Ribbit!

Once again the bulk of the Halloween costume construction this year fell to Micah. Which is probably okay, since he is much better at such things than I am. I gathered the materials as best I could while we were still waiting for Oliver to arrive, but I wasn't totally successful. The green pajamas eluded me. As did the green socks that I had hoped to use in their place. And the green Rit dye to dye the white socks we eventually got also remained unfound by yesterday afternoon. Food coloring didn't do the job, so, in desperation, we turned to last year's supply of Rit dye, which was blue. It was better than nothing and blue socks did the job just fine. We put the finishing touches on the costume this morning and by 3:00 this afternoon we were ready to unleash our creation on the world.
He's a frog, in case you couldn't tell. Please pardon the left eye for falling backwards on Simon's head. It is, apparently, a bit lazy.
This one was going to be a tadpole. If he hadn't taken his sweet to time getting here, we may have felt more comfortable taking him out for a little bit. For the sake of pictures, I wrapped him in some of the leftover fabric from Simon's costume and put the frog hat -- much too big -- on his head. If you squint, maybe you can pretend it is a decent costume. Or maybe he'll just continue to be my pea in the pod, as he has been for the past nine months. A blue pea, but still . . . it's something. Oh, and Happy Halloween. Have fun, be safe. Get more treats than tricks.

The Results

We finally buckled down and tallied the points from September Showdown. Figured we probably better do it before it was suddenly November. Micah and I both filled out a bracket, and since they didn't match exactly, we scored each submission against both of ours, then added the two scores together to get the final scores. One point was awarded for a matching answer in the first round, two points for matching in the second round, three in the third, etc. Several people did have Oliver as the champion, so that in itself did not determine the winner. And here are the results:
Once again, Jamie Bailey is the winner. Her bracket matched mine most closely. And because Becca Frazier's matched Micah's most closely, she will be receiving a prize as well. Becca, I apologize that it says Becca B. on the chart . . . old habits die hard. On a related note, we have officially exhausted the list of boys' names that we agree on. If we have another kid, it better be a girl.

Roaarrr!!!

We found Oliver like this this morning:
It reminded me of this picture, taken of his brother 2 1/2 years ago:They must be brothers.

Possibly more than you want to know

As far as the birth story goes, you got pretty much the whole thing last post. It was pretty quick and straightforward, but here are some other fun little details, just for kicks:

The reason we got the spicy Indian food the night before was because I remembered that our friend Meg went into labor with her second child after eating some spicy Indian food. (I re-read the blog post on the event when we got home from dinner and was hopeful that ours would also be born within two hours of admission, which he was, almost exactly.)

Simon was sick the day before and not sleeping well that night. He woke up about the time my labor started and wanted to be with us the whole time. It wasn't ideal, but we managed to handle the contractions and the sick, strangely cuddly child for the 3+hours of labor before we went to the hospital.

The driver of the car that picked us up kept turning the radio up whenever I had to breathe through a contraction. It made me laugh.

In the elevator on the way up to Labor and Delivery one of the other passengers looked at me and said, "Could've guessed you were going there. We can feel that one [the contraction] all the way over here." That also made me laugh.

I pushed for 15-20 minutes, much improved from my last time of 2+ hours, and, thankfully, only Micah, my midwife, and my nurse were there for the delivery. One of things that I disliked about Simon's birth was that it seemed like there were so many people in the room at the end and it was distracting and difficult for me.

As we left the L and D, all of the nurses/doctors/techs were saying things like, "Well, thanks for stopping by." "Nice of you to drop in for a moment." "See you in 18 months." My nurse couldn't say enough about how much she prefers the 2 hour labors to the 12 hour labors. I was glad I could do them all a favor by not clogging up their delivery room for too long.

Oliver weighed exactly the same amount as Simon when he was born, despite being two weeks later and an inch longer.

Overall, it is hard to compare this labor to Simon's because Simon's was so unexpected and I had so much time to anticipate Oliver's. Micah says I did just as well the second time, but I kind of felt that Oliver's was harder if only because of the anticipation. And maybe because my water was broken through the whole thing, instead of breaking at the very end like it did with Simon. And also because of the pressure to match Meg's time of 2 hours from admission to delivery. Just kidding. Sort of. :)
And finally, Simon just put some popcorn way up his nose. He has never done anything like that before.

Introducing . . .

Oliver Preston Heiselt

7 lbs. 7 oz.
20 3/4 inches long

For Micah's birthday yesterday we went to an Indian restaurant with the express purpose of getting me the hottest dish I could handle and hoping for the best. It seems to have worked. At 3:00ish this morning my water broke. At 7:30 am we went to the hospital. At 9:27 am he was born. I may post more later, but here are some pictures for now. Mother and child are well, as are the father and the other child. We appreciate all your well wishes, prayers, and happy thoughts.

