happy st. patrick's day!

today's blog is mostly for my very irish grandmother. if she had had her "druthers" (her word, not mine) my name would have been erin riley rosentrater. on monday my dad was in st. pete for some golf disguised as work, so andy, janie and i spontaneously headed over for dinner. we ate at ted peter's famous smoked fish house and ordered exactly what our friend eddie (a 30 year st. pete beach local) told us to. it was probably one of the greatest cheeseburgers and root beer i have ever had. the highlight of the trip was for sure the fact that my dad was wearing green, and we conveniently had janie's shamrock pj's in the car. we are all very in touch with our irish roots, and for that i knew my grandmother would be proud. these pictures are for you, grammy. grampa, let me know when the next german holiday is and i'll be sure to get janie her very own pair of lederhosen.

as you can tell, janie really enjoyed ted peters.

since janie is too young to eat green pancakes, and follow gold coin trails to gifts left by leprechauns, i made myself a fancy breakfast of oatmeal with brown sugar and then we ventured out for some st. patrick's day shopping with lauren. liberty of london just designed a whole line of things for target, and lauren and i had marked the date on our calendars months ago. janie told me that it would make her happy if i used a target gift card she received in the mail for being born on myself, which was very sweet of her. so, we got some super cute storage bins and a dress..or two. when we got home, this handsome man was waiting for us in the driveway.

laundry and other exciting things

i strategically just put a load of laundry in the washing machine on the heavy duty cycle, not because they were extra dirty, but because it will buy me a few extra minutes to waste time on the computer without feeling like there's something more important to be done. i think i forgot to mention anything about our wonderful new washer and dryer. we rang in the new year by getting rid of our 25 year old machines. we had talked about getting new ones for a while, and our decision was made when andy got to work with a giant hole in his shirt from the dryer drum made of nails.

in other news, janie is already 2 months old. her doctors appointment was a great success...she cried a lot when she got her shots, but i didn't, which came as a pleasant surprise to us all. she is growing like crazy...more horizontally than vertically. she weighed in at 11 lbs 2 oz and is 21 inches long, which puts her in the 55th percentile for weight, and 10th for height.

a few nights ago we realized that she seemed really mad at us for waking her up every night at midnight to feed her, so we decided to see what would happen if we just let her sleep. it was a miracle. she has slept 9 hours every night since. it's amazing what a full night of sleep can do.

our good friends goose and minta welcomed their second little boy, eli, into the world on thursday morning. he is a charming little fellow just like his big brother, matias. since goose is a good husband, he wouldn't even consider leaving minta home with the boys to attend a magic game. and since he is a good friend as well, he kindly gave andy and i the tickets for sunday nights game, so we went on our first real date since janie's arrival. all week i looked forward to (in this order) spending an evening with andy sans baby, enjoying a gourmet dinner of hot dogs and nachos, and watching the magic dominate the bobcats. we sat next to a nice young man celebrating his 21st birthday. from what i observed, all he really wanted was for "his man j will to know it was his birfday". despite the challenge of sharing a very limited amount of space with a highly intoxicated 7 foot tall guy, the magic's loss to the bobcats, and the shortage of nacho cheese at the concession stand, we had a really great time. we've decided that when joel and lizzy move back we should go in on a pair of season tickets. then lizzy and i can go to games and eat hot dogs while andy and joel supervise janie and luke back at home.

hello again

if you had asked me 7 weeks ago if i planned to continue updating this regularly, i would have said, "of course! do you really think a baby is going to stop me from sitting down and typing for 30 minutes every few days?". now, seven weeks into janie's life i have realized that when there are 30 spare minutes, there are far more important things to do than sit at the computer. our monitor gets really static when i'm in the office, so that is another deterrent. also, there's not nearly as much exciting stuff to write about as i imagined there would be. i mean, it's super exciting to andy and i, and janie's grandparents, but to most others the fact that she sneezed 4 times in a row is pretty boring.

that being said, here are some of the highlights of the past few weeks in no particular order, which is a great example of how my mind works these days...

