August Adventures

Once upon a time, a few friends and I met up at the park down the street. It had been sprinkling, but the storm seemed to be moving away and it was delightfully cool for August. We even responsibly checked the doppler radar to confirm that the storm was moving away from us. All was fine and dandy and the kids enjoyed frolicking in the drizzle. Then the rain. Then they became a bit concerned when it worked its way up to torrential downpour. We were stuck under the gazebo in a full blown monsoon, and the winds were picking up to the point where none of us were actually dry in there anymore, and half of us had tiny babies. Luckily two of us have husbands who work from home that came to rescue us. 

 

Isaac might as well have been straight out of a swimming pool. He thought it was great fun. 

Eventually the clouds parted, making some great afternoon weather for prickly pear picking! Annie is doing gymnastics this year and loves wearing her leotard around. 

I had the tube held in the up position by a rubber band attached to the handle while waiting for it to get up and going. Unfortunately, the rubber band touched the hot metal and melted. This resulted in about a quart of steaming magenta juice spilling all over the kitchen floor and under the stove before Isaac came to alert me of the catastrophe. 

Documenting Isaac's scrabble phase. Breezy, Mimi, and Aaron all played lots of good scrabble games with this guy. It's fun watching preschool kids get so excited about letters- it's one of my favorite phases. 

Annie abruptly started reading chapter books! She could read well by the end of Kindergarten, but would get tired of it and needed emotional support to get through a whole book on her own. Seemingly overnight she decided that she can read much longer books by herself! "Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt" was her first. I try to keep interesting non-fiction books stocked in the car for the kids to read. 

We took a trip up to Madera Canyon with Joanna and Rayne. Ethan and I worked hard to capture this awesome shot. Ethan is such an adventurer. I love it almost all the time, the exception being when he taught Isaac how to use our peach tree to climb onto the back wall. Now he's prone to escaping or inviting himself over to the neighbors back yard (which lacks a peach tree so he can't get back).

Natural waterslide mode!

Wild, wonderful.

Back to School

The first day of school was 10 days after Felix was born. I was so grateful to have my mom in town to help the kids get up and going in the mornings so that I could sleep in with Felix! Aaron waited to take the rest of his paternity leave until after Mimi left. It was glorious having so much help around. 

The school busses come so early! Annie's comes at 6:27 and Elliot's is about 10 minutes later. Annie had Mimi and then Aaron walk her to the bus stop for the first few weeks, but now she happily walks by herself. 

First day of first grade for Annie! She's in Mrs. Vartola's class.

She was brimming with excitement and feeling super cute! She was excited to have some friends from last year in her class and was excited to meet new friends. Her current best friends in her class are named Nellie and Ellie. 

Elliot refused to hold the board and gave me his favorite completely vacant look when I started taking pictures. 

This one's cute at least! Elliot is in Mrs. Leachet's 4th grade class. 

One week later, Isaac started preschool with Miss Leah! He adores it. His favorite day of preschool so far was when they did a playdough restaurant. The kids took turns being the customers, waiters, and chefs. He also had a day when they learned all about the life cycle of frogs. He's been growing leaps and bounds over the past few months!

Isaac rides his strider bike almost a mile to get there every Tuesday and Thursday, usually with the Ashcrafts coming with us. 

Mimi took each of the kids on a date while she was visiting. Isaac's was lunch at Culver's.

Elliot opted for the cheesecake factory.

Annie's date was to Claire's at the Mall. Boy does Mimi know what these kids like!

Overall all of these cute kids are thriving at school!

Felix's First Month

 It is so fun having a baby in the house. Felix never lacks siblings wanting to hold him or begging me to pump some milk so that they can feed him a bottle. 

How handsome is this little dude?

We think he looks a ton like baby Aaron in the picture above. 

Mimi was devastated that Felix thwarted her plans to be here when he was born. She very kindly sent us a charcuterie package with all sorts of scrumptious savory bits to enjoy! Here's our first picture as a family of 6, taken as a selfie while enjoying the charcuterie. Mimi did make it out when Felix was 1 week old and stayed for 3 weeks. More on that later!

