Here's the story of a lovely baby

Saturday, September 12 I had a baby shower at my aunt's house. My in-laws drove up all the way from Visalia to come to that and to hang out with us for the evening, stay the night and then go to church with us the next day. The shower was great and everyone seemed to enjoy it. My mother-in-law was encouraging me to do squats so that the baby would come sooner. She was hoping so bad that Zoe would come while they were there for the weekend. Little did she, or us, know what was in store for us.

After the baby shower was over, I went to Target with my mom to get some odds and ends things that we still needed for the baby. Odds and ends like a stroller and car seat. After that shopping excursion, I went to the church and met up with Ryan and his parents for our ward's annual chili cook-off. There were all sorts of yummy chilis there - some definitely spicier than others. I was careful not to eat more than a bite of the spicy stuff because of recent heartburn I'd had. The night ended peacefully and we went home and soon thereafter went to bed.

2:30AM - Sunday - I was laying in bed, sleeping, and was woken up by a sudden gush of liquid. I quickly got out of bed knowing I was feeling something I'd never felt before. I told Ryan, "I think it's happening." His response: "What's happening?" Me: "IT is happening." We were 10 days before the due date and I hadn't really gotten the "hospital bag" ready so we spent the next hour getting things together, making some phone calls, opening the stroller/car seat box and getting the car seat set up in the car. I knew they wouldn't let me leave the hospital w/o a proper car seat. We had done a couple practice runs to the hospital, but at (now) 3:30 in the morning, there isn't much traffic to worry about. It took us about 10 minutes to get to the hospital.

As we were getting checked in, I told them that my water had broken. What they asked in return was, "How much water?" Like I have anything to compare it to? It was definitely more than a cup and less than 5 gallons. I was soon admitted and now it became somewhat of a waiting game. With my water having been broken, it shouldn't have been too long before I started having contractions. The contractions weren't coming though. Heck, this ain't so bad, I thought. Oh unwise one - what did I know? Turns out that my water had broken, only not completely. Later Sunday afternoon the nurse broke my water. I didn't know so much water could come out of me! They gave me Pitocin to get the contractions going and it wasn't long before I was really in some pain. Ryan was with me the whole time and was a great coach and support as I tried to breathe and work through my contractions. Family members popped in and out throughout the day. I couldn't believe how lucky Ryan's mom was for me to go into labor while she was there. I'm really glad it worked out that way. She's such a sweet woman and it was a dream come true for her. Ok, so back to the contractions. I worked through them the best I could but had no idea when the end of that would come. I sincerely wanted to have a drug free birth, but my body had other plans. The contractions were getting worse and worse and I kept telling myself that after the next one, I'd get the epidural. Well, I did that about 10 times and had Zoe come in the next hour or so, I might have been able to last. I overhead one of the nurses say that those contractions could last for another 3 hours, who knew? It was when I heard that that I decided to go for the epidural. The contractions were exhausting me and it was getting to be evening time and I needed my rest if I was going to be pushing this baby out anytime soon.

Ahhhhh, epidural. Welcome relief. I was able to get a little bit of rest and around 3:00 on Monday morning, I started pushing. Ryan, my mom and my mother-in-law were all able to stay in the room and help me as I pushed and counted and pushed some more. The pushing wasn't so bad at first, but got harder and harder. At 4:40 our little Zoe came into the world. She was beautiful and perfect, 7 lbs 9 oz and 19 inches long. She has been a joy and a blessing to us already. We're so happy to have our little family!

I'm also happy to report that my ankles are back. =)

Funky Fresno

Ok, first of all, have you ever seen garage sale balloons? It sure beats those crappy cardboard signs! We spent the weekend down in Visalia visiting with Ryan's family and friends. His mom, Debi, is the queen of yard sales. She has such an eye for the good stuff. As we were driving around Saturday morning, we saw this truck advertising a yard sale. None of us had ever seen advertising quite like this before.

