So Oliver was big, obviously, though that didn’t register right away. Mostly I’ve noticed that in retrospect, like in situations where I remember noting how small Evie was. The car seat is a good example. I remember when we took Evie home that she looked so tiny in that seat! I sure didn’t think that about Oliver!

The first thing I really noticed were his huge feet and long fingers. Huge feet in particular are sort of a family trait, on my dad’s side. The rumor is that when I was born, the doctor, having delivered many babies in my family, recognized my feet immediately. So at least there is one thing about Oliver that I can really say come from me (I gave Evie my dimple).

Sara had no pitocin for her labor, which was apparently quite remarkable. Everybody who came in mentioned it, especially the residents. Sara asked the nurse what percentage of people get pitocin, and the nurse said, “100%.” Well, she had to amend her statistic to 99.95% later, because Sara went au natural, as it were.

And, despite the lack of pitocin, everything went really fast. Well, I should amend that maybe. Every time I exclaim, “It went really fast!” someone says, “Wait a minute. She had contractions for like 29 hours!” Well, first off, 29 hours seems pretty quick when the first one was 62 hours. And second off, every time they checked her, there was major progress. Compare that with the first one, where every time they checked they would say, “Nothing yet!” So, not only was the first one a lot longer time-wise, it also felt a lot longer because of the lack of progress.

As for me, the birth story is really all about allergies. Holy smokes, there was something with that hospital. From the minute we got there, until we left, I was pretty miserable, even with medication. I don’t really know why it was so bad, but I was a little frustrated that this wonderful, important moment, was being ruined by the stupid poisonous air! Plus, you could tell in all of the pictures that I was miserable, with my red scratchy eyes and stuffy nose. It’s hard to see that kind of thing in a picture, so you can imagine how bad it was (although people usually just say I look tired, which was also true).

I wasn’t the only one who didn’t look good in my pictures. Poor Oliver (You thought I was going to say Sara didn’t you? Well you were wrong, she was pretty much radiant the whole time, with perfect hair) had a case of Erythema Toxicum, which is a bad looking rash all over, common in babies.  It’s not as bad as it sounds; it’s not painful or itchy (or toxic) or anything. Unfortunately though, it doesn’t make for very nice pictures.

So, lets see, where was I? They tried to get us a bigger room, but in reality, the room we ended up with was much nicer. It wasn’t huge, but it was on the corner, so we had two walls of windows looking out onto a boulevard with flowering trees (everyone would say, “Look at that beautiful view!” and I would just sniff and claw at my eyes). Plus, it was at the very end of the hall, so we were more or less alone. It was downright luxurious.

Evie’s reaction was about what I would have guessed. She has just been so excited for baby Oliver to get here, so I knew she would be really exited to meet him. She is very reverent around him, with a lot of soft, “Hello Oliver”‘s and “Good morning Oliver!”‘s. At the hospital she sang Happy Birthday to him. Overall though, she was probably more interested in all the other stuff at the hospital, than in Oliver. There were a lot of interesting tubes and buttons and other things she wasn’t allowed to touch. She likes to hold him and give him smooches and pet his head, so much so that sometimes we have to tell her to give him a little room.

We bought some presents to give her from Oliver, and she gave him some presents as well, including the book Ollie the Stomper.

We told her she could pick something out at the toy store for him, and she picked out a piggie bank. It’s really cute, and she was really excited. Even to the point that when she found change on the ground, she put it in his piggie bank instead of her own. Oliver got her a book about being a big sister, a baby dalmatian (so that the one growing inside of her could be born at the same time), and a little heart full of M&Ms. Evie said, “Oliver gave me a heart because he loves me, so maybe I can give him back the heart, because I love him!”

So far she hasn’t seemed too jealous, but there are a few things here and there. For example, the first time Sara put Oliver in the sling, Evie started quietly sobbing. I said, “Why are you crying honey?” and she said, “I don’t know!”

So that’s about it. Overall, everything went better the second time around; no ridiculously long induction, no weight problems for the baby so far, no premature discharging of mommy from the hospital, etc. He seems to sleep waaay more than Evie, and I’m not complaining about that. Of course, now that I’m mentioning it, I’m sure I’m doomed.

And now we have 2 kids. We’re officially an old couple. You can probably get away with being kind of cool still when you just have one kid, but 2? The first thing I noticed about having 2 kids is that you can’t accomplish anything! With one kid, one of you can watch the baby while the other one takes a shower, does the dishes, does some laundry, etc. With two kids, there’s no one left over to accomplish anything! So we’re already going down a rough path in terms of the cleanliness of our house.

(and the timeliness of our blog posts…)