Firstborn

This is the face of a rapidly developing little boy. Who has amazing hand-eye coordination and a scary sense of direction (Finn could get a stranger to the Island to drive him to the park from Papa and Nana's house).



Who is liking preschool more and more. Who speaks Spanish with a lisp and sounds like a little Spaniard, much to the chagrin of his Latino spanish teacher (he is fluent in Spanish already, which is incredibly impressive to me, but I suppose their little brains are sponges at this stage).

Who loves his grandparents and parents lots and lots and who is learning to love his baby sister lots and lots too. 

Who rides ferries and manages to capture the attention and hearts of almost everyone he meets. (The only person he didn't impress was the lady trying to sleep next to the knitting lady who Finn was flirting with). Who has his parent's hearts wrapped around his little pinky.

Poppie smiles

Poor little darling Penelope has been suffering from a cold brought home from preschool by Finn. Despite her stuffed nose and raspy lungs, she still has a smile for us. And this smile was after a long day getting birth certificates, visiting the midwife for a checkup (and getting poked in the foot) and the social security office (which even on a good day is the last place you want to be with a newborn, let alone one who is feeling ill). Her little eyes are puffy with cold and sleep and her stoic nature makes me want to cry. No one deserves a cold this young in life. Especially not a good-natured little thing like her.

Vignettes of home

The Hall family has been camped on Bainbridge for almost 2 weeks now, but time has passed in the blink of an eye. I have been meeting local mamas, Nick has been getting work done with his creative partner who lives on Bainbridge, Finn has been having a blast at the local toddler gym and park and Poppie has been growing. One or all of us have been back in the city roughly every other day for one reason or another, but keep finding reasons to go back to the Island for another few days. It feels like an extended vacation and I think none of us want this vacation to end.

On our visit home today, I noticed that one of our chickens was listless and her comb was drained of color. Nick came out and lifted her up and she was light as a feather and super skinny. I felt bad that she had deteriorated while we have been gone, but both of our first instinct was to put her out of her misery then and there. We didn't, but the experience made me realize that Nick and I would both have been good farmers and in another life and that we are usually always on the same page, even in weird situations. This is one ingredient that makes our relationship so amazing.

The garden is humming along without us, though I have so much of a jungle growing in my front and side gardens that even my Dad has started complaining about walking up the front steps. Beware, the wisteria may grab you and coil you in her viney grasp. And I am not kidding.

We are having a true indian summer here in the Northwest. Today, we were all dressed in tanks and shorts and it would have been a good day for a swim in Puget Sound if we weren't all suffering from colds or in the city. This weekend the rains are supposed to come, which means chantrelle mushrooms should be popping up everywhere. It will be Finn's first mushroom season where he understands what he is picking. He is quite the natural hunter-gatherer. At preschool, he showed his class what berries could be eaten and which couldn't on a walk in a local wild area, impressing both the teachers. And us parents.

Someone mentioned that the newborn stage of family life lasts only a short season and to enjoy it as such. I like to think of our lives as seasons. In our family history, this time will be defined as a season of Poppie, of Nick's first true taste of filmmaking, of a boy now talking in full sentences, of the richness added by daily doses of grandparents, of Bainbridge and walks in warm autumnal air. I hope we all look back on this season as one of the best, most defining seasons of our lives.

I know I will.

xoxo

Sneak preview...

...of a photoshoot we did this morning:

Isn't she delicious? She has a matching personality...

Play

We haven't really discussed this on the blog in any great detail, but it has been a real challenging integration for Finn since Poppie's arrival. There was some violent behavior (towards Poppie and towards us), lots of tantrums, 'accidental' daily breaking of valuable things (bowls, trinkets, cameras, glasses, bottles) and general terrible-two behavior that we have worked through months ago. I cried multiple times a day for the first week, Nick was beside himself and thank goodness for Nana who kept her cool and kept Finn cool most the time.

I have been reading every book, article, forum, and story on sibling integration that I can find. I have asked every person I see what they experienced with their children. We have solicitated the advice of a Jungian psycho-analyst and we have explored mythological stories of sibling relationships. I have spent hours dissecting Finn's behavior and solutions with my mom (who is an expert on everything parenting and I value her perspective and advice immensely). We have tried all sorts of different techniques and behavior-modification approaches with no luck.

Then, the other day in the car as we were driving to run errands, my mom turned around and pinched Finn's leg playfully and told him 'Don't you DARE go to sleep'. He wasn't even close to going to sleep, so he thought this was hilarious! He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep and she grabbed his leg again and said 'Open your eyes! Don't go to sleep!' He laughed and did it again and she responded playfully again. They continued a playful banter througout the errand-running session and by the time we got home from our errands, he was so filled up with playful, loving energy, he was a really good boy for the rest of the day.

