December News Report

What all we've been up to in the two months since Laurel was born...

• Dad was here for a week
• Emily and Morgan were here for a week
• Mom was here for a week
• Two visits from cousin Karyn
• Jared's parents were here for half a week and built us a gorgeous storage shed.  This will enable us to move things from the garage (bikes, camping stuff, lawn mower, tools, furniture which will eventually make its home in our refinished garage) so that work can begin on the garage...
• I've been back to teaching
• Two student Christmas concerts, and two upcoming studio recitals.  I am practicing the piano quite a bit as I am the main accompanist...
• A trip to the Seattle Aquarium
• Jared and I have been out to two or three concerts
• Thanksgiving - we literally didn't know what was happening that day until Wednesday night, when we invited Jeff and Linda to dinner.  And went to THREE grocery stores in search of Tofurkey...
• I got a new gliding ottoman from Craigslist to replace the broken one and recovered all of the rocker and glider cushions.
• I've hauled both little kids to Anne's school drop offs and pick ups on many occasions.  This involves a hike through the woods and often I've had to carry both of them at once.  It's tricky!
• Lots of nursing two little people
• Fleas and a two vet visits
• Doctor appointments for me and kids
• Wrote letters to voters reminding them to vote in the midterm elections (several hundred between Jared and me)
• Halloween (first time the kids had done it)
• Two visits to the Carpinito fall festival
• A visit to my wonderful Afghan neighbor in her family's new apartment
• Made curtains for five windows
• Decorated for Thanksgiving.  And then Christmas.
• Lots of diapers.
• Laundry.
• Tidying and cleaning.
• Lesson rescheduling
• Parent teacher conferences
• Reading
• Some walking and jogging but not nearly enough
• Virtually no violin practicing other than one or two glorious weeks where I spent 20 minutes a day on Simon Fisher's Basics book
• Anne lost another tooth
• Half hearted attempts to help Lazarus with his potty training
• Lots of dance parties with YouTube during the dark, cold rainy months
• Saw the Bellevue Garden Lights

Here are a few pictures for those of you not on facebook:

Laurel's first bottle

First Halloween - bat!

From a students' yard.  

He asked to hold her and was so proud of himself

Thanksgiving

Two months old

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Having heard from other members of my online Suzuki teacher group that parent-teacher conferences were a "game-changer" in their studios, Jared and I decided to hesitantly dip our toes in.  I wasn't sure what to do or how I'd feel about it, so to keep it as low-key as possible, I offered phone conferences to parents as an *option* during two days of our Thanksgiving week break.  I had parents of about eight students take me up on it, and frankly I wasn't super sure of how to run these calls, other than I hoped they would be both positive and constructive. 

BUT.

But. The Monday morning of that week I was signed up for a parent-teacher conference with the two lovely, young teachers from Anne's forest kindergarten.  Laurel and I went and sat in a booth at a little cafe in a grocery store near the park with Teacher Sarah and Teacher Aly.  They talked me through all the strengths they see in Anne at school and her quirks, and I thanked them for all their work.  They also gave me a folder with a write-up of what all they told me as well as several pages she had drawn and dictated stories for.  It was so fun, and I appreciate those teachers and the forest school more than I can tell you.

So I was warmed up!  I typed up some bullet points for my appointed students.  I talked with each parent about 25 minutes.  It was a very pleasant conversation in each case where I told the parents all the things I could see their kids doing well.  The purpose and value of the things they were currently working on.  The things coming up soon in their study. 

For a couple of the parents I had some specific questions I wanted to ask.  One child, I had the sense we needed to be a bit more goal-oriented than process-oriented; that was basically just a hunch in the back of my mind, and that parent actually brought up a question specifically related to goals, so we figured out a plan to help her child with that.  Another parent has two students working on the same repertoire, and I can see a bunch of potential problems coming down the pipe with that, so we got a chance to talk about how she could see the kids best working around it.

With a couple of the parents I shared this brain storm from a lesson about what is progress:

I wanted to encourage them to see all the ways their student truly is progressing.

