My child, the genius.

AJ LOVES his carrots. As you can see, he opens his mouth for more even before there is a spoon in sight! You can also see him sign "more" as he's eating. Such a genius child!!

The sign for "more" is bringing your hands together so your fingertips touch. You'll have to cut my kid some slack on his technique (I mean, he's only 5 months old!) but he is absolutely signing "more". He also signs "all done", but you will never see him sign that when eating carrots! He does, however, sign "all done" when eating sweet potatoes. Before he even starts. Not a fan.

He ROLLS!!!

My sweet Bubba boy.
He's so old!

I love this kid.

That is all.

Because I can't resist

Some recent pictures of my Bubba.
Half smile:

Baby 'Nole:

Playing outside with Nama:
"Spraying" Aunt Linday during bathtime (LOVE my kid):

Shhhh...sleepin:

Hanging with Mimi:

What the?

Have you ever seen Family Guy? My baby reminds me of Stewie. I'm pretty sure he finds his parents unamusing at most times. I often wonder what's going on in his little mind. I think that were he able to speak, he'd demand therapy. Even being kissed on the top of the head terrifies him.

See?

But how do you not love that little face?

Something very important to say.

Our little man has been very chatty lately. I attempted to get his chatter on video.
He had something very important to say.

Not happy with mom.

I'm not sure what I did, but whatever it was, it was NOT acceptable.

Sleep doesn't always come easy.

My poor little guy has been suffering for weeks with acid reflux. He has been keeping us up all night. And he's been keeping himself up all night. It breaks my heart. But today at the pediatrician, we got a prescription for Zantac. And what a difference it makes.

Here he is "sleeping" before the zantac:


And here he is after:


What a world of difference!

Now if only Count Bubbula would learn the difference between day and night, we'd ALL get some sleep.

Baby Legs

We now have a Shutterfly site with lots of AJ pictures. We'll keep it updated with new pictures.

Like this one:

Which really, I only have because I love baby legs. They are essentially leg warmers for babies. And they are straight up irresistible.

At least one of his grandfathers is not impressed. Pop Pop does not think it's funny or cute to dress him in polka dotted leg warmers. I'm pretty sure Pop Pop is wrong. Well, half wrong anyway. It's not funny. But it is down right adorable.

How he got here.

Our little man certainly took his sweet time in coming to see us.

When Scott and I got married, we decided almost right away it was time to have a baby. Well, in all fairness, I decided it was time to have a baby. I had been ready for a baby for as long as I could remember but I knew Scott wasn't quite ready. So I tried to be patient. I tried not to let him see me surfing baby sites every day after work. I tried not to let him see my lust every time I saw a pregnant woman. I tried to pretend I just loved babies and when I stared at them in the mall, I wasn't trying to picture our own child.

He was so on to me. And he wanted a baby, too, even if his idea was that we'd have one (or two) later. But he knew how badly I wanted one and he understood my concern that it wouldn't be easy for us. So we started our efforts. And as most of you know, it didn't go well at all. Which isn't really the point of this post. Suffice it to say, after 2 years, a failed IVF, a miscarriage, and fertility surgery, our efforts were successful. And, while we were THRILLED to be expecting a baby, my pregnancy wasn't exactly a walk in the park. Most of my first and second trimester issues were documented in gory detail on my other blog, so I will not recount them here. Besides, if you're reading this, you're probably already up to speed....

However, during the last three weeks of my third trimester, the pregnancy got a bit more exciting then even we were expecting. My blood pressure was getting very high--especially for me. Scott often says that my blood pressure is so low, it's a miracle I'm alive. Not so after the 35th week of my pregnancy. While the numbers weren't alarming for most people, they were down right scary for me. Normally my blood pressure runs around 90/55 or so. Even during the most stressful parts of my pregnancy, it was usually only 100/60 or right around there. So when my feet swelled enough to cover my toes, we started monitoring my blood pressure more. And for two or three weeks it stayed steady. High, but steady. Then, I got a headache. And vision disturbances. And lots of protein in my urine. I officially had pre-eclampsia. And on April 13th, my doctor decided it was time to get the sheriff involved and officially evict the little man. Because I'm diabetic and there were concerns about the little man's size, we had an original induction date set for the 20th. Then, when my blood pressure started creeping up, my doctor changed it to the 15th. But when I landed in Labor and Delivery with a headache on the 13th, my doctor had enough. He was coming out.

So at 6:00 am on the 14th of April, Scott and I made our last trip to Labor and Delivery. It was a little strange...after weeks of going there 2 or 3 times (or more!) a week, this was our last trip. It felt both intensely real and surreal at the same time. In a matter of hours, our little boy would be in our arms. How do you put that feeling into words? You can't. I'm not sure Scott and I were even able to understand the enormity of what we were feeling. I will say that I drove myself to the hospital (what can I say? I'm a control freak to the end!) and I did not cry. Denial? Maybe. Excitement? Not sure. I do know that I was terrified. I had no idea what to expect and I have a dreadful fear of both the unknown and things I can't control. And I was headed to both. Willingly.
We arrived at the hospital a little before 7am (early as usual, thank you very much!) and ran into my favorite nurse, Mandy, in the parking lot. She arranged to be my L&D nurse for the day, so that was awesome. After doing the admittance paperwork and getting set up for my IVs, they finally started my pitocin at 8:30. My fabulous OB came to check me around 9:30. (One of the perks of having an OB whose practice is right in the hospital is that she attended my delivery. No on-call docs for me!) The doc pronounced me 90% effaced and 2 cm dilated. In other words, I was exactly in the same place I was the week before at my last appointment. So they upped the pitocin.

And kept increasing the pitocin all day. 2, 4, 6, 8. Nothing. I was contracting, but not well. Finally my doctor came back to see me around 1:00 and decided it was time to break my water. At which point, my labor all but stopped. After a few hours of very little progress, they (my doc and Mandy) suggested an epidural would help me relax and hopefully allow me to progress more quickly. When I went into the hospital, Scott was under STRICT orders not to suggest and epidural. I wanted to go naturally if I could.

Then I had a series of long, painful contraction that enticed me to drop 2 F-bombs. In the middle of the next one, I nodded to Mandy and I got my epidural. And may I just note, epidurals are excellent. This whole "I can do it naturally" thing? WAY over rated. At the end, you get a baby either way. Why do the pain thing? So not necessary. Anyway.

After the epidural, we were cooking with gas. I went from 4cm to 9.5cm dilated in just a few hours. Turns out, I'm a bad relaxer. LOL I guess we knew that, though. Unfortunately, though my mind said it was time to push, my body said otherwise. I still had a tiny bit of cervix that needed to move out of the way. So I rolled from side to side for about 20 minutes to get it to go down. It did, and at 9:00 pm, I was cleared to push.

Now, for those of you who have either not given birth or had Cesarean sections, the pushing thing is not as easy as it sounds. I decided rather soon into the process that if he didn't come out fast, I was going to pack it up and go home. No way I was going to push for 2 hours. Not a chance.

Turns out, I didn't have to. After some supplemental oxygen to help me breath better, I was pushing like a champ. And at 9:34pm, Andrew James was born.

My doctor was surprised. She was prepared to do a c-section on me. We were all so sure that my little guy would not be such a little guy that they even had the pediatrician on call in the delivery room in case his shoulders got stuck. Not only did he not get stuck, turns out our "big" baby, was a quite average 7lbs 13oz.

7lbs and 13oz of pure perfection.
And I'd do it all again 100 times over.

He's here!

And he's the picture of perfection.