On Tuesday January 12th, my due date, we decided to go into Albuquerque

Jack holding Van.

and have lunch at Pros Ranch Market. It’s a big Mexican market that has a food court area. They serve the closest thing to L.A. street tacos we’ve been able to find here and we thought Shane would enjoy it. Since we were in Albuquerque we also went to Keller’s to buy meat and The Herb Store so I could get more nettle and Red Raspberry leaf for tea.

I drank Red Raspberry leaf, nettle and alfalfa tea through out my pregnancy but in the last trimester I brewed it stronger and drank a lot more of it.

At lunch Lee asked if I was going to have a baby today. I told him today was the one day I knew I wasn’t having a baby because giving birth on your due date rarely happens. Then he asked if I was going to have a baby the next day on the 13th. I said no again, I didn’t want to have a baby on the 13th, I’d be ready to go anytime after. And that’s when I jinxed myself.

We got home at 6:30pm. I put away groceries, brewed up a strong pot of tea and talked to my mom on the phone for about 2 hours.  Later in the evening I was talking to Lee in his office when I felt a low crampy feeling. Nothing exactly new, just like at the end of my pregnancy with Jack I’d been feeling those for weeks. The only thing that was different was a downward pressure and it occurred to me that I had had a few at regular intervals. I checked the time – 9:50. I felt it again at 10:05 and again at 10:15. I decided I needed to get up to do some laundry just in case.

A little before 11pm I had no doubt that I was in labor. I told Lee I was pretty sure this was it. I emailed my midwife to let her know and told her I would email again once the baby was born. Up until then I hadn’t said anything to anyone. I didn’t want any false alarms.

I spent some time walking around the house and finishing laundry. I cleaned the bathroom and Jack and Olivia picked up the living room for me. They were so excited, it was like Christmas for them.

Around 12:30 a hot shower sounded like a good idea. By then the contractions were strong enough that it felt better to squat through them while stretching my body upward. It cut the intensity by about half.

I stayed in the shower for about 30 minutes, then went to the tub. I had a few requirements for finding a house to move into and one of them was a garden tub. It was so nice to be in deep water with room to move around. Though I mostly laid over the side or sat back on my knees during contractions. I had towels at the bottom of the tub and on the side so I had soft surfaces.

Lee knows I like to be left alone while I’m in labor so he’d come to the door every little bit and check to make sure I was okay and if I needed anything. After I’d been in the tub for a little while I started to feel really tired and shaky. I wanted the baby to come soon so I could lay down. I laid back in the tub a couple of times between contractions and it felt so nice to rest, but it did not at all feel nice to get caught on my back when a contraction hit. How women go through labor and delivery on their backs is not something I understand. That is the worst position for me to be in. It turns something completely manageable into hellish pain.

Because I was feeling shaky I asked Lee to stay in the bathroom with me. And again, he knows me well … he didn’t stay by the tub attempting to coach me through anything, that would have gotten him kicked out in a split second. He pulled a chair in and sat in the corner and stayed quiet unless I talked to him first.

Soon after Lee came in I felt my body pushing with each contraction. That told me the shaky, tired I want this to be over feeling was transition. I got my second wind and started pushing with the contractions. I could feel his head moving down, he was about half a finger’s length from crowning when my water broke. A couple of pushes later his head was ready to be born. Unlike my first two unassisted births his head didn’t just pop out. I was able to ease it out slowly over a few contractions and had no tearing.

Usually once the head is out I get a feeling of relief. But with Van there was no relief at all, I was in more pain than I had been the entire time. I felt for the cord and instead felt the source of my pain – he had his little arms folded up on both sides of his neck.  I wasn’t having a contraction but I gave a huge strong push and birthed him into the water right into my hands.

9 hours old. I still haven't slept.

I pulled him up to my chest and asked Lee for the time. It was 1:37am. He came out wailing and had excellent color. He was pink from the start and started nursing right away.  We stayed in the tub for awhile with warm towels over us.

After Van was born the water started to turn red. Compared to my first two unassisted births it looked like a lot of blood. It had never looked like I was sitting in a tub full of blood before so I decided to get out and deliver the placenta. It would also be easier to see how much I was bleeding out of the water.

