Well, things around here have been quite busy. We are having a great time with Sonja and Anna, but it has been challenging too. To add to it, I am going to attempt a blog post without one political opinion. That's right, this is Chris posting here so you can count on complete omission of little details and a lack of coherence in the flow of thoughts. So here we go...

The picture above is Sonja in her car seat for the first time. She was born Saturday morning and everyone came home Tuesday afternoon. Delivery by c-section really is a different experience and recovery than a natural delivery. Believe me, everyone was ready to come home on Tuesday! Perhaps Anna was more ready than anyone. She was a good trooper for those four days coming down to the hospital in the morning and evening every day. She missed having mama and daddy at home. Here is a picture of Anna sitting with her Grandma while giving Sonja a kiss.

Anna really loves Sonja and she is going to be a great big sister. We have been practicing saying Sonja's name with Anna. Half the time she says "sunny" and the other half we get "Sony." The correction pronuciation is "Sone-yah." Every night Sonja gets a good night kiss from her big sister and she often gets random kisses of love throughout the day.

We have found out that recovering from a c-section takes a while and requires a lot of help. Thankfully, we have had good help from the day Sonja was born. Missy's mother flew in the day Sonja was born and stayed for a week and a half. Anna had a good time with her grandma especially at 6:30 every morning when Anna's internal alarm clock goes off. And Chris's parents have been in and out at various times to care for all of us. We also had a special visit from Aunt Manda and Uncle Roo who drove out from Ohio to see their two little neices. Anna is really good at saying "Uncle Roo," but she has some work to do on Aunt Manda which sounds very close to her word for banana right now.

Missy had her first day as a stay at home mom of two this past Wednesday when Chris went back to work. It has gone pretty well so far. Along with becoming a big sister, Anna also graduated to a big girl bed which has made it easier to put her down for naps. They won't be running errands soon, but as long as everyone is fed, changed and napped then it is a happy house. Well how about some pictures...

Another picture of Sonja. As energy increases, so will picture taking...many more to come. I promise!

Sonja Marie Schwartz

April 12, 2008

7:56 a.m

6 lbs. 9 oz. 20 1/2"

Backyard flower pickings on a dandy spring day.





This is Anna in her glasses. =) She is doing well with them. We are at an 85% wearage time through the day. It's cute when she takes them off for some reason and holds them up to her face until she finds one of us to put the temples back behind her ears. We haven't been back to her opthalmologist yet, but I believe the glasses are helpful based on how much she likes wearing them.
Little baby is set to make her entrance this Saturday. We had the last u/s today and everything looks good, other than that placenta placement, but whatever, I'm over it. So, we're down to 38.5 hours. Everything is ready at home. Chris is going to switch the chest and cradle places, but I think that is it. The newborn clothes are all washed and folded. The cradle sheets are on. The swaddler diapers are in the caddy. The announcements are made, envelopes addressed, stamped. Give me a task or I shall run mad.(what's that from??) Tomorrow is going to crawl by... I wish my fabric would arrive. I ordered two different fabrics for the couch pillow covers. One came in last week and I made two covers, but Joann just won't give up the other one. Maybe I'll try to make a bolster with these remnants. And I'm going to try welted cording. That should keep me busy, and probably frustrated enough to distract me from looking at the clock.
Well, it's five and hopefully Chris will be home soon to enjoy this fantastic weather with us. Ooh, I think I'll make chocolate chip cookies. There's something worthwhile to do.
Next post should have some cute baby pictures...! =)

Here is the story with Anna!
Annapolis Capital Lifestyle Page

Uh yeah, cosmetics reasons? I didn't say it like that...the reporter asked if I was concerned about how Anna would look in glasses. I said not at all- she'd be darling and she needs the glasses not only for vision, but to mechanically straighten her eye.

We ordered Anna's glasses yesterday and they should be here in five days. Next week is going to be crazy for this little gal:
Monday- Big girl bed to be delivered.
Wednesday- Big girl glasses to come in.
Saturday- Big sister status to be established!

