On Saturday, I went biking with the scouts in Snow Canyon. I hadn't used my bike at all since last fall. The scouts are working on their cycling merit badge, so they went up to Snow Canyon on Friday afternoon and rode 25 miles and camped. I went up Saturday morning to do another 25 miles with them. I figured that anything that a 13-year-old can do, I can do. It turns out I was right, but just barely.

From the camp ground, we rode down the road to the park entrance, and then up a dirt road to the top of the canyon. Then down the dirt road to the park entrance. Then up the dirt road to the top of the canyon. Then down the dirt road to the park entrance. Then up the main road back to the campground. While we may have come up just short of the 25 miles, the dirt and rocks and sand more than makes up for that. It took us a bit over two hours, and in the last mile I pretty much bonked. Of course, the scout who was up with me (the rest were 15 minutes behind us) bonked, too. It was all we could do to make it back to the campground. Oh, and my poor little rear end didn't enjoy all those miles of bumping either.

Maybe you can please everyone all the time

So, in a bit over 2 days, you all commented on my blog 57 times. That equals the number of combined comments my posts garnered from January 23rd through April 16th. So, apparently I should keep giving you what you all want:

No posts over the weekend, because, you know what? We were dead tired. We have very few priorities around here: Julia eats, Julia sleeps, Shannon eats, Shannon sleeps. If we can make those things happen, the day is a success. Julia (I still call her Wombsly sometimes) things that it is great to be asleep all afternoon and awake all night. We don't agree. But, while she was napping on top of me this afternoon, I did manage to get a picture.

One day older and wiser, too

Julia is a day old! We actually slept last night! We were lucky enough to get the room on the mom/baby floor w/0 a nice recliner for me to sit in, just a boring ol' chair. So, they brought in a cot so I could have a sleep over w/ Shannon and Julia. It wasn't a very good cot, but since I only slept 2 or 3 hours the night before, I didn't mind. They probably don't get too many complaints about it. I, of course, was out like a light. We sent Julia to the nursery for part of the night so Shannon could get some sleep, too. Shanny reports that Julia was taken there at about 1:30. At 6, Shanny went to go get her figuring she'd be awake soon. She was still sleeping at 7:30 when I left. Hooray! I came home to shower and change and rest for a few minutes, while Shannon showered at the hospital.

Shannon's parents and youngest sister came down last night, and will be in town this weekend. Today is also the day everyone should come home (probably this afternoon, or maybe early evening).

Julia is a very anxious eater. You don't have to ask her twice if she wants dinner (I wonder where she inherited that from?). I think if you were foolish enough to get your elbow in range, she'd attack and start going to town on it. Watch out for this one!

Julia opening her eyes to see what this place is like:


Julia with her nose smashed up against me:

I didn't hardly know that we knew this many people! Good job commenting guys! Julia has had her first official visitor: Mama Lowe! For those of you who are confused, that would be my brother-in-law Adam's sister-in-law. She was in the hospital to see someone else and came and said hi. Both my girls are sleeping right now. It turns out Julia isn't very happy when we make her sit around in a diaper full of tar for a little while. But we fixed that. I've got more pictures ready to go as soon as blogger will cooperate.

Julia

10:37am -- Shannon just said "we make a good baby". Julia is sleeping quietly. It turns out that after washing out all the blood from her hair, it isn't quite as red as it first appeared. (It was never bright red or anything. Sort of a blond-red. In our defense, all the doctors and nurses said it was red, too.) I still think there's a little bit of red in it, but you have to look closely. She's got quite a bit of hair though, even if it is blond. But really, none of you want to read words anymore, you've all been clamoring for pictures!

Taken 2 or 3 minutes after she was born:


During her brief visit to the NICU:

5 hours old:

Julia Diane Blockburger was born this morning at 5:22am. She weighs 7lbs 11oz and is 19.5 inches long. She is doing pretty darn well. Shortly after she was born, she was having some difficulty breathing, so they hooked her up to some oxygen and took her over to the NICU to keep an eye on her. I went with her, which is why we went so long w/o any updates. She's still down in the NICU, but she's been unhooked from everything and should be up to be with us soon. The breathing thing was a concern, but never anything super serious.

Oh, and she's got red hair! I'll put up some pictures soon. And more details about the labor, too.

The baby is here! Everyone is ok! More details in a few minutes. We're still calling our parents and siblings.

3:09am -- This is the way to go through labor - sleeping. Shannon is fully dilated! Shannon and I were both kinda sleeping for the law few hours. I was at least partially awake at about 1am when she was dilated to 5cm. At that time they put in internal fetal monitors. (As opposed to the ones on Shannon's stomach.) Obviously the epidural was effective enough for us to both get some sleep. Just a minute or two ago the nurse said Shannon was dilated to 10cm and almost-not-Wombsly was at +1 station. (Remember, that's a measure of how far down the baby is. +2 means you're basically ready to deliver and +3 is described as "crowning".) It's pretty amazing that we made so much progress in just a couple of hours while we were sleeping.

11:50pm -- Shannon is dilated to 4cm and just started a very low dose of pitocin. Wombsly's heart rate drops somewhat with each contraction, and they don't want to turn that into a big problem with lots of pitocin (which ramps up the contractions to move things along). Things are pretty well numb, or that's what I gather, since Shannon will ask me if she is having a contraction. (I can see the numbers from the monitors easier.) We're going to try to get some rest so we have some energy when things start getting exciting again.