The placenta came easily and I bled surprisingly little afterwards. An earlier ultrasound had showed that my placenta was low though not covering my cervix. Later my midwife told me that with a placenta positioned higher the blood gets trapped in the membranes but because my placenta was low I saw a lot more of the blood. I never felt dizzy or lightheaded or tired so I wasn’t worrying about it too much.

After about an hour I decided to cut the cord. I wanted to get in bed and snuggle my baby without a bowl of placenta beside us. As I was getting ready to cut Jack said he wanted to do it. That surprised me. I tied off two sections of the cord and told him to cut in between. A drop of blood appeared as he started to cut and he looked at me like he thought he had just hurt the baby. I let him know the wasn’t hurting Van and he cut through the cord with a grin.

I tried to get the placenta into a ziplock bag but I fumbled and it flopped all over the place making a bloody mess. Poor Olivia was right next to me when this happened and she left the room gagging. She came back in a few minutes later after she knew I had it cleaned up.

We all decided to try and get some sleep around 4am but I lay awake for hours snuggling my sweet baby boy.

He’s 16 days old now. He stays awake longer and is more alert every day. He makes the funniest faces at us and sometimes I swear he is smiling. We all love him so much.

I wrote what’s below while we were still in California and never published it. I do that a lot.

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Ten days out of the apartment and I am so excited to be moving along. Something about that place was sucking the life out of me.

Lee has a few more weeks of work before we can leave for New Mexico so we’re stuffed into a motel that takes cats until then. It’s pretty much alright in a at least it’s better than the apartment kind of way. They have some odd policy where they can’t hand me the sheets so I can make the beds myself. They have to do it for me while I stand outside the room for 20 minutes and I am finding that delirioulsy annoying. I mean REALLY.

In other, less annoying news .. Jack and Olivia have been having a lot of outside play time. The old apartment didn’t have a good outside play space. It wasn’t kid friendly at all. But here they’ve gone swimming and had treasure hunts with plastic gold coins and hand drawn maps. Jack loops the sidewalk on his scooter about 200 times a day and is mastering the hula hoop.

Next stop: Albuquerque, baby!

Jack woke up this morning just as Joe Biden was being sworn in. He ate a banana chocolate chip muffin he and Olivia helped make yesterday and continued to watch with me up until Obama was sworn in and then went to play Spider-man3 on xbox. 

Olivia woke up about 12:30 and chattered away about playing Viva Pinata the night before. She earned a new pinata and has 5 helpers now helping her with her garden. She’s taking really good care of it and it’s getting quite large. She also had a banana chocolate chip muffin and then another while she cut out the letters: O B A M A, decorated them red and blue and taped them to the wall. Our kids are kind of political in their own little ways and they also really love tape. 

I talked to Jack about spending a few minutes a day working on his speech. He groaned and grinned at the same time. He knows that sometimes it’s hard to understand him, but he says he’s fine with that and that talking normal is boring. Gotta love that kid. 

They both wanted Thai for dinner. We ordered panang curry and the waitress suggested we not get that for the kids because even ordered mild it’s spicy. We ordered it anyway and they both had seconds. When Olivia was a little nursling she would refuse baby food but would eat spinach paneer at Indian restaurants and Jack shakes Tabasco on his pizza. My kids can handle the spicy. 

While we were waiting for our food a song came on and Jack said, “Oh this is from Rock Band.” Olivia was very quick to correct him, “No Jack,  it’s Taylor Swift.” Then she gave me a big grin and swayed to the music in her chair smug in her music knowledge.

After dinner we stopped at Game Dude. Olivia got Zoo Tycoon and Jack got Lego StarWars II: The Original Trilogy. They were both flippin’ thrilled. We looked at Wii games and all agreed: WE CAN NOT WAIT TO GET THE Wii! But wait we will. We need more space for it .. soon. soon. soon.

Next stop: the drug store. BubbleBerry is the only flavor of toothpaste they will use and we were out. Olivia added a Pink Lemonaid Lip Smackers to her growing collection and Jack had fun walking with the canes. He asked why people use them and when I told him he said he needed a cane because sometimes his leg is sore and he can’t put any weight on it. That was news to me. We did not buy the cane, sometimes I do say no.

