birthday

Birthday Bash

/ Shane / 2 Comments

On Saturday we had a little get together for Sara’s birthday (not nearly as big as what she planned for mine). We had a pretty good turnout, in fact, big enough that I had to make some last minute adjustments in the amount of food I had planned! Everything went more or less smoothly.

I felt a little guilty since Sara had put so much effort into my party, so I wanted to make something special for her cake, something a little fancy. So I ended up making a “honey bee” cake, complete with marzipan bees.

The cake was sort of interesting. There is 1/2 cup of honey in the cake and another 1/2 cup in the glaze. However, it mostly just tastes like chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. Still, my mom said, “This is the best chocolate cake I have ever tasted.”

I think Evie was a little confused as to whose birthday it was, since somehow things always end up centered around her. She was having  a blast playing with everybody and even convinced everyone to walk a block away to the nearest open patch of grass and play parachute with her.

I asked her, “What do you think we should get mommy for her birthday?” “Adult stuff,” she said. “Like what?” “Like books and things.” So I didn’t think much of this conversation until much later when Evie suddenly got it into her head that we should buy mommy a magazine, because “she likes magazines.” So I took her to the store and she picked out In-Style. It was funny to see how excited she was to give Sara a simple magazine.

I also helped her use the scissors and construction paper to make a card for Sara. She took each rectangle of paper and cut a long slit up the middle, almost to the top. “It’s pants!” she said. It did look like pants, and Sara got about 3 pairs on her card.

Anyway, I think everybody had a good time. Happy birthday Sara!

Happy Birthday Sara!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

There was a party yesterday, of which there will be an update, but so far today has mostly been dominated by Pretty Pretty Princess. I’m sure pictures will show up on facebook, whether we like it or not…

Happy Birthday Sara!

Happy Birthday!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Three years old today! I can’t believe how fast the years have gone!

Evie wanted cupcakes for her birthday, but she wanted 3 candles on each cupcake!

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!

Surprised!

/ Shane / 2 Comments

So Sara planned a surprise party for me on Saturday, and I think a good time was had by all. The star of the party, of course, was the tower of homemade cupcakes in lieu of a birthday cake. These weren’t just your average cupcakes either; the green ones were chocolate mint, the orange ones had orange cake, the strawberry ones had strawberry filling. The schnozberry ones tasted like schnozberries. They were amazing.

Now the first question you’re probably asking yourself is, was I surprised? Well, I’ll have you know that I am extremely brilliant, and you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me. And by that, of course, I mean that I’m so oblivious that most people pretty much stopped bothering to even pretend around me, and I STILL probably wouldn’t have caught on if it hadn’t been staring me in the face.

I knew my mom was coming this weekend. So the first clue was when I called her to see if she had received my email about bringing her snow pants (Evie wanted to play in the snow). The conversation went something like this:

Me: “Did you grab your snow pants?”
Mom: “Yes, and I already called Rachael to tell her to bring hers.”
Me: “Oh, is Rachael coming too?”
Mom: “No.”

Despite this, I still wasn’t suspicious yet. Not suspicious enough to not notice the 6 lbs. of beef thawing in the fridge or to think anything was amiss when Sara proceeded to make 45 cupcakes while I was in the kitchen (to be fair, this doesn’t mean that I didn’t notice all the cupcakes, only that I didn’t see a problem with someone making me 45 cupcakes).

However, on Friday night I was opening up some presents from my mom, and the card said, “I hope you were surprised!” “About turning 30?” I asked (I quite expected to make it to 30, thank you very much). I thought maybe there was a surprise in the present. “Was I supposed to open the present first?” So I opened the present and it was jeans. My mom tried to play it off. “Aren’t you surprised I got you the same present for Christmas and your birthday?”

This was decidedly odd, but before I could even think about it, I opened the birthday card from my dad that came in the mail. “Sorry we couldn’t make it to your party.” “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Sara. Now I might be oblivious, but when you put the word “surprise” and “party” so close together, combined with all the other weird stuff (I thought of some other odd stuff later too, in retrospect), you’d have to be pretty dense not to get it.

Not to take anything away from anybody though, there were several highly successful ruses. For example, Tom and Barb calling to wish me a happy birthday when they were really in the car a couple of blocks away. Rachael also calling to wish me a happy birthday and talking to me for a long time, even though she was going to see me the next day. And also my mom making me go the long way around to backtrack and see the people on the ice rink for like 10 minutes. I did not detect that I was being delayed (though I may have been a little exasperated about it!)

One final word about birthday parties, I think it is hard for Evie to imagine any situation that is not all about her. This is not entirely her fault. I remember at one point, she was sitting at the table eating a cupcake, the only one, while she held court with about 8 people crowded around her. From her point of view, there wasn’t much difference between her birthday party and my birthday party.