One Week?!

Julianna is one week old! Time is flying by already!

A Birth Day Story

Thursday, September 20 I had a small contraction at 4:00 while still at work. Twenty minutes later, another. Twenty minutes later, another. I finished up putting together work and instructions for my substitute and went home, still having small contractions about twenty minutes apart. When I told Jeff what was happening we both got really excited -- surely they would start to get closer together and we would have a baby the next day! We ate dinner and I laid down about 8:00 to rest while he packed our suitcase and put all of our stuff by the door, just in case we had to leave in the middle of the night. The minute I laid down, I didn't have another contraction that evening, through the night, or the next morning. I know I was a little bummed when I woke up the next morning and nothing had happened, and I'm sure Jeff was too. Even Jayden asked why we didn't go to the hospital.

On Friday, Jeff had to work, Jayden went to school, and I went to my 9:30 appointment at the hospital for pre-induction blood/paperwork. No contractions or anything. I got Jeff his birthday present. No contractions or anything. I got a pedicure. Nothing. Picked Jayden up from school. Nothing. Had a little sigh of disappointment. Nothing. After getting so excited the night before it was a bummer that now there was no sign of anything happening at all!! Jeff's friend at work had invited us over for dinner, but it ended up being a couple guys from Jeff's work + me and Jayden so I told him to go hang out and have fun, nothing was happening for us tonight. Our neighbors came over to see if we wanted to go to dinner so Jayden and I went to eat with them -- yummy Mexican food.

We made it back about 8:00 and Jayden got showered and into pajamas ready for bed. We were about to get in his bed to read his book so I went to the bathroom real quick. Only problem was, as soon as I stood up I felt a trickle...so I sat back down. Still trickling and there was nothing I could do to stop it (kinda gross, I know). "Self," I thought, "is my water breaking?" I stand up, it didn't stop, so I sat back down. I immediately thought "I have to call Jeff...I wonder if he remembered to pick up his phone when he stopped by the house?" (He can't have his phone at work because it has a camera.) Jayden went to look on the computer desk, which is where his phone had been, and came back with it in his hand. Grrrreat. My water is breaking, Jeff is at this guys house, I don't have the number and he doesn't have his phone. After nothing all day, now this?! I call his work and get the friends number and call over there; naturally, as soon as the friend heard it was me he knew something was up. Jeff started racing home, I called the doctor who said to head to the hospital so they could check and see if my water "had a rupture," and called my parents. Thankfully, all of our stuff was by the front door so we just loaded it into the car and took off for the hospital, Jayden in his PJs and flipflops.

Ironically, it was 9:30 pm when we got to the hospital -- only 12 hours since I had been there doing blood/paperwork, thinking that we had two more days before we would see a baby. Jayden was so great on the way to the hospital and once we got there. He just sat on the chair, very patient and of course cute. I changed into my hospital gown and he was just kinda looking around at the room -- he took a "Big Brother" class that the hospital offers for siblings and had gotten a tour of the hospital and the rooms and stuff, so I think that really helped him feel at ease. Plus the fact that he was so excited about being a big brother! Jeff's mom and stepdad came up about 10:30 and picked up Jayden so he could go sleep at their house. We had talked about how he would stay with them while we were at the hospital, so he was ready to go -- he gave me hugs and kisses and gave Jules a belly kiss and I was thinking "How in the world is he 4 1/2?! I just was here the other day waiting for him to be born!" which of course made me teary.

