welcome to spiceland.

We painted our 3rd bedroom and now have a full size bed for anyone who wants to come visit.

A short (12MB) clip of the room is online here. As always, if it doesn’t play then you don’t have DIVX installed so install it from here. You’ll need it to watch any of our movies.

We got Tru’s first thumbsucking on video.

We posted our Christmas pictures here on our photo gallery.

Make sure you check out our movies below and keep checking for updates on the pictures of Tru!

Thanks for all the prayers, concerns, and comments on our blog/pictures! We’re home and safe now. We are all so tired that we may not be updating or checking emails for a while so stay tuned …

Tru was born at 5:38 AM today, December 21, 2004. She was 6 lbs 14 oz, 19 in. long, and very cute! I know it is cliche but it was like nothing we’d ever experienced! Definitely love at first sight.

Thanks to God for his blessings keeping Erin and Tru safe. Thank You for the opportunities to raise her for Your purposes!

We’ve posted initial pictures on our photo gallery here.

Michael and Erin

Here’s the official birth story for those bored enough to read it!

Mike and I went to the hospital about 7:30 pm to check in. They were supposed to give me one dose of cervadil then and one at midnight to prepare me for my induction at 6 am the next morning. We had family in town, and were late eating dinner and late to the hospital. When we got to the hospital, we were told that someone had changed our appointment from that evening to 1 am that night. They called my OB/GYN and verified that it was supposed to have been 6 pm, not 1 am. We finally got checked in and had our room about 8:30. They put the first dose of cervadil in then. Our nurse said I was 3 cm and 50% effaced at that time. About 11 pm I started having moderate contractions that were about 10 minutes apart. When my nurse came back at midnight for the second dose of cervadil, she told me that I hadn’t dilated or effaced any more. Fifteen minutes after the second dose, my contractions started getting stronger and closer together. At 1 am I was 4 cm and 90% effaced. By 3 am I was 6 1/2 cm and 100% effaced. I asked for my epidural at this point. The contractions were so strong that none of my breathing techniques were helping me relax. Mike kept encouraging me and helping me through them until the epidural took effect. When it did, I couldn’t feel ANYTHING from my chest down, and I really began to enjoy laboring. Mike would make jokes about how strong my contractions were getting on the monitor, but I didn’t even feel them! By 4 am I was 8 1/2 cm, and by 4:30 am I was 9 1/2.

My nurse told me at this point that I would start pushing soon. They got me ready and then told me to push. I did one good 10 second push and she told me to stop pushing, that they had to get my doctor because I had done enough. I was flabbergasted! When I asked why, I was told that their policy is to do everything possible to ensure that every baby is delivered by an OB/GYN. They didn’t have one at the hospital right that minute, so they would have to do what they could to wait until mine arrived. She called my doctor who was at home asleep on call. While I was waiting for the doctor to get to the hospital, Tru’s heartbeat dropped to about 70 BPM, and I had to go on oxygen. There were about 4 nurses walking around the room checking various things then, and they were very calm when they spoke to me, but they were frantically trying to get in contact with my doctor when they weren’t calming us down. She finally arrived about 45 minutes later and told me Tru was beginning to crown and that I could push again. I got ready for another 10 second push and started. I had only counted to 2 when my doctor told me to stop pushing. Tru was out! She was born at 5:38 AM, and she was 6 pounds, 14 ounces and 19 inches long. She cried a little, and they kept having to bounce her and tickle her to get her to cry more!

I couldn’t believe how easy it was. I sustained a 3rd degree tear that was 1 1/2 inches long. I kept asking how many stitches I had gotten, but my doctor wouldn’t tell me. I remember watching her stitch me, and I think I got about 20 stitches! Mike was freaking out because there was blood EVERYWHERE, but I felt fine.

My labor was:

5.5 hours from the start of contractions.

2.5 hours from the start of painful contractions.

1 hour and 45 minutes from the start of painful contractions eliminating the 45 minutes of waiting for the doctor.

Ok, so we are a bit anxious all couped up waiting for Tru to come. We noticed today that the birds must be stopping in Huntsville today on their way south. We took a few pictures but none of the turned out very good.

I spent a few hours last night and most of today raking leaves again Here is a picture of Seiko helping me by carrying sticks! She loved to plop down in the middle of my raked piles. She also did Erin a favor and dug a hole for her to plant a bush in in the middle of the yard. Thanks Seiko!

Well, we had a false alarm last night. The doctor originally told us that after you’ve had contractions for 2 hours that are 5 minutes apart and fairly strong that you should come to the hosipital and have the baby. Well, she did that last night, for 9 hours! When she called the doctor before we went they said in her case to wait until she’s having really strong contractions where she can barely talk or walk.. We decided to wait it out and the contractions stayed but didn’t get stronger. Eventually, we went to sleep.

I found a neat website called mediachest.com. Basically, you publish your list of DVD’s, CD’s, books. Others can find your list and ask to borrow stuff from you. Also, you can search your area for books, dvd’s, cd’s that you are interested in. Here is my DVD collection (really small).

I made this image for those people who are curious. It shows how the much higher the resolution is for HDTV versus standard DVD. All sizes are relative. HDTV resultion is much higher than most people set their monitors to.

First, look at the small blue square. That is standard DVD’s resolution. Now look at the purple. That is HDTV! Thats much better right? Well, the light blue is the resolution of our projector. It’s only slightly better than a DVD so when we watch our HDTV content it has to be shrunk quite a bit. Lastely, the light purple square is the size that we resize the recorded HDTV shows to. It saves us lots of disk space and, as you can see, is still wider than our screen so we still get optimum resolution for us to view.

Enjoy!