They moved my delivery date up to the 12th! I'm excited to meet this baby girl, and in only 9 more days! Really, 8 1/2. Which we round down to 8. So a week! A WEEK!
I am so glad to have the end in sight- the baby is transverse because the placenta prevents her from turning head down and it ain't comfy. Not that any baby position is comfy at 37 weeks, but I can deal for another week.

Another thing- I am having the hardest time finding bedding I like for Anna's big girl bed. Usually I adore all things PBK, but I'm not into the colors or patterns they have for this year. I've looked at JC Penney, Sears, Target, Walmart, Land of Nod, Company Store Kids, Warm Biscuit, eBay...where else?

Press release:
Anna will be getting glasses soon. One eye has been turning in off and on since Christmas time and the opthalmalogist has determined it to be far-sightedness. She's getting some attention over it too. On Monday, the Annapolis Capital interviewed us for their story on children in glasses. The article will be published in the Thursday paper and available online. I don't know how much the interview with us will be a part of the story but I'll post a link Thursday morning.

In local news, the hospital is having a hard time fitting me in their schedule, but as of now I am supposed to deliver on Saturday the 19th. I'm to be notified if there are any cancellations before then...right. It's like getting your hair done I guess.

In health news, Dad is down with a fever and aches. Anna is teething and is something of a bear. Mom is 37 weeks pregnant and also showing signs of bearness. The perfect storm is gathering...

Anna in pigtails.


I couldn't get a good shot though- she doesn't stay still for long anymore.

And here are a couple pictures of the house.





We have wood floors through the whole house and now that we've been here awhile I'm realizing the need for a hardfloor cleaner. Anybody have a good suggestion for a decent stick vacuum or a vacuum mop type of thing? It's really just to keep dust bunnies from proliferating, dern rabbits keep multiplying. I was thinking about that bissel flip-ease vacuum mop that vacuums on one side and then you can use it as a mop on the other side. Anybody ever had one? IS it too good to be true? Amanda K, didn't you get something like that? If I could carry it, I'd bring the shop vac up from the basement. I still love that thing, but Anna's terrified of it. I need something that is small and can be stored in a nook somewhere. The quest is at hand. We'll be looking at Best Buy tonight.

Pillow talk.


So, things are winding down. I have daily things to do, but no big projects left to finish before the baby comes. (Which will be either April 17th or 18th via c-section.) I need a project to help fill in these 23 1/2 days, obviously. Our couch requires pillows so I was thinking of unleashing Viking lady for a go at pillow covers. I looked through all the Joann fabrics online and I really liked these two together. And Chris liked them too. I am not a red fan, but the curtains that came with our place are a dark burgandy and I don't want to spend money on curtains that fit this wide window and likely no other window in future residence. So, it's going to be something to go with red. And I don't like gold. Are these fabrics too modern? Do they go with burgandy? Will the dishes do themselves tonight? Well, I know the answer to that one. So long for now.

Anna in her Easter dress.



Here's where Anna spends most of her time in the living room- looking out the window towards the high school in hopes of seeing a bus.







The house is done, except for two shelves. Baby is done, except for two pounds of chubiness. I'm done, except for two words. Good night. =)

Picture time! (finally.)
These are the day of her 1/2 birthday.





Out for a walk and the park with Daddy.




Yesterday Anna and I made the trek back to Philly for Maddie and Judah's birthday party and to see the newest Livingston. I didn't get many pictures but these two were cute.
The proposal (with chalk).


The book lovers.




I need to get the camera out more often, I know.
Anna is growing up fast. She is learning her letters via the fridge magnets. The other day she picked out the words "baby" and "dada" from a sheet of word stickers. She talks constantly. On our road trip yesterday, she talked for two hours straight on our way up- I can tell you everytime a truck, bus, or van passed us. She's still in love with books and one of her favorite things to do these past few weeks has been to sit in a recliner with a stack of books while listening to music. In the mornings, as I lift her out of her crib she needs the rundown on everyone:
Open door to nursery.
A: Mama!
M: Good morning. Did you have a good sleep?
A: Mmhmm! Daddy?
M: Daddy's at work.
A: Work. Byebye. Oma?
M: Oma's downstairs.
A: Stairs. Oma. Opa?
M: Opa's sleeping.
A: Nigh night. Puppy?
M: The puppy's asleep.
A: Nigh night.

