Lucy's First Birthday...

On May 11th, we celebrated Lucy's FIRST birthday.

Wait a minute.  Did I just type that?  How is that humanly possible?  

I don't know how it happened, but sure enough, with almost no warning - and without my consent, my baby girl went and turned one.  I'm really not okay with it - at all.

But, despite my objections, we spent the day celebrating our Lucy and remembering her birth the year before.

For breakfast, we took Lucy to Finn's Cafe.  "Why," you ask?

Well, a year ago, Andrew and I were told to be to the hospital by 7:30 to get my scheduled induction started.  When we got there, the place was already full of women whose bodies had started labor on their own, which I guess gives them precedence over a wimpy induction.  

Anyway, we were told to come back a few hours later, and since the kids were already settled with my mom, Andrew and I decided to go breakfast.  (How often do we have the chance to go to breakfast together?) We chose Finn's and had a lovely, relaxed breakfast together as we anticipated the birth of our new baby girl.

After Andrew and I had finished breakfast, the hospital still wasn't ready for us, so we ran down to Gateway to do some last minute shopping. We went to a couple of stores, but I wasn't really in the mood, so we headed back to the car.  As we sat in the dark underground parking lot, we realized we were both exhausted, so we decided to take a nap - a dark and lovely nap beneath the hustle and bustle of Gateway, and I anticipated the impending birth of our new baby girl.

Finally at 12:30, after a leisurely breakfast and a little snooze,  the hospital was ready for us and I was ready for them.  

I put on the hospital gown, they started the pitocin, and soon I was ready for an epidural.  I know how to birth babies, and this was going like clockwork.

My mom and my sister, Laura came - and then we waited, and waited, and waited.

Initially the nurses thought I would have my baby by 2:30 - but for some reason my body stalled at an "8".  

At 5:00 the nurse came in and checked me and had me roll on to my left side, hoping that would get things moving.  Sure enough - the nurse walked out of the room and seconds later, the next contraction came and I was ready to push.

"Andrew!" I said,  "Get the nurse! I am ready to push!"

"Oh Honey, " Andrew said. "She was just in here.  I'll get her in a few minutes."

"GET THE NURSE NOW!!" I said lovingly and gently.

The nurse came back to check me, and sure enough, I was ready. 

I couldn't wait to have this baby.

I looked at the clock and thought it would be pretty awesome if I could have the baby at 5:11 on 5/11.  (My mind just works that way.)  Unfortunately, we had to wait for the doctor so 5:11 came and went - but at 5:24, after just two pushes, our baby girl made her entrance into the world.  She had the cord wrapped around her neck twice, but everything seemed perfect.  

When they laid her on my chest, my spirit recognized her immediately and it almost felt like a reunion.  Those first minutes with a new baby are the most sacred and spiritual on earth and I soaked in every detail of those precious moments.  All the anticipation in the world, can't prepare you for the wave of emotion that hits the minute that baby is handed to you.  There is nothing like it.

It's hard to believe that was a year ago.  Time is a funny and a fickle thing.  On the one hand, it feels like the past year has passed in the blink of an eye, but at the same time, none of us can remember what life was like before we had our Lucy.  

On the night of Lucy's first birthday, we had cake and ice cream and balloons and presents.  It was a happy night but there was a little tug at my heart strings that wanted to just stop the party.  There was a part of me that wondered if we didn't blow out the candles, if it would keep Lucy a baby just a little longer.

Oh well.  Like I said, even without my permission, she went ahead and turned one anyway.

First birthday stats:

Weight: 16 lbs 8 oz (1 percentile)

Length: 28.75 inches  (40 percentile)

4 teeth (one on top, three on the bottom)

done nursing, crawls, pulls up on things, walks around furniture, waves, nods and smiles

Basically, she is practically perfect in every way!  

Happy Birthday Baby Girl.  

(Let's just slow it down a bit, shall we?)

Mother's Day Photo Shoot

After church on Mother's Day, I told my kids I wanted to take a quick picture with them - a way to commemorate and celebrate what the day was all about.

I thought it was a simple request; go in the backyard, take a few quick shots and be done with it.

Somehow, it's never as easy as it sounds.

For the second Mother's Day in a row, Isaac had a meltdown because church was over and he wanted his church clothes off.

Mother's Day 2009

Mother's Day 2010

Peter had no interest in being part of the photo shoot, and instead preferred to ride around the yard on this:

(Yes, he's an intense child, why do you ask?)

When we finally convinced Peter to join the group, he came running over and tackled everyone in his path.

When we got all five kids together, it took everything in my power to keep Peter from running away again.

Eventually, my strength gave out and he got away...

