Easter Weekend Pictures

Getting More Alert

This coming Sunday Vivia will be two months old. Pretty hard to believe! She is starting to get her baby chunk, which is adorable... love those cheeks!! Vivia is also starting to look you in the eye, choo, and smile! It is crazy how much a baby can change in a week!



My friend Chrystal had her son Kobe on Wednesday morning and he weighed the same as Vivia did when she was born. So, it was awesome to get to compare the two and see exactly how much Vivia has grown!!

Valentine's Day- 1 month old

Me again

OK my faithful readers, you have convinced me to write again. Judy is pretty occupied with our stinky baby so here I go.

We have been adjusting pretty well so far. Today we had our one week checkup (Monday we had Vivia's post-hospital checkup), and even though we knew later in the day we would be facing tornado warnings and crazy wind, we still made it there on time. One hour, several diapers, and about a gallon of B milk later we learned that Vivia has passed her birth weight already (she went from 7-13, to 7-3, to 7-2.5, to 7-8, now 7-14) and has now grown about 1 3/4 inches. The doctor was impressed, saying that usually happens at about the 2 week mark. We think Vivia feels intimidated by the size of her sweet cousin Gemma (more on that later) and is on a mission. Anyway afterwards we went to the hospital for her second PKU test (aka stab the heel and watch it bleed). She was a champ and made a little whine but just went back to sleep.

Life at home has been great. I am loving being home from work and don't know how I will go back next week. I am normally very restless and have to occupy myself with something, but I can spend all day watching Vivia sleep. She makes us laugh with her strange sounds, endless faces, and super stretches. She makes us stop laughing when the diaper comes off - seriously, where is the pause button? I've gotten better at catching the flow, but I must have washed the changing table pad things we have about 7 times.

Vivia spends most of her time sleeping on top of someone (she knows once we set her down and starts fussing) or being Judy's little parasite. She must have spent 25 of yesterday's 24 hours eating. We have pretty much been doing the same thing, our families have been awesome and loading us up with all kinds of food and our fridge is full! I am loving this because Gordon Ramsey fears my cooking skills, but with all the extra food I am off the hook. Our master bedroom has become the dining room, we've had pizza parties, sandwich parties, burrito parties, and all sorts of fun.

My sister Melanie brought her sweet little (big?) Gemma over, who's one month older than Vivia. You can see the cute pictures we have of them together, it was tons of fun. Both the girls kinda stared at each other for a minute and didn't know what to do (the babies, not Judy & Mel). A few squirms and stretches later and we had some crying on our hands. Mel also lent her hands to help with Vivia's first bath, which was lots of fun!

I'm totally out of interesting things to say, so here's where I revert to bullet points:

• Conan should not be canceled. He has been making us laugh all week.
• Ghostbusters the video game is fun, but Vivia and I fell asleep playing it
• Mark Curtis on channel 12 is totally Tom Tucker from Family Guy
• my butt is numb from sitting on the bed typing this
• I have a boppy on right now as Vivia naps on me
• my hands are perpetually cold, which Vivia hates. She cries like the dickens when I have to change her and touch her bare skin
• Judy is getting better each day. Still hard for her to do a lot of moving and activity, but she is loads better than she was at the beginning of the week.

I'm done. Before I go, don't you find it funny that we've been getting drenched all day, all the tv shows have been getting interrupted with "BREAKING NEWS UPDATES", yet the news channels still find it necessary to have their "teaser" commercials that say, "Rain in the valley, and lots of wind! Tonight at 10."

Duh?

some pictures

She's here!

*Disclaimer* This blog is being written by Brian. All humor and intelligent remarks are expressed solely at the amazing talent of the aforementioned. You have been warned.

