New Pictures...finally

Holy cow! Has it really been almost 2 months since we've posted? I don't even know where to begin updating everybody, but I'll sure try! (That is, if anybody is even still checking this bad boy).

I made it through the Casino Night with flying colors, and went back on Paternity Leave on November 7. Later that week, we took an extended weekend visit up to Uncle Eric and Aunt Brandi's to spend some time with the niece/nephews/cousins, and Eric and Brandi as well... :) We had a wonderful visit, and while we were there jumped on the wonderful Craigslist and picked us up a laptop! Now, all we need is a faster internet connection!



Lily had a doctors appointment on November 14th. She weighed in at 10lbs 12oz, and was 21 3/4 inches long at that time. All of this is within the proper parameters. She has started lifting her upper body up while laying down, so that whole "sitting up on her own" thing is just around the corner. The doctor saw this, and announced that Ms. Lily was "advanced" for her age. She's definitely developing her own personality, and is "talking" up a storm!



For Thanksgiving, we packed up a good majority of our house (for those of you who don't have children, going ANYWHERE with a baby in tow means either upgrading to a bigger vehicle, or always travel with somebody who has plenty of room for all of the baby stuff that goes along with them...) and spent a week out in Seaside with Gramma and Grampa Moo, Papa Dennis, Unkie Andy, and Uncle Pat. Everybody seemed to have a great time, and it was a nice relaxing week at the coast!



Tonya went back to work on Wednesday, so the last two days I've been playing Mr. Mom. So far so good! I'll let you know how this little exercise works out! After two day's I feel like a pro...so I'm waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop! Thank you, oh internet faithful for bearing with our slackerness. I think I'm going to stop saying we'll try harder, because frankly, until we get a faster internet connection, this dial up thing is just unbearable!

New photos

I was just gently reminded by my brother-in-law that we've been negligent on posting again. Here are a handful of pictures to keep you tided over until next time! Everybody is doing well. Lily still refuses to face the fact that sleeping is indeed fun, especially in chunks of time longer than 2 hours. I'm back to work until the 2nd Wednesday in November, but then I'll have another 8 weeks off.

As promised, Hospital Pics!!!

As I'm trying to get out of work as quickly as possible (before they realize that I'm back at the desk and actually ask me to do something other than teach my class...) I'm just going to put up some pictures from the hospital that I had promised. I'll go back through and put up comments as time allows this evening. Enjoy!

First Checkup and life in general

Thank you for all the wonderful comments, and yes, she truly is an extremely beautiful girl. Many of you have asked about an update on mommy. She's doing extremely well, still a little sore, but getting along pretty well. She's no longer taking her prescription pain medication, just over the counter advil/tylenol. She does have some nerve issues which sometimes feels like her insides are ripping when she moves in certain ways, but even those are getting fewer by the day.

Lily had her first check-up today with her pediatrician. Of course, Lily felt it necessary, knowing that we had to get up earlier than we have been, to wake us up almost every hour last night to be fed. So, running on little sleep, we went down to Corvallis to the doctors office. Here are her vitals as of today:

Since last friday when she weighed 5lbs 14oz, Lily has put on 10.5oz and now weighs 6lbs 8.5oz. She also grew 1/2 an inch, and is currently at 19 1/2 inches long. The rest of the check up went extremely well, and she handled everything in stride.

Stay tuned...tomorrow I'll be able to post a bunch of the pictures from when we were in the hospital.

Introducing Lily AnnMarie!

Ok...so a week late, but still great! It is our pleasure to introduce Miss Lily AnnMarie! After months of anticipation, Lily finally joined us last Monday, September 10, at 10:01am, weighing 6lbs 3oz, and is 19 inches. This first picture was just after she got wiped off, and just before I took her down to the nursery. It was truly a magical experience.

This is the first time that Mommy got a chance to hold her little one.

Grandma Moo

Grandpa Moo
Papa Dennis

Lily had a little bit of jaundice, so the doctor decided to go ahead and try her on a "Biliblanket", which is a light pad that helps break down the biliruben in liver which causes the yellow color in babies.

Heres just a really cute picture of Lily sleeping.

And here we are, our new family.

Our apologies for the delay in getting this post up. I'd forgotten how horrible it was to work with a dial up internet connection. I have to teach a class at work on Thursday, and I'll try and put up a bunch more pictures then. Thank you everybody, and help me in welcoming Lily into this world!

--Sam

September 10th 2007...a day that will live on in infamy :)

The C-section is currently scheduled to take place on September 10, 2007 at 9:00am. This is, of course, barring Tonya going into labor, and/or somebody canceling their C-section on September 7th. We're hoping that one of the two latter happen, but at this time we are anxiously awaiting September 10th!

