Meeting more family...

Sunday, Avery spent the day with Aunt Peggy, Uncle Ken, Cousin Aidan and Gramps.

Our Little Girl...

AVERY JADE
January 10th, 2008
7 lbs 9 oz, 19.75 inches

We are still tired and adjusting to our new lives but we are thrilled to have our little cutie pie! More stories to come soon... but for now, here are some pics!

The new mommy and baby!!!


































Happy, relieved daddy.



















Gramps said he was "in heaven" holding grandchild number 2!


















Grandpa and Grandma all smiles with little Avery.









































Aunt Elissa and Uncle Jon greet their new neice.















































A.J. with cousin Ryan... too much cuteness for one picture!

Last Pre-Labor Entry!!!

Update!!!!! As of today, I still have not dilated at all, although I have pretty minor contractions. We are heading to the hospital Wednesday night for a scheduled inducement and then if all goes well, we should have a baby by late Thursday afternoon/early evening. As you can imagine, we are super nervous and excited and it'll be hard to rest the next 2 days with all of this anticipation!!!

As requested, here are my last pregnancy pictures!

Next time we post, no one (thankfully) will want to see me anymore, and they'll just want to see baby Avery!

Density

Hi everyone,

Sorry it's been so long since the last update. We've been spending virtually every evening getting ready for the big day -- packing bags for the hospital, getting the apartment ready, and generally just counting down the time in a state of perpetual disbelief as to how few days we have left until Avery's due date. (Five!)

Anyway, it's taken a lot of creativity figuring out how we're going to fit two adults, a baby, two cats, and all our junk into a 600 square foot apartment. Fortunately, we've been able to store a ton of stuff at Stan & Elaine's house. It'll still be a very tight fit, but it's looking like we'll be able to pull it off, at least for awhile.

Here's the new crib, which was delivered on Friday. The bumper and sheets are courtesy of Jacqui. (Yes, we realize that you aren't supposed to use a bumper with a newborn. Or at least we realized it after Elissa reminded us... but we thought it looked nice for the picture.)















The cats are having a great time taking turns napping in the drawers underneath the crib! Fortunately, neither of them have shown any interest in getting into the crib itself, but we have a crib tent to put on top in case they ever do.

The crib is wedged in between Cher's closet and our bed, which has now been moved several feet down the wall from its original position. Thus, as you can see it's somewhat of a tight squeeze for me to get out of my side of the bed.

Here's Avery's new closet, which was formerly known as our bookshelf.

And here's a typical corner in our bedroom... two dressers and a little bookshelf (with a makeshift cat bed on top) all wedged into one corner. As you can see, it may be a bit tough for me to open my dresser drawers with this new arrangement, but I should be fine so long as I never have to change my socks or underwear.

Here's the stroller parallel parked in a tiny space between the TV and piano.


And here's our new, smaller couch which is wedged up against the cat tower, which in turn is wedged up against the windowsill.













I can't wait to see what happens with so much love, stress, joy, change, laughter, tears and experiences packed into such a small space! Here's to our baby's densely-packed future, and to my beautiful wife who has been so strong, loving and nurturing to little Avery for these last nine months, and to our entire family for these last eight years.


("My density has popped me to you.")

Update

Hi guys,

I made a few improvements to the blog this weekend. It now only displays the most recent entries, so if you want to read any older ones just click on the archives links on the side. We also added some fun links to our friends/family and to the hospital, and will be sure to add more soon. There's also a button in case you ever want to email an entry to anyone.

We had another good weekend of baby prep. On Saturday we went into the City and bought a bunch of storage bins to keep on my old bookshelf, which is now Avery's closet. We also figured out how to put the Pack n' Play together, as well as the crib tent (to keep the cats out), and also did our first two loads of baby clothes laundry.

Elf

Just wanted to share how skinny I am in my elf suit (if we haven't sent you the link already)!
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1318341516

We are at 37 weeks and everything is still normal - not dilated as of Thursday morning.

Getting ready for Avery!

What a weekend! Between selling our couches, getting a new (smaller) one, moving all of our books out to NJ, receiving all of our clothing and presents from NJ - we have been workin' (or I should say Scott has been working) double time!! Unfortunately, we have no new pics b/c we are still rearranging everything in the apartment and trying to get organized.

Avery is 36.5 weeks and I only have to get up for 14 more days of work before she's born!!!! I thought this was a pretty cool picture of how she's positioned inside of me. Her legs/feet are usually on my right side and her shoulders are usually on the left side, but she really does quite a bit of elbowing regardless of where she is. We think with her giant limbs she must take after Scott's side (with all those tall and thin genes- she'll be a lucky girl!). We do joke about how she looks, but of course we really just want a healthy baby girl (who sleeps well and doesn't fuss too often and behaves well when being handled by others, who adores all of her relatives and friends AND we hope she is super intelligent and caring, etc, etc)!! No really... just a healthy baby would be great.



Hopefully we'll have a new and exciting blog soon!!

Fun in the cold!

Scott and I managed to get quite a lot of Hanukkah and baby shopping done on Saturday. It was exhausting and freezing but worth the trek.

Above are some sort of nutcracker/festive people that we took pictures with at the Marc Jacobs store (possibly the home of my future diaper bag if we are crazy enough to splurge on one indulgence item for me). We also bought our new camcorder (thanks to Lorie and Stefan for our Hanukkah gift) and a long awaited pair of new glasses for me. I'm so glad I'll actually be able to see in the hospital now (and make sure I'm taking home the right baby!). After dinner in the West Village, we ended the night with banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery (our favorite dessert EVER!). But best of all we bought our 3 nieces and 3 nephews some very cute Hanukkah presents that we hope they enjoy.

In Avery news - According to the baby sites , Avery is now the weight of a honeydew melon. We have our 36 week sonogram tomorrow as well as the last round of tests. Hopefully all will be well! We have also started to receive some pretty great presents from around the country! Thanks to everyone for being so generous in helping us get ready for our bundle!