Our Little Submarine: 2012

For some reason, only half of the pictures I was uploading uploaded. So my mother-in-law's visit and Gabe's first day of school will have to wait. But here are some of our other September happenings!

The kids "diving" into the ocean at the San Diego History Museum.

My mom and Luke at the San Diego History museum. They had a fun exhibit on the history of tuna fishing that I actually highly recommend!

Betsy's first day of preschool (a little neighborhood co-op).

Grandma Clytee and all the kids.

On the way to the beach to search for Mitt Romney's house.

Lunch at Caroline's cafe. Go there! It's great!

Last dinner before my mom headed home and left me to fend for myself (luckily, we are all still alive!).

Luke, already outgrowing his going-home outfit.

Bowling! Gabe almost beat us all.

The pro bowler.

Betsy and her favorite shoes.

The kids like to go boating and fishing in our living room. Don't worry, they just release anything they catch.

Little snuggly boy.

The San Juan Capistrano Mission. Best mission in California, in our opinion (and we have gone to a lot of them!).

Gabe and Betsy making rubbings in the children's room.

No caption necessary.

By the koi pond at the mission.

Part of the original ruins.

At the LA Temple visitor's center. This was a room depicting Old Jerusalem.

The Christus statue. Betsy ran in yelling "Hi Jesus!"

In front of the LA temple. I had no idea how big it was! I also learned that it was built on the lot of a silent film star's home.

Palm tree. Just because.

Again, no caption needed.

A friend gave us the tip to eat at Diddy Riese cookies in Westwood, near UCLA. Good tip! They have yummy ice cream sandwiches.

A Southern California sunset from the Santa Monica Pier.

Luke enjoying the sunset.

Also on the Santa Monica Pier.

Betsy really wanted to ride the crazy rides, but we just watched them and ate hamburgers.

The Santa Monica Pier is the very end of Route 66.

Camping in the Laguna Mountains. Yes, we took a 6-week-old baby camping. And in some respects, I think it was actually easier than taking, say, a crawling baby or a just-walking baby camping. He just stayed with me the whole time!

Brad and Betsy on the trail.

Me. But I just realized that we didn't document Luke being there! Darn.

Exploring around the campground. This was a cool fort that some previous camper had built. Gabe is MADE for camping - I don't think he stopped smiling for two days. He loves everything about it.

Gabe has been begging to pull out his old Sunday clothes for Luke to wear. Finally this last Sunday, Luke was big enough for something other than a sleeper at church.

Lucas Henrik was born at 3:43 am on Tuesday, August 14, 2012. He weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces, and was 19 1/2 inches long. We are so excited he is here!

Both of the other two kids were born a little early (Gabe was almost 3 weeks early, and Betsy was about a week and a half early), and so with constant contractions and being dilated to 5cm by Monday, August 13th, we couldn't believe he hadn't come yet! So at my appointment on Monday, I finally agreed to have my doctor break my water the next morning. She would be on call at the hospital already, and we would have a day to arrange childcare, and we could end the waiting game. We were supposed to go in at 7am. I had really wanted to go into labor on my own, but this looked like the best option at that point.

Lucky for us, Luke had other plans! I woke up at about 1:00 or 1:30am on Tuesday morning, thinking I had been dreaming about having contractions. Finally, I woke Brad up and told him that maybe just in case, he should go finish packing up the rest of my stuff (toothbrush, etc.). He ignored that for a minute (we had had way too many nights like this already), until I poked him again and he watched me for a minute...and immediately got up to put everything together.

By then, I was convinced this WASN'T real, and that we might as well just wait until 6:30 to go in, when our babysitter was coming anyway. Brad said we needed to call her NOW. It took about 10 minutes to get a hold of her (I finally remembered were supposed to call their HOME number in the middle of the night). I started to help Brad put the sofa sleeper together for her, until I realized I really couldn't do anything. I finally admitted it was probably time to go to the hospital.

You can pretty much see the hospital from our house, but it still felt like a verrrry long ride. I tried to convince Brad to run the stop signs and stop lights, but he was mostly law-abiding. I did at least convince him to park in the fire lane in front of the hospital rather than going to the parking structure. As we got out of the car and tried to figure out which entrance to go in (the regular Labor and Delivery entrance was temporarily closed), two nurses on break walked by. They asked if we needed help, then watched me for a minute and went and grabbed a wheel chair and wheeled us right on up to L&D. That was nice of them!

In Labor and Delivery, they got me into a room fairly quickly (they started to register us, looked at me, and skipped the rest of registration). I got changed, and they tried to start an IV. But I had to keep asking them to stop because I needed to concentrate, and pretty soon I felt like there was a lot of pressure. I decided I was done and didn't want to have this baby anymore. They say that will happen in ALL of the books...and even as I was saying that, it felt like a cliche! But it was all I could think right then!

Brad kept his composure very well, even if I didn't, and between him and this angel of a nurse (she was SO calm!), they kept me breathing. The midwife came in, and after a few reluctant pushes on my part, Luke arrived! Good thing Brad took things seriously, or we may have had a baby in the kitchen. Which would have been fine, but I was really looking forward to the air conditioning in the hospital!