Christmas time

We are in Vegas. Eliza did wonderfully on the drive down. (It helps to stop at great grandma's half way there.) We went caroling to the neighbors yesterday, watched a bunch of Christmas movies (and non-Christmas movies), ate caramel, doughnuts, and hot chocolate. We have been staying up way too late, and some of the family are sick.

Happy Christmas Adam! (If tomorrow is Christmas Eve, what does that make today?--Thanks, Karrae!)

Various Topics

We had a lovely Thanksgiving with my family. My parents and brother drove down from Missouri and spent a week with us. We gave my parents their Christmas present.

Here is Eliza with Uncle Drew.





Eliza does not like "tummy time".

Rolling

Eliza has finally figured out how to roll over on purpose. She has rolled over before, but it was always on accident. She wasn't able to duplicate it. Today, every time I put her on her stomach she rolled over. Sometimes she had to fuss for about 30 seconds and then she would just roll onto her back. Wahoo! She is progressing! She also ate a bigger bowl of baby oatmeal than she has before. What a fun little girl.

Bread and Toast

On Monday for Family Home Evening, Kyle taught me how to make bread. My mom always made her own bread (yum), and I made it once under her supervision (when I was 13?). It turned out dense and heavy. I never made it again.

Here's a video of Eliza eating her toast.

Happy Birthday to me!

Saturday was my birthday party. We ate yummy, chocolatey cupcakes that Bethany made. We played the picture/sentence game, Apples to Apples, and Isaac Zumba. It was fun.














Eliza ate her first baby toast on Sunday. Once it went in her mouth it didn't come out until she had eaten up both corners on that end. Then she played with the crumbs.

For Drew

Here are more pictures and a longer video.

How big is that baby's mouth?

Eliza was sucking on her big toe until she saw the camera. I'm not sure how to line up captions with pictures. I'm sure I will figure out this blogging stuff eventually.

China

The scoop on China is that we are still planning on going, we just don't have a set date. Once we have visas, tickets, and housing we will be able to tell you all when we are leaving. Until then, we don't know when we will actually leave. We will give you at least a few days warning before we actually leave the country :)

Eliza in her blue dress

Here's a close up of Eliza's costume. I knitted and felted the crown and then sewed on the flowers and ribbon.


I want to start a weekly post every Sunday. The only interesting thing I have to write about is Eliza. Here are some pictures taken 3 days before she turned 6 months old. She likes to sit up, reach for her toys, talk to herself, squeal, smile, grab her toes, and eat anything she can get near her mouth. Anything.

Halloween

Here are our Halloween costumes. Kyle was a monk, but got teased at the ward party about not shaving his head. So he became Nacho.

Post

I've had a request to post regardless of the availability of pictures. Here goes.

Eliza is adorable as always. She is sitting up on her own. She is starting to reach for things and can pull herself back up to a sitting position. She also likes to stick her tongue out and make very juicy noises... She also says "goo" and likes to squeal and squeak. She is going to be a princess for Halloween. aww.

Jenny spends her days taking care of 'Liza. This week she has been stressed out trying to put together costumes, especially Kyle's that she is making from scratch with no pattern! Yikes! We'll post a picture and you can judge the final product.

Kyle is still doing research. We aren't sure when we'll be heading to China, but it's still in the relatively near future.

Blog Beautification Project

Theresa showed me how to make our blog all fancy. Maybe we will add new pictures someday :)

Family Pictures

It is amazing to me how long it can take to feed 4-6 tablespoons of milk to a tiny baby! Jenny and I are having a lot of fun learning about how to take care of our precious little girl. Part of the problem with feeding is that it is very hard for Jenny to bend her neck far enough to see whether Eliza is fully on and engaged or not. So far feeding has mostly been a 4-6 hand (2-3 people) affair, but this morning Jenny and Eliza were able to have a good breakfast all by themselves without help. We are all proud of their success!

Here are some picture from this morning. We finally decided we were actually home from the hospital and ready for some family pictures.

Eliza Nicole Brunner

Announcing the arrival of Eliza Nicole Brunner at 8:57 PM, 15 April 2008!