It is so tender watching Elliot dote on his baby brother. He quickly made a sign to label the Felix corner, complete with tied on paper clip hooks to hold his accessories. 

What accessories, you might ask? Naturally, every baby needs a pacifier... and a minecraft sword. He also has a wee little dumbbell made out of tin foil to build those baby muscles. 

In addition to being Felix's accessorizer, Elliot is also his chief photographer. Most of the early pictures and videos we have of Felix smiling and eventually laughing were taken by Elliot. 

I took a stab at newborn photography, aided by a ridiculously big bowtie and the cute basket that the charcuterie came in. 

Looking dapper? Or perhaps just confused?

Yeah. Confused. 

He was trying hard to eat this scarf that I put him on. Look how delightful his arm rolls are! 

This one is my favorite

Or maybe this one. He's so stinking cute!

He had a ton of hair at birth, and it kept growing like crazy. Soon his mohawk reached about an inch! 

My friend Becci gifted Felix a set of superhero onesies. The hulk one is our favorite. 

Sometimes being angry wears a little guy out. 

Here's the family that came out to show their love at Felix's baby blessing. Mary's family came down from Gilbert, Mom Blood came to visit for a week, and my Dad flew out to join mom. 

Max and Morgan came from LA to meet baby Felix! They brought their juicer with them, which led to the best afternoon my kids have ever had. They took the kids to store and let them buy all sorts of produce, then took it home to make mix and match juice flavors. Delicious!

Their car ended up having major troubles on the drive here from LA. They had to deal with mechanics the whole time they were here. It turned out that it would cost more than the car was worth to fix it, and it wasn't safe to drive back to LA, so they had to speed buy a car. They found a great deal on a hail damaged car in Marana that they could drive home. I was so impressed that they managed to be fun while dealing with all that stress!

I can't overstate how much joy Felix has brought to our home. We are all so, so in love with him. 

Felix Birth Story

 Felix Joseph Blood was born at 1:15am on July 26, 2024
6 lb 8 oz
18 inches

Now here's the long version with the graphic details:

I started having Braxton Hicks contractions about 10 minutes apart around 1pm on Tuesday the 23rd. I didn't take them too seriously because I had been having them fairly often for a few weeks, and it was still 2 weeks before my due date. I was dilated to a 3, but that was not unusual for me. Whenever the contractions got closer, I would lie down, and it would space them out to about 20 minutes apart. I was supposed to go to the hospital once they hit 6 minutes apart. 

This went on all evening. The contractions got to about 8 minutes apart when I was trying to cook dinner, so Aaron tagged me out so I could lie down. I decided to go to book club that night figuring I could lounge on Jill's couch as well as my own. Whenever I stood up, I would trigger a contraction, but then they would space out again. Every hour or so I would get a painful contraction, but most of them were minor. Before going to bed, I texted Joanna and Rayne asking them to keep their phones off silent just in case they needed to come sleep at our house and be there for the kids when they woke up. 

I slept for an hour, then was woken up by a painful contraction. I started timing the contractions around 11:30pm. They ranged from 8 to 15 minutes apart, but were all painful now. At 1:00am, I woke up Aaron saying that we should go in because of how intense the contractions were even though they weren't meeting the 6 minute criteria. He got up and started grabbing chargers and toiletries to throw them in the bag. I stood up and immediately got hit with the most intense contraction yet- and this one didn't stop. I was in a non-stop contraction until the baby popped out. We both started calling Joanna... then Rayne... then Joanna again... then Stephen and Claudia... no one would answer. I managed to walk down the stairs to the car, and we decided to drive to Stephen's house two minutes away. Aaron pounded on Joanna and Rayne's window to wake them up and send them to our house. Apparently their phones were turned on, but they are just very deep sleepers. By this point I was bracing myself between the handle above the door and the center console and offering up some very panicked prayers. It hadn't occurred to me yet that we might not make it to the hospital. I wasn't thinking anything very coherently at this point- but at the same time, I wasn't screaming or feeling like I might black out. I figured it was still a long way to go to get the baby actually out. 

