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.

A Very Krusty Thanksgiving

Better late than never...

KRISTY TUNG CAME FOR THANKSGIVING!!!! It was just plain awesome having her around. I hadn't seen her since she left on her mission almost 2 years ago. It was great having a really great friend around and catching up on each other's lives.

Krust enjoyed seeing the native plants probably more than anyone else. "Hi, I'm Kristy, and I like Flowers..." haha. We went on a walk on the nature trail by our house and to the Desert Museum. I was concerned about going into labor while we were out and about. It added a layer of excitement and danger to our activities. Luckily the little guy didn't cause any trouble.

Saguaro, pregnant belly (it looked very different when I turned sideways), and friendship! This is on the wilderness trail by our house

Chewing on those things like farmers do 

This series of pictures from the Desert Museum makes me incredibly happy, especially the last picture where you can see that she was surrounded by random people and kids wanting a turn in the turtle

We spent some time playing Age of Empires. Ok, we spent a lot of time playing Age of Empires. Aaron won every time, even when Krust and I were on a team. I attribute this equally to Aaron's great skills and my complete lack of skills- I was holding team Krustash back big time. Video games were not part of my childhood so I lack the video game instincts that other people seem to have.

Nerrrrrrds

We invaded Aaron's sister-in-law's family for Thanksgiving. The Mikesells were incredibly hospitable despite the fact that most people had no idea who we were since we aren't actually related to them. The food was incredibly delicious, and I had my first exposure to deep fried turkey. There were also 4 types of mashed potatoes and more pies than I could count.

The Mikesell's backyard with classy lights

Also of note: Aaron and I won an athletic competition! The Mikesells have a homemade ladder golf set and we won the tournament. Our strategy was to get our opponents to lower their guard by completely missing the ladder most of the time and then have some incredibly lucky rounds at the end. 

Stock image of ladder golf

I hereby end this post with a picture of one of my favorite humans wearing my halloween costume.

Krusty Krang

Babies & Log Cabins

Last week we bought a dresser off of craigslist for the baby. This ended a months long saga of me being disproportionally stressed about not having a dresser for all the baby's clothes and a place to put the diaper changing pad. Aaron, being the rational man that he is, kept saying that I should hold off until a good deal popped up. After checking Craigslist and the Facebook yardsale pages daily for way longer than my normal attention span, I became convinced that we should just shell out and buy one in a store. The idea of not having a dresser ready to go when the baby came was a huge deal for me.

Around this time I got an email from my Aunt Cecelia who is serving a mission in the Family History Library. She sent out a link to a digitized copy of a family history book. I read through the stories of my not-so-distant ancestors and came to the conclusion that I'm spoiled rotten. I'm going to share some stories about my Grandma, Great-Grandma, and Great-Great-Grandma from when they were at the same stage of life as me.

Great-Great-Grandma Anna Sophia
Anna Sophia and Gustaf Johnson were Swedish Immigrants who settled in the Idaho frontier. They had 10 kids. Here's some excerpts from a history written by my Great-Grandpa, Gustaf Henry Johnson.

"Early in June Gustaf received word that a son had been
born to him. With fifty dollars in his pocket, he hastened back to Hyde
Park. The child was named Gustaf Henry. He was born in a lean-to
at the home of Sam Seamons, a kind friend who cared for the mother
and the baby. The family moved into their home and remained in
Hyde Park until the spring of 1887."

After that, Gustaf moved his little family to Idaho to try farming with his brother, Olaf. Let me say here that I have always loved that I have ancestors named Gustaf and Olaf.

"The brothers hauled logs from the mountains and built a cabin for Gustaf
in the vicinity of the present location of the Archer (Idaho) Meeting
House. The door was of cottonwood lumber which swelled and shrank
according to the humidity. The cabin consisted of one large room
divided by "factory cloth" into kitchen and bedroom. Poles served for
roof and ceiling and were covered with straw and dirt. One opening
in the kitchen and one opening in the bedroom covered with canvas
served for the windows. The bedroom floor was of cottonwood lumber;

one-half of the kitchen had a board floor, the rest was dirt." 

The farm thing flopped pretty hard that year, so Gustaf travelled to a slightly bigger town where he lived in shoeshop and worked for the winter. Anna Sophia stayed behind in the cabin with baby Henry. It hit -40 degrees a few times that winter and Anna only had a straw mattress, a blanket, and two quilts. She worried that the baby would die if he got uncovered during the night.