janie loves to exercise her little lungs every evening from about 7:30 until midnight. if she ever takes voice lessons, we will be sure to remember that those are her optimal hours. the only cure for her screaming seems to be walking around while bouncing her up and down above your head, which is making me contemplate canceling our gym membership.

she has become a pretty good sleeper, giving us at least a 5 hour span on most nights.

she started smiling every now and then, but we have yet to really capture it on camera.

here is the best we could do at capturing a smile

we celebrated her first valentines day with our good friends the harmon's, helms' and l-t's, and lots of great food.

andy and janie on valentine's day

we have spent a significant amount of time watching the winter olympics over the past 2 weeks, though we usually change the channel when the biathlon comes on. the proctor and gamble commercials make even andy cry, and janie is fascinated by the blinking screen. i would guess her favorite event is ladies halfpipe, judging by how well behaved she has been each time it is on.

janie and brianne share a strong affinity for the olympic games, as you can see from their team usa spirit

last saturday we drove out to new smyrna because the weather was nice, but mostly because i really wanted frozen gold. it made me look forward to warm weather and beach days with much anticipation.

this week caroline was in town and so like the good ol' days we stayed up until 2am, spent a lot of time at starbucks and the mall, and watched youtube videos galore. i'm really looking forward to the day that she moves back to orlando.

my favorite thing is how alert she's getting. she has started to focus on things more and it's so fun to be able to play with her. she loves looking at lights, which never gets old to us. had we known she'd be so easily amused, we could have saved ourselves quite a bit of money by passing on swings and exersaucers.

here she is very focused on the chandelier above our dining room table

2 weeks already!

yesterday was janie's two week birthday. we celebrated by taking her to see dr. lim and giving her her first bath. i don't think she will be a big fan of birthdays in the future is we continue to celebrate in those ways. she was actually really great at the doctor-didn't cry a bit, not even when they put a freezing cold stethoscope on her naked little body. she is going to fit into our family well, as she is big fan of eating. weighing in at 7 lbs 4 oz yesteday, she has already gained almost a pound. the doctor told us that she's absolutely perfect, which we already knew, but apparently it becomes official when someone with a phd says so.

on wednesday we had an appointment with a lactation consultant, and as i was feeding janie in this lady's office i noticed that she had remnants of poop caked onto her leg from a major disaster that had occurred at 3:00 that morning. i prayed that the milk lady didn't see and report us to social services, and decided that there was no better time for her first bath. as you can see in the photos below, she loved every minute of it.

not so happy about it coming to an end.

her first two weeks have been filled with much activity. at just 5 days old she enjoyed her first trip to starbucks with daddy. a few days later she braved the millenia mall, and it became clear that she will love shopping as much as her mom. on wednesday she spent 6 hours posed in boxes, bowls and suitcases for her first photoshoot, thanks to callahan photo. (photos should be up on their website sometime today). she wasn't loving it at the time, but she will be so glad to have great pictures of herself when she gets older. we are really fortunate that she has been such a great sleeper after all that we've put her through. she graduated from the bassinet last weekend and now sleeps in her cozy crib every night. and, we made it 15 days without a pacifier.

(aunt becky, we tried to take picture like this for your birthday as well, but the paper cuts were making her a little upset and she didn't last very long. we celebrated you both all day on tuesday!)

andy blogs

i've been trying to get andy to write for some time now, and he was worried that his material would be far too melancholy for our lighthearted blog. after janie's baptism yesterday, he was inspired to write his first blog ever, and i think it's great. so here it is, a little something from the much more intellectual third of the simonds', along with a few photos from sunday for good measure...

