The Last 3 Weeks

Sam Hyrum Kelsey was born 29 June 2009, at 19:19pm, and he weighed 9lbs even. (Anyone who knows me knows this is my lucky baby...look at all those 9's! :D). Boy did he seem fat after all my preemies! Since he lost all that fluid his body was harboring, Sam's gotten a little skinnier looking and has some Sharpei-style wrinkles, but he's gaining weight and filling back out. This is a little picture journey of his first three weeks.

Week One:

For the first 11 days, Sam stayed in the hospital's Special Care Nursery to work out some immaturity problems (forgetting to breathe whilst sucking or sleeping) and to work off some jaundice. He also did fun things like a hearing test (the "I'm going to take over the world by mind control!" shot) and EKG's and echocaridograms. Sam spent his whole day with Mommy every day. Sometimes the big sibs or Grandma or Daddy were there too.




Week Two:

Week two was busy! We brought Sam home, so we got to try out his new car seat and my beautiful sling. A friend of Cassondra's makes them, and she made mine for me out of fabric with my artwork printed on it. :D (I'm wearing it wrong in the picture but we figured it out later. ;) ) Grandma Linda was the first to hold Sam at home, but Abby soon followed. Abby loves to read and sing to Sam, who seems to like it too! The boys love Sam but didn't want to hold him at first. We also got to see Ellen Baird and her beautiful Katherine; who at three months looks like she could eat Sam right up! Hopefully Sam will gain enough weight to get Katherine's beautiful baby rolls. Right now he's still skinny.



Week three:

Week three has brought lots of changes and excitement! Sam weighs well over 10 pounds now, and has taught himself to suck his thumb. He hasn't, however, figured out how not to poke his eyes or how not to insert his fingers into his nostrils. We're hoping he works out those kinks soon. (In the thumb picture, you can also see his crazy mohawk curl! :D) Aidan finally decided it would be okay to hold Sam. Abby still hogs him. And Sam went with Mommy and Daddy to (FINALLY!) pick out a mini-van! :D (We'll have a whole separate post for that.) Grandma Linda went home, sadly, but she left our house in great order and with all kinds of chores and instrument practice to keep the kids busy.

Bowling does not bring on labor.

Unfortunately. Still, we had a grand time at Aidan's bowling birthday party. The place was empty and so the guy running it let us have two lanes for the price of one, so the adults bowled without bumpers and the kids bowled with. :D It's a good thing the place was empty, too...there was no A/C and it got reaaaally warm in there.

Bowling in New England is definitely different than Western 10-pin. You still have ten pins...but they're little and skinny. You get a one-size-fits-all ball with no holes, it's like a shotput or lawn bowling ball. You also get three throws per frame. I don't know if we played all the rules right or just did our own thing but it was super fun!

Here's some pictures. :D

Happy kids:


The girls get strikes!



Sam comes along in his inconvenient carrying case:




Happy family:




Alas, as vigorously as I bowled, no labor symptoms. And that was after a full day at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Jed's eye doctor, hehe. Sam is just too happily swimming in there to come out. I keep telling him his fingers and toes will be all wrinkled, but he doesn't seem to care...

Weekend Fun

We had a fun weekend! We thought we wouldn't get to go out on any more dates, but because nothing was happening with Sam and Mom was here to be with the other kids, Jed and I went "out". So, yeah, it wasn't a movie or a dinner but I did get Chicken McNuggets and delicious Strawberry Shortcake Sundae out of the deal!

We had to drop Michael off at a birthday party, which happened to be held at a state park that has a dairy farm on the premises. So after he was settled Jed walked me up to the dairy's ice-cream shop and we shared a big, goopy strawberry sundae over delicious shortcake biscuits. The walk, although short, was quite eventful. First we found the world's smallest frog! :D He was smaller than my thumbnail. Jed caught it and gave it to me so he could get the camera:




We also found some lovely vines that intertwined to form a heart. We thought it was so neat that it would do that naturally! I must have taken 10 pictures from 10 angles but looks like the first one was the best. Then, while we're walking along, some huge bug (probably a dragonfly, but I never saw it properly) flew down my shirt! If you've never seen a woman that's 9 months pregnant screaming, squealing, laughing and flapping and jumping around, trying to get a large winged bug unstuck from her cleavage, you've missed out on pure comedy. Jed was practically crying from laughter. Anyway, fun times. Top that off with a trip to the grocery store and the used bookstore, and I thought we were going to need to head to Labor and Delivery Saturday night. But alas, no baby.

So we're still pregnant, which is a miracle for us, but has also become rather tedious. ;) I must have complained a lot though because my dear evil twin Farlander drew me this comic:


So we'll let Sam decide when he comes out. Up to a point anyway...if we go past our due date I'll be demanding Pitocin. ;) I was excited to go full term but there's no way I'm enduring overdue!

moan, whine, complain

Hi guys. Sorry about not updating...it's mostly because I have no new pictures and because I only have complaints. I should be really excited that we've made it this far into our pregnancy, because it's the farthest we've ever been, officially 37 weeks 1 day. And I do feel blessed that we kept Sam in so long and that I'm healthy. But 9 months pregnant doesn't feel healthy in any way, shape or form. I measured...I'm more than four feet around. Around, not tall. I can't turn over well in bed and I get charley horses in all my major muscles. I'm in constant pain and I waddle really bad. Sam doesn't like my practice contractions and instead of lying low for the duration like my other kids, he kicks at me, adding insult to injury.

