Announcing The Arrival Of...

...Zachary Thomas Lippman!!!

Zachary Thomas was born on Monday night, November 24th 2008 at 9:33 pm. He weighed 8lbs. 3ozs. and was 20 inches long. We opted to allow my midwife to break my water on Monday in order to ensure that we had the best chance of having the birth we wanted. I'm so glad I made that decision. I was having regular contractions when we went to the hospital at 3pm. When Ruth arrived at 6pm I was still feeling fine, but within moments of her breaking my water I was knee deep in labor. I labored for about three hours in a beautiful, quiet and dark room with a fantastic team of Ahren, who never stopped rubbing my back for three full hours, my mom, who somehow managed to always say the exact right thing at the exact moment that I needed her to, Ruth, my midwife who I could not have been more blessed to find, and Mary, the nurse who I am sure was sent to me by Nana to help me through his birth. After about three hours of labor and a half hour of pushing, out popped Zachary Thomas.

Lexi has been amazing with her little brother. She is very good at taking care of him, and has been very happy to have him home. Ahren and I are adjusting to having a newborn in the house again along with a three year old, but so far all is well and we are as happy as can be.

I will try to be a little bit better about posting updates, although it's tough to find a free moment when no one needs the mama. :)

And.........go!

I have recently come up with the best possible analogy to the final weeks of pregnancy that I can think of, and while I think many people could appreciate it, only those who have run a marathon could come really close to understanding. Being in the last weeks of pregnancy is like having trained for a marathon for nine months. Then, the race director calls you, once you're all trained and says, "Okay, you're ready to go. You've trained well, your muscles are ready to survive the marathon and we will begin the race...sometime in the next three or four weeks. That's right, we're not going to tell you when. It might be first thing in the morning right after you've had a greasy egg breakfast, or it might be in the middle of the night while you're sleeping soundly. Maybe you'll be at work in your best suit, or at the grocery store picking up an extra gallon of milk. All I will tell you is that at some point the gun is going to go off, and when it does, you'd better start running." Anyone want to sign up for that event? This Dave McGillivray would be the director?
Every day I wake up and think, "If this is the day I go into labor, what do I want to get done today before that happens?" I am constantly reminded that I could continue along in this state for another three weeks, or in five minutes my water could break and I'll be "running" to the hospital. Everywhere I go I get comments and suggestions: "Oh my god, you're HUGE!!", "You should eat Chinese food." ,"Try going for a long walk.", "Have you tried having a beer?", "Just relax, if you relax then the baby can come out.", "Maybe you're too relaxed and the baby is just too comfortable to come out" (I actually got those two comments within an hour of each other), "Ugh, you're still here, huh?", and my personal favorite, "OH MY GOD!!! WHAT HAPPENED?!?!" When I asked what she meant she replied, "You got SO much bigger than the last time I saw you!" I explained that I was pregnant and she mumbled on about how ridiculous it was that I was so big...can you believe the nerve of me? Everyone tells me not to think about it, just try to go about my regular day, but how is that possible when every single person I encounter wants to have a ten minute conversation with me about when I think I'm going to have the baby, how early, late, or on time they were with their children, some crazy horror story about when their wife or mother or friend gave birth....it's ALL anyone wants to talk to me about!
Yet at the same time, it's very difficult for me to focus on anything but this baby right now. He has nestled himself so tightly in my pelvis that my legs no longer go together. He plays my sciatic nerve like the guitar, and when he gets bored he uses my bladder as a pillow to take a little nap - but much like the cats, like to push it all around for awhile, making sure it's nice and soft before settling in. Acupunture (originally intended to get labor moving) at least helped to relieve the heartburn that was making me feel like a fire-breathing dragon, so now the only thing keeping me from being able to rest is that everytime I get cozy on the couch my legs start jumping all around and I have to get up and walk around.
Anyway, the circus side show (me) is still hanging on, and I PROMISE to let you all know when the baby comes. I'm just waiting for the damn gun to go off!

Obama

I was reading Dooce.com the morning after the election and looking at the picture of her dog, Chuck with OBAMA written on his head in treats.

