Camping pictures and more..

As promised here are the "camping" pictures from this weekend at my parents house...





Here are also some cute pictures from this morning...Hannah is really enjoying being a big sister, but I am not too sure Samantha looks like she is enjoying being a little sister:



Samantha just looks so much like Adam to me...



And here is a picture from when my brother was visiting...my family being all sorts of crazy and my brother looking a little worried:



Stay tuned for pictures of the princess dinner Hannah and I are going to tonight at Cafe Italia. There will be princesses and Hannah and her friends get to dress up like princesses also. It is a special night out for just Hannah and I and I am looking forward to it. Hannah is going dressed up at Sleeping Beauty...I am sure I will have plenty of pictures to post.

Hannah Plans Her Weekend

My mom came up on Thursday afternoon and had planned to stay until Friday and then go home. Well Thursday night as my mom was putting Hannah to sleep Hannah started planning her Friday out and it went something like this..."Babi you will take me to school, then Mommy will pick me up, and then we will pack up my toys and I will go to your house and spend the night". Apparently Hannah has had enough of us and her new baby sister and needs a vacation because she kept talking about going to Babi's house for the night the next day too. So on Saturday morning we packed up Hannah's stuff and off she went for a sleepover at Babi's house.

For Hannah's birthday she got a backpack with a mini tent and sleeping bag in it so she packed that up and went "camping" at Babi and Dedo's house. My Dad set up the tent in their room and she literally camped in my parents room on Saturday night. My dad has promised me pictures so I will post them here as soon as I have them. They also went "hiking" up the hill behind their house, went to the Golden Gate Bridge and went to Safeway and drove the car shopping carts around the parking lot, which I do have pictures of...who needs Disneyland when you can go to the Safeway parking lot and drive around like crazy people. :)





While Adam and I were slightly offended that Hannah wanted a weekend away we knew she was going to have a fun time and with us all being sick last week...including little Samantha we knew it would be a nice vacation from our house. Adam and I and Samantha also enjoyed our weekend...we rented some movies, slept in a little - we didn't have Hannah waking us up at 6:30ish a.m. so we could go back to sleep after Samantha woke us up.

Broccoli Omama

As I got to Hannah's school this afternoon to pick her up I found her and her fellow girlfriends gathered under the play structure in a circle and I asked what they were doing. I was told by Kathryn, who seemed to be leading the circle, that they were playing "Barack Obama". I was quite impressed that they even knew that name, but as I quickly found out from a teacher they were talking about him in circle time earlier. I was also informed by this teacher that earlier that day when they were playing outside they really hadn't gotten the name down quite right and were calling him "Broccoli Omama". So there you have it folks, our new President Broccoli Omama. I must say I had quite a laugh about that. :)

In other news, Hannah continues to be a great big sister. There are of course times where she will get frustrated that Samantha is not grabbing her hand so she will crunch down on Samantha's delicate fingers to get her to hold her hand. Or Hannah might want Samantha to open her eyes so she will take her fingers and attempt to pry open Samantha's closed eyes. You gotta love those delicate sisterly moments. Another question Hannah asks a lot is when will Samantha be able to play with me...and I can just see it now when Samantha is old enough to play with Hannah or Hannah's toys Hannah will be asking when will she stop playing with me. :)

Samantha's First Week

Samantha's first week has been a nice calm one in comparison to Hannah's first week at home. My mom came up and watched Hannah for us while we were in the hospital and then stayed with us for our first night and day home. She then left and Adam's mom came up to stay with us for 4 days. We relaxed, hung out, went out to breakfast, went out to lunch, had our first doctor's appt (where we found out Samantha weighs 6lbs 4oz after dropping to 5lbs 15oz upon release from the hospital...yay for gaining weight!), Adam's mom helped us with some organizing and Samantha had her first bath. I am still in shock how smooth things have gone...perhaps it is because I envisioned the worst all these months about having 2 kids that now this seems pretty good to me. Here are some pictures to document our first week:

Hanging out with big sister Hannah:


Hanging out with big sister Tulip:


Hanging out with the boys (On the left is Hannah's friend Sydney's dad "Eric" and her little brother "Ryan" who was born in July):


Hanging out with Mommy:


Hanging out with her Nali (Adam's mom):


The all important sleep:




Getting her first bath - Hannah and Daddy washed her and Mommy and Hannah dried her...Hannah is such a wonderful helper! :)

Welcome Samantha!

Samantha was born December 28th, 2008 at 6:49am. She weighed 6lbs 8oz and was 18 1/2 inches long. We barely made it to the hospital as I had my first contraction at around 5:30am and by the time we left the house about 10 minutes later my contractions were only about 1 minutes apart. We had an interesting car ride to the hospital as I was screaming in pain and Adam was trying to drive as fast as I was yelling at him to. :) We pulled up to the ER doorway, left the car there, and Adam ran pushing me through the maze that is the UC Med Center in a wheelchair as I continued to freak out that I was going to be delivering any minute. I swear it was like the movies. When we got into Labor and Delivery I was already 8cm dilated and a few minutes later I was in a delivery room, pushed about 4-5 times and out came Samantha! It all happened so fast we still can't believe it. Obviously since she came so fast I had no time for drugs...I was quite disappointed about that but I clearly did not have a choice...good times.
We came home on Tuesday and all has been well. Samantha is doing great and Hannah is a wonderful big sister. Tulip was a little concerned that she had another sister but is being super gentle when sniffing her or checking her out...she had plenty of practice with Hannah and I think she knows the rules. Here are some pictures for everyone to enjoy...Happy New Year!

Baby Samantha:


Hannah loving her new sister:


Happy Family:


The little yellow hat in these pictures was given to us at the hospital and was knitted by the residents at Eskaton Village Retirement Home which is where I use to work as an Activity Coordinator. I thought that was a really nice coincidence that her first little hat was knitted by the retirement home residence where I use to work and loved to work. Here is another picture of Samantha in it: