Dancing King

Our Elliot has some sweet moves.

Here's his YMCA at 4 weeks old recorded by his awesome Aunt Joanna:

He was also good at "nodding your head like yeah" and "moving your hips like yeah" to Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA," but in what is probably my biggest failure of motherhood, I didn't get a video. He hasn't fallen soundly asleep on my lap like that for a while.

Now he dances while he's awake! He gets all his moves from his dad. These next two videos were taken at 7 weeks. 

Ok, this next one has nothing to do with dancing, but it is pretty darn cute. We put the toys onto his little chair for the first time and he loves them! It's also great because the chair rocks itself when he kicks.

Seriously.

1 Month

At 1 month, Elliot measured 22.5 inches and 9 lb 3 oz. He still doesn't weigh as much as I did when I was born. My poor mother.

The many faces of young Elliot

Tummy Time

Elliot sure is a sweet little boy. He still sleeps a lot, but not really at regular times. He gives great cuddles and is starting to smile! He's pretty portable- driving in the car puts him to sleep, and he will usually stay asleep for a couple hours no matter how much we toss around his carseat. Those things are CUMBERSOME.

The First Weeks of this Parenthood Thing

We celebrated Elliot's 2 week birthday today by taking him on his first walk!

Yes, he slept through the entire thing.

These past 2 weeks have flown by. Elliot is awake more now than he was the first few days, but he still sleeps almost all the time. When he's awake, he mostly just looks around with those big ol' eyes of his. When he does cry, it is usually only for a few seconds, then he acts like it tired him out, and he falls back asleep. It's quite adorable.

I thought that the hardest part about adjusting to motherhood would be the lack of sleep and dealing with a baby that never stops fussing. Neither of those things have been a real issue- Elliot will sleep for 2-4 hours at a time, so I get in the sleep I need. I haven't slept through the night since halfway through my pregnancy, so I'm pretty adjusted to waking up in the night. However, the physical recovery on my part was much more intense than I had thought. It took a week and a half before I could sit normally, and I still get sore and uncomfortable pretty easily. Aaron was incredible (per usual) at taking care of me. There were a couple of particularly rough days where I didn't leave the upstairs level of the house leaving Aaron to do all the hunting and gathering. He wins the 2014 Husband of the Year award if you ask me.

Christmas was a quiet affair with just me, Aaron, and our little 5 day old baby. The Hays gave us a cute Christmas onesie and we put a little bow on Elliot's head and did a little photoshoot with our little Christmas present. We had ham, green and red jello, surprise rolls, and stuffing for dinner.

Once again, he slept through the entire thing.

We also got to video chat with my brother Max who is serving a mission. He is as eccentric and enthusiastic as ever. He told us that he had gained a bunch of weight, so we made plenty of fat jokes.

Mom: Do you like the ties I sent you?

Max: No... We aren't allowed to wear skinny ties in this mission. 

Me: Are you sure they aren't regular ties that just look skinny because you're so fat?

I was particularly proud of that one.

The next day my mom came! She was SOOOO excited to meet him. They hit it off quickly and she hardly ever put him down. She left her mark in two major ways:

1. Aaron and I are now completely hooked on The Walking Dead.

What better way to welcome a child into the world than by watching countless zombies hacked to bits? But seriously. I don't know why I resisted watching this show for so long- it's AWESOME.

2. We are the beneficiaries of three famous Kim Johnson Projects. We asked her to help paint the baby's room and told her not to get any more decorations when she went to Target because we already had super cute things from my baby shower. Of course she ignored me and came back with 5 options for additional wall hangings. Mom, I love you, but you are over the top sometimes.

One of those panoramic shots

This "Alphabet Modge Podged onto cute squares" project happened sometime in the middle of the night while I was sleeping 

Squares from the baby shower (Thanks to all involved!) and a nifty shelf for diaper stuff

On top of the super cute nursery, she also painted and hung a quilt in our guest room and hung a ton of frames in our stairwell. She really is a wonder woman!