The whole process was really positive and easily conversational, friendly; and once again I was surprised that some very obvious positives (to me!) were not obvious to others.  So glad we got to make that personal connection.

I plan to offer this once or twice a year, perhaps optional or perhaps mandatory, for the entire future going forward.  I think it really will be a game-changer.

Library Dreams

Rather recently I finished a long-term reading project which I had started in August.  While I was visiting Leah, as Lazarus was napping one day, I browsed her book shelves, and pulled down a title of which appealed to me greatly.  As I read, I took detailed notes on my phone (not recommended - the "keyboard" is too tiny to spell anything properly, and it's a pain to hold the paperback open with one hand while keeping the smartphone screen from flipping to horizontal...)  When I eventually downloaded the notes onto my computer, it was nine full screens of type!  The title of the book is Grace-Based Parenting, written by Tim Kimmel.  His premise is that our understanding of how God treats us as His children is ultimately going to play out in how we treat our children.  Grace, I know, is one of our most central Christian theological concepts, yet I remain somewhat confused as to what it means.  I hoped, among other things, that this book would give me clarity.  Although I feel I can't define the complexity and richness of grace well (I can spout off a standard quick definition, of course), I did feel that I gained a better understanding through some of the stories in the book.  However it wasn't the stories I took notes on, but the more academic stuff.  I will just share a very few things from my notes.

This passage struck me strongly:

"Because we are made in God's image, we have built into our makeup an infinite capacity for love.  Loving your child and even doing things to show your love do not translate into a secure love.
Secure love is a steady and sure love that is written on the hard drive of children's souls. It's a complete love that they default to when their hearts are under attack. It's the kind of love that children can confidently carry with them into the future. "

I was stunned and humbled by a quote from author Dan Allender, which Kimmel shared in the later part of his book:

Honesty is the commitment to see reality as it is, without conscious distortions, minimization, or spiritualization.  Honesty begins by admitting we are deceived, and that we would rather construct a false world than face the bright, searing light of truth.  An honest person acknowledges his fondness for vague, half-truths that neither require change nor rip away the presumption of self-sufficiency.

Why must we admit what is true?  Because dishonesty, or living in denial, is actually an attempt to dethrone God.  it is an attempt to become as God with the power to construct the world and reality according to our desire.  A person committed to denying hard truths must construct an alternate world and, then, like Atlas, keep it spinning on her own power.  The creation of a false world is really an attempt to shut God out of our world.  It's much like the child who says, "Unless you play by my rules, I'll take my ball and bat and go home."  God does not play by our rules nor resolve our wound and ache as we desire; therefore, we leave God's world and create one that is more palatable to our taste, even if it robs us of life and love.

These two sentences late in the book mystified me and provoked me to deep thought:

"The graceless home requires kids to be good and gets angry and punishes them when they are bad. The grace-based home assumes kids will struggle with sin and helps them learn how to tap into God's power to help them get stronger."

The book speaks very specifically to children's needs and to parents' responsibilities, but it does not tell you HOW to do things.  That's part of its beauty - it recognizes every child is different, every parent is different, every family is different.  Instead the author encourages the reader to look at our circumstances through the eyes of principle, while being prayerfully creative about how to accomplish what God wants for us.

So... having finally finished this book (and its somewhat irritatingly arduous note-taking), it was time to start another book, and I had two waiting for me.... 

We have a little neighborhood free library three blocks from us, and in the year we've lived here I've left two or three books in the small, glass-front, peak-roofed box for neighbors, and picked up three for myself.

The first one I took was The Plague and I by Betty McDonald.  I spied it in the box in March and pulled it out.  I'd heard of the book from my mother-in-law but knew nothing about it.  Turns out this is the same Betty McDonald of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle fame, and Plague is one of her autobiographical works.  I could hear the voice of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle as I read about her experiences in a tuberculosis sanitarium, and was delighted to discover that the author was a resident of Seattle in the 1940s when she wrote Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.  As my sister gave Anne her first two Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books shortly thereafter in April, I have a new appreciation for the setting and surroundings of the author as I read these truly delightful stories to my five-year-old.  Plague was a real page-turner for me, although maybe I am easily delighted when it comes to compelling stories....

Back to the current November, I had the second book I'd pulled from the free library waiting for me, and it was A Wrinkle in Time, which has risen to new heights in popularity due to the fairly recent movie (which I have not seen and am not in the market to see).  I had read Wrinkle in childhood on the recommendation of my close friend Laura, and I don't think I appreciated it as much as she did.  Upon rereading it last weekend while nursing a tired baby (I was surprised how much of the plot and details I hadn't remembered), I definitely understood it better.  Now I get that it is a theological exploration of the battle between Good and Evil.  However, it still stretched my mind in terms of the science-fiction aspect of the fantasy, perhaps a bit beyond where my mind wanted to go.  Science fiction interested me a little as a child, but it has never been my favorite genre, and has since fallen in favor with myself.  For that reason, I will always prefer Narnia or the Ring when it comes to theology in literature.  However, I enjoyed it enough that I would like to continue the series.

The third book from the free library I'd been considering taking for some months, but had never gotten up the nerve.  Most of the books in the box are sort of chick-lit gossip stuff, which I don't have the time or the will to read.  The book in question is a semi-autobiographical novel by Willa Cather, which I knew was definitely NOT in that category, but beyond knowing she was a well-regarded author from a long time ago, I had nothing to go on.  However, in a recent Strings magazine, which I usually skim at best, I enjoyed an article on David Hochstein, written in honor of the 100th anniversary of his death.  He was a violin prodigy from Rochester who was killed in WWI, and his friends organized a community music school in honor of him.  That's where I taught for the first four years of our marriage.  In the article, I learned that Hochstein was acquainted with Cather, and there were quotes from her writing which made me want to read her work.   Finally I took the book from behind the latched door, and now I've started reading it.  The writing is so rich and vivid, descriptive and colorful.  The plot runs in refreshingly human time, and I am so intrigued by the pace of life a century or more ago in a small town in the Colorado desert.  My mom always said when I was a child, that I was born in the wrong century on account of my fascination with "the olden days."  As an adult, I have a more mature view on that statement, but it is still true that I seem to see and do things differently than a lot of my peers.  In reading this novel, I am temporarily in love with and nostalgic for a time I never lived in - with an incredibly different pace of life and an entirely different set of expectations which I almost can't fathom.  I appreciate the author's grittiness and also how her more timely perception of the "olden days" were both more and less sexist and proper than I had imagined.  I am also finding it to be a page-turner.

 

Steely Toad

*growly voice* Hi.  My name's Toad.  Steely Toad.  Put 'er up there.


My mom was on FIRE this past week when she came to help us out.   One of her props was this fantastic toad puppet she found at Whole Earth Provision Company.  Toad and Anne were fast friends and held many conversations.  They met for the first time the day of my mom's arrival.  Rather than anyone telling Anne it was practice time, Toad just started asking questions about the cello until Anne was compelled to get out her instrument to demonstrate things for Toad.  The whole practice unfolded in a slow and conversational manner.  And Toad, it turns out, is horribly picky about intonation, but Anne didn't mind and managed to appease his poor wounded ears with more attention to her left fingers.  Though the practice took a while, there was no fighting, and lots of laughing.  I had the priviledge of sitting and watching the whole thing as an observer, and it was absolutely brilliant.  I wish I could have documented the entire session.

Several years ago I read How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and How to Listen so Kids Will Talk, and I ended up publishing a little article in the American Suzuki Journal on using the concepts from the book in my violin teaching.  My mom had recently mentioned to me that she'd been reading this book...

...and it was obvious that the puppet concept came from it.  Mom lamented that they didn't have this book when we were little and her life would have been so much easier if she'd been able to have this information back then.  Anyway, I'm planning to read this VERY SOON.  I have finished two books recently and started a third.  All of which shall be the subject of the next blog.

Anne has been texting Toad since his return flight to Texas...

Wiggle Music

Anne's cello practice these days is fueled by rockstar cellists.  And it also is fueling happy bath times for my two big kids as well as dance parties during the long, dark evenings.  Lazarus calls it "wiggle".  We have a whole playlist of the 2Cellos going on our youtube.  At this rate, Lazarus will have to learn cello as well so they can play this stuff together...

