Snowboarding?

We love this hat on Trinity. It looks like she is ready to hit the slopes.

It's A Boy...Finally

After 13 years of female dominance in my family, and 10 years in Eddie's, a baby boy is finally born. I thought it was a boy, as did most of our family members as well as the 7-11 clerk on Armitage/Sheffield and the homeless guy who holds the door for customers at Blockbuster on Milwaukee.

Everett Asher weighed in at 8lb., 3 oz. and 19-3/4 inches long. He was born on September 26th at 3:42PM. Of course, nothing is without excitement in this family. After weeks of an accelerated heart rate, there was the threat of a c-section. After hours of worrying and 3 non-working epidurals, he cruised into this world with little effort.

We are so excited to finally meet the little man.

Everett's Birth Story:

I was scheduled to be induced with Everett on September 26th. It was an elective induction. I was physically at the end of my rope and having a birthday for him in sight seemed like a great idea. I was supposed to be at the hospital at 7AM for the induction. Around 6PM the night before, during dinner, I started to feel contractions. They gradually became worse and by 11PM I was ready to head to the hospital. Thankfully my mom was staying the night with us in preparation to watch Trinity in the morning while we were having the baby.
When we arrived at the hospital I was dilated 3cm. They got me comfortable with an epidural and let me labor while trying to get some sleep. Although my contractions were not consistent, they wanted to let me labor naturally, without Pitocin, at least until the sun came up.
Around 3AM, Everett’s heart rate started to climb over 200 which had happened often during the last weeks of pregnancy. The doctor started to get concerned and thought that getting the Pitocin started was a good idea in order to get the labor progressing and get him out sooner. Over the next several hours, there was a delicate balance of pitocin amounts and heart rate issues. Any time they turned up the pitocin, his heart rate would climb. They would shut off the medication and start over. The threat of a c-section started to climb as did my anxiety. Finally, at some point in the morning, after the sun rose (and we have had no sleep) the medication and his heart rate were both steady and stable.
Shortly thereafter, the contractions started to become a little more painful than they should have with an epidural. One side of my body was less numb than the other. We called the anesthesiologist to figure out what was going on. They assessed the situation and thought it would be a good idea to pull the epidural out a bit to help the medication flow to all areas. At first it worked and then after a couple hours, and me moving from side to side, the contractions started to get worse. At 1PM, the anesthesiologist came back to check my epidural shortly after my doctor checked my cervix and found I was close to 8cm dilated. The anesthesiologist found the epidural had completely fallen out of my back and I was therefore no longer receiving any pain medication during the worst part of labor. The pain intensified quickly and my teeth started to chatter from the intense pain- - especially since moments before I was still at least somewhat comfortable.
Between 1:20 and 3:20PM, the anesthesiologist replaced my epidural 3 times. It was finally a success as they discovered that a slight curvature of my spine was causing a problem to the flow of medication. After I was comfortable for 2 minutes, by doctor checked me and found I was fully dilated and ready to push. I had the option of resting a bit since the pain, epidural fiasco and physical exhaustion would all play a factor in my ability to push effectively. I decided to push and see what happened hoping to get it over with soon.
Everett was born at 3:42PM after about 20 minutes of pretty easy pushing. I was so grateful he entered the world healthy and mostly happy.
We discovered with the first 24 hours of his birth that he does not like to sleep on his back. He is 19 months as I write this and has yet to sleep on anything other than his tummy.
He was a very easy baby and still is a good, well-mannered child but things become more difficult with age. He is a lot of fun and such a sweet, sweet boy.

Flowergirl Princess

Trinity had the honor to be the flowergirl in my cousin Marcus' marriage to the beautiful Jonna. After a meltdown in the wedding of her Auntie Jessica last summer, we were pessimistic about her making it down the aisle here. However, she did fantastic and smiled to whole way down. It helped that Peyton, the other flowergirl was such a doll and Trinity's best friend for the day.

Beauty