Dang.

This next part that Great-Grandpa Henry wrote is pretty great. This is talking about how his younger siblings were born. 

"...The matter of being born

in those days was a comparatively simple affair. When the time drew

nigh, the little mare was hitched to the cart and was rushed down the

road as though headed for a fire. Neighbors always had a way of knowing

that a new arrival was expected. A Mrs. Stevens from Jarnigan and

a Mrs. Cook who lived at Eagle Rock were the midwives who served

the family during these years. The midwife came and performed the

essential delivery and came back at intervals during the next two weeks

for the follow up work. The fee for the complete service was $10.00,

but even $10.00 was real money in those days. Usually Father did the

essential chores about the house and the neighbor women also came in

to help. It is surprising how precocious young children were even in

those days. We figured out where babies came from. It was very simple.

The midwife brought them in her black satchel."

Great-Grandma Esther
Esther grew up in a pretty well off family in Sweden. Gustaf Henry met her when he was there serving his mission, and she moved to America to marry him a few years later. They were married in 1910 and moved into a 2 room house where they had 3 of their 8 children. They then moved to a farmhouse where they frequently had to house hired farmhands. Esther had to feed the six to ten men on top of taking care of her kids. She also had to chop all the wood needed to cook, clean, and warm the house. They did eventually get running water, electricity, a telephone, and a furnace in the 1920's... but then the Great Depression hit. They had 7,000 sacks of potatoes that were completely worthless- no farmers could sell any of their produce. They gave the potatoes away to neighbors to use as pig feed and had to sell their remodeled house and move to a smaller farm with no electricity, well water, bathrooms, or furnace. Esther's 8th child was 1 year old when that happened.






Grandma Johnson
Grandma Johnson had her first two kids while Grandpa was serving in the Air Force during WWII. He was transferred all over the country every few months and they constantly thought that he was going to be deployed to Europe, even though he never was. Grandma lived near wherever Grandpa was stationed when she could and lived with relatives the rest of the time. They even lived in a converted chicken coop for a bit after Uncle Jerry was born. Grandma was living with her in-laws when Aunt Jean was born. Grandpa wasn't able to come see them until 10 days after she was born, and was only able to stay for a few weeks before heading back to the base.

Grandma and Grandpa with baby Jerry

That level of instability and uncertainty is hard for me to imagine. I am quite settled with a house and more than what we need to be comfortable. I am quite attached to my Aaron and imagining him only being able to see me and Elliot every few months is saddening. He would miss so much! Grandpa wasn't in the delivery room for the first two kids, and had to pretend to be an assisting doctor to get into the delivery room for their third kid. I'm glad that we live in a day and age where the expectations for fathers have changed and Aaron will able to be with me every step of the way.

My dad was born (kid #7) after a particularly bad winter. They had blizzard after blizzard and the roads would get blocked with snow. Grandma kept having false labor pains and would have to make calls to get the snowplow to come and clear the road to the farm so that they could get to the hospital, only to get sent home. That happened three times before my dad was finally born in March. Yet another reason to be grateful for Arizona weather...


All of this really puts things into perspective. "I have so many cute baby outfits in bags instead of a dresser" doesn't really seem like a hardship anymore. We are truly living in a world with comforts that are absurd when you take a step back. A lot of things that I thought of as "needs" in order to get ready for the baby really are not that important. Does that mean that we should get rid of all our earthly possessions? NO! But I for one am going strive to be more grateful for all the things I have.

Dead Batteries & Minecraft

Jonny and Megan's family have been in town for a few weeks now, and we have stolen them away from Megan's parents a few times.

We planned it so that they could borrow our second car while they were in town. Unfortunately, when they got all the kids loaded up and ready to go back to Grandma and Grandpa's, our car wouldn't start. Luckily our friend/neighbor Doug came over to save us with his diagnostic skills and ratchet set. We ended up having to completely replace the battery, which meant that we had Seth and Catherine captive for 5 hours longer than anticipated (Megan and Aaron 2.0 escaped in the other car). Catherine wanted to feel included with all the tool people, so she grabbed a tape measurer and informed us that our car was 2 miles long and 5 dollars wide.

Despite the late bedtime that we inflicted upon them, they agreed to come back and spend the night this past weekend. Aaron spent the weekend fulfilling Catherine's every whim, most of which involved throwing her in the air. He was sad when she had to go to sleep. I got the Seth Blood Minecraft Crash Course, which was a true delight.