Lexi came in and looked at it, and was asking me what it was. I asked her to tell me the letters and she did so I told her that they spelled out Obama, and he is our new president. I had spent a good deal of time the night before talking to her about the election, and what the president does, and how amazing it was that we were about to elect our country's first African American President. So, I told her that he had, in fact been elected as our president and a little bit about how awesome it was and asked if she remembered me telling her about him last night. She said, “Yea, but Mama? Why is he a dog??” I didn’t even realized what I was doing!! I quickly went to boston.com to show her some pictures of the ACTUAL president. It was going through a slide show of pictures and we saw Obama and his family, which she thought was awesome. Then when there were pictures of crowds cheering she said, “Oh, and a wedding…” and then there was a picture of McCain and she said, “Oh, and it’s over…”

Halloween and More

This crazy thing has happened during this pregnancy, and has become more pronounced in my final few weeks - I have a lot that I want to say, but my brain is having a very difficult time forming my thoughts into sentences that the rest of the world will understand. I keep finding myself feeling frustrated that people don't seem to understand what I'm saying, but I realize that there is just so much swimming around in my head that I can't possibly get it all out. So, because of this I've had a hard time keeping up with e-mails, and keeping up with blog posts. It actually took me a half hour to compose a two sentence e-mail to a friend of mine this week, just letting her know that I was busy on Monday and wouldn't be able to get the kids together. Part of the problem was that I changed my mind no less than ten times while writing the e-mail about whether or not I should try to reschedule the day so that we could get the kids together...which lead my mind down the path of all that needed to be done before "What Then" finally makes his appearance.

So, all of that was to ask that you please forgive my lack of posting, and my lack of clear thoughts when I actually do post. I hate to let a few cute moments get lost because my brain doesn't work, so I'm just going to do my best...

First, Halloween was super cute. Lexi had a BLAST trick-o-treating, though I think next year we need to find a friend for her to go with. She and Ahren painted my belly to look like a pumpkin because we felt that it was too cute of an opportunity to pass up.

The next day Ahren and I opened our blinds to find our neighbors standing in the driveway looking up. When we went out to investigate what was going on, we discovered that JoJo the cat (from across the street) had escaped from the house the night before, climbed the tree, and been stuck up there all night. After much discussion about how we should get him down (which included propping up a ladder and hoping he would climb down on his own) Ahren finally became the local hero and climbed up to save little JoJo.

Genius Child

Lexi has known the entire alphabet and has been able to to identify all of the letters independently since just after her second birthday. Fadia works on this with her a lot because she really enjoys it, so she has now moved on to learning "little" letters, learning about the sounds that the letters make, and learning about how letters make words, and you can sound out the word to figure out what letters make that word. We have also been working on writing letters since she's been demonstrating much greater control over the crayon and making things like faces, lines and circles for a few months now. She's been amazing me with the speed that she seems to be picking up on these new skills and every time she writes her name for me, it becomes more and more clear.

This morning she was writing on her easel and came running in to bring me over and show me what she had done. This is what I walked in and saw...

Do you know what it was that she was excited about?? The new pink crayon she'd found... When I asked her what she had written on the page she said, "my name" like I was crazy for having to ask and then followed it up with, "but look, mama! Look at this new pink crayon I found!!!"

The child is a genius...there is just no denying it. :)

Friday Fun

On Friday Lexi and I rode her bike to the playground. She can now pedal and steer the bike completely by herself all the way there and back. She has also mastered new equipment on the playground which she thinks is pretty exciting...and it is. :)

Later we went over to check out my Nana's house as new tenants were scheduled to move in on Saturday. My mom has always liked having pictures of the kids on the mantle, but Lexi is usually a bit camera shy and has given us a hard time. Not on Friday!! She was striking more poses than a model!



It was a fun afternoon.

Brownies

Tonight Lexi and I made brownies for dessert to celebrate Daddy's birthday. We also made rice pilaf with chicken because that is his favorite dinner. Once dinner was ready I put her rice at her spot at the table. She wandered over, took a peek at her plate and said, "Ummmm...where's my brownie? I'm gonna need my brownie!" We laughed for a minute and explained that we have to eat dinner first.
So, Miss. Never-Leaves-One-Crumb-On-Her-Plate eats her peas and about three bites of rice and declares that she is all done, and hands me her plate. Ahren and I finish eating our dinner and she looks towards the kitchen with an innocent little look on her face and says, "So, about those treats...can we have them now?"
I think Lexi wishes that everyday was some body's birthday. :)