Family Moon

After the first week of recovery from Annea's birth, I have felt pretty darn good, considering. Calvin has been off of work (one week left of his "man-ternity leave") and catering to our every need. We have time together, Annea sleeps gobs and I am able to get things done. I'm playing Candyland with the girls, reading with them on the couch, and trying to organize the three different sizes of girl clothes we are now juggling. This is some precious time, where Calvin and I are relaxed and on top of our parenting game, where there aren't any pressing things to get done or plan or do, where we can hang out and figure out how to be a family of five, how to have three kids (though I'm sure this is just dipping our toe in, as Annea has been really easy so far), how to be a big or bigger sister. I'm calling it our "Family Moon" and it has been blissful. There is the added complication to this baby-newness time of my mom's cancer, which hangs over my days and makes tears flow at random times, but having a baby and a family of my own to worry about makes compartmentalizing what's going on with my mom easier. Not sure if that's healthy, but it makes it much more possible to cope. I have been able to see her every day-- which I love-- if even for a few minutes. I like knowing she's there.

Beloved friends from near and far, church and community have brought us (and are still going to bring us!) meals, which is the most amazing, wonderful, generous and thoughtful thing. I've said it before, I'll say it again: cooking is such a complex, mysterious, high-stress event for me under the best of circumstances, that having food brought to us is the most tremendous gift. I'm learning new recipes from the delicious dishes that people have brought to us, and... my darling and precious friend Amy, (with her one- year-old, Cassiel), flew up (from LA!) to visit me for the weekend to teach me some recipes and fill my fridge and freezer. Such a gift!! I feel empowered. I have a new list of recipes to make, ingredients to buy, directions for meal preparation, and it feels good. My favorite part of her stay (besides crying with her and the deep, endless, life-long conversations we continued), was when she said: "For a side dish tonight, I'll just look through what you have on hand and make something." Ha! Every day I do the very same thing, look at what I have on hand and... freak out that we have nothing to eat. Amy loves a culinary challenge, so when I told her this, she went through our pantry item by item to let me know what each separate food could be paired with for a dish. Amazing! Miraculous!! Thank you, Amy!!

I didn't get a single picture of Amy slaving away in my kitchen, but here she is providing another important service: painting the girls' nails.

Amy also got to visit with my mom, and snuggle Annea a bunch.

Calvin and I trying to pose me in such a way as to show how very little Annea is. Our peanut!

Baby sandwich!

Eliana helping to show that Annea was two weeks old.

Annea's three week old picture (yesterday was three weeks!). Just like...

Adessa's...

and Eliana's! Do our girls look alike, or what?

Eliana is Three Years Old!

Eliana is three! She will proudly show you how old she now is by bending down her errant fingers until there are only three stuck in the air. She is a self-proclaimed "big girl" and there are only a few things left for her to learn how to do, which she tells me she will learn when she's a grown up. Things like jumping rope, riding a bike to Disneyland, and snapping her fingers--which Adessa just learned how to do, (on one hand, only, and not loud enough to be "snappy", yet). Maybe Eliana considers Adessa a grown up?

Eliana is making strides of her own, though. She helps out so much with baby Annea: she loves to refill my water glass, throw things away or into the hamper for me, and is in charge of washing Annea's hands with a washcloth when we bathe her. And just a few days ago as she was hopping around, she learned how to skip, even!! Step, hop, step hop!

Calvin decided we must get into gear with outdoor games and bike riding, (our girls might be behind!) so we loaded up on soccer and base-balls and a bat and other catching and throwing games and prepared to be sporty. Next up are helmets so we can get the girls on bikes! And we both realized this emphasis on athletics is coming none-too-soon when Eliana and Adessa were trying to play baseball and Eliana kept shouting for her turn with the "hitting thing". Yes, we are finally on our way!

You know how people are most loveable when they are vulnerable? Eliana has been so loveable lately! She loves to dance and play dress up, and as people dropped off dinner for us the other night(THANK YOU, THANK YOU!) she came out to do a little number for them (I believe it was "Waltz of the Flowers" because its always "Waltz of the Flowers".) She had her fancy, frilly tutu on backwards! Her little nipples were showing through the criss-crossed back straps. Oh my goodness I just loved her then, her little embarrassed face when she realized why we were trying not to laugh. Painful, loving them this much, being embarrassed for them, feeling it when they're vulnerable. Eliana is a bit accident prone, she walks into walls and doors, doesn't look where she's going, falls and trips. Oh dear. She's also having a little bit of trouble finding her place in our new family, I think, being told to wait over and over again. Crying easily about so many little things. Asking to be held at the most terrible, inconvenient times when she knows my hands are full with the baby. Ach. It just really does break my heart. I want to be so careful with her, with all of them.