My water broke as we left Stephen's neighborhood. A minute later, I told Aaron to pull over because the head was coming out. Aaron turned off onto Camino Hopa and sprinted around to the passenger side where I was sitting. I had pulled down my pants to reveal a whole head by the time he opened my door. He was face down, and I remember seeing a head full of hair. Aaron slid my chair back, grabbed Felix's head, and caught him as Felix slid on out. It was over in a matter of seconds. It was 15 minutes from the time I got out of bed to when we were holding him in the car. 

Felix was crying in a healthy kind of way. The umbilical cord wasn't wrapped around anything. I held him close on my skin, which was actually a bit tricky because of how slippery he was. Aaron and I looked at each other with wide eyes and had this funny moment where we realized that everything was fine, and we had no idea what to do next. I remember saying, "I feel a lot better now!"

Aaron called my doctor's emergency hotline. They recommended calling an ambulance, but that seemed unnecessary. I could tell that neither Felix or I was in an emergency condition and that we could make to a hospital just fine. We asked if we should go to the hospital with the birthing center up in Tucson, but they advised us to go to the Sahuarita ER first to get checked out since the full hospital was a half hour away. While Aaron was figuring all this out, I gave the umbilical cord an experimental tug, and the whole placenta plopped out. We stopped by our house to grab another towel and then drove to the ER. Aaron ran in and told them that his wife had a baby in the car and that we were out in the parking lot. They came out with a wheelchair for me, and I awkwardly transferred myself with my lap full of baby and placenta to the wheelchair. They checked us out, clamped and cut the umbilical cord, and got us into a state where we could drive ourselves up to the normal hospital. I was able to walk out of the ER, which was pretty amazing to me - I had epidurals for all my other babies and am used to not being able to walk for quite a while. 

The first picture taken of Felix!

Aaron and Felix in the Sahuarita ER

We checked into the hospital and went through all the same initial checks. I was able to talk my way out of getting an IV. The nurse asked if she could get me a snack around 5:00 am, and I realized I was STARVING, and also that I no longer had gestational diabetes! Cocoa Puffs Cereal has never tasted so good. 

I was hoping to convince the staff to discharge me that evening if everything looked good, but unfortunately they require babies to stay for 24 hours for monitoring. It ended up being way longer than that. Time is so weird at the hospital. We kept getting woken up by nurses checking on me or Felix, but then when I was eager to have the last people come check us out so that we could be on our way, it took hours. Aaron and I passed the time video calling family members and texting "guess who had a baby in the car at 1am" to people. My mom had by far the best response. She was at Aunt Audrey's house getting ready for Alpine and was going to fly to our house on Aug 1 to be there the week before the due date. I knew she already had a migraine from travelling and stressing over the women's retreat at Alpine, so I knew I had to break things to her slowly. I texted her saying "Hey, call me when you wake up. I have an update!" She called thinking I had new logistics about the induction that I was working on scheduling. I had the camera pointed at Felix. She started hyperventilating and generally freaking out that she wasn't there to help us, and this was before she knew the car part of the story! She wisely sat down with Dad and braced for the story. Her gasps and general reactions were priceless. She also lobbied hard for us to change his name to Brigham once she realized he was born on Pioneer Day. 

For those who are wondering, Aaron did a wonderful job cleaning the car. He went out in the hospital parking lot and used up an entire package of baby wipes to get the worst of it before it could bake in the heat. He worked some magic on it when he went home, and now the passenger seat is visibly cleaner than the driver side! 

Aaron ended up going home that night to be with our kids since there wasn't much to be done at the hospital. He brought the kids with him in the morning thinking that we would all drive home together (in theory, they didn't let us leave yet). It was a great family bonding moment.

Annie's first time holding Felix. She cannot get enough of him. I frequently have to banish her from touching Felix so that he can nap. 