So, for those of you still living in January 13, 2010, or maybe I just fell asleep before I could text, Vivia was born today. The quick & juicy:

• she's asleep right now
• 12:27 am 1/14/2010
• 7lbs 13oz (a bit smaller than we thought...try a pound smaller than we thought)
• 18 1/2 inches
• freakin cute
• mad pooping skills

So yesterday I get off work and head home. I talk with Judy for a bit who's "chillaxing" (that's idiot talk for chilling and relaxing) on the couch. I feed her some almonds and yogurt, then fan her with peacock leaves. We discuss dinner plans and how boring our healthy dinner sounds and debate much tastier, greasier options. I then head off to the gym around 4:45 to teach my kickboxing class. As class wraps up at 6:25 or so, I'm literally telling the members as they walk out that "If I'm not here next Wednesday, that means my wife had her baby." Literally seconds later the front desk gal comes running in "Brian your wife's water broke!"

I meet Judy and her parents at the hospital, and she gets admitted to triage. Basically Judy was sleeping on the couch, and woke up feeling strange...that's when she realized as my nephew Trenton would say, "GOOSH!" Her water had broken (in my cozy pants nonetheless). Her parents quickly load her up and head over.

Judy started having contractions about every 5 mins or so. The doctors (no, not The Doctors) told us they wanted to wait about 8 hours on the c-section because of the food she ate (vomiting/ choking risk). Judy and her mom hang out in triage while I run home to get out of my soaking wet gym clothes and wash the stink off.

Just before midnight they start prepping Judy, who had an awful time waiting (contractions, nausea, acid reflux, vomiting). I get my plastic doctor's scrubs and get called into the OR a few minutes later. They have a big canopy blocking Judy's view (and mine, not interested) while they work. Literally 3 minutes after I walk in the anesthesiologist says "get your camera, you're gonna miss it!" I managed to get a few gory shots of Vivia being pulled out. She cries immediately, says hi to mom, and then we take her to a little table for cleanup. She also peed all over the place immediately (atta girl). I then leave the room with her while Judy is getting reassembled and we take measurements, tests, baths, etc.

About 30-40 minutes later we come back to Judy, who is shivering like crazy (medication made her cold). She gets her first moment with Vivia while the nurse makes sure Judy's post surgery tests are ok. She then gets to feed, and Vivia latched on like a GANGSTA and got her first meal. At about 2 or 2:30 we get to our room where Judy is made comfortable, we get more feedings in and the nurse checks up on everything. Vivia falls asleep in here crib on wheels, but does a little cry about every 15 minutes for no reason. I get about an 1.5-2 hours sleep, Judy even less cuz she was texting while I woke up. Vivia was crying for breakfast.

More checkups, tarry diapers, and the Van Camp crew saves the day with breakfast and some water. I'm typing this up as we wait for the nurse to take Judy around for her first walk. Vivia is sleeping soundly, but I'm pretty sure she'll be screaming for food soon. Judy is also actually sleeping, and I'm not sure whether to wake her or not to call the nurse again, she needs sleep, but she needs to walk.

So far...so good!

The count down begins

Friday I had an ultrasound and Vivia is extremely healthy!! Great fluid and she is huge... about 9 lbs at only 37wks!! We shall see how much she weighs on Monday!

Today I had my regular weekly appointment and my blood pressure was wicked high, but no other problems. He said I just have Gestational Hypertension, which is just high blood pressure during pregnancy. They also monitored baby's heart beat and movement. The nurse and the doctor were extremely impressed with how healthy she is. They said she has a really strong heart and is very active! Oh and she is now even more Breech than before! haha! I could tell this morning when I looked in the mirror. My belly is squared at the top where her head is. Silly girl already does whatever she wants. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come...

This Friday will be my last appointment before the C-section on Monday. They will do an in office ultrasound to check her position, even though my doctor says with her size it is HIGHLY doubtful that she would move. And then we will have our pre-surgery discussion.

Well, if I don't update again before Monday, wish us luck!! Brian will hopefully update the blog while we are in the hospital with pictures of our new baby girl!!!