Also popular is an old school pal of the parents', Mike Block...

Amazing Musicians

What did you do on your second-to-last day off for your new baby?  This morning at 9:00 I drove Laurel and Nutmeg and Feathers to the vet and wrangled us all inside.  Afterward I ran a short errand which involved hauling Laurel's seat back and forth.  We came home for an hour and dropped off the cats.  After I listened to my sister manage Anne's cello practice (I want to put her on our business payroll!) I took all three kids to drop Anne off at school.  This involves a 1/4 mile hike each way in the hills carrying both the newborn and the two-year-old.  I came home and handed Lazarus off to Jared for their run, and got right back in the car with Black Bean.  Headed to the vet with the third cat and the baby again.  I made it home just in time to let one of my students who was pulling up know  that there was no lesson today.  After a little while stabilizing Lazarus post-nap, off we went to get Anne at school.  Same hike/carry story as above.  Drove down the hill to the store for cat food and litter.  And finally home around 5:15 for the evening.  Four hours in the car wrangling lots of small dependents.  Maybe not the best scheduling choice of my life...

But I promised amazing musicians.  In the last couple years we have heard three young female conductors leading the Seattle Symphony.  I wrote about the first some time ago.  The other two we have seen this year - Karina Canellakis and Ruth Reinhardt.  Both of these women were easily some of the best conductors we have ever heard.  They brought out inner structures in the music and found the depth of the composers' emotions, while creating great clarity in voicing and rhythmic flow.  It occurs to me that since conducting has been such a male dominated field for so long, for women to make it to the top, they must be better than good - truly stunning, in fact.  I'd love to hear them again any day.

This past weekend we witnessed a violinist whom I'd never heard of before.  Alina Ibragimova played the dark and complex Second Concerto of Shostakovich.  The sounds she created with her bow from the first note were rich, creative, and compelling.  She used such a palate of articulations to make the music speak.  She interacted with the orchestra like a chamber musician.  Her intonation was pure and piercing, and her choice to play some fifths perfectly!!!! in tune without vibrato was haunting.  She captured the thoughts and feelings of a composer who experienced hell on earth and kept going with aplomb.  She was possibly the most technically flawless violinist I have ever heard in my life, but it was all in service to communicating an incredible and abstract story.

Makes you wonder what you're doing with your life, but moreso it's a chance to truly appreciate the intersection of intelligence, emotion, education, love, dedication, and hard work.

Lots of Feelings

I spent some time in the last couple of days enjoying feeling sad...

• Sad that I am at the end of my maternity leave - the time when I can sit on the couch and stare out the window at the trees and the wind and the sky with a tiny baby on my lap - and not feel guilty about it
• Sad that my tiny new baby is getting bigger and less new.  There is so much wonderful anticipation of newness, and I don't like watching the newness ebb away.
• Sad that it is getting darker earlier and earlier...  (Of course, that will get dramatically worse this weekend with the time change.)
• Sad for the baby we lost three years ago
• Sad that I didn't get to watch my kids on their first trick-or-treating adventure (I thought it best to stay home with my sleeping baby in the front pack to answer the door and visit with all the other trick-or-treaters.)
• Sad that my dad's visit week has zipped by so quickly
• Sad that October is already over

And also I spent some time in the last couple of days enjoying feeling grateful...

• Grateful that I have three wonderful, healthy children.
• Grateful that I have so much wonderful family help.
• Grateful that my dad fixed two of our light fixtures and the lamp my great-grandfather made.
• Grateful that I can watch the seasons go by out my window.
• Grateful that the trees are such beautiful colors.
• Grateful that we have our own beautiful little home.
• Grateful that Jared is home all the time with us, and he is so handy with the cooking and mopping and cat box cleaning.

It is November, and I was able to find our Thanksgiving tree in the garage on my first try yesterday.  This year I mounted it on the sheetrock next to our fireplace - very few of our walls have standard sheetrock, so mounting my stuff is an interesting conundrum.

