My So Called Life

Oliver’s Birth Story

/ Shane / 1 Comment

On Sunday, Sara started feeling contractions at about 5:30 in the morning. However, they didn’t hurt, so she wasn’t sure if they were the real deal or not. By about 3 in the afternoon, they started to hurt. However, ever since they began, the contractions were about 3 minutes apart. So even after they started to hurt, we still weren’t sure they were the real thing. I mean, everything you see or read or people tell you agrees: contractions start far apart, maybe 10 minutes or so, gradually getting closer and closer together, and when they get between 3 to 5 minutes apart, you go to the hospital. So it didn’t make much sense that they were 3 minutes apart to begin with.

So we didn’t really want to mention it to anybody, since we really didn’t think it could be the real thing. Plus, we were just really sure that Oliver would be late, not early. In fact, I was talking on the phone to my mom during this time, and I didn’t mention it. We just didn’t want to get anybody worked up. Finally, around 8 p.m. or so we called Sara’s parents and told them what was going on. We didn’t want anybody to miss any work or anything, especially if it was just a false alarm. On the other hand, Evie was sleeping and her parents were 3 1/2 hours away, so if we waited too long to call them, we might have some trouble. After some deliberation, they decided to make the trip.

In retrospect, it was a good thing we called them when we did, because the contractions continued to get worse. Sara was breathing through the contractions and spending some time in the tub. The warm water seemed to help. She was lying under a towel and periodically I would dump warm water on her.
Me: “This reminds me of when they transport whales.”
Sara: “You’re going to make me pee!”
Me: “You wanted the water to be warmer!”
(Sara would also like to point out that I may or may not have referred to her look as “humpty dumpty” one time while she was pregnant)
So, by the time her parents got to our place around 11:30 p.m., we decided we should go right to the hospital.

It turns out, that was a pretty good time to go. After watching the World Series of Poker for an hour in the waiting room, I was finally allowed to come back to where Sara was, and found out she was farther along than we were hoping she would be. Sara asked for an epidural around 1 and they finally got around to administering it at about 3:30. It was kind of ironic, because Sara mentioned how it took 2 hours to get one last time and everybody was aghast. Well it took even longer this time! Sara made a joke about how badly I took the last epidural, but the doctor didn’t find it all that funny, and I was relegated back to the waiting room for another 30 minutes or so.

The epidural wasn’t as strong as it had been with Evie, so the contractions were still painful, but they were better than they had been with no epidural. I slept for about an hour, but Sara wasn’t able to get any consistent rest. At about 5 a.m. Sara was still making good progress, and they broke her water. They checked her again at about 7 and we knew it would be soon. We were sort of led to believe it would be like any minute, but really it wasn’t until 8:30 or so when Sara started pushing. Finally, at 9:13 a.m., Oliver was born!

Stay tuned for our next installment: Oliver, Born at Last!

A Successful Easter

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Since I didn’t wish you all a happy Easter yesterday. Happy Easter!

I have to say, holidays are just so much more fun when you have kids. Evie was really digging Easter. Other than being a little candy crazed (and believe me, she got practically no candy!), I’m not even all that sure why she enjoyed Easter so much. She got a couple of presents in her Easter basket, but nothing extraordinary (some play-doh, a couple of books, some glue sticks, etc.). I guess it’s just because it is such an event.

Anyway, a good time was had by all. We were surrounded by family, we took some wonder springtime family pictures, we ate some candy, had an Easter egg hunt, and we enjoyed the outdoors a little bit. Sunday morning we had a delicious breakfast casserole, and then late in the day a traditional chicken masala. Ah, the smell of Indian food…it brings back those Easter memories, doesn’t it? 🙂

I hope everyone had as good of a day as we did!

Neighborhood Linkery

/ Shane / 1 Comment

First off, our favorite neighborhood grocery store got a webpage! Before I went to Hyde Park Produce, I never felt really one way or another about a grocery store. It was just a place to buy food. However, after moving to a food desert and having some bad experiences with grocery stores, I finally found one that I really enjoy. It would be impossible not to like the place. How can you not like a family run business that has, “Welcome…to our dream!” written in giant letters across the back of the store? Everyone is so friendly, and they give Evie a cookie when we check out. True, it is really a produce store, so we have to visit other stores on occasion, but it is really a gem in the neighborhood.

Speaking of things in the neighborhood, there is a “restaurant” which we had never been to that we tried out the other day. The reason why I say “restaurant” in quotes, is because the place is Bake at Home Pizza. Basically, they make a pizza for you, and then you take that pizza home and bake it in your own oven (I guess the name is self explanatory). The pizza was actually really good, as good or better than anywhere else in the neighborhood, without a doubt. I really liked the place. However, I do object to the price a little bit. It’s not that the place is expensive, but it’s not cheaper than going to a restaurant. So if I’m expected to bake the pizza at home myself, then I expect it to be a little cheaper. If they reduced the price on the pizzas by a couple of bucks, I would probably go here all the time. As it is, however, it’s probably only going to be a once-in-a-while type place, when we have a coupon or they have a special.

Finally, the MSI, which is right on our doorstep of course, opened up a new permanent exhibit about weather. It is AWESOME! Maybe it is because we go there so often, so anything new seems cool, but I don’t think so. There are so many large installments to see, from the tornado, to the spinning avalanche thing, to the thing that shoots tennis balls across the gallery, to my personal favorite, the giant lightning machine in the ceiling. When I went, it was surprisingly not crowded, and Evie and I were able to do pretty much everything. Evie’s favorite part was the big color box you can stand in and change the colors. She’s not a fan of the Tesla coil, on account of the loud noise it makes. Overall though, a great addition to the museum!

