Nicholas's birth story

** Warning to Kelly and people like her who are petrified of live births! Live birth pictures to follow! One particularly graphic! **

As I mentioned when I told Nathaniel's Birth Story recently, getting ready to do it all over again has me thinking a lot about when the boys were born. And since I wasn't blogging then, it occurred to me that hearing about their births would be new to almost all of you.

We found out we were expecting Nicholas when Nathaniel was a year old. At the time, Nathaniel wasn't walking or talking, and it seemed like he was just a baby himself. But by the time Nicholas arrived, Nathaniel had been walking for two months and -- with the help of a speech therapist -- had developed quite a large vocabulary.

On Oct. 2, 2004, I had a lot of contractions, but nothing that felt like the labor I'd experienced with Nathaniel. The following day, we went for a long walk in the hopes that the contractions would get stronger, but they remained pretty mild. Finally around 8:00 p.m., I started to get nauseated from the continued contractions, even though they weren't that painful.

Grayson thought it was definitely labor and wanted to take me to the hospital. I didn't think it was labor because it just didn't feel "severe" enough.

Around 9:30 p.m., though, Grayson called the OBGYN, who said it was time to go to the hospital.

Grayson took a minute or three to tell me how right he was on a scale of 1 to 10, and then he called our friend Christy to come get Nathaniel and take him to her house to spend the night.

By the time we left for the hospital, I was pretty seriously nauseated, so we had to take a trash can with us. I don't mind saying, that totally sucked. I hadn't experienced that with Nathaniel's labor, so I wasn't prepared to feel that sick.

We checked in at the hospital at 11 p.m., and although I wasn't dilated at all, I was showing continuous contractions on the monitor, so the nurse told us to stay.

Sure enough, two hours later I was 2 cm dilated. I remained really nauseated and threw up all night, and I suppose because of that I got my epidural really early ... around 2.5 cm.

Even with a boost, the epidural wore off before I started pushing, but I was throwing up continuously and just wanted to be done!

Little Nicholas crowned after just one minute of pushing, the OB was summoned and dashed into the room a few minutes later, and two minutes after the OB arrived in the room, Nicholas burst onto the scene.

Oct. 4, 2004

1:30 p.m.

8 pounds, 3 ounces
21.5 inches long

The adjustment to having two kids was much more manageable than I'd feared it would be.

I think my expectations were different the second time around ... much more realistic.

I was able to relax a little more and -- once I quit torturing myself by trying to get a baby to nurse who ABSOLUTELY REFUSED TO NURSE -- I enjoyed it so much more.

Who knew that we could be so blessed?

And now, looking back on yet another addition to our family AND the one we're currently expecting, I'm in constant amazement that this is my life.

AMAZEBALLS, Internet.

Weekend on the lake

As I mentioned to you earlier in the week, we spent last weekend outside of Chattanooga on the lake with our friends Doug and Honor and their kids Haley, Hannah and Jack.

Everyone really enjoyed the new Relaxation Station ... and the kids loved the ducks that hung out nearby.

On Saturday the water was pretty chilly, which didn't deter the majority of the crowd, but Jack spent a good bit of time in the boat, practicing his captaining skills.

At some point before lunch, though, Jack decided to get in the water. He was swimming around the float trying to find the ladder. Jake leaned over the side and yelled, "JACK! I CAN GET YOU!"

Jack said, "I NEED SOMEONE STRONG."

And then he started to swim away.

Jake looked over at me and yelled to Jack: "I AM STRONG!"

So Jack gave him a chance.

Jack is four months older than Jake, but he probably only weighs half to two-thirds as much as Jake does. Even so, Jake couldn't manage to pull him in on his own; Jack had to swim around to the ladder, and Jake and Haley teamed up to pull him onto the float.

Within minutes, JAKE had fallen in and needed help back onto the float.

It took both Nicholas and Haley to haul him up.

It wasn't graceful, but they got it done.

The chilly water temperature didn't put a damper on any of the fun.

 There was much spraying of water and much rejoicing in the thrill that is The Lake Experience.

Before lunch, we loaded up in the pontoon boat and headed out for a ride and to see what was what.

The air was warm, the day was overcast, and the lake was pretty calm.

Most of the kids opted for the front of the boat, the better to spy the herons and passing boats.

Our kids are on the lake so rarely that they can hardly sit down in the boat. They want to see everything!

Doug drove us to a spot with some relatively low boulders that jutted out to a safe depth for jumping.

The kids wasted absolutely no time at all swimming over and climbing up to jump.

And jump they did! Time and time again.

We wouldn't let Jake climb up above the lowest rock, but he was pretty content to jump from that spot.

All of the other kids chose the highest spot, though, which might have been about 10 to 12 feet.

Once we'd finally rounded them all back up to head back to the house, Nathaniel got a chance to steer the boat! It was serious business, as you can see.

We headed back not a moment too soon, as thunder began to rumble and light raindrops began to fall as soon as we got within sight of the house.

It ended up HAILING on us! Crazy! We managed to get everything off the boat and up to the porch before the bottom completely fell out, but we had only moments to spare. The storm lasted a good while, maybe a couple of hours, and during that time we made and ate a delicious supper.

While we cooked, the kids watched a DVD. Well, MOST of them did. Jack watched it through closed eyelids.

They snuggled in their chairs ...

and kept each other company ...

and generally relaxed until it was time to eat.

After supper, the storm had passed and the kids begged to go back out for a night swim. They ended up swimming and jumping off the dock from 7:00 to 9:15 that night! You'd think they would have been exhausted, but come Sunday morning, they were back at it bright and early.

Sunday before lunch we took a boat ride (on the ski boat this time).

The sun was shining and there wasn't much of a breeze, but while the boat was moving, the wind whipped our hair.

Hannah was sporting some very patriotic toenail polish that I had to get a shot of:

Hannah is quite the fashion plate, in general, and she doesn't "dress down" for a boat ride.

Since it was before lunch, we packed a few snacks. You couldn't separate this boy from his chips if you had a crowbar.

Hannah attempted skiing and Nathaniel attempted knee-boarding, each with varying degrees of success. We finally called it a day on the boat and headed back to the house to get ready for lunch.

While we worked on that, there was a lot of jumping going on down at the dock. They started off jumping off the back of the pontoon boat ...

But ultimately they ended up asking Grayson to throw them off the dock as high as he could, which was very entertaining!

The entire weekend was a lot of fun ... never a dull moment and full of memories we'll carry with us for many Summers to come!