Oh Baby!

If anyone has been watching the date you know that today January 28th was our scheduled c-section date for Baby Boy Z. Surprising all of us he decided he couldn't wait and arrived in a hurry on Monday January 26th at 5:58 am. He was 6 lbs, 5 oz, 19 1/2 inches long and we have (finally) decided to name him Benjamin (Ben) Vincent Zaremba. Here's a picture of him snuggling. You can see his cool hair, it can make a very cute little mohawk.



He was exactly 9 days early just like McKenzie . He couldn't be outdone by his big sister I guess. He too decided to cause a little excitement with his arrival - no scheduled c-section for him. Matt and I decided on Sunday night to have one last night out and we had our friends Andrea and Travis come over and watch McKenzie or in all honesty her baby monitor since she was in bed when we left. I'd been having pretty good contractions for over a week but nothing regular so life went on. We came home from the movies around eleven and went to bed. At 2:30 am I woke up with a pretty bad contraction which was soon followed by more so I got up and started timing. They were about 5 minutes apart and so I called the doctor and they transferred me to the hospital who said to come in and get checked out but no need to rush in. I woke Matt up and we finished packing and then woke up McKenzie and we left our house around 4:00 am and headed for Kacey's house which was the opposite direction from the hospital. By the time we were on I405 heading back towards the hospital the contractions were 1-2 minutes apart and steady pain. We got there and went to check in at around 5:00 am. Matt and I still thought we would be taking things slowly. We thought that they would slow the contractions and then we'd just have the baby sometime that day.

I got taken back to triage and they hooked me up to the monitor and then determined that I was 10 centimeters and fully effaced and that the baby was coming now! They started to think we might not have time for the c-section which didn't sit well with me since the idea of going through labor again was not very appealing let alone without medication! They found the on call doctor who determine that we should try for the c-section so we were rushed off to the operating room for the spinal and then moments later they delivered a screaming, flailing Ben into the world.

He looks a lot different than McKenzie did. He has darker blue eyes and brown hair instead of McKenzie's light blue eyes and blond hair at birth. He's just as cute as McKenzie but he definitely looks like a little boy. It's amazing how different they are already. I'm doing a lot better this time too. Not as much time on the IV so little to no swelling and I was able to get up and walk around a little on Monday about six hours after he was born.

We took until late last night to decide on his name. We had to get to know him a bit to finally decide what to call him. Mom, Dad and McKenzie are all in love with him already and can't wait to introduce him to everyone! Here's some pictures and there will be many many more to come.

Here's his sweet face. He's been a very good baby so far. He squeaks instead of crying.


Here's Ben with his proud Papa!



The whole family. This is when McKenzie first got to meet her baby brother.



Baby Ben and his momma. I look a little more excited than he does.


Me at full capacity - side profile as requested before. You can also see the wall decals we put up in his nursery. I'll post more pics of the nursery later but it looks great.



Off to sleep for a bit!

Waking Up To Sunshine!

In the cloudy overcast winters of Seattle you have to enjoy every little bit of sunshine you can find. I bet it would surprise most who live in Seattle if I told you I wake up most mornings to sunshine. It's even more surprising given the fact that Matt and I have blackout blinds on our bedroom windows. My secret is my own personal sunshine named McKenzie. We still have the baby monitor in her room and so most days I wake up to her waking up. I never know what she's going to be up to but it always puts a smile on my face. Unless she wakes up at 5 am that is. Most days I hear her talking to her baby dolls - saying 'bebee... bebee... ' over and over and then the sound of lots of kissing. Today she was talking about 'tea' which is what we call anything in coffee cups around here that is hot. She knows all about 'tea' and when she see us with a coffee mug she knows it's 'hot-hot' and blows while saying 'hot-hot'. This morning hearing her in her room saying 'tea... tea...' made me laugh. This woke Matt up in a panic thinking I was in labor or something. Trust me while I would be happy about that I doubt I'd be laughing.

This weekend we did have some real sunshine and so we headed to the park with McKenzie. She is so good at climbing and figuring out how to get to the highest point of everything . She's a real dare devil.