End of October Tuesday

Today is my last day of maternity leave.  I head back to my full Wednesday tomorrow.  I don't feel ready, but such is life...  I am enjoying my vacation.

My dad is here this week, and Anne and Lazarus are really enjoying him!

The fall colors are at their peak right now, and even though I am sad about the early nights, the colors are beautiful.

My kids have never done Halloween before but this year Anne has decided to go trick or treating.  We put together a super cute bat costume for her from her closet, a wee bit of Goodwill shopping, and a quick hand sew.

My two big kids are getting flu shots today, then we are going to the Carpinito pumpkin patch for our last October hurrah.

Three years ago today I we lost our second baby.

Shopping for a space heater online for my out back mini studio.  The tiny space heater which came with the house isn'y going to cut it now.

Jared and I have written over 400 letters to registered voters to remind them about next week's election.  Today I deliver them to the post office.

I have gotten back to running, just a mile or so at a time.

That's a few updates from our corner of the world.

House Year

It was a year ago yesterday that we got the keys to our house.  After a two-month wait to close, we didn't know if we were going to get it.  And then it was ours, and Jared and his parents did a shocking amount of work on it in the month before we moved in.  What a whirlwind!  Good thing we didn't have a new baby at that same time, too.  The work has continued over the year and is far from done.

To recap, here is what has happened so far:

Chimney demoed
Flooring replaced underneath
Wood floors sanded and refinished
70s mirror demoed
Sheetrock on living room wall
Sheetrock on several ceilings
All of that floated, taped, and painted
Both bedrooms painted
Five doors demoed and replaced and painted
Two outdoor sets of step demoed and replaced and water sealed
Baseboards and interior door trim demoed, painted, and replaced
New heating vents
Insulation of heating ducts under the house
Foundation stabilized
Kitchen cabinets painted
Gutters and downspouts on garage replaced
Storage room painted and furnished to resemble teaching studio
Sand box dug
Plants put into yard
Planter box built
Curtains made for kitchen and laundry and three closet openings
Curtains put in eight windows
Random screws and junk taken out of the walls and trim
Moved in
Offloaded lots of stuff
Got rugs and furniture from Craigslist and elsewhere (six rugs, rug pads, sleeper sofa, baby tub, bathroom shelving, five sound panels, wooden table and three chairs, kids outdoor plastic table and four chairs, chest of drawers...)
Built pot rack
Fixed the floor of the bathroom closet
Put sliders or felt or tennis balls on the feet of all the furniture
Some exterior window frames painted
Back sidewalk dug out

I probably missed a few things there.  LOTS more to do.  It was a fixer.  And we bought it for its potential, not its current usefulness.  Onward!

October Baby

We have a new daughter!  Anne has been praying for a sister pretty much since her brother was born.  And for the third time we decided not to find out the baby's sex ahead of time.  I've guessed boy all three times, but ESPECIALLY this time, so I was in total shock after the birth that she was a girl!  We are all delighted, of course!

I didn't think I'd make it to my due date, since I never have before, and the week before my due date, I pretty much tried to wrap up my lessons in a way that my students would be prepared to work without me for a few weeks.  But then there was no baby yet... The day *after* my due date, in the morning, I could feel things shifting around inside of me, and I knew it was my last day of teaching for the week, so I tried to sit very still most of the day.  And after my teaching was done I took the kids out for a long walk around the neighborhood in the double stroller.  And my labor started slowly and quietly....

...She arrived in the wee hours of Saturday morning, October 6th, and we named her Laurel Ruth.  We came to her name from a short list we'd had for a while, just in time to be released from the hospital Sunday.  Laurel is, of course, a beautiful flower, and I thought it would be nice to have a nature name.  And it also makes me think of the victor's wreaths mentioned in the New Testament.  Ruth is my grandmother's middle name, which I also share.

We made it through Phase 0.5 where Jared's parents took care of the kids day and night while we were at the hospital.  Now we have made it through Phase 1, which was the week neither Jared nor I taught.  Today we start Phase 2, where Jared teaches for two weeks and I work toward stabilizing our new family system.  I will pop out of seclusion twice on Thursdays for 30 minutes for my part of violin group classes in our living room.