The nurse did a test and sure enough, my water had ruptured. The doctor said that she wanted to wait and just see what my body did before they started any sort of drugs or anything to start labor. When we were on our way to the hospital I noticed small contractions again, and they definately started getting more intense at the hospital. Jeff did so great letting me squeeze his hand (off) and helping me breathe. I wanted a little pain medicine and about 12 am they gave me some Demerol. I knew from labor with Jayden that it would put me to sleep so I could sleep through some contractions, and it did its job. Apparently while I was sleeping my body kicked into high gear -- I definately don't remember much of what happened while I was drugged. Jeff will have to fill in the blanks there. I know he said the nurse came in to check progress and I had gone from a 5 to and 8 1/2 in that hour. I remember going to the bathroom and feeling like I had to push and our sweet little nurse was like "No no no!" I remember being back in bed (don't know how I got there though) and then I remember pushing. I remember Jeff saying, "Don't stop now, she's almost out!" so I pushed againg and she was on my belly!

Jeff and I were both almost in tears because even with all the gunk still on her, she was so beautiful and perfect! I held her for just a second before they whisked her off to get cleaned up and weighed/measured. Poor Jeff had to sit down -- in the picture he's up by my head in the clear zone where you can't see much, but during the delivery he was holding my foot, helping me sit up and definately got more than he had anticipated. As he sat there staring at me and the doctor I knew he was thinking, "Wait, I know we had to get baby out, but I didn't know about all this other stuff!" The drugs had worn off for me, so I was in the clear. I told him to go look at the baby not sit there and watch me, so he walked over there.

The next I looked at him, he had pulled a chair over and was sitting and watching them (a nurse took these pictures for use which was so nice!) mess with Julianna. A nurse wrapped her up and handed her to him and said "I'm a little light-headed." No one heard him but me. I told the doctor and she whipped around and the nurse swooped in for the baby. Our nurse, Colleen, was like, "You ok dad?" He hadn't had a chance to eat or anything and now all this excitement. He did fabulous.

So Julianna Elizabeth Fountain made her appearance on Saturday, September 22 at 2:45 am, only 5 hours and 15 minutes after we checked into the hospital. She was ready to see the world!

Daddy holding Jules in the delivery room about 3:30 am...

...and Daddy holding Jules in the post-partum room at a more decent hour that morning (around 10ish I think).

Two of the three sets of grandparents:

Jeff's dad was hunting in Bay City and got to stop by on his way back home, but we didn't get a picture! Sorry Mike!

Our first family photo on Saturday afternoon.

Having a baby is hard work.

Me and my babies!!

Going home Sunday evening.

At home that night in her bouncy/vibrator seat.

Now everyone is home and pretty much adjusted. We went in Tuesday for a weight check and she had lost a few ounces, but she had also just gotten the hang of eating. Believe me, I know by now she's put those ounces back on! Jeff got some batteries yesterday for her little seat and she will sleep foreverrr with it vibrating. Jayden is loving having a little sister -- he loves to just sit and look at her and try to talk to her and play with her. He can't wait for her to get bigger so she's awake more and able to play more. She's a pretty good sleeper in the night. She sleeps about 2 1/2 - 3 hours then eats. The only problem with eating is it usually is an hour long affair. She'll eat, fall asleep, burp, eat, fall asleep, burp, change diaper, switch sides to eat, fall asleep, burp, eat, fall asleep, burp. Jeff's taken over school duty for Jayden, getting up to get him dressed, breakfasted, and dropped off at pre-K while I get a little sleep.

So that's that! Julianna is here and beautiful. And now it's time for her to eat!

Jules is here!

World, meet Julianna Elizabeth Fountain. She joined our family on September 22, 2007 at 2:45 a.m. Her birth weight was 7 lbs, 11 oz, and she measured 21 inches long. We have MANY more pictures to come as well as my description of her birthday so check back later today!

She's sooooo beautiful!!!!!1111!!111oneoneone!! (that's for you Jenn)

-Jeff

The Jayden Fish

Little fish under the water. He always has his eyes open, but I couldn't believe he was even smiling underwater!

Diving for the keys that are on the bottom. He dives under and just needs a little nudge to make it to the bottom. He goes under, grabs the keys, turns around and swims back to the steps all in one breath under water. That's better than I could even do!

Is that Superman? Nope...just J-man jumping off the rocks and belly blasting into the water!

He's a perfect swimmer when his face is in the water.

The boys hanging out on the rock waterfall.

It's finally the weekend! I had a whole summer off and I've only been back to work for about three weeks, but boy do I look forward to the weekends off. My school day makes for a loooong day:

5:00 am -- Wake up and get myself groomed and ready for the day.
6:00 am -- Wake Jayden up and get him dressed
6:15 am -- Breakfast
6:30 am -- Leave the house and drop Jayden off at his school which opens at 6:30. He's usually the first or second one there.
6:45 am -- I arrive at my school and get the last of the stuff ready for the day.
7:00 am -- Kids arrive and have breakfast.
7:15 am -- First period starts. Our classes are 72 minutes long and that is a looooong class. Teenagers have an attention span of about 15 minutes they usually miss the last hour of class.
2:30 pm -- Kids leave and I collapse into my chair for about 5 minutes and hope that I don't have any sort of meeting or training that day.
2:40 pm -- Start getting stuff ready for the next day and working on stuff for when I'll be out.
4:30-5:00 pm -- Leave work to pick up Jayden and we head to the store or run errands or (if we're lucky) go straight home.

Once the baby comes, I'll have to wake up even earlier to make time for her to eat and get her ready for the day. At least Jeff doesn't have to wake up so early all alone now! I know during the summer he would curse me as I got to stay in bed until about 8 while he had to get up at 4:30 and get ready for a long day at work. Don't deny it Jeff...you know it's true!

Jeff usually gets home around 6:30 and we have (like he said) a few short hours of quality family time -- here lately the boys have been playing a lot of baseball, so I'll sit in a chair outside and watch them master the skills of throwing and catching. Jeff especially loves whenever he has to do yard work and I sit and watch. I think he's secretly plotting how he can run me over with the lawnmower or hack me up with the weedeater because he has to do everything himself right now. I promised that I'll help after the baby, but he seems suspicious. Now that I think about it, someone has to watch the baby inside... ;)

This weekend is even better because everyone is home!! Jeff is off work this weekend (he starts nights Sunday night) and Jayden is here this weekend. That means pancakes for breakfast (just ate them) and all of us actually getting to BEEEEE together. I think we're going to go swimming here in a bit. Well, the boys will swim...I'll kind of bob around.

Two other things that Jayden has mastered lately: riding his bike and taking a shower:

In June/July we rented the movie "Three Ninjas." This movie is old school -- my sister and I used to watch it and crush on the little boys in the movies because they were so cute. When I saw it at Blockbuster I convinced him that he wanted to watch it...and since it's about boys who are ninjas (like him, NinjaJayden) the convincing wasn't that hard. In the movie there's a part where the boys are riding their bikes to school and doing little jumps off dirt piles and standing up while pedaling, normal boys-riding-their-bikes things. The next day when we get home from school Jayden asks, "Mom, can we go outside so I can ride my bike?" Heck yeah we can!! He's had this bike since Christmas and had ridden it a grand total of about 3 times -- he wasn't so great at getting it started and was nervous because it wobbled a little (training wheels). Every time we suggested he ride, he would ride his BigWheels instead. I was ecstatic that he wanted to ride so off we went. And the next day. And the next. He started riding his bike like crazy and now he's a pro -- he'll drive up the driveway and around the sidewalk, down the next driveway; he'll try to stand up and pedal; he makes fast turns rather than practically coming to a complete stop. He's a bike-riding fool.

Jayden and Jeff have been taking care of bathtime lately and Jeff has convinced Jayden how it's fun and cool to put your face in the water. Jayden used to be afraid of water in his face in the shower, but fine with it while swimming. Now he's walking through the water with it all over his head, putting his face right in there, and even filling his mouth with water and spouting it out like a whale. Baths used to be good because he liked to sit and play with his toys for a while, but these days taking a shower is a lot easier to fit into the schedule, so it's a good thing he likes it!