The same dialogue every single morning. She needs to know.
The conversation turns to the weather once she can see outside.
A: Rain?
M: Nope, it's not raining today.
A: Na raining. Na raining. Sun! Bright sun. Na raining... Moon!
M: I don't see the moon, do you?
A: No moon.
And more of this through all the day. I am enjoying this conversational age. She has lots to say, believe you me.

Our other little girl is growing up fast too. She's still inside, but it feels like she's trying to get out through my sides. We're still waiting to know what mode of delivery this baby will choose. My last ultrasound showed some placenta movement and the specialist was optomistic about it being completely out of the way by term. I have another US on the 18th and hopefully that will show it out of the way. If not, another US two weeks later and then if not still...bummer and a c-section.
Today is the last day of moving stuff over to our apartment. Chris and his dad and a couple friends have moved things each evening this week so almost everything is there. I am in serious get-er-done mode and I think it's hormonal nesting insticts. I can't wait to everything put away, but I know that the minute I run out of things to do I'm going to start into that grumpy when IS this baby coming mode. Luckily there is plenty to do. =)

Well hello there. We indeed had fallen off the map and it has taken some time to crawl back on with a beach ball belly and all. I kept checking this blog to see if someone would update it, but nobody has so here I am. I'll start at the beginning and see how far we get before naptime.

Move: We moved. We had a fantastic moving crew of good friends, including one cute puppy to entertain the kiddos, who had every content of our home on the yard in seconds flat. They arranged everything in the truck, a sweet saint from the church brought lunch over and everything was done. Chris and I packed the last few things in the cars and we were off to MD. A couple of Chris' friends came over to help unload into Chris' parents' garage and extra rooms in the house. So we here we were.
Then house hunting began. I pored over Craigslist, classifieds and apartment guides for the first two weeks. Then Anna and I went to see all sorts of places. Maybe two weeks ago, we found our home. I fell in love when we walked in the door.

Our new place: It's cute. That's usually the most important factor for me. It's the first floor of a home again. Smaller than our last place, but cuter. The owners did a nice job redoing it. The kitchen is all new, the walls are a nice clean taupe, white trim, wood floors, an archway into the kitchen. I love archways. A dishwasher! I LOVE dishwashers. And a full sized washer/dryer in the hall closet, which also claims my affection. There is a window over the kitchen sink and a door in the kitchen leading out to the backyard, making grilling convenient. One drawback- closet space. There are two coat closets and that's all. So strategizing and seasonal wardrobing. We do have a basement though so we'll be able to store all the nonessentials.
We get the keys this coming Sunday and will take things over during the week. Then move the furniture in on the following Saturday. I'm so excited. I have a floorplan written out, but from memory, no room dimensions, so we'll see how that turns out.

Okay, I owe updates on baby and Anna. I haven't taken many pictures of late, and the ones I have taken are still on the camera because the USB cord, camera and computer never seem to be on the same floor concurrently and those stairs are a major deterrant to me at this time. For now however, it is naptime.

This is your brain.







This is your brain when you are moving, and pregnant.

One more thing before dinner:
Last night, Chris and I were chatting and I mentioned how the last move was kind of stressful and how at the end I was crying and he was frustrated. This was at 1AM the night before we moved as we were trying to make the new place sanitary and move one very unsanitary fridge into a spider-ridden basement...ugh. Anyway, so I was saying how I wanted to keep things as stress-free as possible this time and hopefully this move would be marriage strengthening.

Twenty minutes later, I absently turn my ring with my thumb, like I always do...but it doesn't feel like it always does. I look down and see my engagement ring, but no wedding ring! I LOST MY WEDDING RING!!! Oh no. Pit in the stomach. Definitely NOT marriage building.

