Ross Willis

They say eating spicy food is a sure-fire way to kickstart a labor.  Well, at 40 weeks and 2 days, I decided to have Greek food for lunch with my sister.  Saganaki and falafels will forever have new meaning for me.  Not spicy in the hot sense, but full of flavor spicy- I guess it worked.  

At around 3 p.m. I texted Andrew that he should think about coming home from work.  At 5:30 we arrived at the hospital and were promptly sent home again. "Come back when they're more intense and closer together."  To which I responded "They get worse?!"

Andrew was an awesome coach and the hours of prenatal classes paid off.  Every time I said, "Ok, I'm serious- I want to go to the hospital NOW" he calmly said, "Ok, how about we wait just another half hour."  We didn't want to be sent away again.

He gave in to my pleadings around 9:30 p.m.  Amazingly, I STILL hadn't progressed- at all.  The nurse let us wait it out an hour in the triage room, and thankfully during that hour I went from 2.5 to 5.  Good thing because I was NOT going home again; I would have made Andrew circle the block before going home again.  

Now for the gory details (skip to the next paragraph if you're not interested): our son was O.P. which means he was facing up, not down.  This makes labor and pushing longer and more painful.  I hadn't planned on getting an epidural, though I was prepared to deviate if necessary.  For me, it was necessary.  I started pushing at around 1 a.m. and never would have had the endurance to make it to 5:19 a.m. without my "little friend".  It was a bit of a disappointment but soooooo worth it.  

Ross Willis was born at 5:19 a.m. May 22nd, weighed 7 pounds 2 ounces, and measured 20" long.  He was healthy and sleepy after a long night.  Andrew and I were officially parents and so in love with our boy.

Now, a week later, everyone is still tired but happy.  Our cats have adjusted well- they go from ambivalent to mildly concerned when he cries and back to ambivalent again once he stops.  They just know they get a little less attention now, though we do our best to remember to pet and feed them every once in a while.  

The names we chose are both paternal family names- Ross is Andrew's biological father's middle name and also his great grandfather's name.  Willis is my paternal grandfather's name.  Simple, classic, short (with a last name as long as ours we thought we'd do him that favor).  We just really hope he doesn't have a lisp.  

My sister and I had some fun doing a little photo shoot :)

Almost there!

As mentioned in my last post, we had some pictures taken while it's still just the two of us (not counting the cats, of course!)  There are so many beautiful places here in Colorado Springs that it would have been a great setting anywhere but we chose to have them taken at a "ranch" just outside of Garden of the Gods.  Our shoot had been postponed once already due to rain and it was forecast to rain again that day, but we decided to take our chances.  I'm glad we did, they turned out great.  Our photographer is Sarah Curry (Ex Lotus) and is so amazing!

These are a few of our favorites.

Our next blog post should be the big one!!  10 days and counting.  Andrew installed the car seat today, so we're ready when little guy is!

The Bump

Well, there's only about a month left before the big arrival.  I've been taking pictures as time has progressed, so here they are:

We're starting to get the baby's room ready now that the room is free.  Susan (Andrew's mom) had been staying with us.

My sister, Sally, threw me a surprise baby shower a few weekends ago.  We had a great time.  It was April shower themed and we played games and ate good food which Sally had carefully prepared (ok, she isn't the greatest cook but it's the thought that counts!)  I'd say the highlight was Andrew trying to figure out how to cloth diaper a baby doll.  We got it on camera, but I'm not sure how to post it, otherwise I would!

Sally and Susan did a great job on decorations!

In non-baby news, I got a job! Well two jobs, actually.  The first one was working part time at a coffee shop.  The people were great, they were understanding with the time off I'd need, and it was going pretty well.  However, it was a 20 minute drive, low pay, and exhausting.  Then a few weeks ago I was given the opportunity to work from home for better pay, but the position is temporary.  I attempted to do both for about a week before realizing it was just way too much.  So my last day at the coffee shop was Wednesday and I am feeling very relieved.


Andrew is still working at the outdoor power equipment dealership/repair shop and is really getting along well.  About a month ago, one of the technicians broke both of his feet in a dirt bike accident which meant that Andrew would be able to do double duty: work at the front counter which was what he was hired for, and now also work in the back doing what he's really good at: fixing things.

"Extremely dangerous! Keep off rocks!"  Andrew being a daredevil.

We are having maternity picture taken today so check back for those probably in a few weeks!

Moving to Colorado Springs

Welcome to our blog!  I guess I should let you know what my goal is with this blog: simply to let family and friends know what we're up to during this crazy time in our lives.  I make no promises of keeping up with it or writing with any sort of regularity, but hopefully I'll have something new up every month or so (but don't be surprised if it's 2 or 3 months!!)

