The Man Has Arrived

He is here.  The waiting is finally over.  Jaxon Grant Wein made his timely arrival on Tuesday, August 2nd, at 7:20am weighing 7 lbs. 9 oz. and 20.5 inches long.  Everything went extremely smooth during the c-section.  We were discharged from the hospital just close to 38 hours after surgery.  Jax is doing fantastic and I am recovering slowly but surely.  Here's the tale of how Jax came into the world.....

We arrived at the hospital promptly at 5am.  If you know me, you know that I am a very punctual person.  It's almost borderline OCD.  After getting barely any sleep the night before, we were still bright eyed and bushy tailed upon exiting the elevator to the 8th floor womens center at Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital.  We were greeted by smiling faces and nurses that were just as excited as we were since "one of their own" was going to be having a baby.  We were escorted to our post-partum room to drop off our belongings as I was going to prepped and pre-op'd in the recovery room.  I walked into our room (room 808, same one we had with Ava) and I found a beautiful arrangement of blue carnations and a card that made me cry.  My mom somehow managed to have that there waiting for us - so sweet.

We got to the recovery room and I got my gown on and into the bed and hooked up to the monitors whilst my husband was vibrating, on his 2nd cup of coffee and would not simmer down with his nervous chatter.  He was on top of the world.  He actually started my IV for me and got the fluids going while we were already having visitors from his co-workers, partners and other anesthesiologists from the hospital.  It was near shift-change time so the new onset of nurses came in to say hello as well and express their excitement for us.  (They are ALL seriously awesome and I just love them.)  My dad also arrived minutes before we went into surgery.  Here's a photo of us in pre-op just waiting for the big event.

The time finally arrived for me to walk into the OR.  Yes I said walk.  It's kind of like feeling like you're walking the green mile.  I think I must have left my body walking into there because I was sooooo nervous I just kind of blanked out.  I was most scared of getting the spinal.  I climbed up onto the table and I remember telling Mark (my spinal guy) NOT to look at my butt, haha.  You see, Mark is my husband's partner and he and his wife Brenda and their kids are like family to us.  I was trying to joke around to try and comfort myself a little bit.  The spinal went in flawlessly without any parasthesias (an electrical-shock feeling that shoots down one leg which occurs in most spinals).  So major kudos to Mark for that one.  My wonderful doctor Dr. Watson had come in and was holding/rubbing my shoulders as well to help comfort me since she knew I was nervous.  Once the spinal was in I could slowly feel that tingly sensation starting at my feet and climbing upwards.  Everyone was great - they were all talking me through it and before I knew it my legs were being lifted onto the table and I could not feel them anymore.  The first 5 minutes of the spinal taking effect were a bit nerve-wracking.  It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest and I almost felt like I was going to throw-up.  Apparently that means I got a REALLY good spinal.  After that initial 5 minutes, it was pretty much smooth sailing.  I felt tugging, pushing, pulling all while joking with Bobby, Mark and the dr.'s and nurses.   And then all of a sudden Bobby announces to me, "here he comes" and he stood up and took the following picture......





WARNING......NOT FOR THE WEAK STOMACHS!!

Hmmmm I wonder how he's gonna feel about this picture in about 12 years.  And here is his proud daddy cutting his cord....

Here's a shot of me with Mark aka "Jamarcus" as I like to call him (but he hates it, lol) - he does great spinals!

I'll finish this post with pictures...they tell the story better than I could :-)

Meeting my son for the first time

Mom & Dad checking him out

Kisses for the little guy - his skin was so soft

Picture with our son

Momma's boy

Ava brought me flowers, my sweet little princess

Saying hi to little brother

Giving him kisses before she bolted off to play with the new toy he brought her

Momma with her two precious babies

First diaper change :-)

Ava looking at her baby brother and saying, "awww he's so cute"

We have been home for about a week now and all is going well.  Jax sleeps in 3-4 hour increments at night which is a dream!  Neither Bobby or I are sleep deprived.  Ava is adjusting well, she is gentle with her brother and gives him hugs and kisses all the time.  She also says, "I love you, baby Jax" which melts our hearts every time.  I am relishing every.single.moment of this since we won't be having any more little ones.  I closed up the baby-maker while they were in there for surgery.