An apology

So, we're a little slow about calculating the results for September Showdown. I'm blaming it on the fact that our printer is dead and it is a pain to try to score them on the computer screen. And also, I lack motivation because I keep thinking that I'm going to go into labor any second. Maybe this contraction will be the one that starts it all. Because the previous 11 days worth of contractions certainly haven't been up to snuff. Anyway, we'll get it done. Prizes will be awarded. We'll even share some of our favorite wild card names, as Stephanie suggested. There is still fun to be had with this little activity. I apologize it is taking so long.

The LOSER Sign

So, while we're waiting for something more exciting to happen (like being able to burn these infernal maternity clothes and pull out the jeans again . . . ), let me explain the LOSER sign. The one that was hanging on the sad-faced pig on our bookcase, as pictured above. The pig was a gift to Micah from a friend of his. A reminder to save his pennies so he could go to Cancun at the end of one summer when he was in college. It's from Mexico and apparently Mexican piggy banks are made to look grumpy so you won't break them. That is the story behind that. Oh, and he did indeed go to Cancun and have a wonderful time and came back with a tan that you wouldn't believe and that he still dreams of one day re-attaining.

And the sign. The sign is for the loser of The Loser Game to wear once s/he has lost. If you haven't played The Loser Game, just know that it is fun and we hope we have the chance to add your name to our sign sometime. You see, everyone wins in The Loser Game, except for one person. That person must write his/her name on the back of the sign and wear it through the next round of the game. During that round, the other players may refer to the loser as "Loser" and remind the loser of his/her task, which is to clear the deck from the middle of the table when the correct cards are played. Our particular sign is made to be incredibly awkward to wear, just so you don't forget you've got it on. We're nice that way. Once a person's name is on the sign, if s/he loses again, a checkmark is placed next to his/her name, but really, we would like to just get as many names as we can on it. Because it is fun.

As a warning, The Loser Game may not be for everyone. Sensitive teenage girls are liable to take the moniker to heart if they lose, and then refuse to play the game even five years later, citing deep emotional scars and therapy bills that student loans will not cover.

Will it ever get old?

One of my favorite things is to walk into Simon's room after his nap and see what words he has written with his blocks. Sometimes it takes a minute to figure out what was intended (as with the "down" a couple of posts ago). But the other day I saw what he had written and . . . well, I wondered what I had done to prompt such a thing.
Had I told him he was bad? Had I implied that he was bad with my impatience? Or was it simply because we'd been reading "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" and talking about how some are sad and some are glad and some are very, very bad.

It wasn't until I was putting him to bed that night that I got some answers.

"Simon what words did you write today?" I asked, pointing to the blocks.

"Simon. Mom. Dad." ("Mom" had appeared sometime after his nap.)

"But Simon, that's a 'b.' It says 'bad.'"

"No. Actually, a 'd.' Spells 'Dad.'"

Mystery solved. I guess.

Darn those b's and d's. They are so tricky.

A picture for you belly people

Well, there it is. My 39-week belly. May it disappear soon, if only because it has gotten rather chilly all of a sudden and I find myself with no warm clothes that will accommodate a volleyball sized lump in the abdominal area. Oh, and actually having a baby sounds pretty nice right about now, too. I think we're all ready for a little less conversation and a little more action around these parts.

Cultured

Micah has become mildly obsessed with culturing our dairy products as of late. It started when we acquired an ice cream maker back in August. We didn't want to have to keep half and half or heavy cream on hand all the time, so we started looking at alternatives. It turns out, you can make a killer frozen yogurt with minimal effort. And you can also make killer yogurt with minimal effort. And buttermilk is even easier: just fill a jar 1/4 the way full with buttermilk, then the rest of the way with milk and let it sit out for a day. Voila. Buttermilk. And it makes some darn good ice cream, too.

Some homemade flavors we've tried:
vanilla fro yo (obviously)
blueberry fro-yo
blueberry buttermilk
strawberry buttermilk
lemon buttermilk
chocolate buttermilk (it had a delightful cheesecake-ish taste to it)
honey-cinnamon-cloves fro-yo

Yum. I feel like our ice cream world has just been enlarged immeasurably.

Craft Weekend, Recapped

Here's a recap of what all we finished this weekend:

Curtain for the bathroom. Thanks to the new sewing machine, the IKEA fabric that was on sale for a buck a yard, and the IKEA curtains we already owned, which provided the pattern, we no longer have any rolling shades hanging in our apartment. And that feels good.