I’m sitting here trying to write about Olivia talking politics with Jack a couple of nights ago (so I don’t forget!) and I can’t remember anything more than coming in from the kitchen so I could hear her better. She was explaining something to Jack about the up coming election while McCain was on the TV screen and she said; “And we DO NOT like McCain!”

She amazes me every day.

Shane has left for class, Jack is playing Lego Indiana Jones and Olivia is eating a butter burger with ketchup for breakfast. One cat is napping on a pile of clean clothes and the other is rubbing against my foot reminding me that he would like his midmorning snack. I should get on the treadmill (or maybe put away the clean clothes?) but instead I’m downloading free demos of some games I think the kids will like and thinking about another cup of coffee.

One game is already downloaded, one is 71% complete and 4 more are in the queue.

Olivia finished her burger and nudged me aside to show some stuff on Webkinz and then we did an image search to get ideas for some spooky Halloween treats she wants to make. To our shopping list we’ve added: gross candy, food coloring, cupcake liners and glow-in-the-dark fangs. Mwahahaha!

She also reminded me I did not make the banana chocolate chip bread I said I was going to .. so gotta get on that.

The above video is a true and accurate representation of what waking up is like for me. I think it’s payback for all that loving I force on my furry little babies cats.

I can actually sleep through a lot of what the cats can dish out but I’m a little worried Lee will kill them if he gets his balls jumped on one more time.

Monday afternoon we started talking about going to the Orange County fair and about 3 hours later we were packed and on the road. I love that our life allows spontaneous trips.

First stop after check in was the pool, of course:

Then the hot tub:

They also swam for a few hours in the morning before going to the fair.

Jack didn’t like the petting zoo too much. He was ready to leave after a quick look around but Olivia liked feeding the baby goats. The baby pot belly pigs were ADORABLE but I have no pictures of them.

Olivia liked this baby the best.

Jack saw the lemon and ran over and stuck his head through so he could get his picture taken.

He is a funny little boy.

Jack asked me just last week where we could go so he could do some rock climbing. He will probably want to try this again.

Olivia liked playing the games and came home with 3 stuffed animals because that is exactly what the Stranahan household needs; MORE Stuffed Animals.

She decided to ride the teacups right before we all collapsed.

We went to Santa Monica Friday with the intention of hanging out at the pier.

But first the kids wanted to stick their feet in the ocean.

They were running around in circles of excitement.

Then they were up to their knees …

and all hope for staying even a little dry was gone.

The pier had a Red Bull promotion that was getting ready to kick off so I didn’t care that we weren’t going to be in that madness. The kids still want to go ride the rides and play games though, so next time I will suggest we do that before so much as a toe gets stuck in the ocean.

Because they got soaked …

I’m pretty sure I was 29 just a few days ago, then I had a couple of babies and things got all blurry for a while. And now somehow my baby boy is 7 and my girl is 9 going on 27.

That right there is freaking me out a quite a bit.

Ten years have gone by so fast I wish I’d paid more attention to the stuff that matters and less attention to the stuff that doesn’t. I wish I’d taken more pictures and videos and done a much better job at filing away every single moment. I wish I’d been better at being happy.

Ten years are going to zoom by again and I’m feeling an overwhelming need to catch every little thing. And to be better at being happy.

Mark, Set, Go!

Last night Olivia told me that she was going to wake up early today because it’s her birthday. And true to her word, at 6AM she sticks her head into the room and says, “Hi mama!” I’m so lucky she doesn’t want breakfast first thing in the morning. She went to play in her room and I went back to sleep for another hour.

She decided she wanted to go into work with her dad so she’d been packing up Barbie dolls and their various accessories. She talked me into letting her use a new purse I got over the weekend at Target, because “it’s so big and roomy” for her dolls. She unpacked the Barbies from another purse of mine she had been using. It used to be the “perfect thing” for her to carry her stuff around in, but no more I guess. Out with the old and in with the new.

She’s good at getting my stuff. Very, very good.

We will be taking her and Jack to Chuck e. Cheese, again later today. Why does that place have to be so gross? Last time we were there it reeked of hot pee. Starting to gag just thinking about it.

Now must plan out my Ativan dosage for maximum calmness and get on treadmill.