Facing Forward

/ Shane / 5 Comments

When you are a parent, it seems like you are constantly faced with tough decisions. You are called upon to make weighty decisions that have no clear right answer, and without any good, concrete evidence on which to make your decision. That’s why I like to talk about some of these things periodically on the blog. There really is no right answer, but at least someone out there might be able to read about how and why we did certain things, and maybe that will help them come to a decision of their own. Or maybe at least help them feel a little more secure in their decision, knowing someone else out there agrees with them. Or, barring all else, learn from our mistakes!

So, one such decision we made was to keep Evie sitting facing backwards in her car seat for as long as possible. Always when people see her sitting backwards, they’re always like, “Oh. She still sits backwards?” Even people without kids sometimes. So obviously it is something that people notice, and that stands out as odd.

Really, the root of this decision comes from this horrific video that Sara made me watch, about how much safer it is during a crash for kids to face backwards in their seats.

It is quite clear when watching the video, and watching the poor little crash dummy babies, that the seats really are designed to absorb shock better when facing backwards. And the seat itself has recommendations about how much a child should weigh before you turn the seat around.

So, if it is safer to face backwards, why is there such a push to have the kids face forwards?

I think the main reason that parents tend to assume kids want what they want. So they can imagine they would want to face forward, and that the kids would also want to face forward. Well, this is true to a point; kids do enjoy being able to see forward, or at least Evie does. But at the same time, until we turned her around, she had never experienced it any other way besides backwards. So she didn’t know what she was missing.

Also, it is easier to deal with her in the car when she is facing forwards. You can hand her things a lot easier. But at the same time, if backwards is safer, is it really worth a little added convenience? And we certainly managed to hand her things when she was backwards, and it wasn’t that inconvenient.

All that being said, it is so nice now that she is facing forwards! We saved it as long as we could, and then switched her around on the trip back from Pittsburgh, on the brilliant idea that it would help a long trip pass quicker. Evie really enjoys being able to see what’s in front of her. She always asks what street we are on (I think she knows the neighborhood better than I do!) and she still has not gotten over pointing things out that are on the road in front of us.

Probably the thing I notice the most is the ability to point things out to her. Previously we would say, “Hey, there’s a dog! Wait…coming up on your left…did you see it? No? Well, it went by really fast.” But now, she can see what we can see.

So, to us, the decision firmly came down on the side of leaving her facing backwards as long as possible. However, facing forwards really was worth the wait.

Pittsburgh

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Last weekend we took a few days off and took a road trip to beautiful, sunny Pittsburgh. What’s in Pittsburgh you ask? Well lots of things, but in particular, friends. I had some serious flashbacks to the trip Sara and I took to Pittsburgh about 10 years ago (seriously? 10 years?), before we were even dating. However, there was something a little different this time: kids.

We had the first “are we there yet?” exactly 19 minutes into the 9 hour trip. All in all though, she was actually really good in the car. We made plenty of potty stops and even planned a picnic / park stop for lunch, so we broke things up as much as possible.

Since we took so long getting there and going home, that we only had 2 days in Pittsburgh. So it was mostly a low key trip. We did manage to hit up Primanti Brothers, ride the Incline, and the National Aviary, as well as do some shopping. Evie enjoyed the Aviary, but she was a little panicked about the birds flying around free in the walk-through areas.

Evie, crying: “I don’t want to see real birds, I want to see pretend birds!”

According to Evie, the best part of the trip was “playing with the bath toys”, which I definitely believe. For her (for all of us) the trip wasn’t really about what we did in Pittsburgh, but about visiting friends. She had SO MUCH FUN playing with Ayla and Jackson (who she found quite hilarious). She had been looking forward to taking a bath with them ever since she took a bath with them when they visited us. I would have to agree as well, my favorite parts of the trip were when we were just joking around at night about whatever; minute to win it, baby names, Step Up 2: The Streets, anything.

There was one part of the trip that was particularly memorable. I was taking a shower, when I heard the door open and 3 year old footsteps enter.
“Mommy?”
“No.”
“Daddy?”
::getting nervous due to the rustling at the shower curtain:: “No…It’s Shane.”
::ripping open the shower curtain:: “Hi Shane!”

I’m not the first person to learn that 3 year olds aren’t so great at privacy.

The way home was roughly the same as the way out. It was raining in the morning, but it finally cleared up in the afternoon, so we took a side trip to South Bend to hit up a park. This little side trip ended up being pretty interesting. First off, I got to passively pump gas and watch the police try to rouse a homeless guy who was…well, let’s just say he was never going to be roused by a policeman again. Afterwards, we took a delicious detour to the South Bend Chocolate Company. The food was awesome, but the place was bizarrely empty. It worked out well for us, however, since the place had a big indoor playground and we were the only ones using it. The structure was pretty awesome, except for the stuffed demon monkey statue thing perched on top of one of the tubes. The thing freaked Evie out so much that she wouldn’t go inside without me. I can’t say I blame her. Who puts a stuffed demon monkey statue, complete with sharp teeth in it’s screaming mouth, on top of a kid’s playground? Brilliant design decision.

So anyway, all it all a great trip. Being forced to make stops and take the trip there and back slowly ended up being something of a blessing in disguise. It was kind of nice to be able to stop whenever and feel no stress. Evie is already asking when we can go back, and making plans for what we will do when we go.