For those of you who like photos, I put a lot of them up last night.  A hundred and twenty-four to be exact.  I decided at the beginning of the month that I’d hold off putting up photos until the end of the month, rather than making lots of “heylookit new pictures!” posts every week.

There are pictures from our trip to Tampa, Florida to spend Independence Day with Stephanie’s sister and her family.  We went to the beach and Emma was OK with getting in the water this time (unlike last time).  There are also some pictures from my brother’s wedding, in which I was the best man.  Then there are some professional photos of Emma that we had made last week.  And finally, there are a bunch of Emma pictures from the last month that didn’t really go with any of the others.

Enjoy!

P.S.  I changed a lot of code on my website, but you shouldn’t visibly see any changes.  Let me know if something doesn’t seem to work like it used to.

Last night I added a bunch of pictures from last week’s beach trip.  I also added a set of miscellaneous pictures which I titled “Emma in June.”  (The first three pictures in that set were moved from the “Emma continues to grow” set, but the rest are new.)

Some interesting tidbits-

• Emma did not care for the ocean (compare and contrast her facial expressions before and after touching the water).

• Emma’s second-cousin Clara, who is five and a half weeks her elder, was at the beach too.  At one point, Kaylor (Clara’s mother, who is my cousin) was holding Clara, and Scott (my brother) was with them, while some Asian family with a screaming baby was nearby (they were at a restaurant at the time).  Some moron—who must not have looked closely enough at Clara to realize Scott was definitely not the father—said to Kaylor, “That’s what this country needs: more good, white babies.”  Of course, Clara is only half white.  I think the guy just walked away after that (I wasn’t there).  Like I’ve said before on this blog, I’m always surprised that there are still truly racist people out there who are under the age of seventy.  I mean, if you were, let’s say, over 25 years old in 1960, maybe you were already set in your ways before we as a society figured out that racism is a Bad Thing, so you’ve at least got a bad excuse for your behavior.  For anyone younger than that:  really? seriously? there are still people that ignorant?  (Also, I can assure this guy that white babies are quite capable of screaming very loudly.)

• Emma likes riding on my shoulders.  But I think this is mainly because she likes running her hands through my hair.

For all who are concerned (and I know many are concerned, because I get requests/demands frequently), some new pictures of Emma have been put up on this very website.  I also created an album of photos of Emma’s nursery.  Be sure that you see the time-lapse animation of Stephanie painting the Noah’s Ark mural!

This is a quick update to say two things-

1. Two new sets of baby pictures are up.  They are both under the “Emma Leigh arrives” photo set.  I have to say that photos from Wal-Mart turned out much better than I had anticipated.  We even got full-resolution unaltered digital images on CD, along with full rights to reproduce and redistribute, something I really wish we had with our wedding photos.

2. You’ve probably noticed the site looks a little different.  If it looks broken, try to refresh (browsers tend to cache CSS files very liberally).  I finally implemented a tag cloud, and I’ve made one pass through all my blog posts to add tags to them.  Let me know what you think about it.

I kinda know someone who will be on national TV this weekend.  Stephanie’s sister’s husband’s sister is Miss North Carolina USA*.  She is in Las Vegas right now preparing for the Miss USA pageant, which will air on NBC this Friday, April 11th, at 9:00 PM.

* Please note that Miss North Carolina USA is not to be confused with Miss North Carolina.  The former competes in the Miss USA pageant, while the latter competes in the Miss America pageant.  Yes, that is very silly.

For those of you who aren’t regular visitors to this site, feel free to read what I wrote on the day Emma was born, and my much longer post that I wrote the following evening.

I have finally gotten around to putting the pictures of Emma up on this site.  The pictures are divided into two sets: pictures from our arrival at the hospital up until the day Emma was born, and pictures from her first week.  The first set covers most of the pictures that were on the Flickr page, as well as a few new ones.  The other set covers pictures since the day she was born.  There are a few pictures in here that were on Flickr before, but most of them are brand new to most of you.  You’ll see in the pictures that her eye has improved quite a bit, which really shows in the latest pictures.  (Like this one, taken yesterday.)

Stephanie was released from the hospital last Tuesday, and her mother stayed with us all week to help out.  Because she was here to help out, I went back to work on Wednesday, and I’m using vacation days most of this week.  I’m telling you this to set up a little anecdote.

On Wednesday (which was also the third anniversary of our wedding, by the way) Stephanie and her mom took Emma to the doctor’s office for her first checkup.  After hearing from the doctor that all is well, she decided to surprise me at my office with a “picnic” lunch.  When she got there she asked the security guard to call me and tell me I had a package at the front desk.  Well he called and told me, and I started to head down there.  Then I started thinking—why in the world would he call me?  Normally they just send an e-mail when a package arrives.  So in the minute it takes me to walk to the front desk, the main thought that went through my head was this: “Is this what they do when they fire someone??”  Like I would get down there to find security guards who would escort me out of the building, then they’d send someone else up to get my stuff.  My other thought was that the police were taking me into custody for some kind of violent crime for which I was being falsely accused (something kind of like this story).  Fortunately, when I got there and asked for my package, he said “it’s right there” and then Stephanie came out from around the corner.  Well, I was happy to know that I wasn’t being fired or arrested, so we went and had our picnic in the break room near my desk (a picture of said picnic is up on the second photo set).

