I must pause a moment from this Movable Type 4 busyness to say that, as of today, Georgia and I have been married for 15 years. No, we’re not that old, we just married young.
In that time, we have produced three little Choate-lings, lived in 4 states (which border 3 coasts), bought and sold 2 houses, and held (between us!) 16 jobs.
Never a dull moment. I can honestly say the honeymoon hasn’t ended. Looking forward to the next 15.
A recounting of the delivery of our third child, Arwen Cassandra Choate.
Thanks to all the well-wishers out there. Mom and baby are doing great! Photos are here for those interested (nothing graphic, I promise).
Real quick:
Gotta run. Ciao.
Savannah’s growing up. She’s 3 years, 7 months now. And she has her first Game Boy Advance platform game: Dora the Explorer: The Search for Pirate Pig’s Treasure
Like all good platform games, it involves a lot of things to pick up and jumping. The site rates it for kids 4 and up but she’s doing pretty well with it. We’ve read to her the bits of text it shows in the cut scenes and she knows them all by heart now.
Pardon me whilst I wipe a tear.
This is worth the hit in bandwidth I'm going to take: Seth's First Laugh. It made my mom cry -- YMMV.
Things have been fairly light here lately because we're out on vacation. This week we're visiting my family (although some wouldn't consider that a real vacation, I guess my definition is a little more liberal) for Thanksgiving. My brother (Steve) and sister (Sheila) will be joining us too.
We decided to drive this time. Flying was going to be more than twice the cost of driving (we have to buy 3 tickets now that Savannah is 3). Although it was a lengthy drive (2 days, 1,314 miles), it turned out better than I expected. Georgia, Savannah and I are very grateful that the new laptop can play DVDs. Seth hardly made a peep.
Speaking of DVDs, as with the last 2 or 3 visits with my family, we will have another movie-fest. This time we'll be watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (directors extended cut, 3 hours, 28 minutes), Star Wars II, Rushmore (one of Georgia's all-time favorites), Brazil and possibly others (I'm not sure which titles Steve is bringing). DVDs are so nice and portable like that.
So, if I don't get the chance to post on Thursday, happy Thanksgiving in advance to all of you.
Well, Seth is here! He was born September 3rd, 9:38 PM EST. He weighed 8 pounds, 5 ounces and was 20 inches in length. He's perfect.
His due date was September 1st. That came and went. We were kind of expecting a late baby-- Savannah was 11 days late. At Georgia's last checkup which was this past Thursday, she was dilated 1 cm-- not much but off to a good start. Georgia had a few contractions on Monday, but nothing regular. So on Tuesday I was ready to go back to work since it could have been even a few more days before the baby arrived. Georgia called me at the office that morning to report that her contractions were getting pretty regular-- roughly 10 minutes apart. Still, she wasn't concerned at this point, so she didn't ask me to come home.
A little after 6 PM she called to say that she needed to be checked at the clinic again, but in her condition she couldn't drive herself. So I went to pick her up-- by the time we left the house it was just after 7 PM. At the clinic we found that Georgia was up to 4 cm. They advised that we go to the hospital to have them determine whether Georgia was ready to be admitted or not.
We got to the hospital at 8:15 and they said Georgia should stay-- they estimated her at 4-5 cm. So we called the Traisci's who had agreed to keep Savannah while Georgia was in the hospital. They arrived and left with Savannah. I got back to the Georgia's room after seeing them off. She was already well into labor-- this was probably about 9 PM.
Things are a little blurry after that. At this point she was asking for some pain meds because the contractions were getting strong and frequent. She was also starting to feel the urge to push, which was a serious sign she was close to delivery. A half-hour later (9:38 PM), Seth was born. Georgia delivered too fast to be allowed any medication. She didn't even get out of the triage room! But she did just fine. We called the Traisci's afterward-- like us, they couldn't believe it was already over. They came back down to the hospital to see the baby and to let Savannah meet her new brother.
After that, Georgia was put in a regular room. She was able to nurse Seth there. She also asked for a chocolate milkshake. I obliged her. What a day!
Georgia and Seth will be released from the hospital on Thursday. Besides putting the pictures and this online, I'm running some errands today getting things ready for his homecoming. I'd like to say a word of thanks to my employer, Euro RSCG Circle-- they provide for a week of paid leave for Dad. That's going to be a big help to us this week. My parents are planning to drive up and stay a while. If you'd like to drop a note to Georgia, her e-mail address is mamac@glchoate.com.
To learn more about Seth and to see more pictures, visit Seth's Weblog.
Good news for Windows usability-- a 2 year old can use Windows.
Savannah has learned how to use a mouse!
Today Georgia and I learned that the baby she's carrying (a little past mid-term now) is a boy!
We had been debating whether or not to learn the gender before the birth, but we decided to do it this time since we had waited with Savannah. So today we had the ultrasound done and was able to clearly see for ourselves.
Naturally we're very happy-- and would have also been so had it been a girl instead, but perhaps we're a little bit more happy (or grateful may be a better word) since we already have a girl.
We haven't settled on a name yet-- we'll probably wait until the very end to decide on that. Georgia had given me the option of picking the name for a boy if she could choose the name for a girl-- but now that we know it's a boy, I believe I've lost that privilege. Oh well.
For friends and family that haven't heard from us personally yet and are reading this for the first time here, I apologize for not having told you the news personally, but I wanted to post this today to mark the occassion. (Besides-- I gave the news to mom via instant message, so this is perhaps one notch less personal than that.)