New backs for the gray bookcases. We took off the backs when we moved into this apartment because they just looked really cheap. We meant to re-paper them, but wallpaper is expensive, so it was never going to get done. But, thanks again to IKEA for cheap fabric and Mom Heiselt for lending us another set of hands, we came up with this solution. The bookcases are sturdier, the backs look better, and stripes are fun.

Simon's toddler bed. We used this tutorial as a guide, although we made our own adjustments as well.

We wouldn't be worth our salt as New Yorkers if we didn't take advantage of the opportunity to create more storage space . . . .

All done. It really does look nice.

Simon gives it his seal of approval. Just look at how rested and relaxed he looks "sleeping" on his new big boy bed.

The bookcase from the side of the road. It was dismantled, sanded, refinished, coated with polyurethane, given a new back, and has now been pressed into service, at least temporarily, as our "entertainment center" and shoe rack. It looks so good.

And that is that.

No such luck

Well, we tried our darnedest to get me to go into labor yesterday. It was the "Miles4Midwives" 5K in Prospect Park, and after much hemming and hawing we both entered the race 15 minutes before it started. We decided if my water were to break mid-race, I probably couldn't be in a better place. Micah was 100% supportive of my "bring on the labor" plan, so he ran the race as fast as he could, coming in at about 20:30, finishing possibly in the top 5, while I moseyed along with our heavily-laden jogging stroller, crossing the line at 30:45. Even though my pace was just a little under 10-minute miles I felt okay about it 1. because I did have to walk for a little bit after the first mile and 2. because I think I came in first in the "barefoot and pregnant" category.

But, as you may have guessed, the plan was unsuccessful. We made it home for General Conference where "Craft Weekend" got off to a rockin' start (more on that later), then went to the best 4-year-old birthday party I've been to in years. And then we came home and collapsed into bed without anything more than the normal Braxton-Hicks contractions. Probably for the best. We were too tired for me to go into labor last night.

Side notes: I wish I would have remembered to take a picture with Micah's phone after the race, but I didn't, so the event is, sadly, undocumented in a visual medium. Sigh. (Although there was a race photographer, so if they send us some shots in our e-mail, maybe I'll be able to post something later.) Also, I'm not actually due until the 18th and I'm really not too anxious to have the baby right away. This pregnancy has been really good and really fast . . . I can't believe that we are nearing the end. Still, it would be lovely to be able to sleep on my stomach again.

Amazing what you can do with an extra set of hands

Mom Heiselt visited us for the past several days and even though it was kind of supposed to be a vacation, we put her to work doing lots of manual labor. She assures us that projects like the ones we did are her favorite thing, and we were glad to bring her lots of joy via several trips to Home Depot and IKEA, hands stained with wood stain, and the scent of polyurethane.

Not only that, but we were able to drive around Brooklyn (cars can be lovely sometimes) for a few days, go to the temple, get a new sewing machine (the one we were using was on long-term borrow and, sadly, was needed by its original owner), and wave to the Statue of Liberty from the shores of Battery Park. (Note to self: Simon loves to watch the boats. Why didn't I think of that?)

And in the end, not only is our freezer and our cupboards stocked with more food than we know what to do with, the Baby-Due List (things to do before the baby is due) was significantly dented. The bookcases have new backs, the paint has been mostly touched up, Simon's new toddler bed is taking shape and the bookcase we picked up on the side of the road is just about ready to be reassembled. This weekend we'll sew some new curtains and finish up some other randomness. And then I can go into labor.

Thanks, Mom, for making it possible.

Ups and Downs

Yeah, he pulled a bunch of our food storage out of the closet during his nap the other day, and he shredded a box of ziploc bags, and he asks what time it is every 10 seconds or so (which can drive a mother mad, I tell you), and he always always always wants me to carry him (I think he is savoring it while he can). But he can also recite Eric Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" forward and backward, sing "Jesus Has Risen" (with sign language!), and gives the funniest zerbert/kisses. Oh, and you should see his good-bye routine with Micah every morning. First hugs. Then kisses. Then noses. Then eyes. It's rather endearing.So I guess we'll keep him. If we have to.

Last Call for September Showdown

We've had some trouble being able to post for the past couple of weeks, so if any of you thought that maybe Roscoe decided to grace us with his presence much earlier than expected and that is why you haven't heard from us, you were wrong. It was simply a technical glitch with Mr. Gore's Internet. Or something like that. Anyway, September ended yesterday but if you haven't gotten your brackets for September Showdown in just yet, we're giving you until Sunday because we didn't have a chance to remind you.

So, please, if you haven't sent them in yet, we'd love to see them. And we are thrilled with the results so far. Thanks to those who are supportive of our strangeness. We appreciate it.