Jenny surprised me yesterday with a phone call. She had this week off of work for Spring Break and spent Monday cleaning the house in preparation for the baby (due on May 9th). She was feeling a little sick and decided to spend the day sleeping and watching movies. About noon she threw up violently about 4 times and felt much better. At 1:50 PM she was lying down on the bed watching a movie and felt an explosion and lots of wet running down her legs. She tried to call me but I wasn't in my office and finally was able to talk to the hospital and her mother. She asked her visiting teacher to take her to the hospital and finally reached me just as they were getting to the labor and delivery floor of the hospital at about 2:30.

I walked home - contemplating my last few hours before the noble station of fatherhood forever descended upon me, gathered all of the things Jenny didn't have time to grab (cameras, journals, movies, books, clothing, me, etc.), and headed over to the hospital.

Jenny was having contractions according to the monitors, but she wasn't really feeling them. They were very irregular and 5-7 minutes apart. In retrospect, she says she may have been having occasional contractions like that for the previous 2 months but simply didn't realize it.

Because the water broke, the hospital wants the baby to come within 24 hours to avoid the risk of infection getting to the baby. The nurse told us that the doctor would give us up to 3 hours to try to start labor on our own, otherwise they would induce the baby. We wanted to try to have the baby without medication, so we started walking around the corridors. We walked pretty fast to try and jump start the contractions.

After an hour of wowing the medical staff with our speed walking (got lots of comments on that), the contractions were much stronger, about 2 minutes apart, and finally were uncomfortable for Jenny. She went back to the bed and the contractions slowed to 5 minutes apart, but were still twice as strong or more than original. By 6:00 PM, Jenny was having very hard contractions and was dilated to 6 cm. By 7:00 or 7:30, she had an uncontrollable urge to push and was dilated to 10. The nurse checked and the baby had dropped, so it was time to push. We were told the doctor was on her way, but we didn't know if she would make it before the birth. The nurse wanted to wait, but we talked her out of it.

The doctor got there by 8:00 PM and the baby started crowning by 8:20 PM. Jenny was pushing really hard and she and the baby were doing really well, but by 8:45 Jenny felt she had given everything she had. The doctor didn't want to perform an episiotomy because of the risk of tearing, but she thought that Jenny had enough room to be fine. She thought that a little cut would make the baby pop right out. Jenny said please do it and with a 1/4 inch - 1/2 inch incision, Eliza arrived at 8:57 PM.

Eliza is 5 pounds, 5 ounces, 18 inches long, and has a little brown fuzz on her head. Her APGAR (measure of "aliveness") scores were 8 and 9 out of 10 at 1 minute and 5 minutes.

Officially, Eliza is 3 weeks and 3 days early so she is 3 days premature, but the pediatrician considers her essentially full term.

Mother, Father and Baby are all doing well. We are excited to have Eliza with us. She is so tiny.

Baby Update

Ok, so I didn't update this blog nearly as often nor as much as I originally intended.

We are down to 6 weeks left before Eliza (aka. Kumkuata) rearranges our lives. I am very excited and think it is going to be so much fun to have a little kid taking up all of my spare (and not so spare) time. Here are some pictures from today (23 March 2008):


Jenny was in Mexico last week presenting some of her research on children's folk music at the first meeting of the world's experts in the subject - there were 6 people in attendance - but she said it was a lot of fun to talk to people who really enjoy doing the same thing she does. There were persons representing Europe, America, Mexico and South America, and the Pacific Isles. The representative from China was unable to attend. They spent a week talking about their research and their individual challenges finding credible sources.

Jenny goes to Denver on Wednesday for another music conference where she will have some of her students perform in the national choir.

Two weeks ago I presented some of my research at a conference in New Mexico. It was well received. My topic was a computer model of a reactor for converting coal, biomass (grass/tree clippings, etc.), or garbage to gasoline and diesel fuel. The feed stocks are first converted into carbon monoxide and hydrogen through a gasification process before they are converted to liquid fuels in my reactor. Companies can use my model to help design reactors for commercial production. My professor will present nearly the same talk (and most of the same slides) at the American Chemical Society meeting in Louisiana on April 5.

We are excited for the end of this semester and for me to finally be done with classes so I can focus on research. With any luck, I can get my dissertation work done in no more than two years.

Well, who knows. Perhaps I will update this again soon, then again, the next log might be pictures from Eliza's first birthday!