Welcome to the World Evelyn Leia!

Oy, it's been a really, really, REALLY long time since we've written any updates for this blog! However, we figure that it's a better way to keep all of our family and friends up to date with Evelyn Leia than on Facebook. Or at least a way to give more details :-)

So Evelyn Leia is a week old already! I figure that  means it's time for me to actually sit down and write her birth story- but don't worry I won't go into too much detail. So Wednesday May 11th we went to bed as usual, but around 1:15 am I woke up, feeling slightly weird and it turns out that labor had begun! I started timing my contractions so that we knew when to call the doctor. I thought my water had broken around 1:30 am, called the doctor around 2:30 am. While on the phone with the doctor my water actually DID break. Boy, am I glad that didn't happen at work (which was one of my biggest fears). So we got up, I took a shower, Scott started packing stuff up that we were saving for last minute (computer, DVDs, etc) and off we went to the hospital. We were officially admitted around 3:30 I think- but to be honest that part is a little hazy. When admitted I was having contractions every 2-4 minutes but while I was still about 50% effaced with no dilation.

I had been planning on trying to labor without the epidural, but after my doctor came and checked me-- and it hurt-- I decided I was going to get that epidural. After that labor wasn't so bad since I couldn't feel the contractions, but the contractions also were not progressing me at all so they gave me medicine to try to make the contractions more productive. However, the problem proved to be that the medicine caused stronger contractions- which made Evelyn's heart rate drop. Not to the point of panic, but enough that Evelyn and I had to be consistently monitored.Every 30-60 minutes the nurses came in and had me move positions to try to get Evelyn to move into the correct position to progress labor. At around 2pm the doctor came by and I hadn't progressed at all, so they took me off the medicine to increase contractions and instead decided to see if my body would progress on it's own. However, it didn't. Instead I started getting a shooting pain through my left hip that would not go away-- and the epidural did NOTHING for the pain.

Finally, the doctor came back around 6pm and told us that we were going to have to go for a c-section because Evelyn decided to come down, as the nurse said, "cattywampus". She was sort of diagonal/sideways, and the contractions instead of pushing her down, were pushing her into my hip. They prepped me for my c-section- and Scott did a great job keeping me calm because even though I was ok with the c-section part of me was freaking out.  Finally, we were back in the OR, I was numb from the chest down, and Evelyn was brought into our world!

Evelyn immediately demonstrated that she has a good set of lungs and that she has no problem with her plumbing as she peed all over the table as they tried to clean her up. While in the hospital Evelyn also demonstrated she has a great capacity for pooping when she had her first poopy diaper explosion that first night. She remains a good pooper. Scott and I have (mostly) figured out a schedule that doesn't leave us both exhausted and cranky, so overall, we'd have to say, we've got this.

Basement Work

I've been seriously slacking when it comes to writing blog posts! This update covers the last little bit of last year.

Starting in November lasting through December we had contractors come in and do all the work in the basement that we needed done quickly, or that we didn't want to do ourselves. This included putting up the closet framework for our master bedroom closet, the drywall in the master bedroom and the ceiling in the 2nd room, and lastly installing new windows. The windows were quite an ordeal because they had to be special made so they took a REALLY long time to come in, and then the contractors had to cut out the concrete in order to fit the bigger windows in. We still have concrete dust flying around the house- I think partially because we haven't started, or cleaned, the 2nd room downstairs. But what we worked on last year was our bedroom and the laundry room.

Laundry Room
We paid the contractors to put the ceiling up in the laundry room and put folding doors in the laundry room over the HVAC and Water Heater.
What we did was :

• Mud and sand the drywall that was already up
• Install the tile in the laundry room and the landing 
• Paint the laundry room ceiling
• Paint the laundry room walls
• Install the baseboards

What is left 

• Painting the folding doors (started)
• Paint the molding and the trim (started)
• Build a shelf right above the washer and dryer but only 4-6 inches deep - this most likely will not happen until after we get a new washer and dryer
• Install cabinets above the washer and dryer
• Find a new storage unit/trash can for between the washer and dryer

Master Bedroom

We paid the contractors to do a lot more in the master bedroom than we normally would have, mostly because we wanted the room mostly done by Christmas, and we did succeed. We got the contractors to fix the electrical work, install the bigger window, do the drywall and all the mudding. 

What we did : 

• Paint the ceiling and walls
• Install the flooring
• Install the baseboards
• Install the trim

What we still need to do 

• Install the quarter round/shoe
• Touch up the paint on the ceiling and the walls
• Find a painting to cover the breaker box 

The bedroom has the least amount of work that we still have to do to have it completely done.

2nd room Downstairs 

The 2nd room downstairs is pretty much a blank canvas. We paid the contractors to do the ceiling and some of the drywall above the knee wall and put the bigger windows in. 

What we have left (which is a lot) 

• Empty the room & clean it
• Seal the floor, use concrete filler and seal it again
• Install the sound wiring for TV & surround sound
• Drywall
• Taping & mudding
• Painting the ceiling
• Painting the walls 
• Install the floor
• Baseboards & shoe
• Build book cases & recessed DVD shelves

I have found I am more productive if I have a deadline, so I'm telling myself I want to have the 2nd room in the basement done by the end of April so we can move onto focusing on getting the carpet upstairs ripped up and the flooring installed there. Then we will have most of the big projects at the house done!

House Updates: Shed's workbench

WOOHOOO! We finally have our shed! Only 6 weeks after we ordered it when we were told three, but whatever we have it now. So before we started loading up everything we have that needs to go into it, we wanted to build a workbench to put in it so we could better organized the multitude of tools that we have gotten from my Grandma and Grandpa after he passed. So Scott drew up the idea he had, did the math on what all we needed and off to Home Depot we went! We had them cut the plywood in half and the 4x4 posts as well. The 2x4s we cut ourselves.  We then put it all together.

This is the underside of the top. We used brackets to attach the 2x4s to the legs. 

Finished bench!

We still have to cut and put up the pegboard for behind the workbench, but we're trying to decide if the pegboard is going to need more support in the middle of the board since we'll be loading it up with tools. 

But yay we have a shed! Now we just need all the frustrating things to stop happening with our basement work so we can work on getting that completely finished and we'll be able to move on even more! Hopefully we'll be able to catch some good sales over Black Friday for flooring. I'll try to do an update on the basement later on in the week.