I guess that’s all the news I’ve got to share today.  Emma gets to meet her Aunt Mandy later this week, and I’m sure she is excited.

Note: You can find the latest photos of Emma on our photos page.  I’ll warn you there are a few photos in there from the operating room.  Nothing graphic, but if you’re grossed out by blood, try not to focus on the BigGulp-sized clear plastic jug of blood that was pumped from Stephanie’s abdomen.

As I type this, Emma is about to turn thirty-six hours old, so I thought those of you out there in internet land were due for an update.  My last post was a little light on details, so I will make up for that here.

We went into the hospital Thursday afternoon in order for Stephanie to be induced, as she was eight days past her due date and they estimated the baby to be about 8.5 pounds.  So Stephanie was given a chemical via IV that caused her body to start having contractions.  Well, for some people induction does not cause the baby to come naturally.  Stephanie is one of those people.  On Friday evening, they decided to try induction again, leading to a long night of contractions, but still no baby delivery.

On Saturday morning Stephanie’s doctor came in and said “we can go take this baby out now by C-section, or we can try induction all day and then take her by C-section this afternoon at five, but she’s not going to come on her own.”  So, naturally, we decided to go ahead and have the C-section immediately.

Well at this point they rolled Stephanie back to the OR and handed me a set of scrubs and led me to an area outside of the OR (but closed off from the main hallway).  After prepping Stephanie for twenty minutes that seemed like an hour, a nurse told me I could come into the OR.

I started to describe the C-section, but then I remembered Gabe doing a much better job of describing the process on Penny-Arcade a while back.  So at this point I’ll just quote him:

They wheeled Kara into the operating room and I followed behind scared to death. I knew what a c section was, or at least I thought I did. I imagined the doctor cutting a little hole in my wife’s belly and then gently removing the baby as though she was taking a quarter out of a coin purse. What I did not expect to see was a doctor pulling with all his might on what looked like a crow bar in an effort to widen the incision enough for a second doctor to wrestle the baby out. It was like some kind of WWE event with doctors up on chairs and blood everywhere. I looked up at one point to see a doctor up to his elbows in my wife’s stomach and I just about lost it. Kara was still cool though and I figured if she could handle I sure as hell better.

That’s pretty much what my experience was, except I didn’t actually look over the curtain at any point.  Apparently Emma has quite a large head, they even had trouble getting her out through the incision they made.  Apparently in a C-section they use some kind of vacuum pump to hold onto the head and pull her out, and she moved her head just as they were putting it on her.  This is what caused the black eye, which is more like a large, really bad hickie.

Eventually they got her out, and we got to see her for the first time.  I am amazed that something that size could fit inside a human being!  They weighed her, cut the umbilical cord (by the way, the cord is not flesh-colored as I had imagined, it’s more like a translucent mucus filled eel-like thing).  They asked if I wanted to do the second cut of the cord, which was a little weird but I guess it’s the tradition.  Then I got to hold our bundle of joy for the first time, and bring her over for Stephanie to see.  She weighed in at 8 pounds, 9.4 ounces, and she was 20.5 inches long.  Which isn’t that much larger than average, but apparently Stephanie wasn’t made for natural childbirth; the doctor said any subsequent children would need to be delivered with a scheduled C-section.  But I guess she is very fortunate to have been born in modern times: two hundred years ago it would not have been likely for either Stephanie or Emma to have survived delivery.

Back to my narrative: next I went to the OR recovery area with Emma, while they finished cleaning off Stephanie.  At this point, there was a bit of a kerfuffle.  The doctor went out and told the grandparents they could come see the baby, but then a nurse told them they couldn’t but failed to explain why very clearly.  The reason was mainly that Stephanie wasn’t out of the OR yet, so she hadn’t even held her baby yet.  And mom gets to hold the baby before any grandparents do; that’s just fair.

But after Stephanie came out and recovered from the surgery for about an hour, we got to roll her and Emma back to the room and everyone got a chance to see her, but very briefly.  They paged an pediatric ophthalmologist to take a look at her eye and make sure there was no serious damage related to the bruises.  Fortunately, she determined that they were only superficial damages that will heal soon.  And I am happy to report now that her face looks much much better than when she was delivered a mere 36 hours ago.