Elliot volunteered to be late to pool party day at summer camp to get to meet his little brother. Elliot is SO sweet with Felix. He loves watching him and commentating on his little faces and adding sound effects when Felix is flailing around. 

Isaac was quite concerned that Felix was trying to eat his pikachu shirt. They have since become buddies. 

Aaron took Elliot and Isaac but left Annie with me to have a fun hospital date. We obsessed over Felix, shared my lunch, and watched some shows on the iPad until they finally discharged us around 1pm. 

I'm writing this a week after Felix was born. Reflecting back on it, this birth story is the one that every pregnant woman is terrified of, but I think that emergency C-sections or bad reactions to epidurals are both worse and more common. I am very grateful that there were no complications and also that it was the middle of the night so that I didn't have an audience of friendly neighbors there for the delivery. My recovery has been much faster than it was with the other births. Overall, I feel much less traumatized than perhaps I ought to be. 

We had to wait and struggle for a couple years to get pregnant with Felix. He seems like such a gift! We are already all so in love with the newest addition to our family. 

The Rest of Summer

With only a couple of weeks to spare, we finally settled on a name for our baby number four! We made the kids play hangman to figure it out. 

 

Felix Joseph Blood. We settled on Joseph right away- It is Aaron's middle name and you can also hit so many strong individuals from every book of scripture. Felix was much harder. I campaigned hard for Calvin, but Aaron vetoed that one when he realized it meant "little bald one." Felix was another one that Aaron vetoed after being the one to suggest it originally because it sounds kind of like "he licks blood." We had an ever expanding list of names we were mulling over. Aaron kept generating new candidates by chatting with AI and inputting all the qualifications for what we generally like in names. Felix kept coming up, but Aaron kept being against it for several weeks. I think it was the Knells who finally convinced him that no one is going to call him "he licks" instead of Felix. I'm so glad we got to a name that we both love instead of settling for something that neither of us hate!

I managed to haul my very pregnant self to a few outings for the kids. Here we are actually bowling this time! It was the most high tech bowling alley I have been too. Each player takes a selfie and the screens put your face into the animations while you bowl. 

Elliot and Annie love drawing faces on watermelons. For a bit we also had faces on our bananas. 

Big fruit heads over here

Elliot got really into paper games for a while. Mini mini golf is a fun one where you flick your pencil through obstacle courses you draw. We also have game where you fold paper in half and use the led to fold cannonball dots onto the other player's spaceships. 

Isaac and I got to hang out while the older kids went to Be Well summer camp at the clubhouse. 

Annie's group was finding plastic bugs hidden in the field with those little kid bug catcher kits. Isaac and I were walking by when a little boy came up to the leader and said "I caught a real bug!" It turned out to be a TARANTULA HAWK which is a type of wasp with a sting that registers at level 4 on the Schmidt pain index scale. They are not aggressive, but definitely not a bug you want to be handling!

Isaac and I did a mini dinosaur camp to have something special for him. We read pages from our dinosaur encyclopedia, then listened to songs about the dinos we were learning about. I was pretty proud of this stegosaurus craft.  

Knells, Raleigh Edition

We stayed with the Knells for a few days before and after the beach trip! They are some of our favorite people in the world. It was great getting to see their new house in Raleigh and getting a taste of their life there. They live in a beautiful community where everything is so lush and green! We got to go to their farmer's market, for a short hike, and to the pool. 

 

These girls spent the first day ignoring each other and whining about being bored, but eventually hit it off. They boys were content playing board games and trashing the toy room over and over. 

Alexandra took us to some really cool sunflower fields! It was a huge park area with lots to walk around and see.

Unfortunately, my body was very unhappy with the proposed "walking around" activity. I started having a lot of braxton hicks contractions that were getting really close together whenever I was walking. I caught my breath on the hammocks and then had to chill on the Knell's couch for the rest of the day to slow things down. I was 36 weeks pregnant and having the baby 4 weeks early in North Carolina was a daunting proposal. I am so glad we dodged that bullet!

I wish we had taken a group picture! Thanks for hosting us and feeding us yummy food!