The Moment You've All Been Waiting For...

Penny Jane Lindquist
Born March 29th 2010
at 3:41 pm
In Augusta, Georgia
20 inches long
8 lbs 4 oz
lots of gorgeous hair

I've posted just a few of the pictures on this blog because of the ridiculously slow process of getting them on here. For those of you you want more (which I'm sure is all of you), you can click on this sentence and enjoy the photos there.

We arrived at the hospital on Monday morning around 6:30 for Jessica's scheduled induction, which we were able to get because of the size of previous babies (9.10 and 8.10). The nice nurses at Trinity showed us to our room and after very little time Jessica was rolling on Pitocin and getting the process going. At about 8 her doctor came in and mercilessly broke Jessica's water and "agitated" things to move along the labor. While Jessica squirmed quietly in obvious pain, I squirmed quietly in obvious imagined pain and thought about how grateful I was that I am not a woman and that Jessica was a brave, strong one.

After about 4 hours of very painful contractions about 2 minutes apart Jessica finally asked for an Epidural to ease the pain, thinking that at that point she was surely at least a 7. After the epidural she was sorely disappointed to find out that she was a 5 and about 50% effaced.

Let me take a moment to say what an utter pansy I am. After only watching 4 hours of intense labor pains and a horrible IV episode, I was too wimpy to even be in the room for the epidural. I'm not sure why, but I get sick just thinking about it. Once again, I was grateful not to be a woman and to have an awesome one by my side. I would have passed out and given up at the IV.

Anyway, after another couple hours she was checked again only to find that Jess was at a 6 and 70%. Seemed like there was a long way to go. Penny had other plans I guess becuase just half an hour later when Jessica complained of pressure and pain the nurse checked her and declared, "You're done! Don't push, I'll call the doctor." About an hour and a half after that he finally showed up.

When he walked in the door Jessica was already prepped and ready to push. It only took pushing through two contractions to get that 8 lb baby out. It was miraculous. Penny arrived strong and healthy and Jessica was a champ. I sat helpless by the side amazed at the process, and at my wife and new little girl.

Penny makes cute little faces (though her face is not little, its like a big ball of cherry red cuteness). She eats like she doesn't know how to quit, or want to. Her hair is so thick and lush I can't keep my hand off it. She is just perfect and we love her and hope you all get to meet her soon.

Thank you to all those who are so interested in our lives and willing to help us and rejoice with us on this awesome occasion.

P.S. 100 bonus points are awarded to those who realized that the bottom picture of the three above is actually Brody when he was a baby! Gotcha!

Off to see the Wizard...

The Wonderful Wizard of Pitocin.....and then we get to meet the cutest little sweet quiet smiley perfect girl ever (we hope). How excited are you to meet her? We are pretty darn excited. And we hope she is cute, because there is a lot of competition in the family. We'll post pictures for you all as soon as we get them and can find time between poops to upload them.

So before we head out (haha. pun intended) tomorrow morning we want to get up to date.

Jessica has been hard at work making a certain room of our house rather girly. As far as girly rooms go, this one is delightfully pink and pretty. She already posted the pictures of various projects but the most recent include refinishing a glider and a changing table/hutch that we purchased from nice friends.
For the chair Jess removed the old cover and put on a cream fabric with brown buttons. I painted it with chocolate. The result is quite delicious as you can see.Looks like it was meant to be, right? I guess the thought of having another girl in the house has all her creative juices flowing. (That phrase sounds strange knowing that she'll be nursing tomorrow, but I'll leave it in anyway.)

Now, on to the hutch. It was a light wood, so we painted it a creamy ivory. By "we" I mean "I". Kinda like when I say "we'll" be having a baby tomorrow I mean "Jessica will do most of the work". Anyway, here is a picture of the new hutch, preceded by what it looked like pre-spray paint.

And here is the final room product. Even I'm jealous.

