First 3 Weeks!

It's been 3 weeks, and we are finally BACK! :) We sort of have a routine; the little one has established his complete takeover of our lives and home, and everything is back to normal again. Oh, and it really helps that my parents are here now to hold him and let me actually write this post. :)

So far, here is a list of especially interesting things about our little one:
1. He can hold his head up! And has been holding it up since he was a week old! We thought that wasn't possible. But he can hold it up and make cute noises at the same time, all while looking around and holding his mouth open for food.
2. He likes being held. All the time. Hey, who doesn't? Hopefully he'll learn to control it before school starts in a few years. :)
3. Swaddle is king. He must be swaddled to sleep, otherwise he waves his arms and legs around like a windmill and does not knock out.
4. He is a little swaddle Houdini. Usually he will try to wiggle out of the swaddle, get one of his arms out (and therefore half of his chest out as well), and lay there with one of his arms up. He looks like a half-bare-chested cuban revolutionary (presumably calling people to arms over milk production).
5. We love milk! We hate burp! We love milk! We hate burp! We love....

He changes every day. It's pretty amazing. Everyone is fascinated by him. Oh well - between him and our dog, we are definitely facing obsolescence. It's a miracle anyone still calls us - although, come think of it, most calls are actually for the dog. :)

First video of Wombat

Wombat, meet world. World, Wombat.

Elijah Miles Flores

Born on 08/08/08 at 00:50am!

Weight: 6lbs 12oz

Length: 21 inches

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Dark

Wombat arrives!!

Wombat is officially here, everyone!  Here are some pictures of the day, the new arrival and the happy parents.  :) 

 

Waking up on Thursday morning

View of sunrise from our window

....

and only 18 hours later.....

 ....

 

  

 

Wombat is here!!

 

  

Dad with Wombat

Once Wombat is born, we are moved to a mother-baby side of the hospital, and get a few hours of sleep.  Later the same morning, we wake up as parents!

 

 

 

 

 

Georgetown!

To celebrate our officially last weekend of being carefree, we headed out to DC to stay in a hotel, enjoy city life and live it up. It was absolutely great, except that it turned out to be not so carefree after all.

We stayed at Omni Shoreham....Omni has never failed us. We got all the service perks you expect from them, including chocolate-covered strawberries and other fruit at turndown, for free. Oh, Yum. But, not to get ahead.

Bismarck enjoys the luxurious accomodations

Testing out the mattress firmness

Olya showing off her belly before it disappears....

From Shoreham hotel, you can actually take a trail in Rock Creek Park all the way into Dumbarton Park, in Georgetown. It's a leisurely 30-minute walk, it's beautiful and it's the best of both worlds. Bismarck was thrilled with the idea, so we headed out into the park!


We made it down to the creek, letting Bisy enjoy the water and run about. Lucky dog immediately found someone to play with - a cute black lab mix that ran him around in the creek, that flirt.





Eventually, the dogs got tired and we took off for the rest of our walk. We brought everything we needed for the afternoon - except an umbrella. Which, of course, meant that a storm was going to hit.... and did it ever. We ran for the park gazebo, getting completely soaked.




We waited and waited for the rain to stop, with Bismarck hunting squirrels in 26-foot radius of the gazebo to pass the time. Finally, the rain calmed down, and we wondered back out to the streets, walking over to Dean and Deluca for some food. Wondered around Georgetown, took the same trail back to our hotel, enjoyed the turn-down service.... and watched 2 movies. After taking Bismarck out for his last walk of the night through the beautiful Woodley Park neighborhood, we made plans for Sunday. We were going to paddleboat, or sailboat, or just go back to Georgetown and be lazy. We were going to definitely enjoy our favorite Omni amenity of delicious breakfast in bed. We were in bed by 2am.

At 4 am, "WHEEEEZ!! WHEEEZ!!". It wasn't a scary noise until we realized that it was coming from our dog. He looked miserable, was making these horrifying noises and was convulsing to throw up. After having that go on for about an hour non-stop, we decided we best get him to an emergency vet clinic. We ran out of the hotel, with the lovely Omni staff bringing us a free pot of coffee to keep us awake through the morning. We rushed to Rockville emergency hospital, had our poor puppy examined, and determined that his terrifying, choking, convulsing, throw-up-looking cough is simply a canine upper respiratory infection. Oh, what a relief.....

So, not so carefree after all. :) But hey, we have never been so happy to get rid of our plans to find out that a cough is just a cough. May be we are ready for this parenting thing after all. Who knew?

So this is how it's going to go down....

After seeing the midwives today, and everything looking spectacular (once again), they have declared that it is still unwise to wait past next week.

More then anything, it has to do with the comfort level of the doctors on duty at Shady Grove that day. Apparently, the doctor from Simmonds and Simmonds practice on call that Friday is not comfortable with a baby being born that late. Because she is "uncomfortable", we can't deliver that day. Why she is uncomfortable is unclear, as she's never actually seen the pregnancy, but she basically just doesn't want to deal with it. So the next possible day is Thursday.... the doctor on call that day, apparently is either more comfortable or just doesn't care. In any case, that makes Thursday the day of induction/birth. Unless, of course, something happens before then.

Assuming nothing happens before then, we would be going into the hospital on Wednesday night to be induced. With any luck, we won't come to that.... But in any case, Wombat will be born no later then August 7.