Sidamo's 6th

Here's a very belated happy birthday to my first little man. Sidamo turned 6 a couple day's before the baby was born, and we had a super-fun celebration for him and about a billion of his closest friends at a local sports club.

The day started with pancakes, champagne (a.k.a. apple juice in champagne flutes), and presents.

The themes of the day—sports and Legos—reflect the themes of Sidamo's life right now. Every minute of every day, it seems, is spent doing Legos, playing sports, or talking about Legos, sports, and the intersection of the two. He likes to play football, by himself and without a football, on the rug in our living room. Here's what it looks like: He throws himself to the ground, tackled by some phantom linebacker, and then asks for help dissecting the play. "Was I in bounds? Did I get a touchdown? Where was my knee? Did you see the clock?" And you better come prepared with solid answers, unless you want to see the instant replay (in slow motion, or course). I have learned more about football and basketball in the past few months than I managed to learn in three-plus decades of life.

We normally do mellow birthday parties at home, but this time we decided to outsource the whole thing since it was four days past my due date. So in a completely uncharacteristic feat of organization, I arranged all the details of the party back in August. The theme was basketball, and Sidamo was in heaven. He even had a basketball-shaped cake, courtesy of my extremely talented friend Sarah.

Sidamo had a great time, both on the day and in the coming days, when he dedicated himself entirely to building all the Legos he received on his birthday. The thousands of pieces were almost enough to carry him through Christmas, when he received thousands more.

Happy belated birthday to my sweet, funny, brilliant, and completely sports-obsessed little man. We love you!

The birth

I love hearing other women's birth stories, so I'm going to share here the details of Elliott's arrival. If childbirth makes you woozy, go ahead and skip this post. If long, detailed stories about suffering with happy endings strike you as self-indulgent, move right along. Otherwise, settle in and read on.

Nora's birth was hard. I was induced when I was a week overdue because of apparently low amniotic fluid (turns out I had plenty), and the induction was slow and difficult. Maybe more so because I didn't want an epidural. I managed to deliver without the epidural, but it took 30 hours—22 of which were spent on pitocin, which causes really intense, non-stop contractions. Not pleasant.

This time I was determined not to go down the same road, so I opted for a home birth. I found a wonderful nurse midwife with a home birth practice and saw her for my whole pregnancy. She, and pretty much everyone I met, assured me that a second birth that started on its own would be smoother, quicker, easier. I had high hopes.

At 6 p.m. on Monday, when I was six days past the due date, I went into labor. By midnight, contractions were two minutes apart and pretty strong, so my midwife came over. She examined me, and I was already 4 cm dilated. Awesome. It took me 20 hours to get there with Nora. We all thought baby would be there by sunrise.

During the night she checked me again, and I was at 5 cm. And when she checked me again a few hours later, I was still at 5 cm. After 14 hours, I was still at 5 cm. We tried everything to stimulate labor—including walks around the neighborhood during which I'd have to hang onto Greg every 2 minutes to work through a contraction. (Our neighbors have some stories to tell.) Still no change. At around 3 p.m. my midwife suggested I get in the tub and think about whether I wanted to transfer to the hospital for pitocin. I was exhausted and in lots of pain, and while the idea of giving up the dream of a home birth was hard to swallow, the idea of being done and holding my baby pulled me toward the hospital. I decided to transfer, but that if I had to have pitocin again, I was getting an epidural. Pretty quickly, we were packed up and headed to the hospital.   

The quick relief I had envisioned (honestly, I thought we'd pull up, they'd give me an epidural, and they'd wake me when it was time to push) did not come to be. Somehow it was 5:30 or so before I finally got into a room. Not long after that, I met with the anesthesiologist about that epidural, who crushed my illusions entirely: Because of the rods in my back, I was not an epidural candidate. So I had to have the pitocin again, and again with no epidural.

I cried.

And then we got on with it. I was given fentanyl, which took the edge off and let me rest but didn't eliminate the pain. It made it manageable, though, and it made me a little loopy and happy (at least between contractions). The pitocin did its job and got the labor moving in the right direction, and by 10:54, a mere 29 hours after labor started, little Elliott Owen was in my arms.

So far I'd say he was worth it. And I'd also say three kids is plenty.

Welcome Filbert

a.k.a. Elliott Owen (though truth be told, the four of us still call him Filbert about 75% of the time). He was born 12/13 at 10:54 p.m. Stats: 8 pounds 1 ounce, 20.5 inches, and a whole lotta perfect. We're all smitten.

