Man the time flies by. It really doesn't seem like two years since I was sound asleep in the delivery room. . .
Okay, might as well tell you that story.
About 24 hours before Maggie got borned, Shelly went into labor (as women tend to do before their kids get borned). I drove Shelly to the hospital late in the afternoon where they took us to a "pre-labor" room, which is a tiny uncomfortable room where they determine if you're really about to make a baby or if you've still got some time left. A doctor checked Shelly out and said that she was at least 24-36 hours from babytime. They gave us the option to stay in the tiny uncomfortable pre-labor room or to go home and return when babytime was closer. Shelly opted to head back home. Since the doc wanted Shelly to get a good night's sleep, they gave us a couple of Ambien sleeping pills, which are apparently fetus-friendly.
We got home but Shelly didn't wanna take the pills "just in case". Since I'm a lousy sleeper and knew I was gonna have a busy day the next day, I took the sleeping pills in the hopes that it would let me get some rest for the drama that was to come.
Fast forward to 4:00 the next morning, and Shelly decides that IT IS NOW TIME. Problem is that I, otherwise known as "the guy who's capable of driving a car" am now deep in drug-induced sleep. Shelly tried to wake me up a couple of times with little success, so she busied herself as best she could packing clothes and putting 'em in the car. Around 6:00, she could wait no longer. She then bounced me up and down on the bed shouting "GET UP DAMMIT!" until I finally stirred. I drove her to the hospital, which was probably not the safest thing given that I, to use "Dragnet" terminology, was wacky on the goofballs, but having a 9-month pregnant woman next to you giving you lurid descriptions of her pain tends to keep you awake.
We made it to the hospital where Shelly was re-admitted into the pre-labor room and was pronounced "ready to go". We were taken to the labor room where I promptly fell asleep on the couch for about another four hours while Shelly got hooked up to all kinds of fetus-watching machines. About 1:00 that afternoon we had ourselves a cute, but extremely loud, new addition to the family.
The moral of the story is "Ambien is good stuff!"
Here's my favorite picture of her at one day old. It looks like she's getting her first look at the world, and she just ain't buyin' it :)
And here's a picture from a couple of days ago, immediately after discovering that eating a blue sucker tends to turn one's tongue blue.
At her 2-year checkup she was once again pronounced "exceedingly tall" at 37.5 inches and 33 pounds. She's a big girl and a big joy in my life. Can't ya tell?
