Places to Go, People to Meet

I'll be 3 weeks old tomorrow. It's been an action-packed 3 weeks. I've met lots of my new friends and relatives. My Grandma Vitale, and Grandpa Menzel and Grandma Kay all were there at the hospital when I was born. They were very happy to meet me and hold me. And then Grandma Vitale came back to help take care of me for a week. She likes talking to me and rocking me to sleep and playing with me. And now Grandma Woods is here helping take care of me this week. She always knows how to make me feel better when I'm crying, and she even sings to me sometimes.

Last Friday I had a big adventure. I was sleeping peacefully in my crib but then the carbon monoxide detector went off because there was something wrong with the stove. My mom called 911 and the fire department came and told them to take me out of the house, and then they couldn't wake me up... I was really sleepy. So then the ambulance came and took me to the ER and everybody was scared and upset but really I was fine. I didn't like the ER though... they had to take my blood to make sure I was okay and that made me cry a lot. But then we went home and had pizza with Uncle Herb and my cousins Brian, Olivia & Bridget, and everything was okay again.

And then on Saturday, I got to meet LOTS of family... Great Grandma McSherry, Uncle Greg and Uncle John, Aunt Irene and Uncle Dennis, and my cousins Victoria and David. Everyone passed me around and I slept almost the whole time. I've also had some visits from my cousins Noel and Johanna and Lila. Lila loves to watch me. And this weekend I met my Aunt Pat and Uncle Hub and their 2 dogs. We all had brunch today together.




I've gone to the doctor twice already, and I showed off how well I can hold my head up for her. I weigh around 9 pounds now. I peed all over the scale when she weighed me.
Hmm, what else? I've gone out to 2 restaurants, and to the grocery store, and I've taken walks around the neighborhood in my stroller.

Getting here

I've been up for 7.5 straight hours today, so it has been difficult to get down and have some time to do a post. Whew! I guess I haven't read that part of the baby book that says newborns are supposed to only be active for 1 out of every 10 hours.


Now the story of how I ended up here - the condensed version. Mom was having small contractions starting last Saturday evening (the 4th of March). She woke dad up at about 1:30, and they started timing the contractions. At about 2am Sunday morning, the contractions were steady at about 1 minute long, separated by 5 minutes. Since we weren't in any hurry to get to the hospital, we stayed in bed until about 4:30 am, when we packed our bags. Mom called the doctor, who recommended that we just hang out a bit and think about going to the hospital in a few hours. So we went to the grocery store to get some snacks, went to Carberry's bakery to pick up some muffins, and headed out to Mt. Auburn at about 10:30 am. With her contractions still regularly spaced at 5 minute intervals, mom had fun in the grocery store being the crazy pregnant lady having a baby in aisle five.


Labor was LOONG. By about 11:30 pm Sunday, Mom was almost dilated enough to be ready to push me out. The problem was that my heart rate was slowing way down each time she had a contraction. This went on for about an hour before our doctor decided that we needed to do an emergency C-section. Though this was a bit traumatic for everybody involved in the delivery, it turns out that it was a good idea - my umbilical cord was wrapped twice around my neck and once around my leg, and I wasn't getting enough blood during the contractions. So, thank you Dr. Hardiman! She's my hero. Here she is with me a couple of days after being born.

Hello, World

Hey there!

I thought it would be good to make a website for myself, so that grandparents and other interested folks could check up on me whenever they wanted to. I will try to make as many posts as possible, but sometimes my days are kind of busy so I might not get a chance. So if you don't hear from me, just stay tuned and I'll post as soon as I can.

First, I thought we should start off with a little bit of a recap. That photo above shows what I looked like at 8 or so weeks. I think. I can't really remember. Mom and Dad were really happy to see me in there.

And here's what I looked like at 19 weeks. Everybody said I looked very peaceful and would be a nice relaxed baby someday. I'll show them!


We don't have any more photos of me on the inside, but we do have a nice set of what I looked like on the outside. Here's a month by month series of my mom (she's the best mom in the world) from four months to nine months, which was about 3 weeks before I was born. She got even bigger than that, but was always a bit too tired to change into her special picture outfit, so we don't have a picture of that.