Turns out that Carcassonne is like real world Minecraft. Who knew that there was a war mode to this typically mild-mannered board game? I love how creative this kid is.

I'm glad that we had the kids as an excuse to check out the kids corner at the clubhouse. We rode the little train thing around and went putt putt golfing. Well, Jonny and Aaron duked it out on the putt putt course while Catherine played in the sandpit, Seth pretended to be a minecraft miner, and I sat on a bench. Erry'body had a great time.

Catherine cheesing for Uncle Aaron on the clubhouse train. We failed to get a picture where you could actually see the train.

Blood Brothers- kings of the playground

They have this cool digger contraption that Seth was quite enthusiastic about.

Not sure how functional or ergonomic it was, but that's ok.

TMNT Halloween

Last year, Aaron and I had lame last-minute Halloween costumes. We wanted to be more ambitious this year and do something clever with the whole pregnant thing. Aaron came up with the genius idea of Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Krang is this evil alien dude that looks like a brain with a face and arms. He built a robot suit and hangs out in the cockpit in the stomach. He works with Shredder to take over the world and defeat those pesky Turtles.

Many cardboard boxes and a roll of metallic duct tape later, we had costumes!

Photo Cred to Melony Hall

Had to include this picture because Aaron forgot the hand spikes at home

These pictures are kind of funny... you can't tell that my belly is pushing the Krang out several inches.

The response at the church trunk-or-treat party: A three-year-old girl that usually loves me ran away with a disgusted look on her face. A couple guys in their late 20's/early 30's recognized us and gave us props. Everyone else was impressed that we had obviously put forth substantial effort even though they had no clue what we were. All in all I would call it a success. It was more fun than I thought it would be to put the costumes together- I'm normally not crafty.

Halloween itself was fun. We didn't get as many trick-or-treaters as we thought we would, probably because the houses at the beginning of the block aren't finished yet so our street isn't as promising from a candy per distance walked standpoint. We went over to the House of Hays to get rid of the rest of our candy and watch Ghostbusters.

SNAKE! IN THE GARDEN! Thought you ought to know...

10 points if you know that reference! Here's a hint: replace "snake" with "troll" and "garden" with "dungeon." Answer: Harry Potter book one. Quirrel says it. At this point I'm ashamed if you didn't get it. Go read all 7 books. Start right now.

Back to the point of this post. WE FOUND A SNAKE IN OUR GARDEN! Like I mentioned in a previous post, we ended up with quite the tomato plant jungle because our coat hanger cages weren't actually strong enough to hold up the plants and we didn't do any sort of pruning. It got to the point where they were flopping over and smushing our other plants, so we decided to intervene.

We gathered up some sticks. This is substantially more difficult here than it is back East. We had to walk along the nearby wilderness trail for a while to find sticks that were the size we wanted that weren't infested with termites. We got to work using the sticks to prop up the plants.

BUT THEN!

Aaron pulled aside a bunch of tomato branches, and from where I was standing, I could see a snake! So I did a little yelp and yanked Aaron back. The snake was curled up and apparently asleep- he wasn't flicking his tongue out or anything. It wasn't a huge snake, but it was hard to tell with him all curled up. I wish we had thought to take a picture, but we were filled with battle rage. Aaron grabbed some gloves and our big shovel and I held the branches out of the way. Aaron had a pretty clear shot and the snake was kinda cornered. And asleep. So we felt pretty good about our chances of not being bitten. If it had been awake, we probably would have called the fire department to come get him.

I'll spare you the details of the battle. It was rather one-sided and ended with the snake half buried. It did hiss at us a little after we thought it was already dead, but a few more whacks put an end to that. Aaron moved the dirt around to bury him the rest of the way.

We never got a good look at it's tail- it was covered while he was asleep, and we didn't feel the need to dig him up enough to look at it after the fact. Going off of the coloring, it could have been a rattle snake, but we can't say for sure. There are some other non-venomous snakes with similar patterning. Aaron prefers to think that it was a non-venomous one so that he can tell himself that we don't have to worry about the snakes' brothers and sisters lurking nearby. I get a kick out of thinking that we fought off one of these guys:

Lesson learned- don't stick your hands into places that you can't see!

Garden: Year 1

One of the aspects of home ownership that we were most excited about was that we could start a garden. We made an attempt at container gardening in our apartment, but everything died because 

A) we ignored the fact that we were starting in the heat of summer  

B) we used the cheapest soil that Walmart sold, and 

C) the neighbor's cat might have been peeing on the plants. 

