introducing: the boo

We call her Ila. But much of the time she is The Boo. How do these names evolve?

The origin is unknown except that it was the work of David. However, here is a midpoint in its development:

David called her "chicky poo" in the first week, which my sister Juliana thought was "chicken poop." Um, no. Not.

And from there it became boo, and then The Boo. Boo has no relation to Boo Radley, yet I can't help but think of that name all the time.

the oob

meet ali

a-l-i: pronouced as in aladdin. Except it is princess ali, fabulous she.

ila

ila

ila & laura

ila & david

ila

ali

newsletter

I posted our family newsletter on my facebook wall on Feb 9. Take a look if you haven't seen it! It is not quite a christmas newsletter, but I have every excuse in the world for the delay:)

the end.

costco

So it happened. I gave in and bought a costco membership. Mainly because of the tiny human. I never joined in my Stanford days, when a lot of "roommates" would split a membership. Before last saturday, I had been inside of Costco only twice.

The first visit was 4 years ago to return wedding presents that we couldn't fit into my car for the drive from Utah to California. However, this visit got me no further than the returns desk at the front of the store. Resulting from this visit I became the proud owner of a "cash card," which I realized was code for gift certificate. The second visit was to spend what was on the cash card. I used it to purchase things for my wedding open house in California. Two things remained in my memory from that visit: 1) giant container of frozen cream puffs & 2) huge tray of shrimp, neither of which I purchased.

And so last Saturday was technically my third time inside Costco, but really only the second time I purchased anything, and in reality the first visit as a real member. And alas I saw neither cream puffs nor shrimp. But I wasn't really looking.

To my surprise I discovered there is no such thing as costco grocery bags. Instead they give you a huge apple packing box that miraculously fits in the cart, and even more miraculously, in my trunk. Which we filled to maximum capacity. And naturally we didn't leave without spending hundreds of dollars.

The Obligatory Child Birth Post

It occurred to me that I have been remiss in following the blogging tradition of giving a detailed account of child birth.

Here are the facts, which may or may not be detailed.

I was induced at 41 weeks along at my doctors recommendation. I arrived at the hospital the afternoon of December 26th, and left the morning of December 30th. I had dinner on on the 26th, but didn't eat for the next 36 hours, which was not very fun. Labor technically began on monday night with the first induction part (cervidil) but not really in earnest until early the next morning when the pitocin drip started. I did get an epidural even though I really didn't want to, but it was mostly worn off by the time baby arrived. I'm hoping for spontaneous labor and a natural delivery next time around.

Labor hurts a lot. During labor I enjoyed these activities: eating ice chips, listening to David read, playing a card game with David, attempting to move around to manage pain but being put back in bed because the baby heart monitor would not cooperate, getting my water manually broken (which made labor much more painful I might add), and arguing with David about why he should go to the cafeteria and buy breakfast, then lunch, then dinner for himself. I think I won the breakfast and dinner argument, but not lunch. Poor David ate some granola bars instead. Also, I enjoyed dragging the IV stand around with me to and from the bathroom an infinite number of times.

Labor was around 20 hours (starting from the pitocin) including 3.5 hours of pushing, ending in a forceps delivery (which I was grateful for since the alternative was a c-section!). And then the baby came out and she was HUGE and no wonder her head got stuck! My first observation was my stomach deflated quite dramatically. My first question was whether she was really a girl (I did not totally trust the ultrasound..), but was ignored and I had to ask twice.

And then a lot more stuff happened and I was beyond tired and a complete basketcase for the next week or so.

But it turns out I had a really cute baby. And I love her. And she has AWESOME hair.

the end.

Reija's Rapunzelness and pink-like things

I was struck recently by the parallelism between two photos.

In this shot, I am wearing Reija's hair. I look quite dashing. It seems Rapunzel-like to me the way I am using her hair.

And here is little Ila wearing the baby blanket Reija made. Which is very long and Rapunzel-like.

Both blanket and hair come from Reija, and both are long and pink-like. (Pink-like indicating that Reija'a hair is actually red, not pink, and is only pink-like for the purpose of this paragraph.)

And in the spirit of pink hair (which Reija does NOT have), here are some pictures from David's 26th birthday party that I threw for him while we were dating:

Which of David's hats do you like best?

And of course I must include Karren's scandalous moment with pink hair and a bottle of (root?) beer: