I’ve gotten a lot of practice in baby swaddling over the last few months.  So I decided to write a book.

No seriously!

Swaddle Book

It seems that Laura and I make a big baby.

Lily is now about 16 pounds, at 3 and a half months old.  We’re told that’s a largish baby.  But seriously, she’s pretty cute, so what are you gonna do?

Lily at three months

Several exciting milestones have happened over the last couple of months.  Most of them involve things like being able to hold her head up, sleeping through most of the night.  She’s even almost sitting.  Sortof.

Getting her sit on.

First time in the jolly jumper

Another exciting milestone that seems to have occured is that Lily has found herself a boyfriend.  Or at least she has found a male suitor.  I don’t appove of course, she should be a little older before dating boys.  But who can argue with girls these days.

We caught Lily and Angus holding hands the other evening.

My parents also were thoughtful enough to give Lily a Jolly Jumper as a pre-Christmas Christmas gift.  She took to it right off the bat.  Jumping and turning and standing and all that.

It’s the new fave.

Lily and Angus holding hands

Lily has just passed the two month mark, and she’s growing leaps and bounds.  She is now over 13 pounds, and seems to be growing more and more every day.  Generally speaking she does quite well, and only seems to fuss for fairly easy to identify reasons.

We’ve even had a few nights of 6 hours of straight sleep!

Lily's First Halloween

Lily is currently experiencing her first Halloween, and is putting up well with the all the doorbell ringing.

Here are a couple of pictures.

All decked out in Halloween garb

Wow!  It has almost been almost three weeks since the birth of our daughter Lilith Giovanna McDermott.  Who would have thought that after all of that pregnancy thing, there would be a baby forthcoming?  Despite the rather obvious inevitability, it was still a surprise when it happened.

Both Laura and Lily are doing very well.  Daddy Kevin is doing well too, but he hasn’t had as rough a ride as the other two parties involved in this whole birthing process.

Pregnant Cha-Cha

Laura’s water broke at 6am on Sept 1st, 2008.  About 8 hours after dancing up a storm at a friend’s wedding in Niagara. On “Labour” day, if you can believe it!

She might have been rather rotund, but she could sure cut a rug!

We didn’t think that there would be any issues with Laura going into Labour, because Laura wasn’t due until Sept 13th, a full two weeks away.  But sure enough, the next morning Laura says to me in bed, “Holy cow, I think my water just broke!”

I started running around packing things and saying “Oh my gosh, this is it, this is it!”

We called the midwife, and she came and gave Laura a good once over and said that indeed we would be bringing a wee-baby home very soon.

By about 10 or 11am, Laura’s contractions began and by 1pm, they were intense, regular and frequent enough that we called the midwife and she called us into the hospital.  Unfortunately when we got there, and Laura was given another examination, she was found to be only 2cm dilated, so they sent us back home.

By 5pm, Laura was pretty much ready beat up anyone who claimed that she wasn’t ready to be admitted into the hospital, so we jumped back into the car and headed back to Guelph General Hospital.  This time it took a wheel chair to get her up to the “Family Birthing Unit”.  Sure enough, she was 6cm dilated and in active labour.

All this time, I was updating all of our friends on Facebook from my Blackberry.  It was pretty funny, we were getting messages of support from dozens of people.  People from around the world knew exactly what was going on, and were encouraging me to update them on the situation.  So I often found myself getting my left hand squeezed by Laura during a contraction, while I said “Way to go, you can do it!” to Laura, while updating facebook with my right hand.  A less understanding wife might have smashed my Blackberry against the wall, but Laura was enjoying hearing the messages from our friends.

By about 10pm, Laura was fully dilated and ready to start pushing.  Unfortunately by this point, Laura’s contractions began slowing down and decreasing in intensity.  So after about another five hours of pushing, Lily was very low, but not coming out.  Her heart beat was very strong, so no one was worried, but the Midwife determined that she needed to transfer care to an Obstetrician.  Which meant that everything changed really quickly.

Because of the length of time between when Laura’s water broke and when Lily actually came out, the OB was determined to get her out of there as quickly as possible, to avoid possible infection.  He gave Laura until 3:30am on Sept 2nd to get her out naturally or else he would use a head-vacuum, forcepts and/or a c-section.  So Laura was given an Epidural at this point, and Oxytocin to get her contractions going.

Alas it wasn’t enough, so by 3:30am, the doctor came in and first used the head-vacuum, to no avail, then the forcepts.  By 3:43, baby Lilith was out, unscathed.  We saw the OB for only 13 minutes before Lily was born, and thank goodness too, because he didn’t exactly have the best bed-side manor.