So, despite our best efforts, we never managed to get the "perfect Mother's Day shot" - the one with all my kids looking perfect, gathered around smiling and gazing at me lovingly - but as I look at these pictures, they certainly make me laugh and they do celebrate what I love most about being a mom.

April Madness

Yes, March madness, or the NCAA tournament is the most exciting and most compelling sporting event there is.  But when your team wins enough to play in April, that is another story.  Its been a month now since Duke won the 2010 National Championship on April 5, but hopefully that is enough time to forget that the team they beat was Butler, the story book underdogs that defied the odds every step of the way, making it to the finals.   If you didn't cheer for Butler, you don't believe in the human spirit.  If you didn't want Butler to win it all, you just don't have a soul.  If you wouldn't have loved to see them knock out Duke, of all teams, then I guess . . .  you are a Duke fan.   I loved Butler,  I wanted to really love them.  I cheered for them early in the tournament, and late in the tournament.  I wanted to cheer for them when it really counted.  But sorry, I was watching the Blue Devils win a National Championship with the five cutest fans in the world.  I'd say six, but Elizabeth has a heart and believes in the human spirit and was having a hard time with the moral dilemma of cheering against Butler.

Duke had been down this road before.  But even though everyone tried to paint them as Goliath, against little David, we had wondered if their glory days were a thing of the past.  Duke's last National Championship was in 2001, two months before Abby was born.  Elizabeth was uncomfortably pregnant (but cheered much more enthusiastically that year as we watched it on the big screen at the Arlington Cinema Drafthouse Theater).  Duke had never really done much in my kids lifetime, until now.  This was fun.  Hearing these kids cheer on Duke is hilarious because really they are just cheering for me. They know I love Duke, and they love me. Period.

Eighteen years ago Christian Laettner hit "the shot" to beat Kentucky on the way to a second consecutive  Duke National Championship.  I remember that tournament and watching that him play, but I wasn't even a Duke fan.  I was still on the waiting list, and found out I was accepted about a month later.  No fancy fat envelope in the mail, just a somewhat anticlimactic  phone call saying they had an extra space for me.  Little did I know that a year later I would be taking my little brother Paul on a campus tour pointing out both Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley, then culminating as we walked into a silent, empty, dimly lit Cameron Indoor Stadium.  For me there are few places that are cooler on the planet.  There is something about seeing it in its extremes, the chaos of a Carolina game, to the calm of an off season pilgrimage.

I remember Elizabeth truly appreciated it when she visited it for her first time, which is why I had to get her into the Duke/Carolina game my senior year before we got married, even though it required her borrowing an ID and camping out the last night to make the required three out of five personal tent checks in the last 48hours, after the rest of us had been attending "random tent checks" for the past seven weeks.

     

 (courtside with Coack K '96)               (Paul's campus tour '93)           (front row seat, watching Hurley '92)

Duke went to 4 final fours in a row, winning two championships leading up to when I got there my freshman year.  I figured I could expect more of the same.   My first big game was in December, it was a rematch of the previous National Championship against the "fab five" of Michigan.  I was hooked immediately and have been ever since.  It didn't hurt that Coach K came out to our tent city, now coined "Krzysewskiville", the night before that game with pizza for everyone in line.  Then ton top of that, he wrote back to me went I sent him a letter from my mission.

I missed their next trip to the final four because I was on my mission. To my disappointment, they wouldn't return until the year after I graduated.  We had our share of amazing games, and campus bonfires and bench burnings after big victories, and pep talks from Coach K, and campouts and of course, near misses. 

Paul and me, post game '98

 My senior year was particularly painful as Duke lost to Kentucky, who would then go on to beat Utah in the finals. Elizabeth and I drove down from DC that next year to watch the national championship game broadcast in Cameron Indoor Stadium, only to see them lose in the end to UConn.  I am completely comfortable with the fact that I allowed myself get so attached to these teams and players and seasons that most of them ended with at least a few tears.  The expectations were unreasonably high, but never quite met during my tenure.  Maybe that is why 2001 felt so good.  I was removed at least by distance, and medical school and on the brink of fatherhood, but it all came rushing back as we watched them finally win it all, for my first time.

 (our reunion tour of campus just before Paul got married, 2005)

More removed now, but still a fan, it was fun to surround myself with my little, loyal fan club - even better than in Cameron - and let it all come back to me and see them finally win it all, again. 

A Little Spring Snow?

April 30 at Snowbird

Skiing Blind

 

      Nathan and I went up to Snowbird before either of us had to go to work.  We were pleasantly surprised by what awaited us. 

Not bad for the last day of April.