Nolan's newborn photo shoot

When Nolan was two weeks old I had the very talented Nicole Faby of Nicole Faby Photographycome to the house to take some pictures. I knew Nolan would grow fast, and I wanted to make sure to capture some of these moments when he still so tiny.

Nolan turns one month old today, and just from looking at Nicole's pictures I can see how much he's grown in the last two weeks alone. He has almost outgrown some of his little newborn outfits already. Also, he started smiling real smiles for the first time on Monday!

Here is a peek at a few of Nolan's newborn pictures. If you'd like to see more, visit our Share site where I've posted my favorites.

Nolan William is here!

Well, he's been here more than two weeks now. But Bill and I have been so busy and sleep deprived that this is my first opportunity to update our blog. I love you all, but lately I've been taking the age old advice about "sleeping when the baby sleeps" to heart. Which means I've been getting random blocks of two to three hours of sleep at a time. Since Nolan's birth, time seems to have run together into an indecipherable clump of night and day.

But it is all worth it. Besides the fact Bill and I love being parents, Nolan had his two week appointment with the pediatrician today and let's just say our kid has inherited an overachiever gene. When
Nolan was born he weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces, and when we left the hospital he had dropped down to 7 pounds, 3 ounces. Today he weighed in at 8 pounds, 4 ounces! He also grew a half an inch, and is now 21.5 inches long! My breasts are magical! (We've been breastfeeding, and news like this makes those exhausting feedings in the wee hours of the morning all worth it.)

But back to our originally scheduled broadcast.

PICTURES

First things first: pictures. Posting a lot of pictures to this blog is time-consuming and a pain in the rear. So here is a link to our Shutterfly Share site where you can view pictures from Nolan's first two weeks. I will make this a permanent link on the blog shortly, so check back often. Also, I had a talented young photographer come to the house a couple of days ago to take some newborn photos of Nolan, and I will be posting a link to those photos as soon as she notifies me they are ready for viewing.

BIRTH STORY

We arrived at the hospital on Easter Sunday around 9 p.m. Doctor H began the induction process about 10 p.m. We quickly learned that Nolan disliked Pitocin. His heart rate often dropped when a contraction hit its peak, so we spent about 15 hours of labor turning the Pitocin on and off, while Dr. H and/or my L&D nurse kept coming into the room to make me switch positions. They broke my water at 4 a.m. By 8:30 a.m. I still hadn’t dilated past 3 cm and I was ready for an epidural. (And yes, it was h.e.a.v.en. Loved it. That big ol’ needle didn’t hurt at all!) Dr. H really wanted me to be able to deliver the natural way, but warned me that if things didn’t start to progress soon and the heart rate issue continued, we’d have to think about “other options.” (Read: C-section).

By noon on 4/13 I hadn’t dilated any further past 3 cm, and we were still dealing with the constant on/off of Pitocin and the heart rate issue. Finally, around 1:30 p.m., Dr. H came into my room, checked me, looked at my chart, slammed it shut and said, “Aw, screw it!” and stormed out of the room. At which point my super sweet L&D nurse Ginny cheerily said, “Okay! Let’s get you ready for a c-section!”

Me: “Wait, that’s his big motivational, ‘it’s going to be okay!’ speech? ‘Aw, screw it?!’ “)

But that’s just Dr. H and I trusted him. Having never had surgery before, I was scared out of my mind. The combo of fear and exhaustion caused the tears to flow. (Apparently, I was so pitiful that Nurse Ginny came to see me in the Pediatric After Care Unit afterwards and told me that she started to cry when she handed me off to the folks in the operating room!)

Everyone at Rex was wonderful though, especially Ginny, Dr. H. and all of the nurses and doctors in the operating room. At 2:10 p.m. all of the fear and anxiety I had about surgery just melted away as soon as I heard Nolan’s first squeak and then his beautiful cry! I may have been lying on a table with nothing but a thin blue sheet separating me from my exposed guts, but all was right with the world. All of a sudden my future as a mother became very clear to me, and it was the most amazing, joyful feeling I’ve ever experienced.

