Parenthood: Day 1

We had our weekly doctor's appointment yesterday, and our doctor gave us the option to be induced early due to the size of our baby. Once this option was introduced I knew that there was no way Kellie was going to pass up the chance to be done with this pregnancy. In addition to the size of the child, by inducing last night we almost guaranteed the doctor we were most familiar with delivering our first child.

I got home from work around 6:30 and we gathered what was needed for our hospital stay, took care of the dogs, grabbed a nice meal, and headed to Swedish Medical Center. We checked into triage, and were greeted by a team of genuinely nice nurses who took us to our suite. The room was really quite nice. Our nurse, Rachel, got Kellie set up on an IV and we enjoyed several episodes of Family Guy to take our minds off the upcoming responsibility of raising another human being. I like to think it was an omen of good things to come that the Peanut Butter Jelly Time episode of Family Guy was the last thing we watched before we went to sleep. I find it impossible not to be in a good mood after watching that.

I woke up around 5:00 AM to participate in a conference call for a client. In my defense, at the time I got on the call we were told we probably still had several hours as Kellie was not dilated yet and our doctor would not be in until 8:00 AM. I stepped out at 5:30 AM, called in, put the call on mute, and listened. About 6:00 AM Rachel let me know that they were going to run some standard tests on Kellie to see if she was any further along in case I wanted to be present. Since my call was on mute I decided to go back in the room. Turns out that Kellie was now dilated 6CM. I quickly hit the big red END button on my iPhone screen, shut off the laptop and got ready to meet our first child.

Kellie had mentioned that she was in a lot of pain. Our nurse team asked if she wanted an epidural. Kellie quickly answered yes. By this time the on-call doctor was checking Kellie's dilation and in the last 3 minutes she had become fully dilated. I will never forget what Rachel (our RN) said: "Let's forget about an epidural, what do you say we have this baby." I remember thinking "this is our nightmare." However, Kellie was awesome, the nurse team was awesome, the doctor was awesome, and thirty five very intense minutes later we had a beautiful baby boy.

Edison James Pryor entered this world at 6:40 AM weighing 8 pounds and 3 ounces. EJ got to spend the first several minutes of his life bonding with his mom. I was lucky enough to hang out with the little guy for the rest of the morning. Here are some things that I have learned about my son so far:

1. Hospitals do not like it when you walk around the halls with newborn babies. Apparently, if you walk a newborn by a elevator people assume you are in the business of stealing babies. I of course am not.

2. He really seems to like the Wu-tang Clan. We listened to half of the Wugazi mash-up together and he likes it almost as much as me. Almost.

3. The NFL lockout ended yesterday, and my kid doesn't seem to care too much about Matt Hasselback's future. This puts him in the same bucket as roughly 50% of Seahawks fans.

4. He shares a birthday with one of our favorite people, Brian Wire. Happy Birthday to you too, B.

We are super excited to introduce this kid to the world. We expect to leave the hospital tomorrow, and we will see just how prepared Kellie and I really are.

Ray

3 weeks left, a healthy household, and the wisdom of B.I.G

At the time of our last post we had a dog that could not walk stairs (our home has 50+ stairs), Kellie was feeling the wrath that is 8 months of pregnancy, and work was requiring a lot of time and energy from me.

I sometimes refer to our family as "my team" and Team RPTre was not looking so good. When I asked Kellie how things were, her response was "Your team sucks right now." I reminded her that I had a 5 star recruit on the way, and while that seemed to bring a smile to her face, it did not eliminate any of the stress filled events in our lives.

However, we kept a positive attitude and our situation has improved. Not only can Murphey climb steps again, he is right back to his old ways of seat stealing.

More importantly, Kellie seems to be feeling as good as can be expected. We start seeing the baby doctor weekly after our appointment today. So far, all of the news we have received has been positive and "normal," so we will hope for more of that.

Jordan and Hillary threw us a couples baby shower, and we were amazed at the generosity of  our friends in Seattle. Our little one really made out like a proverbial bandit with loads of toys, diapers, books, and a hooded bath towel that resembles a dragon. Hillary even managed to find good barbecue in Seattle for the shower/cookout, which is an accomplishment that Kellie and I have been unable to achieve in two years of living here.

Overall, life seems to be going really well. As Kellie noted in her previous post, we celebrated her birthday in late June. Coincidentally, on the day of Kellie's birthday a newly opened restaurant downtown decided to grace the sidewalks of the Emerald City with a quote from a Notorious B.I.G song. While this may not apply to everyone (read: anyone) the concept that there are going to be good days and there are going to be less than good days, but if you work hard and keep your head up you will have more good days than bad days does apply to us all.

I hope everyone reading is able to drink champagne when you are thirsty.

RP

Updates

So it's getting pretty uncomfortable by now. Ray is being such a good sport about all of this...I don't know what I would do without him! As if my woes were not enough, Murphey is mystereously injured. We are not sure if it is a sprain, strain, or pinched nerve. Even on his pain medications, Ray has to carry him up the stairs. It's quite the chore given the 50 million stairs in our house.

Enough about the mutt...

