Tuesday, July 13, 2004 02:21 p.m.

So its been a couple of days since my last post. Things have been rather stressful for me but i'm taking it all in stride. Little baby K had to be admitted to the NICU in a nearby Burbank hospital on Friday because his biliruben levels were very high. He was slightly jaundiced at birth and by day three he was pretty yellow. The hospital has been taking great care of K and he has responded exceptionally well to his phototherapy. His levels are very low and the doctors are now monitoring him with zero lights. If his biliruben levels remain at its current state or drop we will be able to bring K home tonight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I want him home so badly!

Since K has been in the hospital I have been taking care of myself. Trying to eat the requested 2200 calories per day, I can't quite manage this. Trying to express milk every 3-hours, which I end up doing every 4-hours. And relaxing as much as possible before K comes home. His room is spotless and everything and everyone here is just waiting for his return.

Not much else to interesting happening. Just wanted to post an update. Now I must return to my either eating or expressing lifestyle.

Thursday, July 8, 2004 08:34 a.m.

At 8.55am on July 6, 2004 T and I welcomed the newest member of our family. I am exhausted, I am excited, I am thrilled. I have way to many emotions flowing through my veins to convey my true feeling.

I labored for just over 10-hours and he was out in about 30-minutes of pusing. I went in with the expectation of of an epidural but ended up with no epidural at all. I took a mild muscle relaxer shot right into my hip muscle which curbed a little bit of the power of the contraction and later in my labor I go an IV of, can't quite remember the name, but somehting like Demoral. It was well worth every bit of pain and discomfort I went through.

Our little baby boy is very fair skinned with sandy, beachy blonde hair. I was sure he was going to have dark hair like me and T was pretty sure of this as well. So needless to say we were both very surprised when we saw his fair hair. We were discharged from the hospital a day early and part way through the night last night I was wishing I was back in the hospital but not anymore. It's a new day and Im somewaht rested and ready to conquer it all.

The doggies did not know what to make of this new little person in our home. Oscar is mostly uninterested but Daisy is very protective. Weather the baby wimpers or cries she runs over to make sure he is okay. She needs to be near the baby. We had him in the baby swing and Daisy was laying at the foot of the toy. This morning Daisy looks exhausted. She is sleeping in the same intervals T and I are, its funny but its also very endearing to see how maternal, caring and protective of our baby K.

I'll post some photos as soon as I can find some time to upload them.

Saturday, July 3, 2004 05:49 p.m.

I just got out of a hot shower and I feel so much better. It's amazing how good a shower can make you feel. We're now heating up some food and watching Dogtown and Z Boys on the Indpendent Film Channel (IFC). IFC is such a great movie channel. I especially like the series Dinner for Five hosted by John Favreau.

A few hours ago we worked on moving our dwarf orange and lemon trees over to the side of our patio/garage area. We had this weird plant thing growing there and we asked that the gardner remove them since it was outta control he did and the area was bear. Hence moving the potted orange and lemon trees as well as throwing some seeds down for baby's breath and baby blue belles. Hopefully the flowers will grow in. That area is so colorful, around our drive way gate/pergola we have pink bouganvilla on the other end is bright orange bouganvilla and bright fuscia bouganvilla then there is the lavendar/purple flower hedge thing. I love the color this time of year everything is so vibrant!

Time to eat and watch my documentary.

Saturday, July 3, 2004 09:37 a.m.

Yesterday afternoon I was able to peel myself off my chair to give my place a quick once over. The house always looks so much better when everything is in its rightful place. I get so anal about things being outta place. Sometimes T drives me up the wall. For example he is the king of writing notes on little post its and leaving it all over the house. I gave him a tiny note book to either writes his notes in or to put his post its in so he can always find them. Okay besides the post its this is what makes me nuts. He gets a call and needs to write a note down he grabs a pen and writes his note and leaves the pen whereever he wants. Call two comes ringing in and he needs to jot something else down he grabs another post it and another pen and writes his note. next thing you know there are like 4 pens scattered about and a million little post its. I told him there is no way you can keep organzied with that amount of post its laying around. I think he has gotten the hint but there is still some level of "persuading" to do on my part about the whole notebook thing.

Last night we ate at this super yummy restaurant in Manhattan Beach called Back Home in Lahaina. It was so good and the portions were enourmous. T and I were left dumbfounded at the size of our dinners. Next time we either split an entree or we order the little rice bowl size. The place was so good I want to go there again but I don't fancy driving down to Manhattan Beach just for dinner I would need to make a day or afternoon of the South Bay.

This morning we're going to breakfast with Amanda. She should actually be here in about 15 minutes then we'll be heading over to Vivians Millenium Cafe in Studio City. Yeah, I can have banana pancakes.