Melony was awesome enough to come over and take some newborn photos. She had super cute props and I'm really excited to see how they turn out! Elliot was awake and pretty cooperative, except for the part where he peed on her blanket. Sorry again, Melony!

The sneak preview

Elliot refuses to let his arms be swaddled. I like this picture because he had his hand next to his eye like this in the last ultrasound I had. This kid LOVES his hands!

Welcome Elliot!

The stats for people who don't want to read this whole thing:

Elliot Henry Blood

Dec 20, 4:06 AM 

(Due date was Dec 17)

7 lb 4 oz

20 inches long
Really, Really Cute

Anybody who has talked to me in the past few weeks should know how antsy I was for Elliot to come. I found out the week before Thanksgiving (36 weeks pregnant) that I was dilated 2 cm and my doctor told me to take it easy to make sure that I made it to at least 37 weeks. He was pretty convinced that I was going to have the baby early. I made it to 37 weeks... then 38 weeks... 39 weeks... 40 weeks... by then I was dilated to 3 cm and about 70% effaced. My due date was Dec 17 but I was absolutely convinced that I wouldn't make it that long. Elliot had dropped quite a bit as well and I was really waddling around. I wasn't crazy uncomfortable like I know many women are during their last few weeks of pregnancy, but I was really hoping for a birthday as far away from Christmas as possible. 

I kept working up until the day I had the baby, which made some of my co-workers VERY nervous. Apparently there was a woman who had a baby in a Raytheon bathroom about 4 years ago. The fire department and her cubicle mate delivered the baby then they helicoptered them to the hospital. One co-worker in particular told me this story multiple times and tried to convince me that it would be worth it to have such a cool birth story. I disagreed, but we did have fun making extravagant plans on what we would do if I had the baby in the factory. My favorite one involved me giving birth in a missile container while a forklift carted me out to meet up with the ambulance/helicopter (people were really fixated on there being a helicopter) and then swaddling the babe in ESD smocks. Fortunately I did not go into labor while I was at work and people got to give me crap when I showed up to work every day, even after my due date passed. I could have gone on leave whenever I wanted to, but the idea of sitting at home waiting to go into labor sounded pretty boring to me. I was also closer to both Aaron and the hospital at work. 

I started having contractions around 10:00 p.m. on Friday night, right after we got into bed. This was December 19, 2 days after my due date. My doctor had said that I should wait to go into the hospital until the contractions worked their way down to 6 minutes apart and stayed at that frequency for at least an hour. Mine were only 3 minutes apart right from the start. However, I wasn't sure if it was the real deal or not because they weren't quite as intense as I had expected them to be. I could still walk and talk through them. I decided we should be play it safe and woke Aaron up (yes, he was already fast asleep after being in bed for just a few minutes) and told him we should go to the hospital just in case. I figured worse case scenario would be sent home, and I didn't want to risk having a baby in the car or some 7-Eleven parking lot if we waited longer. We threw some last minute stuff together and headed out. I was surprisingly calm through all this.

By the time we got to the hospital around 11:30, the contractions were more intense and I was becoming convinced that it was go time. We got all checked in, and sure enough I was dilated to 6 cm. The contractions were still coming every 2 to 3 minutes apart. They got me hooked up on an IV (which was horrible- I hate needles) and sent me to the nice labor room. The IV fluid was super cold and made me shake all over.  Once I got the bag of IV fluid in me, they could give me the epidural. Having the epidural put in wasn't the greatest feeling, but it was definitely worth it. I can't really imagine going through labor without one. I was able to get in an hour and a half nap in before I woke up feeling the contractions again around 2:30. I called the nurse back in and she pushed the magic 'no pain' button. Apparently I was progressing so fast that the epidural had a hard time keeping up. I was now dilated to 9 cm.

The nurse checking on me more frequently after that, and pretty soon she said it was time to start pushing. The doctor on call was with another woman at the time, so the nurse and Aaron help me through the first few pushes. The nurse then left to go get the doctor and I didn't know what I was supposed to do, so I just held back the urge to push for a while. It wasn't that strong anyway because I was all numbed up. The doctor came in after not too long and got all set up. It went pretty quickly after that. I think I was only pushing for about 15 minutes, including the pushes before the doctor got there. In retrospect, it was too fast because I ended up getting 3rd degree tears. I didn't know it until she started stitching me up because I couldn't feel anything. Have I mentioned that epidurals are awesome?

