TheLionRampant.net

There’s no internet access at the hospital, so I’m posting a quick update from the mall across the street (better food than the cafeteria).

As you’ve probably figured out by now, Ezra was born via c-section after about 30 hours of labor. The bottom line is baby’s heart was slowing down with every contraction. Not exactly what we expected, but we’re thankful that both he and Ashley are healthy.

Thanks for all the congratulations. We’ll probably be at the hospital until Sunday.

Those curious about his name may want to check out Ezra and Chalmers (Jonathan, James & D Strain may wonder if he was actually named after the most terrifying room in the world in which to preach, and they may be right:) ).

And now, what you all really want to see…

Happy Baby

Our Family

Ezra and one of his Great Grandmas

Enough Paparazzi

…Ezra Chalmers Hales. He was born at 6.20 pm on Wed., August 29. He weighed 6lbs 5oz at birth and was 19.5 inches. Mom and baby are recovering well, and we are all feeling better after a few hours of sleep last night. Here’s Ezra’s first picture with Dad.

More pics at Ashley’s Dad’s blog.

There are currently only 5 of the 19 people who could still win our ExpectNet baby pool based on their guesses for Baby Hales’ birthday. Apparently today was a popular pick with 4 people choosing it. However, the lunar eclipse did not put me into labor, but I did enjoy a eerie orange moon upon one of my many night wakings.

I don’t think our house has remained this organized and tidy in quite some time. It’s really lovely. I also made a pouch sling the other day, including learning how to make a French seam. I feel rather inept at my sewing projects, but it is fun nonetheless. Today I plan to clean out the fridge, plan a lecture or two for the semester and do some reading. Hope you all have a lovely day and week!

Yes, today is my “due date.” Having hit it, it seems pretty anticlimactic since we don’t have a baby to celebrate with. I’ve found that the average birthday for a first child is about a week to ten days past the due date. I’m rooting that he comes within a week from today. Bryce went out and bought two air conditioning units, one to replace our old 1970’s version of a window a/c unit that our apartment provides, and a portable one for our bedroom. I think I can wait a bit longer as I’m not sweating profusely in our apartment now!

I’ve been keeping myself busy with trying to stay on top of the chores and sewing. I took a sewing class when I was 12 and made a dress and some Tweety Bird boxers. And probably a scrunchie cuz those things were so in. I’ve made a number of burp cloths — putting fabric and ribbon on cloth diapers — and even made a ring sling out of navy corduroy. We went to JoAnn’s Fabric last night and I bought some more fabric: some to make a sling for a friend and some to make a mei tai. I hope to get both finished before the baby arrives and then hopefully my sewing bug will lessen so I can get some lectures planned for the semester when I go back to teaching in October.

For those people who are madly checking our blog waiting for a baby announcement, we’ll post as soon as we can. In the meantime, err on the side of caution and realize I probably won’t have this baby at any second (given the statistics anyway).

Hopefully this will also be the last time I’m offering a chance to guess on the baby’s due date, weight, etc. Sorry to Katie and Manders who thought I’d go early (but you could be right about his size still).

Not ours though.

My friend from college, Julian, just had her baby, one day before her due date on August 16. Congrats Ben and Juli on your little girl, Ellie (short for Eleanor)!

We had a doctor appointment on Friday; everything is looking good and baby is measuring to date. Based on the ultrasound, he’s also on the smaller side, which is wonderful to hear — no 9+ lb. baby for me! We are all excited to see our baby after having not seen him for 19 weeks, but he’s so big we couldn’t really tell what part of him was what. Ah well, we’ll see him soon!

The doctor thinks I’ll go at least to my next appointment, which oddly, is making me more patient waiting for this little guy to show up than if I’m expecting to go into labor every day. It is a bit funny actually: for most of the pregnancy I was worrying if the baby would be coming early and now he’ll probably be late!

…in the sense that we just got one of those weird cars that people either love or hate: the Scion xb.

Yep, we traded in our ‘95 Jetta and got an ‘05 Scion. Bryce captured the sentiment exactly: “we have a new car (crazy!!) and it has a car seat in it (even crazier!).” We’re also those people in that we’ve bought a “family car” instead of something “cool.” Granted, I think the Scion is pretty snazzy as I’m off SUV’s and getting a Honda Accord seems pretty uninspiring. It has 36K miles and has a manual transmission, has lots of interior room but isn’t as big as a boat. One of the passenger doors isn’t locking properly so we need to get that fixed tomorrow, but we’re really happy to have a reliable, newer car that 1) reverses without popping out of gear, 2) doesn’t rattle 3) is a safe car to transport our child and 4) doesn’t need major fixing!

It’s now 10 days until my due date. Totally nuts! I haven’t had many symptoms that would lead me to think that labor is imminent. However, I know one could just wake up and be in labor without any warning signs, so that makes this time pretty exciting. It’s odd; waiting for this child to be born is the only time I can think of where I’m waiting for something major to happen and I don’t know when it will take place. Every year when school started, I knew the date. I obviously knew my wedding date. Okay, I take that back; I didn’t know when Bryce would propose. But I wasn’t waiting around for it either, like I am with childbirth. Two of my good friends, Neyir and Julian are both due on the 17th, just 4 days from today.

If you haven’t guessed already, feel free to play our due date game:

Here’s the picture of Bryce outfitted with his “daddy diaper duty” tool belt, goggles and hard hat.

I had a lovely baby shower yesterday hosted by the ladies of our church. Lots of women showed up and our baby boy has been immensely blessed and spoiled as well with gifts! I was really overwhelmed by everyone’s support and generosity.

Here are a few pics from the event:

This one is of “Bryce’s diaper duty toolbelt.” It’s complete with a helmet, goggles, tongs and necessary implements to safely clean his son’s bottom. My mom has a picture of him wearing it, so I’ll get that up when I can.