Thankfully there wasn’t the need for a c-section, and we had a healthy baby girl!

8 Lbs, 7 Ounces

Heather, our wonderful Midwife who stayed with us throughout the entire process, even when they transferred care over to the OB, declared Lily to be “Just perfect”.

At 8 Lbs, 7.6 Ounces, she was a big baby for being two weeks early!  Thank goodness she decided to come out before her due date, it certainly might have been more tricky had she waited.

Laura and Lily about 3 minutes after birth.

Lily was crying and feeding pretty much immediately and scored an 8 on the Apgar score, which meant that she was doing pretty well from the newborn point of view.  He colouring was also pretty good too, very pink and pretty, not gooey and yucky-baby looking.

Heather, our Midwife and Laura

After all was said and done, Heather our midwife posed for a picture before we went to bed.  But she was still awake, doing paperwork for Lily’s birth.

Lily's first night

We finally got a few hours of sleep and woke up at around 7am.  Lily wanted to be snuggled and wasn’t happy with sleeping in the bassinet, so she spent her first night in the crook of my arm so that Laura and Lily could get a little sleep.

We were tired as heck, but exuberant and oddly enough didn’t feel as though we needed much more sleep.

Well we had this cute little addition to our family, with whom we had to play with and show off to family and friends.

Very exciting!

Laura and Kevin (and baby) at the CNE

This weekend was the weekend chosen for the annual McCran visit to the CNE.  So everyone (except Joanne and myself) headed down to take advantage of the free passes that Mary was able to hornswaggle from her work.

Joanne didn’t show up because she is in Vancouver, and I wasn’t going to show up because (surprise surprise) I had to get some drywalling done.

Laura went to her parent’s house on Friday night, but on Saturday morning I decided that I didn’t want to miss out on the action.

So I jumped on the motorcycle and headed down to the CNE and parked on someone’s front lawn for $5, and headed accross the Dufferin St bridge into the CNE.

By pure random chance I just happened to run into everyone as soon as I walked in!  So we wandered around and I had a great time in the food court.

Everyone else stayed pretty late, but I headed home to get back to the drywalling.  Laura did pretty well with being on her feet all day.

For the last few months, I’ve gotten down and dirty and begun finishing the  basement apartment at one of our rental properties.  It’s soon to be a basement bachelor apartment, with a walkout main entrance and a little private patio.

I think it’s going to be a great little apartment–but I have to finish the thing before I can really say that.  So to that end, I’ve finally gotten all of the framing, wiring and plumbing done, as well as moved the hotwater heater and all of the laundry.   So now it’s time for drywall.

A mess of drywall

Thankfully I’ve had lots of practice!  So things are moving pretty quickly.  I hope to have it all up by the end of this week.  We had to do a lot of boxing around ducts and tricky modifications to that far wall with the window so that the drywall would be perfectly flush with the window, but it all seems to have gone according to plan.

Drywalling is a cathartic process because it forces you to stop mucking about with things in the walls and ensures that you move on to other things.

Thankfully it’s not winter, so the furnace is off and the fans aren’t blowing drywall dust into the rest of the house, which wouldn’t be much fun for the tenants upstairs.

You know it’s bad when I’m blogging about drywall, and I’m actually a little excited about it!

Laura and I both had our 30th birthdays over the last couple of months.  A lot has happened in those 30 years, and we’re expecting equally exciting years to come.

We don't look a day over 29!

Here we are at my parent’s house with a chocolate fudge cake celebrating Laura’s birthday.

Dad drilling in the drywall

Recently my dad enclosed the carport at their house into a garage/workshop.  After insulating and putting in the vapour barrier, he had a load of drywall delivered.  With the help of a drywall lifter from Home Depot, we put up the ceiling and walls.

After some taping and plastering, things now look pretty good.  We managed to wrestle out his table saw from the back room, and once he gets a band saw, we’re going to put together a rockable cradle for the baby.

We have to get cracking though, the baby will be here soon!

The budding nursery and Laura's budding belly

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been slowly getting the house, and our psyche prepared for the coming of our new baby.

We have a change table/hutch, crib and rocking chair thanks to Josie, Brian and Nonna.  We also have sheets, blankets, bibs and knitted hats, all home made by Nonna and Zia Lina.

Stroller, car seat and vibrating baby chair were given to us by Nadia’s sister and husband Anna and Vince, and another car seat from the couple who we are buying our latest house from.  The green animal curtains in this picture were made by Nonna and Zia Lina.

Thanks very much to everyone!

Here are more pictures of Laura and her belly.