Two Months

Elam is two months old already and I have documented nothing of his life so far. It is very sad.

Two months ago, we met this handsome little devil. He was so alert! And he was actually smiling at me the next day in the hospital.

When he was born, we thought he was another Church boy clone with the features that typically come standard: blue eyes, blonde hair. After they washed him up, however, we began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, we had a feisty red-head on our hands. And as his hair has gotten longer, we've discovered that it's actually a bit curly.




We checked in at the hospital at 5:20am for the induction and found out that I needed a 4-hour treatment of antibiotics first, which no one had mentioned. So that was a surprise. They started the Penicillin drip undiluted and I thought my arm had caught fire! I think it was the most painful experience of the delivery, thankfully.

I kept telling the nurse that once I get started, I go fast and I'm fairly sure she didn't believe me at all, which is why I kept telling her. I wanted to know what the time-frame was on the antibiotics, so I'd know when the get the epidural, since they were gradually increasing the Pitocin as the time went on. Finally the nurse told me she'd bring down the anesthesiologist since I "seemed so concerned about it." I had the epidural around 10am and they increased the Pitocin drip quite a lot. Nothing happened for a while and I was beginning to wonder if it was working at all when I got a really painful contraction and inexplicably felt like I was ready to have the baby. Then suddenly the nurses were panicking. Did I not warn them? My doctor was rushed from her office to deliver the baby that was imminently coming. The head nurse explained that in all her years of nursing she had never had to deliver a baby without the doctor and was praying that her record would remain unbroken. Luckily my doctor showed up in time, to the relief of everyone and Elam was born 5 minutes later. Doug was able to catch the baby again. I'm not sure why he enjoys that part so much, but he has "caught" (with the help of the doctor) all of our babies and cut the umbilical cord. I think it's nice he likes to be so involved.

As soon as I had the baby, I realized that when I was sitting up, I had this awful headache and such congestion in my ear like they needed to pop. I asked the nurses if maybe it had anything to do with the epidural and they replied that it was unlikely (though I know now, that these were classic signs of a spinal block headache). It went away after about 2 weeks, but it was very limiting and extremely annoying.

As the weeks went by we realized a few things about our new little guy: he had a very tight lingual frenulum that we had to have clipped. It sounds much worse than it is. The ENT just opened his mouth and used the surgical scissors to clip the skin under there, Elam fussed a second or two and went right back to sleep.

He also had an umbilical granuloma that needed an application of silver nitrate to help it heal up. And finally, he was extremely fussy every night and sometimes during the day. When he was screaming non-stop for about two hours one night, we decided that something else must be going on. We tried Gripe Water which didn't seem to help at all, unfortunately, so then my friend Michelle persuaded me to try eliminating dairy from my diet. Fortunately (and unfortunately) this was a big part of the problem. Eventually I found that he also dislikes anything tomato-based, and anything remotely spicy. I now have a very limited and bland diet, but also a happy baby, and that is worth it!

With the Great-Grandparents, Bobbie and Jack

Halloween was a blur!

Here we are two nights before we had the baby at the ward trunk-or-treat




Evie for her Kindergarten Halloween party. Cutest bunny I ever saw...


My Ninja and Spice-youMan (as Hylton used to call him)


Our neighbor John gets a kick out of scaring the crap out of the kids- every year. Can you see the tense body posture of them all?


Reading with Daddy

All four kiddos- they all love him so much! Evie is so mothering and will try to soothe him when he's sad. Hylton randomly walks by and kisses him. Sterling likes to hold him (for a very short period of time).


Three Church boys: Papa Dewey, Doug, and Elam and The Girl


Thanksgiving was a little less chaotic.


Getting our Christmas tree at Strawberry Hill. The other kidlets are running around the farm somewhere.


Then Doug went outside, one fine day, to do some yard work and pulled a major muscle in his back while he was sweeping. He came inside supporting his upper body weight by propping his hands on his knees (try that while walking). Pretty much looked like Quasimoto. Sterling took this lovely picture of Doug trying to stretch a few days after it happened.


Elam was blessed on December 11th. Look at him! He's such a flirt!


The kids with Grandma DeeDee and Aunt CC








He likes to lay in bed with his brothers and sister while we sing to them all at bedtime.


And he likes to fall asleep in unlikely places, like the bouncer.


His hair is just the coolest. I am so jealous of that coif. Most of the time he's sportin' an eighteenth century hairstyle: swe[t forward on the sides and the curls in front flipped-up, a la Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Bingley:

We spent Christmas Eve at my Dad's. Between us being sick and generally home-bound, and my Dad having a month-long illness, this was the first he had seen of his new Grandson, besides the baby blessing.

The kids got to see "reindeer" out the windows. Do you see the hidden deer? He had his eyes locked on me.


A family of three deer were outside here.


Christmas Eve at our house. Christmas is truly magical.