Now it's time to enjoy this Saturday -- time for our swim!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!
The Mrs.

P.S. Happy 24th anniversary to my wonderful parents!! Love you!

September 24th?

It's been a week since I've last posted an update to this thing. I guess that means that we've been busy. Probably, but I can't really remember anything that we've done. I know that I've been working every day, and I know that Jennifer's been teaching every day. We all meet up at home around 6:30 and hang out together until 8:30, then we pretty much all start falling asleep. 2-3 hours of quality time a day.

Yesterday Jennifer and I went to the baby doctor to get a checkup on mother and baby. Everyone seems to be healthy and doing well. That's always great news. However, we were informed that her doctor is going to be out of town from the 27th-30th of September. Jules' birthday was supposed to be the 30th! The doctor also told Jennifer that once she reaches 39 weeks, she is eligible for inducement. So, since we really want Dr. LeBlanc to be there we decided to schedule the inducement for September 24th. That's not to say that Jules won't come early. I think that's what we are hoping for.

A quick side note...Jennifer's doctor is the daughter of Congressman Ron Paul. You may have heard that he's running for President of the United States. Wouldn't that be interesting to have our baby delivered by the President's daughter?

Well, I'll try to get Jennifer to post something tonight. She's been incredibly busy with school stuff these last couple of weeks. Keep us in your prayers!

Progress

Another post sent in from work. Am I giving the impression that I'm not busy at work? That's not really accurate. It'll probably take me all day to finish this e-mail, because I usually only get to write a sentence or two at a time. The reason I'm so busy today is that I am training on the Desk. The Desk is the area where all the samples from throughout the refinery are received. Let me remind you that the ExxonMobil Baytown Refinery is the largest refinery in North America. That means there are a lot of samples that come across this Desk. A LOT!

My inspiration for this post isn't work-related however. Yesterday, Jennifer went to the doctor to check on Julianna's progress. Well, last week she was dialated 1 cm. This week she's 2 cm! I am almost 100% ignorant of what this means in terms of the schedule and due date, but it seems like a big deal to me. Does this mean that she could go into labor any day now? I have no idea, but that's how I'm taking it. She tells me last night, "We need a car seat immediately in case the baby is born tomorrow." WHAT?!?! I was expecting Sept. 30th. I need at least 3 more
weeks to mentally prepare for this. Apparantly Jules is not going to cooperate. The first of many future differences in opinion I'm sure.

Jennifer even hit me with, "30 minutes ago my stomach was hard just like it is now." Like I'm supposed to have any idea what that means. Is she having contractions 30 minutes apart? If so, what does that MEAN?? I should have read more books about this stuff. Strike that...I should have read at least one book about this stuff. Anyways, I'm thinking to myself, "Self, surely she knows what she's doing. She's been through this all before with Jayden." Then I go downstairs to find her on the phone with her mom. Asking her, "Mom, do you remember what it was like when I was pregnant with Jayden?" Wait just a second. Weren't you there? Wasn't that YOUR body all that stuff was happening to? I couldn't help but laugh. Sometimes life can seem surreal.

On to baseball news. No, not Houston Astros news. No news is good news on that front. I'm talking about Jayden baseball. We haven't been able to go outside much since it's been so wet and hot/humid every day. So instead we've been playing catch in the house. Yes. Playing ball in the house. Let me elaborate further. We are playing catch right in front of the prize of my tech/electronics collection...my brand new 60 inch Samsung HDTV. I'm not crazy, just lazy (hey, they rhyme!). Anyways, the point is that Jayden has improved each and every day. It's almost unbelievable. Honestly, if I wasn't seeing his improvement firsthand I probably wouldn't believe it. He's only 4 (sometimes I forget that), but he throws hard and accurate. Grandpa Mike showed him the proper throwing motions, and it's taken him a few weeks, but I think he's finally figured it out; perfect reach back, step, release point, and follow-through. Even Jennifer noticed the difference the second that he put it all together. All of a sudden she heard my glove start "popping" with each throw. Let me tell you, it's quite a bit more fun to play catch when you don't have to chase down every ball thrown your direction. Right?