In the late fall of 1998 I sat down in a big leather chair in the office of the Dean of the School of Religion at Belmont University. I would be graduating in a few days with a degree bearing his signature, and I was there for my exit interview. He asked questions about my educational experience, and my answers probably more than his questions led us to a place where we were talking about why I wasn’t sure anymore about the existence of God. I told him that there was something deep inside me that just wouldn’t let me walk away from my faith either. I was still surprised by the warmth in my heart and wetness in my eyes that would well up upon hearing some old hymn or reading a story in scripture that I thought I knew well. I remember him saying that this was a good starting place for rebuilding my faith and theology, and I remember thinking that was a nice sentiment. But more than that I remember struggling with this disturbing thought: Maybe that something deep inside me isn’t some mystic connection with God, or the Holy Spirit at work… Maybe it is just stuck in my subconscious because I was brainwashed with it as a child! Maybe it became true for me before reason became part of the equation and maybe that’s why reason still couldn’t really touch it. I remember brushing all this under the rug and deciding to forget I’d left it there.

Tonight I was reading Janie’s picture Bible, and I was surprised by the warmth in my heart and the wetness in my eyes… and with a lump in my throat I became suddenly grateful for the stuff my parents told me before reason became a part of the equation.

Proverbs 22:5-6

5 In the paths of the wicked lie thorns and snares,
but he who guards his soul stays far from them.
6 Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it.

janie caroline simonds

she's here! after what seemed like an endless 9 months of anticipating and preparing for her arrival, janie was born at 12:30 am on january 7. she weighed 6 pounds 7 ounces and was 19 3/4 inches long. we think she is absolutely perfect - no matter what she does it's the "cutest thing ever"...yawning, sneezing, stretching, even screaming.

it is amazing to me how much we loved her from the minute we laid eyes on her. parents tell you all the time that this will be the case, but it is so unfathomable until you're actually in it. the entire process of being induced, being in labor and delivering went so smoothly. i am grateful for all of those who shared their horror stories, because i was prepared for the absolute worst and it wasn't so bad at all. i wasn't sure how i would know when the right time to get an epidural would be because i don't really know how to rank my pain on a scale of one to ten. i can assure you that i quickly learned the difference between discomfort and intolerable pain, and luckily was able to get an anesthesiologist in the room pretty shortly after to give me an epidural. i googled the inventor of the epidural in hopes of being able to track him down and write the most sincere thank you note i've ever sent, and in doing so i learned that it was exactly 68 years ago to the day on january 6 that an epidural was first given to humans. once the numbness kicked in, andy, caroline, my mom and i celebrated the birthday of the greatest drug around by listening to and laughing at the screamer in the room next door, reminiscing on things we stole as children, and sharing other ridiculous stories that i wish i remembered because i don't know that i've ever laughed harder in my life. had i been able to move my legs, i would have been running laps around the hospital.

in a nutshell, at around 11:30 things started progressing much quicker than they had been all day. our wonderful nurse, ashley, called my doctor to let her know that we were getting close to starting to push, and within minutes it seemed there was a flurry of activity around our room as nurses prepared the baby warmer, biohazard bucket, a tray of lots of intriguing silver tools, and smelling salts, juice and ice for andy. dr. thatcher arrived just as we started pushing, and within 30 minutes janie made her appearance! andy remained conscious the entire time, and he even watched as our sweet baby girl came into the world. i cried as soon as i saw her for the first time, and still cry every time i look at her in my arms and think about how amazing it is that she is here and that she is ours. we can't wait for everyone to meet her!

on our way to the hospital...

14 hours later!

first family photo

our wonderful nurse and friend, ashley.

proud daddy.

today is the day.

we are on our way out the door, so this will be quick! we are heading to the hospital in hopes of being induced at 9:00. apparently there are lots of babies being born this week and the hospital has been super busy, so there's a chance that we could get pushed back to later. we are super excited, and i think after two weeks of thinking that she was coming each day resulted in us wasted all of our anxiety/worries, so we are both feeling pretty great. i used each day as an excuse to add some forgotten item to my bag, which means we are prepared with mad libs, 4 different lip gloss shades, multiple coming home outfits for janie, real simple's january edition, and lots of extra contacts (perhaps the only practical thing in there). if you want something to pray about, you could pray that andy doesn't pass out 17 times, that we are able to get in and get things started, and that she arrives before my doctor's shift is over. and of course that she would be healthy and things would go smoothly. we can't wait for everyone to meet her and will keep you all posted. perhaps andy will even write his inaugural blog.