They showed me Nolan’s sweet face before bringing him back to be weighed and measured, and then they let DH bring him back to me in the OR for a few minutes so I could see him for a little while longer. I finally got to hold him for a bit in the PACU where I was visited by our neighbor, Brandi, who is a nurse in the special care nursery. It was so nice and comforting to see a friendly face! Thank you, Brandi!

Well, Smalls is waking up from a nap, and pretty soon his little “meh” and “eh” rumblings will erupt into a full-fledged volcanic wail, which is his way of saying, “Yo Mom, do we have anything to eat up in this joint?” I’ll do my best to post again soon.

Fishing for Data

This is obviously a personal blog that we use to keep in touch with family and friends, so normally I don't post about work. But I feel special today, so I figured I'd share. 

An article I wrote for Coastwatch about experimenting with text messaging as a method to gather recreational fishing data made the science blogosphere. Snips were posted last night on "A Blog Around the Clock," written by one of the organizers of the annual NC Science Blogging Conference.  If you're interested in science, his blog is great. Check it out. 

Nursery pictures!

As promised, here are some pictures of our nearly completed nursery. I decided the other day that the wall above the bookcase needs a clock, and once we've named our son I will hang some very cool wall letters in his monogram above his crib. Oh, and one more caveat about the pictures: they make the room look darker than it really is because the morning I took the photos it was overcast. It totally messed with the lighting for good pictures.

Anyway, we had fun putting together this nursery, and we're looking forward to spending time in it with our son. Only three weeks until his due date!

Walking into the room

Crib to your left

Dresser, changer and shelves to your right

Close up of the alphabet flashcards we strung up with ribbon around the top of the room

Wall opposite the owls. A clock will go above the bookcase. The door to your left is the entrance to the room, the door on the right is the closet.

Showers and Sprinkles

Baby A is almost done cooking (I'll be 36 weeks tomorrow) and while we're obviously excited to meet him, our friends and family seem equally eager! Last month our friends Amy, Heather and Allyson threw us a wonderful baby shower. It made me feel very special, and both Bill and I feel so lucky to have such fantastic friends and family. Many thanks to everyone who came to the shower, as well as to those who couldn't attend but I know would have loved to have been there. I'll post pictures of the nursery, complete with many of the items we received at the shower, once we've put the final touches on things in the room.

Two days ago the ladies in my book club "sprinkled" me and another member (due to have a baby girl the day after me) with several children's books -- thank you! For many of us in book club, it was a trip down memory lane as we flipped through books like Charlotte's Web, The Poky Little Puppy, and A Pocket for Corduroy. We were introduced to some new sure-to-be classics as well, such as Henry Hikes to Fitchburg and I'll Love You Forever. Reading to Baby A is one of the things Bill and I are very much looking forward to and I am sure all of these books will soon become well-loved by our little one!

For those of you wondering whether we've chosen a name yet, the answer is: "sort of." We're down to two finalists but we'll most likely be making a game day decision. Sorry to keep you in suspense!

One of my favorite people

One of my favorite people was recently in the news again -- Rich Ognibene.

In 2008 he was named New York State Teacher of the Year, and last month he was honored at the National Education Association Foundation’s “Salute to Excellence in Education” gala in Washington, D.C., where he received the national Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence. Yay, Rich!

Richard is one of the nicest people I've ever had the pleasure to know, and my only regret is that I never got to be one of his chemistry or physics students. (None of my chemistry or physics teachers ever laid down on a bed of nails to teach us about weight distribution, or wrote his or her name on the blackboard in ethanol and then lit it on fire. Note to my high school teachers: I feel a little cheated.)

I've known Rich and his family my entire life, so rather than read my potentially biased opinions about his teaching skills, I'll let you read what his students have to say about him in this article from the Perinton Post News.

Brian vs. The Angry Vending Machine

I have no idea who Brian is, but I'm pretty sure he's screwed.

There is a vending machine in the building next to where I work that I've dubbed the "angry vending machine" because people often attach angry sticky notes to it complaining that the machine ate their money and didn't deliver their soda. Yesterday, I saw the following exchange:




*Note: For those of you who live out of state, Erskine Bowles is president of the University of North Carolina system and Beverly Perdue is our newly elected governor.