Well, I've rambled on enough. I gotta go stand next to a phone in case Jennifer goes into labor. We should have bought me a pager or something. That would have been fun.

Go 'Stros!

This'll be my first post to the new "family blog". It might even be the first post period. I'm writing it from work, and I'm not sure if Jennifer has posted anything yet. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of my posts will be coming via my work e-mail.

There are a few things that factor into that assumption. First, I work a lot. I've worked nearly 600 hours of overtime so far this year. There aren't many people in the lab that have more overtime than me (9 have more at the time of this posting). Second, I have lots of free time at work. I work 12 hour shifts, but there is probably only 8 hours of actual work involved. Third, I have EXTREMELY limited internet access. Visits to MSN, Foxnews, and Chron.com account for 99.8% of my browsing time. Therefore, I can think of no better use (waste) of my time than to chronicle our family's exploits on this new blog.

And so, without any more ado whatsoever...

Our little family unit is a little over 8 months old, but we've had plenty going on. We're expecting a baby girl to join us near the end of this month. Her name is Julianna Elizabeth Fountain. It's a long name, I know, but a small price to pay for having such amazing initials. J.E.F. We can't wait to meet her.

I am, however, still incredibly nervous about having a baby around. I only have experience with children 2 years and up. I'm not sure about what's supposed to go down during the first two years. I've heard it involves a few diapers. Yay.

And as if this last month of pregnancy isn't stressful enough, these next few weeks are going to put my personal stress-level at the max. I don't want to go into that right now however (I'm very superstitious). Just keep your fingers crossed for me, and send some good karma my way.

In other family news, Jayden's baseball skills are rapidly improving. He can catch the ball with his glove if the ball is headed in the general vicinity of said glove. His throwing has vastly improved as well, but sometimes he thinks too much and it all goes haywire. We haven't had the chance to bat much lately, but that was already his strongest baseball skill. We would have signed him up for the fall season of T-ball, but with Julianna on the way we have had to push that back. That'll give him ammo for sibling animosity when he grows up. "She always gets what SHE wants! I didn't even get to start playing baseball when I could have because of HER! It's not fair!"

Speaking of baseball, we all got to go to an Astros game a few days ago. Jayden has really taken an active interest in the Astros. As you can imagine, I am pretty pumped about this development. I even got him involved in some friendly, harmless heckling action. After Ty Wiggington slide into second to break up a double play, the shortstop was lying in pain near the bag for several minutes. Here goes Jayden at the top of his little lungs, "RUB SOME DIRT ON IT!!" It was freaking hilarious, and our whole section must have thought so too. And don't think for a second that Jayden didn't notice because here he goes again with a resounding, "WALK IT OFF!!!!". Niiiice. I know Jennifer was loving it too by how red her face and ears were. She might have been embarrassed, but personally I've never been so proud.

Well, I better get back to work. Jennifer and I will be updating this thing pretty often (that's the plan at least) so that everyone can see what we're up to. We have some exciting days ahead of us, and we'd like to share them and keep a record of them. I guess we could have kept a journal or something, but I have awful handwriting.

So on behalf of our little family, welcome to our blog and keep checking back for more!

Our Family Blog

Welcome!

DH came up with a fantastic idea that we should start a family blog...so here it is! Seeing as how the two of us met through our individual blogs, starting one together seems like a fitting choice. With a 4 1/2 year old and a newborn on the way, we're bound to have some interesting posts :)

While I'm sure we won't be able to write every day -- did I mention the 4 1/2 year old and newborn on the way? -- we will write as often as we can to keep everyone up-to-date on what is going on with us.

Have a great Labor Day!