And then it hit me: since Poppie's arrival, everything has become so serious. Nick has been frantically working on a major project and has not been able to give Finn his normal amount of fun, playful energy. I have been so wrapped up in protecting Poppie from Finn that I have been no fun either. And up until Poppie was born, Finn had a huge community of fun people around him constantly: all his Uncles (who are great, wild fun), Auntie Casi, Papa and Nana, and lots of stopper-bys, many of whom have moved on and are not around anymore.

So, I made a mission to make, be and have more fun with Finn. In that stupid, goofy, 'don't fall asleep' sort of way. And it has worked a charm. He has been such a good boy. Sweet to his sister, kind to his parents and loving to everyone else.

Mama and Finn having way too much fun in an over-full bubble bath

I don't have any expectations that we have cured our boy of the challenges of being a sibling, but at least it is a positive start!

xoxo

Poppie goes to the doctor

Poppie has had an increasing number of projectile vomiting episodes in her short little life and I have been getting increasingly worried about her. These episodes are not simply new baby spit-ups but 3-foot geysers that leave her soaked, me soaked and the bed or floor soaked. She gags and chokes and is completely spent after an episode and then she is starving again (usually she doesn't do it twice in a row luckily). Projectile vomiting is a sign of pyloric stenosis, which runs in the family and requires surgery, so we decided to have her checked out.

Hey guys! Look at my head control!

 The doctor checked her and she got the all-clear for pyloric stenosis, but she hasn't regained her birth weight and the doctor wants to see her nurse more often. I usually have to wake her up to nurse, and she is so mellow she will have a few sips and then fall right back to sleep. I have to jiggle her, talk loudly, have Finn come in the room and shriek, and take off all her clothes and let a cool breeze wash over her body before she will even flutter her long lashes. After Finn, I never, ever thought I would complain about a baby sleeping too much (she sleeps longer stretches than Finn does and there is 23 months between them).

More please, Mama

Other than her lower than birth weight, she is super healthy, alert, bright-eyed (we could have told her that), and exactly where she is supposed to be. The doctor even told me my dates must have been wrong because there was no way this was a post-dates baby (I didn't say anything but am keeping notes for the next time around because my dates are not wrong, I just don't fit into the nice little neat 40 weeks gestation that OB's have set as the universal standard).

All is well and we are happy to have a healthy girl.

xoxo

And when we come home this is the best place to be...

Good morning!

Mama and I are on our first mother-daughter trip together! The boys are staying at home playing big dirt and making movies while we go to Seattle. Mama is on a panel to educate doulas about how to best support women who want a natural birth after a c-section. I might even meet another baby!

Xoxo
Poppie

good night

Poppie at one week old...

Poppie is a super easy, incredibly angelic baby. She sleeps lots, eats well and has cried maybe a total of 30 minutes of her life, the majority of which was when she was first born.

 She has that alert, wide-eyed look about her that Finn had. Probably because they were both well-done by the time they decided to make an appearance. Another benefit of a well-cooked babe? Early smiles. I caught one on camera during this little shoot, but it was blurry and because I am married to a photographer, I cannot share blurry photos unless I intentionally took a blurry photo for artsy reasons.

 Poppie's name is a hybrid of Nick's favorite name for our first girl (Penelope) and my favorite name (Poppie). Neither of us are crazy about the nickname Penny, so Poppie it is. Nick calls her Penelope most of the time and I call her Poppie most of the time, but either name suits her sweet and flowery nature. Her middle name, Elizabeth, is an ode to my Grandmother, whose full name was Betty (which is typically a nickname for Elizabeth). Before I got married, my middle name was Elizabeth too.

This sweet little thing gives us lots of time to look after Finn and make sure his needs are met. She is already a precious, loving, happy little girl and we are so, so lucky to have her in our lives...

Big Dirt explained

Somewhere in the archives of this blog, you were introduced to the term 'big dirt'. It has caused a lot of confusion, and it took us the parents awhile to really understand what big dirt meant to Finn. Turns out, it is an noun, adjective and verb (what a term!) and is defined by dirt (or sand, or gravel, or rocks or leaves or sometimes food, which we don't like very much), heavy equipment (diggers, bulldozers, shovels, buckets, rakes, spades, steam rollers, dump trucks, forks or spoons), and a sprinkling of imagination (machine noises, hands and arms that articulate like diggers, little guys that drive everything). And it can, and must be played for hours.

