Monday was a very special day. My sister gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Bethany Noelle! Mother and daughter are doing well.

It’s been a veritable baby boom in our circle. Not only do I have a new niece, but in the last few months FIVE of my cousins have also had babies. Among our friends there are two new babies plus two more on the way. Wowie!

In other news, we finally hired a gardener. Not finally as in we finally gave into peer pressure but finally as in we finally found one willing to take our business. After a year of dead end inquiries and referrals, I finally found someone by calling a number in a mailer. During their first visit we watched surreptitiously through the window as they surveyed our front yard and laughed at its awful state, but after two visits the yard already looks worlds better. Hooray!

For the back yard we’ve got different plans. I’ve successfully sprouted seeds for a bunch of fruits and vegetables, the majority of which have already been moved into pots, but eventually they’ll all need to be planted in the ground somewhere back there. I also gave up on the old batch of sunflower seeds that refused to grow and sprouted a new batch that’s doing very well, but instead of planting them in the back I think I will eventually plant them in the front, but maybe wait until they look a little less weed-like to avoid confusing the gardeners.

Kevin convinced me to sign up for Netflix so that I don’t end up working all through my leave. Here’s the first batch of movies I watched:

By the way, did you know yogurt containers are not recyclable? I looked it up a while back and was shocked to learn type 5 plastics are not easily recyclable. This means you can’t just dump it in your curbside bin. This recent Slate article explains it pretty well. Update: It turns out our trash disposal company will take all type 1 through 5 plastics in curbside recycling! Yay! Check with your local trash disposal service and maybe you’ll get some good news too!

Categories: environment, gardening, kids and parenting, movies
Comments Off

I heard about this Amazon diaper deal from Parent Hacks: buy $99 in diapers by May 31, get a $20 Amazon certificate come July 12 – 26. Angelina has spent more time in newborn diapers than either of her siblings, but even she has already moved on to size 1. To reach $99 in diapers without running into the danger of her outgrowing a size, I guess we’ll end up buying one box each of sizes 2, 3, and 4.

Today Angie turns 4 weeks old. Her appearance is changing fast. Her blue-gray eyes have not switched colors yet, but her blond hair is darkening. She’ll probably end up with hair color similar to her siblings. I’ve already mentioned the change in diaper size. When I hold her against me I think there’s no way she could fit in my belly now.

She still spends more hours asleep (or half asleep, judging by how quickly she wakes up when I try to put her down or hand her to someone else) than awake, but we’ve had the pleasure of seeing her eyes open quite a bit the past week. She often looks vaguely amused, and sometimes when we coo at her she’ll coo right back. She also moves a lot: waving her arms, turning her head this way and that way, etc. Once when I was sitting on the sofa with her lying against my left shoulder, she managed to move herself all the way over to my right shoulder like a little baby rock climber by kicking repeatedly.

I’ve been concerned with the color of her poo; it’s been green instead of mustard yellow. After reading this article I think I’ve found the answer: too much foremilk and not enough hindmilk.

Categories: angie
2 Comments »

Next week Kevin goes back to work after spending 4 weeks at home taking care of me and Angie. I’m going to miss him and the insular lifestyle we’ve been leading. When we got home from the hospital, for two weeks I went unplugged because I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. All I did was coo at the baby, pop painkillers, and reread the last three books in the Harry Potter series. The only emails I sent were to announce Angie’s birth, and the only electronic entertainment I engaged in was watching the first Harry Potter movie with my mom. (I got her hooked on the Chinese translations of books 1-4. Still have to get her books 5-7.)

(Two weeks in I checked my work email for the first time. It took me *all day* to answer the messages that had piled up. Sigh.)

Alex and Ana’s last day of school and daycare is a little over 2 weeks away. Then they’ll spend the entire summer home with me. And with few exceptions we will most certainly be home that whole time because I won’t be bottle training Angie until right before she starts daycare. Until then the kids and I get to spend almost 3 months in our own Never Never Land.

(Except when I’m checking my work email. )

Categories: harry potter, kids and parenting, work-life balance
6 Comments »

@ birth:

Latched on immediately. Wants to eat all the time.
Black poo!

@ 1 week:

Loves baths. Hates leaving the water.
Green poo!

@ 2 weeks:

Gained 2/3 lbs and grew 0.5 inch for a total of 8 lbs and 19.5 inches.
Yellow poo!

@ 3 weeks:

Looks around to see what’s going on.
Says “ah-goo.”

Me, I’m doing better. No more weepiness, though I’m still inhaling Angie’s delicious scent nonstop. Also I was able to stop taking painkillers last week because the single stitch I had to get was no longer bugging me. However, the weight is coming off as slowly as I’d feared. A week after giving birth I went from +13 lbs to +10 lbs without even trying, but now 3 weeks postpartum I’m still at +10 lbs. I’m not supposed to engage in any major exercise for 3 more weeks, so until then I don’t think there’s much I can do other than stay away from junk foood.