Ok, that last theory is completely unsupported. The neighbor had a very nice one-eyed cat that probably never peed on our plants.

ANYWAYS, we did some research about planting times when we moved into the house and started seeds for tomato, bell pepper, lettuce, and basil in January. We had some of the cheapo potting soil leftover from our previous gardening attempt, so we put that in egg cartons and planted some seeds. 

We also got some green onion from the grocery store and stuck it in a cup of water in the window. Anyone who isn't doing this already should do it- you cut back the green leaves and they just grow back over and over. No dirt required- just a cup of water and light.

We quickly lost faith in the egg cartons. You could tell by looking at the soil that it was no bueno- it was super coarse, almost mulch-like. So we shelled out a whopping $7 for a seed starter kit. It came with a tray and bunch of these poker chip looking disks that expand when you soak them in water. They are on the left in the picture below. We moved the operation to the study, where we set up the "Germination Station." We eventually moved the lamp to clip onto the window blinds and used fishing line to tie it up to a good angle for more consistent lighting. Yes, we are huge nerds. Germination station was Aaron's favorite place in the house while it was there- he checked up on our little plantskees multiple times a day. 

We got a few sprouts out of the egg cartons, but none of them grew more than a centimeter or so. Also Aaron dropped one of them on the floor. It's a good thing we got the soil pellet things going when we did. They were super convenient and almost all of them sprouted and grew to a pretty good size. 

We failed at pictures for the next few months... this next one is from early August. The vines sprawling out of the bed are cantaloupe. We planted them from seed straight in the ground in May and they did GREAT with the Arizona heat. Unfortunately we lost half of the melons because they all ripened super fast while we were on vacation and were rotten when we got back. The ones that we did get to eat were super sweet and delicious. They had a much thinner rind than the ones you buy in the store. 

The vines crawling up the wall are grapes. We got a cutting from someone at church and felt pretty silly planting it because it looked like just a stick. No roots or anything. 

And that brings us today! We are getting our second wave of tomatoes. We made some tomato cages out of coat hangers, but they weren't strong enough and we now have a super dense tomato jungle. We didn't ever prune them back and planted them fairly close together. We'll get actual cages next year. 

The bell peppers didn't do nearly as well as the tomatoes- the heat was harder on them. But we have gotten a few small peppers, many many tomatoes, and unlimited green onion. We had some lower quality spinach and lettuce earlier in the summer. It didn't do all that great. We also have 3 oranges growing on our dwarf navel orange tree. What a cutie. 

The grape vines are doing pretty well, even though we didn't get any grapes this year. We survived an onslaught of Grape Leaf Skeletonizers. It's an apt name for these cute little caterpillars. They REALLY like grape leaves, but didn't touch any of our other plants. We would go out there and kill 50-100 of them per day for a good week. They would have completely annihilated the whole vine if we hadn't fought them off. They disappeared a few weeks ago and the vine has made a comeback. 

RUTHLESS MONSTERS. We really would find that many under a single leaf.  

We planted our winter seeds at the beginning of October. We have beets, carrots, and swiss chard sprouts. SeedsNow.com sent us a free sample of Kale seeds so we put those in too, but the jury is still out on whether or not any of them will make it. We didn't bother with the Germination Station this time because the weather is nice. We'll see how it goes!

Aaron's Graphic Design Flair

Aaron gets full credit for the awesome blog title picture block in the header. Most people know that Aaron is great at fixing computers, but his talents also extend into the realm of photoshop. My first exposure was this incredible calendar he made for my birthday with these pictures:

 Note my cameo as a Bond girl in this next one:

Basically 2011 was a great year. Aaron Blood = star of every action movie ever. Plus SpongeBob. 

Aaron also has a long history of making awesome cards in Flash. Here are some winners:

 My "Welcome Back"card after I had been home for the summer while we were dating:

Classic birthday card. Aaron used one of those sites that mashes your pictures together to show what your kids will look like. Hopefully Elliot will be less blurry. 

Valentine's Day cards from the past two years:

Then there is the category of "Pictures that Aaron made because someone left themselves signed onto facebook on his laptop." The lucky recipients of Aaron Profile Pictures include my brothers and the acclaimed Palmer Dickson.

The Blake Johnson Selection:

The base pictures for these next two were taken from the website "Hot Guys with Baby Animals." They have a calendar. 

In conclusion, my husband is awesome.