Morning Conversations

This one is for the Grandparents

Halloween Shenanigans

I love holidays! And as far as holidays go Halloween is a big one, it is the ultimate candy lovers delight. It's great; you dress up and people shower you in candy. Genius! Whoever came up with this concept should get a noble prize for improving the lives of children all across America. In the Holiday rankings Halloween comes in a close second to Christmas. I love it because it marks the start of the candy season. You know, like fruit season, but for candy. Pears come on in September, Blackberries are in August and Raspberries in July. Well, candy corn and pumpkins bloom at Halloween, candy canes come out at Christmas, Conversation and juju hearts ripen in time for Valentines Day, and Runt's freckled eggs and cadbury eggs bloom at Easter. Sadly after Easter we have to weather the candy dearth that is summer and fall. Anyway, I digress. Back to Halloween, for Halloween we dressed Ella up as a "Sweet Pea"

we carved our pumpkin and took the traditional Vogey style picture.

Then we thought hey, why not put Ella in the pumpkin? And she fit so nice we took a picture. At first she was happy. . .

so we took another picture . . .

and she was still happy so we took another picture . . .

And then we were done. . .

But she calmed down pretty quickly and still managed to enjoy her first Halloween. Hope you had as much fun as we did, but mostly we hope you had a good candy harvest.

paparazzi

Okay so I'm really behind on my blog. But about a week after I brought Ella home the paparazzi, (aka my buddies Karla and Corinne) came over for a visit. I knew they were both shutter bugs, but I had never actually seen them in action. This is the closest I have ever been to the golden globes. Ella of course was the sta, and she performed beautifully. Even in her sleep! I mean come on the girl is amazing and gorgeous. Corinne and Karla were also amazing, prepping the star, staging the shots and then contorting their bodies to get just the right angle. It was so fun to watch that I decided to take a few pictures of the photographers. Here they are in action

They took such beautiful photographs that I completely scrapped the idea of getting professional ones done. I LOVE the pictures they took. Here are a few of my favorites.

I think this one is hilarious. Ella was being a little bit of a Diva and decided to whine about her bath, actually holler is more like it. :) But then again, isn't that what starletts do?

they even got her toes to look cute!

How to comfort a laboring woman. . . or rather, how not too.

One thing that I discovered is that in the medical profession we tend to gloss over things. Or deliver bad news in a honey sweet voice. If you listen to the tone, everything is just dandy, but if you catch the actual words, things aren't lookin so good. For example. I didn't sleep at all the night that I was in labor with Ella, I kept hearing her heart rate drop on the monitor, then I would look at the strip to see how low she had gone. When things were really exciting a random assortment of health care workers would rush into the room and have me turn this way or that, put oxygen on me, take it off, put it on again. The one's that didn't know I was nurse would nonchalantly say all sorts of comforting things like "oh don't worry we're just resuscitating the baby." Case in point, the term resusciate. Perhaps if I didn't know what resuscitate meant I would sigh with relief knowing that all was right with the world. However, I do know what resuscitate means and I would not classify 'resuscitate' as a soothing term, in fact it's kind of a red flag. When we resuscitate a baby in the NICU it's not something we do just for kicks and giggles. In fact I would put it in the same category as terms like, 'touch and go,' 'death defying brady,' and my mum's personal favorite 'circling the drain.' You get the picture. Then there was my personal favorite, when one nurse told me my baby looked just fine, and followed that statement up with "but I'm just going to arrange these cables so that if we need to go somewhere in a hurry, we can just take off and go." Huh? Let's back this hospital bed up a bit, where exactly will we be going in a hurry, because if it's Baskin Robbins I'm game. Man I was disappointed when after that run down the hall we ended up not at the ice cream palor but in the OR. I'm still trying to decide if they made a wrong turn.

Ella

Sorry that it took us so long to put this up. I only got the internet installed this week, and our little cutie has kept me very busy. So, at long last we are introducing Ella to the blog. Here's the stats for you:

Ella Cornelia Brooks
born on August 29th at 7:10 am
weight: 2146 grams or 4 lbs 11 ounces
Length: 17 inches
Apgars: 8 & 9 (strong work Ella)
Eyes: yet to be determined
Hair: dark brown and lots of it.
general info: practically perfect in every way
Blood sugars: marvelous

Evan and I were supposed to move into our new house at 9:00 on Saturday, but Ella decided to steal the show and arrive that day instead. I was worried that with the diabetes she would be a big sugar baby, but she surprised me and the OB when she ended up to be very tiny. Less than the 10th percentile for her gestation. Apparently she wasn't growing inside my tummy so they decided to induce me in the hopes that she would grow more outside my belly than inside. We tried to have a traditional delivery, but with her small size and my low amniotic fluid she couldn't tolerate the contractions, and they had to do a c-section for poor fetal heart tones. Once she was born she did wonderfully. She dropped down to 4 and a half pounds a few days after delivery, but she has such an appetite that she has already grown to be 5 pounds 10 ounces (yahoo!). She is even getting a Budah belly and chubby cheeks. We're very proud of her growth, and her good looks, I mean come on she's ADORABLE. Here are some pictures of our little cutie.

It only took about 5 seconds for her to wrap Daddy around her teeny tiny finger. Isn't strange that Evan is a Dad and I'm a Mom, that is going to take a while to get used to.

Why I love being an Aunt part 2

July brought more fun visits with family. We started out with an impromptu Brooks reunion on the island, complete with home made ice cream, the swing of course and kayaking. Here are some photos of the Brooks clan

Josh, Kymber, Devin and Emily at Double Bluff
Ian and Devin at the Zoo

Then we spent a girls day in Seattle for me and Lara's birthdays, watching the new Harry Potter and getting lunch at the Cheesecake factory. Delicious!

At the end of the month Dave and Ashlee came to visit the island. We walked around langley and got lunch at my favorite restraunt, Cafe Langley. Ashlee helped me register for the baby and we went to Thai food before heading back to Mom and Dad's.

Here's Libby with her mom, some kids are just born cool. . . it's in the genetics

Max on Grandpa's swingset

NEW HOUSE!

So the bank finally approved the short sale and now we are just waiting for the financing to come through on our new house. We'll probably move in at the end of August. So now it's a race between Ella and the house to see which one comes into our lives first. Personally I'm rooting for the house to come first, but we'll see. It is a 4 bedroom with 2 and 1/2 baths and a pantry, not even a wimpy pantry, but a WALK IN PANTRY!!!

Did I mention it has a pantry, a real live panty. Do you know what this means. . . no more boxes of cereal perched precariously above my Sunday dresses. No more hoping that every time I open the guest closet pasta won't start raining down on me. Although, I will have to buy some new furniture, since the boxes of canned peaches will no longer serve as bedside tables, they'll just be boxes of peaches. What a Delightful concept!

This is the entry way/ living room

Kitchen

a bedroom that we will definitely need to paint, although the star is quite lovely

We also have an entire room painted pink, like the center of that star, we will also be painting that room. Anyhow, we're pretty excited about our new house, come pay us a visit when you can.