Categories: angie, pregnancy
3 Comments »

The only reason this entry exists is because I’m forcing myself to write it now before all the details escape my feeble sleep-deprived brain. I haven’t felt like blogging little Angie’s birth story, not because it was a horrible experience but because it was so wonderful that I don’t want to admit it’s the last time I’ll ever experience something this amazing.

Here’s a typical conversation you might overhear between me and Kevin if you happened to be in our house between 9 p.m. and 12 midnight on a random evening:

Me: look, she’s so cute

Kevin: (some sort of acknowledgment of my previous statement)

Me: and she smells good

Kevin: (some sort of acknowledgment of my previous statement)

Me: and she’s growing up too fast already… (burst into tears)

Kevin: (some comforting remarks about how they’ll always be my babies, how we still have many years of parenting ahead of us, etc.)

Me: (keeps sobbing inconsolably and blubbering about how I don’t want them to grow up)

Incidentally, we had similar conversations right after Ana was born. That’s how we decided maybe we weren’t done having kids yet. This time, however, I think I’ll just have to suck it up and deal.

Angelina was born right on her due date, April 27, at 10:48 a.m., measuring a healthy 7 lbs 5.5 oz and 19 inches. About 24 hours before she was born I started feeling something that wasn’t quite contractions yet, but it was significant enough that we completely forgot about Alex’s karate lessons as well as a birthday party he was invited to attend that day.

Then, sometime in the afternoon, Kevin started keeping track of my contractions. They were still far apart. To pass the time, he sang songs from the Myspace karaoke website to me. It was a very effective distraction

At some point we told the kids that the baby was coming soon. They were very excited. Here they are playing animal doctor, delivering a puppy.

We also called Kevin’s mom. That evening she came to our house with her overnight bag. Kevin read the kids a bedtime story and tucked them in while I alternated between walking around the house and lying down on the sofa. Kevin’s mom stayed up with us for another hour or so and then went to bed.

Around 12:30 a.m. we set out. My contractions were not yet 5-1-1 (5 minutes apart, each 1 minute long, for 1 hour) but since we live about 30 minutes from the hospital, we decided to head to some place near the hospital, maybe a 24 hour diner, where we could hang out until I hit the 5-1-1 mark. About 5 minutes into the drive a particularly intense contraction made me change my mind, and we headed straight to the hospital instead.

When we arrived at the hospital, I was taken to a labor and delivery room immediately. A few weeks ago I had tested positive for group B strep, so I had to take antibiotics via IV for the baby’s protection. Since I had to get 2 doses, preferably 3, with 4 hours between doses, the nurses did not give me Pitocin to speed up labor. This was a new experience for me. With Alex and Ana I didn’t have group B strep, so maybe that’s why they gave me Pitocin to make the baby come as quickly as possible. By contrast, going through labor without Pitocin was positively pleasant.

Kevin had packed 2 of my favorite DVDs in the suitcase. After we finished signing all the hospital paperwork, he started up Bride and Prejudice. My nurse was highly amused to find me LOLing in the midst of contractions whenever she came to check on me. We never got around to watching the other movie, Nacho Libre. By then my contractions were too strong for me to pay attention to a movie.

I made a joke about how strange it was that we didn’t hear any screaming from the other rooms. I spoke too soon. Almost immediately I heard my neighbor in the next room start roaring in pain. I guessed that she had opted to go “natural.” The yelling continued for about half an hour. It was very disconcerting.

Around 6 a.m. I requested an epidural. The anesthesiologist had just come on shift, and he didn’t know what the previous guy had done with the key to the epidural cart. So I had to grit my teeth through 15 minutes of the worst pain while he and the nurse tracked down the key. But as soon as the drug kicked in, it was instant relief. I was so relaxed I fell asleep. Two hours later I woke up feeling positively refreshed, but I couldn’t feel a thing from the waist down, so the nurse had to give me a catheter, which was yet another experience I’d not had before and one that I hope never to repeat, because while I couldn’t feel a thing with the epidural, when it wore off I felt sore for quite some time afterwards.

Around 10:30 a.m., right after I received the 3rd dose of antibiotic, the nurse checked my progress and discovered to her surprise that I was fully dilated (10 cm) and the baby had crowned. Fortunately my epidural was still working because the doctor on duty was busy with another patient, so I was told to hang on for a few minutes. Immediately after the other woman delivered, the doctor ran into my room and changed into fresh scrubs. Five minutes and 4 pushes later, the nurse put Angelina into my arms, and for the third time in my life, I experienced love at first sight.

Categories: angie, pregnancy
3 Comments »