So as most of you know, Andrew and I left the familiarity and security of Ames, Iowa to embark on a bit of an adventure and moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Why you ask?  It certainly would have been much easier to stay and continue with our day to day lives with secure jobs and good friends.  But, for a few years now we've known our house was on the chopping block, so to speak- an obstacle that needed removing in order to expand a parking lot for Wheatsfield Market, the organic food co-op next door.  So after being told "it'll be this year" multiple years in a row, it finally become official.  So, we had to move anyways, why not make it a big move?

Our old home

Reason two: the mountains.  

Colorado Springs and the mountains

Andrew and I took our first real vacation together here exactly 10 years ago.  Then, we came back for our honeymoon.  And every time we come, we do new things, find more beautiful places to visit, and fall more in love with the area.  We would always ask ourselves, "how cool would it be if we lived here and instead of needing a week or more to visit these places, we could go whenever we wanted?"  So we made our dream a reality.

Reason three: my sister, Sally.  

Sally

She's lived in Colorado Springs over 10 years and has been our ambassador and promoter of living here for a long time.  She has shamelessly and relentlessly pointed out every positive of the Springs and has wisely told us the areas to avoid.  Without her, we definitely would not have had the courage to make this huge leap into the unknown.  Plus, free future babysitter. 

So the big day finally came, and although the timing wasn't perfect with me 29 weeks pregnant, we had no say in the matter and March 8th we left 910 5th St.  I had done my best to pack what I could (Andrew had left for 2 weeks to find a place and start a job), but as anyone who has ever moved knows, stuff just appears that you had no idea existed!  We had lived there 5 1/2 years and it was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath with basement and garage.  Our new home is 2 bed, one bath, no basement, and a shed.  Less than half the square footage!  Luckily, Goodwill has no limit on how much stuff you can give them (that I'm aware of) and we still had to rent a storage unit.  

Somehow, Andrew and his amazing friends crammed all of our belongings into a 24' Budget rental truck and Andrew's motorcycles onto an 8' trailer.  Saturday was a blur of packing and throwing away and watching with amazement as they "tetrised" (ie. the game where you have to fit shapes together) boxes and furniture onto the truck.  We are forever indebted to the efforts of our dear friends and family: Aaron, Brandon, Brian, Kris, Mandy, Michael, Nash, Sally, and Susan.  We couldn't have done it without you!!!

It was very muddy!

Another thing we had to figure out how to move were 3 cats.  

                          

As some of you know, Izzy, Marvin and Shishky are our furry children and I was worried that moving them 12 hours away would be rough on them.  So I did some research, splurged on the expensive pharamone diffuser and spray, and did my best to keep everything calm and familiar.  Saturday, during the packing, they were kept in a room with a sign that read "do not enter- cats will escape!"  But they knew something was up.  That night, we let them roam the empty house, and we awoke to all three sleeping with us, which was a first.  

Sunday, they all traveled in cat carriers with me in the Buick.  I laid towels and blankets that had their scent on them on the seats so that they'd have familiar smells around them while we traveled. During the ride, I had planned on letting them out for stretch breaks whenever we stopped but every time I did, they would just hide under the seat and be impossible when the time came to get back into their carriers, so the last 7 hours or so I just let them stay in the carriers.  They meowed the first half hour of the trip, and would occasionally let me know "this sucks" with a faint mew every now and then but other than that they slept or stared at the side of their carrier.  They did surprisingly well, especially considering a trip we had hoped would take 14 hours ended up taking 17 instead, due to a flat tire.

As I said, we left before the sun was up, around 6 am, in 4 vehicles. 

Our last moment in the old house

 I was the leader, Andrew in the big rental truck second, Andrew's mom, Susan, third, and Sally in the back with the trailer.  We all (except Susan) had an app on our phones called Voxer, sort of like a walkie talkie.  Around a half and hour into the trip Sally calls out "Mayday! Take next exit! Flat tire! Flat tire!"  One of the tires on the trailer had gone flat.  Luckily we were in Des Moines and not far from an exit with a gas station right there.  But since it was Sunday, we had to wait until 9 am for a tire store to open.  So much for getting an early start!  By 10 am Andrew and Sally has successfully purchased and mounted two new tires on the trailer and we were on the road again.  The rest of the trip was uneventful but extremely long.  Our caravan rolled into Colorado Springs around 10:30 pm.  We were all exhausted and glad to finally be in our new home.  

The view of part of the caravan from the big truck's rearview mirror

Unloading happened Monday, a bunch of Sally's friends helped us, and I quickly set to unpacking and settling in.  With some of our belongings in storage, most of which our friends had packed for us, it was sometimes difficult to locate important items.  Andrew was very discouraged when we couldn't find his motorcycle helmet for 3 days, but with some persistence we located it in a box with a baby swing, coat racks, and cat toys labeled "baby things and helmet" buried in the corner of the storage unit.  

We found it!

The rest of last week and this week has been filled with miscellaneous business, exploring our new town, and making our new house a home.  

In the mountains