Eliana asked for and received a "Princess and the Frog" cake for the actual day of her birthday. We'll celebrate with a party for both girls (and Jayden, too!) later on, but for her special day, she got a big fluffy cake and a (used, don't tell her) Mermaid barbie doll-thingy and was completely happy. Adessa was another story, not at all okay with Eliana getting something she didn't get.

This picture is blurry, but it shows Eliana's magnificent cake and how she uses both hands to show how old she is.

It was, as you can see, delicious birthday cake!

She posed! When asked! With Eema in the loft at church.

Happily holding Annea.

Annea Elizabeth Lewis

Finally, at long last, (after one week of life!), here is the official blog post welcoming Annea (Uh-nay-uh) Elizabeth Lewis to our family. She was born on Sunday, April 29th, at 1:05 pm. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 10 oz, and was... either 19 or 20 inches long*.
She came at exactly the right time (read: I felt I couldn't have waited another minute!). My mom was going into intense figure-out-the-cancer mode starting Monday, April 30th, and needed to focus on herself and not be worried about being able to make it to my labor or not. April 29th was also my maternal grandma's birthday, born 93 years ago and passed away last year in early April. Auspicious day, all around. I was also dang tired of being pregnant, and tired of the suspense of waiting for labor and wondering if each little braxton hicks was the beginning of something more.

My water broke at 8:45 am Sunday morning, and we went to the hospital, met and were horrified by Nurse Marlene**, walked the halls at 12:00pm to see if we could get things going a little more, got things going, and badaboom badabing, Annea came out after an intense 30 minutes. I went from 7 to 10 centimeters from 12:30-1:00, and it only took one long push to deliver Annea to Planet Earth. Annea came shooting out, really. Nurse Marlene barely caught her, there was no doctor or neo-natal nurse in the room, and I think, finally, I got some credibility from the hospital staff. "Oh, I guess she is going to have the baby."

It is the very best feeling in the entire world that I know of so far to hold your new, wet, wriggling, crying, blue or purple (color doesn't matter as long as they're crying) baby to your chest, after 10 months of pregnancy and however many hours of labor. The relief, the joy, the... relief... the joy... really, that's it. Huge, unparalleled relief and amazing, euphoric joy. The baby is healthy and fine, and made the journey okay: relief beyond relief, joy beyond joy.

Here she is!!

The other piece to my relief and joy is my husband, Calvin. Each of our girls' births have been the most amazing, special, even romantic experiences of our life together. I love this man!! He is such a good daddy to my girls, and partner for me. Thank you, God, for Calvin! Thank you, Calvin! Look at his teary eyes! He was with me through it all, and he loves me and he loves our babies. This is a good man. Girls, you have a marvelous Daddy!

That my mom got to be there, with her heating pad for her back and lots of soup snuck into the delivery room, was a wonderful thing, as well. She felt well enough, and was again part of my "Crack Labor Team". Everyone assumed their duties perfectly, and I feel I could do anything with my mom, sister Laurel, and Calvin at my side. Especially if they were doing soft-touch massage on my arms and legs!

This picture, in light of the recent events regarding Mom's health, made me cry and cry when I saw it. There she is, such a key part of the major events of my life. There she is.

Auntie Laurel holding Annea for the first time.

The proud big sisters meeting Annea for the first time.

Our family of five! We'll work on portraiture as a family unit, but this was our first try.

Eliana taking a turn holding Annea.

Adessa's turn.

Abba's turn.

Grandpa's turn.

She finds her thumb, or assorted other fingers, often! Here, she's smiling about it.

Annea is very sweet and mellow. She sleeps a lot, which I forgot about, and is so puzzled looking when she's awake (which I remember). She is doing well! She is soft and kissable and smells like heaven. I got to bond a little extra with her in the hospital, since I had to stay for the whole two days instead of the one day I was planning on. Nurse Marlene was in no rush to give me the anti-biotics I needed when I got to the delivery room, which I needed since I was Group B Strep Positive. So I had only one dose instead of two, and therefore Annea was at risk of infection and needed to be observed a full 48 hours. After resigning myself to the idea, Annea and I had a great time at the hospital. We just chilled, watched TV, figured things out, gazed into each others eyes, ate pretty decent hospital food, and rested.





*The scatterbrained, very chatty, borderline inept labor and delivery nurse, Marlene, distractedly measured her at 19 inches. At Annea's first doctors appointment, our fabulous pediatrician's assistant, Fatima, measured her carefully and precisely at 20 inches. Could she have grown one inch in four days? Probably not. So her actual length is probably closer to 20 inches, no thanks whatever to Nurse Marlene.

**Nurse Marlene was oblivious to our focused, calm, peaceful approach to birthing. She was a distraction at her best and raunchy and inappropriate at her worst. As my mom said in the middle of it all: "Someday we'll laugh about her, right?" Right.

I'll do a more detailed labor account later, but first I have to hit Eliana's 3rd birthday!!