Kirsten and Mark

My mom had to leave on Thursday afternoon. It was a sad day for all of us. We’d been taken care of so well for a week that it was hard to see her go. She wasn’t very happy about it either. She really thought about taking him with her, but realized she’d have a problem in a couple of hours when he was hungry.

Thanks for everything mom!

Here’s a picture of Brit with Grandma Sheri. (We’ll let him come up with her permanent name when he starts talking.)

His other grandma is coming tomorrow, so we’re excited about that too. She thinks she won’t want to leave either!

It’s amazing that it was just a week ago that I was having the time of my life in the hospital. Seriously, it was pretty boring all day long just waiting for things to progress. Then, our Britton arrived and everything changed.We are having so much fun with him. He has the sweetest personality and is a joy to have around. After the horrible 24 hours of him not eating and both of us being so frustrated there were lots of tears, he finally got what he needed and since then things have been getting better every day.He had a good first Easter–I think he really liked his basket.Yesterday he went to the doctor for a check up and everything is great. Everything is healing well, and he weighed 6 lbs. 13 oz., just 4 ounces less than his birth weight, which the doctor thought was good. We could tell he’d started gaining weight, so I wonder how light he got before turning it back around.Some things we’ve learned about Brit:

• He only cries when there is something wrong–diaper, hungry, cold or frustrated
• He hates having a messy diaper of any kind, and won’t eat unless he’s clean and dry
• When he’s awake, he is very alert, looking around at his surroundings
• He’s strong–has lifted his head for a few days, pushes back from your chest with his arms, rolls onto his side from his back–we have to watch him with this one.
• Can lay awake by himself and doesn’t cry
• Likes to cuddle (my favorite thing!

We love just watching him, and playing with him when he’s awake.

We’re home. We left the hospital yesterday afternoon and have been getting used to having this cute little guy with us.From the beginning he’s been a really good baby, usually only crying when there’s a problem. He is changing every day and his little “delivery marks” have disappeared. He likes to have his hands by his face and curl up his legs, so that makes feeding and changing a little hard, but we’ll get the hang of it.

He’s had a hard time eating (since we got home at least, he did fine in the hospital of course) but we know he’s hungry, so it’s very frustrating. We’re hoping he’ll get the hang of it soon, for all of our sakes.

All the nurses were amazed that he was actually born on his due date–only about 20% of babies are–but, we think he was just being the same good baby he’d been the whole pregnancy. He saw no reason to come early and didn’t want to torture me by being late. Though, since he was born 18 hours since my water had broken , I was thinking he might come the next day.

We want to thank everyone for the calls, emails and comments on the site. We love reading all of them and hearing from everyone. Britton is really lucky to be loved by so many people!

Mark and I are doing pretty well. My mom has been a really big help–making meals, monitoring my water intake, taking care of him. I’m so glad she’s here.

Here are a couple of pictures from the past couple days since some people insist they need to see how he changes every day.

Born March 18th at 10:32pm. 7lbs, 1oz – 19.25in   More pictures soon. 

Kirsten’s water broke around 4:20am and we’re hanging out in the hospital, anxiously awaiting Britton’s arrival. We’ll post more when we get the chance.

I know, I forgot to post yesterday, sorry! It has caused some people to wonder if we had Britt, but alas, no such luck. We’re still waiting.

This past week has been pretty uneventful. I had a cold most of the week, and then on Saturday Mark wasn’t feeling well. So far this week I’ve just been working on getting our taxes done, crocheting Britt’s blessing blanket–though, it may be too hot to use it then–and hanging out.

Yesterday we went to the doctor and there’s very little happening yet. I’ve been having a few contractions, but not major ones, and they never last. So, I’m kicking it into high gear and doing all the things they say “may” start labor–exercising (esp. walking), eating spicy food, acupressure points,  etc.

I know he’s not due until Tuesday…so, he’s not late yet, and I guess he has every right to stay in there till then, but I’m getting really tired of hearing about everyone else having their babies already when they’re due the same time or even after me!

We do have a friend’s wedding on Saturday though, so if he’s not here we can go, which will be really fun. So, that’s the positive I guess.

He’s really done developing everything except for fat…so not much to report. He could be about 7 to 7.5 pounds now, so he really needs to come soon!

We’ll be sure to let everyone know when he does make his debut!

Since Mark already posted a little bit about his new “site” and not much has happened in the past week, this will be pretty short today.

I’m half way through my 2nd week home and have pretty much run out of things to do. I’m now just reading, trying to finish our wedding scrapbook–I finally got more pages and page covers so I can–and hanging out.

Strangely, I got a cold last night. I was completely fine, laid down on our futon for about an hour (without a pillow, could be a factor) and when I got up, my nose was stuffed up and I had a sore throat! It went on throughout the night and into the morning as well. Now, my throat feels almost normal, but I have had a cold symptoms for the rest of the day. Super strange!

We had our doctors appointment today. He’s still in there, still head down, and still doing fine. Come back in a week. I was going to have her check me to see if anything was happening, but she said she didn’t need to yet (though, most places would have done it a couple of times already). But, I didn’t push the issue because when I’d laid back so she could measure my stomach and find his heartbeat I got really light headed and dizzy. Just the reason why they say not to lay flat on your back…but, I wasn’t that flat, so who knows.

Here’s a picture of me from this week.

If you subscribe to our site with google reader (or other feed readers, I would imagine), things should be back to normal now. Basically, I was optimizing our site and checked an option I shouldn’t have. I could get more technical, but that would probably bore most of you. However, if that wouldn’t bore you and you *want* to read technical stuff, I’ve just set up a new blog for myself at Mark.KirstenAndMark.com. There’s nothing there at the moment (other than a vanilla WordPress install), but I’ll be putting stuff there that doesn’t apply to our family as a whole. Stuff like what music I’m listening to, web/tech related items, gripes about Internet Explorer etc. If that sound interesting to you, I plan on posting about once a week. If not, we’ll continue to post about our family here. Just so this post isn’t completely unrelated to what we normally write about here, I’m including a picture of the glider that we picked up this weekend. We’re all set and excited for Britton’s arrival.