Big dirt can be a construction site, which we (ie Finn) have never grown tired of watching before the parents (ie Nick and I) must move on in life. Big dirt can be my garden beds, but not the one with the lettuce seedlings, no, no shakes Finn's little head, only the one that Mama has not been able to replant due to big dirt activity (Buy the boy a sandbox, you say? Have you seen the feral cats in our neighborhood? If you know our family, cats are not generally welcomed and I have no intention of building them a huge litterbox for my child to dig amongst.)

Big dirt can appear in the form of a Finn arm articulating like a digger, accompanied by some very digger-like noises.

 Or, big dirt can be a toy that you sit on in a really cool park on Bainbridge Island.

 Like we did yesterday morning...

On Bainbridge

Nick has some work over here on Bainbridge so we packed things up and came over a couple of days ago. Which turned out well because fall has officially arrived to Seattle and with it, the rain. Finn and Daddy take twice daily 'hot pools' (hot tubs soaks, in Finn speak) and there is a great kid-friendly swimming pool and toddler gym available close by to get some energy out.

We still haven't managed to go blackberry picking in any great volume, but Finn and I found a perfect spot on the beach yesterday that no one seems to know about. If the rain lets up this afternoon, we are going to try to make some jam. Have I shared what a little cook our Finn is? He made his own pasta for dinner last night! I measured things out, but he poured and stirred and waited patiently for the pasta to cook. Then he ate the whole bowl (a feat that would not have happened if we had made it for him). He made sure that we all had a bite and kept saying 'm-mmmm'. He will have a blast making jam with all the mashing and pouring that happens.

More pictures to come later today.

xoxo

For those of you on Bainbridge who would like to stop by, Finn would love to have some visitors and say hi! Poppie will honestly sleep through it all, but she is worth stopping by for too...

This is what sleep looks like in our house...

And let me tell you, there is a lot of sleep happening over here. (I didn't believe my mother when she said that I slept through the night from the beginning. Now I do.)

Somehow, I was wedged in the middle of these two sleeping beauties moments before I snapped this shot

One of Poppie's favorite places is skin to skin on Daddy's chest:

Easy to see where my babies get their long lashes from...

xoxo

Heartbeats

Love heaves so strong we can't contain the force of it

I never knew the depths of my love could be greater than what I felt for Nick until Finn came along and stretched my tender heart with absolutely no effort. And before Poppie there was no way we could have loved more than we loved Finn. But the heart grows and folds until we are all nearly bursting with an uncontainable love.

Preschool and new backpacks

Finn has been having some trouble adjusting to preschool lately and has made it clear that he would rather not go to school (despite telling stories about what happened at school, which tells me that he kind of likes it). In the lead-up to Poppie's birth, Nick and I have been discussing the pros and cons of keeping a schedule versus giving him more time at home. We came to the conclusion that we needed preschool time to collect our thoughts and get some things done and that the routine would be best for him. But we could make the transition more fun, somehow. So, we bought a new backpack the other day and have been making a big scene of packing it with snacks and the things he needs for school. He loves it.

This morning, Finn was so excited about his new backpack that he actually wanted to walk out the door and made a big show of saying bye-bye to me, Auntie Casi, Inca and bye-bye to the baby.  He even asked me to take some pictures of him with his backpack and wanted to see what he looked like. Such a little ham.

Big brothers go to school with new backpacks

Meanwhile, in babylandia

3 days old today

Up next: a posting on the transition to brotherhood for Finn. Advice appreciated.

xoxo

Birth Story (short version)

Poppie's Moon
Photo taken by Tia Mary on the Olympic Peninsula the morning Poppie was born

Penelope Elizabeth Hall was born at home, in a birth tub surrounded by a loving and welcoming birthteam including Nick, my mom, Casi, our fantastic doula Sharon and amazing midwife Suzanne and her assistants. After a weekend of 'are we in labor yet?', 4 hours of active labor and 2 hours pf pushing, darling Penelope arrived on a full moon to a quiet room of love. She was an ounce more than Finn, but hides it in her long, lean body. Officially, she was 17 days overdue, but by the looks of her, she is not one day late. Perfectly cooked.

And wholly adored.

Big brother Finn meets his little sister Poppie

The Birth Story (long version)

My plan from the moment Finn was born was to never, ever have another c-section. I wanted a natural birth and I knew that there was a strong possibility that I would carry my next child over 42 weeks (Finn was 42 weeks plus a day). After interviewing a variety of care professionals when we got pregnant with Penelope, we decided to work with a locally renowned midwife who specializes in HBACs (homebirths after c-sections).

