at his plump little tan face. At only 6 days, he's already back to his birth weight, which I was told takes many babies almost 2 weeks to accomplish. It certainly is hard to not want to "eat him up" every time we hold him!

It's a...

...BOY!! Noah Thomas was born on November 17th at 1:19pm. He weighed in at 8 pounds 1 ounce and measured 21 inches long. Other than having to wait a long time to finally get to meet him, the delivery went well & we are at home resting comfortably.

Announcement

On Sunday at the end of Mass, our sister-in-law Teresa was reading the one final announcement, "The Knights of Columbus will be having a sausage and pancake breakfast next Sunday from 9 to noon." Right as she paused, and when the church was silent, Ian threw his fist into the air in excitement and yelled, "Yeah!" Everyone in our pew and the few rows behind us had a hard time not laughing to the point of being disruptive. I think even Teresa was thrown off by his loud excitement.

I guess he's excited about pancakes.

Exhaustion

After a few days of busy schedules and fighting naps, this is how I found Ian one day this week when I came to get him for lunch. I should have known something was up when he wasn't singing to his favorite movie. (Notice he doesn't go far without some sort of a ball in hand.)


As a "belated" birthday present, the girls were promised "feather" things in their hair (just like Auntie Dawn). They were also able to finally get their ears pierced when we went to Sioux Falls to visit Grandpa Jim in the hospital. (He's recovering well but sore. Hope to have him home soon.)

Updates

As of right now, no, there is no baby yet, but we have other news to share that involves our family. On Monday, Jason's dad went in for an angiogram to try to get an answer for continued shortness of breath. They admitted him & scheduled him for bypass surgery the next morning. On Tuesday morning, he had triple bypass surgery. There was no damage to the heart and they used a vein from his leg to replace the blocked vessels on his heart. His surgery went very well and he is recovering with family nearby. We are hoping to visit him soon, but we have been told that he will be very tired and will be very sore for the next couple of days, so he really needs his rest and visits will be limited. Since we are almost 2 hours away and this baby is going to be here anytime, we are going to see what happens the next couple of days.

We are grateful that he didn't suffer a heart attack, which is how most people end up having bypass surgery, and that there was no emergency or damage to his heart. Hopefully that will speed his recovery. He will be off of work for at least 6 weeks, but at least harvest is done and he won't need to worry about that. We are looking forward to having him home and thank God for watching over him. We thank everyone who has been praying for him and Mary and continued thanks for the support for them as he continues on his road to recovery.

18 quarts and 12 ounces

The first is the amount of spagetti sauce that we canned yesterday (not to mention the 12 we had done at the beginning of the month.) We have been blessed with tomatoes from our garden as well as from Father Jeremy's garden and were also able to make salsa & soup. We have a tabletop full of green and orange tomatoes that will hopefully ripen so we can do it one more time.

The second amount is how much aloe vera spray gel that Ian sprayed in our bedroom. He happened to discover the bottle when we moved a couch upstairs and he was able to stand on it and found it sitting on the bookshelf. Yes, not the proper place for it, but I think I used it to soothe someone's sunburn this summer & just left it on the shelf in case I needed it again. My bad! So needless to say I spent a good 10 minutes cleaning up green slime all around our bedroom. It covered the walls, the door, the bed, and some clothes set aside for Goodwill. Let's just say that we also had to change his clothes. At least the stuff smelled good!

Here's a quick picture of the kids and me with my belly before I "pop". Not a word I really enjoy to use for my condition considering that all of the other things I can think of that we "pop" that are round and full are things like zits and woodticks. (Thank you to the person who commented about me in that manner.) So, I am 36 weeks today and with 1 week to go until baby is considered full-term, I find myself really anticipating a new baby, but not looking forward to the hard and painful part. Please pray for us and that all goes well!

Happy Birthday, Laney!

Eight years ago, we found ourselves living down in Texas and had only lived in our new apartment for 2 weeks when our daughter, Laney Beth Charlotte, arrived. She actually arrived before any of our furniture and belongings from Minnesota did and so for her first few weeks of life, she slept in the little changing "table", that comes with pack-n-plays, right next to our air mattress on the living room floor. We were actually just glad to be in our own apartment and not living in the hotel anymore as we had been for the past few weeks. Maybe that's why she came when she did...she knew we were finally settled into a place we could call our own.

Not only did she come early, she came in a hurry. I awoke from a dream that night from a contraction like none other. When I realized that it was the beginning of labor, I took my time getting ready and packing some things thinking that I had plenty of time before we would have to get to the hospital. After 45 minutes of putzing around, I finally decided it was time to wake up Jason & head in. We dropped AJ off at a friends' and headed to the hospital.

Once there, I think it finally kicked in how far along my labor was when the man wheeling me up to labor and delivery noticed how quickly my contractions were coming along. "Another one?" he exclaimed as we were riding up the elevator. It was then that I realized that if someone who doesn't even work in the OB department recognized the end stages of labor, then maybe there's more going on here.

When I got to the room, the nurse hurried to get me on the bed and into hospital attire and to check where I actually was as far as labor progressing goes. I was dilated to 8. If you're not sure what that means, it means that at that point it's too late for pain meds and at 10 the baby is ready to deliver. I started to panic and fret for the mere fact that I couldn't have anything for the pain & Jason was down parking the truck. Soon after he got into the room, they put the drape over me and said, "It's time to push!" We looked at each other appalled at how quickly this was all going. After 3 very painful but productive pushes, our little baby girl was born. Head full of dark hair and perfect in every way. I cried with tears of joy for the blessing of her and Jason was just glad that he didn't miss it parking the truck!

So, happy birthday to our Laney Beth who loves to draw and do all the things that little girls love to do and for bringing the world of pink into mine. (If you know me, it's not a favorite color of mine...for me anyways, but it suits her perfectly well and that I love.)