After that we will have two weeks of Phase 3 where we have a relative in town to help and I teach two full days each week...

And then Phase 4, which is the normal schedule and seems totally impossible from my vantage point right now.

For those of you who actually like all the medical stuff, read on after the pictures.  For those of you who'd rather not know, stop now.

Jared and his dad constructed new steps for the mini-studio before coming to pick us up at the hospital on Sunday.  Impressive!

Laurel came home in the same monkey suit Anne and Lazarus came home in.

She looks a lot like baby Anne.

First outting as Ballance Party of 5 - Carpinito farm market

*******

Friday morning, after the slow quiet labor had gone all night, *mostly* sleep-through-able, and just a few minutes after I finished my Bible study discussion online (a real God-send this year, for sure!) my water broke, but still things were pretty slow.  We started getting childcare lined up (Jeff to pick up Anne from school... Jared's parents to start driving from Oregon...) and called the midwives.  They said I could come in to get checked.  So we made it over to the hospital late afternoon.

The midwife on call (whom I had seen the most this pregnancy!  and really liked!) said there was meconium in the fluid, which meant potential distress for the baby, so I should go across the hall to Labor and Delivery to check in right away.  And still, I was experiencing VERY sporadic and mild contractions.  Nothing much to write home about.  And showing up at the hospital, predictably, slowed everything down.

Since this was VBAC, the hospital required me to have an IV line ready at all times and to be on continuous fetal monitoring.  Thankfully, they have a wireless (albeit bulky and annoying to carry around) system, so I was able to wear the monitors and walk the halls as much as I wanted.  The IV line was more of a problem.  Although I was very intentional about drinking as much water as possible, the first two nurses couldn't get a line in on their three collective tries, so they had to call the anesthesiologist.  And even HE failed on the first try.  Second try worked, and predictably, later in the evening, they decided they needed a second line for me, so they called the anesthesiologist again, and it was a different person on call.  He managed on the first try.  So I had really irritating needles hanging out the back of both hands which were now cold and swollen and pretty much useless.  My fantastic nurse put heat packs on them, thankfully.  Plus I had four more bruises on my arms from my time as a pincushion.

Jared and I walked the halls of Labor and Delivery for a while, and I was still experiencing VERY manageable and frankly, boring, labor.  Midwife decided to check me despite the broken water, and I was a 5.  Which is theoretically active labor.  But it seemed like I had barely labored at all in terms of pain and frequency.  Fine!  I'll take it!

The nurse suggested some exercises to get things going.  So I did those for 45 minutes and walked the halls some more.  And the midwife checked me and I was a 7.  Which is theoretically transition.  Which is the time when people loose their heads and throw up and all that.  And I was totally fine, and rarely uncomfortable and it seemed like nothing was happening.  The midwife suggested trying to knock the rest of the water out of the sack, so she tried that.

The nurse suggested I get in the tub.  I sat in there for two hours, and frankly got bored out of my skull.  Jared and I were both exhausted because it was quite late at night now.  He was sitting on the sofa, and I was in this fancy spa jacuzzi just hanging out waiting for something to happen.  They added some pitocin to my line to see if that could help things move along.  It was my choice.  They said I could just keep going as I was at that point, but if I were in labor longer than X amount of time at the hospital, because of the meconium in the fluid, they'd have to keep the baby for 48 hours.  Didn't seem like the best plan for anyone in our family.

