Christmas 2010

So if you haven't already noticed, Dave has the more entertaining posts and comments while mine tend to be just informative and factual.  Lucky for all of you he will be the stay at home Dad in about 3 weeks and will likely do the majority of the posting then.  I just have a few more posts about past events that I wanted documented before I get to the more recent stuff.


Christmas 2010 was a quite busy for us since it was our first time traveling with an infant.  Also we live in cold, snowy Minnesota so the weather is not usually cooperative in the winter.  We ended up traveling to Cherokee, Iowa to spend the 24th and 25th with my family and then to Des Moines to spend the 26th and 27th with the Wicks family.  The weather was not very nice on the way down and a usually four and a half hour trip took us 7 hours.  Some of that time was due to stopping to feed Sydney as well.  We did eventually make it and enjoyed time with family.  Sydney got to meet Great Grandpa and Great Grandma Kleihauer for the the first time as well as many great aunts and uncles and cousins.

Meeting Great Grandpa Kleihauer

Grandmas and Grandpas

Four generations and all of our middle names are Marie.

Meeting Great Grandma Kleihauer

Traits

Howdy all, it's Dave again.  In the 7th grade science class I've been teaching we just got done with a unit on Genetics.  Teaching about Punnett Squares and how traits are passed on made me curious about what traits Sydney has from Cherilyn and myself.  So far we've heard a wide range of comments from people.  Some say she looks like me.  Some say she looks like Cherilyn.  But I think at this point we are really only sure about one thing.  Sydney has my hair.

Here are a few examples of my hair

As you can see my hair has trouble sitting down

This does make it easier to have a mohawk at Halloween

This isn't at it's longest but I've yet to find the length when it will start to sit down

Even my chin hair sticks straight out

Now here is Sydney's hair

This is right before a bath

You can usually tell when she needs a bath based on how much of her hair you can get to lay flat.

These are post bath pictures

Mimicking Albert Einstein

Just like her pops

Thanksgiving 2010

Sydney was born on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, which ended up being perfect timing for our family to come visit as they had off of work.  My parents and brother, who was home from law school on break, came the night of her birth and Dave's parents came the next day.  We had not made any Thanksgiving plans as we knew that Sydney could come at any time so the new grandparents set out to bring Thanksgiving to all of us.  We got to leave the hospital on Thanksgiving Day and arrived home to a house full of family and a Thanksgiving feast.  Thanks Grandparents!  Of course we were all most thankful for our newest family member Sydney.

Here we are leaving the hospital.  Cute duckies.

Here is our Thanksgiving chicken.  We also had turkey, but it had been our plan to rotisserie this pasture-raised, happy chicken from Nathan and Sarah

It was delicious!

Here is a sweet picture of Sydney at home.

Here Sydney is meeting Nana and G-pops.

She also met Aunt Anna, Aunt Sarah, and Uncle Nathan right after Thanksgiving.

As you can see Odin was a bit jealous and needing attention too.

We also welcomed some other visitors in Sydney's first week home.

Our friends Chris, Kati, and Callie as well as Nik came to visit.  It is amazing how big 11-month-old Callie seems next to Sydney.  Josh and Alison came another night to say hello.

Nik kept Odin company.  He muttered something about being allergic to Wicks smaller than him.

As we have already seen, Odin was a little jealous and wanted a lot of attention from all of our guests as well as from Mom and Dad.  Overall he did very well adjusting to our new little one.  He learned quickly that he was not allowed to lick her or steal any of her stuffed animals.  After that, he has been great.  I was most worried about our cats.  I was afraid they would jump on her in her crib, but they didn't really care about her at all and avoid her due to her crying.  They were a little jealous at times as they are used to sitting on my lap and that seat was now occupied by Sydney.

Odin getting some cuddles with Mom.

Here the cats are learning to share.

"What? I'm just relaxing here.  Don't mind me"

"Hmmmm she is pretty cute isn't she"

Grandmotherly instinct takes over.  Sleeping dogs can be vicious.

Another first-week-home event was her first bath.  Grandma and Daddy helped while Grandpa documented.

"Nooooo!  If Chris doesn't bathe, why do I have to?"

"What is the splashy stuff?"

"Oooo 4 people massaging me at the same time.  I can get used to this"

Hello, my name is Dave.

