Baby!

Matt here, making my long awaited return to contributing to this blog. I'm sure most of you now know Bren gave birth to our second baby this morning. Brenda Addison Alexander, or Addie as we'll call her, was born at 6:13, weighing an unexpectedly beefy 7lbs 13oz. I'll leave it to Bren to fill in more details later on, but I'll let you know that baby and mommy are doing very well, and Lizzie is wondering why this new tiny crying thing is around all the time. Thanks for all your well wishes and prayers! Here are a few pics from the past 24hrs.

40 weeks, 1 day

...and still no baby. We are inducing late tomorrow night, so she should be born Friday morning. Of course, she could still start the process on her own sometime in the next 24 hours, but one way or another, Addie will be here very soon. I am NOT looking forward to labor, but I am so ready to be unpregnant and I am very ready to meet her and hold her and love her. Matt's mom left earlier today after being here for almost 2 weeks. It is sad that she was here for so long and didn't get to see the baby, but at least Christmas isn't too far away. My mom lands in about 45 minutes, so it looks like we shouldn't have too much of a problem even if I went into labor now.

Right now my thoughts are mostly concentrated on Lizzie. Even if I don't have a cesarean, I could easily be in the hospital for three nights. I hope it ends up being only two, but even then it will be pretty hard on her. I know she can come visit, but I don't know how long she can just hang out in a hospital room without going nuts. Plus, I am really going to miss her! It is hard not to recall all the little details of the night she came into this world...man, I remember thinking "Umm...do they know I am all alone with this baby? Wait, she is MY baby...so, that means I am in charge. Wait--what?"

Of course, this weekend is just the beginning of Lizzie losing her "only child" status. Who knows how she is going to handle it when she realizes this little baby isn't going away? I just try to remind myself that it is good for her and she will be a better person for it. Plus, I want her to have someone to share her childhood with and all of that. I just have to brace myself for the growing pains in the coming weeks. Thank goodness Matt has a lot of time these days (which is why we planned to have the baby now).

Well, I had better wrap this up and get some rest. I will be pulling an all-nighter tomorrow night, so I am trying to be as lazy as possible these next 24 hours. Here are some pics of our little elephant on Halloween.

Pumpkin Patch in Central Park


















Carving pumpkins
















It's amazing what you can do when you use stencils! Matt still had to work pretty hard, though.






Dressed up again for our night at the museum.

















Sure...go ahead and color right on the table. They love that.



39 weeks