Eventually the nurse came in and said that the baby's heart rate was going down during contractions, so I should get out of the tub so that they could do something quickly if they needed to.  Finally, after another half hour or so, the pitocin seemed to kick in, and things started to get pretty intense and increasingly painful.  And I got the shakes.  Because of the meconium issue, they had to get extra medical personnel in the room for the delivery to check the baby right away.  And it's a good thing they were there, because the baby's heart rate went WAY down, and they were rotating me around between contractions trying to get the placenta to deliver more oxygen, and they put me on an oxygen mask, and when I started pushing, it wasn't going as quickly as it needed to.  It took about 30 seconds for the lead doctor who showed up to get on her scrubs while simultaneously informing me that the baby was in danger and we were going to try a vacuum extraction, and we had basically one shot at that, and if it didn't work, we were going straight to the OR for a C-section.  After making it this far and already having pushed the baby partway out, I was NOT up for surgery.  If that had been suggested before I'd labored, I might have gone for it...  I was at the point where for the last 30 minutes I pretty much had to repeatedly yell with all my might into the oxygen mask that I was about to die, and was wondering what ever possessed me to give birth, all while not caring how many random people were seeing me nude at my lowest moment (while the amazing nurse and midwife kept telling me I was doing a good job).  Anyway, thankfully!!! the vacuum extraction worked (and I gave as much assistance as I could muster!) and in less than a minute, out popped a baby girl at 2:22 am.  I did not die.  Although I felt like I would.  The cause for her heart rate problems became clear, as the cord was tangled all around her.  We had planned on delayed cord clamping and having the midwife ask Jared if he'd like to cut the cord, but let me tell you that doctor was going to town with scissors cutting cord off every part of the baby at high speed.  The baby was immediately inspected... and was totally fine, thank God!  So she spent the next almost hour lounging on me nursing, and then after that, she got diapered and swaddled, and Jared got to spend an hour holding her in the rocking chair, happily awake and alert.  The midwife said unmedicated babies are so much more alert after birth, and I can tell you there is not a lot of reason to skip the epidural except for that sort of thing.

She was 7 lbs. 13 oz. and 20.25 inches long - my biggest baby for sure.  And I outgrew more clothes than ever before, as well.

Birth, it turns out, has been a shockingly violent experience for me.  Not violent in terms of being attacked, but violent and relentless, like the ocean pounding on the rocks, like suffocating, like nearly dying of natural causes.  I like to read these sort of hippie home-birth, birth-is-beautiful, I-caught-my-own-baby types of things, but sadly that has not been my experience at all...

The first few days of recovery were tough.  I was so swollen it was hard to sit down or stand up, and I felt ridiculously weak and anemic, like I might pass out if I stood up longer than three minutes.  But Thursday I turned a corner and felt up to walking around the block in the glorious sunshine.  We are definitely on the upswing, and Anne and Lazarus are getting used to having a newborn sister quite admirably.  There is a lot of nursing going on between my two little ones, and lots of diaper changing between the two of them.  And Lazarus is too little to be consistently gentle with her, so there is a lot of monitoring going on.  Sleeping at night, though, is far better than it was during the last few months of pregnancy, so that is wonderful!

Urban Beach Park

Yesterday evening we finally went down the hill to investigate the famous urban beach park on Lake Washington a few minutes from our house.  It is called Coulon.  It was pretty much what I expected, meaning it doesn't hold a candle to Seahurst on the Sound in Burien, but it was fun enough.  And if you happen to need to get some fish & chips or burgers, Coulon's got you covered with two fast food joints.  Jared mostly hung out with the kids on the sand beach and playground while I walked the trail.

Seattle is the landmass across the lake to the left.  The landmass on the right is the southern end of Mercer Island.  The enclosed area is for swimming in the summer.

Blue heron landed on this post, and if you squint just right in the dim light, you can see one of the skyscrapers from downtown Bellevue poking up directly in the center of the photo. 

The southwestern edge of the park, featuring furthest to closest - the 737 Final Assembly, the Hyatt Regency, and some fancy-pants apartments.

Looking back to the beach.  You can see Jared in the red sweatshirt and some fall leaves.

More fall leaves

Another view of the final assembly from further away.  Cranes behind the apartments are building some high rise office buildings.

A little garden area

Geese

On a clear day, this would be a stunning view of the Olympic Mountains.  I could see a hazy outline, but there was no way it would show up in the photo.

Evergreen pinecones

An unpainted 737 took off from Renton Municipal Airport (which is next to the 737 Final Assembly)

Close up

A small plane coming in to land at Renton Municipal

Turning so it comes in over the lake

The playground was fun!

In motion!