Howdy everybody, this is Dave.  I have a confession to make.  I never thought that this would happen to me.  It's kind of embarrassing, but I feel that I need to come clean.  Please be supportive of me in my struggles with my new addiction.......Ok here it goes.......

I love buying baby clothes.  I can't help it.  When I'm in Target I always go by the baby clothes and buy Sydney a new outfit.  Every single time.  I went grocery shopping at Target yesterday just to look at the clothes.  I had no idea how fun it would be.  The first time it happened, I was randomly walking past the childrens section at Target.  Before I knew it I was walking away with 10 outfits.  Cherilyn has now given me a limit to the number of outfits I'm allowed to buy.  Over New Years when we were in the Dells, we were at an Old Navy outlet store.  I saw all the awesome baby clothes and put back everything I was going to buy for myself so that I could get more for her.  Here are a few examples of the great outfits I've found, and thank you in advance for your support as I work to overcome my addiction.

Yellow is so much cuter than pink

 This is probably my favorite.  Yesterday I nearly bought it again in a bigger size because she's outgrown it already.

 ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

 I loved the black color combinations in this one

 I nearly cried when I saw this Spider-man shirt.  All the other ones I had seen were way too big.

 Honestly how could I pass up The Beatles

 In case you can't tell that is a Yoda Star Wars shirt

 Nana is great for napping

Sydney's Birth Story

I apologize ahead of time if this story is TMI or contains too many medical details.  I will try to tell it a simply as I can, but it is difficult for me to leave out some pertinent medical details.

We didn't do so well at keeping up with baby bump pictures during my pregnancy, but I must have known I wouldn't be pregnant much longer when I insisted Dave take this picture the night before you were born.

The next day, 11/23/2010, I went work at Bethesda Family Medicine Clinic for what I thought would be a full day of seeing patients.  However, I started having contractions halfway through the morning.  At first, I thought they were just Braxton Hicks contractions, but they continued to get stronger and became quite regular by the end of the morning.  I did finish seeing all my patients and then proceeded to ask the front desk to cancel my afternoon, but stayed to finish my dictations.  By this time, the contractions were 5 minutes apart and I could not dictate through them.  Because I didn't feel that I could drive safely two of my coworkers kindly helped to drive me home.

Dave was waiting for me at home.  I wanted to labor there for awhile before going to the hospital, but the contractions quickly became much, much stronger.  After being at home for only about hour, we headed to St. John's Hospital in Maplewood.  I don't remember many details of the admission process as I just focused on getting through contractions.   I was 3cm dilated when I arrived and decided within the first hour or so at the hospital that I wanted an epidural.   For the epidural and because I was dehydrated, I needed an IV.  You would think this was a straight forward process, but not for me and my small veins.  Nine sticks and four nurses later I finally had my IV.  About an hour later, I got my epidural.  Hooray!  It was wonderful! 

At this point, I was about 5-6cm dilated and didn't make many changes for an hour or two.  Then after turning to my left side for about 30 minutes, I started feeling a lot more pressure and the nursed checked me again and I was very close to complete with just an anterior lip.  I labored down while they prepared the room and made sure that my doctor, Dr. Flynn, was on her way.  When everything was ready, the nurse had me try pushing, but she had me stop quickly as I apparently was pushing so well that we were worried I would deliver before the doctor arrived. A few minutes late around 11PM, Dr. Flynn arrived and I started pushing again.  It did go very quickly and 27 minutes later Sydney Marie Wicks was born. You had some light meconium (fetal stool) in your fluid so you were quickly wisked to the neonatal nurse practitioner to have it suctioned from her airway. At first, you were quiet, but I could see your little pink body and was reassured by the nurses that you were doing well. A few minutes later you were crying loudly as you demonstrated in your first picture below.

 You were 6 pounds 6 oz. and 20 inches long.

 

Daddy got to hold you first while we were waiting for the placenta to deliver.  It took almost 30 minutes for it to release.  Daddy also took you to see Grandma and Grandpa Hyndman and Uncle Dan who had driven from Iowa to meet you.  Ironically, they arrived minutes after you were born and were waiting outside our room.  They got come in after Dr. Flynn was done putting in a few stitches for two first degree lacerations.  I also tried feeding you for the first time and you did very well from the start!

Happy Birthday Sydney!