Daley Ponderings

...is going great, but has its challenges.  I'm probably not the only one to brush someone's teeth with one hand while bouncing a crying baby with the other.  But bedtime is pretty much the only time of high demand from all at once.  Jonathan is great about waiting and about helping Faith to wait (singing, bouncing);  Noah needs more practice, but he's good sometimes.  Although just now, he brought over Faith's bouncy seat so he could sit in my lap (instead of crying about not being able to sit in my lap while I was holding her.)  (More)

We signed up for a new phone number for dealing with rental stuff, and bought the numbers to go on the sign today.  Three hours later, we got our first call.  Crazy.  I haven't gotten around to getting it on Craig's List yet or anything. (More)

On a Wednesday, two days past my due date, the midwives scheduled me for post-dates testing at the hospital the next week. At first these only consist of a non-stress test (monitoring to be sure the baby's heart rate increases when he moves) and an ultrasound to confirm adequate amniotic fluid levels. However, that is a big "only" to me and I did not want to have to go in to the hospital to do that.  (More)

Our family had been emailing around about the wind and rain from a recent storm, the power outages, and water in our basement, and a couple questions came up, and I thought I would post them here, that perhaps other people are interested in the goings on at our new house. (More)

Our first daughter was born this evening at 6:35, weighing in at 9 pounds, 3 ounces and 20 and 3/4 inches long.  She doesn't currently have a name that we know of yet, but those of you who have been around at the boys' births probably won't be too surprised at that.  So, I guess for now, I'll put this post in the "pregnancy" category, and it can get added to a new category later.

Heather is doing well, and I'll let her write up the more detailed version of her labor - she did time it quite well, we arrived at the birth center at 5:30, and left at 10:30, after the four hour post-birth required stay.

Lots of fun.  Maybe some day.

200 square foot house.  (seems to require Internet Explorer)

$5000 tree house, with cable TV...

The Moore's house.

I was just served with a subpeona to appear for Judy's trial on September 22nd, with a preparation meeting on September 8th.  Probably not what Heather wants to be thinking about with our baby due any day now.

I told the detective that with our baby coming, we might not be able to make it, and he said to call the prosecutor, but she is "out of the office" until Monday, so I assume she won't get the message in time.  Oh well, I guess that is what they get for not notifying us sooner.

Had a midwife appointment today.  All stats are good, baby seems to be about 8 1/2 lbs (tall and skinny, the midwife thinks.)  (S)he is a bit turned posterior at the moment, but I am not too concerned because it's not very much, and as long as Mommy gets to be in whatever position she feels like for labor, babies are good at turning.  (Posterior means baby facing Mom's front instead of Mom's back - I was posterior and my mom had to push for four hours - but she was on her back the whole time.)

They had to schedule "post-dates testing" for next week, but we're all praying the baby comes sooner than that and we won't have to do it.  My body is preparing, but no real labor yet.  I declined an internal exam because I feel it's better not to know.  My body and my baby will do the right thing when the time is right.  We'll see about playing a game this evening.  (We played Settlers a little too late the night before Jonathan was born.)

This is the allergy season that is worst for me, and I've had a few sneezes that might have helped the baby along a bit. (:  (I put some loratadine in the birth bag in case it's distracting me from labor too much.)

Random strangers continue to insist that the baby is a boy.  Mom thinks she should have asked the Rite Aid cashier the date, too.

Ok, let's find a nice labor-inducing game to play.

Noah loves to help Daddy with the plumbing in the new house.  In fact, he had a hard time making the decision about whether he should stay home and plumb with Daddy or come to the zoo with the rest of us.  (After Jonathan exclaimed about the baby elephants, Noah eventually decided to come to the zoo.)

He likes to put on flux, and fetch tools for Daddy, and he is very good about avoiding the end of the hot torch and potentially hot pipes.  He will sit for hours on the floor with scraps and tools, fitting pieces together and taking them apart.  He usually knows exactly where the tape measure, flashlight, and screw driver are at any given time.

 In other news, people have been wondering how Noah has been taking the move.  At first, he didn't really know what was going on.  But the first day that the furniture was out of the new house, he was quite startled to see our bedroom empty.  I had asked him if he knew where the camera was (we had lost it a couple of days before moving day but as you can see we found it again.)  He brought me all the way upstairs (I'm sure he remembers seeing the case which had been in our bedroom.)  When he got three steps from the top of the stairs, he stopped and wouldn't budge further.  He reached for me, saying, "Bed? Bed?"  When I picked him up, he clung to me very tightly, continuing to wonder where the bed was.

However, it hasn't taken him long to get used to the new house.  The other day when we drove in from some errand, he exclaimed, "Home!"

My sister says I need to update my style.  Same shirt, same glasses, same hair...  I guess I just take after Mom that way.  Here now, for your amusement, is a collage of me near the end of each of my pregnancies.  They are labelled with letters so you can guess which is which if you'd like. (Click for a larger image.)

I have to say that the real baby is much more squashed in me than that little graphic baby is on the sidebar.  (S)he pokes up knees and heels all the time and increasingly presses on my bladder.  I am ready to go, but still have plenty of things I can do while waiting.  When Mom and Janet first arrived, I was feeling anxious to get the baby out the next day, but I am content to wait until the right time.