Happy one-week birthday to my little dude- Mommy, Daddy and Sissy love you sooooo much and are so very happy that you are finally here!!

Nursery is Finished

My hand-picked driftwood hung with large bicycle hooks and his name letters hanging with rustic twine

The crib arrived!  PBK bedding and the oar is now hung above the shutters

Fijian thatch is applied to built-in desk area for storage/hiding spot :-)

Now all we need is the little man to make it complete.  Reality is setting in now because my dr office called to confirm my PRE-OP appointments for Monday.  Yay for pre-ops.   Everything else is pretty much done, all of his little clothes are washed and put away, the co-sleeper is set up...we just have to get the carseat situation figured out.  I think we are moving Ava's carseat to behind the driver side and Jax will go rear-facing on the passenger side.  Hopefully it should work.

This weekend we are planning on just spending our last couple days as a family of 3.  Monday night it's on - I want All U Can Eat crab legs from Grille 54 as my last meal, lol.  I will probably eat a huge bowl of cereal just before midnight too so I won't go hungry over the following 7 hours, haha.

The hospital does have wi-fi so you better believe I will be facebooking, emailing, blogging, texting etc. as soon as I possibly can.  I can not wait to see the look on Ava's face when she sees her little brother for the first time.

Life as we know it, is about to change forever........ :-)

More nursery pics

Just waiting on the red & white wooden vintage oar to arrive and we will hang it above the surf board

Fish chime hanging above the door should bring good luck

changing table, glider and you can see the deep red circular shag rug here......there will be a white vinyl palm tree decal affixed to the wall going left to right over the changing table

Baby shower awesomeness and PBK crib woes

I am so fortunate & blessed to have two wonderful ladies in my life who threw me a baby shower yesterday.  Lauren and Jessica hosted a very lovely "sprinkle" at a local restaurant on the water in downtown Tampa with about 15 of my closest friends and family members.  How appropriate the name of the restaurant is called "Jackson's Bistro".

Here is a photo of the room we had, again appropriately called the "Wine Room".

Following are a few pictures from my wonderful day - I definitely received many things I needed for Jax's arrival and also tons of adorable clothes for the little guy.

Adorable diaper cake that Lauren made.  I don't think I can take it apart - it's too pretty!

Yummy cake pops with little surf boards on them...LOVE!

Hostesses with the mostesses!!  Lauren and Jessica

Champagne favors....but I didn't have any.  You better believe the leftover little bottles are getting packed into my hospital bag, LOL

Opening gifts

Got lots of cute stuff

Check out the Under Armour outfit!

Mickey Mouse and FL Gators....what a combo!

Fraser "winning"......I swear they are rigged - she wins every time

Here are the hostess thank you gifts I presented to the girls.......Pandora bracelets that they can add charms to throughout the years.  Jessica's had a "B" and an "E" on it to represent her twins, Brett and Emma, and Lauren's had a little doggie on it to represent her beloved puppy "Scoobie".  I am pretty sure they liked them :-)

And finally we were able to orchestrate a group picture before bidding farewell.  I love all of these wonderful ladies!!

Now, onto my ongoing saga with Pottery Barn Kids.  You may or may not know about the dropside recall of cribs, well PBK was nice enough to replace ours with a fixed gate crib they sent out right away.  All we had to do was put the old crib in the new box and send back to them.  Easy-peasy right?  not so much.  We received our new crib only to have it NOT INCLUDE the hardware to put it together.  I called to see if they could send the hardware - no can do.  They had to send another crib and have us box up the one we received.  So after being told this news, they also inform us that the particular crib we have will be on backorder until July 17th.  Well that was yesterday.  I called today to make sure it was being shipped out and lo and behold they NOW inform me that it is now backordered until August 17th.  I am pretty sure the girl on other end of the phone line may have crapped her pants when I went off on her and demanded they fix this situation and get a crib to me as soon as possible because I am having a baby IN TWO F$%^ING WEEKS.  I will now have a cuter, brand new, different style, safe crib delivered to me by July 25th ALONG with a merchandise credit card for $200 sent in the mail to me.  Here's the new crib only it will be in espresso finish:

Some words of wisdom, do not mess with a woman who is 9 months pregnant.