Version Aversion

So after trying everything under the sun to get this baby to turn, we finally had to bite the bullet and go in and have the doctors try an External Cephalic Version (ECV for short) where the doctors try to manually rotate the baby into a head down position. Here's Tonya with her "Oh, I'm so excited to be here about to get my insides reshuffled" look. Keep in mind that we had to be AT the hospital at 6:00am, which meant we had to leave our house around 5:30am, which meant we had to be up at about 4:30am...

When we were first discussing how the version would go with the doctor a week or so ago, she said that there would be one doctor and one midwife literally pushing and pulling on the baby (from the outside) and that there would be pain involved. Much to our surprise when BOTH of the doctors from the OB/GYN clinic showed up, with one of the midwifes! The doctors performed the procedure, but unfortunately, little Lily decided that she didn't want to budge. Apparently she has settled butt down into Tonya's pelvis, and seems to like it down there. So, unless Lily decides she doesn't want to kick it down in the pelvic area butt down anymore, and flips on her own, we're going to have to schedule a C-section. The doctors are being really positive, though, and instead of having us schedule it for 39 weeks (which would be this next friday) they are ok with us waiting until 40 weeks to schedule it. Once we've decided on the date, we'll let you all know

On a lighter note, since the last post we've done some shopping with the gift cards that we received at the baby showers. We picked up the Pack 'N Play (bassinet/playpen thingy), a bouncer, baby monitor, and other misc. stuff that was on our registry (and some other stuff that wasn't on there, but was too darn cute to leave at the store!). So last saturday we ended up finishing Lily's room. Here is the finished product, complete except for the baby!

Yes, I know that we said we were going to try to do the diaper service thing, but then we got quite a few packs of disposables from various people. We're going to use those up first, and then look at getting the diaper service when the time comes.
Notice the 6 drawers in this dresser. Now just imagine EVERY ONE OF THEM FULL!!! That's what we had the pleasure of doing last saturday, washing, folding and putting away an entire dressers worth of baby clothes. (For your information only, if you have an inclination of purchasing clothing for our little one, please choose a size other than 0-6 months...we have plenty, and I'm sure that Lily would prefer clothes that would fit her when she reaches that wonderful 6-9 and above stage... :) )


Thanks to our friend Lisa for those beautifully hand painted letters above the window. So now all we have to do is wait for something to put in that crib! Talk to you soon, internet friends and family!

Are we there yet?!?

After a lengthy absence online (yet again) we've decided to post an update, oh internet faithful! Since our last post, we've had two baby showers, an ultrasound, and an enjoyable day of painting the baby's room!

On July 21'st, Tonya's mother threw us a baby shower out at her house. Many gifts were given, and good time was had by all who attended. Instead of doing the traditional party games (because, really, who likes those games anyhow?) Tonya got a bunch of plain white onesies and some tie dye ink and some paint markers and had everyone who attended design their own little onesie for baby Lily! They all turned out absolutely fabulous! Last Thursday we had another baby shower at work. Again we were showered by magnificent gifts, and we had an awesome cake, to boot!

Last Wednesday (August 8th) we went in for our weekly baby doctor appointment and a growth ultrasound. The ultrasound showed that the baby is currently sitting with her head up near Tonya's ribs, and her feet right up next to them, with her butt towards the pelvic region. In other words, full on Frank Breech! When we talked to the doctor about this at the appointment, she said that if the baby hasn't changed positions by this Wednesday's appointment, they are more than likely going to have to do an external version, where they physically turn the baby to the appropriate position. Since this is the golden age of the "internet", Tonya did what any good mother of this day and age does, SEARCH GOOGLE!!! :) So in the evening times, it's not unusual to walk into the bedroom to see her either propped up with her butt against the wall, or walk into the living room to see her butt sticking in the air. We've tried putting the iPod ear phones at the lower part of her stomach (who'd a thunk it...babies can actually hear pretty well at this stage of the game...huh...) and tried talking to her to get her to move. Tonya has also tried the homeopathic remedy Pulsatilla which is supposed to help relax the uterus and encourage the baby to move. Tomorrow she's going in to see the Chiropractor and have the chiropractor try the "Webster Technique" which is a chiropractic technique to help get the body in a proper alignment to help the baby get in proper position. All of this to no avail. The baby is definitely ours...stubborn to a fault! We'll keep you all updated on the goings on. Here's a photo from the ultrasound.

(psst...it's her head!)

This past weekend, we finally got off our butts and got the baby's room together. For anybody who has seen the "spare bedroom" at our house knows that it was no small feat to get this task done. We rented a storage unit and moved a large chunk of the crap that we had no clue where to put into that on Saturday. Then I put together the stroller. While there were only about 7 pieces to actually attach to the body of the stroller, it still took me almost an hour to get the darn thing assembled. Whoever thought that one word instructions would make life easier (with words such as "Snap!" and "Pull!") needs to find a different profession. Sunday morning we pulled the few remaining items out of the baby's room and put them in the dining room, and cleaned off the baseboards and wiped down the walls.

