Moxie knew it was bedtime and decided to put on a show. We caught a short amount of it and are sharing it with you here. Enjoy.
On Sunday, January 4th, just after nap time Moxie and Bibi came to the hospital to meet Keen. Strider met them at the hospital entrance and Moxie came with a gift for her new baby sister (a soft monkey lovie). Moxie was a little nervous to be in a new place but as soon as she saw Keen in the basinet she ran to her and asked to hold her. She wasn’t shy about adjusting the baby’s hat, playing with her feet, and didn’t mind that Keen fussed a little.
Here’s some more pictures of our sweet baby Keen. She sleeps most of the time (lazy 10 day old) but when she is awake she is fun to watch. Lots of coos and wiggles. Nothing coherent yet–except making funny faces at her dad. She’s got that perfected.
When is sweet angel baby Keen’s favorite time to poop? About 10 seconds into a nice clean diaper. She believes her yellow mustard sharts are best placed in brand new diapers just after the last tab is placed and the changing pad put away. Makes total sense.
On January 3 at 8:52 pm we added those extra two feet to our home. At 7 lbs 11 oz and 21 inches Keen Zora Dorsey-Lee has entered the game.
She was born, like her sister, at Shady Grove Hospital. With midwives and a doula in attendance. I went into labor the morning of the day we would go in for an induction. We labored at home all day and got to the hospital 4:30. After making slow progress all afternoon suddenly, just seconds before strider was going to get dinner, my water broke and shit got real. I jumped from 4 cm to 9 cm dilated in what seemed like minutes. I wanted to push and we got ready. Unfortunately Keen had one commonality with her sister: the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck–three times. So as she descended her heart rate dropped dangerously low at each contraction. And this only got worse when I started to push. The midwife called in an OB consult to ask for a vacuum or forcep delivery–recognizing the baby wasn’t safe in there much longer. The OB said our only option was to only push every other contraction and let the baby stabilize and maybe we could avoid a c-section. In fact, he thought surgery was our only choice. Strider and I were barely aware of this as we focused the biggest challenge of the birth: not pushing. So the midwife and nurse got down to it and let me push when Keen stabilized. Well about 20 minutes later Keen shot out. Literally. No one expected it and no one caught her. She caught air. I’m not kidding. Air. Everyone but me gasped. I knew it was my last push. I’d had enough of this waiting crap. I decided to make it count. Everyone laughed and congratulated me as a “really great pusher.” I thought they said that to all the girls. Turns out not. But understand I paid for it in stitches and burst blood vessels.
Leading up to her birth Strider and I talked a lot about our expectations and thoughts about this new baby girl. We only have experience with one kid: Moxie. Our range of options were pretty limited. Moxie is a great kid–but we didn’t want a clone of our first born. We hoped for a little person with her own scene. Maybe she would be blonde! Maybe blue eyes! Maybe shy! Maybe she would be the opposite of our two year old and, until the birth of KZ, our only center. Well, it turns out Keen is her own person. Not in opposition to Moxie but someone completely new and someone we already love more than we imagined.
Here’s a picture of our two very different and very wonderful girls.
While our awesome friends Kai (Sky and Moxie called him) and Kiki were here we made a gingerbread house. It turned out pretty well. Sort of. They had a good time though.
Moxie played with Strider’s hair the other night. She was very serious about it but not very good. He was good about it but not very serious.
Yesterday as I was getting dressed for work Moxie looked over and said, “You are wearing your big shirt.” Is it a big shirt? Yes. Is the giant belly underneath it actually giant? Yes. Did she need to say that? …yes. Moxie keeping it real as we are two weeks from the due date and likely three weeks from this baby making an appearance.
Yes. This picture was taken from my work bathroom.
Recently we got Moxie (and Strider) a pair of trainer chop sticks. She is already a pro. I actually think she ate more of her dinner because of how proud she was of her success. She can actually do it better than her dad.
Here’s our adventure in family pumpkin carving. It’s really great having Grandpa and Grandma here to help. Moxie wouldn’t touch the pumpkin guts but it was still fun.
