Introducing

Our little girl, Amelia, was born on July 12, 2012 at 8:45pm. She has a ton of dark hair and is a great baby. I'm a little late telling her story, but here it is.

I had a doctor's appointment at 11:00 on July 12. It was pretty routine until the doctor took my blood pressure. It was elevated a bit higher than usual. The doctor kept me in her office for over an hour to see if it would go down (I think that in itself make it higher). After they took my blood pressure a couple of times, the doctor decided it was best to just induce me that day. I was due the next day, so the doctor wasn't worried about any complications with the baby. The doctor called the hospital and the only time they could get me in was at 2:00 that afternoon. That gave me a mere two hours to get ready to have a baby! I had my overnight bag in the car and called James as soon as I left the doctor's office. He was more than happy to leave work immediately.

I met James at the house, we had a quick lunch, and headed to the hospital. We got checked in and they hooked me up to the IVs. They didn't start the pitocin until 4:15pm, but after that the delivery went very quickly. I tried to go natural, but with pitocin is nasty stuff. I was dilated to an 8 before I needed an epidural. I couldn't believe how much easier that made the delivery.

All told, I was in labor for 4.5 hours and only had to push through three contractions. My little Amelia was born at exactly 8:45 pm and weighed 5 lbs 8 oz. The doctors were a little worried because she was so small, but she's as healthy as can be and is doing great.

Here are some pictures that her daddy took. She's a great little model.

Almost there

James and I are getting very excited to move into our new home. It's so close to being finished that we almost can't stand it.

Laminate flooring that looks a lot like real wood (when they're clean). We're very happy with it.

Kitchen before the counter tops were installed.

The kitchen is almost finished now. They only have to finish installing the stove and turn on the water.

I LOVE our granite counter tops. They could be my favorite part of the kitchen.

This is a bit blurry, but the chandelier in the entryway matches the one in the kitchen.

Almost finished tiling the master bath.

We're trying to figure out what kind of tree this is. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

We have one female mulberry tree. Won't the kids love it? And won't James curse it every spring :)

We opted for extra rock on the front. I'm glad we did. It's looking really good.

Sneak Peek

Today I got a sneak peek of the baby. According to the ultrasound, the baby is right on target for delivery. She's measuring almost exactly average for 29 weeks (tomorrow is exactly 29 weeks). Her heart is working like it should and she doesn't have a cleft lip. Her spine is straight and she doesn't have spinal bifita. I was so exited to see a little of our baby girl. She was a little stubborn (imagine my child being stubborn) and uncooperative, but we got some good pictures.

One of the few times she looked at us

Her Spine

Femur

3-D picture of her face, she didn't want to look at us for some reason

She got shy and tried to hide behind her hands.

Finished

The Elephant

The elephant goes like this and

That,

He's terribly big and terribly

Fat.

He has no fingers, he has no

Toes,

But goodness, gracious, what a

NOSE!

Elephants for the two new loves in my life.

Update on the House

I still have to finish blogging about our vacation, but when we got back, one of the first things we did was to go see the house. A lot got done while we were gone. We were so excited to see the progress.

 They put down the tile in the bathrooms.

 Finished ALL the drywall
and
textured the ceilings

Walk in closet in the master bedroom

Hallway looking into the Baby's room and
what will probably be my office

Looking into the Great Room

Someday, this will be my kitchen

Upstairs living room

 The siding and trim got all finished and
we have a door.

Won't James love mowing this back yard?

Babymoon-Curacao continued

One of the attractions on the island that James and I wanted to see were the Hato Caves. We learned that the only people to inhabit the caves were runaway slaves and that the natives on the island were so superstitious that they never ventured inside (or at least they left no evidence of being there). We couldn't take many pictures of the caves, but here's a bit of what they looked like.

Outside the caves, you can see the limestone that once was coral and also can see what's left of native writings.

The rest of our stay on Curacao involved snorkeling, sunbathing, and eating (some good restaurants and some not so good). We visited at least seven different beaches and snorkeled at every one of them.

James and I LOVED Curacao and plan on going back (next year maybe?). The island isn't overly touristy, but it is open and friendly to tourists. Even though we don't speak Dutch or Spanish, we had no problems communicating with anyone. We had such a great time on the island and can't say enough wonderful things about it. In fact we loved it so much that we're trying to recruit others to come enjoy this amazing place with us. So, if you're up for some sun, sand, and surf, come along and discover one of the best kept secrets of the Caribbean.

Babymoon-Curacao

James and I decided that we needed one last vacation before we become parents. After doing a lot of research, James decided on Aruba and, based on the recommendation of a friend, Curacao (Kira-sow). It was one of the best vacations we've had. We spent about 10 days on the Islands and enjoyed every minute of it.

The first part of our vacation was on Curacao. We rented a car because there's virtually no public transportation (even though there's a bus stop every 100 feet), and we discovered that there are pretty much no street signs. Luckily the island is pretty small and it's hard to get too lost. It was only by divine providence that we found our hotel the first night, but after that, we didn't have too much of a terrible time finding our way around.

Beach at our hotel

We stayed at the Blue Bay Resort which has villas and apartments. James booked us a one bedroom apartment which was so nice to have. We had a full kitchen so we could eat most of our meals at the hotel. 

The first day, we mostly just hung out at the beach and explored the island just a little. We also found the grocery store and purchased way too much food for two people in one week (I may have been a little hungry and wanted to try everything).

We also went to Willemstad and looked at all the cute historic buildings and the floating pedestrian bridge.

On the 27th, we got up early and went on a hike. Everyone told us that it was just an hour up and a hour back to the top of this:

They were dirty rotten liars. It took us over three hours and there's no way we could have taken enough water. My pregnant body was just not up for the hike because most of the trail looked like this:

And the very end of the so called trail, looked like this:

But the view from the  top looked like this:

By the time we finished our hike, we were absolutely exhausted, but we were close to a beach we wanted to see so we decided to visit it and try our hand at snorkeling. I've always thought that snorkeling was lame, but we had a great time just observing the fish. The best part of snorkeling was floating in the water and holding James' hand while we pointed out fish to one another.

We were so amazed at the different fish that were swimming around us. Unfortunately, we didn't have an underwater camera, so you'll have to take our word for it, but here's a picture of the beach :)

We loved snorkeling so much that James decided it is the gateway drug to scuba diving. Guess who's going to be scuba certified before our next beach vacation?