So now that we are all feminized, lets remember that we have two cute boys too.

A couple of weeks ago I gave the Mommies a day to themselves and took Bridger and his Buddy Lucas to the zoo in Columbia. We all had lots of fun and were able to see all the animals without a problem because we got there right when it opened on a Monday. The good side of this was that we had the park nearly to ourselves for a while and we got to park the car right in front of the entrance. The down side was that they apparently don't pay someone on weekdays to hang out by the giraffes so people can feed them. That was a let down. The rest of the time it was fun to see the boys look at the map and decide where to go and what to look at. They loved the bears and the gorillas, but strangely not the monkeys. It must be that they are not interested in their own kind.
Also a couple of months ago we started telling the boys that if they were reverent at church they could have a sticker after church and that if/when they accumulated 4 we would go do something fun of their choice. Well, after about 6 or 7 weeks they got enough to earn a night of fun. Surprisingly they chose bowling. Not surprisingly Jess packed her own.Seriously though, there are two secrets about the above picture that I should share. One is that Jessica is hiding a bowling ball behind her belly. The other is that the midget girl seemingly coming out of her belly is not ours... though quite appropriate.

Luckily they had some very manly and scary pink dragons that the boys could use to propel their balls. If not for that pretty dragon we'd still be sitting there waiting for Bridger's turn to end. I can't recall exactly, but I'm pretty sure I whooped them all. (Although to be quite honest Brody beats me every time when we play bowling on the Wii. I really try to win. I mean I distract him, I trip him, I give him the remote on my turn, but never failing, the little twerp finds a way to beat me. Last time he got 4 strikes in a row! Alas, I take my sweet revenge during Wii boxing.) And finally, because I can't think of any more recent adventures and because I need to get to bed for our adventure tomorrow. This last Monday night we taught the boys about the Stripling Warriors of Helaman. (We may have added something about having to defend their sister from other boys. You can never start too early, right?)
Alright, next post will be full of cute little baby pictures. Life will never be the same! Wish us luck!

Project Mode

I have been in crazy lady project mode lately. I don't know if this could be considered nesting, but I have been at my sewing machine more in the last few weeks than I have ever in my life before. Maybe it's because the thought of all things girly makes me sweat with excitement. I have a long list of things that I want to make or learn how to make and when I am at a fabric store, just touching all the fabric makes me happy. I really do let my hand glide over all the beautiful colors and textures. It probably looks creepy but I do it anyway.

So here are a few of my recent projects:
I can't take a lot of credit for the painting of the baby's room. I told Adam what to do, did a little taping, and he did the rest. He's pretty good at painting after all the different houses we've lived in and painted. I made the crib bedding, which was an intimidating project, but ended up being way easier than I thought it would be. I highly recommend doing this. It saves a lot of money, you get to pick whatever fabric combinations you like, and it's not as hard as it looks.

This is a car seat tent. I'd never heard of these before but my friend Hannah made one for her cute little baby so I tried making one of my own. It's just like draping a blanket over the car seat so your baby can sleep or be shielded from the sun or from people who like to touch tiny babies who don't need to be touched. The only difference is that the blanket stays put and you don't have to deal with carrying the handle with a blanket wrapped around it. I heart this fabric. I got it at Hobby Lobby, which I also heart. Bad.
Finally, a quilt. I have made a few other quilts in the past and the binding of the quilts has always been the struggle I face. No different with this one. No matter how hard I try to bind the corners right, it doesn't happen. I'm okay with that, though. Good thing I'm not a perfectionist.

I also have been sewing flannel blankets like crazy (LOVE flannels blankets and the flannel sold at Joann's is dang cute). My next project: recovering the cushions of a glider we bought used and refinishing the wood part of the glider. Should be a huge frustrating project, but a learning experience nonetheless. I'll let you know how it goes.

Yay for projects, yay for baby girls, and yay for all the time I have now before the baby is born to do all this stuff.