Penelope Elizabeth Hall

(nickname Poppie)

9 lbs, 9 oz, 22 inches long, born at 12:35 am September 12th, 2011

She was born at 42 weeks and 3 days



Penelope Elizabeth and Mama hours after birth

 Penelope’s birth story really starts on Friday when we (my mom, Nick and I) went to UW Medical Center for our tests and a consultation with an OB/GYN. Basically, the OB told us that we are a huge risk for stillbirth (she must have mentioned that word 50 times or more) and that continuing with the pregnancy was nothing short of irresponsible (the placenta is too old, the baby is too big to come out vaginally, and chances of fetal distress during labor are too high) and we needed to gather our bags and walk straight up to labor and delivery to get induced, immediately. (Interesting fact that was not shared by this doctor: inducing a woman with a prior c-section dramatically increases the risk of uterine rupture and is basically a slippery 80% slope to another c-section among the other harmful effects of induction). Because we walked into her office at 42 weeks pregnant, she just couldn’t see how we could make it through the weekend and wouldn’t consider the possibility. She was aggressive and adamant about immediate induction and made me feel super, super discouraged.

We thanked her, told her we were going back to Bainbridge to gather our thoughts and things and go from there. The minute we left the hospital, I got this strong wind of encouragement to trust my natural instincts and NOT go back to the hospital, no matter what. This baby was fine, I was fine, we just needed to trust the timing of my body and this baby and everything would be OK. I am overwhelmingly blessed to have Nick and my Mom, both of whom supported me in this decision completely.

As if to validate my intuition, I woke up on Saturday morning with contractions. Not super strong or close together, but enough to make me take notice. They continued all day and stopped at night (with enough time to get 6 hours of sleep) and started back up on Sunday in the early morning. And continued with easy rhythm until about 4pm, at which point they seemed to get closer together and we started timing them. By 6pm we knew something was up and had alerted the doula and midwife and our entourage (Casi, Nick, my Mom, Finn and me) headed to the ferry.



Some of the crowd

On the ferry, I had contractions lasting about 45 seconds, every 2-3 minutes. Because we were in labor, they scooted us to the very front of the ferry so we were the first off. But, it also happened to be a beautiful night with a huge moon so everyone on the ferry walked to the front to take pictures of the Seattle skyline with a rising moon. Meanwhile, I am singing through my contractions and everyone is looking to see what the heck this crazy woman in the car with the best real estate on the boat is singing about. My mom causally mentions, if I think this is bad, wait until transition. And she turns up the music and smiles at all the people looking at us.



The best labor support in the world

By the time we got home around 8pm, I am still singing, but the contractions are rapidly turning my song into more of a moan. I still thought I was maybe 2 or 3 cm dilated at this point and had a long, long way to go, so was trying to ‘enjoy’ these ‘easy’ contractions as much as I could. We had a blow-up pool of hot water in the living room and I spent most of the labor in there. The doula arrived around 9:30 and she suggested that I take a walk and visit each room in the house. I think I maybe got through three contractions before ending up in Finn’s room (he was sleeping soundly downstairs, God only knows how) and the contractions turned pushy in an animal sort of way that came from some unknown spot deep within me. Everyone came rushing into the room and the doula called the midwife and told her to hurry. Meanwhile, I still thinking that maybe I am only just reaching 5-6 cms and the urge to bear down is because I am tired of contracting or something (the same urge happened with Finn and I was only 5 cms, which was really, really disappointing). After all, this couldn’t be transition and labor was too short.

Minutes after birth

I got back in the tub and couldn’t do anything but push. Poppie was almost born in the caul (water sack) as my waters didn’t break until we were well into pushing. And, I hadn’t planned on a waterbirth, but that is spontaneously where things ended up. With the midwife’s support, Nick helped guide the head and caught Poppie, plopping her soft, sweet body on my chest the minute she was born. Everyone in the room was quiet, letting the first voices Poppie hears, to be ours. It was magical. We had our baby girl, I got my natural homebirth, it was a short and sweet labor (6 1/2 hours!), and it was Grammy’s birthday. I couldn’t ask for more.

Daddy and Penelope, hours old

When we finally got out of the water, we realized that Poppie was covered in vernix. Post-dates babies are not covered in vernix. And my placenta? Looked like a 40 week placenta to the midwife. Wrinkles? Nope. Signs of distress during labor? Nope. A perfectly cooked baby, born exactly when she was supposed to, which just didn’t fit within the normal timeframe of 42 weeks.

Casi and Poppie

Happy Nana with still-wet Poppie

Perfection