In those last 36 hours, I have suffered from a level of sleep deprivation I don’t think I have experienced since high school, and Stephanie has been even more deprived as she is required to feed Emma every 2-3 hours.  I’ve also learned how to change a diaper and how to swaddle a baby.  Thus far Emma has met both sets of grandparents, her great-aunt Cindy, her uncle Scott and soon-to-be-aunt Sarah.  She also met our pastor and his wife, who came to visit us yesterday evening.

You have probably noticed that her name, when spoken naturally, is virtually indistinguishable from “Emily.”  This isn’t a coincidence, and until recently I adamantly said that I would refer to her as “Emily.”  This wouldn’t be that uncommon, lots of people go by nicknames that are slight variations of their real names (it makes much more sense than “Billy” being short for “William”).  But since she was been born I have found “Emma” to be much easier to say, and there is no long explanation needed when someone asks “and what’s her middle name?”

Well right now Emma has just gone to sleep I’m going to try to catch a little sleep too, before she wakes up again.  We will be in the hospital until sometime Tuesday, but I’m already sick and tired of being stuck in this place.  I haven’t seen too many hospital rooms in my life, but I don’t have fond memories associated with the ones I have seen.  These rooms are the least cold and lifeless of any I can remember seeing, but they still don’t feel comfortable.  But I guess I don’t have that much room to complain.  As far as reasons to be in a hospital go, having a baby isn’t so bad.

As I mentioned above, I have put up pictures of Emma.  For the time being they are on a Flickr account, for various reasons (mainly because I’m on an unsecured wifi network here). Update: the pictures are now hosted on this site.

This is a quick note to let everyone know that Stephanie has successfully given birth.  Emma Leigh and her mommy are healthy and resting right now.  She seems to have gotten in a fight on her way out, so she has a black eye.  But the doctors say this is superficial and she will be okay soon.

Whenever someone at my office has a baby, usually they will send a photo around of the newborn.  And everytime I think “wow, that is gross, why would you share such a gross picture.”  I had always wondered if I would feel differently when it was my own child.  I can now tell you with confidence that I do.  So I hope you’ll forgive me for sharing a picture of our beautiful bruised 93-minute-old baby girl.  More pictures will be up later.

Part of our Christmas gift from Stephanie’s parents this year was some time at a timeshare.  We decided we would use the time before the baby gets here, and so we spent the last weekend in Atlanta.  While we were there we visited Zoo Atlanta and the Georgia Aquarium.  I have put up photos from this trip for any who are interested.  A lot of the pictures from the aquarium turned out much better than I had expected.

A few comments

• The elephant will hold a paint brush in its nose and create elephant art.  That was interesting to watch.

• Apparently dried up Christmas trees are a part of the wallaby’s natural habtat?  Actually they had these in several of the exhibits, I guess some kind of recycling program or something.

• The zoo had a baby panda, possibly God’s cutest creation.  The adult pandas must not appreciate this because they won’t breed even to save their species.

• I have determined that Bowser King of the Koopa is in fact not a Koopa at all, but an alligator snapping turtle.  Apparently some Wikipedia editor agrees with me.

• In the aquarium, they had this huge wall that was filled with jellyfish that was incredibly relaxing to look at.  It was kind of like a giant screensaver, only not annoying.

• There were a couple of tanks that arced over head, and one tank that had a glass tube running through the bottom of it.  This allowed you a few places where you could look up and see sea creatures flying overhead.

• The pictures of the sea turtle turned out surprisingly well.  I guess there was just plenty of light in the area.

Michael: Hey dude. I just got back from Jamaica.
Packer: Big whoop! I was in HOTlanta. That whole town is whack!

So I said over four months ago that I would try to put up some pictures of our new house.  Well when we decorated the house and then cleaned it up before we had company over, I decided I’d take some pictures.  Without further ado, you can find those pictures on our photos page.

Among the highlights is Stephanie’s snowman nativity scene.  Because, you know, most biblical scholars agree that it is likely that Jesus was a baby snowman.  You’ll also see a picture of Stephanie barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.  Making dinner no less!

I also want to make some comments about this picture of my messy bonus room/noise room/office.  You can see the following things in the picture, from (roughly) left to right:

• The cardboard cube you see there was going to be a Mario ? block to hang over my cubicle, but I never finished it.  In part because I would need to buy some yellow paper, and in part because I thought it might be too corny even for a programmer’s office.  And I’ll openly admit that I got the idea from someone else.

• You can see the Sumo Lounge bean bag chair that I won last year.

• There is a book of Christmas music for the ukulele that I got last year.  Mele Kalikimaka!

• You can see my big amp, my acoustic guitar, and my Micro Cube mini-amp (which I wrote about on this very blog a while back).

When I went to take the pictures off my memory card, I realized there were still pictures from our Labor Day trip to Lake Lure with Stephanie’s family (we also went there last year).  If anyone is interested, I put those pictures up for your perusal.