I had spent a lot of time thinking about what I would say when I saw it for the first time. When I actually saw him I don't think I said anything at all. I just looked at him in awe when they put him on my chest and toweled him off. He was so TINY. 

First picture of the little guy. I forget what his head measurement was, but they said it was in the 95%. The rest of him was in the 60%. Hence the rather unfortunate tearing.

Itty Bitty Feet

Heart melting

Hello World!

We stayed at the hospital until Sunday afternoon because we had to wait for all the various people that have to get us to sign things before we could check out. We didn't mind hanging out- my bed was super comfy and we thought the food was good. We all got caught up on sleep and it was actually pretty relaxing. Elliot has been a healthy little champ since day 1. He was slightly jaundiced, but that went away by his first appointment a couple days later. We are absolutely in love with our little guy!

First family picture. Elliot was asleep and rather floppy.

Being Pregnant & Stuff

The transcendent Kate Munson told me last week that this whole thing isn't real unless there's a baby bump pic online, so here it is:

This was probably one of the most awkward pictures I've ever taken. What the heck am I supposed to do with my arms to demonstrate my pregnant-ness? 

I'm 28 weeks along now. To save you the math, that's a bit past the 6 month mark. The little fella (yes he's a boy) is due on December 17 and I'm all sorts of excited. 

The ultrasound was by far the most fun part of being pregnant. The pictures look kind of freaky, but watching it on the screen live and seeing the baby move around was way cool and I couldn't stop smiling, which was an issue because it lasted for a long time and my face got all sore. 

The ultrasound tech had a long list of all the snapshots she had to take, and one of them was the baby's open hands with all the fingers. Baby Blood, being filled with his parents' rebellious genes, refused to cooperate. He had his hands in fists whenever she tried to look at them. So she started bouncing the wand on my belly when she had the right frame up and he got all startled and opened up his hands in surprise. It was pretty much just like this:

It turns out the list of "names Aaron likes" and "names Ashley likes" don't intersect all that much- we are both kinda picky. For a while my brother Max texted me a daily name suggestion to help us out, including these gems:

Molar Susan Blood 

(that was the day before he got his wisdom teeth removed)

Anthill Eugene Blood

Compsognathus Carlile Blood

Albatross Curse Blood

Quiznos Lee Blood

Quiznos was by far our favorite, so we called him that for a while until we picked out an actual name. I won't be surprised if his Johnson Aunts and Uncles will keep calling him Quiznos after he's born. Also, why did Quiznos ever make this commercial? It's like they embraced the fact that their subs are gross, which seems like a poor marketing strategy. 

Since we would have to be incredibly cruel parents to name our firstborn after the worst sandwich chain in existence, we made a list of names we both liked and started using them at random to try them out. Aaron's favorite was Elliot, and he was way better at our little game than I was. It got to the point where the name just stuck. The moment I knew for sure was when I was saying my nightly prayer asking for the little guy to be growing like he should and I called him "Elliot" instead of "the baby" for the first time- it was stuck in my head and would be weird to change at that point. So Elliot Henry Blood it is!

I'm very fortunate in that I haven't been very sick. I'd get a little queasy sometimes, but nothing compared to what I know a lot of women have to deal with. Early on I had a lot of food aversions and couldn't eat a lot of random things that I used to love, so I actually lost some weight. Luckily that only lasted for a few months. The only thing I really craved was red meat in the form of hamburgers and canned ravioli. Lately I've been getting queasy in the evenings, and I'm learning about the joys of heartburn. All very manageable with modern marvels like Tums.  

I'm also fortunate to live in an area with lots of young families- I've gotten TONS of hand me down clothes from people at church (THANK YOU if any of you are reading this- you know who you are) and I scored some great yardsale deals on a stroller, carseat, crib, and other assorted items. I love getting ready for the baby to come and can't wait to meet him!