I don't think we will be doing much else today. I know T will be cleaning the bathroom. One thing I want to do is finish watching Cabin Fever I feel like I've had the movie forever, I want to watch and return it. So far its really bad but my friend was the costume designer for the movie so I feel a little obligated to watch it no matter how bad.

Mom gets in tomorrow afternoon. She wants to go to a restaurant straight from the airport so I will need to make some calls to see what will actually be open on the Fourth of July. All this is contingent that I don't give birth between, well, now and tomorrow. But i'm sure you all knew that. My dad will be in Vegas next week as well and wants to fly in for the day next week Sat. I told my mom that may not be worth the money because the ticket will be purchased with no advance notice and there is a possiblity I may not even have the baby. My gut feeling is that on Tuesday I will need to schedule and inducement day and if I end up with a C-Section i may still be in the hospital when my dad is here which would be such a waste of money. The following week my dad will be in Japan so I told my mom maybe he should just visit when he gets back from Japan and me and the baby will definetly be at home. We'll see how the jury rules on this one. My mom didn't seem real receptive on my argument stating that it was just one day and he just wants to see the baby and me but she wasn't quite grasping the fact that there may be no baby, yet, and I could be in the hospital and if Im in hardcore labor I don't want to see anybody. I think I'll have to give her a call today and revisit the conversation. Ugh!!!

Thursday, July 1, 2004 11:25 p.m.

No matter how many times I visit this site it never get's old. I especially love the quizzes and the "You know you're a child of the..."

On a different note, T stayed home with me the last two days. I've been feeling a little wretched. My tummy is achey and it is just plain uncomfortable to move. In a weird way he keeps my spirits up and gives me that little it of motivation that i need to keep semi-active. Today I wanted to get out of the house and walk. Since he knows i'm sick of walking around my neighborhood we drove to Pasadena and walked around the Paseo Colorado. While there I thought I wanted ice cream so we went to Cold Stone Creamery. Ok, I love Cold Stone and I always cave and get one of those giant mixed ice cream thingys. Luckily there was a line so while I waited patiently debating what I wanted I felt my stomach stirring and had to get out. Thank god, I think if I actually ate the ice cream I would have made myself sick. I guess my eyes were a lot bigger then my stomach...as usual. I can get Cold Stone some other time. They just opened a big store about three blocks from my house right on Glenoaks. I'm so excited because I can walk there. Wait, that's not a good thing!

I couldn't find my cell phone earlier tonight. I was in a panic. My heart was racing and I was frantically going through everyroom in the house. I finally found the phone in the ashtray of my car. It's so sad how we become attached to things like cell phones. I've had this specific conversation with various friends. They all said they would have a heart attack if they ever lost their phones claiming that this was their life line. In some ways I feel the same way. I don't have a home phone so this is my main phone, I don't have my phone numbers written down, its all stored in the cell. I don't have an alarm clock and depend on the preset alarm on my cell phone. Sometimes I think about losing the cell altogether and making myself less dependent and accessible. Hmmmm...could I actually do that? Hmmmm.....I don't think so.

Thursday, July 1, 2004 11:22 p.m.

Okay I jumped ahead of myself when posting my entry earlier today. Now I will repost my entry from this afternoon so it is appropriately placed on my July page.

Thursday, July 1, 2004 04:59 p.m.

Still no baby. The doctor warned me that the little tyke will most likely be overdue. Overdue! I had to ask how long do you allow babies to be late? She answered 7-10 days max. Ok, so I have another doctors appointment next Tuesday so we'll see where we are at.

T has been home with me these last couple of days. It's been nice having him here taking care of me. Actually, since he's been home we've been able to get a lot of our financial type stuff in order so we don't have to stress over it once the baby is born. We've learned that the re-fi docs are being finalized and hopefully we will be 80% (or so) debt free by the end of next week. Some of that money will be used to pay off all but 20% of my car which means my fine piece of german craftsmanship will be mine all mine by the end of the year!!!! Yeah!!! I hate car payments.

Last night we popped in on my father-in-law. He seems to be in better health but he told me not to let his outwards appearance fool me. whatever the case he LOOKS healthier and happier. The funny thing is he lives about 8 or 9 houses up the street from T's and my old house. After the visit we headed down to Torrance to pick up T's removable harddrive from work and to eat dinner at Kings Hawaiian Bakery. It was so yummy! T ordered a combo plate consisting of rice, macaroni salad, sweet and sour spare ribs, huli huli chicken and chow mein. I had the kalua pork and rice with macaroni salad. We each had fruit punch (which was a little to sweet for me) and we received a big 'ol basket of sweet bread rolls. We couldn't control ourselves at the bakery counter and bought an entire Lilikoi Crunch cake. We each had a slice of cake and coffee for breakfast.

I need too eat now.