So I went to the doctor today. My uterus is still a couple weeks larger than it should be, the baby most likely weighs six pounds, it's butt feels remarkably similar to it's head because the doctor wasn't sure if s/he is head down or breech. I think that's the extent of the exciting stuff. I can't wait for this baby to emerge...I feel like it has officially taken over my body, and I am losing control of everything more and more each day.

On a lighter note, I've had about as awesome of a birthday as possible. I feel truly loved by my family and friends. Given my recent state of irritability, I am not sure why they have been so nice and generous with all my gifts. For example, the dogs even defied logic by getting me an iPad for my birthday! I am officially hooked. They corroborated with Ray to get this for me, so I can keep in touch and entertained while in the hospital. So unexpected, but AWESOME! Thank you, Lovies.

I'll try to do a better job updating this more frequently, so all y'all back home can stay current if you so choose. I love and miss you all so much.

XOXO,
Kellie

Getting Close...

A lot has happened since our last post. Hard to believe that we are writing our first blog post of 2011 in June. It is even harder to believe that in less than 2 months we will be parents.

End of the Year Rally

The holiday season is a wonderful time to relax with friends and family and reflect on what matters most in our life: consumer goods. Well, not exactly. Tangible gifts do not, or at least should not, trump the feelings we have for those important in our lives. However, as the movie Blow (so appropriately) states "Its nice to have nice things, George." I digress.

Kells and I decided to forgo our usual Christmas tradition of spending large amounts of time and money finding the perfect products that the other would not purchase for them self. Instead, we decided to invest in a new computer. In 2002, while speaking in Nashville, Tennessee our former President, George W. Bush, uttered the famous line "fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again." Now, there are not many words of his that I would consider applicable to my life, but when it came time to spend our money on a new computer I knew we were not going to be fooled again. We decided to purchase an iMac and Apple Time Capsule; we accepted the free wireless printer the Apple store gave us for agreeing to spend a premium on a superior product.

We were able to set up the iMac, Time Capsule, printer, and link every device with a wireless card that we own to each other in 1 hour. I am now a believer. The grass is greener, faster, and not subject to nearly as many viruses.

There have been a few hiccups since our last post. Specifically, our good friend Jordan (referred to as White Shrek from here on) found a way to break his ankle into 3 pieces while sledding. He is truly talented at all forms of disaster. Luckily, the surgery went well and he should be back on his feet subsequent to sledding season. As such, White Shrek is laid up and unable to do much other than consume medication, watch bootleg movies, and plan various ways for me to drown next summer. Some friends helped put up holiday decorations at the floating home he and his girlfriend (Hillary) rent, complete with Charlie Brown tree. My contribution was the star, which I made out of a craft-brew 12 pack container.

In more pleasant, and undoubtedly more important, medical news; Kellie and I had our first appointment with the OB GYN or as I like to call her "Baby Doctor." Kells and I answered questions related to our genetic make-up, deduced that the baby will be born around August 5th, and the Baby Doctor performed an ultrasound. Pictures of a future Jai Alai superstar, to be named at a later date, are included on the right.

Raymond

Perfect Timing

The day after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday as a result of the consumer culture we live in. Ray and I avoid shopping malls at all costs because we are not crazy people. However, that is not to say that we do not support the local economy in a big way. On Friday, after Ray got off work we decided to do some car shopping.

Earlier in the week, Downtown Seattle was hit with about 4 inches of snow. Now, most cities would have no problem at all managing such a minimal amount of frozen precipitation, but Seattle is not like most cities. It may seem like a knee-jerk reaction to purchase a car based upon a single occurrence of inclimate weather, but we have learned that you cannot rely on the City of Seattle to take any action whatsoever to manage snowfall.

We did quite a bit of research on-line about all of the promotional specials that many of the car companies are nice enough to provide. Specifically, nearly every major automobile manufacturer is offering close to 0% financing for 5 years to those with excellent credit. Ray read countless reviews on customer satisfaction, resale value, and overall performance. I provided insight into the aesthetics of our future vehicle. Together we decided on a 2011 Volkswagen Tiguan.

Once we got to the dealer, I learned that Ray's definition of 'negotiating' with a car dealer is to stare at him and act completely miserable until said dealer provides an option that we like. This took a while. To pass the time during one of the many hours spent while at the car dealer, I turned to Ray and said something absolutely ridiculous: "Wouldn't it be ironic if I found out I was pregnant right after we bought this car?" He laughed. I warned him it was a possibility despite the fact that I've taken two pregnancy tests over the past week and a half and they both have been negative. (Note: both tests were taken from the hospital where I work). Our conversations changed from topic to topic, we bought an awesome car, we went home. An hour after we bought our car, out of curiousity, I took a store bought pregnancy test. The Result?

Pregnant. Yep. No kidding.

And so it begins. As much as we love our friends and family members that have Facebook accounts, we've chosen to document my pregnancy and our future child-to-be through a blog rather than via Facebook. We have many acquaintances that we are sure would rather not hear about our personal trials and tribulations with pregnancy, childbirth, and first time parenting. However, Ray and I live far away from many of our close friends and family, and would like to be able to share this joyous time with anyone who wants to share with us. Rather than repeating ourselves by way of status updates, email, tweets, and phone calls; we believe this site will allow us the opportunity to update everyone on what we believe to be note-worthy moments in our new lives.

Thank you for sharing and welcome to the next phase of our lives.
Enjoy.

Kells.