That was because the big day came on Saturday when people came from all over to see the boy wonder for his birthday.  The weather was beautiful, which was fortuitous because so many people wanted to see Alex that there wasn’t nearly enough room inside the house for everyone.  Some of the highlights for the day:

• Alex got to swim in his very own swimming pool for the first time.  He loved it!  Splashing is fun, but not as fun as dunking one’s own head into the water!
• Daddy tried out his new grill and managed to cook about 15 too many hamburgers and 15 more hot dogs than necessary.  There was just too much space on the grill that had to be filled.
• Mommy made an excellent cake shaped like Curious George.  It was quite delicious.
• The entertainment for the day, besides watching Alex do his thing, was Cornhole and Bocce Ball.  It’s amazing how long people can stand around throwing things at other things and still think they are having fun.
• Alex made it all afternoon without needing a nap, and he stayed in a great mood the whole time.  The kid is such a ham.  I wonder where he gets that from?

Click on the picture below to see a slide show of pictures from the day.  If you were there, it was great to see you!  If you couldn’t make it, we missed you and hope to get to see you soon.  There, that should cover it!

Alex has been busy over the last month.  He’s getting really good at "cruising" around the furniture, and he even figured out how to crawl.  Mostly, he crawls Army-style, but if he sees something across the room that he really wants, he’ll pick up his belly and crawl on his hands & knees.

Alex inherited a rocking chair from his cousin Annie.  It’s a good place to sleep or watch his favorite TV shows, like Lingo on the Game Show Network.

 

We celebrated Alex’s cousin Olivia’s 4th birthday (her first birthday in the US) last month. 

   

He gets confused sometimes by Daddy’s brothers.  They look like Daddy, but they aren’t him!  This is Uncle Andy.

Since he’s getting bigger and now has 6 teeth, Mommy thought Alex might be ready for some more grown-up food, but here’s what happened when she tried to feed him beef stew…

A couple of days ago Alex got into the dirty laundry and decided he wanted to try on Mommy’s uniform.

He really wanted to be like Mommy, so he even tried it with a bra!

Here he is today, on his 10-month birthday.

See you all again soon!

He continues to grow and learn new tricks everyday.  Lately he’s taken a new fondness to screaming for no apparent reason.  It’s not a sad or an angry scream.  It’s just screaming for the sake of screaming.  If he weren’t so cute while he was doing it, it would probably drive us bonkers.  But we tolerate it, and Mommy is determined to teach him how to use his indoor voice.  We’ll see how that goes.

He’s also started rolling all over the room, which can be rough some times because we don’t have a lot of carpet.  It’s becoming a frequent occurrence for him to roll off the rug in the family room and bump his head on the imitation hardwood floor.  Surprisingly, imitation hardwood still hurts like real hardwood when you bump your head on it.  Nobody said growing up was going to be easy.

It’s been a great experience for all of us, and we look forward to what we’re going to learn and do each and every day.

After the epidural was placed, Mommy started feeling really funny, and it was discovered that her blood pressure was about 70/30.  That’s a scary feeling!  She was given drugs and fluids to raise it back up.  Apparently, this is not an uncommon occurrence when epidurals are placed, but it was annoying 3 days later when the 2 bags of fluid that were pushed through the IV showed up in Mommy’s legs & feet!

Mommy was feeling pretty good most of Tuesday afternoon after the epidural stabilized, and so we waited some more.

At dinnertime, Mommy was really hungry, but she was restricted to a clear liquid diet, so she ordered a "feast" of vegetable broth, jello, juice, and lemon ice.  Unfortunately, it all came back up even faster than it went down!  But the nurses and doctors said this was a good sign that labor was progressing.

As the contractions started to get stronger, the epidural medicine had to be slowed down so Mommy would be able to push.  That made quite a difference in Mommy’s comfort level!  Finally, about 10:00 pm Mommy announced that she was feeling the urge to push.  So she started pushing…

…and pushing…

…and pushing…

…And when she thought she couldn’t possibly push again, she heard the doctor mention the possibility of a C-section, so she pushed some more!

And finally, at 12:44 am on Wednesday, May 10, Alex arrived!

As you might be able to tell from the pictures, Mommy felt very good and relaxed once she saw her precious baby.  But soon things got difficult again.  Alex was breathing fast right after the breath, so the first breastfeeding attempt had to be postponed.  Then when it was time to try, Alex wasn’t interested, and Mommy almost reached her wit’s end trying to get him to eat before he was 12 hours old (because it’s a rule that baby’s have to eat in the first 12 hours).  She finally had to give in and pump the colostrum out to feed him from a bottle.

Since feeding got off to a slow start, we stayed at the hospital until Friday morning, and by then we were ready to leave and get on with Alex’s first week at home.  Stay tuned for pictures from that first week!

Mommy had been feeling contractions off-and-on for the last week or so, but they never felt like what the doctor called "table grabbers" so it didn’t look like things were progressing all that quickly.  On Monday, May 8th, we had an appointment with the OB doctor to find out how close she was. (For those that don’t know, Mommy’s due date was May 7th.)  The doctor was optimistic, but Mommy was only 2cm dilated, which she had been for the last week. 

Since we were past the due date, the doctor wanted to schedule a date for inducing labor.  She looked at the calendar and the soonest labor could be scheduled was May 18th.  Well, this just wasn’t going to do for the expectant parents.  Mommy was starting a new job on July 3rd, regardless of when the baby would arrive.  We pleaded with the doctor that it would be really helpful for us to be on the schedule sooner so that Mommy could have time to recover before she started her new job.  Since she is so great, the doctor looked into a few things and was able to get us on the schedule for May 9th, the very next day.   Luckily, it wouldn’t matter anyway…

That evening of May 8th, we went out to dinner with some friends to celebrate our friend Sabah’s birthday.  We had a delicious dinner at Grizzly Peak Brewing Co., one of our favorite local restaurants, but the whole time Mommy just wasn’t feeling all that good.  So, we left the party a little early and headed home.

When we got home, Mommy called the hospital just to see if they had any advice and it was decided that she should come in to be checked out.  We got to the hospital at 10:15, and after a short examination it was determined that Mommy was now dilated to 4cm and would be admitted.  So she had moved 2cm in a little under 10 hours – needless to say we were getting excited!

And then the waiting started.

We were admitted to a room with a soaking tub, so Mommy took a bath right away to help ease the pain from the contractions.

And then we waited.

Every once in a while, a doctor or nurse would pop into the room to check Mommy out, but there was very little progress.

And so we waited some more.

At about 2 am the doctor decided to break Mommy’s "bag of waters" to help move things along.  That was a funny feeling!  Now we were definitely stuck at the hospital until the baby came out, but unfortunately Mommy wouldn’t get to take any more baths in the nice soaking tub.

And we waited. 

With our excitement up and people constantly streaming in and out of the room, sleeping was hard to do.  We tried, Mommy in bed and Daddy in a reclining chair, but we didn’t get very far.

And thus we waited and waited.

And to help you get into the same mindset, you can wait too for the end of the story in a little bit… 

CLICK THE IMAGE TO SEE A LARGER VERSION.  MOUSE OVER THE PICTURE THAT COMES UP AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO CLICK "NEXT" OR "PREV" TO VIEW IN SLIDESHOW FORMAT.