On our way home Monday evening, we decided to stop in Fresno for some gas and a little grub. Ryan was craving pizza and we found this hole in the wall called Hungry Howie's Pizza. There were two tables in the "restaurant" so we assumed that most people got their pies to go. Not us. We decided to take a seat and enjoy our food. About halfway into our meal, I saw a guy sprawled out on some grass in the strip mall parking lot. He was a rather large guy, wearing a maroon sports jersey, jeans and at some point his shoes had come off. He was on the ground, rolling back and forth, yelling. Every once in awhile he'd shove his face into the grass. I pointed it out to Ryan and we tried to figure out what was going on. No one was around him and he didn't appear to be hurt in any way. We got up and walked out to get a better view. A lady who had just ordered some pizza to go was outside and talking about how people now days just stand around and watch what's going on, they "don't do nothing." Yeah lady, no joke! Who knows what this guy has on him! Neither Ryan nor I were about to get any closer to this guy. She walked over to him, but did she get close enough to "help"? No. I think when she realized that the guy was a little 51/50, she didn't want to be superwoman anymore. One of the pizza delivery dudes had just come back and he walked over to the the roly poly man with a phone to his ear. I think he was actually the one summoning the black and whites to get over there. A helicopter flew over head too. About that point, I looked at the traffic going by and noticed there was a brown sedan of sorts in the middle of the lane, door open and no one inside. Cars were going around it. I went back inside the hole to watch the action from the inside. The cops showed up in droves, seriously, about 7 cop cars showed up - all for this one guy. Someone thought he was having 'Nam flashbacks. He didn't look old enough to me to have served in Vietnam. Portly delivery dude came back in and said that this guy was yelling and screaming obscenities. Of course he didn't use a big word like that, no, he told us the words he was saying. The police were able to restrain the guy while he was still on the ground and some how word got to us that he was on PCP and had seriously just flipped out. His car was the one in the road and it seemed that he had just screeched the brakes (Ryan said he remembered hearing brakes), opened the car, ran out and over into the grassy knoll of the ghetto strip mall and started going nuts on the ground. If you look closely in the picture below, you can see the jersey clad guy on the ground. Heck, we didn't even have to rubberneck for this one. We had front row seats.

August activities

I got a video camera for my birthday (March) and while I have recently figured out how to get my video images onto my computer, I'm having a hard time getting them onto our blog. I've gotta work on that. Don't worry, I won't put any scary birthing videos on here. That's a little too personal.

Speaking of birth, as you can see below, I am getting close. I am considered full term since I hit the 37 week mark. Things are coming along well. I've got some symptoms of PIH (pregnancy induced hypertension), but nothing to get really worked up about. The due date is Sept. 24 but I have a feeling we'll meet Zoe before then. August 29 was Ryan's golden birthday and as tradition would have it, we were able to spend it up at my friend's cabin in the mountains. It was nice to get away from the city and to have some quiet time to spend together. We realized that our alone/quiet time is quickly dwindling. My friend's dad was afraid we were going to have the little "gorkin" up there in the cabin, but all went well. It was a quiet, peaceful weekend and I'm grateful for the time I was able to spend with Ryan.

We went canoeing on the lake. If you've ever been canoeing, you know that when a canoe rocks, it can feel a little unstable. If you've ever been pregnant, you know that in the final weeks you can feel a little unstable. If you've ever combined pregnancy and a canoe, just imagine the instability you'd feel. I was a little nervous at first, but after intentionally rocking the boat back and forth a little bit, I felt better and more comfortable. Ryan was a terrific support too. We pulled over at a little beach at one point and had a picnic lunch. Couldn't ask for a more beautiful day.

One bit of excitement we did have was finding this little critter inside the cabin. I generally don't mind spiders (daddy long legs, small non-jumping types), but this one was bigger than ones I was used to seeing. We wanted it out of the cabin, but I couldn't see a point in destroying its life altogether, so we, wait, Ryan, caught it in a glass and let it get back to nature. My hero - thanks Ryan.

We made a feast out of hobo dinners. We also learned that cheese in hobo dinners doesn't go over real well. It melts too fast and then burns onto everything.

Last year on Ryan's birthday (before we were married), I snuck over to his house late at night and wrote some happy birthday messages on his car with shoe polish. I had been holding onto that same bottle of shoe polish in the hopes of doing that again this year. Why get rid of a perfectly good bottle of white shoe polish? I thought I'd sneak downstairs while he was in the shower and do a little decorating. I shook the polish up and as I opened the lid, the squishy spongy thing popped off. No biggie, I thought. I'll pop it back in place and get on with my happy birthday wishes. As you can see, the squishy spongy thing popped off again, only this time it did it as I was beginning my message. I couldn't help but laugh at myself. Looks like Big Bird had an accident on his car. It was the thought that counted.

As with other summer traditions, attending the state fair is another one. We found a treasure this year: mango on a stick. I can't even describe how magical that was. Mango. Enough said.
We refer to these sheep as the KKK sheep. Ryan got a kick out of that.

The same day we went to the fair, I had a baby shower. This was the yummy carrot cake. If you can see right about 1:00 there's a little pair of frosting booties. So cute! My friend Alicia and my mom put on this shower. It was great to see so many wonderful people there.

And the month is not complete without a trip to the temple. I'm glad Ryan and I are able to go to the temple at least once a month. It's such a blessing having a temple so close to us. Each time we go, we make a special trip to the back of the temple, near the oh-so-romantic generator and have a special kiss. It was the spot we had our first kiss and the spot where Ryan proposed. It will always hold a special place in our hearts.