Family Musings

Between Two Worlds: Financing an Adoption I thank God everyday that he gave us the blessing of a child and hope to receive the blessing many more times before my life is over. One thing Bruce and I have always discussed is adding to our family through adoption. While we aren't ready to do that just yet, this blog gives some wonderful resources on how to make it more affordable. I look forward to coming back to this post someday to take advantage of these resources.

I love reading blogs... I have been adding to my Google Reader list regularly for a few months. Some of the blogs have come off, but not all of them. One that I added recently and will probably be keeping is Multi-Tasking Moms. I decided to share this blog with all of you because they are giving away a MomAgenda and I think I'd like to win it. I know I only have 1 little one to keep up after, but being organized is so important to me. This seems like a good time to get started!

What is a new mom at home with her baby supposed to do with a digital camera and basic photo software? Go crazy taking pictures of her precious baby of course! I can concentrate on little else besides her even though there are tons of other things I could be doing. So, I thought I'd share the photos with you who are waiting so patiently for more Charlotte Moon news! Here are the happy grandparents a few hours after Charlotte was born. Grumpy (grandpa) wasn't able to hold her because he had to get back on the road, but he'll be here this weekend! I've heard he might be excited. This is Bruce's first time holding Charlotte. He was nervous, but you can't tell from this picture. Here the Sabin family goes from 2 to 3 people. Charlotte is a baby after her mother's heart. She came out of the womb asking for a manicure! After nearly 48 hours, they let Mommy and Charlotte go home. She was very quiet for her first car ride. Uncle Nick and Aunt Michelle came down...

I know many have waited a long time to see a post about Charlotte Moon. And I've been waiting to make the post as well. There are already so many wonderful things I want the world to know about our beautiful baby girl it will take me forever to share them all with you. So, I decided to start small and have been making a list that I will try to get to over the next couple of weeks. The only problem is... sometimes I get so caught up just staring at Charlotte I forget that I have other things to do. :-) I'll start tonight with the "birth story." On Monday, August 6th, I had my regularly scheduled 39-week appointment. While there, Dr. Salamon checked my cervix and decided I was 70-80% effaced and 1-2 cm dilated. Apparently, every time my belly was hardening in the last couple of months, I was having a contraction. If only they had stayed so innocuous! Monday afternoon though, I did start to experience stronger contractions but they were fairly irregular. After talking to...

Charlotte Moon Sabin has been born Aug 8, 2007 at 3:49pm, weighing 7lbs 15 onces with a length of 20 inches. If you're wondering how we came up with the name Charlotte Moon, she was named after someone whose brief biography you can read here .

Today was another ObGyn appointment. I finally met with Dr. Salamon again. She did a pelvic exam and announced that I am 70-80% effaced and 1-2 cm dilated. She thinks I might have the baby this week, but we've still scheduled an appointment for next Monday. We also set-up an ultrasound so they can check on the amniotic fluid. Remember when I said I didn't think I was having contractions... I was wrong. I found out today that I have been having them, but since they didn't hurt I hadn't really noticed them. It turns out that all those times my belly got that rock-hard feeling, I was having a practice contraction. I never knew. I just thought it was kind of cool how hard my belly was. How naive of me. :-) Dr. Salamon said that if I hadn't gone into labor my next appointment, on 8/13, she wanted to schedule an induction. Well, regular readers of my blog know that is not high on my list of ways to begin labor and delivery. I came home and looked into it some more and...

Today was a good day. My parents came down for a visit along with my brother and his wife. The visit was in honor of Bruce's birthday, which is next Saturday. Since my dad is an over the road truck driver we celebrated today while he could be with us. I made a special lunch for Bruce of his favorite Chicken-Spinach Lasagna with Snickerdoodles for dessert. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, which made me happy since I spent most of the morning in the kitchen preparing it. Bruce was also able to open presents and I am proud to report that all but one of them had nothing to do with Baby Sabin. You see, with Bruce's birthday being so close to the anticipated birth of Baby Sabin, he is worried about his birthday being co-opted by Baby Sabin. I've told him I will do my best to make sure that doesn't happen, though we might have to ask them to share a cake in the future because I don't think I could handle having 2 cakes to eat in the house around the same time. After lunch, the...

Baby Sabin isn't even officially here and I am beat. Now, today was a busy and active day for me, but I'm exhausted and hope a good night's rest will take care of me a little bit. Tomorrow I will try to be a little easier on myself though. We started off the day bright and early to do some work in the yard. It was a great day for yard work as it stayed fairly cool until 10:00 or so. Have you ever tried to do yard work with a bowling bowl hanging off your stomach??? That is the best way I can describe what it was like to pull weeds and shape some plants today. I couldn't just bend over, so most of my morning consisted of plopping down, pulling all the weeds within arms reach, then scooting or crab crawling to the next patch of earth and pulling more weeds. I was terribly slow, but got the most important areas done. Bruce did a ton as well, pulling up many of the dead annuals we planted 18 months ago along with laying some new landscaping timbers and cleaning up his fish ...