Here's McKenzie sliding in the sunshine!


I have had several requests that I post a side profile of my wonderful figure here on the blog. I will post one eventually but I'm waiting to reach full capacity - in the meantime you'll have to be satisfied with this nice shadow picture of my profile - look how tall I am!!


7 days and counting! No baby name yet.

My Big Fat Greek Surprise Baby Shower!

This weekend the ladies of Wine Club surprised me with a baby shower during our Wine Club night! I was just excited for a night out after being trapped in all the snow and wanted to see everyone before the baby got here. This year we are changing wine night up a bit and instead of just focusing on a certain type of wine we are focusing on regional foods and then pairing wines with the food or picking drinks or wine from that area. January was slated for Greek which had everyone excited. Kate and Rachel did a fantastic job of hosting at Kate and Will's. I carpooled with Kim and Andrea. When we got there everyone was waiting for us with shots of ouzo which is essentially a black licorice flavored alcohol (yuck!) and toasted me and Baby Z. We had some really good laughs and hopefully everyone enjoyed the evening as much as I did. Thank you all for the wonderful gifts and the surprise.

McKenzie and Matt had a nice evening together complete with McKenzie's first Happy Meal and Matt learning why we don't eat dinner on the couch with McKenzie but how could he resist this face?



One of moments at the wine club shower that had tears rolling down my cheeks was when I opened Carrie's gift which contained a Christmas tree angel. That's a strange baby gift you're probably thinking but there's a history here. When Matt and I got our very first Christmas tree we didn't have any ornaments so we had to go and buy some to put on our tree. We bought a whole bunch of matching ornaments, beads etc and were quite pleased with our tree. We didn't have a tree topper either at that point and so we took a really big ornament and removed the hanger part and have used that as our tree topper ever since. Not all are as fond of our tree topper as we are. Carrie has expressed her opinion many times and she brought it up again this Christmas when we had the friends Christmas party at our house. I will admit she's not alone in her dislike for our tree topper which has been described as a Russian building top. So I guess we need to consider changing out our tree topper next year. Please see below for picture of both of them and then we'll have a vote. Look in the right hand margin of my blog to cast your vote for our beloved tree topper, Carrie's 12 inch angel or something new.

I will tell you that McKenzie saw that angel first thing this morning and ran over and grabbed it off the kitchen desk. I told her is was an angel for our Christmas tree and she promptly ran over to the corner of the family room and hid the angle behind the couch. I must admit that is where our Christmas tree was but perhaps it might have scared her just a bit and she didn't want to look at it anymore.

Here are the candidates for the place of honor on top of our Christmas tree.

Our usual tree topper - close up and then with the full tree view:




Carrie's angel - still in the box for 'safe keeping' and then where McKenzie hid it.




Remember to cast your vote!

Just Chillin'

Gina came over this past Saturday night and did some scrap-booking with me during some of my last bits of free time before baby #2 arrives. Here's my results from the evening of fun and creativity. The picture is from January 2008 during a visit to my parents house in Chelan to enjoy the snow.

I was able to make this great page thanks to two of my favorite scrap booking products. The two way glue (you can read about it in a past blog entry) and the Making Memories SLICE which is a great tool that I acquired recently that cuts out designs for scrapbooking. In my design above I cut out the letters and the snowflakes. I'm very excited for this addition to my scrapbooking tools because it allows me to create more page elements rather than having to hunt for the perfect thing. I should be able to make pages a little quicker and maybe even get close to caught up in my scrapbook efforts

I did receive a baby boy scrapbook from Grandma C for Christmas so I'll be ready to start in on his book if I find any free time after he arrives.

Still no name for baby but we are at least discussing names again.

Happy Birthday Grandpa C!

Today is Grandpa C's birthday and McKenzie worked very hard on making him a special birthday message. Excuse the crazy hair she just got out of the bath. : )

Here's McKenzie taking a spin in her car. Look what a good big sister she's practicing to be. She is all smashed down on the floor board of the car so that her baby can ride on the seat and use the seat belt!