To make it short, because Anna is saying "Wan wan wan wan" and I assume it's dinner she wants, after going through everything I had touched in the past hour, including Anna's wet diaper out of the trash (thank you Chris), I found it at the bottom of a box I had packed. (I had a feeling it was in there because that was the only box with packing peanuts which make a big mess) But whew!

More snow! The roads are gross, I cancelled tutoring, we are hibernating this evening, and packing.




As many of you know, we are moving. On Monday a company in MD made Chris an offer we couldn't refuse. 'Think of the family' a husky voice said. So we accepted that and the whirlwind began. The first phase was brainstorming...we did that for a day and a half and decided that Chris will make the almost 2hr each way commute for next week and then Saturday we will move everything down to MD. Saturday is nine days from today, did you know? !!!! Well it is, and seconds are flying by at an alarming rate. Fortunately we moved 8 months ago and the house hasn't really had opportunity to disorganize. There are lots of things that have not even been touched since they came out of the box last time. Makes me wonder how much stuff I really could do without...hmm. I'll ponder that when I have the time.
So, we started packing boxes Tuesday night. We have a few more nonessential things to go still, but most of what is left will need to be packed the day before we move. We are packing machines I tell you. Frantic packing machines at that.
So where are we moving to? Well, the state of Maryland. The east part. Ummm, probably near Chris' work. Miss Trighe and Hughe Gnoes are our neighbors. Yes that's right, we don't know. Thankfully, Chris' parents are in the same area and we can stay with them as we find a place to live.
It is crazy how quickly things are happening. And speaking of chickens with their heads cut off, I need to get dinner on the table.

Okay okay, for those of you who hate political posts I owe you one. And this is a pretty good one I think...


It was snowing pretty heavily for about an hour today and Anna just had to get outside.

So dad took advantage of the photo op.
I tried to teach her to stick her tongue out, but it didn't happen. We did work on saying "snow" though. Since she mastered "no" about 3 months ago, I figured that putting an "s" in front wouldn't be too difficult. Well I think I got something like an "sn" once or twice. No vowels, but we'll get there. I mean Einstein didn't conquer relativity in one day.

She did have fun walking around the driveway for a while. She particularly enjoyed facing the snow so that it would blow into her face. After a while though she wanted to just be held. Here is the turning point...

So now daddy just had to hold her so she could enjoy the snow. And who got their way when daddy got cold and wanted to come inside? That's right the 16-month-old. So we stayed outside a while longer, but finally dad had enough.

Deep Thoughts on Decision 2008:

The Democrats are all communists. They want to redistribute wealth and expand the federal government's power to "give" us healthcare. Most people (Rs and Ds) seem to have a low level of trust when comes to government. Why in the world would anyone trust them to administer our healthcare?
They also want to tax the big bad oil companies. Last I checked it wasn't the oil companies who didn't want to drill for oil within these great 50 states. Instead it's the EPA who won't let them drill or build new refineries.

One question: Hillary says she has 35 years of experience. Can anybody out there think of ONE thing she actually accomplished in those "35 years"?

The Republicans aren't much better. They are all talk. At least Ron Paul has the right ideology. The only problem with him is that I haven't heard him once detail a single plan of how he would actually implement his ideology. The rest of them talk about how they are just like Ronald Reagan when really, none of them are. I don't get it, if the Rs know that Reagan was the best conservative President possibly in history why do they refuse to actually practice his policies.

Secure our borders. Win the war on terror. Lower taxes (reform the entire system). And STOP SPENDING OUR MONEY! That's all we want.

YIKES!

Okay, back to what I was saying. Christmas in Georgia.
Christmas dinner- boy did Anna pack it in. She sat on Dad's lap with her own plate to her left and Dad's plate to her right. She's a double fisted eater. She gained a pound in GA on turkey, stuffing and gravy.
It was nice to have a couple more days after Christmas to just hang out and enjoy being around my fam. Chris enjoyed the pool table, football on the flatscreen, kickball, rocket launching and video games, but the old wood Brio trainset my mom had out for the kids occupied most of his time actually.
We had some girly bonding time over foot treatments and trying Katie's bare mineral make-up. It was a good time and it flew by.
We came back to Baltimore Thursday night, stayed up way too late watching Band of Bro's with a couple of friends, and got up way too early with Anna. We spent Friday afternoon with Great Grandmom.



