I'm a little behind on this, buuuuuut.... we had a little boy!
Oliver Preston Ward was born on July 20. He was quite the little chunk at 8 lbs 8 ounces. Labor wasn't too bad. I got induced again. With Cecily, I got an epidural expecting a semi-pain free birth, but it was nothing of the sort. I've wondered since then if the epidural didn't work, or (worse) maybe I'm just a huge pansy that thought it was ridiculously awful even with the epidural. Well, I'm happy to report that this time when I got the epidural, I didn't feel anything! It was awesome! Little man was born after about 7 hours of labor, and literally 4 minutes of pushing...
My doctor was pretty hilarious. Jonathan was gone for a lot of this pregnancy and stayed home with Cecily for the appointments that he was here for, so he had never met my doctor before. As soon as Dr. Sarmini walked in, he looked at Jonathan, looked at Jonathan's shoes, and said, "Those are ugly. Nurse, get him some surgical booties to cover them up before I come in here next."
(For those of you who don't know, Jonathan was wearing his favorite shoes that I lovingly call his "frog feet". They are ugly. They look like this.
Yup, ugly. But, I'm so glad I married a guy who is comfortable enough with his weirdness to be able to handle the teasing. )
We absolutely adore this little guy! So far, we think that he looks almost exactly like Jonathan (and Cecily) when they were babies, except that he has my giant mouth and my skin tone. I REALLY hope his skin stays more on the tan side like mine. Cecily's skin is like porcelain and it is super sensitive, so I'm hoping that Oliver's is a little less troublesome than that. He is an amazing baby. Pretty much, he's either sleeping or eating. He only cries when he's hungry, and it's not usually very loud. He puts up with Cecily and her craziness and doesn't even wake up when she's running around the house like a maniac and yelling.
Here he is a few days after coming home from the hospital. (and the coolest quilt ever!)
Cecily loves Oliver and frequently sits on the couch, pulls my boppy around her waist, holds her arms out and says, "Hold him?" and gives me her sweetest little smile until I put Oliver in her lap so she can give him a million kisses on the forehead. We also discovered yesterday that having her hold him during sacrament meeting is a good way to keep her quiet. :)
And here's a nice little comparison shot of him and Cecily at about 1 month old.
And here he is last night. He's not smiling consistently yet, so this is the look I get most often.
And just for funsies.. I stuck Cecily in this shirt for sleeping last week and remembered that I took pictures of her in it last summer when we made it at "Cousin Camp", so I had to do a comparison picture with her, too. It's crazy how much she's changed in a year, but is also so much the same. And, those giant blue eyes are still as wonderful as ever!!