Dennis and Betty came over and we all dove in to painting the bedroom. The walls and ceiling are a light pink with one of the walls a dark chocolate brown. After the painting was done and the clean up was ...well, cleaned up, we went and picked up some lamps for the room. I put those together and then jumped into tackle putting the crib together.
After the debacle with the stroller, I expected to be in for the long haul. I was pleasantly surprised when the instructions were extremely clearly written, everything was labeled very nicely, and everything went together very smoothly!
So at this point, the only thing left to do is move in a dresser that is in the shop, and put all the baby stuff into the room. A big thanks goes out to Betty and Dennis for all their help. Thanks you guys! With more going on now, I think I might actually be a bit more motivated to keep this thing updated more, so hopefully I can do that without having to do a month long recap! Til next time, internet friends!

Harry and other Potters

As most everybody who has been anywhere near any sort of electronic or (gasp) print information device (ie: tv, internet, newspaper, etc.) this month is full of all things Harry Potter. With the release of the 7th and final (or according to J.K. Rowling, perhaps not "only time will tell") novel in the Harry Potter saga and the well timed release of the 5th movie, there has been an inundation of information on the boy wizard. Below is one of the best Potter spoofs I've seen in recent days... ;)



Full disclosure: I have indeed already seen the 5th movie...in IMAX 3D glory, and have my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows coming via amazon.com on Saturday... :)

Isn't she showing yet...part 2

So here is the 31 week update. Tonya still doesn't seem to think that she's showing, but over the last couple of days it's been pretty noticeable that her belly is indeed popping out a bit more. The pregnancy is going fairly well. Tonya has developed gestational diabetes, so we have to be a little more careful about her carb intake, and she has also started to feel some signs of carpal tunnel syndrome in both of her hands, but that is a normal possibility for pregnancy. The baby has decided that she really likes the right side of Tonya's belly, and was pushing her back against the side wall pretty hard last week. All in all, though, everybody is healthy, and except for the occasional "pregnant moments" (Tonya's words, not mine...so save the "you shouldn't be saying things like that to a pregnant woman" stuff for a time when it's a little more necessary) and Tonya's hands falling asleep with increasing frequency, everybody is happy as well. We're going to be getting a "growth ultrasound" at the beginning of August due to to the gestational diabetes, and will post those pictures as soon as possible afterwards.

Depends on what your definition of "frequent" is...

Ok, so I did say that we'd try to update this thing a little more frequently than not, but apparently not has won out so far.

Tonya is doing well, moving into her 28th week of pregnancy this Friday. We went in for the follow-up ultrasound that we talked about a while ago a couple weeks ago (June 2, but who's keeping track, right?) and were reassured that she is definitely a girl. On this picture, the part that I've circled is apparently what little girl junk is supposed to look like at this age. If it were little boy junk, it'd look more like a turtle popping his little head out.

Yeah, it looks like a blurry smudge to me too, but our friend was pretty adamant about knowing what the heck she was looking at. For the rest of the pictures, see the end of this post. For those of you who haven't heard, we're currently naming her Lily Marie Williams, but we're still playing around with the middle name a little bit, so stay tuned for further updates.

Work has been pretty hectic these last couple of weeks. At the start of the fund raising season, we knew that we were in for a long road because we have our Art Auction, 4th of July fund raisers, and Golf Tournament with a 32 day period. Pretty insane of us to schedule it like that, under normal circumstances, but we'll get the most bang for our buck by doing it this way. I say under normal circumstances because the department coordinator decided to take another job with a private school in Salem at the end of May. So, that kinda put a neat little twist to getting these fund raisers off the ground. I've let the powers that be know, in no uncertain terms, that I want nothing to do with the management of this department on a full time basis, mostly because of the political ramifications associated with the job. However, at this time, I've been the acting department coordinator for almost a month now, while they look to fill the position. Under normal circumstances (i.e. when we DON'T have 3 fund raisers in a 32 day period) this would be ok, but that's not so much the case. Not only do I have my normal job duties to contend with, but 90% of my previous bosses job duties as well. Fun stuff, if I do say so myself.

So I guess what I'm saying, my internet friends, is don't look for many more updates within the next month. If there are any updates on the pregnancy, or other major life events, I'll be sure to post. But until August, I'll be hard pressed to remember my own name, let alone this blog. But fear not, internet friends, we will definitely post more as the summer (and the pregnancy) progresses.

--Sam

Isn't she showing yet?

And for those of you who are wondering if Tonya is showing yet, here is proof that the answer is...well...maybe a little? :)