Out for a spin in Grandmom's walker.



That evening we had dinner with college friends and decided we were too tired to drive back to Philly. So we drove home Saturday, unpacked, had a restful Sunday and de-holidayed the house Monday. Everytime we come home from a trip, Anna goes straight to her room and looks through books for an hour. Maybe checking to make sure she still has the story straight? I guess she misses her books.

So, sew. I turned on the norse giant last night. It has a needle threader that blows my mind. I threaded the needle four times and made Chris come watch too. I tried out some of the different stitches and sewed a couple seams. I want to do a little project, but I don't know what. Any ideas?? I'm going to go to the library and check out their sewing books.
And in scrapbooking- it turns out my sister-in-law is an expert! How could we have never talked about it before? I'll be calling you little lady.


Oh, other news too. Monday we had another ultrasound. Our tech was a little inexperienced so the baby is still probably a girl. Chris and I are pretty sure that it's a girl. Names names? We have zero. Also, the US showed me to still have placenta previa. We'll go for another next month to see if there is any movement, but the studies I've read show there is about a 25% chance for it to move at this point. I'm steeling myself for the c-section and maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised if the placenta actually does move. The great news is the baby is happy and healthy and that's what we care about. I'll just wear my midriffs now...or not.

Well, in the midst of writing this blog, we were visited by our good friends Sam and Deb from GCC. They happened to be in the area so stopped by for milk and cookies and Scrabble. It was nice to see them and get pulverized in scrabble.

I think that's all for now.

Happy 2008!
We had a very tame New Year's Eve- Anna was in bed by 8, Chris and I watched three episodes of Band of Brothers, went to bed, heard firecrackers before completely asleep and one of us mumbled happy new year. Envious? Unlikely.

So, we have been traveling about for the holidays. Before we left town, we had a little Christmas here one morning.
Anna had just woken up. She stares blankly:






Realization:





Stroller joy:



The day before we left PA, Chris parents, Uncle Bill and Aunt Gloria came up on their way out to Germany. Bill and Gloria gave Anna and baby doll and it was a huge hit. As she pulled back the tissue paper, she started squeeling "Bee-be! Bee-be!"



Friday night we drove to Baltimore. Saturday morning we flew into Atlanta and Anna met her cousin Will for the first time. Here they are in their pjs.



Out on the trampoline with Grandpa.






Woohoo static.



Then it was Christmas morning. Aunt Hannah was the first one up by far. Then Anna and a very reluctant mama. When all fourteen of us (that's the immediate family nowadays! My parents, siblings, two spouses and two babies) were awake we started opening presents. Anna and William were soon overwhelmed and started down the path of meltdown. Anna went down for a nap with a pile of presents still unopened. Here she is with her teaset.



This year, I definitely felt out of the young crowd. I hadn't really heard of half the gifts my siblings received. DS, docking station, PALM? I just said 'oh wow', and I remember my grandpa doing the same thing when I showed him my Sony discman 15 years ago. Guess I'm out of the technological loop.

In other news, I about to embark into the world of sewing. I am completely intimidated by my new machine. I haven't turned it on yet, even. She's a Viking and I'm too novice to unleash her without reading the instruction manual a couple more times. It's a new world to me and I'm excited.
Another new world- scrapbooking. Chris' mom gave me a gift cert to a scrapbooking site more than a month ago and I've spent hours and hours reading forums and trying to understand what all those tools are for. Those scrapbookers have their own lingo I tell you. Cuttlebug, wishwand, cricut, cropodile? I need to make a book up for Anna before this baby is born, and I want to get some of these fancy tools, but I don't know which things go with which and what all you have to buy to get started.
I'm finished working at Lands'End though so I have much more time to wrap my head around these new hobbies.

More to come...I lost my train of thought and I think I need lunch.