Happy Halloween!

Baby’s First Halloween! Our neighborhood sucks, unfortunately. We only got eleven trick-or-treaters. We got Robin all dressed up to help us hand out candy too, but had to put him down to sleep after only one kid came by. But enough about that.

First of all, IT’S A BOY!
I didn’t actually say that in the initial post/email, and a few people seem to have missed the pronouns. So yes, Robin is a boy. And he has a middle name now:
Robin Adrik Rhoadarmer.

A few interesting pieces of Robin trivia for you all:

Robin was born the weekend of Mile Hi Con, the sci-fi convention where Dean and I first met seven years ago. How about that!

Does anyone remember their Physics lessons? The natural constant Avogadro’s number? Well, Avogadro’s number is 1.023 x 10 to the 23rd power. And what day was Robin’s birthday? 10/23. His grandpa, “Poppa Jim” pointed that one out. I don’t know if it will help anyone remember his birthday, but I’m sure I’ll never forget Avogadro’s number again.

But on to the pictures!

Being held by the doctor who delivered him, Gretchen Frey

All dressed up to go home

All of us ready to go home

First car ride

In his new swing

Daddy giving a bottle

Relaxing together

First walk

Introducing Robin Rhoadarmer (middle name still not decided on.)

Born Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 8:32pm via cesarean
6 lbs, 6.7 oz
19 inches
Swedish Medical Center
Dr. Gretchen Frey was the attending physician

Mom was starting to suffer from high blood pressure which was getting worse, so we opted to welcome him early. The cesarean was because despite three sessions of acupuncture last week and an attempt at external cephalic version on Monday he was still stubbornly head up, with his bottom lodged in the pelvis. The surgery was quick (Dad and Grandma Sue were present) and there was a whole fan club in the waiting room. We’ve been settling in together.

Baby Shower!

First of all, I'm sorry it's been so long since I posted. I had all sorts of grand plans to keep up with this once a week, and that didn't happen. Perhaps now that we're getting close, I can get things posted more frequently. It's far more likely to happen now, since I've cut back to part time at work.

So! The Baby Shower was two weekends ago now, on Sunday, September 28. This was our cake. The m&ms were personalized and said "Baby Zaxxon."

We got the idea for this watermelon fruit baby carriage from the shower of one of Dean's coworkers, Brandon, and his wife Charli. We thought it was cute, so we decided to have one, too. My Dad carved it for us. It was good practice for pumpkin carving.

Dean's sister made this diaper cake for us. It's got a ton of diapers, some toys, and small bottles or samples of various baby products. She, Dean's mom, and my mom threw the shower for us. And they did a great job! Thanks, you guys!



We had a couple babies at the shower, which was a nice addition to the atmosphere. This is Gavin, son of Dean's coworker Mike and his wife Steph. He's about 4 months old.

And this is Lucy. She's the daughter of my coworker Christin, and her husband Aaron. She's about five months old.



My friend Cora surprised me by flying out from Washington state for the festivities. It was awesome to have her there.

One of the games was to guess how many m&ms were in the baby bottle.



Another game Dean's sister came up with was to break up and melt several different candy bars inside of diapers. We were allowed to look and smell, but not taste, the candy. We then tried to identify which candy bar was which.

This was rather disgusting, since it looked a lot like poo. It didn't help that the diapers were warm when we first picked them up (they'd only recently been nuked in the microwave.) Tim here has the right sentiment.



Here, Dad and Charlie examine one of the mystery candy bars.



Since the party was co-ed/couples, we thought it only right to have a game the more macho men might find fun--a beer drinking contest. Of course, since it was still a baby shower, we had to incorporate a baby element into it. So we had a race to see who could drink their beer the fastest--out of a baby bottle with a newborn nipple.

This took several minutes to complete. At first we thought Dad had won, but it turns out he bit a larger hole into his nipple. Shame on him, both for cheating and because that nipple can no longer be used for our baby. Charlie was the actual winner.



We also had our guests play a game while we opened our gifts--Baby Gift Bingo. Everyone got a blank bingo sheet, and they were supposed to fill out the squares with items they thought we were going to receive. Then they marked the items off while we opened the gifts. There were quite a few prizes still at this point, so we were able to have several winners.

This is our haul. As you can see, we received quite a bit. Thank you notes aren't out yet, but to anyone reading this, thank you for everything!

We knew Dean's mom was going to be knitting something for the baby, but we were amazed at how much she actually made. There were something like four gift bags of clothing, blankets, stuffed toys, and burp cloths that she had made (some was sewn, not knitted.) This is a saque set and blanket.



Cora gave us Star Trek clothing and bibs (Star Trek was one of the bonds that kept us together during our childhood.)

This superhero onesie was from my parents. It even has a cape!



These are shots around the room of our guests. Steph, Mike, Aunt Jackie (who flew out from Georgia to attend--another nice surprise!), Sarah, Charli, and Brandon.

Lisa, Tim, Sela, Jolene, and (Great-) Grandma Virginia.



Sela, Jolene, Virginia, Charlie, and Julie.

Julie, Lannie, Veronica, Mom, Dad, Jan, and Bill.



Jan, Bill, Dan, Kim, and Christin. I estimate we had about 34 people there while everyone was still present. It was a lot of fun! Thank you to everyone!

For anyone who would still like to help out, check out the links on the top right of the blog. There are still some items on the registry we'd like, and I'd still appreciate gift certificates to the Denver Diaper Company (we're going to try cloth diapers for at least part time, and it's a bit of an investment initially, but saves lots of money over time.) Also, food that can be frozen would be appreciated so we can avoid cooking much right after the baby is born. The Home Bistro delivers frozen meals that can be heated pretty quickly, although homemade food is always good too.

Keep checking back, we'll post final pictures of the baby's room soon, along with other projects. And in the not-too-distant future, we'll be posting pictures of our little bundle of joy!

Nursery

We spent the last few weekends getting the nursery ready for Zaxxon, and we're pretty close to finished. First, Dad came over and helped us get the jungle mural on the wall.

It covers the west wall of the room and also goes over and behind the door. It looks really nice, we're very happy with the result. It went up like wallpaper, and although it took a while to do, it was faster than we'd feared.







Then, Dean and I painted a few spots on the east wall with magnetic paint (special thanks to my cousin Audra for having some in her room, which gave me the idea) and then we painted over that. Now there are a few parts of the wall that magnets will stick to. Not really heavy ones, but the thin, flat ones work best.





We also purchased some new curtains, which we had to order b/c our local Linen's N Things was sold out. The previous curtains were white and no thicker than bedsheets, so lots of light came through them. Since babies wake up all the time anyway (and the room faces south) I didn't want Zaxxon waking up at dawn just because there was too much light in the room. The new ones do a much better job of keeping the room dark.














I also put some shelf liner paper at the bottoms of the dresser drawers, so now there's no rough wood to snag clothing.

We put magnetic paint on the door too, and we still need to paint over that (we're deciding on colors.) But other than that the room is pretty close to being done. We still have to put the crib together and put some decorations up, but that's about it!

In other news, we had our first childbirth class last week, and have another tomorrow. We're learning all about how things work and ways to relax and breathe. The class is basically making us acknowledge how real this is, which is a little scary.

Zaxxon is getting bigger and still wiggling around. In addition to little kicks and punches, I've started to feel pushes and twists and turns. Zaxxon has even had the hiccups a few times now (which feels like tiny little rhythmic spasms.)

I'm extremely glad that we went to Rome when we did and not later. My general comfort level has gone down in the weeks since we've been back (I'm more sore, and get tired more easily, and my feet are swelling) so it was fortunate that we scheduled the vacation when we did.