I have 14 days left........god help me.......and anyone who tells me something I don't want to hear right now, LOL!

I'm on a roll!

Or maybe I am nesting?  That is, if you consider online shopping "nesting" than yes that's it for sure.  Jax's room is coming together in my mind beautifully, albeit slowly.  I'll go ahead and spill/show more details now since I am too excited to keep it a secret any longer.  So you all know it's a "Vintage Surf Shack" theme, right?  Ok from the picture I posted a week ago, the walls are painted (still needs another coat which is being done today), and I had bamboo fencing/paneling installed with bamboo half rounds as trim/chair rails.  It's amazing, truly.  My goal is to have all of the decor in his room be vintage, antique or found or hand-made by yours truly, wish me luck :-)

My first inspirational vision was brought to me by seeing this idea on a blog I check out on the reg.  Only, I wanted to spruce it up a bit and suddenly a light bulb went off - DRIFTWOOD!  So one afternoon I loaded up my husband, daughter and the puppy and we set out for a local beach where I suspected I might find some.  I parked at the most remote, rockiest, desolate part of Honeymoon Island and we all got out and started walking on some semi-treacherous terrain whilst the wind and dark clouds were rolling in pretty rapidly.  I saw a ginormous uprooted tree stump that had washed up on the shore and began to squeal with delight.  I waddled my fat bottom over to it and saw my pot of gold.  I found the perfect piece of driftwood for my project, picked it up and hauled it back to my vehicle and threw it in the trunk.  I then grabbed my camera and returned to my family who was perched on the bench swing you see in the photo from 2 posts back.  About 1.5678 milliseconds later, the sideways rain started pecking at us and we knew it was time to go.  I did not care.  I was there for one reason and I got my prize.  I am so proud of my find and can't wait to finish that project.  It's still drying out so it may take a while.  But I gave myself a pat on the back for this one :-)

Bedding
Really not that compelling.  I didn't want to spend hours searching for the perfect bedding like I did with Ava when after a while I didn't even like it all that much.  I found this stuff on sale, love the colors and it goes perfectly with the theme.

I only got the quilt, fitted sheet and bumper since that's all that's really needed anyway.  I am debating on whether or not I want to do a "grass skirt" or raffia for the crib skirt or if I want to leave it alone.  I am not a fan of overkill.  All of the above came from PBK, on sale.

Wall decor
Here's where the fun begins!  Along with the driftwood project, I had these made a while ago and they've been waiting patiently in his closet to be hung.

They do read all different cities than shown above, mostly places we've been to or would love to travel to in the future.  Again, I love the colorful, whimsical cheeriness of them.  I got them from ebay seller signshopnmore.

The cathedral wall space above his closet will boast three different vintage items displayed in such a way as to give off a "let's go surfing NOW" appeal.  Here are those items:

Cluster of life preserver rings in these colors

This vintage wooden oar, from ebay seller joelandkathleen

That awesome red, white & blue short board you see in the middle marked "SOLD" - yea that's all mine.  From www.chubbysurf.com

Ahhh so finally some exciting updates!  I have asked my wonderful husband to start getting the "equipment" out of the attic so I can start to sanitize things.  Boppy pillow, bouncy seat, car seat & bases, swing etc.  Also he is going to put together the co-sleeper/bassinet.  I guess we are gearing up for survival mode in a few short weeks.  Hey, at least Jax's room will be nothing short of awesome :-)  Pics will be posted as it all comes together.

I am 35 weeks, 4 days - and he is estimated to weigh 6 pounds already from the ultrasound I had on Thursday.  Not much longer now.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel :-)

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone!!!

Maternity Pictures!

 

A HUGE thank you to Junie for doing these.  I absolutely love them and will now have something to show my little boy.

Testing some pictures

I am hearing that if you link photos here from Flickr, the quality is preserved.  Here's Miss Ava on the 4th of July showing off her festive dress.  Oh how I love this little girl.



And here's another of my cute lil family.