Thankful

 

And for my countless other blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Playgrounds of New York

You Can Dress Them Up

Here's one of about a million photos from our recent trip to New York. Is it just me, or do the boys look like Secret Service agents tasked with keeping the crazy lady away from the president?

Biotin supplements

I can't say enough good things about what biotin supplements have done for our family's hair health.

You really should give them a try.

50-ish States That Rhyme

Did you guys have to learn the "50 States That Rhyme" song in elementary school? I did, and it stuck with me. And somehow I found myself singing it in front of the kids a couple months ago. And they loved it. Then I made the mistake of singing it double-time, as the song instructs, and since then I've been taking requests for it at least daily.

Yesterday Sidamo started singing it in the back seat of the car—not unusual, as he'll often start and get a few states in before giving up. But this time, he started and made it all the way to Wyoming. Wow. A-freaking-mazing, right?

I got a recording today.

Sorry Iowa. Oh, and also Misery.

And then, as I was commenting on the fact that he's probably the youngest kid anywhere to know the "50 States That Rhyme," his 3-year-old sister busted out with this:

Sorry, Indiana.

Crazy, right? (I've since learned, thanks YouTube, that my kids are not in fact the most precocious geography singers out there—and hell, they don't even play an instrument as accompaniment—but still, I was pretty darned impressed.)

Now here's the flip side: It's been about 36 hours since the kids have discovered they can sing this song on their own, and I have heard it no fewer than 7,658 times since then. The lid is off, and there doesn't seem to be any getting it back on. The price I pay for excessive maternal pride, I suppose.

8 years

Hard to believe it's been 8 years since this:

I love this picture of us. We have it framed in the house, and we always get comments on it. It makes us look sooooo-phisticated, as a friend's grandma used to say.

The truth is, though, that almost all the pictures of our wedding look a little something like this:

Gaping-mouthed and doubled-over with laughter. Which, I guess, is a little more representative of the day—and the marriage.

Take this morning's exchange with my hopeless romantic as an example:

Greg: Happy anniversary!
Me (caught off guard): Oh yeah, happy anniversary! I guess I forgot.
Greg: Yeah, what's another year in a life sentence.

See? He continues to sweep me off my feet. Happy anniversary to my sweet, loving, dedicated, hard-working, and hilarious husband of 8 loooooooooong years. Love you big time.

State of the dog

I've been hesitating to post on this topic because it's been such an emotional experience, but it's been a big change in our lives, so I think it's important to get it out there.

After the last post about Eden, we continued trying to make it work. We took her to two more behaviorists. The first told us, "You absolutely cannot keep this dog. There's no way she can succeed in a busy home." Number four outlined a last-ditch one-month training plan, which we implemented religiously but without much success. One day when we were locking Eden in the bedroom for the 10th time of the day, Greg and I looked at each other and agreed that it was no way for a dog to live. It became clear that the constant state of anxiety caused by our frequent visitors was just more than she could handle; she needed to be someplace without so much stimulation.

We contacted the rescue and asked them to start looking for a more suitable home for her. It wasn't easy—most people who want a Golden Retriever are not interested in an aggressive dog. But a few weeks ago, we got a call that there was a couple interested in her. I took her to meet them, and they were totally amazing. They have decades of experience dealing with dogs with all sorts of behavioral issues. Their kids are grown. They have visitors once a week, tops. They live in a quiet area and go for long walks and/or hikes daily. Plus they're sweet as pie. I wanted to live with them. Eden took to them immediately, and vice versa. They kept her for a couple weeks as a trial, with the understanding that we'd take her back if it wasn't a fit. Then last weekend, they let us know they'd fallen completely and had decided to keep her.

The whole experience was so difficult emotionally; there was guilt, anxiety, sadness, loss—compounded, of course, by having to help the kids through it. In short, it sucked.  But at the end, Eden ended up in the absolutely perfect home for her, and we have had a huge weight lifted.

We thought about getting another dog, but given the timing—baby #3 will be here in a couple of months, we're renovating the basement, and we have some travel ahead—we decided against it. Unless we could find a Saffron clone, we decided it would just be too much stress to try to add another dog right now.

And then … we found a Saffron clone.

Seriously, isn't it uncanny?

Introducing Puddle (Pudsy for short). She is a 4-year-old Great Dane and is perfect in every single way. She loves people (especially children), is calm and affectionate, walks perfectly on a leash, and is submissive to every animal she meets—including chickens. We are completely, totally, head-over-heels in love, and I think the feeling just might be mutual.