The Smile

It has been an eventful week... that's part of the reason I have taken so long to post. I guess I'm not doing so well with my daily pictures. A week ago Wednesday St. Louis experienced one of the worst storms in 100 years. The storms here are like nothing I have ever experienced in California. Trees are down everywhere and power has still not been restored to some homes. 500 thousand people lost power... including us. The picture below is of Carter in our basement during his first tornado warning last Wednesday (he slept through the entire thing). Dan's parents flew in that night to a pitch black airport. We had to wait until Thursday to go get their luggage. We were just glad they were able to land. We didn't have power restored to our house until Saturday. Several of our friends finally got their power back last night. The bummer thing was that we were under an extreme heat warning during the days we did not have power. The humidity here is awful!
We were thankful our church got its power back on Saturday as well. Carter was baptized Sunday during our morning service.
So now we are somewhat back to normal. We were sad to say goodbye to Dan's parents yesterday but are excited to have Dan's brother Dave and sister in law Laurisa fly in tonight. It's hard to be so far away from family... especially now with Carter changing so much. He loves to be on his back now and is really starting to make eye contact.
Lastly... I had to post a before and after picture of Dan. Here he is with his Dad and Carter yesterday...
and here he is today!! He's going to be mad at me for posting this picture... but he finally shaved!!! I love it... except now he won't be able to buy a beer without showing his ID!

We were actually up by 8:00am this morning. Carter slept from 10pm to 5am this morning. It was great to get almost a full night's sleep! Here is a picture of Dan and Carter this morning before they walked to the park (Dan did put a hat on before he left the house :)).

I wanted to take a second to say a huge thanks to my Mom and Dad for the past month. My Mom moved out here for six weeks to help take care of us. She cooked, cleaned, held my hand, listened to my cry, and let me sleep. Thanks Dad for letting us keep her for so long (and for holding Carter the past 10 mornings so we could sleep)!
I figured I should probably post some recent pictures for all the Grandparents. We're so excited to have Dan's parents fly out on Wednesday to meet Carter for the first time!

After Carter's bath a couple nights ago.

First book.

Relaxing last night after some drinks with frineds... our cat Eddie finally decided to check Carter out after three weeks of being home.

Finally, here is a picture of Carter from an hour ago. I'm going to try and be good about putting daily photos up (sorry about the white outfit Mom).

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CARI!

Happy Birthday (two days late) Cari! We miss you guys a ton and can't wait to see you!

I'm back!!

After two weeks of bed rest, a week in the hospital, and a week recovering at home... it feels nice to be back on the computer! Our home office is in the basement and I have not been allowed to use stairs. I thought I would write a little update on the last four weeks of our life...

After 35 weeks of a completely normal and healthy pregnancy, I was diagnosed with what doctors call Preeclampsia. (Preeclampsia is a disorder that occurs only during pregnancy and the postpartum period and affects both the mother and the unborn baby. Affecting at least 5-8% of all pregnancies, it is a rapidly progressive condition characterized by high blood pressure and the presence of protein in the urine.) I was at one of my regular doctor visits when they noticed the swelling of my feet, high blood pressue, and protein in my urine. I was in my doctor's office for about 2 minutes before she sent me straight to the hospital. I was then put on bed rest at home and told that they would try and get me to 37 weeks before they would deliver. 37 weeks is considered full term. The hard part of Preeclampsia is that you feel fine... but have a high chance of having a stroke or seizure if your blood pressure gets too high. I was closely monitored for those two weeks and then induced on June 16th. The inducement took a while since I was three weeks early. So on the 19th... after 60 some hours of labor and three hard hours of pushing doctors decided Carter's head was turned in a way where he would have to be delivered by C-section. It was probably the most emotional hour of our marriage. Our healthy baby boy was delivered at 3:08pm. Because of the Preeclampsia I had to stay on some pretty horrible medicine for the 24 hours following delivery to prevent seizures. It was hard because I didn't feel comfortable picking Carter up on my own until a couple days after the surgery. I don't know how I could have done it without Dan. He never left my side. My Mom has also been amazing. She flew out as soon as I was put on bed rest.

So... that's our life for the past four weeks. It feels great to finally have things getting back to normal. I also couldn't finish this post without adding a couple more pictures of Carter!