Jed and the kids have been wonderful. They're helping with everything from buckling my shoes to bringing me water to doing my chores. I avoided bed-rest, which is wonderful because I still need to make meals, but I can't do much else or stand longer than 5 minutes so I feel useless. Jed took us out for our last Saturday as the family we've been for the past 6 years; from now on either Mom and/or Sam will be with us forever. We went to Johnny Rocket's and feasted on burgers and fries and chocolate milk. It made me kind of sad because we've reached a good time where everyone's pretty comfortable with our lives and routines and our place in the family, and now it all will change. I know that it will be wonderful in many ways but the list of cons is long as well (buckets of diapers, anyone?).

From what I've seen so far it will probably be hardest on Aidan; he's excited to be a big brother but his behaviors are regressing (toileting accidents and needing to be fed to finish a meal) and I don't know how to help him with this. We read the kids a book called "Babies Don't Eat Pizza" and they loved it; but then Abby picked out a book at the library called "No one asked me if I wanted to be a big sister". That made me sad cause I thought she was cool with it all. I guess only the next couple months will tell.

Maybe all these downerisms can be attributed to the weather; while I'm feeling blessed and grateful not to have Cassondra's oppressive Las Vegas heat, we've been sunless for two whole weeks. So me, the tomatoes, and the strawberries are all pale and drab in mood. I'm sure I'll feel better when Mom gets here Thursday and can help with the laundry. And maybe we'll have sun later this week.

And maybe I'll have the baby any minute now and it will be all better because I can hold him and cuddle him. :D That's all I really want.

Good news all around! :D

My very dear cousin, Kristin, got engaged this weekend! :D She's getting married to the very excellent Scott Allender (and I totally approve of the upgrade in last initals, hehe.)



Aren't they cute?!

And the second bit of good news (not life-changing, like an engagement, but still made my day. ;) ) is that Chuck got renewed for a short 3rd season! Ok, short. 13 episodes. And yes, probably on Friday nights. But anything is better than no Chuck! SO YAY!

Busy Busy!

Here's our Michael in his first artistic adventure! Michael's art was chosen from his school to go on to the town-wide art competition. There, it was put on the front cover of the program! Only 4 pieces out of hundreds were even in the program, and his was on the front. Then, the winners went on to be displayed at the local library. So now Mike is an award-winning artist, who has shown his art in the same gallery as his mom's art. :D We're so proud of him. He titled his fractal "Flying Sparkle" and he made it all by himself.



We had a lovely Easter, and all our flowers bloomed right around that time as well. It was really gratifying to have such a beautiful (albeit COLD!) spring renewal after such a long, snowy winter. We were also lucky to have Aunt Natalie come visit and help us out so much. We had fun coloring eggs and hanging out.


Now that the weather is warmer, we spend more time outside. Of course, my little vegetables aren't much for exercise. You'll usually see them either examining bugs and plants or reading some books. We had to put a 10 book limit per kid on our library gatherings so that Mommy doesn't go crazy looking for them all when they're due, and so they can be carried out by the kids ('cause I'm not slinging thirty books around at a time!).



These days I'm slinging enough weight around. I'm about the same size now as I was when I delivered Aidan....with 9 weeks to go! Sam is a BIG boy! He moves around (still mostly after a meal) with force and confidence. I don't think he'll be a shy little flower when he comes out. This boy is ALL boy! All elbows, knees and punching fists. HI-YAH! We're excited for Grandma Linda to come out and help around the house, since the bending over and getting things done really isn't happening anymore. Also, as a surprise, Grandpa Dan will also be taking a week out of his blissful baseball schedule to visit us. Everyone is excited to see Sam! (Just not yet.)



Daddy took his boys on the father-son campout this weekend, despite threats of rain and thunderstorms. Luckily they had a platform to throw the tent on! Lots of deadfall was all around after the ice-storms and blizzards this winter, so there was plenty of firewood for s'mores and hot-dogs. (Mommy and Abby had an epic slumber-party at the Harmon's while the boys were gone. Much coconut shrimp, pizza and chocolate was consumed.)


Hope everyone is having a fantastic spring! Sorry for the delay in real updates.

Have a Heart! Renew Chuck!

Just wanted to put a quick link up here, while the fate of our favorite show hangs in the balance:

http://weheartchuck.blogspot.com/




It gives instructions how to donate to the American Heart Association in Chuck's name, in such a way that the execs at NBC can see that we're serious about wanting Chuck to return. Besides, there's not many better causes than heart health research!

I'll put a real blog up soon, with pix. Cause I know you guys are dying to know what's going on here besides the lack of Chuck, lol.