As I was taking photos off my mom's camera, I found these oldies from this summer:

This is what a mellow family dinner looks like these days. This summer, there will be two more kiddos at the table (my sister is due with her 4th in May). But, luckily, there are now two less pianos in the room, so that will be better.... (haha, Mom!)

The craziness is so much fun... most of the time... I loved all the time we got to spend with our cousins growing up and our kids love it just as much!

The Vessey siblings. Yeah, we're a sad bunch of posers. With, apparently, only two facial expressions among the four of us.


My little Hylti on our camping trip - accessorizing.


Doll-babies.

Whew! And now we're all caught-up!

Nesting Much?

Four weeks ago, I was freaking out. Everything was so dirty! Or so it seemed to me. Nesting issues, right? I don't think I've ever experienced pre-baby nesting like I have this time around! I made Doug help me pull up the rug in the living room and pull it outside to be cleaned. And while he was doing that, I took the opportunity of bare floors to move everything around again. What can I say; I like change. Somehow it makes everything seem cleaner when you start over completely from scratch and rearrange- when you move every piece of furniture, you know it is clean underneath and on top.

It was weird to see the whole hardwood floor without the rug in there.

What a hunk, right? He cleaned and rinsed this thing for almost three hours. He is nothing if not thorough.

The next day, we put up some of our Halloween decorations. Not all, since I didn't think I'd feel like taking it all down after the baby was born, but enough to feel like we were able to celebrate my favorite holiday.

The kids have been way into LEGOS. All three of them will happily play for hours with them creating all sorts of awesomeness. Evie actually used the instructions to make this house, which I find pretty amazing- both for attention longevity and age-related ability to do make sense of them.

Sterling usually builds some sort of car or flying boat or spaceship with "fighting guys" on it- usual boy things.

Hylton almost always has some kind of platform, or walking-plank, and he likes to make patterns. They all amaze me.

Doug is still working on the gutters. Maybe we'll have some for winter. We'll see. It's hard for him to do with just one guy- sometimes he needs someone to help push pipes together, but mostly other things keep coming up that interfere with working time (like, uh... 3.5 kids?), and rain, and ginormous roots in the way.

If Daddy is outside, you can bet the kids are! So most of the time, I try to go out and sit in a lawn chair and be moral support for Doug while he's working, make food, fetch water, etc. It's actually extremely frustrating for me to sit and watch someone work. I come from a family of "do-ers" and it really would go so much faster if I could help. I really hate feeling tired and unwieldy all the time.

I call this Hylton's "Bill Cosby" face. His sense of humor always gets me!

Doug with his gigantic root, uprooted.

Hylton really liked this big box that came with diapers in it. He set up his pillows and blankets and watched his cartoons in it for a few days until the poor box gave up the ghost.

Oh my goodness, I love his face! Kids are great when they're sleeping...

We went on our usual preschool field trip to the Fire Station downtown. I'm not really sure what he thought of it all, except that he was absolutely rigid with petrification when the fireman asked him to come over and hold his shirt while he put on his fire suit.

Can you see every muscle in his body tensed and ready to run, and his eyes locked on me?

The two older kids both received awards from school during the first assembly this year. You can just barely make out Evie in the purple shirt on the right in the very front standing up. She got one for Honesty and Sterling got one for Enthusiasm (he stood up, turned around, and waved to everyone which I thought was so typical of his "enthusiasm"- he is not afraid).

They break everyone up into different groups after the assembly based on what their award was. I got a picture of Sterling, but Evie's group was already gone by the time I got over there, dang it.

One of the other things that suddenly bothered me was this light fixture in our room. The light bulbs had literally been in there since before we moved in. In fact, I'd like to know how long they were there, because they looked this dirty and burned on top when we moved in. And then there were the spider webs... When one of the light bulbs went out, I decided I might as well replace the whole ugly thing.

We've had this new light fixture in the garage since before we moved in and I was only reluctant to put it up because I ultimately wanted something different there, but this is definitely an improvement! I don't know why I didn't do it sooner!

This was one of my last days teaching preschool for the year and we got out the shaving cream. What a mess! And stinky (though, that could have been my ultra-super-human-sense-of-smell right now)! The kids loved it, though, especially Hylton and his buddy Matsen; Evie even had a few minutes to play in it before leaving for Kindergarten.

They are always making "beds" everywhere. Even the hall. I don't see the comfort in it, but I remember my sister and brothers and I used to slide down the wood stairs in our house growing up in nothing but a sleeping bag. Pretty sure that would really hurt me now.

Sterling is always making this face for pictures now. It makes me laugh. He got it from this video, where he tells his brother he looks like a gopher.

One day, I spent sewing them pajamas out of material they picked out a couple of months ago. They've been bugging me to make them and I figured I'd better do it before the baby comes or it would be a while! And now that Super Saturday and teaching preschool is over, I'm feeling strangely free (and frankly relieved)! Now, Sterling has some new Spiderman pants, Hylton picked "tractor" jammies, and Evie had a new silky nightgown and a pair of pants like the boys (although hers are yellow with sparkly pink and purple dragonflies, of course). Have I mentioned I love my serger?

