Random Images

The dood chillin' on his new porch.
The happy family at the fair.
Dan, Amanda, Emily and Abe...and Banjo.
Abe taking a rest with his big brother. I think he'd love a sheep skin!
Anniversary dinner. Do you like the "vase"?

09-09-09

Today is our 3 year anniversary as well as Abe's 2 week birthday!  Today was also my second day of staying home solo with Abe.  So far it's been pretty good.  These last 2 nights he's slept pretty well.  Yesterday I took him to my old work to meet all of my old co-workers who he's heard chattering about these past 9 months.  And today we went to get his foot pricked for his second metabolic screening--for which I have my old work to thank.  It actually wasn't too bad.  He cried while they were squeezing his foot to get the blood out, but went to sleep shortly after that.  Then we went to Costco and Safeway to get stuff for dinner.  I'm planning on making chiopino (one of Neil's favorites), although the outing about did me in, so we'll see if we end up making it.

As an aside, I've typed this entire post with just one hand!  

Alaska Grown

Today little Abe went to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer to have his picture taken with the worlds largest cabbage. At 127 lbs, it's 12 times as big as him & bigger than his mother. For someone less than two weeks old, he's getting out quite a bit. The weather has been gorgeous. Clear skies and temperature in the 70's. Good thing we left dreary Seattle to get a little sunshine up in Alaska. This evening Emily & Neil's friends are coming over for a barbecue.

Meet the Grandparents

Dog Park

Aladins

First Night Out

Gung Gung

New Hat

I arrived today, so now all of Abe's grandparents are here. Tonight we went out to celebrate at a Mediterranean restaurant called Aladins. We had lamb cous cous, halibut with spinach on top, scallops and baklava. It was good. The owner was very friendly & congratulated us. On the way home we saw a moose. Emily said they start coming down in the fall. It's the first time Abe's been out to a restaurant. Earlier in the day we went to the dog park. Emily & Abe made it around the lake. Pretty fast recovery when you consider that it was just a little more than a week ago that Abe was born. All along the trail were trees cut down by beavers. Tomorrow the Hoffs leave on a cruise back to Seattle. We plan to go to the Alaska state fair to see the record 124 lb cabbage. The hat was made by Judy, one of my coworkers. Abe makes me look kinda old.

Everyone loves Abe

Just a few more pictures to share with everyone. Abe had a rough night last night - well, maybe it was more rough for Emily and me. Abe just wouldn't go to bed. I pretty much ignored him since I had to go to work, and had an endoscopy in the afternoon. But Emily was up to the task. Tonight the grandparents are going a good job of keeping Abe awake so he will hopefully sleep through the night.
Abe in his 'Daddy's All-Star' suit.
Just chillin' on his blanket on the carpet.
Abe and Grandpa David having some quality time on the couch.
Abe and Grandma Diane in the glider in the Mother/Baby ward.
The Grandma's right after Abe entered the world. Check out the cone-head on that one!

Genetics ?

Dad

Mom

Grandpa

Grandma

Can you see how Abe got his good looks? Who do you think is the cutest baby? Happy birthday little Abe (one week old)!

Guest post by Grandpa

The Little Hobbit

Today we had Abe's first pediatrician visit. He's lost about 1 pound, and now weighs 8#s (50-75th percentile). His height is in the 75-90th percentile (21 inches); and head circumference is 36 cm (25-50th percentile--perhaps it will be higher by the time the cone dies down).

Little Abe has been doing well. The first night we got home from the hospital didn't really sleep much (or let his parents sleep for that matter). Then the next day he made up for his sleepless night by sleeping for over 12 hours. We were pretty worried, because we couldn't even rouse him to eat, but now he's eating much better and last night he woke up twice to eat, but he did a much better job eating.

We've been calling Abe the little hobbit, because he has inherited my deformed ear, except his have some dark baby hair growing on them, making him look like Frodo.

More pictures

After Little Abe arrived and some pictures were taken, the grandparents went back to get some sleep. Emily got a little rest while I held Abe. Around 8am Emily got up to go pee with the nurse- this was the first time she had been on her feet since she had her epidural around 9:30 the night before. She did OK, but ended up losing some blood and passed out. The nurse that was helping Emily told me to put the baby down and yell down the hallway for some help, which I quickly did. You'd be relieved to know how fast and how many people come running into your room when you yell "Help" in a hospital. Everyone helped Emily up and got her back to feeling better.

A little while later they wheeled Emily over to the Mother/Baby Unit. It is a pretty nice room. There is room for the 6 of us (Emily, Abe, me, my parents and Ruth) to hang out comfortably. And the nurses rolled in a bed that I've been sleeping on.

We haven't been doing too much these last few days. Mainly feeding Abe whenever he's hungry, or changing his poopy diapers (which there haven't been too many of). We've mainly been letting Emily rest up and recover her strength. If all goes well, she'll be discharged tonight.

Me and Abe not long after his birth.
Abe looking at Emily in the glider.
Neil changing Abe's second dirty diaper.
Emily holding Abe right after birth.

Abram SaanZai Hoff

Little Abe was born at 4:49 AM on August 26th, 2009. He weighed in at a whopping 9 pounds 0.4 oz. Can you believe little Emily was carrying around a 9 pound baby! That's almost 1/3 off the weight she gained during the pregnancy. After Emily got the epidural inserted around 10 PM, she was able to rest for a bit. She even fell asleep at one point. Finally around 2:30 AM she was 'complete' and started to push Abe out into this world. Almost 2.5 hours later we got to see and hold Abram for the first time.
Here are the proud parents with their little guy.
Emily holding her son.
Hello world!
Abe after a few minutes in the outside world.
I told you he weighed in at 9 pounds, 0.4 ounces!