Here are some things I have written down on scraps of paper that haven't made it out to the blog until now:

We got ants in our car, presumably from having food everywhere on our vacation trip, and one time when we were buckling in, Jonathan exclaimed that he had an ant crawling in his ear.  I couldn't see it, but he said it was far down and wiggling.  I told him it was probably just a phantom feeling after one had crawled in and out.  However, a day or two later, Jonathan came up to me and said, "Mommy, I removed a dead ant from my ear!"

When we were at the Maggie P, the boys were playing on the top bunk with Aunt Janet's supervision.  She then needed to leave and formally announced her abdicating of responsibility.  Not 5 seconds later, we hear a big clunk.  Noah tried climbing down (but only actually fell the last foot or so because Jonathan was holding onto his arm.)  Jonathan's explanation for how it happened was, "He wanted to do it by his own accord."

8/12 - Jonathan counted backwards from 19, his own idea, and with no help.

I am starting to get used to the idea that this new house is my own, and not just someone else's with my furniture in it.  We are starting a compost pile, and there are a lot of local corn husks and cobs in it already.  Jon keeps clunking his head on low ceiling pieces, especially in the basement and coming in on the porch.  I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about it.

We have running hot and cold and drinkable water!  Jon hooked up my brand new front-loading washer two days ago and installed the dryer yesterday.  Hooray!  The washer really does dry things better and the dryer has a shorter running time.  Jon looked in two stores for an umbrella type clothes line without success, but we'll get some kind of line out sometime.  For the moment, I'm using regular detergent in the washer, but being careful to use a small amount.  I drew a line on the cup for what seems good.  It has not sudsed up too much.  Otherwise, he detergents cost twice as much (and effectively four times as much since you only use half the regular amount.)

Breakfast time!  Even when you live 5 minutes from church you can still be late, and I want to avoid that.

Having prenatal appointments every week is not giving me much leeway for blogging.  I just had another appointment today and realized that I have not blogged about last week's.

First, Noah had his 2 year appointment last Wednesday.  35.5 lb, 37"  He didn't like the poking and prodding, nor especially the ear flashlight.  But he got three pretzels at the end because the nurse didn't realize that the doctor had already given them out.

Then I had my 37 week appointment.  This one was with one of our favorite midwives in the practice, and we went over the birth plan with her.  One of the important points is that Jonathan gets to be the one to announce the sex of the baby.  Talking about our family being there, the midwife got excited, and said, "I hope I get to be there for your birth, it sounds like it will be so much fun!"  My friend said, "Then you should hope she's there, too."   They all got to hear the heartbeat again, and the baby was very active under all the prodding by midwife and brothers.

We have finished doing the patch painting in the two bedrooms and hallway.  I enjoyed having the low-VOC paint because I do like painting, though it is more work to have the boys help.  It's medium for Jonathan, but he still had a hard time keeping track of drips.   Noah had to be completely supervised, that is, holding onto the brush or roller with Mommy.  Even then, he'd get distracted and not even watch what we were doing. The color matching in the green room (our bedroom) was perfect, the purple hallway was nearly perfect, but the blue was just light enough that you can tell.  But I'm not going to do anything about it now.

Most stuff is set up, though I just brought a bunch of kitchen stuff from Carroll St which needs to be put away.  We need to get another bookcase, and when the plumbing is done Jon will make a shelf for the home entertainment stuff.  That will then be nearly all the boxes unpacked.

Today was the 38 week appointment, uneventful and quick.  Baby is estimated to be 8 lbs already.  I did lose one pound since last week, but the midwife said she wasn't surprised in the least given all I've been doing and said don't even think about worrying about that.  So I won't. (:  My blood pressure was still great, even though I drove today.  Oh yeah, this was the first time driving directly from the new house to the birth center.  It took 42 minutes.  But I won't take the 31st street bridge again because the light there at 28 was 4 minutes long.  It might be the same time taking 40th street bridge, but at least you're going somewhere and not sitting at a light.  We'll try that next week, I guess.

Ok, time to gather dinner for my crew.

Our new house has fairly long hot water lines to the kitchen and bathroom, so I was looking for different solutions to getting there to be hot water quicker.  I researched some tankless heaters, and for the kitchen and washing machine (on one trunk) a small heater (12 amps) would have worked well.  But, for the bathroom, a good sized heater (with our 45 degree incoming cold water) would have needed a 200 amp service to the house, with 60 amps (220 volt) dedicated to it.  So, an awful lot of upgrades, not counting the tons of ongoing electricity. (More)

We are back at our new house, and had the first taste of our water (unfiltered).  We got the bacteria test results back today, which said the bleaching of the well was successful, and no coliform bacteria exist any more (or at least, less than 1 part per million).  The "MetalMaster" will arrive tomorrow, but since our water is almost clear at the moment, the filter is primarily for taste.  The existing copper pipes do have a significant amount of iron in them, so probably we will have more iron some days, or some seasons, and then the MetalMaster will be helpful in removing all of it (it is rated at twice the amount of iron I have seen in the water previously). (More)