At 37 weeks, we had to go in for a late-term ultrasound to make sure the baby was not getting too big to be born from the Gestational Diabetes. He was just right at about 6lbs 11oz (give or take a pound). Really, aside from feeling hungry a lot and not being able to eat Oreos and milk at night, the diet has its pluses... like a trimmer pregnant me and much less swelling. I am far less uncomfortable moving around than I generally am at this point and able to fit into far more things- especially my shoes! We saw Elam's hair floating around behind him in the amniotic fluid. It looked much like some kind of Dr. Seuss-ish halo of creature hair. And it makes me wonder even more if we only create one model of boy (blonde hair), or if we'll get a dark-haired one. This top picture is his profile.

And this is the slightly disturbing full-face view. I still just find it so amazing what they can see during the ultrasound. Of course we saw his heart chambers pumping blood, were able to re-verify that it really was indeed a boy, and this one showed us his open eyes looking at us! Just astounding! What I also find amazing is the reassurance that everyone comes here with their own, distinct personalities. I already think Elam must be a little feisty, and maybe just a touch impatient. ...Not that I should be surprised by such a thing in this house, but still... He fights back pretty consistently and vigorously when the doctors push my tummy around for any reason.

Some of you will remember that I remade this chair early last year. I never was super-happy with the teal color and was planning to repaint it black or heirloom white, but Doug objected since "it's the only color in the room right now," so I just recovered it. A simple fix to make it look better. The poor burlap really did not wear well at all! The letters fell off and it began to tear. Luckily, I had some scrap upholstery fabric lying around (lovely toile, no less) and now I feel all better.

Doug has nowhere to call his own in this house, and he is someone who really likes to have a clear work space, especially to study or use the computer or read. We also had this really awkward, narrow space at the end of our bed and I finally hit upon a way to utilize it to advantage. I found this cheap old table on Craigslist two weeks ago, and sanded it, and painted it, and clear-coated it, and installed handles on the drawer - it's the perfect solution! Doug really likes it, I think. I try really hard to keep my things off of it, for the most part. He jokes that I like to set things down on the first available horizontal space, and that may be true, so I try to be mindful of the desk. It's very hard. But now, with yet another person coming to live in this little house, he has somewhere he can go, shut the door, and do something in quiet and I like that.

Doug had his own nesting to-do list. Having the van detailed was one, and we've had the baby seat installed for a couple of weeks, just in case. Getting a functional garage door with opener was also high on the list, and last week he made several calls to find someone suitable. Last year, on our way of town for camping, we had loaded our last few items, had the kids in the car, and were ready to close the garage door and set-off when the tension cables on the garage door came undone and the door came down crooked and impossibly wedged. Doug began using the sledge-hammer to unwedge it and suddenly the wheels busted out of the top panel (of our very solid wood door), which then swung down and hit Doug in the back of his head while he was working on it, nearly giving him a concussion. It has been jimmy-rigged closed for over a year now and it has been no end of frustrating for Doug to have to walk around from the back to the front with tools and boards and other things when he's working outside. Now, thanks to early Christmas from Grandma Dee-Dee, we have a fully functional door and an opener just in time for the baby and winter cold and rain. Another barrier was that our garage is our only storage room in the house and we still haven't gone through some of the boxes from the move. I ended up sacrificing some end tables that we've had since we were married and I had planned to remake into something else (very sad) and Doug has boxes and boxes of school books and binders out there to go through and make his own sacrifices. But, by the end of the week, we should have the remaining floor space needed to pull the van inside!

The final problem, was the lack of somewhere to plug the opener into. So Doug crawled up into the attic and did his first wiring job, start-to-finish in two hours! I'm thankful all the time that I was able to help my grandparents with their house remodel and learned some very valuable skills like how to do some electrical work. However, being unable to hoist my preggo-self into the attic, Doug got to test his handiness while I sat on a chair in the garage and yelled instructions up to him. Do you see a pattern here, of Doug working and me sitting in a chair...? He has concluded he hates attic work, but it's preferable to under-the-house work where the Hobos are (spiders, that is, not homeless men). We now have a new outlet in the garage, which is super-useful, a garage door opener that works in the outlet, and nothing has caught fire yet, so I think we're in good shape! And I think Doug may have found his handyman skills in electrical work!

I was having all sorts of regular-seeming contractions yesterday, so I figured we should document the last stage of pregnancy roundness for posterity in case we didn't make it to induction day on Friday. As of last Thursday's appointment with my doctor, I am much further along in the labor process than I ever have been at this point. I won't gross any of you out by talking about dilation and effacement, etc., but it seems Elam is eager to be born and that is something new for a boy in this family! Doug and I finally packed our bags last night, and once we were fully prepared, the contractions pretty much stopped. Figures. False labor is so frustrating!

...Only 3 more days, only 3 more days, only 3 more days...