No baby...yet

So a little update on how things have gone today:
Things went pretty slowly from about 7am until 5:30 pm. Emily finally began feeling the contractions around 3pm, but they didn't start to really hurt until 5:30. Emily sat on the birthing ball or would stand up from time to time. The contractions became more and more intense, and were about a minute apart.
But after all of those contractions, Emily was still only at 4 cm at 7:30. She was a little degregitated. The doctor wanted in insert a cathetor probe inside Emily to more accurately record Emily's contractions. Then he wanted to increase the pitosin levels. Since Emily could stand about all she could at the current pitosin level, she opted for a some IV pain management. But the Strazol (or whatever it was) they gave her made her a little sleepy and disorientated. Then she just decided to go all out with the epidural, since she was already pretty confined to her bed.
The nice epidural lady came, but she had some problems inserting it into Emily's back. She thought that Emily had Scoliosis since she leaned to one one side. Apparantly Emily had very little space to insert the needle - it was mostly bone. But on the second try the lady was able to insert it. That was a little before 10pm.
During this time the knocked down Emily's pitosin level from 10 to 5, and then all the way off. But she was still have good contractions on her own, and by the time they inserted her second cathetor (for pee), she was 6cm dilated. So that was good news. Now they're slowing uping her pitosin levels back up (6 mL/hour now). The nurse thought that little Nutley would be born around 2am. Too bad he had to mess up the 5's birthdays - Hannah born on the 10th, Jacob the 15th, and Emily the 20th. Nutley could have been the 25th. well, I guess he does have 31 more minutes to make it so.

The Big Day!

Emily had an appointment with her baby doctor on Monday. There weren't any new developments. But we did set a date to induce - Thursday August 27th. But then when I was getting up and ready for work this morning, Emily said that she thought her Bag of Waters was leaking again (it happened last Thursday and Friday too). Since the doctor told us that we should have gone to the hospital on Thursday, we decided that we should go in this morning.

So we got into the hospital around 7am. They put us in one of the labor and delivery rooms. The nurse did a test to see if the gush of fluid on Emily's leg really was amniotic fluid or not. The test came back negative, but Little Nutley's heart rate had some dips while we were waiting. Then the nurse told our doctor about what was happening. Next thing we knew, the doctor was over here popping Emily's Bag of Waters. Presto chango labor officially begins at 9:30am!

After that not a lot has happened. Emily and I walked around the hospital for about a half hour around 12:30 - 1. Emily did a few sets of stairs - her friend Sophie told her it helped in her labor. Things still weren't really progressing, so they gave Emily a little (and I mean a little - only 2 units) of Petosin at 1:30. The contractions have kicked up a little since then, but they still don't hurt at all (because Emily is so strong).

Right now my Mom and Dad and Ruth are having some lunch in the cafeteria. A nurse should be by in less than a half an hour to check on Emily's progress and measure her cervix. Fun times lie ahead!

Emily and I played some two-handed Pinocle to kill the time. Can you believe she came from behind and beat me?
Here is Emily going for a stoll around the hospital.
Emily doesn't like to lie around in bed. Here she is sitting on her birthing ball eating some ice chips.
The top graph shows Nutley's heart rate. The bottom shows Emily's contractions.
Here is the paper read-out of the computer monitor.

Berry Picking

Here are a few pictures from everyone's stay in Anchorage. On Tuesday before everyone (excluding Ruth) went home we went up to flattop to go for a little hike and to pick some blueberries. We were successful on both accounts. We got around 6 cups of berries (a significant accomplishment considering how small the berries are), and Hannah, Jacob, Jenilyn and Banjo hiked to the top of flattop. Clave, Ruth and I just hiked to the berry picking spot (aptly named blueberry loop).

With the berries my mom and I made a batch of spiced blueberry jam. However, it is more like spiced blueberry syrup. The sugar got added at the wrong time so it didn't properly thicken. Oh well. It still taste really good. I'll bring some of the cans down when we come in September for all the pickers to have. We also made lemon blueberry scones. Yummy--especially with the "jam" on them.

No news yet

Well today is the big supposed big day, but so far little Nutley hasn't made any indication that he's planning on complying. Yesterday we bought a rainbow chip cake mix at the store to make up a little birthday cake for him. Now he just needs to come out to blow out the candles.

The Hoff's are here now. They're staying at a bed and breakfast for this first week. Then they'll join us at our place. Hopefully the guest of honor will arrive soon.

Sewards Folley

If you were looking for news on the baby, you won't find it here. If you are interested, we'll tell you about our trip to Alaska. According to Hannah, the trip has been a failure so far, since we haven't seen the baby.

Although we caught a lot of fish, most of them were sea bass, the limit was four per person & we got our limit. Actually I like sea bass, but we were really after halibut and salmon. We only got four salmon & no halibut. The weather was a little rough & we could not leave Resurrection Bay where the fishing is a little better. We left at about 8:00 am & did not get back in until 9:00 pm. It was a long day, so it wasn't for a lack of trying that we didn't get the salmon & halibut. My arms are still sore. I caught a pretty large ling cod & skate, which we threw back because they are not good to eat. I also accidently snagged a starfish. We had two cabins called the Misty C. They were pretty basic, but they had a kitchen, barbecue, and a TV, which was all we needed. We were only 8 miles from Exit Glacier, which you could walk right up to after about a mile hike. The reason it is called Exit Glacier is because it is one of the locations where the Harding Icefields escapes down the mountain. Another interesting tidbit is that a definition of a glacier is a block of snow and ice that gains size more than it loses. The last picture is at a dog park near Emily's.

We head back home tomorrow, except for mom & the Hoff's arrive.

Hopefully the next blog entry will have some more exciting news.